Bad Cop (Entangled Covet) (6 page)

“Ander and Kenji were fixing to strangle each other when I saw them in the facility,” Ian said, cutting him off too eagerly for Alice’s comfort. “Couldn’t catch the audio, but it was obvious.”

“Think Ander was on him for leaving evidence around to find?”

“More than likely.”

Alice had to interject. “You guys are too sure of their involvement. Just because it happened to one of the fledglings under their care doesn’t mean it had to be one or both of them.”

“Alice, adjuvants take their duties very seriously. For a baby to get free without their knowledge is pretty much unheard of,” Ian said.

“Prove it.”

He leaned further to see her face. “And what would satisfy you?”

A completely out-of-line thought went through her mind’s eye, but she shoved it aside. “The murder happened just before dawn. Show me how they could possibly have done it, and then we’ll talk.”

“Don’t do it, Ian. You’re setting yourself up.”

Ian nudged Dec and then extended his hand toward her. “You’re on. I’ll expect some sucking up when I see you tonight.”

A smile tugged at her lips. When she took his warm hand in hers, it was hard to let go.

Such an incredibly talented hand
.

She blinked and forced herself to focus. Business. Murder case. He had no problem with lying, bullying, and circumventing the law.
Hello?

“You’re warm.” She sounded like a ditz. A jolt of alarm slid across his features, and his eyes shot toward Declan.

Dec grinned a rather wicked grin. “Yes, Ian. Tell us about this. Are you breathing, too?”

Alice’s eyes widened. In fact, he had been breathing, and his heart had been beating like a wild stampede. What the heck did that mean?

“Shut the hell up, Dec.”

Declan said no more, but the barest hint of a smile lifted the corners of his lips. She opened her mouth to ask, but they’d pulled in front of the VLO.

Ian hopped out to open her door and help her from the car. The stupid fuzziness struck her again.

Then he climbed into the passenger seat and leaned out the window. “Good morning to you. I’ll send someone along with your belongings after I collect my car that you left all alone. Get home safe. I’ll see you tonight.”

She couldn’t turn away from his gaze. This was becoming an unwelcome habit. “Yes, tonight.” Did she appear as flighty as her mind had gone? “And bring some proof with you.”

His laughter faded as the Escalade pulled away. Thought she was funny, did he? Cute. He’d have to think again if he presumed he could operate the way he did tonight. This wasn’t his show to run, and she wasn’t going to let him drag her along for the ride, no matter how adorable he could be. After his exchange with Dec, it was obvious he was keeping something important from her. She pulled her lanyard off, swiped her key card, and headed into her building to wait for him to send her purse. A little digging was in order before going home.

Time to find out what he was hiding.

Chapter Eight

Endless hours of tossing and turning had finally led to a fitful daytime nap before Alice forced herself to get up. What she’d uncovered during last night’s research lit her stomach on fire. Ian had to have seen the similarities between this case and the Infancy killings. Yet he’d said nothing. What possible reason could he have for keeping that old case from her?

A few times, she thought Ian might be different from others of his profession. There were times when he was kind and thoughtful, when he made her forget her worries and enjoy the moment for once.

But he wasn’t different.

After Ian had proven himself a dishonest reprobate yet again, she was in no mood to face him. Fortunately, she didn’t need to. She was headed to the Union Gospel Mission to talk to the transient who’d found the body. Though this was clearly Denton and Campbell’s job, she wasn’t above using the task to delay a confrontation with Ian.

By the time she arrived, it was well past the dinner hour. She waded around what must have been a couple hundred rank, unwashed bodies seeking aid at the shelter, but there was no sign of the transient pictured in her file. Until she bumped into him on the way out. He steadied her with a hand at her elbow.

“Thank—”

The shaggy man seemed uncomfortable, but she couldn’t stop staring. It wasn’t so much his threadbare clothing. With the exception of the peeling gray leather of his once-white shoes and stains on his jacket, he was fairly clean. But he sported a darkened left eye and his lip was cut. The dark, bushy beard couldn’t hide the damage.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Accident,” he said. He tried to duck past her into the shelter, but she hooked her fingers into his heavy, ragged jacket.

“Before you go in,” she said, “I need to speak with you, Mr. Keeler.” When he faced her again, she extended her hand. “I’m Alice Capshaw with the VLO.”

“The what?” His eyes shifted from side to side along the sidewalk, ignoring her hand.

“The Vampire Liaison Office.” She saw nothing in the way of comprehension. Yep, this was going to be fun. “About the body you found last night.”

“Oh.” Picking at his ragged nails, he said nothing else. The crust of blood on his lower lip was pretty darn fresh.

“Mr. Keeler, the other night you weren’t injured.”

He shook his head in a short, tight motion.

“How did you get these injuries?”

“I don’t want to go to jail,” he said.

She frowned. “You won’t go to jail. Did you assault someone?”

“No.” He finally looked up from his fidgeting hands. “Someone asking questions.”

His eyes skittered away every time she tried to hold his gaze. Was it because he was unstable, anxious, or lying? It was so hard to tell in a man of his situation.

“When and who?”

“Tonight. A dark-haired man and another one with an accent.” As he talked, he scratched compulsively at his face.

A shot of alarm and a healthy dose of suspicion landed in the middle of her chest. It couldn’t be. Why would they harm this guy?

“What kind of accent?”

“British. Or Scottish. Irish. Hell, I don’t know.” His face jerked up, his focus darting along the street. “I’m not supposed to tell. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t tell.”

Before she could catch him, he raced into the building and was out of sight by the time she reached the door. What had he seen in the abandoned house that would make Ian and Dec assault such a man? Surely, he couldn’t think the transient had anything to do with the murder. But with Ian’s penchant for resorting to physical force, she could see him losing control if the man had simply refused to talk. Fury balled like a time bomb in her gut. Unfortunately, the transient was too terrified to file a complaint with the VLO.
Dammit
. When she found Ian, he would wish he’d never set eyes on the guy.

Against her better judgment, she’d let Ian’s charismatic personality reel her in much too far, to the point of disarming her defenses with a few words or a smile. But she couldn’t be like those others who turned a blind eye to men with a badge. Devastating memories of Zach’s first night in the hospital stirred a wave of pain.

Even as she turned the facts over in her head, she couldn’t believe Ian would do such a thing. Then again, after only two days, all she knew of him was he didn’t stop at assault or breaking and entering. She had no idea how far he’d go to find the killer.

…

After a short slumber during the day and a restless dusk, Ian ground his teeth again. Alice would never let him hear the end of it when he shared his discoveries about Ander and Kenji. If there was a way to avoid Alice, he would. Then again, he’d been like a greyhound in the slips waiting for night to fall, and his workout before dusk had done nothing to take the edge off. He wanted to be with her.

As he passed a bakery on the way to her office building, the scent of fresh cookies teased him. It reminded him of her, the aroma of warm sugar cookies a whisper under the citrusy fragrance of her shampoo. His chest protested the mule-kick of his heart. Damn it all. This was nonsense, not to mention dangerous. Those wounds last night wouldn’t have been near fatal if it hadn’t been for his heart pumping a mile a minute over her. He hadn’t the nerve to tell her. Those shots truly had been warning shots from one vampire to another. Love taps.

Those little, graceful hands digging into him, her slender legs wrapping his hips like a bow on a present, and her full, tender lips moving under his had jumpstarted him as effectively as flashing into a pair of power lines—yeah, that’d been an accident he wouldn’t soon forget. She’d driven the pain from his mind and had nearly made him forget where he’d been heading.

He hesitated only a moment before walking into her office unannounced. She didn’t seem surprised, only sat back in her chair and regarded him with her arms crossed, plumping her cleavage again. Mmmm, he loved those V-neck sweaters she wore. He tried to wait her out, but the silence hurt his ears.

“Fine. I’ll go first.” He sat across the desk from her and propped his booted feet on the edge of it. She promptly reached over and knocked them back off as if she’d expected the move. Ian leaned forward onto his elbows instead. “Ander was at a benefit for runaway teens. Kenji was conducting interviews for new security personnel hires. Both verified by multiple independent witnesses. Does that make you happy?”

Her lips tightened, somehow managing to appear full and ripe at the same time. “Oddly, no.” She stood and paced to the large window overlooking the street below. “It makes my point for me, but it ultimately leaves us at ground zero with no suspects.”

“That doesn’t mean they don’t know anything about it.”

“What are you going to do, beat it out of them?” Her words were caustic, and he sensed that if she faced him, he’d see that loathing on her face again.

What had he done?

“That’s a ridiculous idea. It would be as effective as beating a dead horse.”

“Don’t laugh about this.” She spun to face him. “This isn’t something you can joke away. I’m not one of your
connections
to get you off the hook for your actions. I know what you did.”

The words assaulted his conscience. She couldn’t possibly know what he’d done. An odd pounding reached a crescendo in his ears that he could barely hear over. “That’s good. Maybe you could enlighten me so I know why you’re riled.”

“Where were you before you came here to the office?”

“Am I being grilled now?” He cocked his head, but her expression was unyielding. She wasn’t going to explain herself until he’d answered her questions. “Fine. I was at Ezra’s for a meeting.”

“You didn’t go out with Dec?”

His confusion hit an all-time high. “I haven’t been out at all. I haven’t seen Dec tonight. What’s this about, Alice? I haven’t been anywhere but Ezra’s and then straight here. Where are we going with this?”

She gazed out the window again and waited so long to speak, he stood with the intent to reach for her—dumb male driven by his cock that he was—but she stopped him cold with a single question.

“Why don’t we start with the information you have on the Infancy Killer?”

Ian dropped right back into his seat and shrugged, though she couldn’t see it from her position at the window. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Don’t play dumb. The evidence matches.” She spun to face him. Icy fire lit her pale eyes turning her into some kind of Pagan goddess look-alike. “You lied to me. You promised you’d tell me everything.”

“I have told you everything!” He slammed his fist on the desk.

She flinched.

Maybe he’d overreacted a bit. He almost wanted to apologize, but she’d brought up something incredibly painful and waved it in front of his face. Fuck her self-righteous indignation.

“Ian.” Her voice gentled as if she were facing a hungry lion. “The wax, the blood, the body—it has happened before. Why do you think it’s not related?”

“The Infancy Killer is dead. There hasn’t been a murder connected to that case for nearly fifty years. He was a serial killer. We’re dealing with a single murder here.”

“Maybe the investigators got the wrong guy.”

Red flashed over his vision. “He fucking did it, Alice.” He’d snarled the words at her, his voice hoarse. Ducking his head, he tried to hide the biting rage boiling to the surface. The emotion wasn’t for her, but for him. He couldn’t be wrong. It would make him a murderer.

She came around the desk. It wasn’t fear or an attempt to flee past him. Her hands cradled his jaw, tipping his face toward her.

Her thumbs massaged his temples in an idle pattern. “Talk to me, Ian. Why are you so upset?”

He searched her face, her beautiful silver eyes, but couldn’t find any derision. Imagine that. The woman who despised Trackers and cops in general braved his fury and was trying to calm him. And doing a damned fine job of it. He’d been a notch away from blowing his mercury until she’d laid her hands on him. It was a regretful thing when she pulled away and sat on the edge of her desk in front of him.

“Were you involved with that case?” A tiny crease formed between her eyebrows. “I didn’t see your name in any of the news articles.”

His lips twitched before he brought his mind back on track. “You looked it up on the Internet?”

“Uhm, yeah? Google solves all of life’s little problems. How else could I learn about it? You weren’t telling me anything.”

“I told you, there’s nothing to tell.” He sat back, but she stared him down again. Hell on wheels, she was good at that. “I was involved.”

“And?”

He took a few slow breaths. “This isn’t easy.”

She waited patiently, calmly. For once, he wanted to talk about it. Like he wouldn’t explode as the words stacked together.

“You read the media coverage,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Then you know Declan was one of the investigating officers. We’d discussed the case, combed over every damn detail until we thought our heads were on backward.”

There was no rehashing this sitting down. His gut in a spin cycle, he stood. After settling her into his vacated chair, he paced in front of her desk.

“And then a new vic turned up.” He ran his hands through his short hair. “I knew her. She was my maker’s subjugate. But he loved Leah, and they were to be mated after she transformed. She was my sister in everything but blood.”

Alice’s face softened. He thought he’d break if she touched him right then, but damned if it didn’t feel like redemption when she rose to put her arms around his waist. What kind of loss had she suffered to have such powerful empathy that close on the heels of her anger?

“Sean fell apart.” He spoke with his cheek against the silk of her hair. “He flashed into the daylight, leaving me with only ashes to mourn by nightfall. I came…quite close to following him.”

She leaned back to see his face. “Oh, God.”

“Alice, I lost her too.” Ian rubbed a lock of her hair between his fingers like a security blanket. “And then him.”

Maybe he was being a big pansy, but it’d been long since he’d had this kind of comfort, having been on his own since Sean’s and Leah’s deaths. Half a century later, the grief lingered as if he’d lost them yesterday.

“I wanted to hate him for it,” he whispered.

Her eyes said she understood, and she did. “You loved him.”

“Like I’ve never loved a man in my life, not even my own da.”

Her arms tightened around him. But then she asked yet another dreaded question.

“What happened with the killer?”

Holy St. George, did she ever stop pulling thorns? “Died in a fire.”

She pulled away from him, her hands resting on her hips as she paced. “You’re full of answers, aren’t you?”

“You know what happened, dammit. You have the articles. What do you want from me, Alice?”

“How about the truth?” Like a fabled Fury, she whirled on him. “From you. But that’s too much to ask, isn’t it? You know, when you’re doing something wrong, every tiny little sound makes you jump.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means something happened, Ian, something bad, something
wrong
. You’re jumpy about it. What aren’t you telling me?”

At that moment, if he hadn’t needed her access to the casebook, he would’ve walked away. Instead, something grim and dark moved inside of him. “Don’t go breaking your shins on a stool that’s not in your way, Alice.”

Her eyes widened, but he was saved a tongue-lashing inquisition by the ring of her cell phone. She reached in her purse and answered the call. Whatever issue warranted a call in the night had drained the flush of her temper. She squared her shoulders before turning back to him.

“Another one, Ian.” Her tone had gone dead. “You could have been wrong. You could have accused the wrong man.”

A deep, biting chill shuddered through him. Was she right? At the time, he’d been so ravaged, he would have jumped at the throat of anyone remotely responsible for the death of his family. But maybe he’d missed something in his blood-soaked haze.

Maybe he’d killed the wrong man, and now the murderer was free to kill again.