Dangerous Games (8 page)

“I don’t think Eric did it because the man I knew wouldn’t have hurt anyone or anything. He didn’t throw his weight around. He wanted everyone to like him. Dead people can’t like you.” She paused, knowing she hadn’t really said anything they could use to sway a jury. “But I don’t think using his character is going to be our best line of defense. Too many people out there have less than glowing things to say about Eric. In the last ten years he’s gone from being a good-time Charlie to a rather pathetic little human being. He drank too much, spent too much and did nothing with his life except go from woman to woman. Until Kathy.”

“Until Kathy,” Cole echoed. There was a knock on the door. He saw the alert look instantly come over her face. In that moment he could almost visualize her springing into action. The notion tantalized him. He banked it down.

“Room service, remember?”

She was on edge. Whether it was due to the earlier call on her cell, or because she was here with Cole in what amounted to an intimate setting, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that a great deal of tension telegraphed itself up and down her body at an incredible rate.

She nodded toward the door. “Answer it.”

As he went to open it, he noticed that Rayne slipped her hand inside her jacket. Was she reaching for her weapon for some reason? Just who did she expect to be coming to the door?

He had to admit that it was an odd feeling to have an armed woman in his room. He was no stranger when it came to guns. When he’d gone to South America posing as a mercenary with an intelligence cartel, he’d had to blast his way out of more than one situation. But the women he’d encountered during that brief period of his life had never handled any kind of weapon on a regular basis. This was a completely different experience for him.

But then, so was trying to get his brother absolved of a murder charge.

The person on the other side of the threshold when Cole opened the door was dressed in a short white jacket that contrasted with his neatly pressed black slacks. “Room service,” the young man announced cheerfully.

Cole glanced over his shoulder at Rayne, his look all but saying, “See?”

“I’ll take it from here,” Cole told the waiter. He took possession of the cart after handing the young man a sizable tip.

Rayne closed the door the moment the cart was inside the room. “Well, you’re certainly not stingy, I’ll give you that,” she murmured. He looked at her quizzically. “You gave that kid a twenty.”

Since he’d begun working with people struggling to better themselves and the lives of their children, Cole had had a very profound sense of “there but for the grace of God….” It made him see things in a whole different light.

He positioned the table by the bed, then pulled over a chair for her. He figured she’d be more comfortable on it. Cole held it out, waiting for her. “Checking me out, Detective?”

Rayne sat down, letting him usher the chair in for her. “Just taking in bits and pieces of information. You never know when it might come in handy.”

Cole reminded himself that she didn’t need to be collecting information on him. And most of all, he didn’t need to be so interested in her.

Cole took off the metal covers keeping the two dinners warm and slide them onto a shelf beneath the table. “I’m not the one facing trial.”

“No, you’re the black sheep who came back to save his brother.”

How could you be a black sheep in a family that was comprised of nothing
but
black sheep? He wondered if that was some kind of anomaly.

Cole sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’d prefer thinking of myself as a rebel.”

“Sorry, that’s my position. Or so they like to tell me.”

By “they” he assumed she meant her family. Cole scoffed at the description. “You joined the police force like the rest of your family. How much of a rebel can you be?”

She felt as if he’d just challenged her. She still liked to think of herself in those terms, that she hadn’t arrived at her present position in life without having gone through considerable angst. Angst that haunted her still at times. “And you made something of yourself rather than coast on your family’s money. What kind of a black sheep are you?”

He broke open a roll. “I guess we’re both reformed.”

“In a manner of speaking.” In her heart, she always knew she’d be a rebel. It had to do with a mind set. Determined to make her father proud of her and to make up for the years that had gone before, she still didn’t intend to be mindlessly obedient to the department to which she’d pledged her loyalty.

“I still have my moments. Like now.”

“Now?” The word shimmered between them invitingly. It made him think of warm moonlit nights and soft, supple bodies. Kisses that promised to go on forever, even when he knew they wouldn’t.

Did her kisses do that?

Had she ever felt that strong pull that drew you into the eye of a hurricane before it spun you out to forever? Or had she been like him, seduced by the promise, only to be disappointed in the execution?

It took a moment before her words broke through. “I’m not exactly following official party line by independently looking into this for you, now am I?”

His smile, she found, was nothing short of raw sex. Her breath was coming in short supply. “Oh, that kind of now.”

Finding her tongue was becoming an annoyingly repetitive task. “Yes, that kind of now.”

She was doing more than justice to the dinner. He reached for the bottle chilling on the side. “Wine?”

Rayne placed her hand over the top of her glass before he had a chance to pour. “No.”

Her response surprised him. He poured a little into his own glass. “Teetotaler?”

“Believe me, when I was younger, I drank enough alcohol to float a battleship.” It wasn’t something she was particularly proud of, but it was a fact and part of her past. She didn’t see the point in trying to bury it by pretending she’d always been what she was today. Someone who, for the most part, walked a narrowed path. “But these days I like keeping a clear head.” She looked at him significantly. “You never know when one might come in handy.”

After taking a taste from his own glass, he retired it beside his plate. “Eric is going to need all the clear heads on his side he can get.”

His gaze held her in place again. Dragging the breath out of her lungs. “My thinking exactly.”

Suddenly he wasn’t hungry anymore. Not for what room service had delivered. Not when there was this other thing buzzing around in his head, pushing other, more important thoughts out of the way. “What else are you thinking?”

How did he do that? Evaporate the air around her? She was lucky she wasn’t gasping. “Nothing that has to do with Eric’s case.”

“Yeah, me, too.” He took a breath. There was no mistaking the look in her eyes. Not when it mirrored the one he was sure she saw in his. Slowly he rose to his feet, slipping his hand to her cheek. “Want to get it out of the way?”

Rayne felt as if she were being levitated. She certainly wasn’t gaining her feet under her own power. She didn’t even try to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. Because she did. “Like a box we forgot to unpack?”

“Something like that.”

“You’re on,” she heard herself whispering.

And he was. The moment he kissed her, he was on. Completely turned on.

And unless he’d lost all ability to read another person, Cole knew for damn sure that he wasn’t the only one.

Chapter 8

S
he wanted to get “it” out of the way. It. Her curiosity, about the kiss, about her response. About his. All tied up in one neat little bundle.

It.

She should have thought about getting herself out of the way. Wasn’t that what you did when you were in the direct path of an oncoming steamroller? You jumped out of the way.

Except that she didn’t.

And was completely and utterly flattened. Immediately.

It felt as if every available drop of air was pushed out of her lungs, her body. It left her head reeling and her pulse, she was fairly certain, had broken some kind of sound barrier limit because it throbbed so hard, so fast.

And the heat—there was a great deal of heat. Rayne would have sworn that she’d fallen headlong into hell, except that it felt like heaven.

Why else would there be music ringing in her head?

It wasn’t music, it was bells. Bells were ringing. Even more appropriate. If such a word could be used to describe the scrambling sensations assaulting her body from every direction, making her acutely aware that she was a woman, a woman who had, of late, been living the life of a nun.

She didn’t want to be a nun anymore.

It took Cole a second to realize that something
was
ringing. In the beginning, he’d felt sure the sound was only in his head, in his ears, reflecting the erratic way his heart was hammering.

Curiosity and a certain amount of overwhelming animal attraction had brought him to this junction. But what had begun as a minor thing now threatened to swallow him up whole. Because his curiosity wasn’t sated, it was hungry for more.

He wanted her.

Of all the times…

With effort, Cole began to disengage himself from the tendrils wound tightly around him. He pulled his head away. The ringing left his ears and filled the room.

Idiot, he jeered silently to himself. “It’s your phone,” he finally told her.

“What?” The word escaped on the wave of a breathless gasp.

Were they still on earth? Still standing? Still in his room?

Could kisses
do
that? Completely obliterate your powers of orientation? She’d thought that was just a silly rumor, whispered amid pubescent girls nestled in sleeping bags at slumber parties while they still had their illusions and their dreams. Before reality found them.

Wonder filled her. Rayne felt like someone who had stumbled across the last living unicorn and was doubting her own eyes, her own senses.

“What?” she repeated, her breathing only a tad more controlled than before.

“Your phone.” He nodded in the vague vicinity of her pocket. “It’s ringing.”

Rayne felt for her cell phone automatically, even as his words registered. Taking it out of her pocket, she opened the phone and she held it upside down to her ear. The smile on his lips made her realize her mistake.

She switched it right-side up with aplomb, daring him to laugh at her. Now if only she could unlock her knees without risking the embarrassment of sinking bonelessly to the floor.

The second she heard a noise on the other end, she straightened, remembering the last call. The whispered command.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end of the line wasn’t whispering. “Should I keep it warm for you?”

Heat still rushed to her face, her limbs. Bellhops carrying bags with no place to leave them. The last thing she needed was to keep anything warmer than it already was. “What?”

“Dinner,” her father said patiently. “You want me to keep it warm for you? Or are you putting in extra time?”

You’d think that a former police chief wouldn’t worry so much. But then, she amended, maybe he worried so much
because
he was a former police chief. Having him keep tabs on her used to annoy her no end, now she had to admit it just made her feel cared for. She wondered if she was getting wiser, or just older.

“Put dinner in the refrigerator,” she said.
Put me in there with it while you’re at it.

She heard a long pause on the other end. “Rayne, are you all right? You sound different.”

She still hadn’t entirely caught her breath. She should have realized her father’d pick up on it. The man had ears that could put a bat to shame.

“Must be a bad connection, Dad. I’ll see you later on tonight,” she promised.

Rayne was vaguely aware of saying goodbye. Or maybe she just thought the words as she closed her phone and slipped it back into her pocket.

Cole watched her and she hadn’t a clue what he was thinking. Had he been as blown out of the water as she was? Or was it just business as usual for him? At least he wasn’t laughing at her.

Struggling for control, she blew out a long breath, then took another in. The light-headedness faded just a shade.

“Glad we got that out of the way,” she murmured.

“I don’t think we got anything out of the way,” he told her. “But at least we answered one question.”

She wasn’t aware of anything being answered, only of a box being opened up and a thousand questions spilling out. Rayne blinked as her bangs fell into her eyes. “Oh?”

He resisted the urge to brush her hair aside, because then he’d be touching her and if he touched her, he might forget to stop. “It’s not my imagination.”

His eyes held hers, accelerating her pulse again. She pressed her lips together, tasting him. “Excuse me?”

“The tension that’s been buzzing here between us. It’s not just because I’m challenging police findings.”

No, it wasn’t, but she wasn’t about to go exploring the issue any further until she had her bearings back. You didn’t just waltz into a dark alley without knowing you could waltz back out again in one piece. It was one of the first lessons she’d learned not just at the academy, but at her father’s knee.

She almost wished she was back there. Things had seemed so much more stable then. Her family had comprised her world and there were no dangers, no forbidding territories.

Rayne cleared her throat. “But that is the main reason we’re here.”

She shouldn’t have had to remind him, Cole upbraided himself. Eric came first. If something was going to happen between him and Rayne, it would happen, but not now. Now it had to be put on ice.

Lots of ice.

“Right.” Without thinking, Cole reached for his glass of wine. Then he stopped, changing his mind, and picked up the glass of water instead. Wine might just weaken his resistance enough to put himself first, Eric second. That was his parents’ way, not his.

He drained the glass before he said anything. “While you were looking up the report today, I was going down the list.”

She wasn’t following him. “List, what list?”

“Of women Eric had gone out with in the last few years.” He was as much trying to get some insight into the brother he’d left behind as he was trying to establish Eric’s character. At some point in time, he knew he should have returned and taken Eric with him. Eric was weaker than he was, a good deal weaker, and had wound up selling his soul because it was easier that way than it was to attempt to make something of himself. Cole frowned. “Some of the things they had to say about him weren’t all that flattering.”

Putting some distance between them, Rayne moved over to the window. It began to mist outside. “And you’re thinking of using them as character witnesses?”

He heard the incredulous note in her voice. “The point is, none of them said Eric ever raised a hand to them, ever threatened them, ever turned remotely ugly. At best, he was a sloppy drunk, harmless. One of them even called him giddy.”

She knew what he was trying to do, but that approach would get them nowhere. She remembered what Longwell had said to her. That everyone was capable of murder under the right circumstances. “The D.A.’ll say that everyone’s got their breaking point. And there are those neighbors who’ll testify that they overheard Kathy and Eric in a shouting match, arguing.”

He shook his head. “Eric doesn’t argue or shout. He withdraws. He cries.”

“But Kathy was different,” she reminded him. “She meant something to him.”

He was pacing again, his agitation clearly rising as he absently ran his hand through his hair. Watching him, Rayne caught herself wondering what that same hand would feel like running along her body. Caressing her. Finding all the secret places.

She stopped herself abruptly.

What was she, seventeen? She was twenty-five, for heaven’s sake, and far from a trembling, inexperienced teenager. Hell, she hadn’t been all that inexperienced as a teenager, either.

Then what was going on? Why was she having all this trouble focusing on what mattered? Maybe she was coming down with something. It seemed to be the only explanation, at least, the only explanation she’d accept.

Cole suddenly swung around to face her, excitement in his eyes as he worked out a theory. “These neighbors that supposedly overheard Kathy and Eric arguing, did they actually
see
them arguing?”

She thought of the report she’d reread after she’d talked to Longwell.

“Maybe.” He continued looking at her, as if he expected her to amend her answer. She did. “There wasn’t any mention of anyone actually seeing anything. But there were several statements in agreement—” The excitement had increased. She could feel herself being reeled in. “What are you getting at?”

He had to admit it was a long shot, but it was possible. More than possible, it struck him as perhaps the only explanation. “What if she wasn’t arguing with Eric? What if everyone just assumed it was Eric because she had that restraining order out on him? What if,” he hypothesized, “it was someone else?”

“And that someone else killed her?” she guessed. When he nodded, she shook her head. He’d already said something like that before, when he thought Eric was being framed. It was wishful thinking on his part. “You’re reaching for straws, Garrison.”

He didn’t waver. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t any there.”

Stranger things had turned out to be right, who was she to ignore a possibility? “Okay, I can check that out tomorrow.”

“We,” he corrected. “We can check it out tomorrow.”

She was trying to attract the least amount of attention. Having him with her wasn’t going to accomplish that. Cole Garrison was as unmemorable as a meteor shower. “Look, let’s not get in each other’s way.”

“Fine. I’ll stand two steps to your right at all times.”

“Cole—”

He purposely kept his expression innocent. “Would you prefer the left?”

She would prefer it if he were out of the picture entirely. “Cole, do you know one of the reasons the South lost the war?” He looked stunned by the question. Just as she’d wanted him to be. “Too many leaders, not enough soldiers.”

“In the middle of all this, you’re stopping to give me a history lesson?” he asked incredulously. “For somebody who supposedly never studied in high school, you’re just chock-full of information, aren’t you?”

She’d lost track of the number of times the principal had sent for her father because she wasn’t doing her homework or was cutting classes. The thing Principal Oshinsky could never understand was how she managed to do so well on tests when she’d hardly even put in a regular appearance in class. Back then, she couldn’t abide structure or any rules that hemmed her in. That didn’t mean she was stupid.

Rayne shrugged. “I liked doing independent studies.”

“Maybe that’s our problem. We’re both too independent.”

“Agreed. The bottom line is, I can’t have you compromising the investigation.”

He wasn’t about to sit in the hotel, cooling his heels while she did the legwork. He wanted to be right there with her. “I’d say we were compromising it just by being in the mix.”

She hated to admit it, but he was right. Having her look into the case could already be considered a compromising circumstance if it came to light. She had to be very careful how she went about things. Enemies in the department didn’t go away easily.

One look at Cole told her that he wasn’t about to be kept out of it. Like he said, they were kindred spirits of a sort and if this had been about one of her own, someone would have had to tie her down. “All right, but we still have to do it my way.”

Cole spread his hands out to either side of him, as if in complete compliance with her terms. “As long as I get to be there.”

She knew she would never convince him otherwise. It was better to have him beside her than to have to keep looking over her shoulder to see where he was. Though he struck her as pretty savvy, she couldn’t take a chance on his jeopardizing the investigation by tainting their findings.

She crossed to the door. It was time to go before she decided to revisit the site of her encounter with the steamroller. “Okay, I’ll stop by at nine and pick you up tomorrow morning.”

His expression was unfathomable and made her a little uneasy as he nodded. Cole reached around her to open the door for her. “It’s a deal.”

She noticed that he hadn’t bothered to shake on it.

Rayne glanced at her watch. She was running late again. Stifling an oath, she strapped on her gun, then slipped her jacket on over it.

Andrew eased a frying pan into sudsy water. Rayne was the last one in the kitchen. “I thought you said you weren’t going in today.”

“I’m not. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to go out.”

“What’s up, kiddo? Tell your old man.”

She didn’t want to tell him because she didn’t want a lecture. She picked up her coat. The weatherman promised more rain was on the way. It never ceased to amaze her how her siblings could get away without a third degree, but she’d always had to jump through hoops when it came to their father.

Probably because she’d given him so much to worry about when she was younger. None of her brothers or sisters had ever had to have him come down to the police station to fetch them. In hindsight, it had been a harmless prank, but the Aurora police department hadn’t thought so at the time.

“Nothing’s up, Dad. I’m just running a few errands, catching up on things. Doing a favor for a friend.”