“You, me.” He paused. “That club.” Wind gusted, icy, lifting a fine spray of crystals.
“There is no you and me, Detective,” she said quietly. “It never happened, okay? And it’s Pallorino.” She held his gaze. Unflinching.
He swallowed. Yeah, she really did it for him on all levels. Which gave him his answer—thiswasgoing to be a problem.
Her gaze shifted slowly, pointedly down to his left hand. He realized with a shock that he was fiddling his thumb against his wedding band.
“Married,” she said quietly. “I suspected as much.”
“It’s ... not what you think.”
She gave a snort and took a step toward him so that they stood almost toe to toe. “If you don’t want your spouse to find out about your extramural activities, Detective Maddocks,” she said softly, “you won’t mention ‘us’ to a single soul back at the station. Or anywhere.”
He watched her mouth. An urge came over him to bend down, kiss her lips, explore that scar with the tip of his tongue. His groin stirred at the memory of her naked, straddling him, breasts bouncing, her head thrown back, long hair spilling over her shoulders. He inhaled slowly, deeply. “That a threat?”
“Consider it whatever you want.”
A slow smile crossed his lips, and he angled his head.
“Don’t mock me,” she said. “And don’t try me—you’ll regret it.” She turned her back on him and beeped her lock. “I should’ve made you for a cop,” she said, opening her door. “I was a fool not to have seen it.” She got into her car and reached to pull the driver’s side door closed. But he clamped his hand on the door, stopping her.
“Yet you gave me your number. Your name.”
She glanced up, meeting his gaze. “See you in the morning, sir.” And she yanked the door out of his grip, slamming it shut. Her engine started. Exhaust fumes boiled white into the cold air.
He stepped back as she revved her engine and took off at a clip, skidding slightly on ice as she rounded the curve out of the parking lot. His breath clouded around his face. His heart, he realized, was thumping in his throat. He dragged his hand over his hair. Yeah—this was going to be more than a problem.
CHAPTER 19
Angie drove home, nerves crackling like live electrical wires. First the hallucinations and those weird words in her head that seemed to come from the child. Now Mr.Big Dick—her superior. Her temporary partner. A fucking cop. A ferocious urge rose in her to cut a U-turn and speed for the highway out of town, hit the club, even as exhausted as she was. She wanted to fuck her brains out, blow off steam with someone other than Maddocks. Overwrite her sexual experience with him, forge fresh neural pathways in her brain. Wash him clean out of her head with something hotter, wilder. Better.
Yet a little voice in the back of her brain said there wasn’t going to be anything better than James Maddocks.
James—what kind of name wasJames, anyway?
Hi, I’m James ... James Bond.She put on music. AC/DC. Pumped up the sound, amped the bass.You ... shook me ... all night long ...She banged her palm on her wheel in time to the beat, the sound slamming through her skull as she turned onto Wharf.
She lived in one of those new “loft” condo developments right on the Gorge waterway at the bottom of Chinatown, “loft” being Realtor-speak for license to charge a fortune for postage-stamp footage that barely accommodated one bedroom. But it suited her—close to work, good investment, new, no-hassle appliances, easy resale. And it had rental potential should she want to travel. Or ... get a life, or ... something.
As she wheeled her Crown Vic down onto Dock Street with its steep incline to the water, the memory of Vedder’s words hit her.
Be nice. If you play nice, Maddocks might put in a word of recommendation when the time comes ... Violent death is not a one-person mission ...
Great. Just great. She waited for the underground parking security gate to open.
After all these years of trying to get into the elite unit, it came down to this? The guy she’d screwed to blow off steam, to escape from her work, nowwasher work? And she had no choice but to cooperate, because making homicide was her one big life goal—a holy grail toward which she’d been gunning for the last six years since she’d made sex crimes. His dark-blue eyes, his words sifted into her memory as she entered the garage.
Is this going to be a problem? ... You, me. That club ...
Her hands fisted on the wheel. There would likely come a day in the not-too-distant future where she’d have to smile and be nice when she met his wife. She’d made this mistake once before in the not-distant-enough past—sleeping with a married man. Someone close to her work. In Angie’s mind it had been a fling. Not in his. It had gone wrong—badly wrong—hurt too many people. Cost his marriage. She’d vowed it could never happen again. That horrible misstep was the reason behind her sex rules. It was why she’d started hitting the club. A good fuck. No strings attached. And she’d grown increasingly addicted to this fix, the latent danger, the taste of power, both physical and mental. There was something about using men that felt good, felt like payback for all the sick cases she worked where males hurt, abused, and used vulnerable females, children. It gave her control. It was a little secret that made her strong.
But now she felt suddenly off-kilter.
Angie parked in the space allotted to her apartment and caught the elevator up to her corner suite on the top floor.
Inside, her living space was sterile. Chrome and black. Bare wood floors. Easy to clean. No knickknacks. No pets to worry about. No plants to die under her neglect because of the hours she clocked on the job. She turned up the heat, shucked off her coat and hat, and kicked off her boots. She placed her service weapon, holster, and two phones on the table, and she tugged the hair tie out of her hair.
Massaging her scalp, she went to the kitchen, got a glass out of the cupboard, and the vodka bottle from the freezer. She poured herself a shot of ice-cool alcohol and sucked it back in one burning go before topping her glass up with a second. A drink or four might actually numb her into a few hours of sleep before she had to face the new task force and Detective Big D. in the morning. She put on the television and listened to the news while she warmed some leftover pasta takeout in the microwave. The twenty-four-hour station was running yet another rehash of the Drummond case. An image caught her eye as she took her plate from the microwave. Angie stilled, stared. Her heart started to stutter.
