Fatal Flaw (3 page)

Freddie returned with the gloves. “What’ve you got?”

“A thinly veiled threat.” She relayed what the card had said. “Or so it seemed to me.”

“Let me see.”

She nodded to the card lying open on her desk.

He took a bite of his candy bar. “I don’t get it,” he said, his voice muffled by caramel and nougat.

“Read it again.”

“Okay. So what?”

“They hope we
‘live long enough’
to enjoy our happiness? Is that something people normally write in a wedding card?”

“Hmm. You may have a point.”

“Gee, really? And here I thought you were one of my best and brightest.”

He scowled at her and took another bite of candy.

Donning the gloves, she lifted the card and envelope into the evidence bag. “Get that to the lab and tell them I want a full workup ASAP. Don’t get chocolate on the bag.”

He rolled his eyes at her. “What about the rest of it?”

Sam glanced at the huge pile of unopened cards on her desk. “Until we have more to go on with the Carl’s killings, I guess we glove up and go through each one.”

“You think Nick got one too?”

Sam sucked in a sharp deep breath. “Christ, I never thought of that. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.” As he scowled at her for using the Lord’s name in vain, she reached for the phone to call her husband. Thinking of him that way made her buzz with happiness even if the reason for the call was unsettling.

“Hey, babe,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Okay, I guess. The thing at Carl’s was rough. Carl and a seventeen-year-old kid who was his father’s only living family.”

“Jeez.”

“No kidding.”

“How’d it go with Gardner?”

Of course he would assume she’d already taken care of that piece of business. He knew how badly she’d wanted her moment with that scumbag. “Nowhere fast.”

“Sorry to hear that. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Another dead end. For now.”

“So what’s up? Miss me already?”

What would he say if she told him she’d missed him from the minute she left him? “You know it. So while we were gone, did you get any mail?”

“
Tons
of it. You?”

“Same. Did your office open it?”

“Not all the cards and stuff they could tell were personal.”

“Listen, do me a favor and don’t touch any of it until I can get there.”

“What’s going on, Samantha?”

He was the only one allowed to call her that and usually only trotted out the dreaded name at the most important of moments. “I’m not sure, but I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”

“And here I thought I had to wait
all
day to see my lovely wife. What a nice surprise this is.”

She smiled. “I’ll be right over.”

“Are you
kidding me?
” Sam asked as she took in the mountain of cards that occupied the meeting table in Nick’s Capitol Hill office. There had to be thousands of envelopes. “You’re
way
more popular than I am.”

“It’s because I’m far more charming than you are,” her handsome husband said. At six foot four with soft brown hair that curled at the ends, gorgeous hazel eyes and a mouth made for sin, Nick turned female heads everywhere they went. No doubt more than a few of the cards were from his admiring public.

“I can’t deny you’re more charming than I am,” she said. She’d never been known for her charm and was fine with leaving that trait to him. “Perhaps the eight million citizens you represent might have something to do with the fact that more people are happy for you than they are for me.”

“All these people,” he said, gesturing to the pile, “are happy for
both
of us.”

“Not all of them.” While it still went against her nature to share everything with him, especially stuff she knew would upset him, she told him about the threatening card she’d received.

Hands on his hips, face set in an unreadable expression, he stared at the pile of cards.

Sam went to him and rested a hand on his back. “What’re you thinking?”

He glanced at her. “It never ends, does it? Just when we’ve neutralized one threat against you, another pops up.”

Sam knew he was referring to the recent murder investigation that had uncovered a prostitution ring reaching the government’s highest levels. As she’d closed in on the man who’d raped and murdered two women and kidnapped and raped Detective McBride, Sam had been warned to back off or face a similar fate.

“We don’t know for sure this is a new threat. Maybe it’s just someone thinking they’re being funny.”

“You don’t believe that or you wouldn’t be here.”

“I don’t know what to believe yet. Could be nothing, could be something. I have to take all these cards and go through them, okay?”

“Whatever you need to do.”

Sam reached behind her and closed the office door. Sealed off from the prying eyes of his busy staff, Sam took his left hand and kissed the platinum band she’d recently placed on his finger. The sight of that ring never failed to stir her. That the one who’d gotten away now belonged to her forever was still hard to believe. “I don’t want you to worry until we know we have something to worry about.”

He put his arms around her and rested his chin on the top of her head. They fit together like two halves of a whole. Sam closed her eyes and took a moment to breathe in the scent of starch in his dress shirt as well as the citrusy cologne that suited him so perfectly. She concentrated on remembering the blissful days and nights they’d spent together in Bora Bora.

“I always worry about you,” he said. “You know that.”

“The card mentioned both of us living long enough.” She looked up at him. “If this turns out to be something to worry about, would you consider requesting protection, especially on campaign stops?” When she thought about the hordes of people he’d been attracting on the campaign trail, she shuddered at how easy it would be for someone to take a shot at him.

“Let’s cross that bridge if and when we come to it.”

“It may come to it, and I won’t need you being mulish about asking for protection.”

“And who will protect you, my love?”

She flashed a big grin and rested her hand on the service weapon on her hip. “I’ve got my protection right here.”

“Samantha…”

“I’ll be careful,” she assured him, going up on tiptoes to kiss him. “I’ve got so much to live for these days. No point in being reckless.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that.” He glanced again at the pile of cards. “Is it possible this could be Peter’s handiwork?” Her ex-husband had tried to kill them both with crude bombs strapped to their cars. He’d recently been released from jail on a technicality that rankled Sam because it was partly her fault. She’d let her detectives enter his apartment before they obtained a search warrant. Stupid mistake that she was now paying for by having that lunatic on the loose again.

“I suppose it’s possible, and it’s certainly his style. Good old Peter
loves
the passive-aggressive game.”

“And it would piss him off that we’re married now, especially after all he did to keep us apart.”

Six years ago, after Sam and Nick met at a party and spent a memorable night together, Peter, her platonic roommate at the time, had gone to great lengths to make sure she never saw Nick again. She still couldn’t believe she’d fallen for his games and ended up spending four miserable years married to the controlling bastard when she could’ve been with Nick all that time. The night before her wedding to Nick, Peter had confronted her on the street outside their home. Violating a restraining order, he’d pulled a gun on her and let her know their relationship would “never be over.” He’d gotten a two-week slap on the wrist for the stunt and was now walking free again.

Nick kissed her forehead and then lingered at her lips. “Don’t think about it or him,” he said, tuning into her thoughts as he often did. “The past is the past, and all that matters now is the future.”

“I swear to God, if he’s got the balls to threaten us, I’ll kill him with my own hands.”

“You’ll do me no good in prison, babe,” he said with a devilish grin that calmed her. “Even though you’d look awfully sexy in an orange jumpsuit.”

“Very funny. Can you grab me a couple of garbage bags for all these cards?”

“I’ll see what I can find,” he said. “I’ll need them back when you’re done with them.”

“What for?”

“I have to acknowledge them all.”

Sam stared at him. “Seriously?”

“Such is the glamorous life of a politician.”

“What about the hundreds that were sent to me?”

“I’ll need any that came from Virginia.”

“Better you than me.”

While he went to get the bags, she plopped down at his desk and studied the tidy piles of reports, file folders and other desk paraphernalia, which, as always, was arranged with the neat precision that drove her bonkers. Taking a quick look to make sure he wasn’t on his way back yet, she turned the pile of reports so they were all upside down and knocked them out of whack so they wouldn’t be anally aligned the way he liked them. Then she turned the picture of the two of them from the White House state dinner—the night they’d gotten engaged—upside down. Finally, she scrawled “Sam loves Nick” on a sticky note and put it inside his desk drawer. She loved the idea of him finding that later. By the time he returned, she was sitting with her feet up on the desk and hands folded in her lap, the picture of innocence.

As he crossed the threshold with the bags, he stopped short. “What’re you doing over there?”

“Just waiting for you, my love.”

He eyed her warily. “And that’s
all
you’re doing?”

“What else would I be doing?” It took all her self-control not to descend into laughter. Messing with his need for rigid order was one of her favorite pastimes.

Sam got up to take the bags from him and gloved up to fill them with the cards. Because the bags were too heavy to carry on her own, he walked her to the car she’d left illegally parked outside the Hart Building.

Holding the car door for her, he leaned in for a kiss. “Gonna be a long day, huh?”

“Looks that way.”

“Here we go again.”

Detective Jeannie McBride sat in the window seat in her boyfriend Michael’s bedroom, which overlooked a leafy street in the city’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood.

“Coffee?” he said, handing her a steaming mug.

She worked up a smile for him. “Thanks.”

“Got any plans today?” he asked as he knotted his tie.

“Nothing special.” How could she tell him it took all she had to get out of bed, to breathe, to eat, to function? Forget about sleeping. Every time she closed her eyes she was back in that yellow room, tied to a bed while a monster attacked her.

How could she tell Michael that the thought of him or any man touching her made her sick? Or that the overwhelming love she’d once felt for him was gone? It had been replaced by numbness so deep and so pervasive she’d begun to wonder if she’d ever feel anything but nothing ever again.

“Want to meet me for lunch?”

Since that would require showering, getting dressed and leaving the cocoon of his comfortable home, she shook her head. “No, thanks.”

He sat next to her and reached for her hand. “I’m worried about you, Jeannie. Every morning I wake up hoping this might be the day you start to feel a little better, but it seems to be getting worse.”

“I need some more time.”

“I hate to see you in so much pain. There has to be something we can do. Maybe that counselor Sam suggested—”

“No,” Jeannie said sharply—more sharply than she’d intended. He’d been a pillar of strength and comfort in the dark days that followed the attack. He certainly deserved better than her snapping at him. “I’m sorry, but the last thing I need is to relive it all again.” Reliving it once with her lieutenant had been more than enough. Eventually, she’d have to relive it in court too. So no, a counselor was the last thing she needed.

“Whatever you want.”

He looked so tired and sad, which only added to her guilt over what she was putting him through. The days when they’d been blissfully happy and newly in love seemed like a long time ago rather than a few short weeks. She reached out to caress his face. “Maybe I should move back to my place. I’m not all that much fun to have around these days.”

He took her hand and kissed the palm. “That’s not necessary. You feel safer here because of the security system. I want you to feel safe.”

She didn’t feel safe anywhere. She was a cop, a homicide detective, and she’d been nabbed off the street in broad daylight. Would she ever feel safe again?

“I had hoped you’d feel better once they caught him.”

“I do.” How could she tell him that knowing her attacker was behind bars didn’t do a damned thing to erase the memory of what he’d done to her?

“I thought you’d want to get back to work, back to something that feels normal.”

What was normal anymore? In her eight years as a police officer she’d learned that you could lock up one monster but there were thousands more just like him roaming the streets looking for someone else to attack, someone else to change forever.

“I’m not ready yet,” she said. How could she tell him she didn’t think she’d ever be ready to return to work or any other part of the life she’d had before?

The doorbell rang, startling them.

“I’ll get it,” he said, kissing her forehead before he left her.

She wondered how long it would be before he left her for good.

He was back a minute later. “Someone here to see you.” The determined look on his face set her nerves on edge.

“I don’t want to see—”

Michael stepped aside to admit Lieutenant Holland into the room. She dropped a huge trash bag on the floor next to her.

Jeannie ran trembling fingers through her hair, wondering if she looked as awful as she felt.

“Sorry to bother you, Detective,” Sam said, all business. “But I could use your help.”

“Oh. Really?”

Sam told her about the threatening card she’d received and about the thousands of cards they now had to go through to see if there were others. “I thought you might be willing to lend a hand with the investigation.”

Since that would require effort and focus, Jeannie wanted to say no, but the pleading expression on Michael’s face stopped her from uttering the single world that hovered on the tip of her tongue.

“Can I count on you?” Sam asked.

Jeannie thought of the hours her lieutenant—and friend—had spent by her bedside as she endured the rape kit examination, the setting of her fractured wrist and the trauma of reliving the attack for the sake of the investigation. Now someone was threatening her sister officer, her friend. How could she say no to helping her? Clearing her throat, Jeannie said, “Of course.”

Smiling, Sam withdrew several pairs of gloves from one pocket and a fistful of evidence bags from the other and held them out to her.

Hoping her trembling legs would support her weight, Jeannie got up from the window seat and made her way across the room. Halfway there, she realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d showered. She took the gloves and bags from Sam.

Sam waited for Jeannie to look up at her, to make eye contact. In her lieutenant’s eyes she saw a touch of sadness along with determination. “Let me know if you find anything.”

Jeannie nodded.

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

After Sam left the room, Jeannie stared at the huge bag on the bedroom floor. All at once, a wave of panic hit her. Why had she agreed to help? She was on leave. They couldn’t make her work. What had Sam been thinking coming to her home and dragging her into an investigation when all Jeannie wanted was to be left alone?

Possibly sensing her growing panic, Michael put his arms around her, drawing her into his embrace.

Jeannie took deep, calming breaths of his familiar scent and fought back the panic that threatened to consume her.

“You can do this, Jeannie. I know you can. Sam must really need your help or she never would’ve bothered you.”

Jeannie nodded.

“Why don’t you take a nice, hot shower, and I’ll fix you some breakfast before you get started?”

“Okay.” She did as he suggested, but only because she was tired of seeing that worried, desperate look on his face. For the first time in weeks, he seemed a little hopeful.

Standing under the hot water, she thought about Sam and her senator husband and how happy they had been on their recent wedding day—the only time Jeannie had left the house since the attack. The idea of someone threatening them made Jeannie good and mad, which she decided was better than the numbness. Anything was better than that.