Fatal Deception (4 page)

Fuck that
, she thought, determined to close her third of the investigation while the other two were still tripping over their own dicks. That thought made her smile as the chief made eye contact with her.

“Am I clear, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” she said in her sweetest tone.

Unused to such easy capitulation, let alone sweetness, from her, Farnsworth eyed her suspiciously before he moved on to the others. “Ramsey? Hill?”

Both men muttered their agreement.

“Now, get to work, and keep me posted. Lieutenant, I’ll need you to brief the media at zero seven hundred.”

“What if we don’t have anything by then?” Sam asked.

“Get something,” Farnsworth said as he walked away with the other men in tow.

“Sure, no problem.” When they were alone, Sam turned to Cruz, who had joined them. “Where are we with the canvass?”

“We checked the whole block and didn’t find anyone who heard or saw anything unusual. Naturally, all the neighbors wanted the lowdown on what happened.”

People were always obscenely interested in crime—until it happened to them. “Call in Gonzo, Arnold, McBride and Tyrone. We need all the help we can get on this one.”

“And of course you’ll want to close the case before Hill or Ramsey,” Freddie said.

Sam rewarded him with a shit-eating grin. “Duh.”

Chapter Three

“Tell me about Victoria,” Sam said, once again filled with regret that she’d never taken the time to get to know the other woman better.

Hill stood inside the closed door to the interrogation room, observing the interview.

Sam went out of her way to pretend he wasn’t there, which wasn’t easy when he was staring at her the whole time.

“What about her?” Derek asked. He’d already answered a staggering number of questions about his daughter for Ramsey and Harper, who’d left to mobilize the entire special victims unit in the search for Maeve. Issuing an Amber Alert would be their first order of business.

“Where did she grow up? What do you know about her childhood?”

“Her maiden name was Taft. She grew up in Ohio with her parents. She didn’t talk too much about her childhood. I got the feeling it wasn’t particularly happy.”

“What did she study in school?”

“History and political science.”

“What did she do after college?”

“She worked for a lobby firm but quit her job when we got married. She couldn’t do that while I was working for a senator, especially since he was running for president. It would’ve been a conflict of interest.”

“Can you write down the name of the firm where she worked?”

Derek reached for the pad and pen she pushed across the table.

“Who were Victoria’s close friends? Who did she see every day who might have insight into her activities?”

“I should know that,” he said regretfully. “But I’m afraid I didn’t spend much of the small amount of time we had together talking about who was in their playgroup.”

“So she did belong to a playgroup?”

“A few of them, I think. She and Maeve kept busy with lots of activities.”

“And she never talked about who she met through these activities?”

“Look, I know this’ll make me sound horrible, but I didn’t care about those people. I work so much that when I was home, I wanted to talk to her about Maeve and about us, and I wanted...” He faltered and again dropped his head into his hands.

“What did you want, Derek?”

“I wanted to be alone with her, to take her to bed...” His hands over his mouth muffled his voice. “I can’t believe I’ll never, we’ll never... Ever again.”

Sam ached for him. For the first time since they started the questioning, Sam took a tentative glance at Hill. She noticed the pulse of tension that ticked in his jaw before his eyes met hers, offering support that Sam appreciated in the face of Derek’s terrible grief.

“We’ll need her phone,” Hill said. “The list of contacts will give us a place to start.”

When the agent took the words right out of her mouth, Sam frowned at him, and the moment of unity was forgotten.

“It’s probably in her purse at the house,” Derek said. “That’s where she kept it when she was home. I’m thinking now that her friend Ginger, who she met in the hospital when she had Maeve, might know her other friends.”

“That’s helpful,” Sam said. “Excuse us for a minute.”

Hill followed her out of the room.

“I thought you were going to stand there and keep quiet until I’m done,” Sam said.

“Just trying to help,” Hill replied with a charming smile that had the desired effect, even if Sam would never admit it.

“Do me a favor and don’t. I’ve got this.”

“Whatever you say, Lieutenant.”

His condescension earned him another scowl.

“Your husband sure is a lucky man,” he said with a chuckle that grated on Sam’s already raw nerves.

“Yes, he is,” she said suggestively. Let him wonder how lucky Nick really was. If anyone had any idea, she’d be tagged a nymphomaniac. Under normal circumstances, that thought would’ve made her laugh. But nothing about this situation was funny.

“Would you like me to ask your partner to arrange for transport of the phone?” Hill asked.

“Sure, thanks.” Since she was apparently stuck with the ingratiating agent, she may as well make use of him. “That would help.”

“Wait for me before you start up again,” Hill said over his shoulder as he headed for the pit to find Freddie.

Sam stuck her tongue out at his back, which made her feel much better.

“How’s it going, babe?”

At the sound of Nick’s voice, Sam turned. “Where’d you come from?”

“I saw you come out. What’s with that guy Hill?”

“What do you mean?”

“He watches your every move like...” Nick looked past her as he seemed to search for the words he needed.

“Like what?”

Turning his potent hazel-eyed gaze on her, he said, “Like I imagine I do.”

Sam stared up at him. “Are you jealous?”

“Do I need to be?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Our friend has been murdered, and we’re talking about the way a fellow officer looks at me? As if I have any control over that!”

Shrugging, he said, “I don’t like it.”

Sam went up on tiptoes to kiss her husband, a rare deviation from her strict no-PDA-at-work—or ever—rule. “You’re very cute when you’re jealous.”

His brows narrowed with annoyance. “Samantha...

“Oh, sorry to interrupt,” Freddie said when he came around the corner. “Hill said you want me to get Victoria’s phone?

Sam stepped back from Nick. “You’re not interrupting. Get the phone to the lab. I want a call made to every contact on there, asking when they last heard from her or if they’ve seen Maeve today. Then we need a report on every number, as well as a log of all calls made and received in the last month.”

“On it.”

“Where are our reinforcements?”

“Gonzo and Christina are on a train back from New York City, where they were visiting his sister. He said he cleared the weekend away with you before he went.”

“Yeah, he did. I forgot.”

“Arnold is in Florida visiting his parents. He said he also cleared it.”

“I guess he did, now that I think about it. What about McBride and Tyrone?”

“They’re at Tyrone’s brother’s wedding in Baltimore. She said she can come in if we need her, but it’ll be an hour or more before she can get back to the city. She said they cleared it—”

“All right already! They all cleared their plans with me, and I forgot! Sue me.”

Freddie started to grin, but her frown discouraged him.

“Phone. Lab. Now.”

“You got it, boss,” he said as he scrambled off.

“Sometimes I feel sorry for him,” Nick said.

“He’s lucky to work with me, and he knows it.”

“Sure he does.”

“I have to go back in there and dig deeper into Derek’s life when all I want to do is offer comfort to our friend.”

“The best thing you can do for him is find his daughter and get the person who killed his wife. Harry and I will be there for him when you are done.”

“Good,” she said, squeezing his arm. “I’m sure he appreciates that you’re here.”

He gave her shoulders a quick, fortifying massage right as Hill reappeared in the hallway.

“Are you ready to get back to work, Lieutenant?”

Nick gave her one last squeeze and let her go, muttering “asshole” under his breath.

Surprised by the unusual and unwarranted hostility from her mild-mannered husband, she whispered, “That’s no way to talk about an FBI agent.”

“Since when do you need help from the Feds?”

“Since I don’t have a security clearance and he does. Someone has to dig into Derek’s work and any possible connections. Can I go back in there now?”

“Don’t let me stop you, but stay away from that guy. I don’t like him.”

“So you said.” Sam rolled her eyes at him and stepped into the interrogation room, where Hill was opening a soda for Derek.

He gestured to the diet cola he’d left on the table along with a can of lemon-lime-flavored water. “Drink, Lieutenant?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Staring at the diet cola with lust in her heart, she chose the flavored water, but only because Nick might be watching in observation. She didn’t feel like hearing it from him if she fell off the diet-cola wagon she’d been on for months now thanks to her damned stomach.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said to Derek when she sat next to him at the table.

“I’m going crazy wondering where Maeve is. There has to be something I can do. I should be out looking for her rather than sitting here answering endless questions.”

“The best thing you can do is cooperate with the investigation. We’ve got every cop in the region looking for her.”

“She could be anywhere. Who knows how long ago this even happened?”

“The medical examiner is working on getting us a timeline right now. In the meantime, take me through the last time you talked to Victoria.”

“Last night. Late. I was finally back in my room after an eighteen-hour day.”

“Was there anything unusual about the call?”

“No. We were both tired after the long day of political strategizing and chasing a toddler. It was a quick call.”

“Let’s talk about how you met.”

* * *

“They told me I might find you in here,” Harry said to Nick when he stepped into Sam’s office.

Nick, who had his feet on the desk he’d spent twenty minutes cleaning, gestured for Harry to have a seat in the visitor’s chair.

“What’s the latest?” Harry asked.

“Last I heard, they’re talking about how Derek and Victoria met.”

“Remember how he was after he met her?” Harry asked with a small, sad smile.

“Yeah. A total disaster.” Their shy, unassuming but sharply intelligent friend had been blown away by the dark-haired beauty. Nick had met Derek shortly after John O’Connor was sworn into the Senate and Nick became the new senator’s chief of staff. Derek was an aide to then-Senator Nelson, who was now the president. Nick ached thinking of the golden days when John was still alive and Derek was trying to figure out how to ask out Victoria. “How’d it go with his parents?”

“Horrible, as you can imagine. They’re despondent about Maeve and heartsick over Victoria. I know how they feel. Who in the world would want to kill Victoria?”

“I can’t begin to guess. Everyone loved her. Especially Derek.” If Nick let himself think how he would feel if this had happened to him... He shook it off, refusing to go there. It was bad enough that he lived in fear of suddenly losing his wife every day of his life. “I was thinking about how long it took him to work up the nerve to ask her out.”

Harry ran a hand over his face in a gesture of weariness Nick could relate to. It was all so hard to fathom. “The poor guy was so painfully shy, and she was so vivacious. We thought it would never work.”

Sam stepped into the office. “Derek needs a minute,” she said, looking battered by the grueling interview. Her eyes bugged out of her head when she took in the clean surface of her desk. “Every time? It’s a sickness!” To Harry, she said, “Can’t you prescribe something to cure his anal retentiveness?”

“No more than I can cure your messiness, my friend,” Harry said with a smile.

Sam flipped Harry the bird.

“Do you want to sit?” Harry asked, offering her his chair.

“No, I need to pace.”

“How’s Derek?” Nick asked.

“He was doing okay until we started talking about how they met and got together.”

“At the gym,” Nick and Harry said together.

“We were there,” Nick said, filling her in. “He was instantly attracted.”

“But it took him forever and lots of urging from us to work up the nerve to ask her out,” Harry added.

“I did some recon work for him and asked her if she’d consider going out with him,” Nick said.

“Remember how mad he was with you about that? He said something about how this wasn’t junior high, for crying out loud.”

Nick smiled at the memory. “He was only mad until I told him she’d been waiting for him to ask.”

“His parents desperately want to speak to him,” Harry said to Sam, holding up Derek’s phone as Agent Hill appeared in the doorway.

“Do you mind if I take the phone in to him and sit with him while he calls his folks?” Nick asked.

“Go ahead,” Sam said. “He’s no help to us in his current condition.”

Nick got up, pressed a kiss to Sam’s forehead and gave her a quick squeeze that he made sure Hill saw before he left the office to go to Derek. He didn’t like the way that agent looked at his wife. He didn’t like it one bit.

* * *

“I was going to call you tomorrow,” Harry said to Sam when they were alone.

Hill had wandered into the pit to make a call.

“What about?” Sam asked the handsome, dark-haired doctor with the adorable dimples. He’d become her good friend since she’d been with Nick.

“Close the door.”

Wondering why he was being so secretive, she did as he asked.

“I had a note pop up on my calendar on Friday that your three-month birth-control shot is wearing off this week. You’ll need to either renew it or be aware that you could conceive at any time.”