by Debra Dixon
“Darlin’, looking like that you could catch the Dallas Cowboys.” He smiled and drew the derringer from between her breasts without letting her arms go. When he slipped it in his back pocket, he added, “I think you look healthy enough to fight off a chill or two while I check for other weapons.”
She bit her tongue, refusing to rise to the bait. This was a game with him. He patted her down with his free hand. He didn’t actually pat; he stroked, slow as molasses. Jessica trembled with the effort to control her anger. The search was purposeful, deliberate, and intended to shake her. The man knew exactly how to get to her.
Threats, raising his voice, rough handling … none of that would have fazed her, and he knew it. He wanted her off balance. He wanted the truth any way he could get it. The man was a bloodhound, and he’d sniffed out her lies before she’d ever told them. Now that he had concrete proof of his suspicions he wasn’t going to let this go. All good cops were like that. Part bloodhound, part hellhound.
Jessica decided Sully was more one than the other.
When he was satisfied she was clean, he let her go. “Now you want to tell me who you are and why you carry the peashooter? And don’t tell me it’s for self-defense. I’m getting real tired of bein’ lied to. Or would you rather wait until I run you through the computer?” He tapped his pocket. “You do have a license for this, don’t you?”
Jessica narrowed her eyes and pulled her shirt together with as much dignity as she could muster. Her shoulders hurt from being pinned back. Refusing to let Sully rattle her, she shook off the ache and fastened every button before she answered. “I carry it for the same reason you carry your weapon. I might need it.”
“For what?”
“Shooting two-legged rats.”
Sully didn’t like what he heard or what he saw in her eyes. She wasn’t joking, and yet she couldn’t possibly be serious. With a careless air she swung her hair forward and finger-combed the tangles from it.
“Shot many lately, have you?” he asked.
“No. Not a one.” Her dark gaze never wavered from his. She never hesitated. The swiftness of her answer should have placated him. It didn’t.
“Who are you, Jessie?”
He thought she wasn’t going to answer. Finally she told him, “Why don’t you ask Iris?”
“Now there’s a fine idea.”
A few seconds later he’d ushered Iris in and stood behind her, hands on the girl’s shoulders. Iris had on purple biker shorts with lace eyelet trim and an incredibly loud tie-dyed T-shirt. Kid clothes on an old soul. After Iris looked expectantly at Sully and then at Jessica, she asked, “Are we in trouble again?”
“Just me. Tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“The truth.”
“But we already told him the truth.”
Jessica shook her head and smiled in spite of herself. Iris was a trooper, loyal to the end. “No, it’s time for the ‘truth truth.’ The gig’s up. If I’m not mistaken, Detective Kincaid thinks I’ve done something with your father.”
Appalled, Iris turned to Sully. “She didn’t know anything about Daddy being missing. Not until I called her.”
“You didn’t talk to Phil Munro yesterday?” Sully fired the question at Jessica like a missile.
“No. I haven’t talked to Phil for a very long time.”
“Why’d you lie?”
“Isn’t that obvious? I didn’t want to create an unnecessary panic. Iris could’ve been overreacting.”
“About what?” His attention returned to Iris, who fiddled with her harmony ball as she answered.
“Daddy calls every Sunday if he’s out of town. He didn’t call this week. He always calls.” She looked up then. She was biting her lip.
“Always?” Sully asked. “Never misses? Ever?”
Iris shook her head. “No, sir. There’s no special time, but he calls on Sunday. Always.”
Frowning, Sully considered the situation for a moment. Then he looked sharply at Jessica. “He’s almost forty-eight hours overdue.”
“I know.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Iris and I weren’t real happy about it either. I was going to give him until tomorrow.” When his eyes narrowed, she quietly added, “I would have called you tomorrow.”
“And in the meantime you thought you’d do a little investigating yourself.”
“I thought I might.”
“Who are you, Jessica? And where’d you come from?”
Iris spoke up as she crossed the room to be with Jessica. “She’s one of Daddy’s special bodyguards. There’re just a few of them.”
“I’m retired,” Jessica answered. “Have been for a couple of years.”
“Daddy still keeps her name on a list of his best. She came back because I called her.”
“Before or after you called the police?” Sully asked.
“After.”
“She was very busy on the phone. It seems I was Goldilocks’s third choice. She called the CIA first,” added Jessica helpfully, a deadpan expression on her face.
Suddenly Sully felt the sickening thud of trouble as it settled on his shoulders. “I don’t think I want to hear this.”
“Oh, but you must,” Jessica echoed his earlier statement to her. “You want to make a federal case out of this. Then let’s do it right. Let’s get all the facts on the table.”
“I was trying to find my dad,” Iris explained.
“So,” Jessica continued as if what followed was the most natural thing in the world, “she pushed the redial button on the phone in his bedroom at the beach house.”
“And got the CIA?”
“We assume.” She pulled Iris to her. Gone was any trace of insecurity or emotion. She was tough again, having slipped back into the role of Iris’s protector. “The area code fits. They answered the phone with some top secret spy jargon garbage and when she couldn’t identify herself in the accepted manner, they freaked.”
“I didn’t like ’em anyway.” Iris crossed her arms in that weird way kids had of holding their elbows. “They were cold. I don’t think they care about my dad.”
Sully paced a few steps, rubbing the back of his neck. “What does Munro Security or Phil Munro have to do with the CIA?”
Iris shrugged. Jessica simply stared at him, silently suggesting that they’d all be better off if they didn’t know the answer to that question.
“Okay, we’ll put that issue aside for the moment. Is that all you’ve got to go on?” He looked at them, his hands on his hips.
“That’s all the facts.”
Once again Sully was struck by the notion that it was a damn shame that Jessica was so slippery. Despite concrete evidence that the woman wasn’t nearly as innocent as her kiss pretended, he still wanted her. That surprised the hell out of him. He liked his women straightforward and uncomplicated. Jessica was anything but.
She’d given up lying, but the half-truths were just as bad. She was very good at it. Fortunately, he was better.
“Good,” he finally said. “Now let’s start on the non-facts. Let’s start with what worries you, Jessica.”
The black book and that file. But she couldn’t say that out loud. Not to Sully. Not to anyone. “We can’t prove it, but we think someone’s broken in to the beach house. Phil’s office door was open, and he’s the only one with the key. The place looked gone through. Some of the pages of his calendar were missing.”
Sully reached into his back pocket and pulled out the page she’d had when he walked in. “So you came down here to check this calendar.” He glanced down at the calendar sheet, at the words she’d already memorized.
Gemini Electronics. 3274 Petrie.
“Why this page?”
“It was Friday’s page, and it’s the only one with an address.” That was the truth, but she’d have taken that page regardless of how many appointments existed on Phil’s calendar.
She smiled when Sully strode to the desk to check. He
didn’t trust her. Smart man. While he flipped pages, Jessica studied Iris, wondering how she was holding up. It was one thing to think your dad was missing and another to have that suspicion confirmed by the actions of a police detective.
After Sully tore two more pages out of Phil’s calendar, he picked up the phone and called Jericho. A brief phone conversation later, he said, “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Gemini Electronics. You wanted to investigate, so here’s your chance.”
“Do we have a choice?”
“Yeah.” He stopped beside them. “We can swing by my old squad room instead, and ask someone to run your name and the gun through the computer.”
“We’ll go with you.”
“I thought so,” Sully said, and put his hand on the small of her back to urge her toward the door.
The polite gesture caught them both by surprise. Because of her crop top, his hand rested in the small of her bare back. His touch created a focal point of heat, an intimate contact reminding them of what happened between them. She managed to swallow the gasp before it came out and arched her back away from his touch, but not quickly enough. The heat remained. Like a brand, his imprint.
After clearing her throat, she said, “Let’s go, Iris.” They were almost to the parking lot, Iris dashing ahead of them, when she remembered to ask him, “Your old squad room?”
“Houston PD. Twelve years.”
“That explains it.”
“What?”
“Why you don’t act like a small-town cop.”
“I didn’t realize it showed.”
“Only when you walk, talk, or breathe. Let me guess. You were undercover narcotics? You’ve got that just-crazy-enough gleam in your eyes and enough don’t-mess-with-me swagger to get along in that world.”
“No. I did my time in the major case squad.” He frowned when he said it, as if a shadow fell over him at the memories. Sully looked directly at her, his gaze boring into hers, almost warning her. “I was very good. Not everyone can do it. You have to think like a serial killer, like a kidnapper. Like evil.”
“H-how …?” She was unsure how to ask what she wanted to know, but he told her anyway.
“It’s easy. All you have to do is give yourself up to the darkness. Crawl inside their skin.”
A chill swept through Jessica, and the sun couldn’t warm her. It couldn’t reach the icy spot in her soul. She understood all about the darkness. “Why did you walk away?”
He didn’t answer; she didn’t ask again. She was suddenly terrified of what the answer might be.
The three of them sat in the front seat of Sully’s car. Iris didn’t mind being in the middle. Especially now that the flip-flop feeling in the pit of her stomach was getting worse. She didn’t want to be alone in the back. That’s where she was headed before Jessica pulled her out by grabbing the hem of her T-shirt and directing her to the front.
Sully didn’t seem to mind, but then he hadn’t said much of anything since he’d told her to buckle up. As they approached the turn for Petrie, Iris leaned forward as far as she could. Gripping the dash, she focused on the distance. “What’s the address?”
Sully slid the calendar page, which lay in front of him, toward her. “Thirty-two seventy-four. Gemini Electronics.”
Slowly Iris took the sheet and stared at it. The word “gemini” shouted at her. It couldn’t be; she didn’t want it to be. But there it was. She held out the sheet to Jessica, searching her face for reassurance.
Gemini was Jessica Dannemora’s code word.
Jessica had hoped Iris didn’t know or wouldn’t pick up on the word that had struck her so forcefully when she flipped through Phil’s calendar. At a loss for how to convey to Iris that the name was a coincidence without tipping Sully, Jessica finally shook her head the tiniest bit. Then the girl quietly held out her right hand. Iris believed in all that mumbo jumbo about vibrations and auras. She wanted to test Jessica.
Slowly Jessica eased her hand toward the small waiting one. As Iris wrapped her fingers around it, she closed her eyes. After what seemed like an eternity, she nodded and opened them. But she didn’t let go.
Letting out the breath she’d been holding, Jessica realized that she’d wanted to pass that test more than she cared to admit. She wanted someone to trust her unconditionally. She wanted a connection that didn’t rely on words or actions. Pain seared her as she realized what she really wanted, what she’d refused to voice for so many years now. She wanted Jenny back. She wanted to be whole again.
Unfamiliar tears blurred her sight as she stared at the small hand wrapped around hers. Blinking, she cleared her vision and then cursed Sully. All this damned emotion was his fault. He’d started it with that seduction of his. Rampant hormones were screwing up the precarious balance that kept her sane.
Not feeling anything was so much easier.
When she looked up, Sully was slowing the car. The street had dissolved into a collection of dead and dying businesses. For every two storefronts or buildings that were occupied, another was boarded up. Cigarette wrappers, fast-food bags, and broken beer bottles littered the curb, even in front of the viable businesses. No one seemed to care about the character of the neighborhood.
Finally stopping the car alongside a vacant lot, Sully announced, “As close as I can figure it, this is our address.”
“We’re looking for an electronics company. This can’t be it.”
Pointing first at the side of the lot behind them and then at the other before them, he said, “Thirty-two seventy-two and thirty-two seventy-six.”
Slowly Jessica became aware of the pressure on her hand, and looked down at Iris. The girl’s attention was riveted across the street. She shifted for a better view.
As she did, Iris clutched her hand even harder and shakily whispered, “I think that’s my dad’s car.”
Jessica’s heart stopped and lurched onward again. A shiny black Mercedes had been stripped, the victim of urban warfare. Instinctively her arm went around Iris and her eyes sought Sully. This time she was looking for some reassurance.
His face was expressionless, and he already had the radio in his hand. When he got through to dispatch and identified himself and his location, he said, “We’re going to need a crime scene unit out here.”
SIX
“Dammit, Kincaid! Get in here!”
A number of detectives in the Houston squad room jumped nervously, but his former captain’s explosion came as no surprise to Sullivan Kincaid. Nor did it upset Jessica. She sat beside Iris, holding the girl’s hand, legs crossed at the knee, impassive—just as remote with him as she’d been before the kiss. The only emotional chink in her armor since the kiss had been that split second she’d turned to him after they found the Mercedes.
Suddenly the need to shake, rattle, and roll Jessica Daniels came roaring back, just as strong as it had been that first night. And that was not good. The need to shake her out of her emotional distance would lead him down roads he couldn’t afford to travel, like the scene in Munro’s office. It was a game of control that would only escalate. The need to force a reaction from her would only bring out the worst in him.
Like father, like son. So he’d made a habit of avoiding women who got to him on anything more than a sexual level. He shook his head unhappily. Some habits just weren’t meant to be broken.
“Kincaid!” his old boss hollered for the second time.
Sully dragged his mind away from Jessica and sighed the sigh of a condemned man. It was time to face the music. This particular butt-chewing had been inevitable from the moment he’d called in the crime scene unit. Ancient metal castors squealed a protest as he pushed the chair away from the vacant desk he’d occupied since giving his statement.
Peter Keelyn, the last in the long line of partners Sully’d had over the years, looked his way and offered condolences. “If you don’t survive this, I want you to know … I’ll take good care of your lady and that sweet chrome forty-f
ive.”
The undeniable stab of possession he felt toward Jessica shook Sully. He didn’t crack a smile as he walked past and said, “Now, why would I leave you anything, Peter? I don’t even like you.”
“Hey, man, you can’t take it with you.”
“Sure I can,” he called over his shoulder. “I cut a deal with the devil.”
“Hell, Sully, you are the devil.”
“That’s what my daddy always said.” And that was on a good day.
Without bothering to straighten his tie, he strode into Captain Harlan Robertson’s office. A neatly knotted tie wasn’t going to make much of a dent in the man’s displeasure. An apologetic hangdog attitude might help, but Sully had never been able to manage “hangdog” with any degree of sincerity. And Harlan knew him much too well to fall for an act.
“Close the door.”
“Yes, sir.” Sully obliged by snagging it with the heel of his cowboy boot and kicking it shut behind him. The old-fashioned metal venetian blinds covering the window to the squad room rattled as the door made contact with the jamb.
Sully’s gaze never wavered from the man who had not only been his captain, but was also one of the few people he trusted enough to call friend. Not that they let anything so trivial as a friendship get in the way of business. His former boss was the only one who knew the real reason Sully walked away from the major case unit.
Harlan looked about as healthy as an emaciated marathon runner. Even the starch in his shirts couldn’t keep the fabric from hanging on his spare frame. Like the rest of his body, Harlan’s lips were thin, narrowing to a faint line when he was unhappy.
At the moment, Sully decided his old boss must be downright despondent. His lips had disappeared completely.
Before he began, Harlan flicked his eyes at one of the two chairs in his office—a silent command. Sully sat, leaned back, and rested an ankle over his knee. Obviously dispensing with formalities, Harlan swore and then got right to the point.
“Sully, you are supposed to be handing out jay-walking tickets in Jericho and not knee-deep in missing persons. Why are you back in my town?”
