revel.
Should she be doing this here and now, though, with her cousin missing and her brain so crammed with thoughts that it might take her until next Christmas to sort them out?
When he raised his head, the room tilted slightly. Big yes, she decided, and swore she could see Fitz sending her a delighted thumbs-up. She marveled that her mouth felt numb and gave her upper lip an experimental touch with her tongue. “So that’s what a nuclear explosion feels like, huh?”
“Or a tidal wave.” He framed her face with his hands, looked into her eyes. “We shouldn’t be doing this, Romana.”
“Probably not.” Her movement against his lower body drew a hiss of reaction. “But I sense a conflict in you, Jacob.” Her smile teased while her fingers roamed. “A big one.”
He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Very clever, Professor Grey. I meant there are things I haven’t told you.”
The smile gave way to understanding as she brushed at his dark hair. “You don’t remember the night she died, do you?” “Only a part of it.” “Jacob, you didn’t kill her. Aside from the fact that you’re a cop and sworn to uphold the law, why would you have wanted her dead? It doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t mesh with your character.”
“Not the character you know.” Romana sighed. “Did you love her?” His eyes slid past her to the window. “I don’t think I had any feelings for her. She wanted help with a problem. I’m a cop. She came to me.”
“So you see? We agree. You didn’t do it-as I’ve said from the start.” She nipped his lower lip, smiled just a little and set her hands on his shoulders.
Taut muscles, lean body, awake and aware. Troubled he might be, but he wanted her, and God knew she wanted him.
Still, timing mattered, and this wasn’t their moment. Tonight they needed something different, something active and purposeful.
“I have an idea.” “Should I be worried?” “I’m worried enough for the both of us, Jacob.” Her eyes narrowed. “Captain Harris has people looking for Fitz, right?” “As many as he can spare.” “Good, because we need a break.” “Okay, now I’m worried.” “That’s the idea.” Jumping up, she wrapped her legs around him. One final, long kiss, deep and dangerous, then she nuzzled his ear and whispered, “Grandma Grey swears a change is as good as rest for sharpening the mind.”
“And that means?”
“It means, Detective Knight, that you and I are going to climb into your new vehicle, point it north-and go shopping for Christmas trees.”
SURVEILLANCE WAS A DULL SPORT, but what had to be done had to be done. He’d been following Romana all day with little opportunity to strike. He had no particular desire to involve children in his revenge. Besides, Knight was with her now, and twofers were always more exhilarating.
Take the incident last night. Watching them careen down that hill, skid, spin and finally crash through a rusty fence into the meat factory wall had gotten him hard. Wonder what a shrink would say about that?
A sprig of mistletoe on the dash taunted him. Knight had used it as a prop in Belinda’s death. It seemed only fitting that Warren Critch should make his counterstatement in much the same way. One clear, life-ending statement. Then,
Inside his truck, he pulled the hat he wore down low on his forehead, tucked his hands under his arms and slumped deeper into his seat. He had an arsenal of weapons locked in the utility box behind him. When they left tonight, alone or together, he’d be right behind them, their very own ghost of Christmas past.
Chapter Eleven
They drove to a Christmas tree farm ten minutes north of the city. Live trees, cut trees, small, medium and large trees, this place had it all.
Romana knew what she wanted-a six-foot blue spruce that could be planted in her brother’s backyard after Christmas.
“It’s eco-friendly,” she told Jacob as they wandered through the labyrinth of green. “It’s also a happy ending for the tree.”
“Now you’re into the psychology of trees?”
“Every living thing has a spirit. People, trees, even cockroaches. Maybe.” At the tug of amusement on his lips, she grinned. “Hey, I teach criminology, not metaphysics. What kind do you want?”
He examined the burlap root bag of a traditional Christmas pine. The memory of a similar pine brought a stab of pain and a clutching sensation in his belly. He saw his mother’s face and had to work to block it out.
“No kind, Romana. But thanks.”
She left the blue spruce she’d been admiring and circled to where he stood. “You need a tree, Jacob, even if it’s the Charlie Brown twig variety.”
“Oh, look, Oscar,” an elderly woman remarked. “There’s a lovely spruce.”
Romana gave Jacob’s shin a light kick. “Your bad attitude just cost me my first choice, Knight. Pick a tree before they’re all gone.”
Humor stirred as Jacob made a sweep of the immediate area. At least three dozen people had braved the slippery roads to come here tonight. There were others wandering around in the barn, in search of wreaths and pine boughs. The smells of Christmas enveloped him. Funny, though, when combined with Romana’s exotic scent, the memories felt distant and very nearly manageable.
Romana rubbed her arms to warm them. “I know there are unhappy thoughts running around in your head, but you won’t exorcise them by letting them control you. You have to stare them down, put them in their place.”
He kept his eyes on the line of frozen root bags and his hands in his jacket pockets. “Is that the Romana Grey philosophy for beating your demons?”
“Think of it as a game of cops and robbers. Cops good, robbers bad.”
“In theory, anyway,” Jacob remarked. “Some robber-demons can take a lifetime to capture and control. I’m thirty-eight. That’s not even half a lifetime by twenty-first-century standards.”
He gave her credit for patience. Squeezing his arm, she replied simply, “Not going to pry, Knight.”
His gaze climbed the skinny tree in front of him. “Because you’re afraid of what you’ll hear, or because you have other weightier matters on your mind?”
“You really are obtuse, aren’t you? Fine, more the second than the first. I want to find Fitz, and I don’t know how to do it. You don’t know either, and the department can’t help. Officially.”
“The patrols know the story. I talked to several officers last night. They’ll watch for her.”
Unhooking her arm, she skirted a puny fir that stood between two much more majestic ones. It tilted to the right at the top, and a number of the branches were uneven, but it looked as healthy as a live tree possibly could under full-blown winter conditions.
“This is Fitz,” Romana said and detached an icicle from the trunk. “I’m going to buy it for her and decorate it in purple and red, her favorite colors. That’s all I can do to combat my demons right now.”
The skin on Jacob’s neck prickled. Turning up his collar, he looked back but saw nothing except trees, darkness and an old man wearing a money apron.
There were more people here than he’d anticipated. Why, he couldn’t imagine. What sane person left the city at nine o’clock on a Friday night to go shopping for Christmas trees?
He noticed Romana glancing into the shadows and knew exactly what she was looking for.
“Problem?” He kept his tone casual and his eyes on the snow-covered pots that dotted the path.
“Hmm? No. I was thinking.”
“About Christmas trees?”
“And Fitz and Critch and mistletoe.” She dusted loose snow from another spruce. “I know you know why I wanted to come here tonight. The purchasing of Christmas trees is a bonus. I figured, beyond the city limits, in bad road conditions and nasty weather, who’d want to wander around outside? Guess I underestimated the hardiness of the average Cincinnatian.” She blew out a cloud of breath, swept an arm around the yard. “You see now why I left
