Yesterday when they’d gone to Lucy’s house to feed her cat, Quinn had stepped on the damn cat’s tail. It had been an honest-to-God accident, but he wasn’t quite sure Lucy believed him. “I swear that was an accident,” he reminded her. “I didn’t see him.”
“How could you not see a twenty-pound cat sitting in the middle of the floor?”
Because he’d been watching Lucy’s breasts jiggle a bit as she’d poured cat food into a dish. He pulled her tighter against his chest. “In the future, I’ll watch where I’m walking.”
She laid her head against his shoulder and said, “I want my life back, Quinn. I want to be normal. If that means I have to do a news conference or book signing, let’s do it as soon as possible.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded and took a step back. “Yes. I’m not afraid as much as I’m pissed off.” Her eyes got all Linda Blair squinty and shone with that unholy gleam he hadn’t seen since the day he’d sat in her car and told her Millie was his dog. He was glad to see it again. “She’s going down.”
He was glad that look wasn’t directed at him.
Quinn arrived at work ten minutes early, prepared to inform Sergeant Mitchell of the latest developments, but was informed that the sergeant was in a meeting and wouldn’t be in his office until that afternoon. Quinn felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. He had a reprieve for a few hours.
At ten after nine, a fingerprint technician walked into the briefing room, grinning from ear to ear. “We got a thumb print off the latest envelope,” he said. “It matches the thumb print taken from the seat in Robert Patterson’s truck.”
Quinn leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Thank you, Jesus.” They finally had a strong link between Breathless and the murders. Whoever had written the letters to Lucy had been in the Patterson truck. And whoever had written that last letter had seen Quinn and Lucy together and knew he was a cop. Breathless was starting to make mistakes.
Quinn looked at Kurt, and they both knew this was big. They were finally getting the break they needed, and Quinn wasn’t going to have to use Lucy. At least not yet. She could stay tucked safely in his house. Her and Millie.
“We’ve interviewed her, Kurt,” he said, referring to Breathless.
“You’re probably right,” the other detective said as he looked over a copy of the last letter.
Quinn opened his notebook and flipped to the suspect list. “We’ve cleared half, so-Son of a bitch!” He flipped to a Xerox with the vics’ photos on it, then his attention snapped to the print technician, who was still in the room, as he pointed to the page in his notebook. “I need you to process this. If our luck holds, we can get a matching print off it.”
“We must have shown that to twenty or thirty people,” Kurt reminded him.
“And half of those have been cleared.”
The fingerprint technician pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and removed the Xerox from Quinn’s notebook. He left, and Quinn went into his office to cool his heels and wait. He called the crime lab, but there was nothing new regarding hair and fibers found at the scenes. He checked in with the victims’ families and informed them of the fingerprint evidence. Then he called Lucy on his home phone.
“McIntyre residence,” she said. “Home of Quinn, crack detective and sexy man.”
At the sound of her voice, he felt an overwhelming potentcy squeeze his chest. “What if this call had been from my mother?”
“I looked at your caller ID before I picked up.”
He didn’t feel it in his whole chest, just the left side, near his heart. Like he had a blockage. “Are you bored?”
“No. I’m trying to get some work done.”
“You’re writing?” Last night he’d let her look over his files on the Breathless case. He hadn’t known she wore gold-framed reading glasses until she’d put them on the bridge of her nose. She’d looked hot. Of course, he thought she looked hot in everything or nothing at all.
“Trying to write. It’s not going well, but I’m hoping something will shake loose.” In the background, Millie started barking, like someone was busting into the house.
“What’s wrong with Millie?”
“Just a second.” There was a pause, and then, “She sees a cat on your lawn.”
“Ah, she’s protecting you from the neighborhood felines.”
Lucy laughed. A soft little sound that settled next to his clogged heart. “She doesn’t seem to be much of a guard dog, Quinn. If a burglar breaks in, she’ll show them where you keep your good stuff.”
Quinn chuckled. Lucy was his good stuff. “Maybe, but she’ll bark a lot while she points the way.” He pulled back his cuff and looked at his watch. It had been over an hour. “We got a print off the latest envelope,” he told her, but he didn’t have to mention how important it was. They talked about the case, and they talked about what they were going to do that night and what to have for dinner, like an old married couple. “When I get off work,” he said, “I’ll go feed your bag of fur.”
“His name is Mr. Snookums.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Her long-suffering sigh carried across the phone line. “I want to go with you because I have to look for a very important folder. I misplaced it somewhere in my house.”
“I’ll help you search for it,” he offered as the fingerprint technician entered his office. By the guy’s smile, Quinn knew they had another hit. “I need to go,” he said and hung up the telephone. “Well?”
“We have a matching index finger taken off the bottom of the vic paper.”
For a week Quinn had stared at the prints taken from the truck. He wanted to kick his own ass, but he didn’t have time. He stood and shoved his arms into his blazer, covering the pistol hooked to his belt. The list had just been culled down to a dozen suspects, and he knew the first place to look.
Lucy stared at the blinking cursor willing the words to flow from her fingertips and onto the computer screen. When they didn’t, she took off her glasses and set them on the kitchen table next to her laptop. Millie sat beside Lucy with her head on Lucy’s thigh. Lucy reached down and scratched the dog beneath the ear.
She’d thought that since she was feeling safer today, the muse fairy would tap her on the head and her writing would once again start to flow.
It wasn’t happening.
She blew out a breath and leaned back in the chair. If she had the critique from Maddie, she would at least have something to do. And hopefully, reworking a few chapters would kick-start the rest. She stood and walked into the living room. Millie followed close on her heels, and Lucy picked up the television remote and turned it on. She flipped to the twenty-four-hour news stations to see what had been happening in the world since her life had gotten so out of control. There was nothing on but depressing news, and she turned it to City Confidential and vegged out on the tube. What she’d told Quinn that morning was the truth. She wasn’t as scared as she was angry. She felt an impotent rage at the woman who’d pushed her into the worst writer’s block of her career.
She turned off the television and tossed the remote on the coffee table. She thought about Quinn and what he’d said yesterday about their elationship starting out under stress. She had to admit that it had started out a little less than orthodox. Okay,
He hadn’t told her he loved her, she reminded herself. But to be fair, she hadn’t told him either. He’d moved her into his house to keep her safe, and he’d taken the tapes out of the evidence room.
Her cell phone rang, and she jumped a little.
“Hello.”
“Hello. Am I speaking to Lucy Rothschild?”
“Yes.”
“I found a folder that I believe belongs to you.”
Quinn stood in the inventory room at Barnes and Noble with his hands in his pants pockets, looking relaxed. In
