Chapter One
The corpse was sprawled out before Detective Anne Sutton like a felled oak. Around the form of the once imposing man, bloomed excessive spatters that were now growing dry and dark. If it weren’t for the number of bullet holes, Anne would’ve had a hard time buying that anyone could get the drop on this huge lug.
“You sure pissed someone off,” she muttered as she pulled on a pair of gloves and leaned over the body.
Beside her, the forensics guy was taking samples and cracking jokes with her partner Jeffers. Ignoring them, she focused on the grisly scene in front of her. Whether this was a hit or a crime of passion, Anne knew that she could put the details together faster than anyone else in her precinct. As much as she hated to think about the political aspects of her job, she really needed to be the one to get the credit for this. This wasn’t her first homicide, but it was definitely the messiest. It reminded her of a case from her rookie days when some idiot had accidentally cut himself with a new knife and claimed his neighbor had targeted him for the campaign sign in his yard.
But Anne wasn’t a rookie anymore, and her higher-ups needed to start seeing her as the capable woman they’d promoted to detective, or she could find herself in trouble and soon.
Brushing a stray lock of chestnut hair away with the back of her hand, Anne scanned the body again. He had no ID. No particularly distinctive identifying marks. His shoes were expensive Italian leather. They were a bit incongruous with the hair, which was greasy and as long as her own. It had been pulled back into a ponytail. He was also wearing a high-end tracksuit. Someone hadn’t been planning to die today.
His pose supported the theory that he had been caught by surprise. A look at his well-manicured nails told her that he definitely hadn’t fought anyone off. That was a pity because it was so easy to run tests on a few skin flakes from under the nails. Forensics did scrapings there anyway, just in case they might find anything useful.
The glint of the ring caught her eye just before she was about to rise. It was pinned beneath one of his monstrous shoes, almost out of sight. Anne moved his foot slightly to retrieve the ring and then held it close for examination.
A broad band of brushed tungsten carbide. Fleur-de-lis pattern on the side. Marquise cut garnet in the middle. Anne knew this ring.
The deft way that he moved his hands had always left Anne under the impression that they were delicate. His fingers were long enough, forever in motion, as he twiddled a pen or held a hand-rolled cigarette. Those hands looked like they could slip in anywhere unimpeded, a testament to his prowess at illicit activities.
But they proved themselves adept at other activities, ones that Anne hadn’t been able to fathom the first time the two of them had met, with his dangerous smirk and her censorious glare daring him to step out of line. Her investigations in that area had found nothing of relevance… but they had found HIM, and now his active fingers were finding every sensitive spot, every weakness. She moaned softly as his cunning fingers brought her to the brink and still demanded more of her vulnerable flesh.
“William!” She gasped as her back arched involuntarily.
He chuckled almost wickedly before leaning forward to press teasing kisses along her collarbone. She panted helplessly, with him on her and in her. She felt as though he had expanded his slim form to make up her whole world. She knew that she should stop this. She knew that they shouldn’t be doing this, and yet he was everything. She had put off the very thought of pleasure like this in her life but was now so consumed by it that she might never break away.
“You like this, pet?” he teased. His voice was deep and smooth, like whiskey and razorblades, and it sent a shiver through her.
“D-don’t stop,” she begged.
His lips spread into a lopsided grin, and, dutifully, he resumed stroking the tender folds between her legs. She shuddered and closed her eyes. Each stroke made her hips want to buck forward, and as she panted, he pressed kisses to her neck, murmuring encouraging words. Exalting her beauty, her scent, her strength.
One finger slipped inside her, and he moved down so that all she could see was the mess of blond curls as he went to work. Heat began to well inside her. He was rubbing now, up and down, up and down the sides of her folds, but his clever tongue had also put itself to work. She gasped with each breath, and a staccato stream of gratitude and pleading issued from her lips.
The explosion of pleasure almost caught her off guard. Her hips jerked forward and froze, and she cried out, afraid that this feeling would stop. But William didn’t stop. He kept lapping at her and rubbing her until her muscles had relaxed, and she lay spent on his bed.
When he finally pushed his considerably wide cock inside her, she just laughed softly, pulling a hand back through her hair.
“You know how to make a girl receptive to your advances,” she murmured, moving her hand along the sinewy muscles of his left side, where a long scar marred the otherwise white marble perfection of his skin.
“Oh, ‘advances’ is what we’re calling him?” William joked. “I always through I’d call him Sir Richard.”
Anne laughed as all the tension released from her body. It only returned a few moments later for an encore of the pleasure before. A little quake. An aftershock. And she clenched around him as his brow furrowed, and he tensed all over, letting out a deep groan.
After going slack again, he laid himself beside her with one of his smirks on his lips. She looked at him with a lazy fondness. She couldn’t even make herself be ashamed. It was impossible to stop herself when he was around. He was like an addiction. And like any good addict, she made every excuse to get her fix. Otherwise, why would she be here?
He rose, and she grabbed for him, ordering him to stay. William waved her off, and returned with washed hands and a few wipes for her to clean up with. So fastidious. Then he lay beside her again and reached for the nightstand.
“I love this,” he said softly, toying with her long chestnut hair that had fallen around her head, mussed and sweaty. “You’re like Goldilocks.”
“You’re like Goldilocks, with your blond curls.”
William rolled his eyes and slipped the ring he’d left on the nightstand onto the index finger of his left hand, where it usually always rested. “Goldie was never so butch. Imagine a fairytale princess with a crewcut.”
“Or a mohawk,” Anne suggested. She took his hand and stroked her fingers over the back of it, feeling his skin, memorizing every line, and the little scar just above his knuckles. The garnet of his ring caught the glint of the lamp.
“Hey! Annie!” Jeffers snapped his fingers in front of her face.
“Don’t call me Annie,” she responded automatically. Then she shook her head and held her hand out. “Gimme an evidence bag.”
Jeffers crouched down beside her. “Whatcha got there?”
“Evidence,” she snapped. “It’s a ring. Obviously, it wouldn’t fit any of our vic’s fat fingers.”
“Woman’s ring?”
“It’s a man’s design,” she said in as neutral a tone as she could muster.
But neutrality had never been Anne’s strong point when it had come to William Oscar Spencer.
***
By the time they’d returned to the precinct, the tension had bunched Anne’s shoulders up so tightly that she could barely turn her neck. It had been years since she’d seen William, and now his ring had been found at a crime scene. It was hard to imagine that he’d ever be that sloppy when it came to doing a job. But he had been put away for smuggling and felony tax evasion, and that was just facts. He had been caught, once.
Never mind that William had been a grifter and a thief at best, a pathological liar at worst. He’d never killed anyone, to Anne’s knowledge, but he’d had his lovely fingers in everything that could be gotten into back then. Anne knew as well as anyone on the force that involvement in crime only begat more crime. Couldn’t keep your hands clean when you were already elbow deep.
If only he’d still been behind bars when this murder had occurred. Then, she could’ve written him off, and Jeffers could go get his testimony about what had happened to his ring. But he had gotten out on appeal a little over a month ago, so she was compiling a list of suspects with William’s ridiculously British name at the top.
Jeffers came over and set a cup of coffee in front of Anne. He slumped into his own chair with a grunt. His hair was sloppy, as per usual, and his shirt wrinkled beyond salvaging.
“Got a long list there?”
“My list for leads is longer than my list of suspects.” Anne sighed. “We’re going to have to jump on this yesterday, before the smart ones have the sense to get out of town.”
“My kingdom for a time machine.”
Anne scowled at him and went back to her list. “We do some legwork while we wait for Shaw to finish up the autopsy.”
“No doubt about the cause of death though.”
Anne rolled her eyes. “Obviously, but there might be evidence on the body.”
She shouldn’t have to explain things like that to Jeffers. He was six years her senior and had been a detective for two years already. Though, he could be teasing her. Most of the detectives weren’t overly thrilled to have someone her age among their number.
It was hard to tell sometimes whether Jeffers was pulling her leg or just being lazy. His attitude was generally jovial, but he hadn’t been too pleased when he had worked up the courage to ask her out a few months ago and she had turned him down. Darren Jeffers wasn’t entirely unpleasant to look at, but beyond on the job joking around, Anne had never had much connection with him. Not to mention, she couldn’t afford another indiscretion. No way Jeffers would be able to keep quiet if they so much as went out for a non-platonic coffee.
“I’m going to make a phone call,” Anne said, picking up her coffee and her phone. “When I get back, we hit it.”
“Sounds good to me.” Jeffers kicked his heels up onto the top of his desk.
Another potential bonus: Jeffers was one of the few detectives who didn’t mind having Anne as a primary on a case. Was it respect for her skill or just apathy? Not that she cared, as long as she got to run the investigation the way she knew was best.
Anne moved at a good clip as she exited the bullpen and made her way outside.
“‘Sup?” Michelle answered, with all the seriousness her barely-legal self could muster.
“Are you home?” Anne asked.
“No. I’m at school. It’s study group night.”
“Which one?” Anne knew it didn’t really matter, but her protective interest seemed to prevent her from getting to the point.
“Stats. Ugh. This class is so ass, Anne. I don’t know why it exists.”
“But it was that or calculus, and you know I don’t think you should take on too much your freshman year.” Anne had no call to tell her baby sister what to do in college, since she’d only completed her own degree through night school anyway. “Hang in there, Miche. Look, when will you be done? I’m gonna need someone to pick up Evie.”
“Aann-niie!” Michelle stretched the word out like an abused rubber band. “Jake and I were going to go out after study group!”
Anne winced at the near-whine. A remnant from Michelle’s onerous teenage years. “I’m not ordering you to. You’re theoretically an adult now, and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to except pay taxes. But your big sis would really appreciate it.”
Michelle gave a little huff. “You’re working late, huh?”
“Murder case.”
“Fine.”
Anne could imagine her sister stomping her foot a little as she huffed.
“I’ll do it. But you’ll owe me.” Michelle paused. “Next pizza night, I get to choose toppings.”
“Ugh. Gross.” Anne smiled a little. Michelle was notorious for her bizarre taste buds. Still, Anne knew she was getting off light. She had been asking a lot of Michelle lately. “Okay, we’ll have whatever weird thing your gut wants next Friday. But I’ll have to make buttered noodles for Evie.”
“Sure. And I’ll bake some cookies. She’ll like that.”
Anne smiled. If nothing else, she could count on how much Michelle liked being the “cool” aunt. She and her sister talked for another minute before getting off to return to her desk. Jeffers had disappeared, so she texted him to get his butt back there and sat down to get her notes in order.
Her chest heavy, she considered what it would be like to see William again. Three years was a long time. Though, everything probably seemed longer in prison.
Anne rested her chin on her palm and reached over for a framed picture on her desk. Evie was getting big. She was a handful and oddly clever for a toddler. Anne rested her eyes on her baby girl’s golden curls and slate gray eyes. Of course, Evie was clever. Anne would be lucky if the girl didn’t end up a criminal mastermind.