Читать книгу All A Man Can Do - Virginia Kantra - Страница 11

He could have handled that better, Jarek acknowledged as he drove north.

He watched the baleful gleam of Tess’s red taillights five car lengths ahead. She’d indulged in one short burst of speed and temper as they merged with a couple of trucks making an early morning run on Highway 12. But she settled down quickly enough. He had no trouble following her car. He wished he could follow her thought processes as easily.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. On the job, he was known for his ability to take all the facts of a case into account. But he’d sure miscalculated with Tess. He’d underestimated her determination to make him a news item. He’d misjudged the timing and the amount of the personal information he’d needed to give her to keep control of her story.

And he definitely hadn’t reckoned on his own reaction to their kiss.

He practically broke a sweat just thinking about it. About her. She was hot. And unexpectedly sweet. When he kissed her, his body went hard and his mind went blank. For a minute there, kissing her, he’d felt hot, too. Hotter and more dangerous than a stolen pistol, and about as likely to go off. Heady stuff for a disciplined cop and responsible family man.

He unrolled his window to let the cool, damp night stream in over his arm. Living like a monk for the past eight years had obviously made him susceptible to pushy reporters in black leather pants. And the potent contradiction posed by Tess’s curl-up-and-die looks and little-girl-lost mouth would tempt a saint.

But his loss of control wasn’t her fault. Her voice echoed accusingly in memory, her flip tone not quite hiding the insult to her feelings. Anyway, you kissed me.

She was right, Jarek acknowledged fairly. His frustrated body was his problem. Her hurt feelings were his responsibility.

And if Tess, in a typical female snit, decided to smear him in the paper and stake him out for the local gossips to feed on, then the resulting loss of public goodwill would be his headache.

Jarek frowned as he watched Tess’s tin can compact zip toward the off ramp. He signaled his intentions to the empty lane behind him and then followed her down the exit to Eden. He was determined to keep his private life private. His failed marriage and his unhappy daughter were off-limits as topics for the press. But ticking off the reporter assigned to introduce him to the town was bad public relations.

Maybe he should agree to that interview Tess wanted. He could steer the talk away from his hopes for his family and onto his plans for the town.

He would have to be nice to her, he decided. If he wanted her cooperation. It was practically his duty.

His mind drifted to all the ways he’d like to be nice to Teresa DeLucca. His body buzzed with anticipation.

He did his best to ignore it.

Tess’s fingernails beat a nervous, angry tattoo against the steering wheel. Every time she looked up, she saw Denko’s car in her rear view mirror, a dark blue, unmarked Crown Victoria. Nothing new, nothing flashy, nothing to signal whatever midlife crisis had triggered his move to Eden.

His driving was like the rest of him: patient, dogged, steady. She told herself these were not qualities that appealed to her. He probably made love the same way. She pulled a face at her windshield. Nothing kinky or exciting for Chief By-The-Book Denko.

She passed the brightly lit Gas-N-Go and turned under an arch of trees onto a dark residential street. Of course, Denko would still get where he was going that way. She bet he made sure his partners did, too.

The barred moonlight ran over the hood of her car. She shivered a little, with temper and lust.

The Plaza parking lot was quiet, all the seniors’ cars tucked in safely for the night. Tess found an empty space and cut her engine. In the silence, she heard the rumble of Jarek’s engine as he pulled in behind her. His door slammed.

She took a deep breath and got out of her car. “You want my license and registration, Officer?”

“I’ll pass, thanks.” He strolled toward her. “I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee, though.”

The moon had ducked behind the trees. The glare from the building’s security lights could hardly be called romantic. That was okay. She didn’t want romance. Particularly not with a tight-lipped cop who came equipped with a school-age daughter.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Offering you coffee is what got me into trouble in the first place.”

His eyes narrowed. “What kind of trouble are we talking about here?”

Tess cursed her big mouth. One of these days she was going to learn to think before she spoke. Yeah, and then she’d probably never talk at all.

“I just think we should keep things on a professional footing,” she said weakly.

Denko nodded, his gaze still fixed on hers. “I wasn’t suggesting anything else.”

Disappointment and a lack of sleep made her incautious. “Sure you weren’t. I bet you invite yourself up to women’s apartments at three in the morning all the time.”

Maybe his lean cheeks reddened slightly. Under the sodium security lights, it was hard to tell.

“You wanted an opportunity to talk,” he said.

“So I’ll call the station and make an appointment.”

“You might not catch me in. I’m in and out a lot.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Fighting our big crime wave?”

The creases deepened around his mouth, but he didn’t smile. “More learning my way around. Trying to get a feel for things. You could help.”

His intensity pulled at her. He wasn’t a big man—lean and only average height—but she still felt threatened.

She shook her head. “Not in my job description, Chief.”

“Then…as a friend?”

“I’m not feeling very friendly at the moment.”

He took a step closer, close enough that she could smell the wickedness that clung to his hair and clothes, the tang of beer and cigarettes from the bar, the scent of his skin. “Maybe we should work on that,” he murmured.

Possibility quivered through her. Don’t be dumb, DeLucca. You don’t want this. You can’t want this.

“Sorry,” she said. “It wouldn’t work. You held out on me.”

He watched her closely. “Would it help if I apologized?”

“I don’t think so. You’re not exactly my type.”

“Want to tell me why?”

“Well…” She could think of a million reasons. Couldn’t she? She moistened her lips. “For one thing, you’re a cop.”

“I won’t apologize for that.” He sounded more amused than upset.

She stiffened with annoyance. “And you have a kid. I don’t do men with kids.”

“Why not?”

Because she needed to keep him at a distance, she told him the truth. Part of it, anyway. “I raised one family already. I’m not interested in taking on another.”

He stepped back. “Got it. We’ll keep it professional, then.”

Obviously he wasn’t crushed by her rejection. Tess tasted flat disappointment. “I think we’d better.”

But she didn’t object when he walked with her across the parking lot to the Plaza’s cheerless entrance. At three in the morning, she wasn’t up to arguing either about her building’s negligent security or Jarek Denko’s outdated notions of male courtesy. The anticipation she’d felt earlier that evening driving down to Chicago in pursuit of a story had evaporated. She fumbled for her keys, feeling flat and tired.

She was completely taken aback when Jarek stooped and brushed her cheek with his lips. Pleasure fizzed along her veins.

“Professional courtesy,” he explained blandly. “Sleep well.”

Oh, right. Tess staggered up the four flights to her empty apartment, her hormones churning and her brain in turmoil. She’d be lucky if she closed her eyes at all tonight.

She prowled into the kitchen, fueling her nervous energy with some stale chips from the bottom of the bag. She ate standing at the counter, listening to the hum of her refrigerator and the persistent gurgle of her leaky toilet. She licked her finger and pressed it to the seam to catch the last salty potato crumbs.

It was only the late hour that made her notice the silence, that made her feel so alone.

Jarek’s car swooped onto the lake bridge north of Eden and over a sea of mist. His eyeballs were gritty. A headache had been building at the base of his skull since the radio call that jarred him awake almost half an hour ago.

As a rookie detective, Jarek had learned to go for days without much sleep. His new schedule gave him hours alone on a brand-new, super firm, double-wide mattress. But for the past three nights, he hadn’t slept so well. Maybe it was the new job.

Or maybe it was the woman. Tess DeLucca.

Should he have called her?

She’d been crisp and professional yesterday when she phoned the station to set up this morning’s interview. Jarek lifted a hand from the steering wheel to rub the back of his neck. She was going to be really ticked if he blew her off. But right now her feelings were not his top priority.

Besides, she was probably still sleeping, he thought, and then had to push away an inconvenient image of her dark hair and ivory skin against the white sheets of his bed.

He had enough trouble already.

The early-morning sun barely cleared the pines. Jarek followed the hidden shoreline past the gated driveway of the grand old Algonquin Hotel, heading toward the Bide-A-Wee vacation cottages, relying on the police scanner and his own imperfect knowledge of the town. He missed Chicago’s numbered grid.

Bud Sweet should have called him, damn it.

But even without coordinates, Jarek found the scene of the crime without any trouble at all.

His mouth compressed as he took in the stretch of road. From the look of things, he was about the only person in town Sweet hadn’t called. If some enterprising burglar decided to hold up Main Street this morning, the downtown merchants were out of luck. Vehicles spilled along the asphalt under the pines. Yellow tape meandered in a haphazard rectangle around a white Honda Civic with Illinois plates. Red and white lights rotated and flashed from three patrol cars, two EMS vans, and—Holy St. Mike, was that a hook-and-ladder truck?

Jarek pulled his radio car in thirty yards behind the mess and parked on the shoulder. As he got out of the car, he saw a woman pressed against the yellow tape, bright and exotic looking against a background of dark uniforms.

His body reacted with quick enthusiasm.

Tess.

Jarek groaned mentally. With the exception of Bud Sweet, he couldn’t think of anyone he’d like less to find at a crime scene.

He approached the huddle of cars, automatically putting his hands in his pockets. Look, don’t touch. The pine needles edging the road muffled his footsteps.

“Tess,” he said quietly.

She started. Turned. Something in his chest tightened at the early-morning pallor of her face, the unexpectedly serious set of her mouth.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Her eyes, that had been wide and welcoming, narrowed. She hitched her purse strap on her shoulder. “Getting a story.”

He felt a muscle jump in his jaw. He didn’t want her here. She would be upset. And he couldn’t be distracted.

He looked past her to the white car, its doors gaping open. No body that he could see, but there were enough uniforms crowding around to block his view of the interior. “I don’t have time to talk to you now.”

Tess shrugged. “Okay. I’ll wait. You can give me a statement later.”

That wasn’t what he wanted, either. In his book, the public’s right to know took a poor second to the victim’s right to justice. But he couldn’t spare time to argue.

He nodded once. “Suit yourself. But you need to step back from the tape. We have to worry about contaminating the crime scene.”

She looked at him, and then at the chaos surrounding them, and then at him again. She raised her eyebrows.

“Yeah, I can see how that would be a worry,” she dead-panned.

He resisted the urge to grin. There was nothing funny about a screwed-up investigation.

Behind Tess, Patrol Officer Stan Lewis—who should have gone off duty an hour ago—quit arguing with the paramedics around the ambulance to run over and consult with the mob around the car. Jarek shook his head. He didn’t care how hard up his officers were for excitement. A crime scene was not a Lions Club picnic.

“Excuse me,” he murmured to Tess, and ducked under the police tape.

Bud Sweet stood guard by the white car, flanked by all four members of the day shift and rookie patrolman Tim Clark. When the lieutenant saw Jarek, his face crumpled like a disappointed Santa Claus’s.

Jarek let his gaze travel slowly along the lineup to the flashing police cars and the hook-and-ladder truck still half blocking the road.

“Somebody want to tell me where the fire is?” he asked mildly.

Sweet drew himself up. “No fire. We have a roadside assault. Clark here caught the call on an abandoned auto. Only when he came to investigate—”

Jarek held up one hand to silence him. “Just a minute. How’s the victim?”

“Stabilized,” Sweet said.

“She’s still here?” Jarek couldn’t keep the anger from his voice.

“I was going to question her.”

Jarek pivoted and strode quickly to the nearest EMS van. A tiny uniformed technician moved to intercept him, her dark eyes snapping.

“We need to get her to the hospital,” she said. “Now.”

Jarek nodded. “Do it.”

As the tech climbed into the ambulance, he swung in after her and crouched down next to the victim.

Young. Blond. Pretty. Or she had been, before the attack. She was swaddled in blankets, an IV running into her arm.

Jarek put his head down close to hers. “Honey, can you hear me?”

She opened dull blue eyes. Whimpered.

The tech reached around him to moor the cot.

Jarek tried again. “Honey, do you know who did this to you?”

“Police,” she whispered.

His heart nearly broke for her. She was really young. Maybe eighteen? “Yeah, I’m with the police,” he said gently. “You’re safe now. Did you see who hurt you?”

“We’ve got to go,” the tech interrupted.

Jarek’s jaw set. He started to crawl out of the ambulance.

“Lights,” the girl on the stretcher volunteered suddenly.

Jarek leaned back in the open door. “What, honey?”

“The car that stopped me.” She licked cracked lips. Blue eyes met his and then slid away. “Red lights. Like police.”

Jarek felt as if he’d just been thumped in the stomach with his own nightstick.

Red lights. Hell.

He stood like a block while the female tech slammed the doors and the van drove away, its turret lights flashing. On Jarek’s home turf, in Chicago, the police were identified by blue flashers. Ambulances and fire trucks operated with red. But in Eden and for most of Illinois, all official emergency vehicles were identified by red flashing lights. Only volunteer firefighters used blue.

And the victim in his most recent case had just identified her assailant’s car as showing red lights. Police lights.

Jarek swore again, silently, viciously. And then he turned and stalked back to the officers clustered around the white car.

Tess still waited too close to the yellow tape, her usually animated face soft and serious.

Her absorption in the scene hit him like another slam in the gut. He had a red light assault on his hands and a reporter underfoot. What a godawful mess.

Routine, he reminded himself. Do the job.

He looked down the row of police faces. “Anybody get pictures before the body was moved?”

“This isn’t a homicide,” Sweet objected. “The girl’s alive.”

Jarek lifted one eyebrow. “And are we sure she’s going to stay that way?”

Sweet’s red face got redder.

Jarek dismissed him. “Lewis, take photos now. I want someone to go with the ambulance. Is Baker on?” Laura Baker was the department’s only female officer.

A patrolman shifted in the line. “She’s out today.”

Sweet tugged on his gun belt. “This isn’t Chicago. We don’t have the manpower to waste on an ambulance run.”

Jarek held on to his temper. “I don’t see a shortage of manpower here. I want an officer with the victim at the hospital.”

She needed police protection. Jarek frowned. Unless she needed protection from the police.

He did a rapid mental review of his department. Who could he trust? Who the hell did he know, really?

“Call Larsen in,” he ordered. “Tell him to make sure that they do a rape kit in the E.R. And I want all nonessential personnel cleared off this scene. Have you called the state police yet for crime lab support?”

Sweet scowled. “We work with the county.”

“Not on a possible homicide,” Jarek pronounced. “Call. Johnson and White, I want you to move all vehicles out of here. See my car? I don’t want anything parked closer than that. And recordon the crime scene, divert traffic to—what’s the nearest parallel road?”

“Green’s just west of here,” Clark volunteered.

Jarek turned back to the rookie patrolman. “Right. Green it is. You found the victim?”

“Yes, sir. I—” The young officer swallowed hard. “She didn’t want to talk. I tried to get a description of her assailant, but… Anyway, I finally just wrapped her in a blanket and left her alone.”

A compassionate action that had effectively wiped any trace of the son of the bitch who attacked her from her skin. Hell.

“All right,” Jarek said. “Did she give you her name?”

“No, sir.”

“How about her purse? Do we have an ID?”

“Her wallet’s missing. I ran the plates,” Bud Sweet said. “Car’s registered to a Mr. and Mrs. Richard Logan of Evanston. So the car could be stolen.”

“Or she could be their daughter,” Jarek said grimly. “Find out. And find out what she was doing up here.”

“She was a student at Bloomington,” Tess said from behind him, her voice flat. “Taking a break from exams.”

His gut tightened like a fist. He turned. Tess had moved to this side of the crime tape, but he couldn’t object to her presence now. He wanted to protect her from the ugliness of the scene. He needed to protect his department from the force of her determination, from those wide golden eyes that saw too much. But this wasn’t Chicago, where he could canvass half-a-dozen surrounding buildings for witnesses. If Tess knew something, he had to talk to her.

“You know the victim?”

Tess’s slightly crooked teeth caught her lower lip. “Her name is Logan? Carolyn Logan?”

“I don’t have a first name. Can you describe her?”

“Oh…” Tess frowned in concentration. “Medium height, nineteen years old. Blond, shoulder-length hair. Her eyes were blue. Or maybe gray?” She shook her head. “Light, anyway.”

Okay, so her being a reporter wasn’t a total loss, Jarek thought. It was a good description. And, for good or bad, it fit the battered girl in the ambulance.

“How do you know her?”

“I don’t know her,” Tess corrected him. “I met her last night.”

“Tell me.”

She fidgeted with her purse strap again. “My story for yours?”

His jaw set. He didn’t make deals. But he knew how to get what he wanted from an interview. “It could work that way.”

She snorted. “Oh, now, that’s something I can stop the presses for.”

She wasn’t as tough as she made herself out to be. He waited.

“Oh, all right,” she said crossly. “What do you want from me?”

Too much. He shoved the thought away.

“I want you to wait for me over there,” he said quietly, “while I finish talking with the investigating team. And then I’d like it if you’d go with me to the station house so I can take your statement.”

“You can’t take it here?”

He could, of course. But he wanted her away from the crime scene. A vicious sexual assault might be news in sleepy Eden. But to a town that depended on tourism, it could also be a public relations disaster. And to the new police chief, the attack at the beginning of his watch was a personal and professional spit-in-the-eye.

Especially if his own department was implicated.

He met her gaze steadily. “No point in being uncomfortable. You want to give the station house coffee a shot?”

The memory of her words trembled between them. Offering you coffee is what got me into trouble in the first place.

Tess hugged her arms across her waist. Lifted her chin. “Maybe I’ll let you buy me a drink instead.”

“It’s a little early for that.”

“Why don’t we see how long this takes? I’ll just get my butt back on the other side of your police tape until you’re ready for me.”

Jarek watched as she walked away and bent back under the yellow crime scene tape. Her butt. Yes.

Sweet coughed. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a hot one, Chief.”

Jarek stiffened. “Excuse me?”

“Hot lead,” the lieutenant said. “If DeLucca really knows anything worthwhile, that is.”

Sweet was a jackass. Tess was a complication. And Jarek had never felt more like an outsider in his life.

“We won’t know that until I take her statement,” he said calmly, and turned back to the scene of the crime.