Sex, Lies, And Online Dating

Chapter 7

Down2basix: Seeks Nontalker…

The last rays of the setting sun painted the valley in blue and pink as Quinn finished testifying in the Raymond Deluca case. He pushed open the glass doors of the Ada County Court House and pulled a breath of fresh air into his lungs. Outside, a chopped Nissan added its high-pitched whine to the traffic speeding past on Myrtle Street. A cool April breeze tugged at his red tie and the lapels of his navy wool blazer as he headed across the brick sidewalk toward the parking lot.

Raymond Deluca’s defense lawyer had gone after Quinn as he’d expected, attacking the time line and questioning the forensic evidence, trying to make it appear as if Quinn hadn’t done his job. After sixteen years of experience, Quinn had been ready for everything the lawyer had thrown at him. In the end, there had been no way the lawyer could discredit that gasoline transaction at 2:35 a.m.

Quinn moved across the parking lot and unlocked the door to his white unmarked car. Mr. Deluca was up for capital murder and would probably get the death penalty. Quinn supposed he should feel bad at the prospect. He supposed it was the compassionate, human way to feel, but he’d been at the autopsy of Mrs. Deluca and her three children. He’d seen what the fire had done to them, and he was fresh out of compassion for anyone but the victims.

He fired up his car and headed across town. He turned on Grove Street and drove past the Grove Hotel, with its infamous river sculpture on the exterior wall.

The sculpture was supposed to represent the Boise River, but it resembled quake damage more than anything else. It wasn’t uncommon to see tourists standing in front of the multicolored crack, their brows scrunched as they wondered what the hell they were supposed to be looking at. To confuse them further, the crack sometimes wafted steam, which was supposed to resemble fog. It didn’t.

Quinn was the first to admit that he knew zero to nothing about art. There were really cool sculptures and paintings around the city; the crack in the Grove Hotel just wasn’t one of them.

He pulled to a stop at a red light and reached for his sunglasses. With the Deluca case behind him, his thoughts turned to Lucy. He was a cop, trained to pay attention to detail and have near-perfect recall, but he didn’t need any tricks of the trade to recall every second of the night before when he’d stood on her front porch kissing her. He’d held her face in his hands with her smooth hair tangled in his fingers. Her mouth had tasted like warm woman, and she’d melted into him. He’d reminded himself he’d just been doing his job. That the woman running her hands up and down his chest and making him hard enough to pound nails was a murder suspect. He’d kept his hands on her face to keep them from traveling south to more interesting places. He might have given into his urge to touch her waist and hips and breasts. To drive her as crazy as she was him, but she’d slid her hands to his back, and he’d grabbed her wrists a split second before she’d discovered the recorder taped to his back.

He would have loved to have taken her up on her first and second invitation for coffee. He would have loved to have followed her inside and checked out her bra right before he’d have buried his face in her cleavage. He would have damn sure loved to have stripped her naked and do the hot sweaty deed, but he couldn’t have followed her inside and jumped on her. Breathless did her work in the victim’s bed, not her own. Sure, he probably should have followed Lucy inside and maybe gotten more information out of her, but he just wasn’t into prolonged torture.

The traffic light turned green, and by the time he got to the office it was the end of his shift. He filled Sergeant Mitchell in on what had taken place in court that day. They talked about the latest developments in the Breathless case. He had a date that night with a new suspect, Carol Rey, aka sugarbaby. Carol was an Internet dater, an employee of Hastings Books and Music, and she loved animals. Once again, Quinn would buy a woman coffee and set the bait to see if he could hook a serial killer.

By the time Quinn returned home after his date that evening, he was exhausted but knew it would be hours before he slept. Hopped up on coffee and conversation, his mind went over every detail of the past several hours.

Carol had been a nice-looking woman. She’d seemed normal enough-until she’d started talking about her ex-husband. She’d torn into the man, ripping him apart for his job performance in and out of bed. That kind of resentment produced a lot of hatred, and Kurt would e-mail her in the morning and set up a second date.

Quinn grabbed his laptop and files off the counter in the kitchen and moved down the hall to his office. He flipped on the light and walked to his desk in the corner. Across the room he’d set up a treadmill and weight bench. Detectives ate on the go, in greasy spoons, or at their desks. At the age of thirty-six, Quinn had to work out five days a week to stay in shape and stave off the love handles that plagued a lot of cops.

He sank into his office chair and set the laptop and files on his desk. He booted the computer and scratched Millie’s head as he waited for the program to appear.

Even after two months of online dating, Quinn was still taken aback at the things women confessed to virtual strangers on a first date. If they were telling him about past husbands and lovers, he was sure they were telling everyone else they dated, too. Sometimes it got so bad that he had to fight the urge not to lean across the table and say, “Honey, I don’t want to hear about your former husband’s foot odor, and I sure as hell don’t want to know he had to take Viagra, Cialis, or Enzyte. Some shit you just keep to yourself.”

Lucy was the only woman he’d dated that he’d actually had to ask about former boyfriends. Of course, Lucy had a bad habit of lying her ass off, so whether she’d managed the truth was open to speculation.

He reached for the phone on his desk and glanced at his watch. It was 9:30 p.m., and he flipped open his notebook and wrote down the time. On the fifth ring, she picked up.

“Hello.”

“Lucy, it’s Quinn.” He leaned back in his chair and moved his head from side to side to work out the kinks in his neck. “I’m just calling to make sure we’re still on for tomorrow night.”

“Hang on.” There was a pause like she put the phone down. A few drawers opened and closed, then she picked up again. “Okay. Yeah, but I was thinking you should come in for a drink first. Or we could just stay here and order takeout.”

Breathless never killed and moved the body, and she probably never invited a suspect to her home. “Sounds good.” The phone made a soft thud, as if she’d dropped it.

“Sorry,” she said and confirmed his suspicion. “I dropped the phone.”

He tapped the pen on his desk and asked, “What are you doing?”

“Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m standing here in my underwear getting ready to put on my pajamas.”

The pen stopped. “I’ll let you go,” he said as a vision of her wearing licorice candy pants flashed into his head.

“It’s okay. I’m going to kick my feet up and watch a little television before bed. What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Just sitting around.” In his mind, he had her dressed up in an edible bra too. He wondered if she got kinky. Not the kind of kinky that killed a man, but the kind that let him eat off her undies. Quinn hadn’t worked undercover in over four years now, but he still knew how it was done. When to push and how far. He set down his pen and told himself he was just doing his job. “Are they edible?” But he knew his curiosity was more than just work.

There was a pause, during which he half-expected her to tell him to go to hell. “My feet?”

“Your panties.”

Another pause and then, “No. They’re white satin.”

He swallowed, the chair swiveled, and the arm bumped Millie’s face. She looked at him like he’d done it on purpose and left the room. He didn’t want to talk dirty in front of his dog and watched her go before asking, “Any lace?”

“No.”

Damn, he liked lace on a woman.

She added just above a whisper. “But there’s pink ribbon.”

Damn. “Tell me more about the ribbon.”

“It’s woven around the tops of my thighs, and there’s little bows.”

He closed his eyes and imagined it. Imagined that pink ribbon warmed by the heat between her legs. Those panties suddenly sounded edible to him. “Are you wearing a bra?”

Her breath whispered across the line, and he could picture her pink lips. “Yes.”

“Does it match your panties?”

“Yes.”

He sucked a breath deep into his lungs and pressed his palm against his erection. “Where’s the ribbon?”

“Woven down the front.”

He could imagine that, too. “Are your nipples hard?”

Instead of answering, she asked, “Are you hard, Quinn?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in the habit of talking dirty on the phone?” Her voice was seductive as hell.

“No.” He pictured her standing right in front of him, her hair spilling across her shoulders like the sun, her feet slightly apart as he ran his hands up the backs of her thighs while he put his mouth on her flat belly. “But I’m willing to give it a try if you are, Sunshine.”

Her quiet laughter reached him across the phone line. “See you tomorrow night, Quinn,” she said and disconnected.

He opened his eyes and half expected to see her standing in front of him. Instead his gaze focused on the work laid out on his desk. On the mounds of folders, notes, laptop, and the photographs of Mary and Donny’s kids.

The silence in the room pressed in on him. The weight of it sat on his chest and forced him to feel the loneliness deep in the black pit of his soul. For several seconds, it was stronger than him and threatened to close his throat. Then he beat it back and shoved it down once again.

He reached for a stereo remote sitting on his desk and pushed Play. The Black Crowes filled the silence with bluesy Southern rock. Chris Robinson sang about good lovin’ and being hard to handle.

He was fine with his life just the way it was.

The next evening Lucy took a fortifying drink of her red wine, then set the glass on the coffee table. She didn’t want to risk catching a buzz before she told Quinn the reason she’d wanted him to come over to her house instead of going out. It was time to tell him the truth, especially after the conversation they’d had on the telephone last night. She could hardly look at Quinn without her cheeks catching fire, while he didn’t seem embarrassed at all.

Out of the corners of her eyes, she glanced across her shoulder at Quinn as he took a long drink of Becks. He gazed down the bottle at Mr. Snookums, who was kneading his thigh. Lucy was all too familiar with Snookums’s modus operandi. If Quinn didn’t return the cat’s affection, he’d move his loving attention a few inches north.

“Get down, Snookie,” she said and removed the heavy cat from between them on the couch.

“What did you call him?”

“Snookie. It’s short for Mr. Snookums,” she explained.

“Uh-huh.” Quinn’s eyes got kind of squinty, like his head hurt.

Lucy took a deep breath and forced herself to confess on an expelled breath. “I’ve been lying to you.” She said it so quick that she had to wonder if he’d understood her. She hoped so, because she didn’t want to have to say it again. Her stomach felt as if she’d swallowed too much air, and her mouth was dry. She was suddenly too nervous to feel any lingering embarrassment over the phone call. If he couldn’t understand why she’d lied and decided he didn’t want to see her anymore, then the relationship wasn’t meant to last. At least that’s what she’d been telling herself. But that had been before he’d walked into her living room looking good in a pair of Levi’s worn in interesting places and before he’d sat so close to her on the couch that she could smell the cologne on his skin and scent of laundry soap in his clothes.

“About what?”

“I’m not a nurse.”

Quinn set the green bottle on his thigh, and his dark gaze stared into hers. One brow lifted in surprise. “You’re not?”

She shook her head and turned her body toward him. “No. It’s this whole Internet dating thing. I just didn’t want to let the world know everything about me.” She pulled her knee on the couch and tucked her foot under her other leg. She picked at the seam of her khaki pants with her fingernail. “I wanted to keep some things back. Just in case.” She decided not to tell him that the only reason she’d agreed to meet him that first time had been for research. That would only bring up questions about the other men she’d met and killed off. She didn’t want to talk about those other men. Not tonight.

“In case what?”

“In case you were a loser or a stalker or just really insane.” She pushed her hair behind her ears, then placed her hands in her lap. She lowered her gaze to the middle of his chest. His blue hooded sweatshirt was so old that the logo on the front had faded to nothing. “That night at Starbucks, I thought for sure you’d realize that I didn’t have any medical training.” After a few long moments filled with silence, she lifted her gaze to his face. “I guess you didn’t notice that I don’t know the Heimlich.”

“I noticed.” One corner of his mouth slid up, and a little comma creased the corner. “I just figured you sucked at being a nurse.”

She let out a pent-up breath, and her nerves settled a bit. “But you asked me out again anyway?”

With his free hand, he picked up hers and brushed his thumb across the backs of her knuckles. “I figured since you’re so fine, you had to be really good at other things.”

Little tingles spread up her wrist to the inside of her elbow. “What things?”

“Girl things.”

“Girl things?” She tried for outrage and blew it by laughing. She tried to pull her hand back, but he brought it up to his mouth. “What girl things?”

Laugh lines wrinkled the corners of his eyes as he looked at her over her fingers. “Cooking.” He pressed a kiss to the tingles on her wrist, just below the sleeve of her maroon sweater.

“I am a very good cook.” When she did cook.

“Good. I like to eat.” He lightly bit her palm.

The too-much-air feeling in Lucy’s stomach pressed upward into her heart. “What?” she asked past the constriction in her chest.

“What do I like to eat?”

“Yeah.”

“Blondes with blue eyes.”

Oh God. She pulled her hand from his. “Are you hungry?”

His gaze lowered to her mouth. “I could eat.”

Years of experience had taught Lucy to take it slow. Not to rush. Not to get too involved too soon. At least that’s what the rational part of her brain told her. Then he raised his gaze to hers once more, and there it was. That hot, hungry something that looked out at her from the depths of his dark eyes and blew rational all to hell. “I’ll order takeout,” she murmured as she quickly stood and walked into the kitchen before her brain shut down and she pulled him down on top of her. “Pizza, pasta, salad?” she asked as she picked up the phone on the counter.

“Whatever.” Quinn followed as far as the doorway. He leaned one shoulder into the frame and tapped the bottle against his thigh. “So, if you’re not a nurse, what do you do?”

Lucy pushed number five on her speed dial. “I’m a writer.”

“A writer?” His black brows lowered as if he didn’t quite believe her. “What do you write?”

“Mystery novels.”

He raised the bottle to his lips. “Have you sold any?” he asked before he took a drink.

“Yes. I’m writing my seventh book.” A person picked up on the other end of the line. “I want to order a medium combo and two Caesar salads for delivery,” she said. She gave her phone number and was told it would be half an hour to forty-five minutes.

“Under your own name?”

“Yep.” She pushed End and set the phone down.

“So I can go into a bookstore and buy one of your books? Or are you a writer like you were a nurse?”

“I’ll show you,” she said and headed toward the stairs to her office. She stopped on the bottom step and looked back over her shoulder at him. He still stood leaning against the doorway. “Come on.” She motioned to him with her hand. He pushed away, and Lucy continued upstairs to the loft.

She hadn’t planned on bringing Quinn to her office, and she wished she had dusted and maybe straightened her research books. But at least the writing hadn’t gotten so crazy that she’d started piling things on the floor around her chair. Not yet. It would. It always did.

From within the confines of her seventeen-inch flat-screen monitor, hungry sharks swam the blue waters of the Great Barrier Reef. Lucy walked to her desk and reached for the mouse. The shark screen saver disappeared and revealed the scene she’d been reworking in dead.com. She rolled the pointer to the top right and reduced the document to an icon in the lower left of the task bar. She glanced over her shoulder at Quinn as he glanced about her office. He looked at her big L-shaped desk, which took up half the wall to her left, before he glanced about at her printer, scanner, fax, and copier, which were placed around the room according to electric outlets.

Plaques and writing awards hung on the walls and lined the numerous shelves. Her starred Publishers Weekly reviews sat in frames next to photos of her family and friends. The gold star trophy her mother had given her when she’d sold her first book sat on top of a stack of her books that had been translated into foreign languages.

“This is where I spend most of my life,” she said, then pointed to two closed doors. “That’s a closet where I store paper, and that’s a bathroom I added about two years ago so I wouldn’t have to run up and down the stairs all day and night.”

Quinn moved to a shelf containing a row of her published hardbacks. As he studied her books, she studied the back of his dark head. Her gaze lowered to the short black hair on the back of his neck. His wide shoulders filled out his big sweatshirt, and she lowered her attention down his back to the behind of his Levi’s. He’d threaded an old brown belt through the loops low on his hips, and his wallet bulged one of the worn pockets hugging his butt. He was so tall, so completely masculine, that it was a little disconcerting to see him in her own personal space. He set his beer on a shelf, then reached for a book. He flipped it to the back and glanced at her photo on the dust cover. “This is a good picture.” He raised his gaze from the photograph to her. “But you’re better looking in person.”

The compliment filled her with more pleasure than it should have, and she felt a little embarrassed. “Thanks.” She scooted papers aside and sat on top of her desk. She folded her arms beneath her breasts and watched Quinn.

“You must be a good writer.”

“What makes you say that?”

He pointed with his thumb behind him. “All those plaques on your wall. I don’t imagine bad writers get plaques.”

“You’d be surprised.” She was surprised he’d noticed those. She’d had boyfriends whom she’d dated for years who hadn’t noticed any of her accomplishments out of bed. It was silly. Nothing really, but the fact that Quinn noticed something about her after knowing her a week made her like him a whole lot more. Which was dangerous, because she already liked him a whole lot.

He slid the book back into place and turned his attention to an eight-by-ten photo of Lucy and her friends taken a few winters ago in Cancun. He leaned in to take a closer look at the four women in bikini tops and shorts, sunburned skin and drunken grins. “Those are my friends,” she explained. “They’re writers, too.”

Quinn straightened and looked at her over his shoulder. “Mystery writers?”

“No. We all write in different genres. When we go out, it can get real interesting.”

“They all live in Boise?”

“Yep.”

“Wow, I didn’t know so many writers lived around here.”

“Well, you know what they say: Paris, London, New York, Boise.”

One corner of his mouth turned downward in a dubious smile. “Who says that?” he asked as he walked toward her, his loose stride reminding her of the first time she’d seen him in Starbucks.

“The T-shirt shop at the mall.”

He stopped in front of her. “Then it must be true.” So close that she had to look up. So close that she thought he might touch her. Instead he reached beside her and plucked a CD from her CD rack. As if in pain, he sucked in air through his teeth. “I don’t know if I can date a girl who listens to Phil Collins.”

Lucy took the CD from his hands and set it on her desk. “It was a gift from an old boyfriend.”

“Phil Collins sucks.”

“So did the old boyfriend.”

He chuckled, then of course he zeroed in on the fuzzy pink handcuffs sitting in front of a row of research books in the hutch above her monitor. He picked them up and held them with one finger. “Kinky.”

“They were a gift.”

“From a boyfriend?”

“No. From the Women of Mystery.”

His eyelids lowered and his voice got husky. “Now that’s twisted.”

Lucy laughed and grabbed the cuffs dangling from his finger. She placed them next to the CD on the desk. “The Women of Mystery is a group of local writers. About once a year, they ask me to speak at one of their meetings.”

“No one gets tied up?”

“No bondage of any kind.”

“Damn.” He shook his head. “I was hoping to hear something good.” He moved between her knees. His fingers brushed her ears, and he pushed her hair out of her face. “How kinky do you get?”

She didn’t. Not really. Well, not on a regular basis. After the phone call last night, she didn’t expect him to believe it, though. She placed her hands behind her on the desk and leaned back. “What’s your definition of kinky?”

His gaze drifted to her mouth. “Do you like to be tied up?”

She shook her head. “No, I like to be an active participant.”

He leaned over her and placed his hands next to hers on the desk. A few inches from her mouth he asked, “Do you like to tie men up?”

Again she shook her head. “No, I like to be with an active participant. A man who isn’t going to just lay there. Otherwise, what’s the point of having someone else in the room?”

“Someone to talk dirty to.”

“Talking dirty is overrated.”

“You don’t like men to talk during sex?”

For the most part, no. Nothing ruined the mood faster than “Come to daddy.”

“Some talking is okay.” She shrugged. “But at some point all talking dissolves to the basics anyway.”

“What’re the basics?”

She lowered her voice and moaned like she was in the throes of orgasm. “Harder, faster, don’t stop or I’ll kick your ass.”

He let out a breath. “Jesus H. Macy.”

Lucy laughed. “Do you like it kinky?”

“Sunshine, I’m a guy. I’ll do just about anything if it means I’m going to get laid.”

He’d called her Sunshine. It wasn’t the first time he’d called her that, and she wondered what he called other women. She wondered what he’d called his wife. She was curious about the woman Quinn had loved and lost so tragically. The woman who’d left him so lonely that he’d turned to the Internet for companionship. “Last night you said you wanted more. What did you mean?”

“That I want to see more of you.”

“Are you sure you’re ready?”

He pulled back far enough to look into her eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be ready?”

“Because you might still be grieving for Millie. I like you. A lot. I do, but I don’t want to get involved with someone who might be looking to replace his wife.” She thought he might get angry or hurt. Instead he smiled as if he found the whole idea amusing.

“I’m not looking for a woman to replace Millie.” He reached for one of her hands and slid it up his chest to the back of his neck. “I want to be with you.” He straightened and brought her up against his chest. “I like being with you,” he continued. “When I’m not with you, I’m thinking about you. No one else. Just you.”

Lucy ran her free palm up his arm to his shoulder and brought his mouth down to hers. She kissed him lightly at first. A slow brush of lips and light touch of tongues. She recognized the scent of his skin and the wet texture of his mouth. She felt his hands and fingers in her hair, and he whispered her name.

“Lucy,” he said, “this is what keeps me up at night.” The kiss turned hotter. Like liquid sunlight, it spread across her skin. Deeper, so deep that it touched her heart and made her feel light-headed. So light-headed that she thought she heard bells, and when Quinn lifted his mouth from hers, she realized she did hear bells.

“Pizza’s here,” he said as her doorbell rang once more. “We could ignore it.”

Lucy dropped her hands from the back of Quinn’s neck and sighed. “No. I order from them all the time. The delivery guys know to keep knocking until I answer.” Occasionally, if she was really into her work, they had to call to tell her they were at her front door.

Quinn took a step back and ran his fingers through the sides of his hair. Frustration burned from his hooded gaze, and Lucy wondered how far things would have gone before one of them would have stopped. She liked to think not far, but she wouldn’t have staked her life on it.

Quinn watched Lucy stand and move across her office when what he really wanted to do was put her back on that desk and crawl on top of her. His gaze moved from the top of her blonde head, down her back and narrow hips, to her round behind. He dropped his hands to his sides and let out a deep breath. He felt like a kid again, living day in and out with a constant hard-on. It was enough to drive him insane. “I’m going to use your bathroom and be right down,” he told her.

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Okay,” she said and walked through the doorway. Quinn listened for her footsteps descending the stairs before he turned his attention to the hutch on her desk filled with crime reference books. Homicide investigation checklists and field guides. Books on investigators’ tactics, procedures, and a whole slew of books on forensics. He noticed studies of clinical disorders and criminal behavior in her shelves. Her reading covered everything from poisons and weaponry to material on the most infamous serial killers in history.

Perfectly understandable reading for a mystery writer. The more he knew Lucy, the more he was convinced she wasn’t a killer. Of course, his brain reminded his groin, that could be because he was attracted to her and didn’t want to believe he could get hard for a psychotic nutball.

Her cat wove itself like an orange Slinky between his feet. He didn’t particularly like cats. Especially cats named Snookums. Christ, even thinking the cat’s name made his sac shrivel. He reached for her mouse and enlarged the document she’d reduced when he’d first walked into her office. He didn’t expect to see anything incriminating, but he placed his hands on the desk and read anyway.

Within the clear plastic, his blue eyes stared into hers, wild, pleading, filled with terror. He struggled for breath, but the more he struggled, the more thin plastic he sucked down his throat. He thrashed about on the bed, pulling and kicking. The strain of the flexi-cuffs was turning his hands white. Fighting was useless.

She sat back on her heels and waited. It wouldn’t take long now. His cuffed hands curled into fists and his back arched. Then he stilled, his muscles relaxed, and she counted. Five…ten…fifteen seconds. His body jerked and convulsed. He wet himself, then went lifeless. She leaned in close and stared into his eyes. Her blood pounded in her ears and she held her breath. She watched his blue eyes fix, his pupils enlarged. She waited…waited for the exact moment when life left his body. Her lungs felt like they were going to explode…but nothing. She leaned back and crossed her arms beneath her bare breasts. That was it? Where was his soul? She thought for sure she’d see it this time. Disappointment settled between her brows. The last guy had given her more of a glimpse into his passing from one world into the next. This one had been a dud.

She gave him a look filled with contempt and scooted across the bed. It had taken her a month to find this guy. It would probably take her a month to find the next one too. But there would be others. There were always others. It was so easy. Some men would do anything if they thought it led to sex.

She grabbed her panties off the floor. Men were so pathetic.

Quinn straightened, and everything within him got real still. He stared at the screen and the blinking cursor. Then he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

“Fuck,” he whispered to the empty room.