A Kiss to Kill (6 page)

Again, he gave a derisive snort. “Fucking bullshit.”

“Language, Zane,” she admonished.

“Pretend all you like, angel, but I know you want me. Dump the bastard.” He leaned closer and murmured coaxingly, “Be with me.”

How long had she wished and prayed to hear him say those three little words? Well. Or three little words to that effect.

“You’re not being fair,” she murmured.

“How so?” He reached for her. He curled his fingers behind her neck and pulled her face toward his. “You don’t love him. You can’t possibly love him.”

That’s not what she’d meant. She and Wade had decided to keep things casual and non-exclusive after that disastrous trip to the Caribbean, and had since drifted apart pretty much permanently. No, she didn’t love him. How could she? “That’s not the point,” she said.

“I’m not asking for a commitment, Rebel.”

Yeah.
That
was the point. Alex didn’t want
her
, he only wanted sex.

As though sensing the direction of her thoughts, he brushed his lips tantalizingly over hers, and said, “I’ll be with you for as long as you want me, angel. I promise.”

Her heart gave a stutter. Could he really mean that?

Why not? Alex Zane was the most loyal person she knew. When he gave his word, he kept it. He’d proven that over and over again in the past. With Helena, for instance.

But could Rebel really trust him
now
? Being a virtual prisoner of war, going through such unspeakable horrors for so long, it must have changed him. How could it not have?

Was he still the same man he’d been before his ordeal? And even if he was, could she live with the knowledge that she was his second choice and always would be?

He pressed his lips more firmly to hers. Warm.
Persuasive
.

“Trust me,” he urged softly.

Could she?

She swallowed heavily. Torn as never before.
She needed time
. “Let me think about it,” she said.

He gave her a masculine, satisfied smile, as though her answer were already a given. “Take all the time you need.” He kissed her one last time. “Now let’s go pack you an overnight bag. We’re moving onto the boat.”

FIVE

“MCPHEE.”

Sarah punched the blinking line on her desk phone, hoping against hope it was the coroner calling to let her know the autopsy of the Dumpster vic had been postponed indefinitely. Or better yet, had been moved up unexpectedly and, oh, hell, she’d missed it.

“Detective McPhee, this is FBI Special Agent in Charge Wade Montana.”

Sarah picked up a pen in surprise. “Yes?” she said cautiously, glanced at the clock, then quickly scribbled down his name, the date and time. “What can I do for you, SAC Montana?”

“You ran a fingerprint search last night, on a woman named Asha Mahmood.”

Speak of the devil. Sarah’d gotten back to the station late last night after interviewing witnesses—none of whom had seen anything, surprise, surprise. But someone in the medical examiner’s office had also been burning the midnight oil and e-mailed over a clean set of the vic’s prints. So she’d run them, and come up with the name, an address that upon investigation this morning turned out to be fake, and not much else.

“Yes, I ran her prints,” she said. One thing she’d learned in her varied encounters with the agents of Uncle Sam: never volunteer anything to a feeb. Always make them ask.

“May I ask what it was about?”

She smiled wryly. At least he was polite. Nice voice, too. Smooth. Cultured. She could just picture him in his natty blue suit and red-striped tie. Or was he more of a Men in Black with reflecto sunglasses guy?

“May I ask why you want to know?” she returned just as politely.

There was a pause.
Yeah, here it comes
. She didn’t know what, but federal interest in a case or a vic always spelled trouble, no matter how nice the guy’s voice.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” he said.

She was shocked,
shocked
. “Oh. Well. What a coincidence,” she said pleasantly. “I can’t, either.”

“Detective McPhee,” he said with studied patience, “I would sincerely appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”

“And what matter is that, SAC Montana?”

He sighed. And to her surprise, chuckled. “Okay. I surrender. Tell you what. Why don’t we meet and discuss this over lunch? My treat.”

Uh-oh
.

“No pressure,” he added. “Just a friendly exchange of information.”

Ri-ight
. Still. Against her better judgment, she was intrigued. What had this vic been into? Knowing that could help in her murder investigation.

She checked her day planner. Four hours until she had to be at the M.E.’s. “All right. How’s fifteen minutes? Where would you like to—” The buzzer on her intercom sounded. “Hang on.” She pushed the button. “Yeah?”

“You up?” came the voice of the dispatcher.

“Yep.” She grabbed her notebook. Because Jonesy and another detective were testifying in court today and two others were out at another call, she was up in the duty rotation again.

“DB reported at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens on Anacostia Ave.” The dispatcher rattled off the relevant information.

Ah, well. So much for lunch.

“Got it.” She pushed the line for the feeb. “Sorry, duty calls,” she told Montana. “I’ve got a homicide.”

Montana promptly said, “Where? I’ll meet you at the scene.”

Okay. “Look, I don’t—”

“I’ll bring lunch with me.”

All sorts of alarm bells went off in her cop brain. Definitely Men in Black. She better watch herself if she didn’t want to be turned into an alien. Or worse, have the FBI horn in on her case.

“How ’bout I call you when I get back?” she suggested. “Good talking to you, SAC Montana.” She hung up. Without getting his number. If it was important, he’d call back. Which would give her a chance to be better prepared. But meanwhile, she had a case, and with any luck she’d be away from her desk for the rest of the day.

Kenilworth Gardens, eh? The little-known national park situated along the Anacostia River was dedicated solely to water plants. An unusual place for a murder.

She grabbed her things and made the fifteen-minute drive, pulling up just as the assistant M.E. did. He got out of his BMW and gave her a smile and a wave. “Detective McPhee. Busy day, huh?”

She smiled back. “Thanks for the quick turnaround on those prints last night, Dr. Stroud.”

“No problem. And please, if we’re going to be cutting up dead bodies together later, call me Johnny.”

She tried not to choke. On either count. “All right. And I’m Sarah.”

They walked through the ugly gate that led into the park, and followed the dirt path down to the ponds where the new vic had been found. The thick smell of standing water and wet earth filled the air, along with the buzz of awakening spring insects.

Since the murder scene hadn’t been released by the CSI team yet, she halted when they hit the outer edge of the built-up maze of man-made ponds. With a wave, Dr. Stroud—Johnny—kept walking onto a narrow levee between them. “Give me five minutes.”

A handful of gardeners in muddy hip waders and the park ranger in a Smokey hat milled about, observing the police activity from a roped-off section of the path where they’d been herded. She joined them.

The shallow green ponds themselves were for the most part bare of vegetation, save for a glutinous haze of slime and algae. She didn’t know much about plants in general or water plants in particular, but her mom had kept a pretty pink tropical water lily in a half-whisky barrel on the back deck growing up, and it had to be taken in each winter and set out again in spring.

The official last frost date in D.C. was just a few days away—although Sarah never put her tomato plants out on her apartment’s microscopic balcony before Mother’s Day. So she wasn’t surprised to observe big white buckets filled with rotting plant detritus sitting along the water’s edge, evidence that the staff must be cleaning out the ponds in anticipation of spring planting. Which must be how the DB had been discovered. She wondered idly how long the victim had been in the slimy water. Yuck. And how it had gotten there.

Pulling out her notebook, she turned to the gardeners and ranger and started asking her questions. She was just finishing up with the last witness when a tall, good-looking, fortyish man in a dark blue suit strolled up holding a Burger King bag.

He peered at her over the rims of amber-colored reflecto-aviators. “Detective McPhee?”

She did a double-take.

Oh. My. God.

Probably a few years her junior, the guy was at that stage of forty-something that made a man look affluent, sexy, and in his prime—fit, tanned, tailored, and financially sound.

Well, except for the Burger King part. Lunch? Really?

“SAC Montana, I presume,” she drawled, torn between irritation and annoyance.

“I brought lunch,” he said with a bad-boy smile that had doubtless captured the heart of many a hapless rookie straight from the Academy who didn’t know any better.

“Seriously? Burger King?” she said dryly.

“Angry Whoppers,” he said, and waggled his eyebrows.

Okay, you had to give the man points for a sense of humor. Unwillingly, she felt her lips form a half smile. “How perceptive of you,” she said.

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks. So”—he looked around—“where can we sit and chat?”

She snapped her notebook closed and started back toward the parking lot without bothering to check if he was following. “I can’t believe they let you onto an active crime scene. Somebody’s gonna wish he didn’t get up this morning.” Referring to the guard at the gate.

“Not his fault,” Montana said from behind her. “He got a call from your lieutenant to let me in.”

She jetted out a breath, halted and spun, hands on hips. She should have
known
Harding would—

Montana ran right into her.

For a split second the front of their bodies pressed together intimately. No longer than an instant, but long enough to feel the hardness of his muscles and the broadness of his chest against her breasts. Not to mention a few other things she
defi
nitely should not be feeling.

Like a crazy zing of sexual attraction in the pit of her stomach.

Whoa
.

She stepped back. He stood still. He cocked his head, gazing at her over those impenetrable glasses again. His eyes were blue as the spring sky. “I’m hungry,” he said, his voice suddenly pitched low. “How ’bout you?”

God, had he felt it, too? Was that an invitation for more than Angry Whoppers . . . ? Or had her overactive imagination just skipped from too-fertile to plain-old-stupid, due to being without a man for so long?

“Um, look—”

“No strings,” he said. “You don’t have to give me anything you don’t want to.”

She blinked. What exactly
were
they talking about here? “That’s good. Because I don’t have much to give.”

His lips tilted up—mobile lips, no doubt brimming with experience. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

Holy. Jesus.

She swiped the bag from his hand. “We can eat in my car.”
In full view of the officer guarding the gate
, she reprimanded herself sternly. With that, she strode off down the path.

And wondered what the bloody hell he
really
wanted.

GINA
awoke with a peculiar feeling in the pit of her stomach. Something was—

Omigod
.

Then she remembered. The attack! She let out a cry of despair. Visions of blood flew through her mind. Along with the feel of powerful hands gripping her and . . .

Gregg
.

Bolting upright, she looked around frantically.
Mother of God
. She was in his apartment!

And in his bed
.

She would recognize that heavy wrought-iron headboard anywhere. Its unusual custom features had figured prominently in their lovemaking on the occasions he’d brought her here . . . and in her fantasies ever since.

But those fantasies were about to turn into nightmares
.

Her hands flew to her mouth, stifling a cry of panic.

That’s when she noticed her arms were bare. She looked down at the rest of her body. A desperate whimper escaped.

She was naked!

What had he done to her?

“Hello, Gina,” his deep voice said from nearby.

She whipped around, and saw him.

He was sprawled casually in a chair by the window, fingering a bottle of beer clasped between his hands. His faded jeans had holes at the knees; his signature black T-shirt hugged a torso that was still ripped from granite. Short-cropped sandy hair; hard, sculpted features; and a shoulderholstered gun tucked under his armpit completed the picture of the consummate badass. Despite his slack pose with one motorcycle booted-foot resting negligently on the other knee, his whole body oozed strength and power.

Her throat went painfully dry. She recognized, almost viscerally, that tall, broad, hard-as-nails body. Felt the power of its impact at such a primal level she nearly cried out in protest.

But she managed to swallow down the sensation and ask, “Why am I here? What do you want from me, Gregg?”

His sensual lips curved downward. The movement made the hollowed angles of his ultra-masculine face even more harsh than usual.

She should be terrified. She
was
terrified! And yet . . .

A spill of goose bumps washed up her arms and over her chest. Against her will, a coil of sexual desire tightened in her center.
Lord help her
. Why did the bastard have to look so damn amazing? She didn’t understand why her body steadfastly refused to acknowledge her fear of him.

“Why am I naked?” she demanded, gaining strength from her inner mortification. She clutched the bedsheet to her tightly, pulling it up to her neck. “What are you going to do, rape me before you kill me?”

A muscle ticked in his cheek but his expression didn’t alter. “Your clothes were covered in blood.”

She quickly touched her face, flashing a glance at her hands again. Both clean. He’d washed her, too.

He dropped his boot to the floor and rose catlike from the chair. Her heart pounded erratically. But he just walked to a dresser and from the top picked up a pair of neatly folded black sweatpants and a black T-shirt.

In a vase sitting next to where the clothes had been stacked, she suddenly noticed a bouquet of yellow roses and blue forget-me-nots. The flowers she’d dropped? She was so surprised, she didn’t sense him approach until he tossed the clothes down on the bed in front of her.

She started badly, panic zinging through her like an electric shock. He halted, watching her with narrowed eyes as she frantically scrambled backward.

They stared at each other for an endless moment. At length he said tightly, “Gina. I’m not going to rape you. I didn’t dress you because after cleaning the blood off your body, I didn’t trust myself to touch you for one second longer. Yes, we have history, and it’s pretty damn clear I still want you. But I wouldn’t take you by force. And I’m
not
going to kill you.”

An uncontrollable tremble went through her. She didn’t believe him! The man was heartless; he’d sold her to terrorists! They’d beaten her, drugged her, and forced her to use her expertise in genetic research to weaponize a horrible biological agent. If not kill her, then what could he possibly want with her? Why was he doing this?

She let out a squeak of horror as an unacceptable thought hit her.
Surely, he didn’t intend to give her back to them?
Please, God, no! She couldn’t go through that again!

As the squeak morphed to a scream, he was on the bed in a flash. One powerful hand clamped over her mouth, his arm banded around her body. “Shhh,” he sussed in her ear as the frantic sound fought in vain to explode from her. “There’s no need to scream, sweet thing. No one will hear you anyway. Please stop.”

No!

She struggled against his hold. Against his hand. Against the worst fate imaginable. She fought him as tears blinded her and sobs clogged her throat. She scratched and clawed and pounded him. And all the while he held her fast, not giving an inch.