When the Storm Breaks (19 page)

Pointing to her chest, she silently tried to communicate the situation to Sean.

Sean stared at her in complete disbelief. He reached a tentative hand out to her breast, only to have her smack it away. She pressed her own hand over her chest in an attempt to muffle her words.

“The microphone is still on,” she said between clenched teeth.

“Fuck.”

Sean had taken off his earpiece once the cab had pulled away from the curb. But he’d be willing to bet that Aidan still had his receiver activated, which meant that he’d gotten an earful.

Claire and Sean shared a pained look. She rubbed her head like she suddenly had a headache.

“Turn it off,” Sean said quietly. “I’ll erase the end of the tape before we turn it in to Evidence.”

Claire disconnected the microphone, reaching deep between her breasts in order to disengage the recording device. “I’m sorry. I can’t get used to living under a spotlight. I have to forget about the microphone or I’d go crazy. Are you sure you won’t get in trouble erasing some tape?”

“The information isn’t relevant to the investigation,” was all he said. He’d have some explaining to do with Aidan, but it wouldn’t be a problem.

“I’ll go get my things,” she said. “Olivia can give me a ride home.”

“We’ll follow you.”

Without another word Claire turned and went up the stairs to the lobby. She passed Aidan, who told her Olivia was waiting inside. She knew by looking at his face that he’d heard every word.

Aidan continued past her down the stairs and crossed to Sean. “Do you know what you’re doing?” Aidan asked bluntly.

Sean tucked his hands into his front pockets. “I’m not doing anything. Things got a little out of hand one night. It won’t happen again.”

I wouldn’t bet the farm on that one
, Aidan thought. “Olivia’s worried about her.”

“Why?”

“She said Claire is a very private person and it’s not easy for her to be under constant surveillance. I agree. She sure as hell doesn’t need the additional stress of fighting with you.”

“I know.” Sean sighed. “I try, but sometimes I can’t stop the words in time. Watching her being pawed by losers….” He shrugged.

Aidan studied his cousin. “You’re the most disciplined person I’ve ever known. Work with her instead of bickering. Hell, if you’re nice to her, at least you might get it out of your system.”

“And then what? I get removed from the case for sleeping with a witness? Or worse, I get her hurt—even killed—because my mind isn’t on the investigation?” Sean shook his head. “Won’t happen. Besides, neither one of us is looking for that kind of entanglement right now. It’s under control.”

“The kind of red-hot chemistry you two have isn’t known to be convenient and timely and tame,” Aidan cut in. “That’s why it’s called an ‘entanglement.’”

“I said it was under control. Look, can we drop this?” Sean asked, gesturing to the women coming down the stairs.

Aidan shrugged and got into the car, preparing to escort Claire and Olivia home for the night. Sean didn’t speak again.

Washington, D.C.

Tuesday morning

C
laire sat next to Afton in the offices of Camelot. Sean and Aidan would soon be there, but Claire was too annoyed to wait for them. Besides, their damn earphones had told them everything she was going to tell Afton.

“Date number four was an absolute, total, and complete disaster,” Claire said.

“Come on, surely last night wasn’t that bad.”

“It was worse.” She began to describe it but stopped when Afton’s assistant showed Sean and Aidan into the office and shut the door behind them.

“Hey, Afton, Claire. How’s it going?” Sean asked cheerfully.

Approaching the desk, he set down a high-heeled shoe sealed in a zipper bag in front of Claire. “You can have your shoe back. We aren’t going to be pressing any charges, so we won’t need it as evidence.”

Claire practically snarled at him as she snatched her
shoe off the desk. Sean pressed his lips together to suppress the laughter dancing in his eyes.

Mouth open, Afton looked at both Aidan and Sean. “Shoes? Charges? What’s going on?”

“Nothing, at least as far as the investigation is concerned. You might want to take Dr. Petrov out of your catalogue, though,” Aidan said carefully, rubbing a hand around his mouth to hide the smile there. He took a seat between Claire and Sean and carefully avoided eye contact with his partner as they both struggled not to laugh out loud.

“Why?” Afton asked.

Both men snickered.

“Because Leonard Petrov is a pervert,” Claire said flatly.

“Now, Claire,” Sean said, praying he wouldn’t lose it. “We investigated him thoroughly and found nothing to support any evidence of a crime. He just has, um, unusual tastes.”

“Very unusual.” Aidan chuckled, but he straightened in his chair when Claire turned angry black eyes on him.

“What on earth happened last night?” Afton asked.

“Leonard attacked me at the end of the date,” Claire said, “and these examples of Washington D.C.’s Finest almost wet their pants laughing.”

“He didn’t actually attack you,” Sean pointed out, chuckling in spite of himself.

“That creep licked my foot!” Claire brandished the shoe as evidence.

Both men doubled over and howled. They laughed until they cried and still kept on laughing. Claire took the
shoe and whacked Aidan with it, because he was the only one she could reach.

“It isn’t funny,” she said.

“Oh, God, yes it is! If you’d only—seen the expression—on your face,” Sean managed between gasping laughs.

“I’ve had it with you two clowns,” Claire said. “You’re supposed to be protecting me, not laughing yourself into a coma at my expense.”

“I consider it a fringe benefit,” Aidan said, wiping his eyes.

She gave him another smack with her shoe.

Safely out of reach, Sean kept chuckling. As she glared at him, she realized she’d rarely seen this side of Sean before. Aidan was usually the mischievous one, but right now Sean’s dancing blue eyes and infectious laughter were delightful, taking years off his age. Normally her own sense of humor would have been charmed by the entire situation, and she’d be laughing as hard as both men put together.

But she wasn’t feeling like herself. She’d spent the last four nights living like a bug under a microscope, wired for sound and having every moment studied and catalogued for the police files. Death-row inmates had more privacy than she did. It was fraying her nerves and temper.

“Now I’m dying of curiosity,” Afton said carefully. “What happened on your date?”

Claire took a deep breath. “I should have known it would get weird when the guy introduced himself. He was short, blonde, and had a very slight build. I’m sure I outweighed him by at least…by quite a bit.”

“Wait a minute.” Afton pulled up Petrov’s file on
her computer. “That doesn’t match his photo or description.”

“He said he’d had someone else come in for the initial consultation and photo. He claimed he’d joined another service using his own picture and had very few replies, so he asked a more attractive friend to stand in for him.”

Afton made a
tsk
ing sound and typed something in the database.

“I was pretty sure right away that he wasn’t the killer,” Claire said. “Way too short and skinny and blonde. In fact, I thought he was completely harmless.”

“And you said so into the microphone. We felt confident you were safe,” Aidan pointed out.

“You’re cops. You’re supposed to know a pervert when you see one.” She stuffed her shoe into her purse so that she wouldn’t be tempted to hit him with it again. “Anyway, we had a quick dinner. I cut the evening short because it was a dead end.”

“Dead end from an investigative standpoint or a romantic one?” Afton asked with a grin.

“Both,” Sean and Claire answered together.

She turned her head around to look at him. “How do you know I wasn’t attracted to him?”

“Come on,” Sean said. “I’ve been watching your every move for the last four evenings. I can read body language well enough to know when there’s no chemistry between two people.”

Not to mention the fact that he’d engaged in enough verbal and physical foreplay with her to recognize when she was interested in a man. She hadn’t been even remotely attracted to the harmless podiatrist, which had allowed
Sean to relax enough to see the humor in the entire situation.

“Great,” she said. “Just one more piece of my private life ripped out into the open for public commentary and entertainment.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sean said, no longer laughing.

“That’s what they all say.” She wanted desperately to rub away the unhappy ache building behind her forehead, but she figured he would probably read and understand that gesture as well.

“So you cut the evening short and?…” Afton asked.

“We took a cab back here and he started to get kind of pushy,” Claire said. “He wanted to go somewhere for a drink or drop me at my place or whatever. I wasn’t worried, but I made sure I said good-bye on the steps outside the building.”

“She stood on the step above his to emphasize his lack of height,” Sean said. “Nice move.”

“Christ, am I that easy to read?” Claire asked.

“Don’t answer,” Aidan said quickly to Sean. “It’s one of those trick female questions.”

“You’re killing me,” Afton said. “Finish it.”

“I said good night and pulled my keys out,” Claire said, “but he jostled me and I dropped them on the stairs.”

“Allow me to point out,” Aidan said, “I was in position less than fifteen feet away and Sean was across the street in his car.”

“Yeah, yeah, I was never in any danger. We got that part, Detective,” Claire said. “Anyway, Leonard bends down to pick up my keys, but then stays there at my feet, staring at my sandals. He says I shouldn’t wear
high heels, they cause all kinds of problems, blah, blah.”

“Sounds like good medical advice to me. He is a podiatrist, after all,” Afton said.

“Yeah, well then he starts to undo the straps on my right shoe, saying how they cut off the circulation when they’re tight. He looks at my feet and says how beautiful they are, how I should take better care of them and not subject them to such stress.”

Sean began to snicker again. “You should have seen Claire’s face. Total deer-caught-in-headlights look.”

“So he starts rubbing at the marks the strap left on my foot,” Claire said, ignoring Sean. “He tells me he has just the trick to make things feel better. Then he
licks
my foot from toes to ankle.”

“Omigod,” Afton said. “What did you do?”

“She executed one of the more interesting gymnastic moves I’ve ever seen,” Aidan said. “She went straight up in the air and backwards at the same time. I took the guy down about a second later. When I looked up, the revolving door was going around and Claire was
gone.”

“And there’s poor Leonard getting cuffed, her shoe still clutched in his hand, wondering what the hell is going on,” Sean said, grinning.

“Poor Leonard? How about poor Claire? Do you have any idea how revolting that was for me?” she said angrily. “And the whole thing gets recorded and logged into the evidence file for this case. It’s humiliating.”

“I think you’re overreacting,” Sean said. “Leonard insisted he was very sorry if he offended you and wanted to offer you a free foot exam to show he’s got no hard feelings.”

This time Afton joined in the explosion of laughter that echoed around the room. Claire waited until it was quiet before turning to Afton.

“
Et tu Brute?
” she asked.

“You have to admit it’s kind of funny.”

“Really? This pervert is running around dating clients from your company and it’s funny?”

“That reminds me,” Afton said, turning to type a notation on the computer.

“Are you removing him from your database?” Claire asked.

“No, we’ll just see if we can find a foot fetishist to hook him up with,” Afton said.

Everyone but Claire laughed.

Afton sighed as she looked at Claire’s angry face. “Of course we’ll remove him.”

“I’m starting to wonder about this service of yours. Look at my last two dates—gay and weird, in that order. Washouts, along with the other dates I’ve had so far.” Claire felt mean for being hard on Billy, but facts were facts.

“I know the last few days have been difficult,” Sean said, “but remember what we’re trying to achieve here.”

Afton added, “You’re not the average customer looking for a dream date.”

“That’s how I started out,” Claire said stubbornly.

“But now we’re trying to help the police catch a killer. How can you say the dates were a disaster if through them we’ve managed to eliminate some suspects?” Afton asked gently.

“Because I wanted to find…”…
someone like Sean.
Claire forced herself not to look at him. “Oh, forget it. I just feel all this tension building, like something is going
to happen and I can’t do anything about it. I feel like the butt of some huge cosmic joke right now. Usually I’d be laughing, too, but I can’t.”

“Sorry,” Aidan said. “We didn’t help with the Leonard thing.”

“I thought for sure you’d see how funny it was,” Sean said.

“Try my sense of humor after you’ve caught the killer,” Claire said, turning on him. “Have you found anything yet?”

“We’ve run several dozen Camelot clients through police background checks,” Aidan said.

“I assume you didn’t find anything interesting, since these individuals have all been extensively screened by our own private security firm,” Afton said, tapping her pen on the desk. She really hoped her sister’s screening methodology would stand up to checks run by the police.

Sean and Aidan looked at each other.

“Our checks are a lot more thorough than those done by a private firm, although we missed the photo switch by the podiatrist,” Sean said. “In the future, we’ll check driver’s license photos against Camelot’s records.”

“We have access to national criminal databases,” Aidan added, “and we can see when there’s evidence of things like sealed records or juvenile convictions. We’re also less likely to take things at face value than a corporate security firm, which works on a very high volume of clients.”

“What are you trying to say?” Afton asked.

“Among the approximately four dozen clients we’ve screened to date, we’ve found some pretty serious misdemeanor crimes. Not surprising, since I’m sure your private firm only did a check for felony offenses,” Sean said.

“That’s right. Maura decided to only flag felonies because they were getting so many hits for neighborhood noise complaints and violations of doggie leash laws.”

“I understand the policy. But a lot of felonies get pleaded down to misdemeanors, so they’re a red flag for us,” Sean said.

Afton braced herself. “Go on.”

“We found three clients who are legally married, although we can’t confirm the de facto status of those unions.”

“Did the files show that?”

“No. They just said single, no mention of divorce or separation.”

Clenching her jaw, Afton picked up her pen again. “I’ll need their names. Withholding that type of information is grounds for cancellation of the membership.”

“And we’ve found evidence of at least four clients with sealed juvenile records. I’m assuming everyone is required to divulge any and all criminal activity in their past, and so we flagged these names as well,” Sean said.

“What kind of juvenile records?”

“It could be anything from malicious mischief to drug charges to murder,” Sean said. “When juvenile records are sealed, nobody has access to them. But we’ll speak to the arresting officers and see if they remember the cases. Until then, we’ll have to assume the worst.”

“Why?” Claire said.

“Many serial killers become active in their teens,” Sean said without looking away from Afton. “Things like interest in the occult, misdemeanor sex crimes, animal cruelty—these can all be precursors of true sociopathic behavior in adulthood.”

“If the crimes are that serious, why can’t you access the files now?” Claire asked.

“Our legal system believes anything that happens before the age of eighteen shouldn’t be held against someone once he or she is an adult,” Aidan said. “It takes a court order to unseal juvenile records, and we don’t have enough evidence for that.”

“Great. So if the police can’t even get this information, how is Afton’s private security firm supposed to do a thorough background check?” Claire demanded.

“Amen.” Afton threw down her pen in disgust.

“You do the best you can,” Sean said. “There’s nothing wrong with Camelot’s system. You have the same limitations that your competitors do.”

“What I have is a personal responsibility to my clients, people like Claire,” Afton shot back. “They believe we offer them a safe alternative to the singles scene. What a farce.”

“Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?” Sean asked.

“A week ago,” Afton said, “when you came to me and said Camelot might have a killer hidden among the clientele, I thought you were crazy, that there was no way a murderer could get through the screening process. I can’t say that now. This could be the end of my sister’s company, her dream.”