by Beverly Bird
Molly cleared her throat. “It was the day you stole my parking space.”
“That wasn’t what I wanted to do to you, though.”
Her heart hit her chest wall with a solid thump. “What, then?”
“I wanted to feel those curls of yours tumble through my fingers.” He stepped closer and gathered a handful of her hair.
Molly’s breath came back, but it snagged.
“And I wanted to touch you here, like this.” His other hand closed over her breast.
Molly’s knees buckled. She would have fallen, she knew, if he hadn’t pulled her into his arms at just that moment. Then he cocked his head thoughtfully to the side.
“Or maybe it was the time you showed up in the sports bra.” His mouth moved to her throat, slick and warm. “Maybe that was the first time I really thought about doing this.” His strong fingers kneaded her breast gently, his thumb gliding over her nipple.
She was melting. “I told you…that was a…bathing suit top.”
“The bathing suit top was later.” He tucked her hair away from her ear, and his mouth found the soft spot behind her lobe. “The time I’m thinking of it was definitely the sports bra. You had the library book. And you were moving in place…jiggling.”
“There’s not enough of me to jiggle.”
“Oh, Molly, you are so wrong.” His mouth moved down to close over her breast, right through her uniform shirt. Molly had the dizzy, disjointed thought that she was very glad she had taken her Kevlar vest off at the station before she’d sat down to write her report.
“I don’t want to be just friends anymore.” His mouth came to hers and sealed over it. “And civil enemies—well, let’s just say that it had its moments. But even then I was thinking about changing the status quo.” He began unbuttoning her shirt.
“Danny…”
“Don’t tell me to stop, Molly. Please.” He kept unbuttoning.
“No.”
“Good.” He pushed her shirt off her shoulders, then he picked her up and carried her to the sofa, settling himself on top of her. “Because it’s time now, Molly. It’s time.”
He knew all the reasons he wasn’t supposed to do this, Danny thought. They’d been taunting him since she’d kissed him this afternoon. But all the dominoes were falling down now. He would beat Carmine at his own game, and he would take down her Lion’s Den, too. The only obstacle that remained was what he was, and what she was, and he knew he’d find a way around that rather than live without her.
There was no bathing suit top this time, no sports bra, but something clever and filmy and white. This time when he closed his mouth over her breast, the sheer fabric clung damply to her nipple. If she had worn this to play basketball that night, he would be a dead man already, Danny thought. He would have killed Ricky Mercado the next day for warning him off her.
But he couldn’t hold on to the image of Ricky when Molly was writhing beneath him. Her hands fluttered, searching, skimming down his back then diving into his hair. She dragged his face back to hers and claimed his mouth. Her tongue reached for his and he tasted the soft drink, something deeper and more promising in the way she groaned. He reached between their bodies and unfastened the hook on her trousers.
“Molly,” he murmured.
“Will you please shut up now and just touch me?”
“I was planning on it. But I want you naked first.”
His words rippled through her, tickled along under her skin. Molly dragged on his T-shirt, pulling it over his head, and she realized she was smiling again. She realized that, in this moment, caught in this sliver of time, she was as happy as she had ever been in her life. Part of it was standing on the precipice, ready to leap off, to leave the anticipation behind and finally feel his skin against hers. Part of it was the burning need of discovery. And part of it was that she had waited for him, for this, all her life.
She tugged on his jeans, impatient now. Tonight, when she’d thought she might die, she had known simply that she couldn’t leave this life without having this, without loving him first.
He finally stood to take his jeans off and to slide her trousers down her legs. There was another patch of nearly translucent white there, he found. If something was delightful once, he thought, there was the reasonable expectation that it would be again. He closed his mouth over the flimsy material and her back arched off the sofa in response. A strangled sound left her throat, and her fingers knotted in his hair.
He tasted her again and again until her breath came in short, ragged little pants, then he dragged the cloth down her legs and out of the way.
He came back to her. He wasn’t ready when she wrapped her legs around his waist, wanted more time to investigate all the little curves and corners of her. But the clasp of her thighs made him impatient. Needs tangled inside him…to drive himself into her, to fill her hard and fast and fully, and yet he wanted to ease away and slide his hands and his mouth over more of her skin. He wanted to feel the silken flesh that gripped the delicious muscles of her thighs, the taut stretch of her belly, the little ridges of her ribs.
He satisfied both urges. He slid his hand up and pushed her bra away at the same time he finally slid seamlessly inside her. Then he felt her close around him and he was gone.
Molly heard herself cry out once. She was vibrating, she thought, actually vibrating. There were tremors inside her, growing stronger and steadier with every heartbeat, every one of his thrusts. And for the first time in her life she gave herself over to the sensation of it.
There were no answers because she had no questions. There was no struggle because she had no doubts. She was where she had always needed to be. When they were one, when they were joined, there was no tomorrow, there were no differences. They belonged together.
She rocked up to meet him as he drove deeper inside her. Then they rode over the edge together.
By Molly’s reckoning—though she admitted her mind wasn’t working very well—it took a full fifteen minutes before she could feel her legs again. She sat up unsteadily, then she took the chance and decided to try to stand. “Where’s my drink?”
Danny had rolled to his side to let her move out from beneath him. He watched her scoop hair free from her temples as she looked around the room, took in those beautiful, firm muscles, the sweet uplift of her breasts. “You’re magnificent,” he murmured.
Molly looked at him quickly. It was on the tip of her tongue to argue with him, to tell him about all those full-breasted bimbos in the movies who always got their hero, to remind him that she wasn’t like that at all. But in the moment, she didn’t feel that way. She felt full, sated, voluptuous. She felt her mouth slide into a smile. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He braced his head on his hand to keep watching her.
“My soft drink?”
“You dropped it. Over there.”
“I did not.”
“Oh, yeah. You did. You went to put your arms around me and—plop.”
“I dropped it?” She pivoted to find the can on the floor. “Wow. I dropped it.”
“I’m good, aren’t I?”
She glanced back at him. She tried for a retort, but that wouldn’t come to her mouth either. “You’re magnificent.”
They grinned at each other.
“Go get us more drinks and then tell me what you found out by breaking and entering tonight,” he suggested finally.
Molly almost sputtered. She didn’t know which of his words tweaked her more. She decided to take them one at a time. “What, now I’m the little woman? Molly, get me this, Molly, get me that?”
“Actually, I just want to watch your backside when you walk over there to the refrigerator.”
She couldn’t help herself. Molly laughed. He was everything she’d ever thought she wanted. He met her word for word…and touch for touch. She finally sobered and cleared her throat. “Actually, I didn’t break and enter.”
“Ah, now, honey, don’t disappoint me.”
She went for the soft drinks. “Sorry, but I really didn’t. Evie Castelano planted her keys at my locker. I would have, though, if I’d had to. Does that make you feel any better?”
Danny sat up and took the can she handed him. “Yeah.” He popped the tab and drank, then, just to prove he could be chivalrous, he took hers and popped that tab also. “So what did you find out?”
Molly sank down beside him on the sofa. “Do you have anything to write on around here? I want to put it all down on paper.”
“You’ve remembered it so far.”
“My mind turned off for a while there. It went into suspension mode or something. Now that it’s reviving, I want to make sure I don’t forget anything.”
Danny looked around the apartment. “Why don’t you go down to Ron’s office? You should find some paper and a pen there.”
“I’m not dressed.”
He wriggled his eyebrows. “Exactly.”
She laughed again. It felt so special, Molly thought, so precious. “You’ve got a good memory. I’ll just tell you, then you’ll remember everything for me.” She took a deep breath and pulled her legs into a lotus position. “Okay, from the beginning—”
“Molly,” he interrupted suddenly, hoarsely.
“What?” She glanced at him, startled.
“Not naked. Don’t do that naked. Not if you want me to remember anything at all.”
Something good and warm slid through her. She grinned and untied her legs. “This is important so keep your mind on it. But I’ll do it again later if you want. The leg thing.”
“Promise?”
Her heart skittered. “Absolutely.”
He tossed her his T-shirt. “Then for now, put this on and talk.”
Molly pulled the shirt over her head. “Okay, in order, starting with when I first knew something was wrong—when Malloy and Bancroft kidnapped Jake Anderson. I’m not sure why Bancroft went bad. I couldn’t find anything on him. But Kyle Malloy owed some serious favors to his sergeant—who, by the way, is currently my sergeant on the four-to-midnight shift. And he’s been seriously busting my chops. He was the one who told me to stay put at the domestic scene tonight—and then someone shot at me.”
“Who is he?” Danny’s blood heated. Dangerously.
“Connelly. Mark Connelly. He used to work the day shift and was brought back to swing seven months ago. This is interesting because a lot of my suspected cops have been demoted from the day shift and bounced to evenings right along with him. I think they’re all kind of sticking together. Connelly has an undisclosed reprimand in his file, and right after that he landed on the four-to-midnight. Then Malloy got in deep trouble for setting his K-9 dog on a suspect. Instead of being suspended—which he should have been—Connelly went to bat for him. There were four other instances like that in his file, so Malloy really owed Mark Connelly. The sergeant kept pulling his backside out of various slings.” She drank from her can and told him about the day she’d more or less threatened the worker’s comp suit, and how word had reached the garage before she’d even walked down there. “Connelly is part of this Lion’s Den. I’d put money on it. Of everyone in that room that day, only he would have the clout to change a car order that quickly. Everyone else would have had to go through channels, would have had to get a supervisor to okay it—and they would have needed a damned good excuse if that supervisor wasn’t involved. It just couldn’t have been accomplished in such a short period of time. I think Connelly pulled in some of the chits Malloy owed him and had him kidnap little Jake.” She paused. “Anyway, that brings us up to Beau Maguire. He discovered the money in your condo six years ago.”
Damn it, Danny thought. It couldn’t be connected. He didn’t know anything about anybody named Maguire, and Carmine had definitely been behind that frame-up.
“It wasn’t Maguire’s normal patrol area, Danny. He was reassigned that morning, just for the day. Connelly gave that order, too. Don’t you see? They put one of their own men in the area of your condo so he’d know exactly where that money was supposed to be planted and he could grab it without any complications.”
Anger boiled up in his blood and he deliberately ignored it.
“Frank Hasselman has a demerit in his file for illegal gambling on the Internet,” she continued. “He’s a computer whiz. Paulie McCauley has a sexual harassment charge pending against him by a suspect he arrested for—get this, jaywalking. Connelly intercepted both situations from going to IAD. They all owe him, Danny. Every one of them.”
“So you’re thinking…what? That this Connelly is the Lion’s Den ringleader?”
Molly nodded. “I couldn’t find anything untoward on Harry Roscoe. He’s the one I switched days off with last week and I ended up getting suckered for it. I think they wanted me working my regular shift without a night off until I dropped from exhaustion—so I wouldn’t have the time or energy to poke around the task force war room. But I’ll bet there’s something somewhere tying Roscoe to Connelly as well. As for Bryce Evans and Kevin Neely, they took Bobby’s 911 call this afternoon.” She filled him in on her conversation with Evans. “At first, I was just ticked off by the way Evans kept trashing the worth of Bobby’s life. I was getting tied up with memories of Mickey again. Then, later tonight, I realized that he was talking to me like I was one of them, like I was part of the Lion’s Den. I think he just assumed I was, that at first he thought that was why I was calling him. He kept saying things like, ‘if you get my drift.’ Which I didn’t, at the time. Then when he realized I wasn’t sympathetic, he asked who I was. I lied, but they’ll figure it out eventually. I think he was implying that the Den was behind Bobby’s beating. Then, when he realized I wasn’t a comrade, he pretty much warned me to keep my nose out of it.”
Danny swigged soda, his pulse beating.
“There’s only one other female officer with the department right now,” Molly continued. “Her name is Donita Carver. If Evans thought he was talking to Carver, then Donita might be in on this, too.”
“Stands to reason.”
“Evans owes favors to Connelly too, by the way. And given that Neely is his partner, I can’t see how he could operate without Neely’s knowledge and cooperation, so that puts Neely into the mix too.”
Danny focused on that. “Why don’t you have a partner? Why were you there at that house alone tonight?”
Molly shuddered briefly. “I told you why. They set me up. Actually, I used to have a partner when I was on grave, then I got moved up to swing shift. When that happens, you have to wait for the dust to settle a little and for other officers to get freed up. My not having a partner right now isn’t unusual, but dispatch should damned well have shot another unit to that address after me.”
“So you’re thinking that dispatch is in on this too?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure yet. More than likely, the dispatcher was just following Connelly’s directives tonight.”
Danny caught one of her curls around his finger. “What are you going to do now?”
Molly didn’t hesitate. “I’m going to be smarter than they are. I’m going to fake out the ones I can fake out, and I’m going to scare the devil out of the rest of them. I’ll officially resign from the task force in the morning. That should mollify the dumbest among them. I have to stay alive long enough to finish this.”
His heart spasmed. “I’m in favor of that.”
“Then I’m going to continue working on this Lion’s Den thing on my own time. I don’t need access to the war room for this. That’s their turf. But if anything pertinent does come through there, Joe will tell me.”
“Who the hell is Joe?” Danny was reasonably stunned to feel a tug of jealousy at his gut. He was never jealous.
Molly shrugged and drank from her can. “Joe Gannon. He lifted your parking space from you. And he came off his personal time tonight to save my backside, to cover me.”
Danny didn’t know whether to hate the guy or go to his kne
es in gratitude. “So you’ve got…what? Eight bad cops.” He mentally counted off the names.
“Ten, if we count Harry Roscoe and Donita Carver. But like I said, I’m not sure about them.”
“You’re going to start tailing the others, aren’t you?”
Molly met his gaze. “Yes. I have to.”
“No. I will.”
“Danny—”
“Clamp that mouth of yours shut for a minute. This matters to me.”
It was the way he said it that had her falling silent.
This wasn’t his nightmare. It was only peripherally his problem—if Beau Maguire had helped to frame him. Molly’s heart spasmed. This mattered to him because she mattered to him.
“Who are you most suspicious of?” he asked. “Who among all those you just mentioned do you think has the strongest chance of being involved with the bastards who hurt Bobby and shot at you?”
Molly didn’t hesitate. “Mark Connelly and Beau Maguire.”
“Why Maguire?”
“It’s a gut feeling. Something about the way he looks at me.”
“All right, then, which of those two is smarter?”
“Connelly.”
“Then we’ll start with Maguire. He’ll be more likely to slip up and do something stupid. Get me his address tomorrow. Can you do that?”
“I already know his address. It’s 126 East Tamara Lane. It was in his file tonight. I memorized it.”
“You’re something.” Oh, yeah, he thought, he really was in love with her.
“Thank you. I think.”
“Yeah, that was another compliment.” He looked at the clock over the stove. “I’ll pick up on Maguire in the morning. In the meantime, are you going home or are you going to taunt them with your car outside all night?”
She grinned wickedly. “I was kind of planning on taunting them.”
He covered her body with his own again and found her mouth. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Wait, Danny. Call the hospital and check on Bobby first.”
When he didn’t argue or hesitate, when he reached immediately for the telephone, she fell in love with him all over again.
