Good people. Who had told them they felt safer with a cop next door.
Showed what they knew.
His two-story house was about as fancy and unique as a penny from the seventies. Which, as it turned out, was the last time the place had been wallpapered.
Pulling up to the garage, he dismounted and left his helmet hanging from the handlebars. There wasn’t a lot of crime in this area—so his mowing neighbors were getting a burn deal on a lot of levels.
He went in the side door, passed through the mudroom and walked into his kitchen. Not a lot of Food Network going down in here: all he had were a couple of empty pizza boxes on the counter, and some Starbucks dead soldiers clustered around the sink. Half-opened mail and loosely stacked reports were on the table. Laptop was closed down for the day next to a Valpak coupon book he was never going to use and a cable bill that was not yet overdue but probably would be because he sucked at paying shit on time.
Always too busy to write a check out or go online to pay.
God, the only difference between this place and the office downtown was the fact that there was a king-size bed upstairs.
On that note, Officer Reilly wanted him to get naked, didn’t she.
Snagging a Glad trash bag from under the kitchen sink, he went upstairs, thinking he was going to have to hire a cleaner to come once a week so that he didn’t end up with cobwebs in every corner and dust bunnies going IVF clinic under the couch. But this was no home and was never going to be. Pine-Sol and 409 four times a month didn’t get you cozy.
Although at least the occasional chick he brought in would have somewhere halfway decent to get re-dressed in.
His bedroom was at the front of the house, and all it had in it was that big bed and a bureau. His boots, socks and pants came off quick. Turtleneck was the same. As he peeled off his black boxer briefs, he refused to think of Officer Reilly handling them. Just was not going to go there.
Heading into the bath, he turned on the shower, and as he waited for it to get warm, he stood in front of the mirror over the sink. No reflection to bother with—he’d covered the glass with a beach towel the day he’d moved in.
He was not a fan of mirrors.
Lifting his hands, he held them out palms down. Then flipped them. Then looked under his nails.
It appeared as though his body, as with his mind, was empty of clues. Although you could argue that no scratches, no blood, no gore on him was an indicator—and no doubt what the fine Officer Reilly had noticed and acted on.
Man, this was the second time in his life he’d been in this situation. And the first . . .
No reason to think about his mother’s murder. Not on a night like tonight.
Stepping into the shower, he closed his eyes and let the spray fall down his head and shoulders and face. Soap. Rinse. Shampoo. Rinse.
He was standing in the steamy, wet heat when he felt the draft: Sure as if someone had opened the window by the toilet, the blast of air shot over the top of the plastic curtain and brushed across his skin. Goose bumps came when called, popping out across his chest and shooting down his legs and back.
The window hadn’t been opened, however.
And this was why he’d removed the glass wall of the shower and covered that built-in mirror over the sink. Those two things had been the only changes he’d made to the house, and the unimprovement had been for his own sanity. He’d been shaving for years without his reflection.
“Get the fuck away from me,” he said, closing his eyes and keeping them that way.
The draft swirled around his legs, feeling like hands roaming over his flesh, going higher, fondling his sex before hitting his abdomen and his pecs, up to his neck . . . his face. . . .
Cold hands ran through his hair—
“Leave me alone!” He threw out his arm and shoved the curtain aside. As warm air greeted him, he bore down at his core, trying to kick the intruder out, kill the connection.
Stumbling over to the counter, he braced his arms and leaned down, breathing hard and hating himself, hating this night, hating his life.
He knew damn well that it was possible, if you had multiple personality disorder, for a part of you to break free and act independently. Sufferers could be completely unaware of the actions their body had taken, even if it involved violence—
As that headache started kicking his temples like tires again, he cursed and dried off; then pulled on the flannel shirt and NYPD academy sweatpants he’d slept in the night before and left on the back of the toilet. He was about to go downstairs when a quick glance out the window held him in place.
There was a car parked across the street about two houses down.
He knew every vehicle in the neighborhood, all the trucks, vans, SUVs, sedans, and hybrids, and that shadow-colored, late-model American nothing-much was not on the list.
It was, however, exactly the kind of unmarked that the Caldwell Police Department used.
Reilly was having him surveilled. Good move—exactly what he would have done in her position.
Might even be her in the flesh.
Hitting the stairs, he hesitated at the front door, drawn to go out in his bare feet, because maybe she, or whoever it was, had some answers from the scene. . . .
With a curse, he pulled himself out of that bright idea and headed for the kitchen. There had to be something to eat in the cupboards. Had to be.
Pulling them open and finding a lot of shelf space and nothing more, he wondered exactly what grocery-fairy he thought had magically come and delivered food.
Then again he could just throw some ketchup on a pizza box and chow down. Probably good for his fiber intake.
Yum.
Two houses down from Detective DelVecchio’s, Reilly was behind the wheel and partially blinded.
“By all that is holy . . .” She rubbed her eyes. “Do you not believe in curtains?”
As she prayed for the image of a spectacularly naked colleague to fade from her retinas, she seriously rethought her decision to do the stakeout herself. She was exhausted, for one thing—or had been before she’d seen just about everything Veck had to offer.
Take out the
One bene was that she was really frickin’ awake now, thank you very much—she might as well have licked two fingers and shoved them into a socket: a full-frontal like that was enough to give her the perm she’d wanted back when she’d been thirteen.
Muttering to herself, she dropped her hands into her lap again. And gee whiz, as she stared at the dash, all she saw . . . was everything she’d seen.
Yeah, wow, on some men, no clothes was so much more than just
And to think she’d almost missed the show. She’d parked her unmarked and just called in her position when the upstairs lights had gone on and she gotten a gander at the vista of a bedroom. Easing back into her seat, it hadn’t dawned on her exactly where the unobstructed view was going to take them both—she’d just been interested that it appeared to be nothing but a bald lightbulb on the ceiling of what had to be the master suite.
Then again, bachelor pad decorating tended to be either storage-unit crammed or Death Valley–barren.
Veck was obviously the Death Valley variety.
Except suddenly she hadn’t been thinking about interior decorating, because her suspect had stepped into the bathroom and flipped the switch.
Hellllllllo, big boy.
Ifont sio many ways to count.
“Stop thinking about it . . . stop thinking about—”
Closing her eyes again didn’t help: If she’d reluctantly noticed before how well he filled out his clothes, now she knew exactly why. He was heavily muscled, and given that he didn’t have any hair on his chest, there was nothing to obscure those hard pecs and that six-pack and the carved ridges that went over his hips.
