Next to Die (28 page)

“Are you sure?” she asked, crossing to the door to check it. “Oh, it is.”

Joe stood up. He wore a checkered flannel shirt and familiar cowboy boots. Her heart beat faster as he joined her at the door. “I thought maybe somebody’d broken in, but I don’t see any sign of tampering.”

“Did you . . . check upstairs?” she asked, distracted by how good he smelled. He’d gotten to take a shower—not fair.

“No,” he admitted. “But I haven’t heard anything.”

“Maybe we should check upstairs.”

“Of course.” He sent her a suggestive smile, and her concerns faded at the realization that they weren’t going to make it downstairs to eat for a while yet.

“I wanted to change first and fix my makeup,” she pleaded.

“You look good just like that.”

“In this old uniform?” She broke away, hoping for a head start. Joe chased her. Laughter erupted from her throat as she raced ahead of him, carefree in a way she hadn’t ever been.

A glance into the office had her stumbling to a halt. She switched direction, approaching the open door in amazement and growing horror. The room was a mess, with file cabinets left open and papers and folders scattered all over. “Oh, my,” she murmured.

Joe’s hands settled on her shoulders, and she sagged against him. “I don’t think Ophelia did this,” she decided.

“We need to call Hannah,” Joe agreed.

They were not alone again until ten o’clock that night. The house had been dusted for fingerprints and swabbed for trace DNA. But the intruder, whoever he was, was more than just a master picklock. He’d left little behind him to suggest his identity. Whether he’d found what he was looking for was entirely up to speculation.

Hannah, who hadn’t known that the state police had pulled the plug, made a furious phone call to McCaully, only to be told that his men were too tied up to guard the Price sisters. They would need to hire bodyguards.

Penny had reassured the FBI agent that she’d be fine. Joe was going to spend the nights at her house. And she’d managed to announce that without blushing, even when Hannah murmured a considering, “Oh, really?”

But then, Joe wasn’t there. He’d popped next door to retrieve an MP5 semiautomatic rifle, which he’d then tucked under Penny’s bed. Even without police escorts and with her home recently broken into, Penny had never felt safer in her life.

Although when she emerged from the shower in a silk teddy to find Joe nestled among her pillows without a stitch of clothing on, she had to admit to a sudden sense of vulnerability. Surrounded by flowery pillow shams, he struck her as ruthlessly masculine and potent, like a bad-girl’s dream come true.

He smiled wryly at her attire. “Let me guess. Ophelia loaned you that.”

“Look, don’t ruin this,” she warned him. “I’m a novice at seduction, so bear with me.” She crossed to her bureau to light the rose-scented candles, a feat that almost proved impossible, given her trembling fingers.

He sat up as she approached the bed. Without warning, he pounced.

Penny found herself flat on her back, his hard, warm body pressing her into clean sheets. “You don’t need to seduce me,” he informed her gruffly. “I’ve obsessed about you all week. Tonight,” he added with a wicked glint in his deep green eyes, “I get to take my time.”

A warm shiver went through Penny. His magnetic pull on her was visceral—she could feel it deep within her womb. But he was just obsessed, she reminded herself, and obsession was temporary.

His breath was warm and sweet. He kissed her cheek, her chin, her nose, and finally her lips, with unhurried undulations of his tongue that went on and on, making her heart race, heating her from the inside out so that she melted like the candles on her bureau.

He savored her, making her feel special, unique, the only woman in the world. Half an hour later, he grinned with predatory satisfaction as she moaned, thrashed, panted, and gleamed with desire-induced sweat. “Joe!” she cried, catching his head in her hands to stop him as he made to push her to the edge yet one more time. “Please!” she begged.

“What?” he demanded. “This is payback for all those deep-tissue massages. I had to lie there hard as a rock and not make a sound. You can scream if you want to. That’s hardly fair.”

Penny laughed. Joe had turned her bed into a playground. “You can’t make me scream,” she scoffed. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

“Oh, I can’t?” That was all the warning she got before he hooked an arm around her waist, flipped her onto her stomach, and buried himself inside her in a single thrust.

Penny screamed.

“I hope I didn’t hurt you,” he said, instantly contrite.

“Oh, no,” she said. “And don’t you dare stop, either.”

He didn’t stop. He started and he kept on going until Penny screamed several more times.

Why not? It was just the two of them. Joe was in her bed, doing all those things she’d imagined for so many lonely nights. Except Joe in the flesh was even more inventive than the Joe of her fantasies.

He was magnificent. No wonder women flocked to him in droves.

At last, they lay face to face, limbs tangled, and Joe still wasn’t done. Penny felt dreamy, sated, stretched, but content to keep this up all night. He lifted his lips from her neck and fixed her with a heavy-lidded gaze. “Hey,” he said, smoothing a lock of damp hair off her cheek.

“Hey, what?” she murmured.

“I want us to stay friends,” he said gruffly, “always.”

After this is over.
He didn’t say that, but she heard the words all the same. She blinked as reality overshadowed her joy.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Penny,” he added, looking remorseful for something he hadn’t done yet.

“It’s okay, Joe. I went into this with my eyes wide open,” she reassured him. But her heart still constricted. Just the thought of Joe with another woman shredded her emotionally.

He loosed a sigh and dropped his forehead onto hers. “See, I am a selfish person,” he reiterated, harking back to a conversation they’d had weeks ago. “Even when this is over, I’ll want to keep you for myself.”

Her heart performed a funny flip. That almost sounded like monogamy; of course, he hadn’t meant it that way. Fortunately, Penny was a realist. Expecting Joe to go from bachelor extraordinaire to faithful lover overnight was just plain naive. If being Joe’s friend was all she could expect in the long run, then so be it. It was still more than she’d ever expected. “I promise,” she agreed, “that we’ll still be friends.”
When this is over
.

He braced his weight on his elbows and gathered her closer. Putting his lips to hers, he thrust gently but with intent. Penny felt the difference right away. He wasn’t playing anymore.

She clutched his neck and shoulders, driven by a desire that was as much emotional as physical. She could feel Joe’s pleasure overtaking him. With an indrawn breath and a muffled roar, it flowed out of him and into her. She cried out as it crashed over her, pulling them both into a perfect, timeless undertow.

Chapter Seventeen

Penny pushed through her front door at the end of a tedious Monday and paused in surprise. Ophelia was bearing an armload of clothing down the stairs. “What’s going on?” Penny demanded.

“I’m moving back into my apartment,” her sister happily announced. “Jenny and John have found a place of their own.” She tossed Penny a grin as she sauntered into the laundry room. “So, I’ll finally be out of your hair,” she called. “Besides, three’s a crowd, don’t you think?”

Penny squelched the blush heating her cheeks. She trailed Ophelia into the garage to note that her sister had already filled the trunk of her car to capacity.

“And,” Lia added, slamming it shut, “Vinny’s going to be home eventually. When that happens, you’ll be glad I’m gone.” The smile she sent her sister struck Penny as forced. Waiting and not knowing was taking a toll on Lia.

“I don’t think it’s a good time to move out,” Penny argued. “Hannah says the FBI’s been swarmed with calls since you aired the ricin story. Can’t you wait until the murderer is caught?”

“That could take months,” Lia pointed out. “I’m paying rent on an empty apartment.”

“So sublet it again.”

“I can’t. The management is furious with me for subletting in the first place. Besides, I miss my things, Pen. I need wind chimes and suncatchers and the flowing water. I need good chi.”

Penny rolled her eyes at the impractical but impassioned argument. “You need to be careful,” she advised her sister. “You’ve got no one to watch over you at your apartment.”

“Are you kidding? No one could get by Mrs. Vatter.”

“The woman across the courtyard?”

“Exactly.”

Penny sighed. “I want you to get a cell phone,” she insisted, “and carry it with you at all times, and put that number the state police gave us on speed dial.”

“I will, Mother, I promise,” said Ophelia, giving her sister’s cheek a peck. “Thanks for putting up with me,” she added, her voice growing husky, “and not just for these past few weeks, either. I know I’ve taken you for granted all these years. I never realized how much you did for me. It seems so lame just to say thank you.”

Lia’s words summoned a rush of tenderness. “Oh, honey,” Penny cried, giving her sister a fierce hug. “I’m going to miss you.”

“It’s not like I’m moving to Timbuktu,” Lia protested. “I’ll just be ten miles down the road. You won’t even know I’m gone.”

That, Penny thought, was the understatement of the year.

Buzz Ritter glared at the intruder through his night vision goggles.
Who the hell is that?

Wedged between a hedge of boxwoods and a cinder-block foundation, Buzz had waited hours for the right moment to slip unseen into Ophelia Price’s apartment. At ten minutes to midnight, the complex stood quiet. He was just about to squeeze out of the bushes when a stranger drifted from the shadows.

Buzz squinted through his NVGs, astonished to discover that the third party not only wore camouflage, he was armed with a blade and a pistol. The young man knocked on Ophelia Price’s door and waited. He knocked again. When it still didn’t open, he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a key. Or maybe it was a pick, since it took him a while to work the lock open. He let himself in.

Buzz grumbled with contempt. Obviously, this was a horny boyfriend, dropping in for a quick one. There went his plans to abduct Ophelia tonight, to question her and—he rolled his eyes at the stupidity of his boss—to let her go.

But then the crack of a gunshot split the quiet. It’d come from inside the apartment. “What the fuck!” Buzz breathed, utterly perplexed.

He waited for someone to retreat, but then the door closest to his head opened, and a middle-aged woman poked her head out. “Ophelia!” the woman cried, covering her mouth with a hand.

A dry leaf crinkled under Buzz’s elbow, and the woman whipped her head around. “Who’s there?”

When he didn’t answer, she pulled back, slamming her door shut. He heard her running through the apartment, no doubt headed straight for a phone.

Damnation,
Buzz seethed, scuttling out of his hiding place. He would not be grabbing Ophelia Price now. And it was risking too much to stick around in hopes of grabbing her later tonight.

There was more than one way to skin a cat, he comforted himself. The other Price girl was just as likely to have answers. As long as he got his money, what did it matter where he got his information?

Lia slept with earplugs. Not even the gurgle of her wall fountain made enough white noise to disguise the shouts and thuds that went with living in an apartment complex. She’d forgotten how bad it was. Sleeping at Penny’s had spoiled her.

The drawback of wearing earplugs was—ironically—that she couldn’t hear
anything,
and that made her nervous with Eric’s killer on the loose. A working woman had to get her beauty sleep, though, so she’d bought a handgun at a pawnshop, trusting her accuracy with a gun over a 911 call any day.

Tonight, something roused Lia from a deep sleep. What had wakened her? she wondered, lifting her head from the pillow to crack a bleary eye.

With an impatient mutter, she pulled the wax plug from one ear and listened.

There it was. A strange sound within her apartment!

With a stab of fear, she slid a hand beneath the adjacent pillow and grasped the Colt Commander she’d taken costly lessons to learn how to shoot. As she swung the barrel toward the door, she pushed up higher on the pillow, suddenly wide awake, her heart thumping earnestly.

The dying flame of a fragrance candle cast eerie shadows on the four walls of her room. The sound didn’t come again, but Lia’s instincts told her that someone was approaching her cracked door. With a tremor in her fingers, she disengaged the gun’s safety.

Maybe she should have stayed with Penny, after all.

The slow opening of her door caused a sudden rash of goose bumps to spike up on her skin. The door yawned open, revealing the silhouette of a man—dark hair, broad shoulders.

Lia squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the trigger.