Ricochet

Chapter 22

THE BARKEEP WIPED LEMON JUICE FROM HIS FINGERS AND cleaned the blade of his knife on a towel. “This rain, can’t say I blame ’em for calling off the search. They’ll probably never find the body now. But I guess that means it’ll forever remain a mystery. Was it murder or suicide?” He tossed aside his towel and leaned on the bar. “What do you think happened?”

Duncan looked up at him with bleary eyes and said hoarsely, “I know what happened.”

Smitty’s barkeep scoffed. “Sure you do, pal. Sure you do.”

Following his altercation with Savich, Duncan had come straight to the tavern. He’d been escorted out of the detention center by the guards, who advised him to go somewhere and cool off before coming back. He didn’t blame them. They’d only been doing their job. He supposed he should be glad that Savich hadn’t pressed charges for assault.

He’d left peacefully and didn’t return, having realized the futility of confronting the jail guards about Gordie Ballew’s suicide. He hadn’t been in the proper state of mind to conduct an inquiry that important. He’d also figured it would be a waste of time. No one working as a mole for Savich was going to give him up. Not with Gordie’s blood still fresh.

He’d sought solace in Smitty’s, where whiskey and heartache were undiluted. Against his will, his eyes gravitated once again to the silent TV set behind the bar. The press conference dragged on. In the words of the barkeep, the body was fish food by now. Why not just sum it up with that? Why not conclude the thing and return to Seinfeld?

The discovery of Elise’s missing sandal had ended all hope that she had survived her plunge from the bridge, whether voluntary or not. Now even the search for her remains had been canceled. End of case. Tomorrow everybody would pick up where they’d left off ten days ago.

Everybody but him.

Suddenly the door was hauled open, admitting a gust of rain and a customer. Standing on the threshold, she pulled the door closed, then turned around. Duncan groaned and reached for his drink.

DeeDee took a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness, then spotted Duncan at the bar and made her way to it. She shrugged out of her rain slicker and shook water off it. As she sat down on the bar stool next to his, she gave her head a hard shake that flung rainwater off her hair and onto him.

He frowned and made a show of brushing drops off his shirt sleeve. “They have these cool things now, called umbrellas.”

“I left mine in your car this morning.”

“Out for a stroll? You just happened to be passing by and got thirsty?”

“I ran out of options and finally deduced that you might be here.”

“How did you deduce that?”

“You came here only one other time that I know of. The time the murder we were investigating involved a mother and baby who’d been decapitated.”

He saluted her with his glass. “Thanks for the reminder. Just what I needed to cheer me up.”

“On that occasion you told me that this was a good place for getting drunk.” She looked around with distaste. “I guess.” To the barkeeper she said, “Diet Coke.” When he served it, she nodded down at Duncan ’s highball. “How many of those has he had?”

“Let’s just say I’m glad you’re here to drive him home.”

“That many?”

“Go away, DeeDee,” Duncan mumbled.

“Hey, I’m the one with a right to be pissed, not you,” she said angrily. “You haven’t been driving around in the rain for hours looking for you. I have. I went to your house, your gym, everywhere I could think of.”

“I’m touched by your concern.”

“Why did you just split like that without telling anybody where you were going? Why didn’t you answer your cell phone?”

“Hint, hint: I didn’t want company tonight.”

“Too bad. You’ve got it.” She unwrapped a straw, stuck it in her Coke, drew hard on it.

“If you’re hoping to lift my spirits and make me feel better about things, you’re wasting your time,” he said. “No matter what, I’m not going to feel better.”

“Then why are you bothering to get tanked?”

“Because I fucking want to,” he snapped.

DeeDee maintained eye contact for several beats, then looked up at the television where Chief Taylor was still silently waxing poetic. He was flanked at the podium by Bill Gerard and Cato Laird.

“You heard that the recovery mission was officially canceled?”

He nodded.

“That was decided after the judge and Gerard talked to Chief Taylor. Those pictures of Mrs. Laird and Savich sort of changed the complexion of the situation.” She paused to allow Duncan to comment. He didn’t, only continued to stare morosely into his highball. “The judge won’t be saying anything or answering any questions tonight, but he insisted on being present at the press conference when the announcement was made.

“They, uh, they also agreed not to publicly address Mrs. Laird’s connection to Savich unless and until they’re forced. Which isn’t right, but it’s certainly…cleaner. For everyone.” DeeDee took another pull on her straw. Still Duncan said nothing. After a time, she asked, “Have you eaten today?”

He shook his head.

“You should eat something.”

“I should eat. I should get some sleep. I should refocus on other cases. I get it, DeeDee,” he said testily. “God knows you’ve harped on me enough the last several days. Stop mothering me. Get out of here. Go home. Leave me alone.”

She was hurt by his rejection of her help and concern. It also made her angry. “What is it with you these days? Where is this coming from? Tell me, Duncan. Is it about her?” She looked at him with consternation. “It is, isn’t it? She got to you, didn’t she? I mean really got to you. From the very start.”

He planted his elbows on the bar and rested his forehead on the heels of his hands, curling his fingers up into his disheveled hair. “Yeah,” he said gruffly. “She got to me from the very start.”

She had sensed this coming from the night of Gary Ray Trotter’s fatal shooting. Or maybe Duncan had been doomed the first time he saw Elise Laird at the awards dinner. Gordie Ballew’s sad fate had been the proverbial last straw, but the judge’s deceitful wife was at the crux of her partner’s misery. Once his path had crossed Elise Laird’s, his slide into this pit seemed inevitable.

“I’ll have a refill,” he said, sliding his glass toward the bartender.

“ Duncan -”

“I asked you nicely to leave me alone.”

“What happened, happened, Duncan. There’s nothing you can do about it now.”

“Wrong. I can get drunk.”

DeeDee threw up her hands. “Okay, fine.” She motioned the bartender to pour him another shot.

She noticed that the press conference had ended. An anchor-woman now appeared to be solemnly summarizing the story. Then the screen returned to Seinfeld. They watched the muted TV for several moments, then he said, “She begged for my help.”

DeeDee looked at him in profile, the flickering light of the television set playing across his careworn features. “Elise Laird?”

“She came to me twice. And twice I refused to help her.”

DeeDee dreaded what she was about to hear, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking for details. “What are you telling me, Duncan? That she came to you in private?”

“First she passed me a note, asking to see me alone. I didn’t respond. Then she surprised me by showing up at my house. Early on that Saturday morning when we later went to the country club. The table on the terrace. White umbrellas.”

“I remember.”

“Early that morning you called my house suggesting we confront the judge about Napoli ’s connection to Trotter. Elise was in my living room when you called.”

She imagined Duncan carrying on a telephone conversation with her while their suspect was within earshot. She must have sounded like a fool, prattling on about the case they were building against Elise Laird while she and Duncan were eyeball to eyeball. DeeDee hated nothing worse than being made to look a fool. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now,” he said shortly.

“You hustled her out of your house before I got there, then played out that little farce on the country club terrace, pretending for the judge and me that…that…”

“That we hadn’t been alone together earlier that day.”

DeeDee had to forcibly tamp down her rising anger. If they quarreled, she might never hear all this, and she needed to hear it. Moreover, Duncan needed to confess it. If he didn’t, it would continue to eat at him and he might never recover. “What happened when she came to your house?”

“What difference does it make now?”

“If it makes no difference, then tell me.”

“We were coming at her like she was a suspect.”

“She was.”

“She had another story.”

“I’m sure she did. Did you believe it?”

His defensiveness slowly ebbed. DeeDee watched the tension in his shoulders relax. Softly he said, “Not a word of it.”

She sat quietly for a moment, considered ordering another Coke, but decided not to because she didn’t want to distract Duncan. “You said she begged for your help twice.”

“The second time, she called my cell phone, left a time and place on my voice mail.”

“Presuming you would meet her.”

“She didn’t have to presume a damn thing. I knew it was wrong not to tell you about it. I knew it was wrong to go and meet her alone. But I went anyway. Oh, I justified it. I talked myself into believing that the call had come from Savich, that he was setting me up. But deep down I think I knew it would be Elise who was waiting for me.”

“Where did this meeting take place?”

He snuffled a bitter laugh. “It wouldn’t have mattered, DeeDee. It could have been anywhere, and I still would have gone. Nothing would have stopped me from going to her. See, I went with the clear understanding that she would try to compromise me. I went hoping she would try.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew what she would use to barter.” He turned his head and looked at her in such a way that she couldn’t mistake his meaning.

She swallowed hard. “I see.”

“She knew what I wanted, so that’s what she offered.”

“And you accepted?”

“Yeah.” He closed his eyes and repeated huskily, “Yeah.”

With a detached part of her mind, DeeDee wondered what it must be like to hold that much sway over another human being, how heady it must feel to have the power to make someone sacrifice his integrity, his life’s work, for a few minutes of sexual gratification.

He drained his glass. “After we…Well. I welched on the bargain. I left her with tears on her face, begging me for help.”

“To do what?”

“Help her out of her mess. The details don’t really matter now. Hours after I walked out on her, Napoli was dead and we were searching for her body.” He plowed his fingers up through his hair again and held his head between his hands. “Christ help me.”

This explained his despair. He had compromised their investigation and violated his personal codes of morality and ethics, and he would never forgive himself for those transgressions.

Years before, while she was still a beat cop, two SPD officers had been accused of sexual misconduct with a female suspect. They had claimed that the woman was the initiator and a willing participant-which turned out to be true. Nevertheless, DeeDee remembered that Duncan was incensed over the officers’ refusal to admit their fallibility and accept blame. In his view, they’d had the choice, as well as the responsibility, to do what was right, no matter how strong the temptation. Now he had made a similar misstep, and to him that would be indefensible.

But flaws and all, Duncan Hatcher was DeeDee’s hero. To see him so reduced by guilt filled her with compassion, not condemnation. That she reserved for Elise Laird, for whom she had the utmost contempt. She’d be damned before she let that conniving woman’s ghost destroy Duncan.

“You made a mistake,” she said gently. “But you’ve acknowledged it. Put it away. It’s over.”

“Not for me, it isn’t. I’ll never forget the way she looked at me when-”

“ Duncan, she was a player!” she exclaimed, loudly enough for the bartender to glance their way. “She knew you were attracted to her and she used that. What better way to protect herself from prosecution than to screw the cop who’s trying to incriminate her?”

“I know that, DeeDee. Goddamn it, don’t you think I know all that? But knowing it doesn’t make me any less culpable. Three people are dead, not even counting poor Trotter, who started all this. Napoli, Gordie Ballew, and Elise. If I had done the right thing, they wouldn’t have died.”

“You don’t know that. No one can know that. One way or another it was bound to end tragically.” She leaned toward him so he had no choice but to look at her. “The lady was poison. You said so yourself when we started investigating this case. You lusted after her body, but that didn’t blind you to her character. I know that for a fact. You trusted her no more than I did.

“She lied at every turn, she lied to everyone, and that night on the bridge all those lies caught up with her. Frankly, I don’t regret whatever happened between her and Napoli. I’m glad she became history before she had a chance to destroy your career. Before she had a chance to destroy you.”

She rarely touched him, never wanting their working relationship to be jeopardized. But now she laid her hand on his arm and gave it a no-nonsense squeeze. “Put this behind you, Duncan. Forgive yourself for being male, for being human. Make a conscious decision to forget her. Refocus. Tomorrow we start fresh trying to nail Savich.” She pushed the highball glass out of his reach. “For that, you need to be stone cold sober.”

Duncan let himself be led out of the bar and into the deluge. By the time they reached DeeDee’s car, he was drenched. He didn’t care.

“What about my car?” he asked as she herded him into the passenger seat of hers.

“I’ll pick you up in the morning and drive you back here to get it.”

He didn’t argue, having no interest whatsoever in any aspect of tomorrow.

It was a short distance to his town house; they covered the blocks in a matter of minutes. DeeDee cut her engine and was reaching for the door handle when he stopped her. “Don’t come in.”

“I’m coming in.”

“I’ll be fine. I won’t drink any more. I swear,” he said in response to her skeptical expression.

“All right, I believe you. But are you sure you don’t want company?”

“Positive.”

“Go play the piano for a while.”

“I don’t play the piano.”

“Right.” She grinned.

He forced one in return, but it felt like an unnatural stretching of his lips.

“Try and get some rest. See you in the morning.”

He scowled. “Not too early.” With that, he opened the door and got out.

The gutter had turned into a rushing creek. He stepped over the swift current and onto the sidewalk. Then he climbed the steps to his front door and unlocked it. He turned to wave good-bye to DeeDee. She tooted her horn as she drove away through the rain.

Inside, Duncan switched on a table lamp and, out of habit, walked toward the kitchen. When he got there, he couldn’t think of a single thing that sounded appetizing. He wasn’t hungry. He wanted nothing more to drink even though Smitty’s whiskey hadn’t had the desired mind-numbing effect. His head was all too clear.

Heedless of the rainwater he was dripping onto the rugs and hardwood floors, he made his way back into the living room, then stood in the center of it like a stranger, looking about for something familiar with which to make an emotional connection. For the first time ever in his life that he could remember, he felt utterly alone.

He could call his parents, who had always been there whenever he needed them, ready with an embrace, with a prayer and words of encouragement, with unqualified love. But he couldn’t talk to them about this. Not yet.

DeeDee would come back in a heartbeat. She’d even offered to stay with him tonight. But he couldn’t drag her down with him into this morass of guilt and self-loathing. Besides, he hadn’t been completely honest with her.

He had confessed making love to Elise.

He hadn’t confessed falling in love.

He glanced at the piano with complete indifference, but the piano bench was a painful reminder of the morning Elise had sat on it, looking up at him with imploring eyes that entranced and ensnared as facilely as they lied.

Irresistibly drawn to it, he sat down where she had sat. He was haunted by the possibility that nothing she had said or done had been true. Nothing. And worse, he feared that she’d been coached by Savich, that she had operated strictly under instructions from him. That when she was moving against Duncan on that shabby sofa, every touch, every expression, every sigh had been calculated.

Actually, it was treachery worthy of Savich. If Savich had shot him execution-style as he had Freddy Morris, it would have been too obvious, and Savich might have been easily captured.

Besides that, a bullet to the head wouldn’t have been poetic. How much more satisfying to Savich to place Elise in his path, then sit back and watch with glee as Duncan came under the spell of her allure, compromising every ethical code to which he adhered, sacrificing his integrity, his career, his self-respect, everything that was valuable to him, slowly but inexorably bringing about his own downfall.

A brilliant plan.

He bowed his head lower and tried to compose a prayer of contrition, but the only sounds that issued from his raw throat were harsh, dry sobs. He longed to cry, but what would he be crying over? His squandered morality? Or Elise? What right did he have to cry over losing something that was never his to lose? Elise was lost to him forever.

He was simply lost.

He sat there a long time, but he never touched the keyboard. Eventually he got up, switched off the lamp, and started upstairs, feeling his way in the dark. The rain-streaked skylight cast a watery shadow on the wall of the staircase that made it appear to be weeping. He paused on the landing to watch the mournful trickles reflected on the wallpaper, then entered his bedroom, switching on the light as he passed through the door.

She was backed into the corner between his bed and the window.

He cried out in disbelief, shock, outrage. And joy. She was alive!

Acting instinctively, he whipped his pistol from its holster and crouched, aiming the barrel directly at her. “Drop the coat and face the wall, hands above your head.”

“ Duncan -”

“Fucking do it!” he shouted. “Do it or so help me God, I’ll shoot you.”

Elise dropped the rain slicker that she’d been holding folded over her arm and turned toward the wall, hands raised.

It took a conscious effort to close his mouth and control his rapid breathing. There was nothing he could do to slow down his racing heart. “Do you have the twenty-two?”

“The what?”

Keeping his pistol aimed at her, he came up behind her and hastily patted her down, running his hand down both her sides from armpit to ankle, up the inseam of her jeans and around the waistband. Satisfied that she wasn’t armed, he sidestepped across the floor and picked up the telephone on the nightstand. She turned around as he fumbled with the rubberized digits on the phone.

She held up a hand, palm out. “Don’t call anyone. Not until I’ve had a chance to explain.”

“You’ll explain, all right.”

“ Duncan -”

“Don’t call me that! I’m not Duncan to you. I’m not anything to you except the cop that’s gonna haul your ass to jail.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe it.”

“You don’t have to hold a gun on me.”

“I’m sure you said that to Trotter and Napoli, and look what happened to them. How’d you get in here?”

“I heard you downstairs. Were you crying?”

“How did you get in?” he repeated, enunciating the words.

“A back window on the ground level wasn’t locked. I guess you forgot to set your alarm. Why were you crying?”

Again, he dodged that question. “Armies of men and women all over the Southeast have been busting their butts looking for you. There’s been much ado over your disappearance off that bridge. You enjoyed all that attention, I’m sure.”

She spread her arms at her sides. “Do I look like I enjoyed it?”

She had a point. She looked like hell. “What happened to your hair?”

“When you fake your suicide, the first thing you do is change your appearance.”

Her hair looked like it had been sawed off with a dull butcher knife. It was short and spiky and stuck up in random spots like a punk rocker’s. And it had been dyed a dark brown.

She wasn’t dressed in the quality stuff she usually wore. The jeans and shirt were too large and looked like rejects of a yard sale. On her feet were plain canvas sneakers. No turquoise stones on these shoes. They were also wet and muddy.

Her face was gaunt, the thinness emphasized by the extreme haircut. Her eyes were outlined in dark makeup that had been applied with a heavy hand. When she saw that he noticed it, she said, “To cover up a black eye, compliments of Meyer Napoli.”

“Who put up the fight? Him or you?”

She extended her arm and pushed up the long sleeve of her shirt. From wrist to elbow her arm was mottled with bruises in a range of colors. “I don’t think he expected me to fight back.”

The cordless telephone felt heavy in Duncan ’s hand. So did the pistol, but he didn’t lower either of them. “He was waiting for you in your car?” She gave him an odd look, and he said, “That much we figured out. Napoli took a taxi to where you’d left your car.”

“While I was with you.”

“While you were favoring me with the motherlode of fucks.”

She lowered her gaze but only for a moment. When she looked at him again, her eyes were bright with anger. “Don’t you get it yet?”

“Apparently not.”

“I was desperate,” she cried out. “I would have done anything to enlist your help.”

“But you didn’t do anything. You did that.”

“Because I knew…” Again her gaze faltered, but only for a moment before it locked with his. “Because I knew that’s what you wanted.”

It was almost verbatim what he’d said to DeeDee a half hour earlier, but hearing it from Elise made his blood run hot with fury.

“I even knew that’s what you expected me to do,” she continued. “Detective Bowen, too. She would have expected me to play the whore. So I guess I proved you both right.”

“Well, it was a wasted effort.”

“I know. You didn’t believe me.”

“Not then, and for damn sure not now.”

“I hoped you might have changed your mind.”

He didn’t allow himself to be taken in by her wounded look. “What happened on the bridge?”

She shook back long hair that was no longer there, a reflexive gesture Duncan recognized as what she did when collecting her thoughts. Or fabricating lies. “After you left, I fell asleep.”

“Oh, right. You the insomniac.” She really was a priceless liar. She would like for him to believe that she had drifted off following their lovemaking, when she’d been unable to sleep after sex with her husband. Lest he fall for the manipulation, he yanked his mind back to what she was saying.

“I slept for over two hours. When I woke up, I panicked, knowing Cato would be looking for me. I rushed back to my car. Napoli was waiting for me in the backseat.”

“As arranged.”

“No.”

Trying to trap her in a lie, he said, “But you recognized him immediately.”

She shook her head emphatically. “I’d never seen him before. He introduced himself, even gave me his business card.”

Duncan had wondered why, if their meeting was prearranged, there’d been any need for the transponder and why Napoli ’s card had been in the seat of her car. He’d raised those questions once with DeeDee and Worley, but they’d shrugged them off as insignificant details.

“Okay,” he said, “ Napoli ’s in your car. Then what?”

“He held a gun to my head and told me to drive to the middle of the Talmadge Bridge. I did as he said, but when we topped the bridge I called his bluff and kept going. He dug the barrel of his pistol into my temple and threatened to pull the trigger unless I turned around. So as soon as we reached the other side, I made a U-turn.”

That explained why the car had been in the inbound lane. But she could have heard that in the news reports.

“This time, when I reached the crest, I stopped. He told me to leave the key in the ignition, get out, and walk to the wall. I kept stalling, asking him what he wanted, offering him money. He said he’d already struck a deal for more than I could ever pay him.”

“With who?”

“Who do you think?”

“Don’t dare say your husband. The man’s been shattered by this.”

“You’re wrong.”

“And you’re lying,” he fired back. “For ten days I’ve watched him. I’ve seen him disintegrate bit by bit. He’s devastated.”

“That’s what he wants you to think.”

“He’s faking it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sticking to that story?”

“Yes.”

He started pressing digits on his phone.

“Wait! Duncan, I beg you. Listen to me.”

He stopped dialing, but kept his thumb poised over the buttons.

She clasped her raised hands in a gesture of appeal. “Gary Ray Trotter failed, so Napoli had to finish the job himself. He gave me the choice of jumping off the bridge, or of being shot. Either way was fine by him, he said. I wouldn’t survive the two-hundred-foot fall into the river. People would think I’d killed myself. If he shot me, it would look like another carjacking. Either way, I’d be dead and he would be richer, courtesy of Cato.”

“Why would your husband pay a creep like Napoli to get rid of you?”

She hesitated; Duncan laughed shortly. “We never get further than that, do we?” He pressed another of the digits on the telephone. “Motive trips you up every time. But you had plenty of motive to shoot Napoli, didn’t you?”

“Yes. No.”

“Well, which is it?” he shouted.

She put her hand to her butchered hair. “You’re confusing me.”

“Welcome to the club, lady. I’ve been a little confused myself lately.”

“I had motive to shoot him, but I didn’t. I got away from him and ran. He chased me. He stepped on the heel of my sandal and it snapped off. I stumbled, fell. Napoli hauled me up by my arm. He wrenched it hard and I screamed. That startled him. I took advantage of his surprise and grabbed for the gun. I yanked it out of his hand and threw it into the river. He hit me in the face.” She pointed to her eye. “I swatted at his head, grabbed his hair, and pulled hard. He fell back, and I took off running again.”

“At some point you shot him in the stomach with your husband’s old twenty-two.”

“I don’t know anything about a twenty-two,” she cried. “In any case, I didn’t shoot Napoli.”

“Well, somebody plugged him in the gut.”

“Savich.”

His breath came out in a gust of disbelief, almost amusement. “Savich?”

“That’s right.”

He laughed. “What a convenient scapegoat. First you used his name to get me to the old house for our secret meeting. Now you’re trying to-”

“It’s the truth!”

“You watched Savich shoot Napoli.”

“Yes.”

“And he let you get away?”

“He didn’t see me.”

Laughter as well as patience deserted him. Giving her a hard look, he said, “Try again.”

She took a deep breath as though ready to launch into a long and complicated story. “I was running from Napoli -”

“On second thought, save your breath. I’m sick of your bullshit. You killed Napoli. Otherwise you would have notified the police.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t?”

“I knew everyone would think that I had killed him. Like Gary Ray Trotter. No one would have believed me.”

He didn’t. Certainly not this crap about Savich, especially now, knowing what good friends they were. But for the time being, he played along. “Okay, so you ran and miraculously escaped Savich. Where have you been for the last ten days? How’d you live? What did you do for money? We’ve had cops up and down the East Coast from Miami to Myrtle Beach checking hotels and motels, from the ritziest to the sleaziest. Bus stations, airports, boat rentals and charters, car rental companies. Anything that moves, we’ve checked. Bicycles, motorcycles, and pogo sticks,” he finished angrily. “How did you manage to disappear? Did you have help?”

“Help? No. I had a contingency plan to disappear. For months I’d been preparing for it. I had some money stashed away, a credit card in another name, a fake ID, a place to go.”

“You didn’t go to the house where I met you.”

She tilted her head. “You went back there to look for me?”

“Yeah, I went back.”

“Alone? Or with your partner?”

He avoided that. “You hid out until tonight when the search was called off. Now, nobody’s looking for you or your remains. So why’d you come back? Why’d you come to me? Why didn’t you just stay dead?”

It was a vicious thing to say and she reacted accordingly. But he let the question stand.

Finally she said softly, “I came back because I have unfinished business.”

“Yeah, I know about that. You’ve got a smooth operation going with Savich.” Reading her shock, he moved toward her in a measured tread. “I saw the pictures. The ones Napoli was using to blackmail you.”

“Blackmail me? What are you talking about? What pictures?”

The thought of hitting a woman was repugnant to him, but remembering the photographs with her and Savich raised the level of his frustration and brought him close to slapping her. At the very least giving her a hard shake to dislodge the phony perplexity in her expressive eyes.

He also wanted to touch her, to crush her against him and inhale the scent of rainwater coming off her, just to reassure himself that she was real and warm, not a figment of his cruel imagination, just to see if she felt as good against him as he remembered.

Duty and desire were warring again, and he hated her for it.

“I curse the day I first saw you,” he said, meaning it. “God damn you for dragging me into your scheme, whatever the hell it is. I wish to heaven-”

The telephone in his hand rang, startling them. They both looked at the instrument as it rang a second time.

“Don’t answer, Duncan. Please.”

“Shut up.”

Using the pistol, he motioned her to back away from him then raised the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

He listened for about thirty seconds, his gaze never wavering from her face. He ended the call by saying, “Sure. I’ll be right there.” Even after disconnecting, he held her stare.

Her chest rose and fell anxiously. She wet her lips. “What?”

“Earlier tonight a woman’s body was pulled out of the river,” he stated slowly. “Judge Laird has just identified it as you.”