by Adrianne Lee
“Is something wrong?” Jeremy asked, taking the seat across from her.
Kerrie shook herself and forced her faltering smile up at the corners. “No. Not really. It’s just that…I’ve never done this before.”
“Done what?”
“Met someone through a classified ad.”
“I see.”
“Have you?”
He poked a finger at the bridge of his glasses, a leery look entering his cool blue eyes. “Once or twice.”
Kerrie waited for him to expand, but he didn’t. She bit back a frustrated sigh. “I guess it can’t be too bad then if you’re willing to try again.”
“No.”
Cage’s voice slipped into her ear. “This guy is some conversationalist.”
“Uh-huh,” Kerrie responded without thinking.
“Pardon?” Jeremy leaned closer.
“Nothing.” But her cheeks heated. She had to remember not to answer Cage.
The waitress came, took Jeremy’s drink order and left. He fingered the rose. “Why did you run the ad?”
“Oh.” She laughed. “After a couple of disastrous blind dates fixed up for me by friends, I decided the Classifieds had to be better. I could list what appeals to me and maybe have something in common with men responding to the ad.”
“You said you work for Computer City? Doing what?” His eyes were hot behind the glasses, suggesting an intense nature beneath his calm, fastidious exterior. Disquiet spun through her and she glanced away from him. Jeremy touched her hand with one clammy finger, and she jerked back toward him.
“Talk to me,” he demanded in his soft voice. His expression implied that her attention should belong to him and no one else.
Her throat dried. She took a sip of her club soda.’ “About?”
“Your job. Your life. Anything. Everything.”
Usually adept at small talk, Kerrie could think of nothing to say. “I, uh—”
“Ask him about his job.” Cage broke in.
Jeremy’s drink arrived and by the time the waitress collected the money and left, Kerrie felt more in control of herself. “Really, you know more about me than I do about you. Why don’t you tell me where you work?”
“Boeing. On the assembly line. Boring, repetitive work.”
As Jeremy started asking her personal questions, Cage fed Kerrie the false bio they’d worked up. Occasionally she threw in a telling question or two. Always, Jeremy skirted answering as if he had something to hide. As if he might be Loverboy? His behavior sure put him near the top of their suspect list.
They were an hour into the date when Jeremy touched her hand again. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”
Kerrie’s stomach knotted at the suggestion. “I’m sorry. I like you, Jeremy, but I’m not ready to move that fast. I’d like to get to know you better. Maybe…a second date?”
Wounded pride, anger and frustration passed in such rapid succession through his eyes that she’d almost thought she’d imagined them. Almost
His gaze was steady now, controlled. “Sure. Here? Night after tomorrow? Dinner?”
“I’d like that.” She’d hate that. This guy made her skin crawl. Maybe it was his eyes. Maybe it was his evasiveness. Maybe it was the way he tapped her hand when she glanced away from him. Maybe it was all three.
“Eight?”
“Great.” Great, indeed. She’d made two dates tonight that she hadn’t wanted to make. The one for dinner she would keep. The one for lunch she would not.
“May I escort you to your car?”
“No, thanks. Maybe another night.”
“A cautious lady. I can be patient.” Jeremy kissed the back of her hand, said good evening and left.
Kerrie wiped her hand on her napkin beneath the table, muttering to Cage, giving him a description of Jeremy, “He’s leaving now.”
“See you tomorrow, Irish.” Nick’s voice, close to her ear, sent a tingle shivering down her spine.
She recovered too slowly to respond. He was already at the door, following Jeremy outside.
“IRISH, HUH?” Tully Cage laughed as she entered the undercover police van. Cage was a couple of years older than Kerrie. He had blond hair, crew cut, and teal blue eyes, with a scar that sliced through one eyebrow, giving him a mean look. In the past six months she had discovered that he could be mean when the situation called for it, a trait she admired at those times. But overall, she’d say she’d been lucky in the partner pool. Cage was a decent cop, as straight an arrow as ever flew through the Seattle PD.
“How come you never told me about that Diamond guy before?” he asked in his strongest New Jersey accent, an inflection he always played up whenever he teased her.
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Cage.” She plopped onto the van’s front passenger seat. “Let’s keep it that way.”
It was the wrong thing to say. She could see the interest it sparked in his eyes. But he didn’t pursue the subject. “What did you think of Jeremy Dane?”
“He gave me the creeps. He’s either a run of the mill sleazeball, or Loverboy.”
“Well, we’ll know his life story inside and out by morning.”
Not that that gave her consolation. She was the one who had to meet him again. “I wonder why the first two dates never showed.”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Let’s file the report and go home.”
At the station, Kerrie went to the locker room and changed into blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Feeling more like herself, she joined Cage at his desk- He looked up from a handheld recorder. “I called the Introductions line and retrieved the messages.”
Kerrie perched a hip on the edge of his desk. Introductions was the newspaper column where they’d placed the classified ad. “Any new callers?”
“No. Two old callers. The two who stood you up tonight.”
“Oh, yeah. What did they want?”
Cage punched the Play button. “Listen.”
A scratchy voice came on. “This is Troy. I thought you were different from the others, Kerrie. You said you were looking for someone to call your own. I came into the bar tonight thinking that one was me. But you were with another man. I watched you from the shadows. He made your face light up. Liar. Don’t you know how to be faithful to one man?”
Cage pushed the Stop button. “Nice, huh?”
Glad she had missed meeting this guy, Kerrie shook her head. “And I thought Jeremy Dane was a creep.”
Cage smirked. “The second call is just as interesting.”
He started the tape again.
Kerrie’s heart nearly stopped. The man didn’t identify himself, but the voice sounded very much like Nick Diamond’s.
“Am I mistaken?” Cage asked. “Or does that sound like the guy who calls you Irish?”
Nick Diamond…a murderer of young women? He was a dangerous man. If she was right about him, he was a smuggler. But a cold blooded killer? A psychopath? She couldn’t bear the thought that she’d slept with such a man. And worse.
She hugged her stomach. Then again, hadn’t she suspected his bosses of having connections to the mob? If she was honest, hadn’t she had her share of nightmares where Diamond appeared as a mobster hitman? And hadn’t he remained date-free the whole four hours he’d been at the bar?
“Well, do you think it’s him, or not?”
“I don’t know. Play it again.”
Listening three times to the man apologize for being unable to keep the date and asking to reschedule for another time, only made her three times more certain that the caller was Nick.
“I’ll deal with this tomorrow,” Kerrie said. “Right now, I’m going to type up my report and go home.”
“I’ll type it. You go on home now.”
“You sure? ‘Cause I’m going. to take you up on it.”
“I’m sure.”
Twenty minutes later, Kerrie entered the three-bedroom house in West Settle that she shared with her widowed mother. A light was
on in the living room, emphasizing the vivid ruby of the Victorian furniture that had once resided in her parents’ huge house and was now crammed into the tight confines of the small space.
“Mom, what are you still doing up?”
“I wanted to make sure you got the message.” A slender woman with vibrant red hair, Glynna Muldoon was curled on the sofa in a robe. Small and delicate, she usually looked ten years younger than her fifty-six years, but tonight there was undefined dread in her pale green eyes that gave away her true age. “Your lieutenant called. He wanted you to call him at home the moment you came in. I told him it was late, but he was very insistent.”
A surge of apprehension surged in Kerrie. It wasn’t like her boss to call her at home. She hoped Loverboy hadn’t struck again.
Glynna followed Kerrie to the kitchen phone and stood to one side wringing her hands. Although it was after one in the morning, the lieutenant sounded wide-awake. “I just talked…to Cage and I’m going to tell you exactly what I told him. The mayor climbed my frame tonight at the benefit dinner. He wants Loverboy caught. Now.”
Kerrie let out a held breath. At least, there had been no new killing. As far as anyone knew anyway. “We’re doing our best.”
“Not good enough. I don’t like having my frame climbed by the mayor or anyone else.”
Kerrie didn’t blame him. She didn’t like it any better than he did. She curbed her rising temper. “We got a couple of leads tonight.”
“Cage tells me you might know one of our suspects.”
Kerrie tensed at the mention of Nick Diamond. “Cage told you about the messages?”
“Yes. Do you know the guy or not?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not positive it’s his voice.” But she was positive.
“Well, we’re not taking any chances. I don’t want Loverboy killing anyone else.”
Her heart hitched. “Neither do I.”
“I’m glad you see it that way. I’ve already spoken to Cage about this. I don’t want you taking any unnecessary chances, but I want you to keep the lunch date you made with that Diamond guy. In fact, I want you to stick to that man like glue. Make up excuses to be with him. Ask him out if you have to.”
“But—”
“Don’t ‘but’ me, Muldoon! Cage will be backing you up. Just do it!” The phone went dead.
Furious and shaken to her toes, she hung up.
“You’re as pale as a ghost, Kerrie Carleen. I knew it. I’ve been expecting bad news all day—ever sinee that black cat crossed my path in front of Riley’s Market this afternoon. I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Yes, Mom, you are.” Kerrie gazed down the hall at the closed bedroom door and shuddered. “The lieutenant just condemned me to hell.”
Chapter Two
Kerrie was late, and F. X. McRory’s bar was noisy with noontime patrons. But even in a crowd, Nick Diamond drew her attention like radar to an incoming enemy missile. Memories threatened to engulf her. He was seated at their old table. She shrugged out of her wet raincoat and tightened the band around her collapsed umbrella, holding the memories at bay with a new resolve she’d found sometime during the bleak hours before dawn. She’d be damned if she’d let him know he was getting to her. She’d be damned if he’d get to her.
Weaving between the occupied tables, she muttered, “He’s here.”
“And I’m here, too.” Cage’s voice filled her left ear, offering a double-edged reassurance: on the one hand, backup was only a shout away, on the other, her partner would hear every word she shared with the unpredictable Nick Diamond.
Forcing a pleasant expression, Kerrie shoved her thick curls back from her face and closed the distance separating her from Nick.
He was on his feet, his amber eyes lighting as if they were twin suns. “Irish…”
He didn’t say he approved of her soft green sweater and hip-hugging plaid skirt; his eyes said it for him, rolling lazily, appreciatively over her. Heat skimmed her flesh and coiled in her belly. With sheer willpower, she held her amiable expression.
“I chose this table—” he dipped his head and a lock of his raven hair brushed his forehead, and the corners of his mouth tipped upward “—for old times’ sake.”
“Well, I’m not the sentimental type.” She dropped her raincoat over the back of the chair facing his. “One table is the same as any other to me.”
Was that disappointment or amusement flitting through his eyes? She couldn’t discern before his grin widened and zapped her animosity, weakened her knees. Neither before nor since Nick, had a man so affected her. But why? How could her blood be heated to boiling by a man who might be a cold-blooded killer? Was there something missing in her moral fiber? Was it her innate love of danger that made Nick attractive?
Whatever the cause, she had to master these feelings and dispose of them. Otherwise, this man could strip her of everything she held dear.
Against her protests, he insisted on helping her ease her chair up to the table. His subtle aftershave settled around her, a bewitching fragrance that suited Nick and Nick alone, and made her pulse thrum.
He murmured near her right ear, “I like the new perfume.”
“New perfume?” It was so close to what she’d been thinking about him that she flinched. “I’m wearing the same scent I’ve always worn.”
He returned to his chair and sank into it with the grace of a dancer. He shook his head. “No…I remember your scent. This is different.”
Kerrie caught a hint of vulnerability in his eyes. It confused her. She…didn’t want to know he could be vulnerable. Couldn’t afford to think of him as human. “That just goes to show you how faulty memory can be. I haven’t changed perfumes in five years.”
She could tell her lie had dented his ego, but he recovered quickly, his gaze caressing her face. “I was starting to think you were going to stand me up.”
“Would I do that?” But she would have. In the blink of an eye. In a heartbeat. In a New York minute. And yet standing up Nick Diamond would have been in defiance of her lieutenant’s orders and netted her nothing more than a place on the unemployment line. A fate she could ill afford. “Your ego so fragile these days, Diamond, you couldn’t bear being stood up by two women in as many days?”
It took him a second to realize she was referring to last night’s no-show date. His expression sobered. His voice lowered. “If one of the women was you, Irish.”
Despite her best efforts at detachment, she felt his words steal through her, whispering across that secret place where she’d interred her tender feelings for him. Her body went rigid, and she grabbed the menu, hiding behind it, buying time.
This man had swept through her life as if he were a hurricane, devastating her, nearly destroying her. But now she was older. Wiser. Stronger. Even though she still felt an attraction to him, she had infinitely more to lose now. No. She would not succumb to his potent sex appeal. Or her own misguided memories.
A cocktail waitress strode to the table and began refilling Nick’s coffee cup. She turned toward Kerrie. “Coffee or something stronger?”
“Coffee will be fine.”
As the waitress took their lunch orders, Cage murmured, “I’ve been reading the report on this Diamond guy. For all intents and purposes, he didn’t exist before four years ago.”
Cage wasn’t telling Kerrie anything new. She had conducted her own search for Nick Diamond three years ago and discovered exactly the same thing. She suspected he was Mafia. He had a dozen aliases.
The waitress left and they were alone again.
Nick said, “Aren’t you going to ask what I’ve been doing for the past three years?”
“Sure, why not?” Kerrie laughed and shrugged, keeping her voice and expression neutral, even though that was exactly what she wanted to hear. “What have you been doing?”
“Nothing very interesting.” He sipped his coffee, forcing her gaze to his sensuous mouth. “Did you miss me, Irish?”
“Not for
a minute.” The lie zinged off her tongue.
He covered his heart with his hand as if she’d wounded him. “Not one minute in three long years?”
“Not even thirty seconds.” Terrific. He’d rather flirt than talk. Schooling her impatience, Kerrie added cream to her coffee. She needed a starting point, something that would get him to open up, but which of the things she “knew” about Nick were true?
Come to that, what had she ever told him that was true? “So, what are you doing in Seattle?”
Nick grinned. “I’m here as a favor to a friend.”
“Nothing illegal, I hope.” She sipped her coffee, feeling bolstered by the hot liquid.
“Illegal? Now, why would you ask that?” His amber eyes gleamed with feigned innocence. “Oh, of course, I forgot. because you’re one of Seattle’s finest.”
Despite her best effort not to show her surprise, Kerrie’s eyes widened. How long had he known she was a cop? For three years? Was that why he’d left Seattle so abruptly? Had she somehow blown her cover? Had he guessed she was investigating his company for smuggling? Or had he run a check on her after he’d left Seattle? Either way, it didn’t matter now. She set her cup down. “My occupation is hardly a secret.”
“Then why did you tell me you worked for Seattle Lighting, selling light fixtures?”
Cage spoke before she could answer. “I don’t like the direction this is going.”
Kerrie wished she could reassure her partner, but he’d have to settle for letting her do what damage control she could. She arched a brow and leveled her gaze at Nick. “I suppose you were one hundred percent forthright with me?”
Nick reached across the table and grazed his knuckles along her jaw. “Every romance needs a little mystery.”
“Romance?” Cage queried.
“Personally, I find honesty refreshing,” Kerrie said in the coldest tone she could manage. “Why don’t we try some now?”
“Sure. You start. Who were you trying to catch here last night? It wouldn’t be that ‘Loverboy’ the local newspapers are full of lately, would it?”
