You Really Got Me (5 page)

“I’ll meet you out at the car,” Jason said to the other man, who nodded and walked out.

Jason turned to her where they stood in the living room. “Are you okay, Kendall?”

She wasn’t prepared for his gentle concern. She blinked and lifted her chin. “Yes. Of course. I’m worried, but I’m okay.”

Their eyes met. And held. Awareness shimmered between them. He was such a presence—big, broad, muscular. Way taller even than her five foot eight, with those piercing eyes and that sexy mouth and that way he made her feel feminine and desirable and protected…

Gah! What was she thinking? She had to drag her gaze away from those lips.

“I’m sorry about all the questions,” he continued. “It’s standard procedure.”

She refocused on their conversation. It felt like she was being accused of something.

“We’re here to help,” he continued. “You seem nervous.”

Her eyelashes fluttered and her stomach tightened.

“Kendall. You’ve never had any reason to be afraid of me.”
 

Oh hell yeah, she had! “I’m not afraid.”

He moved closer and she had to tip her head back a little. She refused to take the backward step her instincts told her to.

“Don’t worry, Kendall. I’m sure Natalia will turn up.”

She tilted her head. “Really?” Hope once again rose.

“Yes,” he said after a short pause. “We have to consider every possibility. But chances are, she just got scared and ran away. We’re checking with all her girlfriends, even those who don’t live near here, to see if they’ve heard from her.”

She nodded. “Good. Kevin’s really worried. And so am I.”

He looked at her steadily and her veins heated again. “I have to go.”

She nodded. But he still didn’t move. Then he shook his head and with a small salute, he turned and left.

Kendall walked blindly back into the living room and sank down onto the couch. Lord. She covered her hot cheeks with her hands. Jason was the police. And she was still so attracted to him.

And she’d lied to him.

She could get in big trouble for lying to the police. Like, mega, going-to-jail big trouble. Which was why, when Kevin had crashed his car into a house years back, she’d begged the home owners not to call the police. It was better when they weren’t involved and then you didn’t have to lie. But in this case, when it came right down to it, there was no question—she’d do whatever she had to, to protect Kevin.

It wasn’t a big deal telling the police that Kevin had been home all weekend. Because if Kevin knew
anything
about where Natalia was or what had happened to her, he would tell the police. She was absolutely sure of that. So it wasn’t as if they were hindering the police investigation or anything.

Once he told her where he’d been and what had happened, they’d figure out what they had to do. In the meantime, they
needed
the police to find Natalia, and if she was okay, bring her home so they could give her a shake.

If they had to cancel this wedding and flush thousands of dollars down the toilet, Natalia could forget about ever having another big wedding. Finances were better now, but there’d been enough years where they’d struggled that this felt like a helluva lot of money to spend.

Assuming Natalia still wanted to marry Kevin.

Hell.

She needed cookies. And more music. She turned the stereo back on then moved back to the kitchen to the sounds of “My Generation”
by The Who. She opened the cupboard where her stash of animal crackers should be. Her eyes widened at seeing only one box, and she picked up and shook it. Half empty! Holy Angelina Jolie…who’d been eating her animal crackers?

Her eyes narrowed. There could only be one person.

Kevin walked into the kitchen. “Any news?”

She whirled around and held up the box of cookies. “Did you eat all my animal crackers?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe. I had some.”

“Kevin!”

He lifted one eyebrow. “Kendall. They’re cookies.”

She drew in a long slow breath. Yes, they were just cookies. But she was stressed, and when she was stressed she wanted animal crackers, wanted the sweet crunch of them between her teeth, melting on her tongue. She knew it was silly, a grown woman addicted to animal crackers, but she didn’t care. She released her breath as she dug into the box and pulled out an elephant-shaped cookie.

“What did the police say? Did they have any news?” Kevin asked again.

She gave him a long look. “Why didn’t you ask them yourself?” She crunched the cookie.

His mouth tightened. He didn’t answer.

A throbbing in her temples made Kendall close her eyes as she swallowed the sweet biscuit. Lord, what was happening to them? Once again, that feeling of everything spiraling out of control rushed in on her, squeezed the breath out of her, and the fact that she’d felt this way before only scared her all the more.

Chapter Four

As his staff filled him in on the progress in the Debarros missing person case, Jason shook his head, baffled.

“She disappeared into thin air,” his deputy chief Larry Marsh said. “She walked out of that lab at 4:42 p.m. on Saturday and disappeared. Nobody’s seen her or heard from her since.”

“You’re sure she left the lab.”

“We watched the surveillance tape. You have to swipe a security card to ente
r the building, but not to leave. But there are cameras all over the building–twenty-five, to be exact.
”

“What the hell kind of research do they do there, anyway?” Jason asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Natalia Debarros was working on a project about uh…I’m no scientist…some kind of compounds in wine that have health benefits. Phytochemicals.”

“Jesus.” Jason made a face.

“Apparently she was quite the scientific genius. Very promising future. And this project has huge commercial potential.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “With…guess who? Wineries?”

“You got it.”

Jason wanted them to watch all the surveillance video tapes, but there were hours of them from twenty-five cameras, covering the period of time between one o’clock when Natalia Debarros had entered the building—along with her fiancé
–and 4:42 when she
’d left. They also had computer records to go through, tracing everyone who’d entered that building using their security card. That huge job was going to stretch all their resources to the limit. Not only that, since UCLC had offered a five thousand dollar reward for information leading to the whereabouts of Natalia Debarros, the media were starting to take an interest in the case and they had reporters from Santa Barbara hanging around. Soon it’d be national news reporters. He was going to have to deal with that.

Curious, he went to watch the video tapes himself, the ones of Natalia entering the building and leaving the building, just to assure himself she had in fact left. After watching it with his own eyes, he felt even more frustrated. What the hell was going on?

“Interviews of the other people who were in the lab that day?”

“Done. We got nothing.”

“Talk to them again. Maybe we missed something.”

“Yes, Chief. We’ve been going door to door in the neighborhood of the lab and Debarros’s apartment, and haven’t turned up anyone who even caught a glimpse of her after that.”

“Keep going.”

Jason shook his head as he returned to his office. He needed coffee, needed it badly. And donuts. He turned around and left, heading for Mel’s Churros over on Salinas, only half a block away from the police station. He walked into the small diner, the rich scent of coffee and yeasty, sugary pastries filling his nostrils. Loud voices talking and laughing surrounded him as he strode across the black-and-white tiled floor and slid onto one of the red vinyl stools at the counter. It was obviously coffee break time for everyone in downtown Las Colinas.

“Morning, Chief,” Raven said, pausing behind the counter to smile at him. Her black hair matched her name, though Jason was pretty sure black was no longer her natural color. He wouldn’t even try to guess Raven’s age. Her round face, rosy cheeks and sparkling dark eyes appeared youthful, but when he looked closer, faint lines at the corners of mouth and eyes hinted at more advanced years. “Large black coffee to go?”

“Yup.” She knew him so well. Not surprising, given he was in there every day. “And a honey glazed donut, please.”

She winked at him. “You’re gonna be getting all fat and pudgy, Chief, you keep eating donuts like that.”

He grinned. “Nah. Got a good metabolism.”

She sighed and looked down at her generous curves. “You know that breaks my heart, hearing that. So unfair.” She busied herself pouring his coffee, covering the cup with a plastic lid, then taking a donut from the display case with a small square of waxed paper and dropping it into a small paper sack.

“Hey Chief.”

Jason turned to the man on the stool beside him. “Hey Drigger. How’s it going?”

Drigger Jones was built like a linebacker, dressed like a biker, wore diamond earrings in both ears and his long brown hair in a ponytail. He was a local artist, one of several who cooperatively ran the Museo de Arte down the street. Drigger painted watercolor paintings, all dreamy and soft and subtle. Not that Jason knew fuck all about art.

“Going good,” Drigger replied, hands clasped around his ceramic mug. He didn’t get his coffee to go, but stayed and enjoyed the company. “Hear you got a missing person case.”

And stayed and enjoyed the gossip, apparently. Jason had already encountered how talk traveled faster than a bullet through Las Colinas so this didn’t entirely surprise him. “You heard that, huh.”

Drigger gave him a toothy grin. “You’re so discreet, Chief.”

Jason’s smile tilted up higher at one corner. “Yup.”

“You think the girl got cold feet? Ran away right before her wedding?”

“You crazy?” The voice came from the other side of Jason, and he glanced at Buddy Horodecki, owner of Buddy’s Bodacious Burgers across the street. Buddy didn’t open his restaurant until eleven, so he had time to sit and drink coffee at this time of day. “Why would she do that? She was marrying into big money.”

Buddy shook his bald head, and it gleamed in the sunshine streaming in the big windows at the front of the coffee shop. He poured a generous splash of cream into his cup, picked up a spoon and stirred it. “Can’t see any woman running away from that kinda money.”

Raven joined in the conversation too. “Not every woman is a gold digger, Buddy. Maybe she just realized she doesn’t love him anymore.”

Buddy snorted.

Raven glared at him.

Jason pressed his lips together to stop his smile from escaping and handed over a few bills for his coffee and donut. Raven took it from him, went to give him change, but he shook his head. She smiled and dropped the coins into her apron pocket.

“If she didn’t love him anymore, she shoulda just told him,” Buddy said.

“I’ll agree with that.” Raven gave a short nod. “So what’s the deal, Chief?”

“Can’t say much more than what’s been on the news,” Jason said. “You guys know that.”

They all nodded regretfully. This wasn’t the first time they’d tried to get details of some crime out of him.

“General consensus is she ran away,” Buddy said. “It’s not just me that thinks so.”

“Well, I feel sorry for Kevin Vioget,” Raven said. “He doesn’t deserve to get jilted almost at the altar like that.”

Jason lifted a brow at that, then slipped his face back into neutral. It wasn’t just his cynical police background that had made him immediately think Kevin was somehow involved in Natalia’s disappearance, it was also his personal experience.

“I hear his fiancée is some kind of brilliant scientist,” Buddy said.

“Wine isn’t science,” Drigger said.

“Sure it is. It’s all science.”

“Winemaking is an art, you Philistine.” Drigger heaved his huge body off the stool. “Gotta go open the gallery.”

“Yeah, I have to get back to the station,” Jason said, and they walked out together, Jason with his cardboard cup of coffee and paper bag holding his donut. He passed a woman coming in, young, with short, spiky auburn hair and it took Jason a few seconds to place her. Ah yeah, the girl who worked in the tasting room at Chateau Vioget. Her eyes flashed with recognition as their gazes met in passing, and he gave her a brief smile.

After saying goodbye to Drigger, Jason turned the other way down Salinas, then turned right again at Flores Avenue. The sun was hot already, and he was grateful for the shade of the laurel trees that lined the sidewalk, their leaves illuminated ten shades of green by the sun.

His thoughts went to the Vioget family and then of course to Kendall and seeing her yesterday.

She’d been lying.

He was good at knowing stuff like that, instinct, training, whatever, but with Kendall he was especially attuned to her body language. At times it was almost as if he could feel what she was feeling, and he knew that came from domination and submission. He
had
to be in tune with what his sub was feeling.