shook her head. “I think I’m losing my mind.” She turned and walked back into the kitchen. After everything, she still preferred to look at Quinn’s behind. Yeah, she was losing it, all right.
Concerned, her friends followed. “You’re under a lot of stress.” Clare reached into a cupboard and pulled out four glasses. “And we’re supposed to be here helping you out, not eyeing the workman.”
Adele placed ice cubes in the glasses, and the four friends sat with a pitcher of tea at the kitchen table and discussed Lucy’s problem. Lucy had spent the night before with her mother and probably would again before the nightmare was over. But she always felt like a kid when she stayed with her mom, and she did not want to camp out there.
“I just hate being scared,” she said and raised a glass of tea to her mouth. She took a drink and added, “I’ve always seen myself as a strong person. Someone who could take care of herself in every situation.” She set the glass on the table. “Someone fearless in the face of sinking ships or shark attacks, but this psycho woman scares me.” She shook her head as the sound of a power tool made its way inside. “Yet, at the same time, I don’t know if I even
“Yet.” Maddie pushed her glass aside and placed her forearms on the table. “A serial killer has contacted you, and you have to take it very seriously.” Maddie knew that of which she spoke. She talked to serial killers all the time.
“I am taking it seriously. It’s just that I wonder if I’m being paranoid,” Lucy replied.
“Not everything is a paranoid delusion.” Adele stirred her ice cubes with her finger. “Sometimes freaky things do happen.”
“What has Dwayne left on your porch now?” Clare asked.
“One sock and my Some Bunny Loves You coffee mug.”
“What a weirdo.”
“That’s creepy.”
“You actually have a Some Bunny Loves You coffee mug?”
By the time the pitcher of tea was finished, the four women had decided that Lucy would take turns staying in their homes or they would stay with her in her house. They assured her that it was no imposition, but she knew it was. She just hoped that Quinn caught Breathless sooner rather than later.
Adele rose from the table and grabbed the empty pitcher. “I volunteer to go first,” she said as she moved toward the sink. As she passed the back door, she glanced outside. Her feet stopped, and she took a few steps back. “Whoa Nellie.”
“What’s Randy doing now?” Lucy asked.
“It’s not Randy. Someone new has come to play.”
Clare rose and joined Adele. “Now that’s a gorgeous chunk of hunk.”
Lucy and Maddie stood and joined their friends. “That’s a cop,” Maddie said. “I can tell by his bulge.”
“You can see his bulge? From all the way across the yard? You’re good.”
“His gun. You can see the outline of his service revolver under his suit jacket.”
Lucy didn’t need to lower her gaze from Quinn’s face to know all about his bulges, revolver or otherwise. He stood next to Randy, talking to him and pointing up to the eaves of Lucy’s house. He wore a chocolate-colored suit and a beige shirt. A slight breeze messed his hair, and dark glasses covered his eyes. “That’s Quinn.”
“Hardluvnman?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.” Clare shook her head. “I mean, what a jerk.”
Quinn dropped his hand, then moved up the sidewalk to Lucy’s back door. He knocked twice and opened without bothering to wait for her to answer. Seeing the four women, he stopped in his tracks and reached for his sunglasses. “Well, hello,” he said, and Lucy could practically hear her friends melting. Or maybe that was her. Quinn shoved the glasses in the inside pocket of his jacket. “You ladies must be Lucy’s writer buddies. I’ve seen your pictures in her office.”
Lucy introduced her friends, who did a pretty good job remaining cucumber cool to the man who’d lied to her- until he lowered his chin and looked into Lucy’s eyes. “How’re you holding up, Sunshine?”
“I brought your mail.” He reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a restaurant flyer.
“This is it?”
“Yeah.” He tilted his head to one side, and his brown eyes continued to stare into hers. “I need to talk to you.”
He meant alone. She walked into the backyard and he followed. Beneath the shade of an old oak he told her, “The Breathless letters came back negative for prints.” A shadow from the limbs overhead shaded the top of his face. “The envelopes are being tested for DNA. We put a rush on it, but I don’t expect the results for a few days. If we’re lucky.”
That was disappointing as hell, but police work was never as easy as it was in books or on television. Never nice and tidy.
“How are you really holding up?”
Scared. Disoriented. In shock. “I really am okay. My friends are going to take turns babysitting me.”
His gaze moved over her face and settled on her mouth. A slight breeze blew strands of her hair across her lips, and Quinn lifted a hand as if he meant to brush them behind her ear. Lucy pressed her back into the uneven bark and waited for his touch.
A frown wrinkled his brow, and he took a step back. “Call me if you need anything,” he said as he turned and walked away.
For the next three days, Quinn drove to Lucy’s PO box, only to find it filled with junk mail. As promised, he took it to her, and with each passing day she seemed a little more on edge than the day before. She tried to hide it, but he could tell the stress was getting to her. He could see it in her eyes, and he was afraid she was going to shatter before it was over. He was afraid there wasn’t anything he could do but stand back and watch it happen. She’d made her feelings for him clear. The few times he’d reached for her, she’d recoiled, as if she couldn’t stand his touch.
After the episode in her backyard, when she’d tried to push herself into a tree to avoid his touch, he’d made sure to keep his hands to himself. He should give the PO box task to Kurt. Yeah, that’s probably what he should do, but he wasn’t going to. Lucy might not want to see his face every day, but he wanted to see hers. He couldn’t explain it, even to himself. It was more than lust, although there was plenty of that. He was drawn to her in ways that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with her. Dangerous ways that had him thinking about more than just his career and a dog to keep him company. And that kind of thinking had never given him anything but a chest full of grief.
Sergeant Mitchell and the other detectives had discussed ways of using Lucy to draw out Breathless. They’d talked about a videotaped public appearance. Quinn hadn’t liked the idea, but he’d mentioned it to Lucy yesterday when he’d driven by to give her the latest junk mail. Her flat refusal had been a relief.
The only real thing he could do for Lucy now was to catch a killer. It was a little after nine on a Saturday, and he’d come into the office to do just that.
He and Kurt had interviewed half the presidents of The Peacock Society, and he’d just received the last five membership rosters from each chapter president. Unfortunately, not all of them had included membership profiles, and he’d had to phone them and make a second request. While he waited, he cross-checked the names against the Women of Mystery roster. None of the Peacock ladies belonged to the mystery writers group, but some of the chapters of the Peacocks conducted their meetings at bookstores throughout the valley. He had a feeling Breathless was on one of the lists. Quinn leaned forward in his chair and placed the Women of Mystery roster on top of a pile of paperwork sitting on his desk. He read over each of the thirty-five names. She was there; he could feel it.
He reached for the latest crime lab reports and reread them. There wasn’t a lot of good news. Except for the one set of usable prints they’d lifted off the leather passenger seat in Robert Patterson’s truck there wasn’t any hard evidence. They’d lifted a palm and four fingers from the left edge of the seat, where a person’s hand would naturally grasp. The prints didn’t belong to anyone in Robert’s circle of family and friends, and they didn’t belong to the victim. They didn’t match any of the prints lifted from the hotel room, but Quinn wasn’t surprised. Just as he’d suspected, that room had been lousy with prints and DNA, and he doubted any of it would prove useful.
