Dangerous to Touch

by Jill Sorenson

  “I still have that arrest warrant, if all else fails,” he warned.

  “Have you ever heard of a body cavity search, Miss Morrow? It’s very invasive, I assure you. Especially for someone as sensitive as you.”

  Fury washed over her. “You are such a bastard,” she said.

  A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he made no reply as he unlocked the door. Leading her into the depths of the cavernous interior, he located a metal locker and pulled out the horizontal drawer. Before she could turn away, he unzipped the body bag.

  Sidney felt the color drain from her face.

  “What do you want? Her hand?” With callous indifference, he opened the bag further, exposing a woman’s head and upper torso.

  It was Sidney’s first glimpse of death.

  Candace Hegel’s attractive features were slack, robbed of beauty, devoid of expression. Her naked chest was bisected with a hideous, Y-shaped incision, and with no oxygenated blood pumping through her body, her skin was strangely discolored. Her lips were dark and her areolae an odd purplish-gray. She looked…cold.

  Taking the corpse’s pale, limp hand away from her side, Marc held it out toward Sidney, his expression inscrutable.

  Her eyes filled with tears as she pressed the dead flesh between her two palms.

  With no warning, cold enveloped her, encompassed her, consumed her. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Pain exploded inside her head, a quick flash, and she sank heavily into the darkness.

  Marc caught her as she fell.

  He couldn’t believe she’d actually held her breath until she passed out-what kind of grown woman would resort to such extreme measures? Laying her out on the floor carefully, he reevaluated her motives. Maybe she was just a sad, lonely basket case, one who truly believed she had special powers.

  However she’d come by her information, he couldn’t imagine her hurting anyone, and she didn’t deserve to be treated this way. He rarely used cruelty as an investigative technique, and had to admit his motivations for doing so now were more about his personal bias than about her.

  In his opinion, psychics were little better than vultures, picking on the bones of the bereaved. Because of people like her, his mother was still trying to communicate with his father via the spirit world. She couldn’t let go of him, a man who hadn’t been worthy of her affection while he’d been alive.

  It drove Marc crazy, thinking about all the time she spent chasing ghosts. Walking down dark alleyways and being ushered into back rooms. Paying money in exchange for lies.

  Clenching his jaw in annoyance, he stared down at Sidney’s chalk-white face, waiting for her to resume breathing. She didn’t. After falling unconscious, the body’s natural inclination was to kick up the oxygen, yet she lay there, as quiet as Candace Hegel’s corpse.

  What the hell?

  Her pulse was visible, throbbing delicately in her slender neck. While he watched, it slowed, then stopped altogether.

  Muttering a curse, he leaned over her prone form to give her two quick breaths. Her lips were soft and cool, completely slack. If this was a trick, he was buying it hook, line and sinker. He checked her pulse, couldn’t find it, panicked and gave her two more breaths.

  Gasping, she lurched forward, clutching her chest.

  Weak with relief and stunned to the core, he lay stretched out on the ground beside her, placing a hand over his own heart, which was knocking hard against his ribs.

  “What happened?” she wheezed.

  “You died.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “He didn’t save you,” Marc asserted. “I did.”

  She leaned to one side and wretched pitifully, her shoulders shaking.

  Marc put Candace Hegel back in place, folding her arms across her chest with careful reverence and zipping up the body bag. His hands were trembling as he grabbed some paper towels for Sidney and a plastic cup of water.

  She accepted his tepid peace offering in silence, dabbing at her damp mouth. “Why did you do that?” she asked after a moment, her huge gray eyes swimming with tears.

  He looked away, hating the reflection of himself he imagined there. “Because I’m a bastard, just like you said.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  His gaze jerked back to her face. He’d just forced her to hold hands with a dead woman, and she was apologizing to him? “Don’t worry about it. It’s true across the board.” He watched her take a small sip of water. “So what did you see?”

  “Nothing. It was just…black.”

  Bleakly he wondered what she’d see in his soul. “I’ll take you home,” he offered.

  “I have to get back to work,” she argued.

  “You just died, woman! Take the afternoon off.”

  She chuckled weakly. “I don’t have anyone to cover for me.”

  Marc stared down at her in disbelief, frustrated with the entire situation. He couldn’t decide what he thought about her, and that was a complication he didn’t need. No way she was legit. So what the hell was she?

  “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. You’ll find the real killer.”

  “Are you a prophet, too?”

  “No,” she said with a rueful smile. “I was just trying to be supportive.”

  Although he was wary of misplaced kindness, he couldn’t resist smiling back at her. “Don’t you think you can call me Marc now? After all we’ve been through?”

  “Okay,” she said, taking his proffered hand. “And I’m Sidney.”

  Ignoring the burst of warmth in her eyes, and the matching sensation in the middle of his chest, he helped her to her feet.

  At Vincent Veterinary Clinic, Marc attached a GPS tracking device to the chassis of Sidney’s pickup truck while she went inside to get Blue. When she came out, mangy-looking hound in tow, both dog and woman regarded him with mistrust.

  “Can you take some time off tomorrow?” he asked, shoving his hands into his pockets.

  “Why?”

  “I thought we could drive him around. Walk him along the river, maybe. See if he…smells anything.”

  She released the tailgate. “Why would you waste your time? You don’t believe me.” When he made no reply, she gave the dog a brisk order in a foreign language. Blue jumped up and went inside the carrier.

  “You speak German?”

  “No.” Realizing she just had, she said, “I’ve picked up a few commands. A lot of people train their dogs that way, and he’s part shepherd.”

  “Really? I thought he was half wolf, half hyena.”

  She shot him a dirty look as she shut the kennel door.

  “What did you say to him?”

  “Get in,” she decided.

  She’d said “up,” but he didn’t bother to correct her. “So how about tomorrow?”

  “We could go early, before the kennel opens,” she offered with a tense shrug. “It would be cooler.”

  “Five-thirty?”

  “I guess,” she said in a resigned voice.

  “I’ll come by your house,” he tossed over his shoulder as he walked away.

  “Don’t you need my address?” she called after him.

  He shook his head, because he already had it. By late afternoon, he’d not only located her small, two-story residence, he’d familiarized himself with every square inch of it. The covert-entry search warrant he’d obtained allowed him to rifle through her personal belongings at his leisure. Sidney would be notified of the “sneak and peek” search when she was no longer under investigation.

  Unfortunately there was nothing incriminating inside.

  Nothing interesting, either. All of her clothes were well-worn, casual and inexpensive, from her pocket T-shirts to her simple cotton bikini briefs.

  The place was quaint and spotless, with mismatched furniture, unusual knickknacks and colorful accents. She saved things like birthday cards and photos in a disorganized drawer, as if she meant to go through them later. Flipping through the photos, he saw
a great-looking blonde with two dark-haired girls and a middle-aged couple who must have been Sidney’s parents.

  There was no indication of a man in her life, but she had a smush-faced little cat, sitting proprietarily atop her wrought-iron bed. The powder-blue chenille bedspread looked as soft as a cloud, the hardwood flooring was polished to a dull shine and the pale yellow paint was warm and unassuming.

  It was…cozy.

  On impulse, he reached out to place his palm on the pillow where he imagined she put her head. His hand stood out against the white pillowcase, obscenely dark and masculine in the feminine space, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled with awareness.

  It was just like his mother’s house, he realized with horror. Nothing new, nothing matching, nothing expensive and a sense of complacent loneliness that tugged at the heartstrings.

  He jerked his hand away from the pillow, unsettled by the revelation. Sidney’s cat startled at the sudden movement, flying off the bed and losing her footing on the slippery floor as she rounded the corner. Berating himself for the moment of sentimentality, he went downstairs and attached a listening device to the cordless phone on his way out.

  In addition to the search warrant, a judge had signed his request to run video and audio surveillance. If the killer was in contact with Sidney, feeding her specific details about the murders, that made her an accessory after the fact.

  If she was telling the truth…

  Marc shook his head, because he couldn’t fathom it. Maybe he was a cynic, but at least he wasn’t a sucker. There was one born every day, his father had always said, and he’d been a master at spotting them. He claimed there was nothing more rewarding than pulling off the perfect con. Marc respectfully disagreed. Catching the player at his game was far sweeter.

  So why did the thought of arresting Sidney leave a bitter taste in his mouth?

  Deputy Chief Stokes had given him the authority to run full surveillance, if not the budget. He’d booked a cheap hotel room less than a block away, but he couldn’t get a visual on her back door from there. They couldn’t afford to have undercover officers parked on the street in front of her house or hanging around the beach behind it.

  He grabbed the white hard hat he kept in the trunk of his car for assuming alternative identities and climbed the telephone pole closest to her house, hoping anyone who saw him would think he was a well-dressed phone company employee.

  Near the top, he saw the angle gave him a bird’s-eye view into her backyard. It was a miniscule space with an array of potted plants and a large outdoor shower, probably for washing off sand from the beach. He set up a small, nondescript video camera, similar to the ones that come with your basic home computer nowadays, but of marginally better quality, and made sure it was pointed toward her back door.

  With that done, he returned to the hotel room, engaged the feed for the bugs and the video camera and waited.

  Detective Lacy arrived after he’d done all the work, but she brought excellent takeout so he didn’t fault her.

  “I was thinking,” she said around a mouthful of mu shu pork, “maybe she’s not faking.”

  Marc gave her an expression that meant she was incredibly naïve, and kept eating his beef and broccoli.

  “I mean, how did she know about the scarf?”

  “Your face is an open book,” he said, because he didn’t know, either.

  She grunted in disbelief. “Next time you’re going to pull a stunt like that, could you let me in on it? I almost died of embarrassment.”

  “How was I supposed to know you had kinky stuff in your locker? It was the only article of clothing I could find in there besides a uniform.”

  “Well, I don’t see how she could have known-unless she talked to Gina.” She narrowed her eyes. “They did smile at each other.”

  Marc laughed at her display of jealousy. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s straight.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do,” he said, aware that he sounded very arrogant.

  Lacy crossed her arms over her chest. “Not every woman is after your schlong, Marcos.”

  “Well, if I stick with the ones who are,” he said lightly, taking no offense, “I still have a variety to choose from.”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

  “What?”

  “Fulfilling a badge-and-holster fantasy for jaded bimbos?”

  “No. Why would I?”

  “Because it’s degrading.”

  “Not to me.”

  “To them, then.”

  He shrugged, because he didn’t care.

  “Sidney Morrow is not your type,” she announced, coming around to the point she really wanted to make.

  “She’s not yours, either,” he retorted, starting to get pissed off.

  “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “She might go for it. A bottle of wine, a couple of scarves…”

  Over my dead body, he almost said before he realized she was teasing. Then he scowled at his reaction. Since when had he been possessive over a woman-a suspect no less-one who was unequivocally hands-off?

  Lacy was right, anyway. She wasn’t his type.

  When Sidney came home, Marc and Lacy settled in for a brain-numbing evening. Stakeouts were always tedious.

  From their vantage point inside the hotel room they could see Sidney’s front doorstep and the south side of her house, complete with one bedroom window, blinds closed. The street she lived on was moderately busy, as was the enticing stretch of sand beyond.

  After opening the windows to let in a hint of breeze, she walked out the back door in a demure black Speedo and bare feet.

  “That’s the ugliest swimsuit I’ve ever seen,” Lacy said.

  He grunted in agreement.

  On the beach, Sidney didn’t sunbathe or stroll along the shore but swam straight out into the Pacific and started doing vigorous laps.

  After thirty minutes she came out of the waves like a wet seal, sluicing water off her arms, black bathing suit clinging to her. The Speedo was a crime against nature. It flattened her breasts and covered everything from neck to upper thigh, thoroughly disguising her shape.

  As she approached the house, they switched their attention to the video monitor, which gave a view of the side yard. She turned on the outdoor shower, her back to them, and he noticed the sleek muscles in her shoulders.

  Especially when she peeled down the upper half of her suit.

  The shower had block walls on both sides and a pair of shuttered wooden doors in front that parted, saloon-style. It was a perfectly modest setup, except that the angle of the camera allowed them to see down into it.

  “You put the camera there on purpose,” Lacy accused.

  “No,” he said, his throat dry. This scenario really hadn’t occurred to him. Videotaping a subject without their knowledge, in a place where they had the reasonable assurance of privacy, was illegal. Bathrooms, locker rooms and bedrooms were off-limits. An outdoor shower was kind of a gray area.

  Until now.

  “I wouldn’t have…” Whatever he was about to say was lost, because she pushed the swimsuit off her hips and turned around.

  “Oh my God,” Lacy murmured. “Who would’ve thought she was hiding a body like that underneath those horrible clothes?”

  Marc had to admit his wild speculations hadn’t done her justice.

  Her rose-tipped breasts were lush and natural, a sight he could appreciate in this age of implants. Her belly was sleek and flat, her hips flared out sensually from a slim waist and her legs…they went on forever.

  “We shouldn’t be watching this,” he said hoarsely. There was a protocol for surveillance, and ogling naked women in the shower didn’t follow it.

  “Definitely not,” Lacy agreed, making no move to turn off the monitor.

  Hugging her arms around herself, Sidney felt the hot press of tears against her eyelids as the cool shower spray pe
lted her back.

  She couldn’t stop the barrage of images assaulting her senses. Anika Groene’s red-marked body. Candace Hegel’s sea-ravaged face.

  Yesterday, Candace had been alive. Last night, she’d been fighting for her last breath.

  Sidney should have done something.

  She could have done something.

  Shutting off the water, she grabbed the towel hanging on the shower wall and wrapped it around her dripping body. In the kitchen, Marley was waiting expectantly for her dinner, reminding Sidney that she hadn’t eaten, either.

  While her cat munched on dry food, Sidney munched on cold cereal and milk at the kitchen countertop, staring mutely at the blank television screen. When the phone rang, she almost jumped out of her skin. Hands trembling, she picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Sidney? Is that you, dear?”

  Who else would it be? “Yes, Mama.”

  “Thank goodness. I’ve been trying to get through to you all afternoon.”

  “Really?” Her message machine showed no calls. “I was at work.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.”

  Her mother had a selective memory. She often “forgot” about the kennel, and any other detail of Sidney’s life she didn’t approve of.

  “I was so worried,” she continued. “Samantha called yesterday.”

  Sidney was torn between annoyance with her sister and annoyance with her mother. “It’s really not a problem,” she lied.

  “Not a problem? I beg to differ! Contemplating divorce is the biggest problem a married woman can have.”

  Sidney sank into a chair, kicking herself for thinking her mother had been worried about her, not Samantha, or that her egotistical older sister would have bothered to call home and talk about anyone besides herself.

  “You’ve got to do something,” her mother was saying.

  “Like what?”

  “Talk her out of it.”

  Sidney laughed softly, so she wouldn’t cry. “Samantha does what she pleases. She’ll get a divorce if she wants one, no matter what you or I say.”

  Her mother was silent for a moment. “I just don’t understand you girls sometimes. In my day, a woman gave her husband some leeway.”

  “He’s cheating on her,” she said shortly.