case, he knew he’d have to hang around, and he couldn’t risk an increased police presence.”
Fitz propped her chin in one hand. “Being a cop sounds complicated, Ro. So many procedures and loopholes and bad dudes flipping them the bird, then walking. No wonder some go bad.” Her finger crept across the counter. “Are you sticking to your belief that Jacob didn’t kill Belinda?”
The doubts that rose up scuttled into the corners when Romana pictured Jacob holding his gun on the Santa who’d grabbed her at Bitte. “There’s no reason not to stick.”
“So if you’re right, that means someone else, probably someone who knew Belinda in the back bedroom kind of way, did the killing.”
Romana slanted her a mildly suspicious look. “Why the tone, cousin?”
Eyes rolling, Fitz hopped from the barstool. “You’re a cop to the bone, Ro. No tone, no problem. Come on. Let’s haul out the big stepladder and hang twinkling lights around your gi-normous city-view window.”
Romana bit her lip, glanced at the phone. She should call Jacob. Or-well, maybe not. No, she really should.
Frustration escaped on a sigh. Yes, no, maybe-what she really wanted to do was scream. Then call him.
Her fingers tapped the countertop. Of course, he could have called her. How did he know she knew about his neighbor? She also had no idea when he wanted to leave for the mall. Or why her blatantly sexual dreams about him were beginning to disrupt her thought processes.
Actually, that was one question she probably could answer, if she allowed her thoughts to veer in that direction. The problem was, she wasn’t sure she’d like the answer, or the other, more disturbing questions that would accompany it.
“Damn you, Knight. What secrets are you hiding in that gorgeous head of yours?”
While Fitz hunted noisily for the ladder, Romana set her elbows on the counter, plunked her chin in her hands and debated. She was glaring at the handset when her cousin gasped.
“What?” Reacting automatically, she grabbed a spatula and darted into the living room.
She’d been expecting a spider since Fitz was terrified of anything with more than four legs. Instead, she found her cousin staring at the computer screen.
“You had an envelope. I opened it.”
Romana stared with her-and felt an icy finger of fear glide along her backbone.
A color image glowed on the monitor. The subject of the picture was positioned exactly as Belinda Critch had been in death. Unlike Belinda, however, she was lying naked in the alley where Critch had tried to shoot Jacob. Mistletoe leaves were scattered around her. Some of them floated in the blood that had seeped from the wound in her chest. Half-lidded gray-blue eyes stared at them, cloudy and dull, like the eyes of a very old doll.
Directly beneath the photo, a single word wafted across the screen.
Soon…
Chapter Six
Jacob needed to punch something. Not because he was angry but out of sheer frustration. In three nights he’d had three dreams about Romana, and she’d been naked in all of them.
There’d been other dreams as well, long-accepted nightmares that left him tense and wanting a drink, but never ones that absorbed him so completely that nothing he thought or did could shake their hold on him.
At 7:00 p.m., pumped on caffeine and with a gym bag over his shoulder, he walked through the door of the Riverside Gym. So many officers frequented the place that over the years it had become their off-duty training center.
Thankfully, Christmas wasn’t the busiest time of year. Jacob spied a handful of his cohorts, sweating, grunting and adjusting weight machines, but he wasn’t going for weights tonight. He wanted his workout fast, painful and exhausting as hell. It was the only hope he had of dousing his desire for Romana. He aimed a narrowed look at the ceiling. God help him, this wasn’t a thing he needed right now.
Circling the floor mats, he headed toward the change room. A man who’d been beating up on a large bag stopped when he spied him. The leather took a last vicious punch as he called out to Jacob.
“You looking for a self-defense partner, Knight?”
The room’s echo gave his tone an extra whip of anger. Jacob’s lips curved, but he didn’t alter his stride.
“I’ve got ten years on you, Hoag.”
Dylan rounded the bag, began untying his gloves. “The year count between us is only six, as I recall.”
“Street years count differently.” But Jacob halted, unzipped his jacket. Considered. “You want to fight out your mad?”
“My mad, my hostility, my contempt for a judicial system that favors cops above all others.”
Anticipation kindled in Jacob’s belly. “We’re on our own time,” he reminded. “I won’t hold back.”
“Wouldn’t want you to.” Despite the acid in his voice, Dylan’s face remained a blank canvas. “I might have washed out at the Academy, but I haven’t been sitting around mourning the loss. In fact,” he dropped his boxing gloves on the floor, “I don’t see it as a loss at all these days.”
Yes, he did, Jacob thought, because as a cop he’d have had easy access to his sister’s file. He’d also have had the means to investigate any and all claims made at the hearing.
With a shrug he replied, “Up to you, Hoag. Street rules.”
Dylan’s fists balled. “What does that entail?”
The light of anticipation flared as Jacob paused in the doorway to look back. “Means no rules at all.”
“HE’S NOT HERE, ROMANA.” O’Keefe pressed weary fingers to his eyelids. “If he’s not answering his cell phone, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“He’s not answering any phone.” She perched on the edge of O’Keefe’s desk and tried not to notice the bags developing under his eyes. “But there is something you can tell me.”
“Shoot.”
“How did you spend your New Year’s Eve nine years ago?”
O’Keefe raked the hair from his temples. “Nine years. I don’t… Ah, wait, maybe I do. Gilhoolie’s Pub?”
“That’s the one.” Romana wasn’t sure why she felt guilty when he was the one who’d been spotted going upstairs with Belinda Critch, but it probably had to do with a friend’s loyalty and the sense that she’d let herself believe a stranger’s story just a little too readily.
With no way back, however, she waded in deeper. “James Barret saw you with Belinda Critch, Mick. Handing money to the proprietor, going upstairs.”
O’Keefe’s hands fell and with them, Romana’s hopes. She’d wanted him to deny it, to be disappointed at her lack of faith. She absolutely did not want him to look at her with those big dog eyes of his and offer a sheepish grin.
“Weak as water, Romana, that’s me. Or was nine years ago.” His chair creaked as he leaned back. “My wife and I were- well, let’s be civilized and say we were having problems. I was drunk, and Belinda was there, coming on to me.”
She’d come on to James Barret, as well, yet Barret had managed to stay downstairs. “Belinda and Critch had only been married for eighteen months, Mick. He was still buying her presents, sending flowers to the lab.”
“Nothing happened.”
“I-” Romana blinked in surprise. “Nothing? As in no sex?”
“I couldn’t-you know, get it up. God, it was embarrassing. Still is.” He kneaded his eyebrows. “Anyway, she got annoyed and started flouncing around the room. She said she’d wasted her New Year’s Eve. There were other parties she could have gone to and far better men she could have seduced. Then she marched downstairs and disappeared into the back room.”
“Where the private party continued.”
“At full volume.”
“Was Barret still there?”
