Man with the Muscle (3 page)

He set the box on the van's bumper with a heavy thunk, and the entire vehicle rocked, giving an indication as to the considerable weight he'd carried. The man unsnapped the strap beneath his chin and pulled off his helmet, dropping it to the concrete at his feet before scrubbing his black-gloved fingers over the top of his hair.

For a moment, Audrey forgot about the reporters and the mud and her grief. As he opened the back doors and hefted the box inside, his movements caught the lights in his short dark hair, revealing blue-black glints in the rumpled waves. Was he packing up? Did that mean the house had been cleared? The bomb discovered and dismantled?

He had the doors closed before she could think to move, and now she was forced to kneel there until the motion-detector lights went back off or the officer climbed inside the van. But he didn't appear to be in any hurry. With his rifle looped casually through the crook of his arm, he slowly turned, taking note of the vehicles in the street, the neighbors scurrying along the sidewalk to get a closer look at all the activity. Apparently oblivious to the approach of winter in the air, he unbuttoned the cuffs of his black shirt and rolled up the sleeves over a pair of muscular forearms. With a simple tilt of his head, he spoke into the microphone strapped to his Kevlar vest.

He was on guard, looking for something or someone,
scanning his surroundings, his dark gaze skimming past her hiding spot. Audrey hugged her arms closer to her body and made herself even smaller. Had he seen her? Sensed her presence? She could hide from friends and avoid the press, but something about the intensity of those watchful eyes warned her that it would be very hard to keep anything hidden from him.

Audrey held her breath. Waited. Tried to ignore the little tingles of awareness sparking beneath the emotions she held so tightly in check. He wasn't as tall as Harper or even her father. But he was all muscle, all alertness, all coiled energy. If the killer had planted a bomb inside the Cosgrove house, he looked like the type of man who could take care of it. He looked like the type of man who could have saved Gretchen's life in the first place.

Gretchen would have called him hot. She would have been introducing herself, flirting with him by now. She would have welcomed him as a friend and made him feel glad to be a part of her life long before Audrey even decided to admit he was handsome in an earthy, unpolished sort of way.

A tear leaked out, its hot moisture chapping her cheek in the cool breeze. Gretchen would have thought hiding in the shrubs to avoid the press and spy on hot guys was a grand adventure, but for Audrey this was pure torture. Another tear trailed along the same path, marking her skin. Grief could no longer wait for privacy and a sob squeezed through her throat in a muffled gasp.

Not here. Not now. The SWAT cop's gaze swung back around and she shoved her knuckles against her lips, stifling the breathy whimper of each sob while the tears streamed over her hand. She could read the headlines now—
Lawyer Can't Handle Crime Scene,
Muddy Misstep for Kline's Daughter
or
Newest A.D.A. Runs and Hides.
Just the kind of decorum and control that would inspire public confidence as she led the prosecution against gang-leader Demetrius Smith. Not.

But then a KCPD pickup pulled into the driveway behind the SWAT van and she had her chance to escape public scrutiny.

Audrey pushed to her feet, stumbling back against the iron fence, as that all-seeing cop walked up to meet the truck. Another uniformed officer—minus the armored vest and extra gear and weaponry of the first man—climbed out of the truck with a German shepherd bounding down behind him, to shake hands and trade greetings. By the time the SWAT cop had stooped down to wrestle the dog around its ears, Audrey was moving. Holding up her hand to shield her face from the prickly branches of the hedgerow, she jogged several yards along the fence until the bustle and bright lights from the front of the house could no longer be seen or heard.

She inhaled a lungful of the cool night air and exhaled on sobs that shook through her. Curling her fingers around the cold, unyielding iron of a fence post, she held on and let the grief overtake her.

Seconds passed, maybe a minute or two, as the pain knifed through her. With one hand braced on her knee and the other gripping the fence to keep from toppling over, she wept for Gretchen and for the void her death created in so many lives, including her own. She'd never learned Gretchen's gifts for spontaneity and handling stress and sharing joy, and now she never would. Kansas City had lost a generous and enthusiastic young benefac
tor. Harper Pierce had lost a fiancée. The Cosgroves had lost a daughter. Audrey had lost another friend.

Finally, the sobs became little gasps and hiccups as the worst of it passed. Audrey's diaphragm ached, her sinuses throbbed against her skull, her eyes felt puffy and hot. But she could think again. She could feel something beyond the pain—anger, perhaps, determination to honor Gretchen's memory and vindicate her murder.

And she could hear.

Footsteps.

Audrey snapped her attention to the soft, even rhythm of someone moving through the Cosgroves' backyard. Although muffled by the fallen leaves and dewy grass, there was no mistaking the tread of company cutting between the garden paths and towering oaks that shaded the yard on the other side of the fence.

The police officers she'd seen all carried flashlights. But this, this was something different. A noise in the dark. The whisper of stealth.

Pushing her hair away from her hot, sticky cheeks, Audrey peered between the iron bars to identify the source of the sound among the trees. Too big to be a squirrel or rabbit. Too real for her to feel safe. The breeze rustled through the hedge, sending a chill dancing along her spine. If that was a cop, where was his flashlight? And if it wasn't, how had he gotten past security inside the front gates?

She pressed her face against the bars, trying to spot the movement among the trees. But the footsteps had fallen silent. With no sound to listen for and nothing to see, her other senses took over. The breeze was damp and cool against her skin, and it carried the subtlest hint
of cigarette smoke into her nose. Since when did cops smoke on the job?

Audrey straightened, her breath still coming in stuttering gasps, her legs willing her to back away. She dabbed at her nose with the back of her hand and brushed the moisture on her pant leg. Had he gone? Was that scent the whisper of a shadow that had moved on? Or was he standing there, waiting, watching from the darkness?

Watching her?

A beam of light hit the side of her face, blinding her. With a startled yelp, she raised her hand to block the light and turned. “Stop it!” She pointed through the fence. “Were you…? How…?” Her pulse raced faster than her thoughts could keep up.
Run.
No. Even as the instinct shot through her, she knew she had no place to go.
Game face, Audrey. Get your Rupert Kline, killer-in-the-courtroom game face on.
With a noisy sniffle, she pulled back her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Could you get that light out of my face, please?”

She was going for confidence, strength, with that order. But her bout of crying and uncertain fear made the tone husky, revealing she was far more rattled than she cared to admit.

“Audrey Kline?”

Oh, boy. Here it comes.
“I don't have any statement to make at this time.”

“Okay.”

Okay? In a moment of confusion, her strength deflated. “The light?”

Thankfully, the man tilted the flashlight down to the ground. Not a reporter. Not a killer. He wasn't giving off a whiff of anything beyond leather and starch and
clean, musky man. She didn't need to see his face to know from the width of his chest—and the assault rifle pointed down to the ground at his side—that she'd been discovered by the SWAT officer she'd been ogling only minutes earlier. “Better come out of there, ma'am.”

He pulled back the hedge where she'd been hiding. No way had he just climbed that fence. She'd been so busy sobbing and sniffling, then spying through the trees, that she simply hadn't heard his approach from the opposite direction. She pointed over her shoulder as she stepped out. “There was someone over there. Maybe just having a smoke, maybe something else.”

“And you were checking it out?” He let the hedge spring back into place and positioned himself between her and the noise she'd heard. He pointed the beam of his flashlight into the trees on the other side of the fence.

“No, I…” Despite the warm, rich timbre of his voice, she detected the tinge of sarcasm there. “How do you know me?”

Apparently, he didn't see anything more than she had, although he did pause a moment to touch the microphone at his shoulder and ask someone called Trip to take another check through the Cosgroves' backyard. “You're with the D.A.'s office.”

Audrey struggled to wedge her defenses back into place when he faced her with the abrupt pronouncement. “I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”

“I saw you on the news earlier tonight. Besides,” he continued as he shone his flashlight on her chest, “I can read your name tag.” He swung the light to the badge hanging from a chain around his own neck. “Alex Taylor. I'm with KCPD.”

Her gaze darted from his black vest to the handgun strapped to his right thigh, over to the ominous-looking rifle and back up to dark eyes that were nearly black in the shadows. “I figured out you were a cop for myself.” Her throat grated as she coughed to clear it. But she managed a smile as she moved around him. “Nice to meet you. Excuse me.”

“You can't go that way.”

She shrugged off the gloved hand on her arm and gestured out to the street. “Well, I can't go
that
way. I'll just cut through the neighbor's yard and circle around to my car.”

“No.”

“No?” She uttered a sound somewhere between a sob and a curse. “I know it means nothing to you, but I have a reputation to uphold in this city. I have on no makeup and I've been crying my eyes out. If you recognized me, then those reporters who track my every move certainly will.”

“Do you always hide in the bushes when you're upset?”

“Do I hide…? You…” Audrey clamped her mouth shut as her temper rekindled other emotions. She tipped her chin to look him in the eye. “I'm not trespassing on your crime scene. All I need is the chance to slip away undetected so I embarrass neither my family nor the D.A. You can't stop me.”

He took a single step and blocked her path. “Yes, I can.”

Oh, God. He was serious.

Temper. Grief. Frustration. Humiliation. Any one of those could have busted through her tenuous control of
her emotions. Being hit by all four at once released the flood gates again. Audrey's eyes stung.

“Don't do this.” She swiped away the first tear, chiding her own weakness.

“You don't cry pretty, do you?”

She croaked on a sound that was half laugh, half groan, and swiped at another tear, willing it to be her last. “Gee, thanks. Is that the best line you've got?”

“Never found the need to use lines. Here.” He reached behind him and pulled a blue bandanna from his pocket. The hint of a smile eased the firm line of his mouth as he held out the cloth like a peace offering. “Was the woman inside a friend of yours?”

With an embarrassing snivel, Audrey nodded and snatched the gift from his fingers. She wiped her cheeks and nose, then pressed the soft cotton, still warm from the heat of his body, against her eyes. “Thank you.”

“There's nothing pretty about losing an innocent life, is there?”

Although his hushed voice was as dark and soothing as the night around them, she got the faint impression that he was speaking about something personal rather than philosophical. Audrey shook her head. “No, there's not.”

He shifted his stance, his eyes sweeping the area around them. “Look, I'm not trying to be a hard-ass when you're clearly dealing with something here. But KCPD has established a perimeter and wants to control the crowd for a reason.”

“I heard about the bomb.”

“We're thinking that was an empty threat—neither the dogs nor my team have found anything.” He nodded his head toward the street. “But it got the perp the
response he wanted. Detective Montgomery—he's in charge of the investigation—thinks the killer is getting off on all this attention. Chances are he's here somewhere, watching.”

Audrey tensed and glanced over her shoulder, remembering the footsteps she'd heard.

“So you can see why it might not be too smart to wander off on your own.”

She turned her gaze back to Alex Taylor's face, feeling more than a little unsettled by the possibility he was suggesting. “There has to be a hundred people involved with the party tonight. Double that if you count all the press and cops and curiosity seekers. You really think the killer is one of them?”

“I'm not the detective. But I do make sure everyone stays safe. Especially someone from the D.A.'s office who has a major trial coming up.”

“What do you know about that?”

“Like I said, I watch the news. I'm one of the men who brought in Demetrius Smith. You cannot let that murderer walk.”

“I'll do my best.”

“I'd like it better if you said you were sure you could win. Or if D.A. Powers was handling the case himself.”

Audrey bristled at the dig. It wasn't the first time someone had doubted her abilities because of her looks or her father's bank account or the fact she turned red in the face when she lost control of her emotions. “No one bought my law degree for me, Mr. Taylor. And I didn't just earn it—I was top of my class. I've worked as a defense attorney and now for the prosecution, so I know criminal law inside and out. I asked for this
assignment, and Dwight Powers gave it to me because he knew I could handle it.”