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Steph was alone in the lab that night, just shutting down the last of the big machines, when the phone rang. The sound shattered the humming silence like a scream.
“Damn!” She put a hand to her thumping heart and stared at the instrument as it rang a second time. She imagined a dead-sounding whisper, a snarl of accusation because she’d talked to a cop. A chuckle as he told her Jilly was gone.
The phone rang again. “It’s not him,” she told herself. “Just pick it up.”
But she couldn’t. Her feet were frozen in place, and she felt a sudden surge of the nausea that had been building ever since she’d looked into Detective Peters’s gorgeous golden-brown eyes and lied her ass off.
She’d lied to a cop about an investigation. She was going to hell—or jail, whichever came first.
If the voice didn’t get her before then.
The phone rang a third, fourth and fifth time as she stared at it. Then it stopped. The answering machine did not click on.
He’d hung up.
Steph felt a massive shudder crawl down her back and she fled through the lab, slapping at switches and grabbing her purse almost as an afterthought. She was halfway to the elevator when she remembered.
I know how you walk to work, bitch.
The phone began to ring again. She shoved at the door to the elevator lobby and caromed into the little space, frantic to be away from the ringing phone and the voice in her head. Frantic to get to her daughter. She punched her security code into the door lock with trembling fingers and turned to jab at the elevator call button.
The car was already moving up toward the thirteenth floor.
He’s coming, she thought hysterically, he knows I didn’t tell Detective Peters that the Makepeace DNA was a match. He’s coming.
She pressed the other call button again and again, as though she could hurry the second elevator by doing so.
Eight…nine…ten…
He’s almost here!
Steph threw herself back at the security door and tried to key in the override code that would let her back in the lab after she’d punched in All Clear for the Night.
Her mind blanked. “What is it?” She fumbled at the little round numbers. “Oh-four-four-six-nine, right?” The door didn’t click. The light flickered red, warning her that another wrong code would freeze the lock for the night. “Come on, you bastard,” she snarled. “I bought you. I programmed you. Let me in!” She miskeyed again.
The lock buzzed angrily and the red light shone solid. She wasn’t getting in before morning.
Eleven…twelve…
Steph suddenly remembered the little gray canister in her purse—required equipment for any woman working in or near Chinatown. She scrambled for it. Grabbed it.
Thirteen…ding!
Screaming at the top of her lungs as her two-week self-defense class had taught her, Steph leaped for the widening crack in the elevator doors and aimed the nozzle directly at her attacker’s face with one hand while she swung her purse with the other.
And at the last moment saw the surprise in his familiar golden-brown eyes.
WHILE HIS MIND was still grappling with the sight of Stephanie Alberts attacking him with pepper spray in one hand and a leather purse in the other, Reid automatically chopped the canister out of her hand and tossed it toward a corner of the elevator, noting as he did so that it hadn’t fired because she’d failed to flip the safety. Once she was unarm—
Bonk! The elevator tilted when something impossibly heavy thumped him upside the head, and Stephanie’s face—now looking more horrified than afraid, with her mouth making a big round O of surprise, loomed in front of him.
“Detective Peters!”
Afraid she might belt him with her purse again, Reid grabbed her wrist and stepped back, directly on top of the pepper spray. The metal canister shot out from underneath him and he flailed backward with one hand while the other pulled Stephanie with him on the way down.
They landed in a tangle of arms and legs, half in and half out of the elevator door, which dinged impatiently when it tried to shut itself on his kidneys. Stephanie struggled to right herself, nearly unmanning him with a pointy kneecap. Reid grabbed her upper arms and tangled his legs with hers in self-defense before barking, “Quit it!” when she kept squirming. “You’re okay!”
What the hell was going on?
He shook her again, hoping to get through and she stilled. Froze. Seemed to realize where they were and how. Reid could feel her soft round breasts pressed against his chest, and he could swear he could feel her heart start to pound as the possibilities dawned on her.
Or maybe that was his heart, tempered only by the cop in him that remembered she’d been geared for attack when the elevator doors had opened. Though he could neither see nor sense immediate danger, he could feel it thrum through her body and into his.
Or maybe that was something else. Something far more dangerous. Far more insidious.
“It’s okay,” he repeated as the warmth spread and he felt her body soften as his did the opposite. He lowered his voice, “I’m here, Stephanie. You’re safe.”
It was the wrong thing to say, he could feel the change in her, though he couldn’t have explained it. She tensed, and he hoped she hadn’t just realized that he kept his gun in a shoulder holster, not his pocket. When she pushed herself off him and stood, the imprint of her soft curves hummed along his nerve endings like fire.
“I’m sorry, Detective Peters. I…” He could see the shields slam back down, could see her tuck her problems back into that place he couldn’t reach and resisted the urge to bare his teeth. “I’m sorry. Being up here alone gives me the creeps sometimes, especially after what happened last year.”
And by God, she wasn’t a half-bad liar. She brushed at her sleeves and patted her riotous red hair as though proper grooming would prove that everything was just fine.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Reid stood and resisted the urge to grab her shoulders. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to kiss her or shake her. Or both.
When he glanced pointedly at the pepper spray, she shrugged. “I don’t usually work this late, and it was so deserted, and the phone kept ringing—” She broke off. “Anyway, I’m very sorry I tried to spray you. Lucky for both of us it didn’t work. Although…” She frowned. “If you’d been anyone else I’d have been in trouble.”
He bent and picked up the offending canister. “You forgot to flip the safety off.” He demonstrated. “See?” Then he tossed it back to her, not caring to ask whether she had a permit. He’d rather she have it than not, given the neighborhood they both worked in.
Now that there was no longer a body obstructing their path, the elevator doors whooshed shut. Irritated with both of them—and particularly with the fact that he could practically taste her on his lips though they’d never kissed, Reid jabbed the button marked Lobby before he turned on her. “What’s going on, Stephanie? What’s wrong? You can tell me. I’m your friend.”
He meant it. He wanted to help. He hadn’t even told Sturgeon about the Makepeace DNA. He’d said only that it was delayed.
Surprisingly, she snorted. “Yeah, and I have great taste when it comes to choosing guys to place my trust in.” She leaned back in the elevator car and crossed her arms. “Why are you here, Detective Peters? Checking on your test results again? I told you I’d have them in a few days.”
Reid thought of her embezzling ex-husband Luis. He thought of the ex-boyfriend who’d used her to gain access to the Watson lab and almost killed her when she was no longer useful. How could he possibly say, but I’m different?
And was he really so different? He carried a gun. He knew how to disappear in Chinatown and how to find information down by Boston Harbor. He dreamed of blood and of a little girl’s hollow, dead eyes, and when he woke all he wanted to do was curse and hit something like his old man used to do.
She was right. She shouldn’t trust him. He wasn’t any different than the others. But he still had a job to do.
The doors slid open. It was the end of the line.
She was out in a flash, but he caught her by the arm and tried not to think he’d touched more soft female flesh in the previous two minutes than in the prior year.
He steered her toward the big revolving doors at the front of the building, though she’d been headed for the back exit. “I thought I’d walk you home.” He could make sure she made it safely. Make sure Maureen and the kid were okay.
Make that damn itch go away.
She balked. “You needn’t bother, Detective Peters. I’ve been getting to and from work for several years now. I know the way.”
“How about I come over for coffee then?”
“No.” She tried edging around him toward the back exit again, but he held firm and sighed. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
“We could have coffee down at the station, but I’m sure yours is much better. What do you say?”
As he had long suspected, Stephanie Alberts was anything but stupid. “A threat, Detective? On what basis?”
He touched a hand to the tender spot on his cheekbone. What the hell did she carry in that purse, anyway? “Assaulting a detective, for one.” Seeing she was not inclined toward sympathy, he finally said, “And tampering with evidence, Stephanie.” Her face drained of color and she swayed. For a quick moment he thought she might faint.
But she didn’t. She narrowed her eyes. “And just what do you mean by that?”
So she was going to tough it out. “I saw the Makepeace film on your desk. The markers didn’t line up. The DNA isn’t a match. You’re deliberately obstructing my investigation and I want to know why.”
“Oh, and you’re an expert at reading DNA fingerprints now, are you?”
Truth or bluff? Reid wasn’t sure he could tell any more. He shook his head. “Of course not, but Dr. Watson explained them to me once and they seemed pretty easy. Either the bars line up or they don’t.”
Her lovely jade eyes narrowed even further. “Ever hear of an artifact, Doctor Peters?”
He shook his head. “Not in the context we’re talking about, no.”
“Well, genius, it just so happens that if the thermocycler temperature is wrong when the experiment is run, you can get nonspecific interactions called artifacts. They’ll show up when you develop the film, but not before. They’re not real results. Just garbage.”
“Oh, come on,” he fired back. “That sounds…”
Plausible. Hell.
He frowned. “Then you mean…?”
She nodded, and a little bit of smugness crept into her expression, pushing the other emotions aside. “That film you oh-so-cleverly snitched off my desk didn’t mean a thing. Like I told you before, you’ll have to wait until the end of the week for the test results.”
Truth or lie?
“Now… You want to tell me why you thought it necessary to scrounge around my desk? How would you like it if I went through that notebook of yours?”
He’d be damned if he’d apologize for doing his job. But he felt the anger recede a bit and wondered whether she might not be telling the truth after all.
He shrugged. “I’d probably have—” kittens. Which reminded him. “Oh, hell. She Devil.”
The little calico cat had been asleep in his underwear drawer late last night when he’d stopped by the house to change his clothes before heading to the station. She looked like she’d swallowed a football and it had gotten stuck. Sideways.
That had been—he glanced at his watch—more than twenty hours earlier. “I beg your pardon?” Stephanie Alberts drew herself up to her full, imposing height of about five-foot-nothing and tried to look down her nose at him. “What did you call me?”
If someone had asked him a month ago which came first, the job or a mangy stray cat, Reid would’ve laughed that it was even a question. Now he wavered. Stephanie kept insisting there was nothing wrong, and yet… He shook his head. “Not you. There’s someone waiting for me at home and I’m late. Since you’re okay, I think I’ll go…” He gestured toward the revolving door and her eyes narrowed.
“I thought you wanted coffee.”
Boiling water. Towels. Sharp, sterilized knife. His mind came up with a reasonable-sounding list of items. But what if something went wrong?
Growing up, he hadn’t been allowed a pet. Hadn’t even known he liked animals until the little scrap of orange and black and white fur had appeared on his fire escape in a blinding rainstorm and howled until he let it in. She—and the size of the cat’s stomach left no doubt that it was a she—had eaten an entire can of albacore tuna, scratched his hand and barfed on the ugly Oriental rug he’d inherited from the old man.
Reid was hooked.
He’d taken her to the vet, bought a bagful of expensive toys before figuring out that she preferred crumpled balls of wax paper, and after going through a whole box of Band-Aids in the first week, christened the beast She Devil.
He was expecting her to give birth to a litter of demons any minute now, but the blessed event had been pushed from his mind by his worry over a woman who quite clearly neither needed nor wanted his help.
“Detective Peters? Coffee?”
He shook his head. “Not right now, thanks.” Stephanie was fine. She’d explained the Makepeace film pretty convincingly, and as for the incident in the elevator, well, just about any woman steeling herself to walk through Chinatown at night could be excused for being nervous—especially considering what had happened in that very lab just the previous year. “Okay then, can I give you a lift home?”
She shook her head vehemently. “No thanks. You just be on your way, and—”
STEPHANIE WAS TALKING to thin air. Peters had practically sprinted out the revolving door to the street. She blew out a breath and unknotted her fingers from the purse.
This is what she’d wanted, right? She’d wanted him to go away and leave her alone. She’d hoped he would buy the “artifact” story she’d cooked up after she’d glanced over from her phone conversation and seen him looking at the Makepeace film. She’d prayed he wouldn’t insist on driving—or worse, walking her home, leaving her to make the voice on the phone believe that she hadn’t told him anything.
“So this is a good thing,” she told herself firmly. “He’s gone and I can go home.”
Then why did she feel like scratching the eyes out of the woman Detective Peters was running to? Why did she feel such a twisting sense of betrayal that he’d asked her for coffee when he had someone waiting for him?
“Not everyone says coffee and means sex, Stephanie,” she lectured herself sternly. Her face flushed at the word and her skin heated at the memory of the good, solid bulk of the detective’s body beneath hers in the elevator and the heavy warmth that had stolen through her. The quick throb of her pulse as their limbs intertwined, and…and she’d sworn off men for good.
You have terrible taste, she told herself, don’t even go there. And besides, you’ve done nothing but lie to Detective Peters for the last twelve hours. That’s not exactly a great basis for a lasting relationship.
Or a brief, explosive one. The thought brought a quick liquid heat.
“You okay, Miss Alberts?” She jolted and shot a glance at the back hall of the lobby, relaxing when she saw the night watchman’s familiar stocky form. Though thoughts of the handsome detective were a momentary distraction, the fear that the man on the phone was watching her stayed near. Lurked.
“I’m fine, Bobby.” When had the words I’m fine become a mantra? “Just heading home.” She looked out past the revolving glass doors and suppressed a shudder. She didn’t want to go home through the Zone. Not tonight.
“It’s late, Miss Alberts, why don’t you take the catwalk over to the train station? It’ll be safer.”
She seized the idea gratefully. Usually, she spurned the T because the hospital was a mere ten-minute walk from her house and it took twice that to wait for the train. But tonight the brightly lit, well-guarded MBTA station seemed like heaven. “I’ll do that, Bobby. Thank you.”
So she took the catwalk and waited for the train. But the feeling of being watched didn’t go away.
LATER THAT NIGHT, Reid trotted up the old granite steps and banged on the nail-studded door with the cast-iron knocker. There was something to be said for the charm of the Patriot District, he thought as he scanned the narrow cobbled street. There were flower boxes at every window overflowing with period-correct plantings, and a discreet kiosk on the corner filled with brochures.
A sweet slide of saxophone drifted out of the window next door, making Reid think of beignets and open-air cafés.
Though the neighborhoods were only fifteen minutes apart by foot, Patriot was a far cry from the open markets and seedy underbelly of Chinatown. He wasn’t sure which he preferred.
He knocked again, and a little wooden window opened in the big wooden door. Jade-green eyes stared out at him.
