A Fine Specimen (5 page)

Alex had whipped out a
notebook and was taking notes. “Did Hank get a good look at them?”

Martha shrugged again.
“Dunno. Hafta ask him.”

“Well, tell Hank to stop
by the station house and we’ll run a lineup for him. Round up the usual
suspects and let him see if he recognizes anyone.”

“What’s the use?” Martha
gave the weary sigh of someone who was used to the cruel ways of the world,
with the odds tilted against the powerless. “You’re never gonna catch ’em
anyway.”

“We can try.” Alex’s
deep voice was quiet, firm. Caitlin knew full well that the statistical chances
of finding muggers almost twenty-four hours after the fact were practically
nil, but Alex sounded so reassuring, she almost believed he actually could
somehow magically produce the two muggers, with Hank’s two hundred still
unspent.

Alex released Martha and
put a hand to Caitlin’s back, ushering her into a booth with cracked red vinyl
seating. Once she’d been seated, he took his place across from her, sliding
over the menu Martha had placed on the table. “The cheeseburger’s good here. So
are the burritos.”

Caitlin didn’t open the
menu. “I’ll have the cheeseburger then.”

Alex signaled and Martha
came up, placing two glasses of ice water in front of them. “Here’s two on the
city. So—what’ll it be?” She pulled a pencil from behind her ear. “The usual
for you, Alex,” she said without looking at him, “and what’ll it be for you, miss?”

“Cheeseburger,” Caitlin
replied.

“C.B. and a burrito,”
Martha said, writing. “And to drink…” She looked at Caitlin, her brow wrinkling
heavily. “And don’t even bother asking for anything alcoholic, because we don’t
serve liquor to minors.”

Alex’s hard mouth curved
slightly. Lord, was that a
smile
? “Relax, Martha, she’s of age.” He
raised an eyebrow at Caitlin. “So, what’s your poison?”

“Iced tea,” she said.

“And black coffee for
me.”

He brought his attention
back to Caitlin as Martha bustled off, crossing his arms on the faded linoleum
tabletop and leaning forward. He eyed Caitlin for a long moment. His gaze was
so intent she felt as if he were seeking the secrets to her soul. Good thing
she wasn’t a criminal and had nothing to confess, because she would have. In a
heartbeat. Who on earth could withstand that intense black gaze?

“Okay.” His jaw muscles
bunched as she watched him try to line up his arguments against her staying at
the station house for ten days.

However, something had
happened in the past hour since she’d been with him. It wasn’t so much that
she’d acquired a backbone—she already had one. Living off peanuts while working
on a PhD dissertation took guts, thank you very much—but rather that she’d
become a convert to Ray’s thesis. There wasn’t anything that could stop her
now. Alex could rant and rave or—since that probably wasn’t his style—talk
himself blue in the face, but she wouldn’t be swayed. Oh no. Not when she’d
seen with her own eyes how fascinating he was. Just an hour in his presence and
she’d written a whole chapter of her dissertation in her head. Not only that,
but now she knew she had a powerful weapon in Ray.

Still, it was going to
be fun watching him try to dissuade her.

His jaw muscles bunched
again. “Okay, Ray wants you to spend a week in the station house. That I get.
But I don’t get what it is that you want from us. Or what Ray thought you would
get by spending time with us.”

Caitlin took a sip of
the ice water. Not stalling for time, really. Just marshalling her thoughts.
You didn’t let your mind wander around Alejandro Cruz. He was watching her with
piercing dark eyes, his normally full, surprisingly sensuous mouth pursed
tight…

Caitlin shook herself
slightly and took a deep breath. She had to convince him she was serious. She
knew now that she was going to be spending the next week in the Baylorville
Police HQ, but it would make a huge difference whether Alex Cruz was going to
be quietly obstructive or helpful. So she had to watch her step and she had to
find the right words.

“Look. I’ve got a double
masters in behavioral psychology and sociology.” She leaned forward as he had
done, looking straight into his black eyes and trying to make him understand.
“I’ve always been interested in law enforcement theory and I’m writing my
dissertation on it. I have basically all the material I need but, as I told
you, Ray insisted that I spend time at a police station and I think he’s right,
because fieldwork in testing theories is always so important.

“I won’t be a bother, I
promise. I have a slightly modified Thematic Apperception Test which I’ll be
asking your officers to take, but they can do that whenever they have a spare
moment. I would like to interview them as well, but I can easily arrange to do
that when they have some down time, if they’re willing. I won’t interrupt
anyone’s routine and I promise not to get in the way. When I go back to my
hotel in the evening, you won’t even know I had been around.”

It was as if she hadn’t
spoken about her work at all. He honed in on something else entirely. “You’re
staying in a hotel? Where? Which one?”

“The Carlton,” Caitlin
said, wrinkling her nose. She’d been a student all her adult life and was used
to ratty student conditions, but the Carlton was, hands down, the worst place
she’d ever slept in her life.

He reared his head back.
“The Carlton. That’s in Riverhead.”

She blinked at the flat,
disapproving tone of his voice.

He shook his head, a
sharp blur. “You’re crazy. Riverhead is the worst section of Baylorville, worse
than the Trey. Someone who looks like you, someone who gets lost in her
thoughts, is ripe prey for the scumbags in Riverhead.” He rapped his knuckles
on the tabletop once, hard, and blew out a quick breath. “I knew it. You
do
have a death wish.”

“No, I don’t.” Caitlin
sighed. “I didn’t know the area would be like that. My travel agent probably
didn’t either. I told her I wanted a budget hotel. I’m sure she didn’t realize
how…how unsavory the area is.” She shrugged. “It’s only for a few days,
anyway.”

“A few days are enough
for you to get tossed, maybe killed,” he said bluntly, and nodded as she
flinched involuntarily at his harsh words. “Good. The more scared you are, the
more wary you’ll be.”

He was trying to scare
her away, but he didn’t know her. Caitlin didn’t scare easily. “Like I said, it’s
only for a few days. I’m expecting—hoping—to be awarded a year’s grant by the
Frederiksson Foundation. Once I get the grant, I’ll be looking for an
apartment.”

Caitlin tried not to
squirm under Alex’s dark, intense, disapproving gaze. She simply met it with
her own, keeping her face neutral. But she could feel his strong will beating
against her from across the table. To her relief, Martha arrived, neatly
sliding his burrito and Caitlin’s cheeseburger in front of them.

As if she didn’t have a
care in the world, Caitlin bit into her burger and munched. “Wow. This
is
really good.”

He was barely listening,
simply glowering at her. Caitlin refrained from rolling her eyes or showing
impatience in any way as she ate the delicious cheeseburger. She didn’t want to
do anything to tip the balance, because they were at a stalemate. His power
against her stubbornness. The first person to blink lost.

They stared at each
other, Alex doing a very good imitation of a smokestack with steam coming out
of it.

After a while, it got
ridiculous. Caitlin tried a little conversational distraction. She finished
chewing and smiled. “Ray told me the cheeseburgers in Baylorville were
special.”

Alex just stared. He
didn’t want her at the station house, but just as clearly, he was compelled,
for reasons she didn’t understand, to accede to Ray’s wishes. As long as
Caitlin didn’t do or say anything that could put ammunition in his hands, she’d
won.

They were at a tipping
point. Caitlin suddenly realized that she needed for him to obey her on
something, to establish a precedent.

She nodded at his
burrito. “
Eat
,” she said, trying to inject stern command into her voice.

He looked down,
startled, at the food in front of him, as if he’d forgotten all about it. At
her command, he picked up his fork.

Though she kept her face
impassive, Caitlin rejoiced inwardly.

Yessss!

If he obeyed her once,
he would obey her again.

She was going to win
this battle. And after the battle, the war.

The aromas of Hank’s
food wafted straight into Alex’s system, reminding him that he was running on
empty. Or on station house coffee, which was worse.

Alex picked up his fork
to dig into his burrito then stopped, running through what Caitlin had said in
his mind. He lifted his head, surprised.

“The Frederiksson Foundation?”

The Frederiksson
Foundation was the pride of the city—one of the best-known think tanks in the
country, run by two Nobel Prize winners.

Alex looked again at
Caitlin Summers, this time looking past the incredible prettiness, the
absentmindedness, the grad student messiness.

Now he saw the
intelligence.

He hadn’t noticed it
before because she was so fucking pretty and looked so damn innocent. He didn’t
know any pretty, intelligent, innocent women. Most of the intelligent women he
knew were cops. A cop didn’t stay innocent after Day One on the job.

She swallowed and smiled
at him. “You’ve heard of it? I suppose you would have, being from Baylorville.
I’m really looking forward to being a fellow there, if they offer it to me.”
Caitlin pursed her lips. “Even though it
is
full of pencil-dick geeks.”
Flashing an amused grin at him, she bit into her cheeseburger again. A drop of
Hank’s homemade ketchup dripped from the bun. She licked it off her lip with a
small pink tongue.

Alex opened his mouth to
reply but was sidetracked by the sight of that little pink tongue. This was
another aspect of Caitlin Summers that he’d been trying to ignore, but that
quick, mischievous grin, that tongue sneaking out to lick her luscious
lips—making him think of her licking
him
—blindsided him.

Alex kept sex and work
strictly separate. Not that there had been that much sex lately to keep
separate. He’d been busy. But still. If he met an attractive woman with any
connection to the job, Alex just flipped that switch in his head that kept his
dick down between his legs.

That switch just broke.

He’d already noticed how
attractive she was but it hadn’t really affected him beyond a knee-jerk male
reaction when she’d nearly become roadkill. He’d just filed it away as a
distinguishing characteristic, as if compiling an Identi-Kit.
Large,
luminous eyes the color of a summer sky, beautiful pale blonde hair so thick it
frothed out of its ponytail, high, sculpted cheekbones, long graceful neck.
Five-four, slender build. Utterly gorgeous.

But now all that
feminine attraction seemed to reach out and grab him by the dick, forcing him
to notice, to look at her as a woman. She wasn’t wearing any perfume, she
didn’t have any makeup on, her clothes were cheap and wrinkled. His cock didn’t
give a shit. It just reared straight up, the fucker.

Damn
Ray Avery! This woman was going to be a
huge
distraction. And now was the wrong time for him to be thinking with his little
head. Just when he was zeroing in on Angelo Lopez…

Maybe all this was
happening because he hadn’t had sex in a while, sort of like punishment. Like
going too long without giving your car a lube job. He had to see about getting
laid, double quick, only not with Caitlin Summers.

Not only was she
definitely not his type, she’d been sent by
Ray
. It’d…it’d be like
fucking Ray’s daughter. Ray didn’t have a daughter, he’d never married, but
still.

“Lieutenant?” He looked
at her. Shit, even her voice was attractive. Soft, a faint hint of honeysuckle,
though without that coyness he hated in Southern women. He shifted uneasily in
his seat. The boner was
not
going down.

Caitlin put down her
cheeseburger and leaned forward earnestly, light blue eyes searching his.
“Look, I’ve interviewed literally thousands of people at the workplace. What I
said before is true. I can promise you that I won’t cause any trouble or
distract anyone from their duties. I’ll be so discreet you’ll hardly notice I’m
there. All I want to do is talk with the officers, get to know them well enough
to evaluate the questionnaire. Find out how they feel about their jobs. Find
out what their concerns are.”

“Well hell,” Alex said,
disgusted. “I can tell you that right now, without having to interview them.
They want to put away the bad guys and stay in one piece while doing it.”

“Of course they do.” She
nudged her little round scholar’s glasses back up to the bridge of her nose.
“But in order to do that, they need a strategy. A survival strategy. Cops are
both predator and prey, so like any animal in the wild they need to hunt while
convincing
their enemies that they
won’t make an easy meal.”