On Dangerous Ground Page 20

  “At first, I wanted revenge, too.” Squaring her shoulders, she wadded the pages into a hard, tight ball. “I spent hours, days, months contemplating how to make Adams pay. I used my knowledge of poisons to plot an agonizing death for him. I even mixed up a vial.” Feeling suddenly cold, she wrapped her arms around her waist. “In the end I couldn’t do it.”

  Grant cocked his head. “What changed your mind? Why didn’t you go through with it?”

  “Because I knew deep down if I did, it would make me no better than him. Worse than him.”

  “Yeah.” Grant rubbed his palms over his face, a gesture of such misery that she longed to go to him, hold him close. Instead, she remained where she was, the pages wadded in one fist.

  “It took me a long time to learn I was giving Adams power by letting what he did to me control my life,” she said. “The answer is not to get even, Grant, but not to be a victim. Not to let the past control the future.”

  He came to her, settled his hands on her waist and stared down into her face with haunted eyes. “I’m not used to walking away from a bad guy.”

  “I know.” Sky’s lungs were burning, and the sensation was rapidly moving toward her heart. This man, for whom she cared so deeply, was standing before her with turmoil in his eyes because of her. Because of a deep-seated need to make things right for her. Desperation rose inside her like a flood. “Do you think I could handle it if anything happened to you? Do you think I could just go on if you threw your life away because of me?”

  “Sky—”

  She gripped his arms, her nails digging in. “You have to walk away from this. Give me your word you’ll walk away.”

  He grazed his knuckles down the length of her cheek, and shook his head. “I don’t know if I can.”

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she slid her arms around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder. After so long, after so much pain and suffering, she had the man she wanted in the circle of her arms.

  And she was terribly afraid she was about to lose him.

  “Just how many jobs can one man hold in two years?” Julia Remington asked Grant hours later.

  “And how many apartments can he rent in that same time period?” he asked, looking over the top of the latest printout he’d received from Communications. He’d accepted Julia’s offer to spend the afternoon helping him track Jason Whitebear’s activities over the past two years. To make it easier to compare notes, she’d taken up residence at Sam’s empty desk that butted the front of Grant’s. Lieutenant Ryan didn’t seem in any more of a hurry to fill Sam’s slot than Grant was to get a new partner.

  “The count’s up to eleven jobs, six apartments,” he stated after checking the list he’d compiled on a yellow legal pad. “People working in construction move around.”

  “Tell me,” Julia commented, flipping her long, auburn hair over one shoulder, “what is this Spider guy, a jack-of-all-trades?”

  “Laborer,” Grant replied. “All of the construction foremen I’ve talked to say Spider’s tried his hand at a lot of jobs, and he’s good at them, but he doesn’t have the drive to stick with any one thing for the long run. What he does is hire on as a helper.” Grant checked another list. “He’s mixed mud for bricklayers. Been a gopher for a plumber. A framing carpenter’s helper. Construction’s one of those professions where job tenure doesn’t much matter—you can usually hire on with any company that needs the labor.”

  Julia tilted her head. “When Sloan and I had our kitchen remodeled, the contractor had a heck of a time getting some crew members to just show up from one day to the next. I got the impression that was standard practice.”

  “It is. That’s probably one reason Spider has worked in so many jobs—somebody doesn’t show up one day, he gets shifted somewhere to take up the slack.” Grant laid the printout aside and stretched his neck to try to get rid of the kinks that always set in after he’d spent long hours at his desk. “Sam couldn’t find anyone who saw Spider here the day Mavis Benjamin got killed. Our backtracking hasn’t changed that.”

  “Might as well file that under ‘dead end.”’

  “Yeah.” Grant tapped his fingertips against the desktop. “At least we now know what company Spider worked for when Carmen Peña—the convenience store clerk—was murdered.” Grant checked his watch, was mildly surprised to find it was after four. “When that company’s foreman returns my call, I’ll know if Spider was working around here the night of the murder.”

  “He sure would be easier to track if he had a fist full of priors. The guy’s squeaky clean, or he’s sly enough not to get caught. Either way, there’s not much to go on.” Julia paused for a moment, her lips curving. “You know, Sam used to say that clues are like ingredients in a recipe with no instructions. Put them together the right way, you have dinner.”

  “If you don’t,” Grant chimed in, “you’ll be in the kitchen a long time, confused and hungry. Right now I’m puzzled as hell and starving.”

  Julia’s eyes softened as she stroked a palm over the top of Sam’s desk. “I guess we both learned a lot from your partner.”

  “Yeah.” Grant rubbed his burning eyes, kept his fingers pressed there for a moment. He wished to hell Sam was around to give him some advice now.

  Julia checked the clock hanging over the Homicide assignment board, then closed the cover on a file and tossed it on top of Grant’s overflowing in-basket. “Sorry to desert you, Pierce, but I’m out of here.”

  Grant arched an eyebrow. “You suddenly get a hot lead?”

  “Hot date. I’ve arranged with Ryan to duck out early. Sloan and I have a black-tie dinner tonight.” She cocked her head. “I need time to get dolled up so I can sweep my husband off his feet.” She slid her gaze around the almost deserted squad room, then leaned forward as if to share a secret. “I happen to be crazy about the guy.”

  “No kidding?” Grant asked dryly. Julia was a tough, no-nonsense cop, but when the subject veered to Sloan Remington, she turned to goo.

  “Yep, I’m in love.”

  So am I, Grant thought as Julia rose and headed across the room to her own desk. The fist that clenched in his chest had him setting his jaw. The minute he’d walked in the office that morning, he’d dived into work, had purposely kept his thoughts from turning to Sky. He hadn’t wanted to picture the fear he’d seen in her eyes when she’d asked his intentions about Kirk Adams. Hadn’t wanted to acknowledge how it had shredded him to pieces to know he’d put that fear there.

  Leaning back in his chair, Grant blew out a breath. He could close his eyes and hear again the scream that ripped from her throat during the nightmare. Could feel the sick terror that had reduced her to a sobbing, quivering mass in his arms.

  He wanted to forget. Wanted to let go of the memory, of the burning need for revenge that raged inside him. A need that had already wedged a sliver of fear and wariness between him and Sky.

  Dammit, he loved her. With her, he wanted the now. The future. All he could seem to do was dwell on her past.

  His gaze flicked to a row of battered cabinets that lined one wall of the squad room. The cabinets all contained file after file of homicides. It was his job to solve that particular type of crime, to seek justice for each victim. He was well aware it wasn’t in his job description to sit at his desk and contemplate murder himself.

  Groaning inwardly, he scrubbed his hands over his face. It haunted him that he wanted to hunt down a man and hurt him. That he could be driven by pure and simple unadulterated vengeance. So driven that thoughts of his career, of the code of honor he’d sworn, of the life he’d built paled against the need to take action.

  The control he’d maintained since he’d walked into the office that morning suddenly shifted. Emotion coiled inside him like a tightly wound clock, ready to spring.

  Muttering an oath, he rose, grabbed his suit coat and stalked toward the door. He had two cases in the toilet and his personal life was teetering on the brink of hell. He had to do something ab
out both issues. He wasn’t quite sure what that something was, but, by God, he was going to do it.

  Chapter 12

  A slate-blue twilight had settled over the city by the time Sky nosed her Blazer into her assigned parking space outside her apartment. Shoving the transmission into Park, she remained motionless, her gaze riveted on the rearview mirror, searching the parking lot for movement. Her already ragged nerves sizzled from waiting for headlights to stab around the corner she’d just turned.

  Minutes passed without the appearance of the dark vehicle that had seemed to mirror her every lane change and turn during the hour’s drive home from the meeting with her former hematology professor.

  Blowing out a weighty breath, she forced her fingers to unclench from the steering wheel while she told herself she’d imagined being followed. She hadn’t, after all, glimpsed more than the hood of a dark car…or cars in the heavy traffic and snarling construction zone that had made the drive home seem interminable. It was more a sensation of unease that someone had been following her. Watching.

  “Get a grip, Milano,” she muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. She knew it wasn’t just what she’d learned from Professor Linley that had her senses jittery. It was the fact that, when she’d called Homicide to talk to Grant, no one seemed to know where he was. And he hadn’t returned the messages she’d left for him.

  The memory of the tense grimness she’d seen in his eyes that morning sent fingers of cold creeping up along her spine. For all she knew, he was in Ventress, Oklahoma, giving Kirk Adams a taste of revenge.

  She shrank away from the thought that put an instant curl of nausea in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t think about the man she cared so deeply for that way, she told herself as she switched off the Blazer’s idling engine. Couldn’t let her dark imaginings take over. Grant was a good, decent man; she had to trust that he could find a way to let go of his anger and accept that Adams would never pay for what he’d done to her.

  She was well aware that it had taken her years to do that very thing.

  “Please, Grant,” she murmured, her voice prayer-soft on the still air. “Please let it go.”

  A spear of headlights in the rearview mirror had her jolting. When she realized the dark car that swept into the spot beside hers belonged to her petite, red-haired neighbor, Sky forced herself to take a firm grip on composure. The last thing she needed was to indulge in a raging case of paranoia.

  Minutes later, she waved goodbye to her neighbor, then swung open the door of her fourth-floor apartment. The security system filled the air with its quiet, reassuring beep. After punching in her code, she settled her briefcase on the kitchen counter beside the answering machine. Its message light was dark. Damn, why hadn’t Grant tried to reach her? Nibbling her bottom lip, she put in another call to OCPD Homicide. The detective on the evening shift told her Grant hadn’t checked in since she’d left her last message. Thanking the detective, Sky hung up and called Grant’s house. After the tone, she left a message on his machine.

  Unable to stand still, she paced her living room with the restless, prowling stride of a caged cat.

  “Where are you?” She flung the question in the direction of the phone when her pacing took her on a second pass by the kitchen counter.

  It wouldn’t do her any good to go back to the lab tonight. She had done all she could where Ellis Whitebear’s DNA was concerned. She was far from an expert on warrants—it was her guess the data in her briefcase, courtesy of Professor Linley, was enough to persuade a judge to force the hospital to turn over the name of the person who had donated bone marrow to Whitebear. Grant would know if the data she had was enough. Dammit, she needed to talk to him.

  She needed him.

  He loved her. The knowledge had her blinking furiously to hold back a rush of tears as she roamed past the dark fireplace. If she allowed herself to examine her feelings for him, she would probably find they mirrored his. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—let herself indulge in that type of introspection. Not now, not while her past stood in the way of their future. Grant Pierce wasn’t a man whom a woman could disentangle herself from easily; she knew that. Yet, that was what she would do if he couldn’t turn his back on the past it had taken her torturous years to claw her way out of.

  Just the thought of doing that made her feel lost, shaky.

  Her head pounding, she jerked the pins out of her loose topknot and headed down the hallway toward her bedroom. She would go crazy if she stayed there, waiting for the phone to ring. Every muscle in her body was strung tight; a workout downstairs in the complex’s exercise gym would at least take care of that one problem. She knew if Grant called and couldn’t get her in the lab or in her apartment, he would dial her pager.

  Please, God, let him call. And don’t let him be in Ventress, Oklahoma.

  Nearly an hour later, Grant swung open the frosted glass door and strolled into the small gym where the faint, musty smell of sweat hung in the air. To his right, a potbellied, red-faced man walked on a treadmill to nowhere. Beyond the treadmill, a couple of Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alikes worked with free weights, their muscles bulging.

  Grant moved farther into the gym, hesitating when he caught a glimpse of Sky’s reflection in the mirrored wall on the opposite side of the room. He knew with intimate sureness she didn’t have an ounce of superfluous fat on her body, yet she pumped away on a StairMaster with the speed of someone in need of a strenuous workout.

  Her long, dark hair was pulled back into a glossy ponytail that swung across the center of her back with each movement; a pair of loose shorts and a T-shirt concealed her spectacular figure. His gaze tracked the thin rivulet of perspiration that trailed down her right cheek, reminding him of the sweat that had pooled against their joined bodies only hours ago.

  Until this moment, he had not known he could want her even more fiercely than he had last night.

  With need licking at his veins, he closed the distance between them.

  Her gaze met his in the mirrored wall the instant before his hands gripped her waist. In that slash of time, he saw the mix of relief, need and hesitation in her eyes.

  She turned easily enough toward him as he lifted her off the machine’s foot pads, her hands locking onto his shoulders as he slowly lowered her to the ground. Still, he sensed her withdrawal. She didn’t have to say the words for him to know she’d pulled back emotionally during the hours they’d spent apart. Logically he could accept why. She had fought too hard to escape the black hell that was her past for her to allow him to drag her back into the pit. Yes, when cool, rational thought was involved, he could accept her reason for drawing away. But where she was concerned, he wasn’t thinking cooly. Or rationally. All he knew was she was his, and he had no intention of letting her go.

  Damning himself to hell and back for his raging need to right the wrong she’d suffered, he wrapped her ponytail around his hand, then tugged her head back. When her mouth, untouched by lipstick and faintly moist, was fully exposed, he took. And plundered.

  He devoured her lips until her mouth opened to his, hot and hungry, returning his kiss with equal measure. Despite layers of clothing, he felt her flesh heat, smelled the light scent of her perfume and the salty tang of her skin. When her fingers dug into his shoulders, a murmur of pleasure rose in his throat; he changed the angle of the kiss and dived deeper, his arms tightening around her.

  He feasted on her, his tongue inside her mouth, until his own flesh was damp with sweat and he shook with need. Only the knowledge that they were in a public place had him backing off, lightening the kiss.

  He pulled his mouth from hers, but kept her locked firmly against him, her hair still wrapped around one hand. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittering like blue gems as she gazed up at him. He chose to believe it was the kiss, not her workout on the StairMaster, that had her breath ragged and her lungs heaving.

  “Grant…we…”

  He placed a soft kiss against her temple. “We wh
at, Sky?”

  “Shouldn’t.” She ran the tip of her tongue across her flushed, swollen lips. “I can’t…”

  The thread of anguish in her voice was one of the hardest things he’d ever faced. He rested his forehead against hers, closed his eyes for a brief moment. “Yeah, I know.” He ran his hands up and down her arms before he stepped away.

  She turned, grabbed a white hand towel off the Stair-Master, then blotted her face, her throat. After a moment, she met his gaze. “How did you know I was down here?”

  “Your redheaded neighbor heard me knock on your door. She peeked out into the hall, said you’d walked in together, that if your car was still in the lot for me to check the gym.”

  When she hooked the towel around her neck, Sky’s gaze flicked to his right hand. At the sight of his battered knuckles, her flushed cheeks drained of color as she snagged his fingers. “Where have you been?” Her gaze jolted up to his. “Grant, what did you do?”

  The fear in her eyes touched an already-frayed nerve as he focused on his bruised, throbbing knuckles. Dammit, the last thing he wanted was to make her afraid.

  “I wasn’t out beating Adams to a pulp, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said, tamping down on regret that she’d even had to ask the question. “I spent time at the police gym this afternoon, hammering my fists against a punching bag.” He kept to himself that the workout had done little to relieve the frustration festering inside him.

  “I’m sorry.” She ran a light fingertip over his injured knuckles, then looked up, her eyes bleak. “I’m sorry you’re having to deal with this.”

  “It isn’t your fault.” Not wanting to break the contact, he slid his hand around hers and decided they’d be better off talking about work.

  “While I was at the gym, I got a call to meet a construction foreman whom Spider used to work for. I spent a couple of hours at a construction site ten miles north of the city—learned some interesting stuff about our boy. The location happened to be a dead zone for my pager. I didn’t know that until I called the office on the drive back and got your messages.” He paused, glanced around the gym. “I want to brief you on what the foreman said, but this isn’t a good place to talk.”