Ah, hell
.
Then he kissed her.
She exhaled softly. That little rush of air across his skin sent blood surging, rushing to his groin. He grew immediately hard, so hard he ached. He slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her deeply, fully, sliding his hands around her back and wrapping her in his embrace.
Her lips parted farther and she gave him back his passionate kiss, her tongue teasing his. For a long, hazily erotic time, they explored each other’s mouths, both of them panting. When he finally lifted his head, she gazed at him through eyes half-lidded with desire. Her lips were wet and plump from his kisses.
She wanted him
. Fear, shocking as ice water, sluiced over him. What the hell was he doing? He knew better than to get involved with a victim—especially with
this
victim. He needed to stop this. The only thing he wanted to give her—all he dared give to her—was his protection.
He set her away from him and dragged in a ragged breath, feeling like a horny teenager. He ducked his head as he tried to regain his detached composure. When he stole a glance at her, he saw in her expression that she was having the same struggle.
Stop understanding her
, he admonished himself.
She swallowed, drawing his attention to that small flutter in her throat. Then she raised her gaze to his. “Thank you,” she said, far more steadily than he felt. She grasped the two sides of her blouse and pulled them tight together, folding her arms over them for good measure.
“For what?” he asked.
“For—for unbuttoning my blouse.”
He almost choked. “Sure.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” she continued, blushing.
“No. It wasn’t you. You’re just having a delayed reaction,” he muttered. “I was out of line.”
Idiot.
He’d done exactly what he’d just vowed he wouldn’t do. Watching her closely, he saw the fragile tension he’d seen in too many terrified victims, too many heartbroken families, not to know the signs. He guessed she was about two seconds away from breaking down. He’d likely made things worse rather than better for her.
He
knew
he’d made things worse for himself.
She took a deep breath, the movement pulling the edges of her blouse a fraction apart again. “A delayed reaction. Yes. That must be it.”
“I’ll wait right outside the door until you—” he said, keeping his gaze determinedly above her neck. He gestured vaguely. “—finish.” She suddenly looked so miserable that, without thinking, he touched her chin, barely a brush of skin against skin. “Call me if you need me to do anything else for you,” he said.
She blushed, the hint of a smile on her face. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Her smile faded as her gaze sharpened. “Dev? You did go to Angola, didn’t you?”
He made a show of glancing at his watch. “I’ll need those clothes. I’ve got to get them to the crime lab.”
“Come on, Dev. I’ve got enough sense to know that getting my clothes to the crime lab at one-thirty in the morning versus eight o’clock in the morning is not going to mean catching or losing my attacker.”
He opened his mouth to tell her that certain chemicals or fingerprints or fibers degraded rapidly, but while that was true, he doubted any of those elements applied in this case. “Maybe not,” he said. “But if either one of us is going to get any sleep tonight, we need to get it taken care of.”
“Fontenot wouldn’t see you, would he?”
“That’s right, he wouldn’t,” he said almost defiantly. He bit his tongue before “So what?” managed to escape.
“He’ll see me.” She gave him a smile that held a hint of flirtation. “If you’re nice, I’ll let you go with me.”
He pushed his fingers through his hair. Damn it, she was right. She’d been right from the start. The only way he’d get Fontenot to talk to him was if she was with him.
“Why do you want to see him so badly?” she continued. “Why were you so adamant about doing it alone?”
Dev wiped a hand across his face, then slid it around to rub the back of his neck. “I want to look in the bastard’s eye and ask him if he’s killing my kids.”
She lifted her good hand to touch the bandage at her neck. “I want to ask him that, too,” she said. “If whoever did this to me was the same person who killed the three boys, it doesn’t make sense. I need to ask him what’s going on. Fontenot wouldn’t hurt me.”
He gaped. “How can you say that? Look at your hand, your neck.”
“That’s precisely why. If Fontenot’s behind the murders, he instructed the killer not to hurt me.” She looked down at her hand. “This couldn’t have been the same person. Or—” She looked up. “Or if it was, then they defied Fontenot’s orders.”
Dev gave his head a shake. He didn’t know if he was just too tired to think straight or what, but Connor’s reasoning was making a lot of sense. Maybe Fontenot hadn’t meant for her to be injured. Maybe he just wanted to scare her. Or maybe—
“I’ll consider it,” he said, hoping to assuage her. “Right now though, I need those clothes.”
He slipped through the door, closing it behind him. Her question about Fontenot had tamed his libido some, but he was once again having trouble wiping the image from his brain of her undressing. He could picture her dropping that skirt, reaching behind her to unhook her bra and pushing her breasts out in the process, hooking her fingers in the soft, silky material of her underpants and sliding them down her legs.
He gritted his teeth. He was in big trouble. What was he going to do with her—about her? For more reasons than the obvious, which again strained painfully against the rough material of his jeans, he was
not
getting personally involved with Reghan Connor. She was a victim, as well as an investigative reporter he didn’t believe he could trust. Hell, he
knew
he couldn’t trust her.
From the back of his mind came a snicker.
Too late to worry about all that.
The solid door between them was a big help in forcing his brain back into a detached, professional mode. Thank God. That ability was the one thing that made him able to deal with the violence and tragedy he saw every day. He consciously relaxed his shoulders, arched his neck, and reminded himself that his job was to serve and protect, especially where Connor was concerned.
The door opened and one bare, delicately muscled arm held out the bag of clothes. “Thanks,” he said, deliberately looking away from her firm, tanned skin. “Okay, great. I’ll get these to the lab right away. Penn’s across the hall, if you need anything while I’m gone.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
From the tone of her voice, it sounded as though she’d done a lot better job than he had of regaining her composure.
“As soon as I wash up and get in bed, I’ll be better.”
“Sleep tight,” he said as she closed the door.
He drove to the police station to deliver the clothes to the Crime Scene Unit, going over in his mind what he knew about the case. Three homeless kids, connected by the Thibaud Johnson Center, killed within ten days, all three offed in the same way with the same weapon. But now the killer had changed part of his MO. He’d still used the scalpel, had still gone for the carotid artery, but he’d moved from homeless kids to Reghan Connor.
Dev had to figure out why. And if Connor’s theory was correct, there was only one person, other than the killer, who could supply the answer.
Gerard Fontenot.
…
By the time Dev got back from the crime lab, it was nearly 2:30 a.m. To say that the past two days had been a nightmare was a gross understatement. He’d been to five crime scenes and had had no more than a catnap for forty-eight hours. The six hours plus that he’d spent on the road to and from Angola had been the icing on the cake.
Tiredly, he trudged into the kitchen to get a glass of cold water. To his surprise, Nicky Renato, his fourth—and only living—candidate for the Safefutures Scholarships, was sitting at the scarred wooden table, his head down and lolling dejectedly on his shoulders.
“Nick, glad to see you. I guess you got my message. Have you talked to Penn?” Nicky, like most of the kids, knew about Brian’s death, but had he heard about Darnell and Jimmy?
Nicky looked up and Dev saw the telltale puffy redness around his eyes and the vacant stare. “Nicky, what the hell? Are you high?”
“Not really,” Nicky said. When Nicky dug a crushed pack of cigarettes from his pocket, Dev spotted the strip bandages on his right forefinger and thumb. He thought about what Liz had said about the killer cutting himself. Could Nicky have killed the boys? Dev couldn’t even imagine it. Sure, the kid fit Connor’s general description, although Dev couldn’t see her describing Nicky’s scrawny frame as small but strong. Still, as Dev had said to Connor, he never made assumptions. He went over and snatched the cigarettes away. When he did, he got a whiff of bourbon. Maybe Nicky wasn’t high so much as drunk.
“Hey,” Nicky said dully.
“No smoking,” he said and tossed them into the trash. “What happened to your fingers?”
“Cu—cutting H,” Nicky said miserably, without looking up.
Dev grimaced as a small sigh of relief loosened the tightness in his chest.
Cutting heroin with a razor blade
. How sad was it that Nicky dealing and using a deadly addictive drug was suddenly the lesser of two possible evils? “Why, Nicky? You’ve done so well. Why blow your chances for the scholarship now? Is it because of Brian and Darnell and Jimmy?”
“They’re all dead,” Nicky said, shaking his head slowly back and forth. “I can’t do this anymore. Can’t sleep, can’t hardly think. I didn’t mean to—” he looked at his trembling hands, then lifted his bleary gaze. “I did a bad thing,” he mumbled.
Dread settled heavily on Dev’s chest. “What bad thing?”
“I can’t—” Nicky stammered. “You’d ne-never understand.”
“Tell me. Does it have something to do with Jimmy’s death?” From the day they’d met at the center, Jimmy and Nicky had been best friends.
“Jimmy?” Nicky said on a short laugh. “No. Nothing to do with Jimmy.”
“Then what? What’s got you so upset?”
The boy rubbed a hand down his face. “Gonna die,” he mumbled.
Dev winced. So that’s what was wrong. Three scholarship recipients from the center were dead. Nicky was the only one left. “Listen to me. You are
not
going to die.” He squeezed the boy’s narrow shoulder. “Not while I’m around. I promise you, I’ll keep you safe.”
“Safe?” Nicky spat the word out on a hollow laugh. “You can’t—keep me safe. Look at Brian and Darnell and—” The puffy eyes turned red and filled with tears. They ran down his face when he blinked, and Dev didn’t think he was even aware of them. “And look at Jimmy,” Nicky whispered.
“Don’t worry, okay? Let’s put you in the crash room and you can sleep it off. You’ll be safe there.”
“No, I won’t. Not there. Not anywhere.” He closed his eyes, spilling more tears down his cheeks. “It’s gonna get worse. You can’t stop it. Nobody’s future is safe.”
Dev stared at Nicky in sudden alarm. The kid’s words had echoed Gerard Fontenot’s almost exactly. “Who told you all that?”
“Don’t know.”
“Yes, you do, Nicky. Tell me.”
Nicky shook his head slowly back and forth. “Shouldn’t have said anything. Shouldn’t have—” Nicky’s head drooped again. Dev knew he’d probably gotten all he was going to get out of the boy tonight. He needed to let him sleep for a few hours.
Meanwhile, he’d call Givens to bring Nicky in for questioning. It was obvious he knew something about the murders. He’d have a uniformed officer put on Nicky, too. Dev wasn’t taking any chances.
“Come on,” Dev said. “Let’s get you into bed before you pass out.”
The crash room was a small alcove down the hall from the office. It had a single bed, blankets, a tiny television, and a wind-up alarm clock. Only he and Penn had keys that would open it for a kid who needed to sleep off the effects of drink or drugs or have some privacy if they were fighting DTs. They didn’t lock anyone in, but they policed who got to use the room. Dev helped Nicky up and half-carried him there.
“I didn’t want the H—” Nicky said. “Didn’t want it.”
“Who gave it to you? Did somebody try to make you use?”
Nicky hesitated. “I don’t know.”
Frustrated, Dev half-tossed Nicky onto the single bed and threw a blanket over him. “Okay. You sleep for a while.” Before he’d finished the sentence, Nicky’s mouth was open and he was snoring quietly. Dev eased out of the room and closed the door.
Back in the office, he called Givens.
“I’m never going to get another full night’s sleep in my life, am I?” Givens said when he picked up the phone.
“Roy, I’ve got my last scholarship kid here. Nicky Renato. He knows something about the murders. He quoted Fontenot to me. He said, ‘Nobody’s future is safe.’”
Givens sighed. “You bringing him in tonight?”
“No. He’s passed out right now.”
“He’s high? Dev—”
“I’m telling you, he quoted the DVD. There’s no way he’s had access to it, so he had to have heard it from Fontenot or from the murderer.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I’ll bring him in first thing in the morning. Lean on him hard. He’ll crack.”
“Fine.”
“And Roy, once you’re done grilling him, can we get a protective detail on him? I don’t want anything happening to him.”
He heard Givens’ unamused laugh. “What? First Ms. Connor and now this kid? Didn’t Hamilton tell you we’re too shorthanded to babysit for you?”
Dev gritted his teeth against the sarcasm in the other detective’s voice. “Yeah.” It was hell being on the sidelines and having to ask Givens for everything. He wasn’t used to being in this position. But he’d do whatever he had to if it meant keeping Nicky safe. “But you know as well as I do that he’s the next intended victim. And he knows something. It’s only a matter of time before the killer comes after him. Ask Hamilton, will you? It doesn’t have to be 24/7. Twelve hours? Say, eight-to-eight. I’ll watch him here at the center at night.”
Givens sighed audibly. “I’ll give you a call back.”
“Thanks, Roy,” Dev said. After he hung up, he lay down on the couch, doubling up a pillow behind his head.