When Night Falls (8 page)

The rough-hewn admission did cruel things to the walls of the professionalism Jess relied upon. Everything inside her that was female reached for the man, wanted so badly to touch him, help him. She hadn’t meant to hurt him like that. Didn’t want to pick him apart piece by piece.

Never had she seen a man so alone.

Never had she wanted to just put her arms around someone and find a way to make it all better.

“If
that’s the truth,” she said, “then yes.”

His gaze prodded her. “Would that make you happy, Jessica? To know I’m finally where your father wanted me?”

She swallowed against the emotion thickening her throat. “It breaks my heart, but that’s not what you want to hear, is it? For some idiotic reason, you want to pick a fight.”

Armstrong winced. For a moment she thought her candor might return them to calm waters. But this was William Armstrong, the man who’d pulled himself up from nothing and turned himself into everything. “Why are you really here? Because of last night? To find out why I didn’t follow you into your garage?”

Jess stiffened. Her breathing hitched. She knew what he was doing—trying to muddy her objectivity by reminding her of the unwanted physical attraction that had flared the night before—but awareness didn’t dim its power. She’d stepped too close. Prodded too deeply. Forced Liam to voice a truth he wasn’t ready to admit.

Too bad Jess wasn’t a woman to roll over and play dead. She’d come here for a reason, and it had nothing to do with last night, the dangerous desire he’d stoked, the wicked dream she’d awoken from, the one in which he’d followed her upstairs…

“Tell me about Marlena Dane,” she said matter-of-factly.

He laughed. It was a purely masculine sound, dark and wicked, amused. “I wondered how long it would take you to get around to her.”

“Get around to her?”

“After what you walked in on yesterday, I knew sooner or later my inquisitive little detective would want to know more.”

My.
“You two were an item for a while, yes?”

He turned toward the wet bar, poured two fingers of mineral water, threw it back. “My involvement with you, detective, pertains to my daughter. Not my love life.”

His choice of words scraped. She recognized the defense mechanism but refused to yield.

“My job is gathering facts,” she said tersely. “Stringing them together.” She wanted a drink of that water herself. Either that or an ice cube down her blouse. “Since you only tell me what you want me to know, I have to look where I can.”

He poured another finger of water and threw it back. “Not anymore.”

“I’ll believe that—”

“I’ve got a call into Commander McKnight. I want you off the case.”

Jess went very still. “You what?”

“I want a different team of detectives on the case. I want someone who can be objective.”

Shock winded her. Disbelief and something dangerously close to regret spurred her closer to the edge. “So you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot,” she said softly. Sadly. “Guess Dad was right about you, after all. Too bad he’s not alive to see the day.”

He didn’t move a muscle, didn’t flinch. “A man doesn’t crawl from the gutter to high-rises by shooting himself in the foot, Detective. But he does learn to cut his losses.”

“What are you so afraid of?” she asked, because for some reason, she had to. “Don’t you realize I’m your best chance?”

“Best chance for what?” He stepped toward her, so close he had to look down to meet her eyes. “Counseling me why my relationships never work? Why I run through women faster than a jet tears through the sky?”

“Damn it,” she said, grabbing his forearm, “you’ve got some kind of nerve—”

His eyes sparked. “Playing by Daddy’s double standard, Detective?”

She felt his muscles bunch beneath her fingertips. “Excuse me?”

“You can touch me, but I can’t touch you?”

Jess wasn’t quite sure why, but she laughed. “Good try, but I know what you’re doing.”

“Oh? Why don’t you tell me then?”

She didn’t release her grip on his arm, noticed that he didn’t pull away, either. A crazy energy buzzed around them. “I’d rather tell you what
I’m
doing,” she told him bluntly. “My job. A job I take seriously.” She paused when she felt her beeper begin to vibrate, but didn’t check it. “I’m exploring every angle because I want to help you. I want your daughter back. I want to see you hold her again. It’s obvious how much you love her. A blind man could see it.”

Those hard, cobalt eyes of his bore down on her. “Just last night you told me she probably ran away.”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Sometimes love can be suffocating. Just because you love your daughter doesn’t mean she agrees with how you show it. I sure didn’t.”

“Just what’s wrong with how I show my love, Detective?” The words were silky, the way he lifted a hand to cup her cheek shockingly intimate. “I didn’t realize you’d seen it.”

Jess’s heart beat so hard and deep she could barely breathe. She abruptly released his arm and backed away from his touch. “I was talking about my own father.”

“Ah,” he said. “Then you need to learn to be more specific.”

“And you need to learn to pay attention.”

He laughed. “So that’s why you ran away?”

She lifted her chin. “My father was a good man,” she said, tired of the cat and mouse game. “But he was also a hard man. Focused. He defined himself through police work—”

“Runs in the blood, huh?”

“He loved his family but didn’t know how to show us. He thought by working hard, climbing the ranks, making a good living, he would be filling his role as husband and father.” She paused, surprised by the words falling from her mouth. They applied to her father as easily as they applied to the man she was coming to know.

She wasn’t sure who needed to hear them more.

“I never realized how much he loved us, how hard he tried, how difficult emotion was for him, until he lay in his hospital bed, a shell of his former self.”

Liam held her gaze, each breath he drew thickening the air around them. Jess tried to move away, look away, couldn’t. She was too drawn to what she saw in his gaze. In other men, she would label it compassion, but she knew better than to entertain that dangerous notion with the stone man who didn’t allow himself human traits like emotion.

The odd glitter more likely stemmed from the formulation of some plan, the cataloging of the information she’d just handed him.

“Detective?”

“What?” she asked, blinking back the painful memories, the even more painful realities.

“I wasn’t sure you were still with me. Thought you might have run away again.”

She squared her shoulders. “I don’t run away anymore, Mr. Armstrong. That was a lesson I learned well enough the first time.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that.” He stepped closer to her.

Recognizing the tactic, Jess held firm.

But God, how she wanted to back away. To breathe.

“What you’re sure about really doesn’t matter, though, does it?” She slid the pager from her pocket and saw that Kirby wanted her down at the station. Something about a big break. “Look, I’m needed downtown.”

Armstrong streaked a finger down the side of her face. “What was it you said about not running away, Detective? We’ve just barely scratched the surface.”

Heat rushed through her. “Funny.” She forced herself to speak. “That’s all it took to get rid of my itch.” Proud she’d kept the breathlessness from her voice, she turned and walked out the door.

* * *

“That man belongs behind bars,” Adam Braxton snarled. The punk had called Kirby, said he needed to talk. Seated across the interrogation room table from him, Jess took a moment to study the boy to whom Emily Armstrong had given her heart. With his moody eyes and angry mouth, it was easy to see why the teenage girl had fallen hard and fast.

Jess had no such problem. She still felt the sting of his fist on her jaw.

“You sure your accusations against Mr. Armstrong have nothing to do with the fact he opposed your relationship with his daughter?” she asked point-blank.

Braxton leaned across the table. “You saw him last night—he’s out of control.”

Kirby turned to look at her. “Last night?”

She lightly touched her injured mouth. “Later.” Slapping the punk with an assault charge appealed, but Jess wasn’t interested in the scandal doing so would invoke, particularly with William Armstrong’s involvement.

“As I recall,” she said to Braxton, “you were the one out of control.”

“That lunatic attacked me. No telling what he would have done if you hadn’t come along.”

The punk was wasting her time. “What does all this have to do with Emily?”

“She’s scared of him, too. Her mom couldn’t take it and cruised, and now Emily has, too.”

“You sure she isn’t with you?”

“I wish she was,” he said with great drama. “Then, at least, I’d know my girl’s safe.” He leaned across the table. An odd light glittered in his eyes. “Just look around. No one stays in that man’s life for long. He’s got a track record. The clues are all over the place, if you can get past your hots for him and see the truth.”

Jess stiffened.

“Hots for him?” Kirby echoed.

“I saw the two of you,” Braxton went on. “Huddled in that alley. You couldn’t keep your hands off each other.”

Jess pushed to her feet. “Need I remind you what happened inside that barroom? Perhaps you’d like an overview of what happens when someone assaults an officer.”

Kirby stood, as well. He glanced from Adam Braxton to Jess, and Jess knew the second he put two and two together.

“Later,” Jess growled again, then focused on Braxton. By the time she finished with him, she was confident he understood very clearly the potential consequences of her swollen mouth.

“What happened to my by-the-books partner?” Kirby demanded the second Braxton left the station. “Forget to mention a few pertinent details?”

“My personal life is just that,” Jess retorted. “Personal.” She was tired, and her head hurt. She wasn’t about to get into this. “I can spend my free time as I choose.”

Kirby blocked her path. He was exceedingly tall, and when he got up close like that, she understood why he’d made more than one suspect wet his pants. “Is that really what Daddy taught you?”

Jess frowned. She was darn tired of everything relating back to her father. “Dad taught me a lot, Kirb. Keep pushing and maybe you’ll find out just how much.”

He shook his head. “You’re my partner. I don’t want to see you fall under Armstrong’s spell. The man is dangerous. I—”

“There you two are.”

Jess swung around to find Commander McKnight striding toward them. Her chest tightened. She knew what was coming. Her dismissal from the case. “Commander—”

“Just got a call from the boys out in Irving,” he said gruffly. The planes of his dignified face were unusually grim. “We’ve got a break in the Armstrong case. There’s been a discovery in a field by the airport.”

Dread almost sent Jess to her knees. She could hardly breathe, much less form the question. “Emily?”

The commander nodded. “They’ve found her car.”

Chapter 7

«
^
»

L
iam took the street hard and fast. He ran with the focused determination of the sprinter he’d been in college, pumping his arms and keeping his stride long. His feet pounded the cobblestone. Sweat dampened his body, despite the arctic wind blowing from the north. He wore only ratty gym shorts and an old tank top, but he barely felt the sting of the cold.

It was the most alive he’d felt in entirely too long.

By his side, Molly matched his pace. His daughter’s dog ran full throttle, like a retriever chasing her latest prize. Her ears were back, her eyes fevered. She missed her mistress, appreciated the exercise.

Man and dog turned from the main boulevard onto a quiet street in Liam’s neighborhood. Waiting at a stop sign, a young mother with a minivan full of children lifted a hand in greeting.

Liam couldn’t bring himself to wave back.

The realization of how normal he and Molly appeared, man and dog out for an afternoon jog, tore through him. Illusion, he knew. One of the most seductive narcotics known to mankind. The belief that appearances equaled reality.

Not even a man like Liam was immune. He’d been seduced by the fantasy when he built a home for his daughter in one of the most elite areas of Dallas. He’d naively thought the prestige and dignity, the privilege, would rub off on him, clean him, and he’d be able to give Emily the normal, unencumbered childhood she deserved.

He’d never been more wrong in his life.

Violence and tragedy, greed, callousness—they didn’t discriminate based upon address. Beauty often masked ugliness; simplicity could shroud complexity; serenity concealed danger.

But danger came in many forms, he knew, and instantly he thought of Wallace Clark’s daughter. After she’d sashayed out of his office, he’d stood for a long time, watching the door she’d slammed behind her. There was a very real chance he’d never see her again. As soon as the chief met Liam’s demands, which he would, his relationship with the enigmatic detective would come slamming to a halt.

Liam had waited for the satisfaction to ease through him, but instead he’d found himself coiled tighter, like a rattler primed and ready to attack. He was in his car and roaring down the street before sanity intervened.

He had no business chasing after Detective Jessica Clark. Instead he’d come home, where he found Molly pacing the house with a restlessness he understood only too well. Emmie took her dog for a run every day. The big, muscular lab needed to work off tension as much as Liam did.

Over the years, he’d found physical exertion the most powerful form of release. Not even a bottle of whiskey could compare. He enjoyed challenging himself. Testing. Marlena called it punishing, but she didn’t understand the needs that drove him. When he pushed himself, sprinted block after block, slammed his fists against the hard punching bag, he felt alive. Sharply, painfully, gloriously alive.

He needed that feeling now. He needed to feel alive and vital, capable. He could not allow himself to feel beaten.

“Kick it in, girl,” he called to Molly, then ratcheted up his pace for the home stretch. He swiped the dripping sweat from his eyes and rounded the corner at a full run.

The sight awaiting him almost stopped him dead in his tracks.

He felt his heart stagger, his throat tighten. But he kept on running, straight toward the dark gray sports coupe parked in front of his house. Detective Jessica Clark stood by its side, decked out in that damnably sexy long leather coat. The wind blew her auburn hair about her face, but she didn’t try to hold it back. In fact, she didn’t move at all, just, stood there like a vibrant swatch of life against a pale gray sky and watched him running toward her.

Running toward her?

The thought scraped at him. That’s why she was so damn dangerous to him. That’s why he was carving her out of his life. Didn’t the inquisitive detective realize he meant what he said? There wasn’t a damn thing Wallace Clark’s daughter could say or do to make him change his mind about having her removed from the case.

She wouldn’t persuade him, couldn’t touch him.

Awareness of the coming confrontation spurred him on. He kept up his sprint, but as he pounded the pavement and grew close enough to see her expression, his heart almost stopped.

Detective Jessica Clark wasn’t there to change his mind. She knew something. He saw it in the way she held that distracting body of hers so tense, the hard line of the bruised mouth he’d wiped blood from only the night before, the worry in her expressive eyes.

“Come on, Moll,” he urged the dog. Through the roar in his head, his voice sounded distorted, almost warped. He commanded his body to run as fast he could, but his senses slowed to a crawl. He wasn’t sure how he kept moving. Wasn’t sure he did. The street seemed to elongate. Every stride felt like a wobbly baby step.

Oh, God, Oh, God, was all he could think.
Emily.

Jessica started toward him, that slow, measured walk he’d seen too many times before. The one that held apprehension. The one that never preceded good news. Molly barked an enthusiastic greeting and launched herself against the woman who held his fate in her hands. Her eyes.

Jessica raised a hand to pat the dog’s head, but her gaze never left Liam. And in those somber, bottomless pools of rich brown, he read a litany of possibilities that instantly turned his pounding pulse into a river of dread.

“Liam.”

He stopped inches from her and tried to breathe. “What? What’s happened?”

“I need you to come with me.”

“Is it Emily? Have they found her?”

“It’s about your daughter, but no, they haven’t found her.”

The exertion of his run caught up with him, and he felt the sweat pouring from his body. Impatience and frustration cut him to the quick. “What then?”

“Her car.”

He staggered. “Christ.”

Jessica’s gloved hand was on his arm in a heartbeat. “I’m sorry, Liam. It looks like you might be right about foul play. Evidence at the scene suggests Emily wasn’t alone.”

He wasn’t sure how he remained standing. Liam felt as though she’d hit him with vicious blows rather than simple words. He wanted to grab Jessica’s shoulders and force her to take back the punishing revelation. Worse, the compassion glowing in her eyes made him want to crush her in his arms and absorb her, pretend they were two very different people, in a far different situation.

His whole life had been an uphill battle, always trying to prove he was right and everyone else was mistaken. But now, for the first time he could recall, Liam wished to hell and back he was the one who’d been wrong.

* * *

“No sign of her so far, Jessie, but it’s a big field. It’s just too early to tell.”

“I’ll be there in five.”

“Keep Armstrong out of the way. We can’t have him tampering with a crime scene.”

“I know the drill.” She clicked off the phone before Kirby could drag the conversation down a pointless path. They were near the airport, the sound of jets roaring into the late afternoon sky growing louder with each mile they drove.

Liam sat by her side. He didn’t speak, didn’t move, barely breathed. He hardly looked alive. He still wore his running clothes, had refused to take the time to change. The car heater had dried the fine sheen of perspiration on his arms and legs, leaving Jess acutely aware of the half-naked male animal seated next to her. Every nerve ending in her body hummed with the awareness of something primal and disturbing.

She didn’t want William Armstrong to affect her like this, make her ache to reach out to him, to lay a hand on his thigh and assure him everything would be okay. To feel the power simmering beneath the flesh. She didn’t want to think of him as a half-naked, fully consuming man, knew she was safer regarding him as just another of the victims her job routinely tossed her way. But victim was one word that did not apply to William Armstrong, and there was nothing routine about him.

Or his unnerving eyes.

Or the precarious way he made her feel. The ache. The longing she didn’t understand, didn’t trust, knew she couldn’t indulge. He was right. Assigning a new team of detectives to the case was safer for them all.

Refusing to look at him, Jess turned onto a dirt road. A circle of black-and-whites about a hundred yards away denoted their destination but obscured the view of Emily’s car. A line of officers threaded their way through the tall brown grass. Kirby led the charge.

Her blood ran cold at the thought of what they might find.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking you to wait in the car while I go find Detective Long?”

“None.”

She glanced at Liam, saw his gaze riveted on the line of men searching the field. “I don’t suppose you care that you’ll freeze to death?”

His steely blue eyes slanted toward her. “What do you think?”

“I’m not sure you feel anything right now,” she said honestly.

A dangerous combination of mistrust and hope glittered in his eyes. “I feel something. Trust me on that one.”

The need to touch him had never been so strong, but Jess kept her hands curled around the steering wheel. She knew William Armstrong spoke the truth. What he felt was obvious in the hard lines of a face many called forbidding, but she was coming to realize that face masked a surprising vulnerability.

Tension riddled his features. Worry. The kind of agony that ate someone alive, bit by excruciating bit. She felt it, too, radiating from him, suffocating her.

“Holy God,” Liam rasped. “No.” He threw open the door and took off running between the official vehicles toward his daughter’s car. Or rather, what remained of it.

Jess swore softly as she rammed the car into Park, wrenched open her door and raced after him. Kirby hadn’t warned her about this. Hadn’t given her a chance to prepare Liam for the kind of scene that could easily send a strong man to his knees.

“Hold it,” one of the two officers milling about the car said. Jess recognized him as Juan Vasquez. “This is a crime scene.”

“This is my daughter’s car.” Liam ground the words out.

Vasquez moved to block his path. “I’m sorry, sir, but right now it’s evidence, and I can’t risk you tampering with anything.”

Liam kept right on going. “I don’t give a damn—”

“Liam!” Jess saw him lift his arm and lunged for him before he could do something stupid. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward her. His skin was hot, his pulse hammering.

“Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be,” she said as gently as she could.

“More difficult?” The fevered light of disbelief flashed in his eyes. “This is the car my daughter washed by hand every weekend, the car she kept in immaculate condition, and now here it is burned out, and no one’s seen or heard from her in over forty-eight hours. How the hell do you want me to act?”

Her heart hammered mercilessly. Her stomach churned. “We need to follow procedure.”

“Screw procedure.”

She looked into his hard, challenging eyes, then down to where her fingers wrapped around his wrist. She couldn’t bring herself to let go. “I didn’t have to bring you here,” she reminded gently. “I could have waited until we wrapped up our initial investigation. Is that what you would have wanted?”

His gaze crystallized, but he said nothing. Nor did he move. Nor did he pull away.

She looked at Vasquez. “What do we have?”

The rookie looked like he’d just witnessed a magic trick. He glanced at an unmoving but still forbidding Armstrong, then at her. A hint of disbelief flickered in his dark eyes.

“Looks like the car’s been here since at least yesterday,” he began. “No sign of occupancy when the fire broke out. Two sets of tracks lead away.” He glanced to the right. “Looks like another car was waiting.”

The brisk north wind whipped hair about Jess’s face, but she didn’t want to release Armstrong to brush it back. “Do both sets of tracks lead to the second car?”

“Hard to tell,” Vasquez said. “Looks like only one.”

A chill shot through her. “Anything else?”

“Not yet.”

Moments later Jess watched the young officer stride toward his black-and-white, where voices squawked from his radio.

The evidence was inconclusive, but Jess couldn’t shake the bad feeling weaving its way through her like a rusty needle. Despite Liam’s assertions, she’d been leaning toward labeling the girl a runaway. Now she wasn’t so sure. The presence of a second car nagged at her. It could be a setup, sure, the teenage girl’s way of throwing them off track. Her father, after all, was a master strategist.

Why shouldn’t the daughter be the same?

She felt Liam pull away from her and this time let him go. She didn’t look at him, though. Didn’t follow. Not yet. Instead she drew a deep breath, enjoying the feel of the cold air stinging her lungs.

A jet roared into the pale gray sky. No more than a hundred yards away, nine officers combed the tall grass, looking for any sign of William Armstrong’s daughter.

Jess turned toward Liam, found him standing before the remains of his daughter’s car. If she’d seen only the man and not the surroundings, just the pain in his eyes, she would have sworn she was seeing a man standing before a grave in a cemetery, the last mourner, unable to say goodbye. That’s how isolated he looked, how alone.