Setting the bottle down on the coffee table, she took a seat on the sofa. He sat down next to her. Fed now, the puppy decided that their feet were fair game and curled up happily between them, occasionally raising her head to flick her tongue over Kyle’s shoe as a sign of affection.
“Which one’s the oldest?” Jaren asked.
“We’re triplets,” he reminded her.
“I know that, but there’s always one that’s the oldest. The three of you didn’t make your debut at exactly the same time.”
“I am,” he finally said. Absently, he scratched the puppy’s head. The Labrador had shifted over closer toward him. It was clear that she thought of him as the leader of the pack.
“I thought so,” Jaren declared. “So, taking charge comes naturally to you.”
He didn’t like taking charge, just getting things done. His own way. “I’d rather do things alone,” he informed her.
“But you don’t. You take charge. If a leader’s called for, you’re it.” She saw him frown. He didn’t like credit, she concluded. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not ashamed,” Kyle countered, then took a long sip from his glass. “You’re putting me in a niche and I’d rather not be pigeonholed.”
She smiled as she took her first sip of wine. “Spoils the mystery?”
He laughed dryly. “There’re enough mysteries around right now without that.”
Jaren took a breath. Was it her, or had it suddenly gotten warmer? She realized that she was watching his lips as he spoke, letting her mind drift. Maybe the wine was a bad idea, at least for her.
She set the glass down on the table and cleared her throat. “Are you hungry? I can order some pizza,” she offered.
He thought of the empty refrigerator. “Was that what you were going to have?” She nodded. “Not exactly a balanced dinner.”
“Bread, meat, tomatoes, cheese,” she recited the components of her favorite pizza. “Sounds pretty balanced to me.” Rising to her feet, she crossed to the kitchen phone and began to dial the number of the local pizza parlor.
Kyle followed her, leaving the glass of wine standing next to hers. “You don’t cook, do you?”
She paused for a minute. “Only if I’m looking to come down with food poisoning. Now,” she resumed dialing, “what’s your pleasure?” The line was busy. She broke the connection and began to dial again.
Kyle wasn’t sure just what prompted him to do what he did next. Maybe it was reacting to her question. Maybe it was being alone with her like this and feeling the chemistry crackle between them without the usual distractions of work. And maybe it was the wine and the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything in close to eight hours, and then it had only been half a sandwich.
For whatever reason, Kyle took the receiver from her hand and hung it up.
Her mouth turned to pure cotton. Jaren raised her eyes to his. “You want something else besides pizza?” she guessed, the words coming out in almost slow motion. This wasn’t what she thought it was, she silent insisted.
Get a grip. The man just changed his mind about pizza, that’s all.
Taking a breath, Jaren was about to rattle off the names of several other take-out places in the area she’d become familiar with in the last few weeks, but the words never rose to her lips.
Which was just as well because her lips suddenly had something else to deal with. The press of his against them.
Her heart slammed against her chest and she found herself falling into the kiss and the moment. He tasted like no wine she’d ever sampled.
His mouth slanted over hers over and over again, weakening her just a little more with each pass, dissolving her strength and melting her inner core. Struggling to remain grounded, she entwined her arms around his neck, rising up on her toes so that her body could press against his in all the important contact points.
A hunger raced through her, surprising her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted a man to hold her, to kiss her. To make her forget everything else.
She kissed him harder, not wanting to disappear into oblivion without leaving her mark. He responded by tightening his hold on her. She felt a fire ignite in her veins.
This was only going to end one way.
But just as the thought came to her, she could have sworn that music filled the air.
No, not music, ring tones.
Her phone was ringing.
Oh no, not now. Jaren wanted to ignore it. With all her heart she wanted to pretend it wasn’t ringing, but then she heard another ring tone. Kyle’s phone was ringing, too.
The dissonance broke into the moment. A feeling of bereavement, framed in relief, overtook her. This would have been a mistake, she told herself. A glorious, mind-numbing mistake. With reluctance, she pulled back.
“The phones are ringing,” Jaren told him needlessly, trying to catch her breath.
She wasn’t the only one.
Breathing hard, wondering what the hell had come over him, Kyle nodded and took a step back. He dragged his hand through his dark hair, as if that would somehow restore his thinking process to normal—or as normal as could be expected. Swallowing an unintelligible oath, he pulled out his phone.
Rosetti, he saw, was doing the same with hers. They answered, announcing their names, at almost the exact same time.
“O’Brien.”
“Rosetti.”
By the way her face paled, Kyle surmised that she was getting the same message that he was. The moment they’d shared was gone as if it had never existed, blown away in the wake of the information they were receiving.
He later remembered thinking that this couldn’t be happening. Except that it was. It had.
“When?” he demanded gruffly.
A shaken Riley was on the other end of the line, calling to tell him that the vampire slayer had struck again. Telling him the slayer’s latest victim. Kyle could tell it was all she could do to keep from breaking down. He felt sick to his stomach himself.
“The M.E. hasn’t gotten here yet,” she was saying. “I called you as soon as I—as we—found the body.” He thought he heard a suppressed sob. “Holloway is on the other line, calling Jaren.”
“Get a hold of yourself, Riley. Where are you?” he asked gruffly.
It took her a second to remember the names of the streets and get her bearings. When she did, Riley rattled the address off to him.
Kyle didn’t bother telling her he’d be right there before he snapped his phone shut. That was a given.
He looked at Jaren who’d already gotten off her cell. She looked even paler than before. He thought of telling her to stay put, but that would have been playing favorites. Most likely, she’d just resent him for it.
“You okay?” His voice was harsh as he grappled with the situation himself.
Feeling like someone in a surreal nightmare, Jaren nodded, then added in a haunted voice, “I’ve been better.” Pivoting on her heel, she crossed to the counter and picked up her weapon. She strapped it on quickly.
Maybe Holloway had made a mistake, she thought desperately. Maybe, but even as she tried to advance the desperate notion, she knew she was wrong. There was no mistake.
“Let’s go,” she cried, hurrying out the door before Kyle.
With sirens blaring, flying through all the lights, they lost no time getting to the back alley where the slayer’s latest victim lay. Jaren approached the body on legs that grew progressively more rubbery.
Detective Diego Sanchez, his dark hair slicked back, wearing the black all-weather coat he favored, died with a surprised look on his face. A copy of The Vampire Diaries lay on the ground several feet away from him.
There was a stake through his heart.
Kyle crouched down beside the body. He looked at the book. It was facedown on the pavement, its spine broken and flat. Was that what did it? Had the book attracted his killer? Or was it the way Sanchez liked to dress? Kyle struggled against feeling sick.
He ro
se to his feet. “What’s he doing with this book?” he demanded. The question was addressed to anyone who could give him an answer.
Holloway sighed heavily. He and Sanchez had been partnered for the last six years. For the purposes of the investigation, Kyle had assigned each of them to one of the other detectives on the task force, to give them the benefit of their experience.
“He said he wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Thought it might help him to figure out the inner workings of his girlfriend’s mind,” Holloway finally said, standing over the body and shaking his head. “Damn it, who’s going to tell his mother?”
“I’ll do it,” Kyle said, his voice low, barely a rumble.
Holloway looked at him. “I didn’t mean for you—”
Kyle cut him off. “My task force, my job,” he said with finality. Forcing himself to focus on the crime, he scanned the area. None of this made any sense. Why Sanchez?
“Anyone know what he was doing tonight?”
Riley cleared her throat. Sanchez had been assigned to her. “He told me he was playing a hunch,” she volunteered.
Kyle turned to look at the woman who, thanks to his mother’s deathbed revelation, had become part of his family. “Which was?”
Riley shook her head. “He wouldn’t tell me. He said—” Her voice cracked and she began again. “He said that if it didn’t pan out, he didn’t want to be left with egg on his face. I told him I’d go with him, but he said there was no point in both of us chasing this down.” Riley pressed her lips together as if trying to force down the tears. “I should have gone with him.”
Unable to witness her guilt a second longer, Jaren came up to her and tried to put her arms around the woman. Riley shook her off, then caved.
“You had no way of knowing what was going to happen,” Jaren told her.
There was anguish in Riley’s eyes as she said, “That’s exactly why I should have gone.”
“Don’t waste time beating yourself up,” Kyle told her. “We’ve got a killer to catch. Riley, I want you to find out all the calls Sanchez made on his cell phone in the last twenty-four hours. Maybe we can figure out where he was going tonight.”
Riley nodded. “On it.”
“Holloway, go with her,” he ordered, and then looked at the three detectives in the alley. “From now on, I don’t want anyone going off on their own.”
“We can work faster if we split up,” Holloway argued.
“No one is going alone,” Kyle repeated with feeling. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Clear,” Riley agreed, her voice hardly above a tortured whisper.
“He wasn’t killed here,” Jaren realized, just as the M.E. arrived. When the others turned to her, she explained. “There’s no pool of blood. He was killed somewhere else and then brought here.”
Why? Kyle wondered. Had the crime scene been too close to the slayer’s home? “I still want a canvas of the area. See if anyone saw or heard something. A truck, a van, a car pulling into the alley and then leaving.” Even as he said it, he knew it was too much to hope for.
“Tire marks do?” Holloway asked.
Kyle felt his pulse jump. “Fresh?” he asked, hurrying over to where Holloway stood.
Jaren had already joined the other detective and squatted down to examine the markings. “Looks to be,” she answered.
“Have CSI run down the make and model,” Kyle instructed. He could see the team members entering the alley. “Maybe our vampire slayer made his first mistake.”
“His first mistake,” Riley said grimly, “was killing one of our own.”
No one argued that point.
Chapter 12
“I’m going with you,” Jaren informed Kyle as she hurried to catch up to him outside of the alley.
Kyle shook his head. “I’m on my way to see Sanchez’s mother.”
Of all the things that a police officer did, Kyle thought, informing a parent or spouse of their loved one’s death had to be among the worst. Even he wasn’t immune to it, despite the fact that he did his best to distance himself from the people he worked with.
Jaren lengthened her stride to keep pace with him. “I know.”
Kyle stopped abruptly. “Thanks, but I don’t need someone to hold my hand. I’ve done this more times than I care to remember.”
“Everyone needs someone to hold their hand once in a while,” Jaren told him. No matter how aloof he pretended to be, she knew Sanchez’s murder had gotten to him just like it had to the rest of them. Having to tell the man’s mother the detective had been slain was going to be hard enough with support. She didn’t want him doing it alone. “I’m coming with you so you might as well get used to it. Besides, Mrs. Sanchez might want a woman there.”
He didn’t want to waste time arguing, especially since he had a feeling that he was not about to win. Rosetti seemed the type to argue the ears off a brass monkey. And maybe she was right. Maybe having a woman there might give Sanchez’s mother some measure of comfort, although if it were him, there would simply be no way to glean comfort from this kind of a situation.
Kyle resumed walking to his vehicle. They were parked one behind the other. “If you’re going to come, let’s go.”
They drove separately, just as they had from her apartment. She hadn’t thought to ask him for Mrs. Sanchez’s address, so perforce, she had to follow closely behind him when all she wanted was to open up the engine and go fast. The tension she was experiencing reached critical mass.
The porch light was on at the Sanchez residence but the lights inside were off. Kyle seemed to hesitate, not wanting to wake the woman up to news like this. But in the end, he finally pressed the doorbell.
Several minutes went by before a light went on inside the house and they heard the lock being flipped open. Jaren heard Kyle take in a breath as the door opened.
Inez Sanchez was a short woman whose full-figured frame testified to her love of food. At sixty-three, her face was unlined and only a few gray strands had found their way into her midnight black hair.
Her dark eyes were still sleepy as she recognized the young man at her door. She smiled a sleepy greeting.
“Diego isn’t home yet,” she told him.
“I know,” Kyle replied.
The two words erased the woman’s smile. Horror took its place as her eyes widened.
“Oh no, no. Please, no.”
Kyle forced the words out. “Mrs. Sanchez, I’m so very sorry to have to tell you this, but—”
“No. Es la mentira. No. He is coming home. Diego is coming home. He is just late,” she insisted, looking from her son’s friend to the young woman who had come with him. Her eyes begged them to tell her she wasn’t wrong.
“He isn’t late,” Kyle said, raising his voice above her cries. “He’s dead.”
Mrs. Sanchez’s eyes were wild as she heard the words that brought the end of hope in her life. Her knees buckled, refusing to hold her up. Kyle caught her, but it was Jaren who moved in, Jaren who put her arms around the woman and held her close. Mrs. Sanchez struggled, trying to shrug her off. Jaren refused to let her, holding on tightly until the detective’s mother finally dissolved into a pool of tears.
In her misery, Inez Sanchez completely reverted to her native tongue. Kyle was surprised when he heard Jaren answer her.
Jaren said every soothing thing she could think of and then fervently swore to the woman that they would get the man who killed her son. She sealed her promise by taking an oath on her father’s grave.
It was the latter vow that finally got through to the grieving mother and stilled her louder sobs.
At a loss, feeling as if he was in the way, Kyle quietly slipped out of the small, single-story stucco house.
Jaren was aware of his leaving, but her attention was focused on Inez.
She remained with Mrs. Sanchez another twenty minutes, until, utterly exhausted, the woman fell into a fitful sleep on the sofa. Taking out one of her newly printed cards, Jaren wrote
a note on the back, urging the woman to call her anytime if she needed to talk. Time of day or night didn’t matter.
She left the card propped up against the base of the lamp on the end table. With an aching heart, she tiptoed outside and quietly pulled the door shut behind her. She made sure she heard the lock click into place.
When she turned around, Jaren bit back a scream. Her nerves were closer to the surface than she thought.
“You didn’t go home,” she said needlessly. When he slipped out, she was certain Kyle had taken the opportunity to go home himself.
“I said we were supposed to do things in pairs, remember? I’m not about to have you out on the streets at this hour. Especially in this neighborhood. It’s not safe.” He nodded toward the house behind her. “She going to be all right?”
Jaren shook her head. “Not for a good long while,” she guessed. “But she cried herself into exhaustion and fell asleep. I left her on the sofa. Sleep’s the best thing for her right now. Is there anyone we can call for her?”
“Not that I know of.” He led the way back to the cars parked at the curb. “Get in your car,” he instructed. “I’ll follow you home.”
“Then what, I’ll follow you to your place to make sure you got in safely?”
Kyle frowned at her. Why did everything have to turn into a debate? “I’m a man.”
“So was Sanchez,” she reminded him grimly. “Seems to me that this maniac only goes after men.”
“So far,” Kyle pointed out.
She stifled a shiver. O’Brien might be right, but she hoped not. There was already enough panic about this killer without bringing the female population into it.
Jaren couldn’t remember ever feeling this restless, this unsettled. She wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight. Not given the way she felt.
“There’s no point in going back to my apartment,” she told him. “I won’t sleep. I’m too keyed up.”
She was about to say that she might as well go to the precinct and see if she could get any work done, when she heard him say, “I’ll come with you. We can talk until you wind down.”
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