Harlequin Intrigue, Box Set 2 of 2 (14 page)

Stop what you're doing
, the message had said. “They want you to stop investigating Leland Asher?”

She pointed to the gibberish on the screen. “It's all right here. But I've been too distracted to see it. It's a virus, a replicating virus that copies everything I do to another computer. Someone got close enough to my laptop or portable hard drive to plant it.”

“At the theater? There's too much security at HQ.”

“I don't know. I may be able to track down the source.” Her fingers were flying over the keyboard, clicking on icons and typing in commands he didn't understand. “I need to notify tech support at work to sweep the systems, just in case they've found a back door into the KCPD network. But there are enough safeguards that that might be difficult, even for an experienced hacker. More likely, it's my personal account that's been...”

She picked up the hot-spot device and turned it over. “Do you have your pocketknife?”

Trent reached into the pocket of his jeans to retrieve the knife. He marveled at the woman's intelligence as she pried open the device. “Katie?”

She dropped the pieces onto the desk and sank back in her chair. Trent didn't have to be a genius like her to see that the innards weren't connected, so it hadn't blocked any intrusive signals. She could have been hacked almost anywhere if that wasn't working—at the coffee shop, at the theater, at home.

He pried the open knife from her grip. “Where did you buy that thing? Who would have access to disable it besides you?”

“Anybody. I bought it months ago. I keep it in my bag. If they could get to my laptop, they could get to the hot-spot device. Then I'd be as vulnerable as if I had no security on my computer components at all. I am so going to lose my job over this, aren't I?” She closed her hands into fists. “Such a screwup.”

“You're not,” he insisted. He dropped down on one knee beside her and captured her jaw between his thumb and fingers to turn her gaze toward his. “This just means there's somebody who thinks he's as smart as you out there. He's a lot more calculating and doesn't give a damn about who he hurts.” He tightened his grasp and pulled her forward to meet his kiss. Katie's lips were full and sweet and shyly responsive in a way that shattered the caution around his heart and kindled a fire in his blood. “I believe in you, sunshine. Maybe this is a break in the investigation, an opportunity to trace it back to some hacker with ties to Asher. Now take a deep breath and figure this out.”

Her hands came up to cup his face and she smiled. “I don't know why you're so good to me.”

“That's easy.” He leaned in to kiss that worry dimple on her forehead. “Because I lo—”

“Wait a minute.” Trent reeled in the ill-timed confession as a new idea reenergized her. He folded the knife blade and returned it to the safety of his jeans pocket while Katie went back to her keyboard. “I should be able to track back to the date the device was disabled. The time should help us zero in on a location and who could have—”

She drew back with a gasp, her hands raised as row after row of words scrolled across her computer. After the first line, they were the same words, repeating over and over and over until they filled the screen.

Stop, Katie.

Die, Katie.

Die, Katie.

Die, Katie.

Die, Katie.

Die, Katie.

“Trent?”

“Son of a bitch.” Trent pulled her to her feet. He wanted to smash the monitor to erase the threats she'd somehow triggered. He would have ripped the whole thing out of the wall and tossed it across the room if some little sane part of his brain hadn't remembered he was a cop, looking at a desk full of key evidence. “Log out of there. Do something. Fast.”

Katie quickly shut down her Wi-Fi connection and pulled the cable connecting her router to the internet. He turned off the screen himself before she backed into him. His arms instantly went around her. “Easy, sunshine. You're okay.”

She shook her head, the nylon of his coat rustling against her hair. “Why is this happening to me? I'm just one little cog on the team. I'm background. I'm nobody. We're all trying to solve cold cases and connect them to Leland Asher. All I do is the research. Why was that man here? Why is he trying to scare me?”

Probably because they were getting closer to the truth, closer to making a major case against Asher stick. And someone in Asher's camp was targeting Katie because she was the weakest link on the team—she hadn't had police training and she didn't carry a gun, but she was vital to proving that there was nothing alleged about the mob boss and his illegal activities. “Their time to shut us down is running out. Asher gets released from prison today.”

She shook within his grasp. He knew the moment she decided she needed him more than she needed the distance between them. Turning in his arms, Katie shoved open the front of his coat and burrowed against his chest. Her fingers clenched in the layers of his shirts and the skin and muscle underneath. Trent threaded his fingers through her damp waves and cradled the back of her head, dropping his lips to the fragrant sunshine of her hair, holding her tightly against his strength.

“Mom? Are you okay?” a soft voice whispered from the open doorway. Despite the grip he had on Padre's collar, Tyler's eyes were wide with concern. Smart kid. He could see his mother was scared.

He just prayed the boy couldn't see that Trent was more than a little frightened for Katie, too.

“I'm okay, sweetie,” Katie answered, her voice strong to reassure her son. “I just got some bad news.” She tried to push away, but Trent wasn't budging.

Instead, he held his hand out to the little boy. “You're going to come stay at my house for a couple days, buddy. Okay?”

With a nod that didn't quite erase his frown, Tyler left the dog and ran across the room to hug Katie. She lifted her son into her arms and Trent wrapped them both in his shielding embrace.

CHAPTER NINE

Trent sat at his desk, staring at the twelve pictures on his computer. Six victims, six suspects. Plenty of circumstantial evidence to link one to another, but no real proof as to who was ultimately behind either the unsolved murders or the threats against Katie. But the key to solving the crimes attributed to Leland Asher and his criminal network had to be staring him in the face. If only he could get those pictures to talk.

That one of the police department's information technologists was being stalked and receiving threats promising to kill her or harm her son if she didn't stop poking around with her research meant the team had gotten too close to uncovering some long-buried truths. Their cold case investigation was heating up.

Maybe more than Trent wanted.

Not for the first time that day, his gaze wandered across the maze of detectives' desks to the cubicle where Katie sat, surrounded by a desktop computer, a stack of print files and a tall cup of some mocha-latte thing. She wore a pencil in her hair and a hands-free headset to talk on the phone with other tech gurus assigned to the department. The threats that had frightened her at home only seemed to motivate her now. Maybe diving into work was a way to distract herself from the fears for her and Tyler's safety. Or possibly, skipping lunch and never leaving her computer was some kind of atonement for allowing an outsider to breach her computers and gain inside information on the cold case squad's progress on different investigations. Or maybe there was still a little bit of that teenage girl who charged into battle left inside her, and instead of cowing her into submission, the danger that had come to her very doorstep had inspired her to take action—to save the investigation, to find justice for those victims whose murders had yet to be solved, to save her son.

Although Trent didn't understand all the jargon, Katie and the tech team at the lab had scoured all her computers, and, as she suspected, the mirroring had been done through the hot-spot device on her laptop and portable hard drive. The KCPD network was secure and only the public-record files she'd been using in her database had been accessed. Her laptop was back from the lab—unfortunately, with no usable prints but her own and his. And, with a legal warrant and approval from Ginny Rafferty-Taylor, Katie was back at work again, doing a little hacking herself to find out when the virus had been planted so she could determine her location at that time and identify anyone who might have had access to plant the bug in her system.

A paper wad smacked Trent in the forehead, drawing his attention back to the desk across from his. “Really?”

“Hey, I didn't want to be the only one working.” Max Krolikowski had plenty of ammunition on his messy desk, but he pointed to the stray missile that had landed on the tidy expanse of Trent's blotter before hanging up his phone. “That's the number that called Katie this morning.” Trent unfolded the note and smoothed it open to read the information Max had jotted there. “Just like you suspected. Disposable cell. It's been turned off so there's no way to trace it.”

Trent slipped the paper into a folder and glanced down at the license plate number and name of the rental company that had leased the black sports car to a John Smith, aka Mr. Fancy Dress Shoes, aka he still didn't have any freaking ID on the guy who'd gotten far too close to Katie and Tyler that morning. Just a bunch more puzzle pieces and no big picture yet.

“However, it does belong to a type of phone sold exclusively at your favorite big-box discount department store over the past year.”

Trent sat back in his chair. Like the anonymous John Smith with the fake license and credit card, that was almost worse than no help. “There are a dozen of those stores in the city. Assuming the perp bought it in KC.”

“Yeah, but they all have surveillance cameras in their electronics departments.”

“Are you willing to sit through twelve months of surveillance footage from all those stores to see who bought a phone and then try to identify John Smith or anybody else who's come up in one of our cases?”

“It's a long shot.”

“It's worse than a long shot.”

“But I'd do it for Katie.”

Trent agreed. “So would I.”

With an answering nod, Max picked up his phone again. “I'll start calling, see if the stores even keep security footage from that far back.”

“I'll find out if this guy used his John Smith ID to buy the phone or anything else.”

Trent closed out the pictures on his computer screen but paused before picking up his own phone to help Max with one of the tedious, but necessary, demands of police work. “What's the point of threatening Katie? She's not going to be arresting anybody. This bastard should be coming after me or you or Liv and Jim, or anybody else on the team, if he wanted to misdirect us or slow down our investigation.”

His partner hung up the phone without dialing. “You think this Smith dude tried to break in to her apartment to harm her? Not just to steal her computer or something like that?”

“I didn't give him a chance to finish the job. And he wasn't inclined to stop for a chat.”

Max scrubbed his fingers over his jaw in a thoughtful sigh. “Are the threats affecting her work?”

Trent glanced over to see Katie riffling through the files on her desk before tapping her headset and answering whatever the party on the other end of the call had asked. “She seems as scatterbrained and brilliant as ever.”

“Interesting.” If Max meant something by that cryptic response, he didn't elaborate. “But the scaring part's working?”

Trent could still feel the marks on his skin where she'd finally turned to him for solace and held on to him until her trembling had stopped. And he'd never forget the worry stamped on Tyler's sweet, innocent face. “It's even getting to her son. I mean, Jim's at the school shadowing Tyler during the day, so we know he's safe for now. But how do I reassure a nine-year-old that everything's going to be okay if I don't even know what I'm up against?”

“I don't have kids—Hell, that's a scary thought, ain't it—me and kids?” Max propped his elbows on his desk and steepled his fingers together. “But I think you just need to be there for them.”

“That's what Katie needs, too.” Trent summoned half a grin, appreciating Max's attempt at deep philosophical advice. “But I won't lie. It's hard to be spending that much time with her, given our history.”

“It's hard because you're a good guy. You think things through. You wait for an invitation. You don't just haul off and kiss a woman like I did Rosie when we first met and I was toasted out of my...” Max slapped his palm on top of his desk. “Well, hell's bells, junior, you
did
kiss her. And not one of those Dudley Do-Right pecks on the cheek, either, I'll bet.”

Groaning, Trent tried to temper Max's stunned excitement. “They were a mistake.”

“They? More than once?” Max swore under his breath. “You've been holding out on me. About time it happened between you two.”

Trent glared at his partner. “Nothing happened.”

“No fireworks?” Max looked disappointed. Oh, yeah, there'd been plenty of spontaneous combustion between them on that kitchen stool. But the
Die, Katie
bombardment on her computer screen had reminded Trent that Katie needed his protection, not his love. Max leaned forward and whispered, “Wrong kind of fireworks?”

Give his love life a rest, already. “It's Christmas, not Independence Day.”

“Huh?”

“Wrong time for fireworks. I was taking advantage of a vulnerable moment.” Of several vulnerable moments, it would seem.

Max grumbled a curse and sorted through the scattered papers on his desk. “Junior, you don't know how to take advantage. If Katie wasn't willing, you wouldn't—”

“Tyler's safety is her priority.” Trent pulled a phone book from a desk drawer and started looking up numbers, as relieved to be ending the conversation and getting back to work as he'd been to air some of his concerns with his most trusted friend in the first place. “And it should be. It's my priority, too. I want to find out who this jackass is and put him in my interrogation room. I want to get him out of their lives so Tyler can just be a kid again and Katie can...”

What? Go back to being his buddy when he wanted to be her bedmate? Her soul mate? Her everything? Now that she and Tyler were staying with him, his worries about their safety had eased a fraction, but remembering not to push for everything he wanted from her grew harder with every passing minute.

“Earth to big guy.” Olivia knocked on the corner of Trent's desk, pulling him from his thoughts. “The lieutenant wants us in her office. The press is covering Leland Asher's release.”

Setting aside his troubling thoughts, Trent pushed to his feet, taking a moment to tuck in his corduroy shirt and the thermal Henley he wore underneath before following Liv and Max across the room. Katie ended her call and scooped up her laptop, darting into the office on a waft of flowery scent that reminded Trent of freshly shampooed hair and warm curves pressed against his body. Wisely avoiding broadcasting that woman's physical effect on him, he took a position standing at the back of the room while Katie set up her laptop and sat at the front of the group. When his gaze locked on to a sly glimpse of cornflower blue directed back at him, Trent wondered if Katie was making a point of keeping her distance, too.

“Let's see what our friend has to say.” Lieutenant Rafferty-Taylor turned up the sound on the television screen as a twinkling of camera flashes captured the image of Leland Asher walking through the prison exit into the bright, cold sunshine of the wintry afternoon.

Looking like a politician on a campaign stump, Asher waved to the crowd of eager reporters, curiosity seekers and armed guards who were there to make sure nothing got out of hand before the alleged mobster left the premises. Although the once stocky man had lost a lot of weight, probably due to the cancer, there was a sense of entitlement to his carriage. Plus, he wore the impeccably tailored suit and dress coat of a man who still had access to plenty of money. The man with a briefcase beside him led the way to a small podium, where he identified himself as Asher's attorney and made a statement regarding his client's release.

But the words coming from the television were just white noise as Katie began to fidget in her chair. She drummed her fingers over her keyboard without typing anything and kept drawing her hair between her fists in a ponytail before letting it fall back to her shoulders when she realized she had no clip to secure it. What was buzzing through that brain of hers now?

An elbow butted up against his, diverting Trent's attention to his far too observant partner. “You up for this, junior? You want me to take over shadowing Katie?”

“No.” He wasn't about to leave Tyler and Katie's security up to anyone else. “I want you to be there to take up the slack in case I can't get the job done.”

“You not get a job done? Trust me, junior. That'll never happen.”

Olivia sat on the corner of the table. She nodded to the TV. “He's on. Turn it up.”

A dark-haired woman wearing a fur coat ran up to the podium to kiss Leland's cheek. The woman had a striking strand of white framing her face when she turned to the camera. And while she looked adoringly up at the gaunt, graying man, he wound his arm around her waist and held her to his side.

Katie pointed to the screen. “That's Beverly Eisenbach, Mr. Asher's significant other. She's the psychologist who counseled Matt Asher and Stephen March as teenagers.”

“Any response to your query about whether or not Leland was ever a patient of hers?” the lieutenant asked.

Katie shrugged. “Talk to her attorney and get a warrant?”

Trent tuned out Asher's pontification about learning from his mistakes and how his incarceration hadn't affected his business investments one iota, as well as the updates on his health. Taking Lieutenant Rafferty-Taylor's lead, he turned the gathering into an impromptu staff meeting. “I tracked down the house mother from the sorority Bev Eisenbach and Isabel Asher belonged to. She's retired now, but she remembers the two of them taking classes and hanging out together before Isabel left school. Night and day, she called them. It wasn't just a blonde-brunette thing, either. The house mother said she never understood how two young women with such different personalities got along so well. Dr. Eisenbach was neat, organized, intent on keeping her scholarships and earning her degree, while Isabel was more of a free spirit who was there for the social opportunities.”

The petite blonde who led the cold case group folded her arms in front of her and nodded, urging Trent to continue. “Does the house mother remember meeting Leland? Can we prove that Leland and Dr. Eisenbach knew each other twenty-five years ago? And does that information do anything to help our case?”

“The house mother remembers Leland coming on campus to attend events with Isabel. They had no parents, so he was more than a big brother to her.”

Olivia chimed in. “We can trace suspected criminal activity to Leland all the way back to that time. He was already starting to amass his fortune, so I'm sure Bev would have been interested in meeting Isabel's big brother.”

“Maybe that's what she liked about Isabel,” Max interjected. “She could hook her up to a man who was destined to make a lot of money. Clearly, it paid off for her.”

Trent thrust his fingers into the back pockets of his jeans. “The house mother remembers the guy Isabel Asher was dating, too. ‘A prissy Italian guy' is how she described him.”

“Francisco Dona.” Katie supplied the name as she typed on her laptop and read the info off the screen. “He was a small-time dealer and user. Looks like they dated each other, or at least used together, on and off for several years until she died. He was questioned as a suspect in Isabel's death, but no charges were ever filed.”