Chapter Four
Anne reached blindly over to her nightstand. Was that her alarm? Normally, she woke before it. Her fingers slid over the screen, expecting silence.
Instead, a peeved British voice snapped: “Could you possibly call off your dogs, pet?”
Pet? Anne sat up, rubbed her eyes, and looked at the phone. The number was unknown, but that was obviously William.
“What are you talking about?” Anne said after she picked up the phone.
“Look, I can handle you people following me everywhere, but when you pull me over and search my car for no bloody reason, I’m going to have a bit of a problem. There was no probable cause, it took forever, and one of your moron rookies scratched my Aston Martin.”
“Oh, my God, William. It’s so early. Why are you calling me about this?”
“Because you are the one who told them about my ring and caused this moronic pack of roaches to scuttle after me everywhere I go!”
Anne got out of bed and ruffled her hair as she squinted through the blinds at the rising sun. “If you’d give us a straight answer about the ring, then maybe they’d lose interest.”
“Ah, yes. I’d forgotten the Los Vegas police’s motto: Harass until you find a reason to call them guilty.”
Anne winced. “Okay, fine. You’re right.”
“God, that must’ve hurt to admit.”
“Cut me some slack, Will. I just woke up,” Anne snapped. “Have you called your lawyer yet?”
“No. I have business this morning, and it was too late last night.”
“I would appreciate it if you held off.”
“I’m sure you would.”
“I just need to talk to the guys at the station. No one wants to taint this investigation. I’m sure it was just a couple of rookies trying too hard to prove themselves.” Anne paused. “Thank you for calling me before you did anything. It means a lot. Having this case explode wouldn’t be good for me right now.”
“Didn’t do it for you, love.”
Love. Anne sighed, uncertain what to say next. “Too bad. You’re thanked.”
William was quiet for a moment. She could imagine him pursing his lips and his sharp cheekbones sticking out even more as he did so.
“I don’t have any information for you,” he said finally. “I’ve hardly had the opportunity to go anywhere but work and the hotel.”
“Have you been looking?” She made no effort to keep the surprise out of her voice.
“Only inasmuch as I would prefer to stay on this side of the prison walls. As you might imagine, it’s no vacation.”
Anne smiled reluctantly and picked up her brush. “I’m sure.”
The tottering steps of her daughter caught Anne’s attention, and her heart pounded in alarm.
“I’ve got to go, William. Thanks again for the heads up.”
She hung up before he could reply and opened her arms for the toddler rushing toward her.
***
William spared an offended look at his phone, then set it aside and propped his heels on his desk and rested his laptop on his knees.
“Well, that was rude, wasn’t it?” he said to no one.
The bit about having a meeting was a lie, in a way, although he did have plans. After he’d finally gotten home last night, he’d met up with Erin O’Malley who had come to his suite on the pretense of making a delivery, just as they’d specified on the phone before he’d left the shop. He’d been lucky that she’d waited. There had been loose ends to tie up from his trip to California, and anything that looked remotely shady right now could be a huge liability, with all of these police around.
At least Anne hadn’t orchestrated this extended harassment. It didn’t mean their relationship could be salvaged, but he would take it.
William took a sip of tea as he typed with one hand. The police servers weren’t particularly well-guarded, and with the password Erin had given him (he wasn’t going to ask how she’d gotten it), it only took a few minutes for him to get into their files. He combed through each file with a critical eye. There was a lot here that would be beneficial to know for future business, and some that would help if he ever needed to blackmail a few officers, but he had to focus. Jarvis Pigg, everything about him. Life and death.
Unsurprisingly, Pigg hadn’t been a model citizen while alive. What bothered William was the fact that he’d never met this bloke. He would’ve thought that there might be more of a connection, or that perhaps he’d run into him during a deal, or in prison, but he’d never seen him. He didn’t even recognize the tattoos clearly visible from the autopsy photos.
William bit down on his thumbnail and increased the picture size. Nothing better in the morning than scanning the naked corpse of some pasty white thug for clues. Pity the police didn’t bother to do this. It took three scans before he saw anything of interest. He made the image bigger still, but the resolution was too low. He could barely make out the mark. It might’ve been something else. A cat scratch, or a papercut. But maybe not.
Setting the laptop back on his desk, William sighed heavily. If he were right, there would be more than one murder for the Vegas PD to investigate. Well, more than usual, since Vegas tended to average about 130-150 murders per year. That part wasn’t particularly compelling to William. The problem was that if that mark meant what he thought, he might be one of them. There was no guarantee that he’d still be a target. Logically, if someone had wanted him dead, it would’ve been easier to take him down while he was still in prison. However, he’d just gotten his life back. He had no desire to lose it.
He rose and headed to the kitchen, considering his next move. There were ways to get information to the police, but since he didn’t know the name or the current alliance of this killer, it would be difficult to tip them off without simply walking into the station and telling them to look at the evidence more closely. Then there was the problem of his missing ring. The police weren’t looking in the right places, all because of that red herring dropped by a common thug’s foot.
As William poured his tea, his thoughts drifted to Anne. This killer, in particular, had once favored knives. Now he was using bullets. There was nothing to suggest that he might not target her if she got too close. He remembered a time when an officer who had simply been following him had gotten put down for getting in the way.
“Goddammit, Anne.”
He watched the brown tea billowing up against the water in his cup. Anne could really die. She hated him, and she’d shown no care for his well-being… but she could die.
His heart constricted as he remembered the feel of her skin against his own. The way she had always stomped away after a fight in those heeled boots of hers that she tried to use to make up for her height. The way her breasts hung above his chest as she straddled him. How when they’d first kissed, their mouths had come together so passionately and so hurriedly that their teeth had clicked. It had been as though they both knew they had to be together right then, or never.
William had no shortage of memories of Anne. She had taken a decidedly law-oriented life path, but she could dance as well, as if she’d spent every day in high school and beyond in the worst of the clubs in the Las Vegas Valley. He remembered one night they had come home together to talk. She’d started to unbutton her blouse, and the air left his lungs. They’d been teasing at that point. A seemingly unending back and forth. He’d laced innuendo into every word he spoke to her, knowing that all of her resistance was fortified against him. She was the law; he aimed to subvert it. Their flirtation shouldn’t have gone further than that.
But it had, that night. Anne had unbuttoned her shirt halfway as William stared at her stupidly. His groin gave a tug, and his stomach seemed to flip. Her lips smiled, teasing, and she rolled her shoulders. He’d even forgotten that he’d put on music when they’d stepped into his house. His hand still at the door, he threw the deadbolt and closed the distance between them. Her hips moved fluidly, as though detached from her. They had a life and movement of their own, and they captivated him as he stood there, for the first time since meeting her, unable to find something to say.
Her blouse fell to the floor, and she stood there in a camisole and tight pants that hugged her hips and dipped below her navel. William was drawn to her. His hands cupped her sides as he took her mouth in a forceful kiss that she seemed to beg for. She gave back as good as she got, and soon he almost felt breathless. His hands had drifted to her back, and then slipped lower, lower…
When Anne pushed him away, he had fallen onto the sofa with disbelief written across his face. But her smile… Oh, her smile had been so wicked, so calculating. Their kisses had been unplanned, hurried, sloppy. She came to him again pulling her cami over her head and tossed it to him. Her belt fell to the floor. Her fingers unbuttoned her pants and then slipped down as she breathed heavily.
“Good God, love,” he had murmured.
Anne slipped her other hand down the side of her pants and gave a little wiggle to loosen them. They dropped. William blinked as he stared at the heart placed right over her soft mound.
“Was that a no?” Anne teased.
“Hush.” William growled. He grabbed her hips and pulled her to him. She gripped his shoulders as he licked his tongue broadly over her taut abs. She bent down to kiss him, and at once her hips were moving again, swiveling in a mesmerizing dance, and her breasts bounced just above his eye line.
With a flick of the wrist, he removed her bra, and he took one of her well-formed breasts in his hand and bathed aggressively with his tongue. She let out a soft moan and arched her body toward him. Soon she was squirming and panting, and he moved to the other breast, giving it equal attention. Anne ground herself against his leg, making little mewling noises. He wanted to rip those cute little panties of off her and bury himself deep.
The larger problem was that he was still dressed. He gave her thighs a squeeze before lifting her to the side and kissed her as he relieved himself of his clothing. This done, he lunged at her as she shrieked in laughter and hitched her legs above him.
“Slow, slower!” Anne begged as he began to push himself inside. She was dripping wet but tight. So tight.
William kissed her forehead and moved his fingers to her clit as he purred. “Whatever you like, love. Tell me, and it’s yours.”
After that, his ears were attuned to every gasp, every high-pitched sigh, every moan. He diligently rubbed along her lips and against her wet little nub until she was shaking and squealing, and only then did he thrust his cock inside her. Anne grew louder, responding to his thickness spreading her wider and rubbing against her sensitive flesh. Her hand clenched around the back of his head.
“There we go, love. Take me in,” William muttered. His hips rocked as he pounded her. Anne fell back, one hand in her hair as she made soft grunts, and William grinned in perverse satisfaction just before he felt himself starting to come.
He pulled out, and his cum spilled on the floor. He’d barely made it. Sinking over Anne, he’d made a mental vow to make sure they had condoms on them at all times. He’d only been unprepared because he had never thought she would seriously allow anything beyond kissing, let alone initiate a striptease and open herself up to him.
In the present, William came back to himself and set the bags of tea in the sink. However much Anne hated him now, she had feelings for him once. They had worked together very well, both in the bedroom, on his sofa, and everywhere else. She owned part of his heart.
William couldn’t allow harm to come to her, even if it put a target on his back.