by Peggy Jaeger
Gemma Laine was a world-class photographer, there was no doubt of it. In the span of a few seconds she had captured an act so heinous and violent that if seen through a normal person’s eyes would have been unbearable. Through her talented ones, though, she’d immortalized the scene.
“Is that my SD card, or did you upload the pictures to your laptop?” Gemma asked from behind him.
He’d been so engrossed with the photographs he hadn’t heard her approach. “I uploaded them,” he told her.
“Do you have my card?”
“No. It’s still being examined.”
She sighed. “I have some really great shots on that card,” she said, leaning against the kitchen counter. “There isn’t any way I can get just those back? Never mind the shooting stuff. I don’t want to lose a whole day’s work, especially since it was really productive.”
It took him a moment to reply. “The FBI IT techs uploaded your pictures onto the main data frame and I did the same with my work laptop. I copied the ones we don’t need to a flash drive. I was going to give it to you later on, after you’d rested for a while.”
For the first time since he’d met her, Gemma smiled. The joy that filtered through it almost knocked him backward. Her entire face changed with just the parting and uplifting of her lips. Ky had thought she was a gorgeous woman without it, but when she looked into his eyes, her own glistening with happiness, he realized just how beautiful she truly was.
“Really?” she asked, wobbling closer to him. “Can I have it now? Please?”
He reached into his pants pocket, took out the flash drive and handed it to her. “Like I said, the kill shots aren’t on this.”
Her hand rolled over the drive, no bigger than a stick of gum, as she held it. Like a lover stroking a mate’s naked flesh, her long fingers twined around and fondled the drive as she spoke to him.
“Do you know…anything?” Gemma asked.
Ky shook his head. “Not yet. The man who attacked you, I believe, is one of the soldiers in the Ritandi mob family.”
“This Ritandi. He’s the one who killed your men today?”
“He didn’t do it personally, but he ordered it. I’m certain.”
Gemma shuddered. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and then crossed them in front of her, the flash drive tight in her grasp. “Curiosity compels me to ask why. But I really don’t want to know.”
Ky nodded. “Believe me, you’re better off not. Just know that we’re doing everything in our power to find the man who attacked you.”
“In addition to this Ritandi guy?”
“Oh, I have a good idea where he is,” Ky said.
“Then why haven’t you arrested him?”
“Knowing where someone is, and proving they did something are two different things.”
Gemma’s lips formed a small O. “I get that. But if you know where he is and you know he’s responsible for what he did today isn’t there some way, some piece of information, that can help you link the two?”
Ky put his hands in his pants pocket. “That’s exactly what my men are trying to do right now.”
Gemma nodded.
“I’m betting you’re a little pissed off you have to sit here and babysit me, because I can guess you’d like nothing more than to be out there on the chase yourself. I know I would be if I were you.”
Ky stared across at her. He shouldn’t have been surprised by her statement. She seemed an astute woman, attuned to what was going on around her.
“Don’t get the wrong impression,” he told her. “I’m not pissed off, to quote you, at being here to keep you safe. It’s part of my job. But I will admit I’d like to be there when we locate the guy who attacked you. Once we know who it is, I’m positive there’ll be a link to Ritandi. One I can use to take him down for good.”
The corners of Gemma’s lips turned up in the slightest of smiles. “Yeah, you’re pissed off. And I can’t say I blame you.”
They stared at one another for a few moments. Neither spoke. Finally Gemma shrugged and said, “Thanks for the flash drive. If I have to be stuck here at least I can do some work.”
At that moment her stomach rumbled loudly. When she laughed and placed her hand, open palmed, across it, Ky didn’t know which was stronger: the jolt that leaped around his heart at the sound of her laughter—low, but so seductive—or the heat that palpated through his lower region as he watched her hand flex and contract against her abdomen. Even though she was fully clothed Ky knew the skin under the material would be soft, tight, and hot.
“Obviously, you’re hungry,” he said.
“Obviously. When all hell broke loose this afternoon at my apartment I was in the process of making something to eat. I’d been working since early this morning and when I got home after being at your offices for over three hours, I realized just how hungry I was.”
Ky didn’t miss the irritation in her words. “We keep this house filled. There’s plenty to eat. What can I make you?”
Her eyes widened with surprise. Ky wasn’t in the habit of cooking for people other than his family or friends. Not that he wouldn’t. The women in his family had seen to his culinary education while he was growing up. Standing in the safe-house kitchen with this incredibly desirable woman, Ky realized he not only wanted to cook for her but he wanted to make something that would be satisfying both nutritionally and emotionally.
“You don’t have to cook for me,” Gemma said. “I’m a big girl. I’m used to fending for myself.” Her lips lifted in one of those smiles Ky was starting to want to see on her face all the time. “I couldn’t be Kandy Laine’s sister and not know how to cook, even a little.”
“I just thought, with your knee and all, you wouldn’t want to be hopping around the kitchen. I’m more than willing to whip us up something quick.”
He couldn’t read the look she tossed him.
“If Ky is offering to make dinner, let him,” Jon said as he came into the kitchen. “At least we’ll get something edible.”
With a shrug, she said, “Okay. Mind if I sit here and upload these to my laptop so I can work on them?” She held up the flash drive. “The lighting is better in here than in my room.”
“Not at all.”
“I’ll get your laptop,” Jon said. “You rest that knee.”
When Gemma smiled her thanks, Ky swore the feeling dropping in him wasn’t jealousy. He wanted her to smile at him like that: naturally, and with warmth. So far, she’d scowled at him more than anything else, and although it was tantalizing to see the passion in her anger, he realized he’d like nothing more than to see that emotion revealed in a much more enjoyable way.
“Do you have any food restrictions?” he asked as she sat at the breakfast bar, her injured leg propped up on the stool next to her.
“None.”
With a nod, he set about making a simple dinner for the three of them.
But he never forgot she was in the room.
With a dishtowel tucked into the front of his trousers as a makeshift apron, he got to work. While the chicken breasts browned in olive oil in the pan, she typed away, every now and then exclaiming, or drawing in a breath while she fiddled on her laptop. As the orzo softened, he glanced over his shoulder and saw her unlined brows meeting in the center, those gorgeous blue eyes zeroed in on the screen. Whatever she was looking at had her total and complete concentration as her fingers flew across the keyboard.
“It smells great in here,” Jon said at one point when he came back into the kitchen.
Gemma’s head shot up, a look of puzzlement on her face. “Oh, my God, it does,” she said. “I didn’t even notice.”
“You’ve been pretty engrossed in your work,” Ky said while he dropped a handful of parsley and some lemon wedges into the pan.
“You making YiaYia’s lemon chicken?” Jon asked
, settling onto a bar stool next to Gemma.
“YiaYia?” she asked, her gaze ping-ponging between her two protectors.
“My grandmother,” Ky explained.
“She can make shoe leather taste good,” Jon said with a laugh.
Ky filled their plates. “Jon, get drinks.”
“Water okay for you, Miss Laine?”
“Water’s fine, and it’s Gemma.”
He handed her a bottled water from the refrigerator. She uncapped it and waited for Ky to sit with them before eating.
“Oh, good Lord!” she said after the first mouthful went in. “My sister is going to kidnap your grandmother and hold her hostage for this recipe.”
Ky’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth, the pleased grin dying on his lips from her praise when he looked over at her.
Her beautiful eyes were closed, her head thrown slightly back, giving him a full view of her long, smooth neck, as her tongue skimmed from one side of her bottom lip to the other.
“Right?” Jon said, grinning. “The first time Papps ever cooked for me I asked if he had any unmarried sisters at home who cooked as good as he did.”
With an eyebrow tilting up to her hairline, she glanced over at Ky and then back to his partner. “Papps?”
Jon’s grin split his face.
“You’re not the only one,” Ky told her, “who’s had difficulty with my last name.” He forked a helping of chicken into his mouth.
Gemma’s cheeks turned a lovely shade of pink.
“It was our boss who started calling him that,” Jon said. With a good-natured grin, he added, “It stuck.”
“Well, whatever people call you,” Gemma said, addressing Ky, “this is the best meal I’ve had since the last time I visited my sister.”
Before he could thank her, his cell phone pinged.
“Excuse me.” He stood from the bar and moved out of the kitchen when he saw the caller ID.
In the living room across the hallway, Ky punched the connect icon.
“Pappandreos.”
“We got an ID on the attacker,” SAC Tiege barked into the cell.
“One of Ritandi’s guys?”
“Yes. Charlie ‘Little Chico’ Faldo. Low level jackass, but definite ties to our boy.”
“Any idea where he is?”
“Not yet. I’ve got people working on locating him. His rap sheet’s a mile long, but I’m confident he’ll be found. They located the van about an hour ago.”
“Where?”
“Under the Brooklyn Bridge. Empty. Crime Scene Unit’s all over it.”
“How do they know it’s the right van?”
“Descriptions and license plate number your witness gave us matches.”
“I’m surprised it wasn’t torched. CSU won’t find anything.” Ky shook his head, frustration boiling in his chest. “This hit was too well orchestrated and coordinated to leave something as helpful as a fingerprint or any kind of a DNA trail to one of the shooters behind.”
“You never know. The van’s VIN number was eradicated, but I’m guessing it was a chop-shop steal, probably from one of Ritandi’s own. How’s your witness?”
“Pissed,” he said, “but cooperative.”
“How certain are you, Papps, she’s not connected to this, other than as an innocent bystander?”
The question had been rolling around in his head all afternoon. Her explanation for being on the street at just the time Calafano was executed seemed coincidental. But if there was one thing Ky had learned over his years at the bureau, it was to dissect and inspect everything, whether it seemed plausible or not.
“I wouldn’t say certain, but I really can’t see any other scenario that would put her on that street today other than the one she’s given us.”
There was a moment of silence and Ky wondered if his boss knew something he didn’t about Gemma Laine.
“I agree,” he said at last, one tired sounding breath wafting through the phone. “Listen, I’ve got a meeting to brief the director and the attorney general, so I’ve got to go. I’ll call again if CSU finds anything or if Faldo turns up.”
“Appreciate it, boss.”
Ky shot his phone back into his pants pockets, pinched the bridge of his nose, and closed his eyes.
Calafano’s execution shouldn’t have happened. He’d had two of his best, most experienced agents assigned to the bookkeeper for two months, ever since the man had been convinced turning over evidence and being put in witness protection was a better option than spending the rest of his life behind bars where one of Ritandi’s men would have easy access to him.
His men knew—knew—they weren’t supposed to leave the hotel for any reason. Ky had ordered them repeatedly to stay put. All they needed to do was keep him safe for one more week until the attorney general could file charges against Ritandi.
One week. And now, because his agents had disobeyed a direct order, they and the bookkeeper were dead.
Why had they left the hotel?
Today’s events had all but destroyed three years of work, gathering information that would lead to the arrest of mob boss Antonio Ritandi for money laundering, tax fraud, and extortion.
Three years of endless wiretaps, surveillance, and subpoenas that had yielded nothing substantial until Mario Calafano made one small slip up with a bank deposit transaction, and Ky and his partner had roped him in.
A sudden thought danced around his head but was quickly killed when the sound of Gemma’s laughter pulled him like a magnet back into the kitchen.
The smile he’d seen for the first time just minutes before was now broad, free, and lit with mischief. The throaty laugh, lusty and filled with enough just-woken rasp to make his pulse bounce filled the small kitchen at something his partner was telling her.
“That can’t be true,” she said, grinning at Jon. She’d nestled her head against the palm of her hand, her elbow propped on the table.
They’d finished their dinners while his had sat, uneaten.
Jon, ever the fervent storyteller, swiped his index finger across his chest. “Swear to God, it is.”
At that moment, Gemma’s smiling gaze found his across the room.
It should be illegal to have eyes that blue. Ky had to willfully hold himself back from saying it out loud.
“What story are you spinning, partner?” Ky came into the room after he was able to check his thoughts.
With a sly wink to Gemma first, Jon said, “No spin, just facts, Ky. I was telling Miss Laine—”
“Gemma,” she corrected.
“Gemma.” Jon nodded. “About the first time I met your family.”
With an inward groan, Ky shook his head and brought his plate to the microwave. “I’d rather forget that,” he said, timing the appliance to reheat his food.
“It sounds like you would,” Gemma said, a wry little line dancing across her lips.
As much as Ky loved his large, boisterous, and utterly lovable family, they could be trying on his soul, especially his six older brothers, who never missed a chance to embarrass their baby brother.
“I’ve got older sisters,” Gemma said, lifting her water bottle. “I know what it’s like.”
“I have to think the torture a brother employs is different from a sister’s,” Ky said over his shoulder.
She considered it while she took a mouthful of her water and he brought his reheated dish back to the table.
“Maybe,” she said. “Brothers will probably be more physically exacting while sisters are more like emotional hit men, getting inside your head, niggling, and torturing you to death.”
In the next breath, she sat her water bottle down on the table with a plop, her face going gray.
“Are you okay?” Ky asked. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but knew it wouldn’t be wise.
The trio was silent for a few moments.
“It’s getting late,” Gemma said. Ky was quick to notice the smile she’d had moments before was now just a memory.
“Don’t worry about the dishes,” Jon told her when she started to bring hers to the sink. “Ky and I have a system. Cleanup’s my job.”
She nodded and grabbed her laptop.
“Everything you’ll need should be in the closet in your room,” Ky said. “Towels, fresh linens. Just let me know if there’s anything you might want that your sister didn’t pack.”
“It’s fine,” she told him. “I’ve got all I really need.”
Before quitting to her room she turned to them. “I—well.”
Both men allowed her a moment to collect her thoughts.
“I just wanted to thank you. Both. I know being stuck here with me is the last thing you want to be doing about now, and believe me, if I could undo what happened today, I would.”
“Don’t worry about any of that,” Jon said.
“It shouldn’t take long to find the men responsible,” Ky added. “And we’ll get the man who hurt you.”
She looked from one of them to the other, her gaze coming to rest on Ky. “I have no doubt about that.”
