Deadly Fall (11 page)

“I carried you.”

“You carried me? You said—”

“You were shivering, so, gentleman that I am, I carried you in here where it’s warmer.”

“You are no gentleman,” she said succinctly. She tried to push away from him, but his arms were heavy across her back, imprisoning her. “Let me up.”

“Why don’t you finish what you were doing first?” he suggested, rubbing one hand along the slope of the small of her back to her buttocks, which instantly clenched in response.

Augusta swallowed and fought the need to move against him until she could feel his erection between the apex of her legs. “I’m not into meaningless one-night stands.”

He stilled. Then everything in his face tightened. “You seemed to be quite into it not too long ago.”

“I wasn’t fully awake.”

“Let me remind you that you were the one who started it.”

She swallowed and looked away from his flinty gaze. “And now I want to call a halt to it. Please.”

Beneath her, he remained unmoving, eyes unreadable, and a thread of trepidation snaked through her.

Suddenly, he rolled her onto her back and loomed over her, pressing into her, not letting her mistake the proof of his desire digging in between her thighs, just inches from where her body ached for him. His intense eyes bored into hers, searching. Then he leaned down and said softly, “Today, I’ll be a gentleman. Next time, I’ll live down to your expectations of me,” and then he was gone.

Moments later, there was the sound of the bathroom door closing followed by that of the shower running. But Augusta lay there, still as a marble statue. Eventually, she rolled to her side and pulled the sheets over her shoulders and up to her neck. She flicked her tongue out to lick her dry lips and tasted Nick Markov. Had she been standing, her knees would’ve buckled.

He tasted salty and male and sinful enough to make her ask herself why she had turned him away a second time. Was her independence really worth that much?

An hour after lunch, Nick nodded a greeting to the white-haired concierge as he followed his partner through the lobby and to the elevators and waited for one set of stainless steel doors to open.

“What do you think we’re going to find that the CSU missed and that we missed the first time?” Ethan asked him.

Nick shrugged uneasily. “I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right.”

“This entire case doesn’t feel right.”

“That, too.”

The first set of elevator doors quietly slid open and both men stepped inside. Ethan pressed the twenty-seventh floor button. They were silent as the elevator ascended. They had gone over the ballistic and forensics reports that morning. The bullets dug out of the plaster had not been damaged beyond recognition, but they didn’t match up with anything the NYPD had on file. The .45-caliber bullets were useless unless they could come up with the weapon to match them.

There were over forty useable prints found in the penthouse. Andrew Langan had a lot of visitors in life. Unfortunately, none of the prints that didn’t belong to Langan or Augusta matched up with any in the criminal database. Besides, they were betting the perps had worn gloves. The palm print on the wall beside the fire door was smooth, without any identifying whorls, lines or creases.

The blood stains on the floor, walls and furniture all belonged to the victim. A visit with the medical examiner working on the case told them Andrew Langan’s last hour on earth had not been pleasant. He had ligature marks around his wrists and ankles and signs of strangulation around his neck. One, or perhaps both, of his interrogators had been skillful with a knife. Long, shallow cuts were found along his torso and down the length of his thighs. The toxicology report had come back relatively clean. Andrew Langan’s blood alcohol level had been point-zero-three. However, the few glasses of red wine he had consumed wouldn’t have been enough to dull the pain.

The rest of the preliminary verbal report Nick had received from the ME wasn’t good. Langan had sustained massive internal injuries. Almost every bone in his body had been broken or at least fractured, including his fingers, and his organs had been tenderized. The ME speculated most of that damage had been done by the plunge down twenty-seven stories and onto Nick’s Pathfinder. She couldn’t positively distinguish between what could’ve resulted from a beating and what could’ve resulted from the fall until further examination. Even then, she doubted if she could draw any distinctions. It was a miracle Adam Langan had been able to identify his brother.

The funeral would not be open casket.

“How did they know to take the correct surveillance tapes?” Security measures in the high-rise building included a camera in the lobby, in both lobby elevators and in the hallway of each floor. The perps had apparently appropriated the tapes of the lobby, the elevators and the fifteenth and twenty-seventh floor hallways. Charlie the night concierge’s official statement said he’d been knocked unconscious at the time. No one had seen them enter, so that left the back door and the basement parkade. The security tape of the parking entrance didn’t show any pedestrians or cars entering that didn’t belong. The back entrance, unfortunately, was not monitored by a camera. When Nick had checked out the back door, however, there had been no signs of forced entry.

Nick suddenly went still.

“What is it?” asked Ethan.

“I’m just remembering what really bothered me about that night. They didn’t even wait for the elevator. They went straight for the stairs as if they knew we were coming.”

“Inside help?”

Nick grunted. “Charlie Medina could’ve called up and warned them.” He knew his smile was grim. “We should pay him a visit after this.”

Ethan sighed but nodded. “Have you decided what ‘this’ is?”

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Nick’s eyes narrowed on the door with police tape across it, but he didn’t get off the elevator. “I do now. Don’t get off. We’re going down to the fifteenth floor.”

“Reenactment?”

“Yes.”

It took them longer to get down to the fifteenth floor from the twenty-seventh than it did to get up to the penthouse floor from the ground. The elevator doors slid open on the twenty-second, nineteenth and seventeenth floors for people on their way to the lobby. Nick got off on the fifteenth floor and silently communicated with his partner, who remained on the car, with a nod of his head. As soon as the elevator doors slid shut, Nick sprinted toward the fire door and took the fifteen flights of stairs as he had several evenings ago. Ethan was lounging behind the security desk in the lobby, talking to the concierge when Nick saw him.

“Well?” Nick asked, his somewhat heavier breathing the only sign he’d exerted himself physically.

Ethan motioned for them to walk away from the security desk for more privacy. A glance at his watch, then he said, “I’ve been here less than seventy-five seconds. That’s not enough time to knock out a man, scan through each of the monitors, pick out
only
the correct tapes, steal them and then run out of sight. Not unless someone took out the tapes and had them ready for you.”

“We need to have a chat with Charlie.”

Ethan shook his head. “I like Charlie.” He pushed the button for nineteen. “Let me tell Torie that I’m going to be late again.”

* * * * *

“Have you heard a single word I’ve said all evening?”

Someone was asking her a question. Augusta pulled herself back to the present and tried to focus on the man across from her. “Hmm?”

“Augusta?”

She blinked and gave him an absent smile, as if that would convince him that her mind hadn’t been wandering far from the cozy Italian restaurant in which they were sitting.

Adam Langan glanced down at the fork she was using to push the food around on her plate. “You haven’t even taken a bite of your fettuccine. What’s wrong?” he asked, leaning toward her, concern etched on his handsome face. “Or are you just preoccupied tonight?”

“The latter.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

Her smile dropped. “You don’t want to hear it.”

He sighed, sounding infinitely indulgent and patient. “Yes, I do. That’s why I wanted to see you tonight.”

Augusta cocked a brow at him. “To check up on me?”

“I can see what you’re going through, and I know it’s not easy. It’s not easy for me, either. Drew was my brother. I loved him too.”

She silently berated herself. She wasn’t the only one affected by Drew’s death. He and Adam had been closer than most siblings she knew. They had been closer than she had been with any of her half-siblings. Adam had hero-worshipped Drew, and with good reason. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching out and squeezing his hand. “It’s been a really long day for me.”

He squeezed back. “What happened?”

Augusta drew her hand back and propped her chin on it, her elbow braced on the table. “Nothing.”

A smile crooked his mouth. “Too much time to think?”

“Yes.” She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Something like that.” Her lips twisted into a humorless smile. “Did I tell you I was fired yesterday?”

“
What?
The university fired you?”

She gave him a curt nod. “Something about the current spotlight on me in the media being bad publicity for the school. The private and corporate sponsors and loaded alumni flipping out over it, yadda, yadda, yadda.”

“That’s a load of crap.” His head tipped to one side. “Was it the article in the
Times
yesterday morning?”

She nodded, not meeting his gaze.

“And why were you at the police station?”

“The detective said the lab needed my fingerprints to rule them out from the prints taken from the penthouse. A reporter, I suppose, was lying in wait around the station house and snapped the picture.”

“That’s still a load of crap. You should make that paper post a retraction.”

“They already have this morning. During the police conference, the speaker stated emphatically the NYPD currently do not have a suspect in custody. And neither did they have evidence that hired killers threw Andrew Langan from his terrace.” She couldn’t keep the trace of bitterness from her tone. “The two lines ‘exonerating’ me were buried in the last paragraph.” She shrugged. “But what good did it or will it do? The damage’s already done, and no one will believe otherwise unless the real killer is found and convicted.”

Adam made a sound of disgust, but he didn’t disagree with her.

“That’s how it works and even an artsy type like me can understand that, so you can wipe the scowl off your face, Adam.”

He continued to scowl. “We can sue the university for wrongful dismissal.”

“No,” she said gently. “Technically, I’m on a leave of absence. My job, they assure me, will be waiting for me once everything dies down and, naturally, once I’m no longer a murder suspect.”

“You’re not a murder suspect.”

Several nearby diners turned their way, drawn by Adam fierce tone. Augusta set her face into a pleasant expression for their audience’s benefit and said quietly, “Thanks for defending my honor, but lower your voice, please.”

He flushed. “Sorry. But the police can’t think you had anything to do with Drew’s death.”

“According to them—according to anyone, for that matter—his money’s a hell of a motivator, especially with the pending divorce.”

“But Drew wasn’t going to change his will.”

Augusta gave a tiny shrug. “But I didn’t know that, did I?”

“Crap.”

“My thoughts exactly,” she murmured, inordinately pleased and deeply touched to have someone so staunchly on her side.
Of course
, a small voice inside her head reminded her,
Nick Markov thinks you’re innocent too, and he’s the one who’s seen all the evidence against you.

“What’s the matter?”

Augusta quickly smoothed out the frown on her forehead. “Nothing. Just an unpleasant memory.”

Liar.

“So, if you weren’t at work yesterday, where were you? I must’ve called you half a dozen times last night.”

“Did you?”

“Didn’t you check your machine?”

“Actually, no. I’ve been avoiding it. After seeing the vultures on my doorstep, I can just imagine the messages on my machine.”

“Then where did you go last night?”

Augusta hoped the hot flush she felt creeping up her neck didn’t make her look as guilty as she felt. “Uh…I was at Nick Markov’s apartment.”

“Markov…?” Realization dawned, replacing Adam’s blank look with disbelief. “The police detective? That Nick Markov? Why in the world did you go to his place?”

“He offered,” Augusta answered, hoping her dinner companion would drop the line of questioning. But nothing had been going right for her in the last week, so why should that change now?