Chapter Twenty-Five
Mac’s entire body throbbed with well-used satisfaction as he drove down Wisconsin Avenue toward Georgetown. Mixed into it was the growing sense of “holy-shit what the hell did I just do?” The justification for having sex with Tess had seemed sound when his body was burning up with lust. Get close, gain her trust, use the attraction he couldn’t control to forward the investigation. Be a dedicated FBI agent. Take one for the team.
The fact he was still buzzing from his brain to his balls was a bonus.
Very noble.
The truth was, he’d wanted her so much he hadn’t been thinking about the case or the consequences until he’d already been in too deep. He’d fucked her without a goddamned condom because he’d wanted her that much. He’d never had that little self-control before, not even with the woman he’d exchanged vows with. A woman he needed to convince to stop calling him unless she wanted to seriously piss him off.
Except that was bullshit. He’d latched onto Heather’s text so goddamned fast he’d almost given himself whiplash. He was running away—not from what he’d done with Tess, but from the emotions that had assaulted him, before, during and after sex. So much for separating the two.
Tess had morphed from quiet, serious tax accountant to uninhibited erotic nymph and had reduced his brain to ashes. But something had shifted at the end, possibly the rising horror at the stupidity of two supposedly intelligent adults having unprotected sex…
Except it hadn’t looked like horror, it had been more like she’d turned into his most wanton fantasy, which in any other woman might have been aimed at keeping him around, but with Tess it had seemed like the direct opposite, as if she could take him or leave him—when earlier she’d just been desperate to take him.
He ran his tongue around his teeth. He could still taste her and even that was enough to have him rising to half-mast. He hadn’t had this much trouble controlling his dick since he’d been sixteen and had been initiated into the fine art of fellatio by one of his father’s girlfriends. Miranda had hooked on the side and given young Stevie a freebie in exchange for the cup of coffee he’d made her. Fact was he’d been happy to talk to someone who didn’t want to kick the shit out of him at home. And she’d been happy to receive a simple kindness. Maybe he was now mature enough to admit part of the thrill had been in getting some small-minded revenge against the miserable sonofabitch who’d been passed out in the other room. At sixteen he’d thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
He sure as hell would never forget Miranda Wyatt for what she’d done to him that day in that suffocating little trailer, but what Tess had done with him in her home had been a million times more powerful, a million times more emotional…right up until the moment it hadn’t.
It had started off like an inferno. Hell, they hadn’t made it up the freaking stairs let alone to bed. They’d spent an hour and a half exploring things neither one of them should have had any business touching and at the time he would have sworn it had been good, honest sex, but…
Thanks for the ride, cowboy?
As if she’d picked him up in a bar and didn’t know his name?
Cowboy? What the fucking fuck?
He set his teeth and maneuvered toward Georgetown. It was so unlike the woman he thought he knew. He tried to pinpoint when the mood had shifted but the only thing he could think of was Heather’s phone call.
Ah, fuck. He hung his head.
That would do it.
How to piss off the naked woman you were literally on top of and possibly inside—by getting a call from your ex that made you drop everything and run.
Goddamn.
His mind drifted to the way she’d touched herself like some sex kitten at the end. He’d almost passed out from sudden blood loss. Now he figured she’d been torturing him for being that prick who left to deal with his ex. He thought about the other things he’d said although details were blurry. He remembered something about walls, screwing and controlling someone through sex.
What a fucking dumbass.
He shook his head at himself.
He’d hurt Tess and she’d shielded herself in the one way that she’d known would make him think she was fine with it. Not by being clingy and vulnerable, but by being a sexy, confident woman who didn’t need anyone. Because as far as she knew he was off for blonde dessert in the ’burbs.
“Shit.” He thumped the steering wheel with his fist.
A patrol car put its lights and sirens on in the distance, speeding off to someone else’s crisis. Traffic was light at three a.m. There were definite advantages to working the graveyard shift. He pulled into a drive-thru to grab a coffee. He needed to go back and talk to Tess. Apologize for being a coward and refusing to face the fact he had growing feelings for her. Tell her she was important to him and maybe once this case was over they could see where this thing between them might lead.
Another text from Heather dinged. This one said she had something important to tell him about his new girlfriend. What the hell? Did she know about Tess, or was she just fishing?
Was Heather drunk? Did she think she could blackmail him into coming back to her? That was insanity. Should he call the cops? That made more than fifteen messages in twenty minutes. He’d already texted back a less than flattering response. Maybe she’d heard from Lyle’s lawyer or discovered that his new girlfriend was younger and prettier than she was.
She was. He’d checked.
One thing was for damned sure, if it was an emergency she’d have called 911.
Divorce meant no contact as far as he was concerned. They didn’t have kids. There was no reason for them to ever communicate again. Heather probably had seduction in mind but he’d fulfilled his quota of screw-ups for the day and it wasn’t even four a.m.
He debated whether to head back to Tess’s, or go to Heather’s, but he was sick of being hassled by his ex. It was time to put an end to the insanity.
Mac parked his truck in front of the address Heather had sent him, a large house on the edge of Georgetown, so close to the Naval Observatory some of the lights from the buildings shone through the trees.
It was a nice place. Near the woods, and not far from where the congressman had been shot. Trettorri was still in a coma. Mac had checked before he’d had mind-blowing sexual relations with someone who might know something regarding the shooter.
He got out of the truck and shut the door calmly despite his anger. The wide, front lawn was sprinkled with dead leaves that rustled as the wind blew in a strong gust.
A light was on upstairs.
Mac needed to convince Heather he’d moved on. That he had someone important in his life now. His mind flashed to Tess and he swallowed.
Regret ate him up inside. He needed to talk to her. Explain… Explain what? That, although he couldn’t be in a real relationship with her right now, it was a smart idea for him to stick close to protect her from Eddie? And as they were together anyway maybe they could just fuck like bunnies until this was all over because his dick couldn’t get enough of her and his head was having a similar problem?
Just as long as his heart wasn’t involved.
But it was. He knew it was. He hadn’t had the kind of emotionally derelict sex with Tess that he usually embraced. But he couldn’t promise her a damned thing except she’d almost certainly regret getting involved with him and might get hurt in the process. It was another layer of shit added on top of all the other crap she’d had to endure over the years.
He couldn’t do that to her. He had to walk away before either of them got in too deep, and maybe it was already too late for one of them, but that was his problem and he’d take it to his grave.
And as for starting something after the case was closed…what was the point? He was a career FBI agent. He wasn’t getting out unless it was in a body bag. And Tess Fallon, only surviving daughter of Francis and David Hines did not fit in with that life choice. No matter how unfair that might be.
It was unfair.
It was damn unfair, but he wasn’t sure what the hell he could do to change it.
Heather’s crazy ex text spree had done them both a favor, he realized as he moved toward the front door, although it hadn’t felt like it at the time.
The icy wind dragged its claws over his skin, telling him winter still had a firm grip on this part of the US. A decorative wreath formed a bull’s eye on the red, front door of the Georgian mansion. He rolled his eyes at the situation he found himself in. Then he dialed 911 and reported a disturbance at this address. Heather would never be tempted to text him again after this went down.
He climbed the three front steps and pressed the buzzer. No one answered. Another strong gust of wind blasted and the front door moved slightly. Shit, it wasn’t even latched properly.
A shiver of unease ran down his spine and he slid his Glock from its cradle.
Heather had gone through a phase when they were married, texting him as if there was some major issue at home, only for him to rush back and find her waiting in bed wearing nothing but sexy lingerie.
It was cute the first couple of times, but then it started to interfere with his job. It wasn’t long after he’d started ignoring those text messages that Lyle had started getting a little extra boardroom action. Heather did not like to be ignored.
Mac forced himself to feel a little compassion for his ex’s situation. He knew how much it sucked to be cheated on. Heather might have genuinely loved the guy and might be heartbroken, but she needed to realize it wasn’t Mac’s job to fix that.
He got another text.
“I’m upstairs. Come on up.”
He eased the weapon back into the holster but left the clip undone. Even if he’d been stuck on a desert island for the last two years with only his right hand for company, there was no way an hour with his ex would be worth the year of misery that was sure to follow.
He’d risked more than that to be with Tess…
Which was beyond reckless.
Since when had personal relationships been more important than his career? Since never.
Impatient with everything that had happened tonight, he pushed the door open. Cops would be here soon.
Dammit, he was in the middle of a multiple murder investigation and was dealing with women problems? What the hell was wrong with him? He was about to text Heather back when he realized how ridiculous the whole situation was.
He stepped inside and yelled up the white-painted staircase. “Heather! You better be decent. Cops are on the way!”
The sound of a TV playing loudly came from somewhere on the second floor and drowned out his words. Dammit. He turned on the lights and took the stairs two at a time. The house was beautiful with hardwood floors and framed pictures on the walls. One oil painting was knocked off kilter and he straightened it out of habit. Most of the rooms were dark but light shone from beneath one door.
Shaking his head, he knocked on that door. “Heather. If you want to talk to me you need to come out here with some clothes on. Uniforms are on their way. You said this was an emergency.” Again, no answer. Could she even hear him over the racket of the TV?
Part of him wanted to walk away and never to hear from Heather Surrey again. But he’d once pledged his life to the woman and though he despised her for throwing that commitment back in his face, another small part empathized with the fact she was hurting.
“And damned if she doesn’t know it,” he acknowledged to himself.
This nonsense had to end. He blew out a big breath and reached out for the door handle.
“Heather?” Still no answer.
He stepped hesitantly into the room, which seemed to be a small living room off the master bedroom. The TV showed the news—weird considering Heather’s idea of keeping up with current events involved watching Entertainment Tonight.
Something felt off. He stopped walking, eased out his Glock.
“Heather,” he demanded louder.
Still no reply. He eyed the closed door and made his feet stay firmly planted where they were. He narrowed his gaze thoughtfully, then crept closer and listened for a moment. The TV was too loud to hear a damn thing.
He took hold of the knob, knowing he was going to feel like an idiot if the woman was trying to seduce him, but he couldn’t shake the sense of unease rattling along his nerves.
He burst into the room, weapon drawn as he cleared the fatal funnel and kept moving left. His heart squeezed as gore rose up his throat.
Heather lay on the bed. Naked. Her arms were restrained above her head by two silk ties, her legs spread eagle. Duct tape covered her mouth. The only other adornment was a thick gold chain around her throat. Blood soaked the sheets from two bullet holes. One to the heart. One to the head.
He strode towards her, gun raised as he searched for a pulse in her throat. Her skin was still warm, but she wasn’t breathing and she was way past saving. He glanced around. Was the killer still here?
Had she waited here naked for him, only to be surprised by some opportunistic burglar? Had Mac taken too long to arrive?
Was that a pulse? He pressed harder against her throat, trying to find the carotid.
“Christ.” He pulled out his cell, dialed 911 again. “I’ve found a woman with a gunshot wound to the chest and head.” He gave the dispatcher the address.
“Officers are one minute out,” she told him.
“Tell them an FBI agent is on the premises. I’m going to search the house for the suspect.”
He cleared the en suite and bedroom as efficiently as possible without disturbing potential evidence. He’d worked his way through another three bedrooms by the time the first cops arrived.
“Up here,” he yelled. He held his gold shield aloft. “ASAC Steve McKenzie. FBI. Victim’s through there.” He pointed to Heather’s bedroom. “I haven’t cleared the whole house yet.”
“We’ve got it.”
One guy, a little on the heavy side, gray hair and a buzz-cut, eyed him warily. “You injured?” the guy asked him.
“Nope.”
“You know the victim?” asked the other cop, coming out of the room and shaking his head, confirming what Mac already knew.
Mac wiped his jacket sleeve over his forehead. Nodded. “My ex-wife.”
“You often visit your ex-wife in the middle of the night?” The cop’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“I arrived about eight minutes ago,” he told the first cop. “Found her like this.” He frowned. “She asked me to drop by. Sent me dozens of texts.” He held out his cell phone to show the guy.
Where the hell was her cell phone? He started to walk back into the bedroom to look for it, but the guy with the buzz-cut stopped him. “Sorry, sir. You can’t go back in there. This isn’t your investigation.”
Shit.
His stomach hurt and bile tasted bitter in his mouth. “She left the front door ajar, and texted me to come up.” He rubbed his forehead. “At least, I assumed she’d done it.” The killer must have done that.
Fuck. Had he been played?
He’d definitely been played. Had Lyle set him up to get rid of a woman he no longer wanted?
“You need to call her husband,” Mac told them.
“Another one?” the cop asked in surprise.
Mac nodded. “They were having problems, separated at Christmas.”
“Those problems have anything to do with you?” the uniform asked.
Mac gave him a hard stare, not liking where this was going. “No. I just got reassigned to HQ in DC a week ago. Heather begged me to meet her for lunch on Tuesday. Before that I hadn’t seen her in a couple of years.”
“Amicable?”
Mac grimaced. “As a bare-knuckle fight.”
He saw the cops exchange a glance, the kind he exchanged with colleagues when he thought the witness might be the bad guy. “Do I need my lawyer, Officer?”
The guy smirked. “Only if you have something to hide.”
It was the sort of thing Mac would also say to a suspect to get them to waive their rights. He blinked a couple of times, realizing how this looked. Fuck. He didn’t have time for this shit.
Mac walked downstairs to the living room and sat on the couch. Buzz-cut followed. Mac might be a federal agent who’d called emergency services, but he was now the prime suspect in a vicious homicide. He shook his head and covered his face with his hands. Swore. “I have to return to headquarters. I’m leading the task force investigating these DC murders.”
“I’m sure you are.” The cop nodded sagely, clearly not believing a word. “Weren’t they killed by two shots, one to the heart, one to the head? Like the vic upstairs?”
Mac nodded. He wasn’t about to go into the differences between the cases, but they couldn’t actually believe he’d done this.
“You know as well as I do, we need to question you before you do anything else.”
“Then hurry the fuck up,” he bit out. Then he closed his eyes and realized he was being an asshole. Heather had been murdered, and he needed to do everything he could to bring her killer to justice. And if that involved sitting down with a homicide detective for an hour or two to try and sort this mess out, then so be it. “Fine. But I need to call headquarters and tell them where I am.”
“You can do that.” The uniform gave him the sort of smile that made criminals buckle. “Tell them you’re gonna be a while.”
* * *
Tess drove up to Cole’s house in American University Park and parked on the side of the road. The lower half was red brick and the windows had black painted shutters. An addition on the side housed Cole’s office, but it was dark. A light shone in the living room. Cole’s car wasn’t visible but it might be in the garage.
She went around the side to knock on the kitchen door. No one answered so she knocked harder. She didn’t want to use her key. The sound of footsteps had her bracing herself.
Dave opened the door. The stocky redhead gave her a puzzled frown and rubbed his eyes. “Tess? Everything okay?”
“I need to talk to Cole. Is he here?” She’d changed into jeans and a red sweater. She hunched inside her coat trying to keep out the frigid wind.
Dave stood back and she brushed past him.
“I don’t know. I fell asleep on the couch watching a movie. Last time I saw him he was on his way to your place.” He yawned widely and covered his mouth in embarrassment. “You want me to go find out if he’s in his room?”
“I’ll do it. Thanks. I need to check on something first. Tax stuff.” She spoke quietly, not wanting to disturb the other people in the house. She wasn’t willing to back down now she’d finally found the courage to confront her baby brother. She took off her boots and left them by the door. The thumb drive was in her jeans’ pocket and she wanted to study the look on his face when he saw it.
First, she wanted to see if that black folder had magically reappeared.
She went to his office and started going through each individual file. After a few minutes, she sat back on her heels. Nothing.
Frustrated but determined, she headed upstairs to Cole’s bedroom. There were four rooms on this floor: Cole, Zane, Dave and a spare that Joe often used. Tess wasn’t sure why the guy didn’t move in here, but he claimed to like dorm life too much. Probably appreciated the easy access to the female population, she thought wryly.
She knocked lightly on Cole’s door and eased it open. The room was empty. Dammit. She pressed her lips together and took a step inside. The familiar scent of athletic trainers assailed her, but the room was tidy. No dirty laundry on the floor. Bed was made. Tess wondered if he’d turned over a new leaf for this woman he was seeing. Just in case she ever turned up here unexpectedly.
Was that where he was now? Sadness seeped through her. Her lies had driven him away and that left her feeling desolate. But she wasn’t compromising her principles again. Not for Cole. Not for anyone.
She closed the door behind her and eyed his bedside table. It was a gross invasion of privacy but she started searching the drawers, ignoring the personal items that were not her focus.
Then she searched his clothes drawers, running her hand beneath the sweaters and t-shirts, across shelves, under jeans. Nothing. She felt beneath his pillow and found the pajama bottoms she’d bought him for Christmas. One of the pictures tacked to the wall above the bed was a photograph of Cole and her when she’d moved into her new house last fall. Another showed him kissing the cheek of a woman, but Tess couldn’t make out any distinct features. She stood in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips. Guilt ate at her. She shouldn’t be doing this. He’d be furious.
She didn’t care.
She turned on her phone’s flashlight and knelt beside the bed. The carpet was dusty but aside from two pairs of sneakers and a stray pen there wasn’t anything underneath. She frowned as something black caught her gaze through the slats. She heaved up the mattress and there was the file. Her heart knocked against her ribs in a frantic tattoo.
She pulled her gloves out of her pocket and slipped them on. Grabbed the file, and flicked it open. There was the photograph of Judge Thomas. She slipped the folder inside her coat, and held it tight against her side while she did up the zipper. She hadn’t imagined it. She put the room back together so no one would know what she’d been doing.
At the door, she met a concerned-looking Dave. “I left him a note,” she said to explain the length of time she’d spent in his room, closing the door firmly behind her. Suddenly his confused frown seemed a little sinister. Cole’s roommates were just as capable of hiding that file under his mattress as he was.
But what motive would they have?
She smiled brightly. “Sorry I woke you,” she whispered. “Bye.”
He shrugged as if coming over in the middle of the night was perfectly normal. “S’okay. See ya at the party?”
“Of course,” she lied. A birthday party was the last thing she cared about. She was conscious of his gaze on her back as she jogged down the stairs, holding on to the folder with one forearm. She forced herself to walk not run through the house and pull on her boots rather than bolting barefoot down the street.
She eased out the door, her ears hammering with the sound of fear.
She got into her Mini Cooper and locked herself inside, heart beating frantically. She unzipped her coat and placed the folder on the passenger seat before driving away. Half a mile later, she pulled over. She called Cole, but once again he didn’t answer. What was he doing? Spending the night with his lover or plotting how to avenge the deaths of a family he didn’t remember?
She glanced at the file and lifted the first page. The paper fought her slippery gloves. Finally, she turned over the first page and her heart solidified into a piece of ice. A picture of Sonja Shiraz, the transgender DJ, was on the second page.
The ice shattered and inside she felt broken. She needed to get this file to Mac.