You Don't Know Jack (13 page)

As I reached the wall something feathered my face like a thousand spider legs. I choked down a scream, batted at it, and felt it flutter to my bare feet. I jerked, kicked, only then realizing it was not a nest of spiders but a long length of fluff. I reached down and gathered up a boa. I hung it back on the hook, spat out a couple of fluffy floaties, and returned my attention to the wall.

I could hear nothing from the room beyond over the roar of pulse in my ears. Maybe I wouldn't need to hear anything if I could just see who Bruce was arguing with. My gaze locked on the largest hole, I inched closer, focusing, nerves taut, stiletto heels pressed to my thudding heart. I caught a blur of movement, but couldn't adjust my optical tracking to clear the resolution. The hole was too small. I needed a wider screen.

A rustling noise at my back, near the murder room wall made me jump. My breath choked off. Deja vú fell over me like a trapper's net. I twisted around, eyes wide, body rigid, feeling caught, pulled back to the night Lars died.

I should have turned the light on, should have made sure I was alone in this room. A shiver washed through me as though I'd stepped off a ferry and dropped into Puget Sound in the dead of winter. I should have remembered the first rule of mystery writing: Killers always return to the scene of the crime.

If I turned on the light, I risked the men in the next room noticing, perhaps even spotting me. If I stood here like a dolt, shivering, I might be attacked by a killer. Instinct: run to door. Reality: in the dark I had no idea where the door was. I moved blindly toward where I thought it was.

Hugging the stilettoes to my chest, I slipped my other hand into my shoulder bag, digging to the bottom as though I'd miraculously come up with a deadly weapon, or even one that could subdue an evil doer long enough to escape unscathed. Lipstick. Concealer. Lipstick. Pen. Lipstick. Antacids. Lipstick. No can of pepper spray, but four tubes of lipstick? What was I going to do, gloss the killer to death?

I pulled my hand free and fended off unseen impediments as I skirted obstacles in the dark. I don't own a gun. I don't want a gun. I don't like guns. I don't know how to shoot a gun. Maybe though, I should carry a fake gun. Toy manufacturers these days were making them look like the genuine article. I didn't need bullets to scare someone into thinking I might shoot them, right?

Was that breathing I heard?

Oh, my God. I reconsidered my aversion to guns. As soon as I reached the door, I would duck out, run to my car and hightail it to wherever one goes to buy a gun, and then check into a shooting range resort and stay until I'm proficient enough to drill a hole in a dime at fifty paces.

Unless I didn't make it to the door.

I stifled a whimper.

Some investigator. I'd left home this morning without so much as a flashlight. Note to self: Start carrying P.I. kit everywhere. Though at the moment it wasn't much of a kit. I no longer had my camera or a recording device. I didn't own a gun or even pepper spray. If I made it out of alive, I vowed to stock my purse with all of these. If nothing else, my purse would be as heavy as a bludgeon. But for now, I was stuck relying on my wits.

I was screwed.

Another rustling sound by the murder room wall. I almost wet my pants. I patted the wall, found the light switch. The sudden illumination blinded me. But my focus corrected like a Nascar racer. I was alone in the room. I must have been hearing the crime scene cleaners.

My heart beat sputtered and slowed.

"Fucking script!"

I jerked at the shout from Bruce's dressing room, gouging breast tissue with my stiletto heels. A silent curse and a second later, the sharp pointy devils dangled from one hand. How was I supposed to prove Apollo's innocence if I kept scaring myself? I returned to the peep hole, shoving aside the annoying feather boas, sending more fuzzy floaties scattering. Since the hole hadn't enlarged during my distraction, the men were still a blur.

I needed something to bore the hole a bit larger.

"Darlin', use what you've got."

I jumped. Looked around. Still alone.

"Lars...?"

"At your service."

Damn you, Lars!" I whisper-shouted. "Stop startling me. What are you doing here?"

"Supplying some Dr. Watson to your Sherlock Holmes."

"Huh?"

"You seem to need some assistance."

"From a ghost?"

"Why not?"

He had a point. I wasn't doing so great on my own. "Okay, then... assist."

"I already did."

Had I missed something? "What? How?"

"You said, or rather, you thought you needed something to enlarge the hole, and I said, use what you've got, darlin'."

"What I've got?"

Pain sliced my fingertip as if the stiletto heels had grown teeth and bit me.

"Ouch!"

"Use what you've got," Lars repeated.

"Gotcha," I murmured, sucking blood from the fingertip stuck in my mouth. The stilettoes, sharp as awls, were perfect boring tools.

"Stand back," I told Lars as though he was physically there towering over me. Silence. His job done, he'd gone.

I stuck a heel against the plasterboard, praying the men on the other side were too intent on one another to notice the bright red heel waggling at them. I drew a breath, then hesitated. Given the age of this building the wall might crumble at first gouge.

With that in mind, I scraped like an archeologist brushing sand from an ancient artifact, but the noise of my actions sounded magnified — like giant, scrabbling rats. I tensed. Cringed. Had they heard? No. The argument railed on. I twisted the heel once more. Cringed. Froze. Held my breath. No loud shouts of discovery. Better yet, the hole was now Peeping Jack B-sized.

I could see into the room. For all the good it did. The man with Bruce had his back to me.
Turn around, damn it.
But no. And I couldn't hear his voice well enough to tell if I'd heard it before. Did I know him?

"What are you doing in here, sweetheart?"

My spine went rigid, my eyes wide. While I was busy trying to hear what was going on in the next room, I hadn't heard the door open. The heat left my face. "Stone, I..."

I, what? I was just destroying the wall? I was just researching boas for my current manuscript? I was just spying on the men in the next room? I was just meddling in your case after you told me not to? I shoved my shoulders back, pushing
the girls
more fully forward in the vee neck of my sweater and faced him, sexiest smile I could muster in place.

Our gazes met and an erotic flush swept through me like a struck match to spilled gasoline. I was so warm I swear steam oozed from the vee neck of my sweater. I grabbed Stone's upper arm as much for support as to keep his mind on me and off what I'd been doing. The feel of those bunched muscles almost undid me. I angled forward, giving him a shot of cleavage as I slipped into my stilettoes one foot at a time. I watched his mossy eyes darken.

I said, "I thought you were done with the crime scene."

He leaned toward me like a carnival barker offering me a free ticket on the most fun ride at the fair. My toes curled. His voice was raspy. "I thought you were going to stay out of my case."

I swallowed and bent away from him wondering why the air felt so charged and thin, and why I felt so tingly and weak-kneed. Wondering why this man made me want to trade every promise and goal I had for myself for a few moments of carnal pleasure. I fought the urge to shove him against the wall and kiss him stupid. I was stronger than his lure. I was. He would not entice me into his arms or his bed no matter how much my body ached for him.

"My being here has nothing to do with your case," I lied, struggling to regain my composure as well as to keep him from spotting the spy hole. "I have my own case — which I can't tell you about. Client confidentiality... and all."

"You don't have a license. Nothing is privileged between you and your clients."

I felt like telling him some people lived by a code of honor. I didn't need a license to keep privileged information privileged, but I did need my investigating gear. "Speaking of my clients — I need my recorder and camera returned."

"I can get you the camera. There was nothing on it of use to us. But I keep the recorder until the trial's over."

"That's too late. I need them now." I moved toward him, slowly, seductively, keeping his gaze. "The only thing of use to you on that recorder is your conversation with Bruce. Unless you and Bruce were plotting Lars' dead, the recorder can't be of use for the trial. So just erase your conversation and give it back to me."

"I'll see what I can do."

"If I don't have them both back by tomorrow, you'll get a bill for their replacements."

He grinned. "Maybe we could work off the cost."

We shared a sexy, thirty second stare down, and then I shoved past him. "You're the most stubborn, unreasonable, insufferable—"

I heard his quiet laughter as I stormed out into the hallway. Stone arrived on my heels as I was nearly run down by a man exiting Bruce's dressing room.

He didn't even glance at us.

I had only a view of his back dashing away. Damn. I started to run after him, but stopped in my tracks as I realized that Stone had just asked, "What's he doing here?"

I put on my best not-really-interested expression and kept the excitement out of my voice. "Who is he?"

"I thought you'd know."

"I wouldn't have asked if I did."

"Lars' agent. Carter Hawks."

The agent who was supposed to change my destiny?
He looked shorter in person, thinner. I wouldn't have known him anywhere. I hadn't known him. Had Lars really planned to introduce me to him? My pondering expression must have roused Stone's suspicions.

He caught my arm as I turned to leave. "Stay out of my case or you'll find yourself in handcuffs, Jack."

The words flashed a sexual image in my head and heated my cheeks... and other places. "If that's an invitation, Stone, I'll pass. I've sworn off sleeping with men." Especially you.

He laughed. It wasn't a laughing-with-me laugh, or a laughing-at-me laugh, but an I'll-take-you-up-on-that-challenge laugh. I was in big trouble.

I resisted the urge to ward him off. "Nice as this has been, I've got a da—" Oh, my god, I'd almost said I had a date with his brother Duke. "Er, dentist appointment."

"And I need to find Dinah."

"Have you checked her office?"

As he walked away, I admired the view presented by his delicious backside, and wondered why I hadn't wanted to tell him I having dinner with his brother. Stone had no ties on me. I could date the entire Seahawks defensive line and it would be none of his business. Then why did it feel like a naughty little secret? It was dinner, not sex.

Bruce's dressing room door opened. Oops. No place to hide. Too late to duck and run. Though I might fantasize about Seahawk linebackers, I didn't actually know anyone on, or even associated with the team and therefore had no defensive moves.

His brown eyes snapped. "You!"

I gaped at him without otherwise responding. I'd expected him to look like hell, eyes red and puffy from hours of grief-sobbing or underscored with dark circles from lack of sleep and sorrow drowning in 100 proof liquor. Or even hollowed cheeked from mourning-induced appetite loss.

At the very least, still pink cheeked from fuming at Lars' agent.

"What do you want?" He gave a toss of his tow-headed locks. I peered closer. If not the usual grieving signs, then he should be too-put-together in order to hide what he was feeling from the world. He was a performer. He knew the importance of playing the grieving life partner in a murder investigation. He clicked his fingers near my nose. "I said, 'What do you want?'"

I wanted to know why he looked as he always did: arrogant, scornful, just-returned-from-a-full-day-at-the-spa fresh. I wanted to know why Lars' death didn't seem to have hit him as hard as it hit me.

Apparently tired of my silence, he gave me a dismissive huff and began to close his door.

I stopped him. "Why are you refusing to give Carter Hawks Lars' last manuscript?"

Lars apparently didn't like my question as he chose that moment to scream inside my head,
"That's none of your business, darlin'!"

A shiver arced through me. Lars Larson had presented to the world a self-image of the intriguing, honest man. I knew otherwise. I could understand his not wanting me to tarnish his reputation now that he was dead. But if he didn't want me to dig into what was going on with his agent and his manuscript, I was going to do just that.

Bruce looked me up and down as though I were dirt that had impossibly appeared on his freshly mopped floor. "Go away."

"Why don't you want him to have it?" I asked. Bruce stepped back as I stepped forward. "He was the agent of record at the time it was contracted, right?"

Bruce growled. "Leave me alone."

"Listen to him, darlin'. Back off."

Screw you, Lars.
I went for the jugular. "Lars thought you were cheating on him, Bruce. Were you?"