made dinner for me and my brother. I got to be a really good cook.”
Quinn recalled the chocolate torte she’d made him and how she’d said chocolate was better than sex. Granted, the torte had been good, but not that good.
She yawned behind her hand until her eyes watered.
“Am I boring you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m tired.”
“Are you having trouble sleeping?”
“It’s more like I’m staying up late trying to work. I have a book due in four weeks and I haven’t written a word since I found those letters. My deadline stress is adding to my insomnia. I’m a mess.”
Yeah, she was. Her hair could use a brush, but that didn’t keep him from wanting her. Spiffed or messy, he didn’t care. “Why don’t you take a nap? I can do some work here while you sleep.” They both knew what work he was talking about, but neither wanted to talk about it just yet.
“I doubt I could sleep, but I would appreciate it if you’d stay while I took a shower.”
Quinn pictured her naked and wet and all soaped up. “That’s fine,” he uttered as he picked up his plate and walked to the sink. He didn’t have to try and imagine her naked. He knew what she looked like. He’d seen her from the waist up, and what he’d seen had rocked his world. Turned it on its head until he’d lost his friggin’ mind.
Quinn rinsed while Lucy loaded the dishwasher. The late morning sun streamed golden light through the window and into Lucy’s hair. It got caught in her lashes and poured across her cheek and into her parted lips. He’d lived with Amanda, had thought he’d spend the rest of his life with her, but he couldn’t recall if they’d ever washed dishes together.
He handed Lucy a wet plate, and a drop of water slid from the edge to slip across her palm and wrist and disappear beneath the long sleeve of her pajamas. It wasn’t until the machine was loaded that he brought up the subject they’d both been avoiding.
“Do you want to know what’s in the letter?” he asked as he dried his hands with a dish towel.
“I’m not sure.” She took one end and dried her hands too. “A part of me does. The curious part that killed the cat, but I know I’ll regret it. So, no.” Her fingers brushed his, and a wrinkle appeared between her brows, as if she was confused about something. “Thanks for lunch.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And ah…if Snookie meows at you, don’t feed him. He’s on a diet.” She moved across the kitchen to the doorway leading to the bedrooms. “And if you have to leave-”
“I’m not leaving.”
She looked at him one last time and disappeared.
Quinn tossed the towel on the counter and moved into the living room. Instead of turning on lamps, he opened the drapes and let the sun in. He grabbed his duffle from the floor and tossed it on the couch, then took out a pair of rubber gloves and snapped them on his hands. He picked up the letter sitting on the table and sliced open one end with the small utility knife he kept in the front pocket of his jeans. As he sat on the couch, he pulled a letter from the envelope. This time there was no newspaper clipping.
Somewhere in the house, Quinn could hear the water turn on as he unfolded the paper and read:
The hair on the back of his neck stood up, which didn’t happen to him very often anymore. He slid the letter and envelope in a clear evidence bag, sealed it shut, then pulled the gloves from his hands. He tossed them on the coffee table and skimmed the letter once more. He was going to have to tell Lucy about this one. He couldn’t keep it from her. She had to know that Breathless was clearly threatening her.
When Lucy had called with this last letter, Quinn had known the stakes had changed: He just hadn’t known to what degree. Now he did. Lucy was going to have to relocate for a while or agree to have two undercover cops move in for around-the-clock protection. Those were the options-he just hoped she’d agree to one of them.
He opened his notebook and booted up his laptop. Breathless had seen him and Lucy together. She knew Quinn was a cop. Either she’d seen him on the news at a press conference, or he’d interviewed her. Quinn had a gut feeling it was the latter.
First, he wrote down all the places where he and Lucy had been together. The list started with Starbucks and included restaurants and Barnes and Noble. The list ended with the last time he’d been in her house.
Next, he flipped to his notes and wrote the names of everyone he had interviewed since the first killing. He pulled the Women of Mystery writers profile and membership roster from the notebook and circled the three members who worked at Barnes and Noble and possibly could have met the victims. Then he circled the four Peacock chapters that met in bookstores and the presidents of the group he’d already interviewed. He checked the three employees and Peacock members against the victims’ phone records and e-mails. He came up with a big fat zero.
Across the house, the water shut off, and he took out the xerox copies of the other letters and laid them side by side on the coffee table, checking to see if there was anything he’d missed. There wasn’t, and frustration tightened his forehead. Finding a clear connection would have been too damn easy. And nothing about the case had been easy. He flipped pages in his notebook until he turned to the interviews he’d done with employees at bookstores where all four victims had purchased books.
Bookstore receipts were just one link connecting all four victims. There were others, but the receipts were looking to be a bigger piece of the puzzle than Quinn had originally thought. If Breathless wasn’t communicating with men online, then she was probably meeting them in the bookstores. Trolling the aisles for victims.
Quinn didn’t have all the personal profiles from the Peacock ladies, and he didn’t know which, if any, worked in bookstores. A week ago he’d seen several of them in the Barnes and Noble where Lucy had been speaking to the mystery writers group. It was possible they knew he was a cop. Even if none of the Peacocks worked at bookstores, they were readers who hung out there and could not be excluded.
“Christ,” he cursed and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. He was going around and around in circles. Each break in the case added as many questions as it answered. Each time he crossed off one suspect, it seemed like ten more were added. Breathless was on one of those lists, though. He knew it. If he kept whittling away, he’d find her. He had leads and suspects. It would take time to get through them all. Unfortunately, time was one thing he didn’t have. Once he turned over the latest letter, the sergeant would be more determined than ever to use Lucy as bait.
Hell, if this were happening to anyone but Lucy, Quinn would be the first person to want to use her to establish more communication with Breathless. Use the media to anger Breathless into doing something stupid like showing up at a staged event, or baiting her into a physical confrontation. But this wasn’t happening to anyone else, and the last thing he wanted to do was place Lucy in even more danger.
The thought of something happening to her twisted his insides into knots and burned a hole in his gut. He thought of Merry and the pink roses in his car. It was the thirtieth. He always put flowers on Merry’s grave on April thirtieth.
There was no way he was going to have the death of two women on his soul. No way in hell that he would let anything happen to Lucy. He didn’t care if he had to hog-tie her and shove her in a closet. His closet. The one in his bedroom was big enough.
Of course that was out of the question. Mitchell would have a fit. Besides, having her in his house would drive Quinn insane. He couldn’t have her, and he couldn’t keep his hands off her. Oh, he would have every intention of keeping his hands to himself, but something would happen and she’d be in his arms again, pressed up against him, and he’d be feeling for bra straps. Getting all hot and bothered and thinking about all the places on her body he wanted to put his mouth. At the same time knowing her feelings for him and that it was never going to
