Deadly Lover (18 page)

“Yes, but what specifically and why? And does it even matter here. If it was her research that kicked things off, how do the others tie in?” Lily’s shoulders slumped under the weight of too many answered questions.

Hands tucked behind his back, Jolaj crowded into her space. “If the person behind these attacks truly despises my people, just spending time with Fresna might have been enough to get her killed.”

“Maybe.” They had learned a lot, but had more questions than ever.

Together they walked back to the apartment’s front door, but Lily’s com signaled again before she could get the door open.

She laid her hand over his on the handle. “Hang on another minute—com.”

“Your sister again, Agent Rowan?” Concern flickered in his eyes despite his deadpan expression. She’d had to look up to see it. That close he towered over.

“Yeah, an alternate profile, but it’s here.” Even as she said it she used her com-lens to decline the call and block the new profile.

“Family is a valuable link to the continuation of your line.”

“Yeah.” She lifted her hand off of his. “Believe me, my line is doing plenty fine without me.” She fought for nonchalance and failed.

They were face-to-face, bodies only inches apart. He eclipsed her view of everything but him. He wrapped one hand around her arm. “Lily…” There was no panic, no fear. She wanted to press into him. The fire banked in his eyes said he wanted that too.

“I’m fine.” Lily found the strength to step back far enough so that he could open the door. “We need to poke around this building a little more, then I need to go back to my place. I can dig into Deepwater DataCore from there, run some probabilities, look for ties.”

He’d dropped his hand when she’d moved back but his body angled toward her, leaning in, as if he wanted to fall.”I’ll accompany you.”

She didn’t need his help to do data mining. She should send him away, but she didn’t want to. She liked his presence. His deep voice. The heat he made her feel.

Lily’s com signaled again. “Damn it.” She glanced toward the message and relaxed when she saw Sara’s name instead of Rose’s. She opened an audio channel, this time leaving it in privacy mode. Sara’s voice came across the link.

“Lily, I am so going to kill you, slow and painful.”

Lily laughed. “What did I do now?”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about the lilies found on Mary Santini’s body. You need to be careful, cuz.”

Beside her, Jolaj growled low and angry. He shouldn’t have been able to hear that.

“I’m being careful. I haven’t been alone since then.”

Sara let out a shrill of outrage. “You walked me home after the club last night then walked home alone in the middle of the freakin’ night, Lil.”

When Lily ventured a look at Jolaj, his eyes had narrowed and the rest of him had turned to stone. She suddenly wished she’d taken the call in another room. “Oh, right. I forgot about that. But I spent the night at the med facility surrounded by lots of people. Besides, all of the attacks have taken place during the day.”

Sara groaned. “So far. You idiot. That doesn’t mean the bad guy can’t change his MO. What about today? Are you wandering around out there in the open? Making yourself a target?”

She gave Jolaj her best innocent grin. “No. I’ve had backup at my side all day.”

“Your pistol doesn’t count, Lil.”

Lily forced her eyes closed and set a mental
la, la, la
playing in the back of her mind in an effort to block out the man standing beside her. “Not my weapon. A person. I haven’t been alone, except to pee. I swear.”

Sara made a humph noise. “I have that data you wanted on the toxin found in the Ormney’s blood.”

 “Great. What’ve you got?” Her lids popped open and her gaze immediately went to Jolaj, hoping to find him brighter at this news. He wasn’t. And she was stuck in his deep-sea eyes again.

“Not over the com link.”

Lily wanted to pound her forehead against the door. Sara needed to give her something to appease the mighty beast. “My link is secure.”

“Deepwater encryption, right?” Sara elongated some of the syllables, clearly calling attention to the subtext.

“Yeah.” Lily huffed.

“So,” said Sara, “maybe we should talk face to face. We have a lot to go over. We’ve finished up the autopsies on Mary Santini and Jennifer Richardson.”

 “Okay, I have a few things to finish up then I—” Jolaj changed the angle of his head and his lips parted as if he might speak. “I mean, we’ll be over.”

Sara didn’t miss a thing. “We?”

“Yes. Now, anything else before I close this link?”

“ Lil,” said Sara. “I went over the autopsies with Sean a while ago. Before he left, he said our reports are sending him back to The Zone.”

Jolaj heaved a sigh and leaned against the door. “Oz.”

“But why would he be going after Oz? We ruled him out.” Lily had been asking Jolaj, but Sara answered.

“If you’re talking about the Ormney male without claws, there’s something you should know.”

“What is it, Sara?”

“The preliminary report was wrong.”

The preliminary cause of death had been exsanguination. How could that be wrong? “I don’t understand.”

“I’m saying, the murder weapon wasn’t what we expected.”

Lily shook her head at Jolaj, still confused.

Jolaj frowned. “What she means is that the fatal injuries were not made by Ormney claws,” he offered the news completely calm. No shock or even mild surprise.

“You knew?”

He nodded. “I suspected.”

“Who are you talking to?” asked Sara across the com-link.

“Sara, we can talk more when I get there.”

“Sure, but who—”

Lily closed the com link and glared at Jolaj. “You want to tell me how you knew it wasn’t claws?”

“I didn’t know. But no Ormney are missing. If the killer wasn’t one of us, the weapon couldn’t be claws.”

Lily swore. “This is why you didn’t point out Oz’s lack of claws yesterday. You suspected it wouldn’t eliminate him anyway.”

He nodded. “I thought Metro would have this information sooner.”

“Damn, damn, damn.” Lily paced to the center of the room and faced him with a bit more space between them. “You can’t keep holding out on me this way.”

“I’m sorry, Lily.” He followed her across the room and stopped a breath away. “I couldn’t be sure of anything.”

Lily held her ground. “What else aren’t you telling me?”

His fist clenched and unclenched at his sides. He sighed, his spine sagged then hardened again so fast she almost missed it. “Many things.”

Jolaj wanted to tell Lily everything. The realization twisted him in knots. “We should speak to building security before we go.”

Standing in a dead woman’s home, he watched fire flash in Lily’s cool green eyes.

“That’s it? You as much as tell me you’re holding information back, then say let’s go talk to security?”

His regret and frustration bubbled up to fray his control. He fought to keep his hands off her. Standing so close to her while she spoke to her cousin had been a trial. Even now he could hear her breath move in and out of her lungs. His head was full of her sage and honey scent. “I will tell you what I can, when I can.”

Her breathing hitched and her body trembled. An Earther wouldn’t have heard that hitch. Wouldn’t have seen the tremble. But he wasn’t like them and that was the problem. Would he ever get past that damn fear of hers? Damn, he shouldn’t want to. But he did. He needed her tremble from want.

He eased back to wait for her to recover, but she followed his step, pressing her breasts against his chest and tipping her head back to look into his face. “You asked for my help. People are dying, you damn arrogant jerk. If that doesn’t mean any damn thing to you, why did you pull me into this?”

His hands came up, hovered inches from touching her. Her bravado tugged at his heart and pushed aside the edge of anger, leaving raw, tender lust. He needed to put his hands on her. “You don’t know how to do things the easy way, do you?”

“I’m not afraid of you.” Her voice steadied as she spoke, as if the words gave her strength.

Despite his will, his hands skimmed down the arms of her heavy leather jacket, searching for some hint of the heat beneath. “Liar.”

“Fuck you.”

The words were spoken low and harsh between deep, heaving breaths. His head knew how she meant them, but his body longed for a more literal meaning.

He fit his hands to her waist and lifted her pulling her against him. She reached for his shoulders to steady herself, but she didn’t fight him. Her body was tender, lighting fires across his torso, from chest to hip. Sliding a hand under her ass, he encouraged her legs to edge around him. The heat of her curves fitting to hi body brought his need to a boil and he thought he might find release just from pressing against her. He lowered his head to rest his forehead against hers. “I would like nothing more.”

Her trembling hands lifted from his shoulders and settled along his jaw, urging him to look at her. Her eyes met his then slipped down to his mouth. Her tongue darted out to spread moisture along her pink lips. He took a deep breath, enjoying the press of her soft breasts as his chest expanded, then exhaled. Her thighs tightened against his hips.

She wanted him.

Her hands had stopped trembling and her breathing was heavy but no longer panicked.

Slowly, giving her time to stop him, he dipped his head down to taste her lips. Soft and plumb, they tasted him back.

He wanted to take her, right there in the middle of a dead woman’s home. Lust rode him hard. He pushed his tongue into her mouth. The wet heat surrounded him as he pressed his tongue along hers. He pulled her bottom closer, letting his hardness find the sensitive parting between her legs.

She moaned. Then pulled back leaving them both panting. Her hands slid down to his shoulders and squeezed his tight muscles. Her breath heated his skin just beneath his jaw line, making him want to purr for her.

“Please, Jo. Put me down.” Her voice was soft and seductive, but the meaning of her words splashed cold water over the flames and called his reason to the fore.

He waited until she looked up to lock her gaze to his, then he carefully lowed her to the floor. As her toes touched the ground he watched for her reaction, regret, or worse—fear.

Lily stood silent and still for several seconds before trying to speak and when she did, nothing came out.

Jolaj wanted desperately to hear what she would say, but he couldn’t force her to speak when she wasn’t ready.

“We have work to do.” He nodded to encourage her agreement.

She dipped her small chin then turned on her heal and strode to the door.

Jolaj followed her into the hall, watching her walk away. Knowing he should let her go and wondering if he could.

Together Jolaj and Lily took the elevator down to the security office. Her Deepwater ID got her access to the security vids. Fresna had been there. Walked in with the mysterious Doc Smith on several occasions, always staying for a couple of hours.

Lily glanced his way with the weight of understanding in her eyes. But Jolaj didn’t see the same thing she saw on the vids. Or rather he focused on the difference between the two on vid and the couples he’d known. Lanyak and Oz had both been in love with the human women they’d broken Council decree to bed. Fresna hadn’t been in love and neither had the woman. There was no sign of it in their body language. Even when they were alone in the elevator or the hallway. If Fresna had fucked the woman, it was all he’d done.

Security could filter the vids based on the flat number. Each time the flat security was keyed a record was logged. What they couldn’t or wouldn’t do was give them the woman’s name. Just the lease holder and that led back to the Deepwater front corporation Jolaj and Lily already had. A little more checking showed that no other Ormney had visited the woman or the building in recent months. That made it simpler when they confronted the building’s doormen.

There were two doorman stations, one on ground level and another on level six where the glide-rail ran through the building. They tried the ground floor station first. Lily asked the attendant to recall any Ormney visitors and flashed the vid-com display they’d downloaded from the flat’s display wall. The first man remembered the woman with a little prompting, but didn’t have a name. They had better luck on the sixth floor.

The attendant there recognized the woman immediately. He was a short, round man, buttoned into a solid gray uniform. His eyes were lively and his mind seemed sharp. “That’s Doctor Rawls. Simone Rawls. Nice lady.”

Lily turned off the vid and thanked the man. Jolaj followed her to the glide-rail platform to wait for the next train.

“Simone.” Lily rolled her shoulders then looked at him. “Not far from Simon. Ginger Simon.”

He hated that he’d added to the pressures that plagued his little fighter. “The woman whose remains were pulled out of the river?”

“Yeah. That’s the identity that popped for the DNA.” She rubbed the back of her neck, still rolling one shoulder. “It could be an alias, but why does a research tech need an undercover flop and ID?”

Jolaj didn’t know enough about Deepwater to help, so he remained silent and let her work through her thoughts.

“Doctor Rawls.” Lily spoke, eyes unfocused. “A company med tech who hangs out at the docks. Known there as Doc Smith. Maybe floats another identity as Ginger Simon. Ginger Simon. Simone Rawls.”

Jolaj watched her talk it through, fascinated until she turned icy pale. Worried he moved closer.

Her eyes flicked as they sometimes did when she was using her com-lens. “Damn me. Doctor Simone Rawls.” She looked up to meet his gaze. “Doctor Simone Rawls texted me the day Lanyak attacked Jennifer Richardson.” She sucked in a breath and exhaled, her body shuddering, but she didn’t look away. “Two weeks after she died.”

It didn’t make sense, but their com’s were capable of many things he had no interest in. Perhaps it was a prerecorded message. “What did her text say?”

The grin that graced her lips was anything but happy. “She changed my damn evaluation appointment. Ensured I’d be going toward the glide-rail station at exactly the right time to hear Jennifer Richardson scream.”