Crazy Cool (12 page)

Dammit. She didn’t even want to think about how that made her feel. Of course he’d gone on and made a life for himself, and of course that life would include women, and all that kissing last night had just been . . . incredible. Dammit.

Dropping the opera tickets back on his dresser, she looked over some of the IDs. Slowly, her brow started to furrow. He had a library card, two platinum credit cards, and a card from the FBI that said he was Special Agent Christian Hawkins, complete with a photograph.

Now why would he tell her he worked for the DOD, if he worked for the FBI? Of course, the next ID she picked up said he worked for the State Department—in Saudi Arabia. There were two more credit cards issued from banks in France and Germany. The next few cards were bundled together with a rubber band, each of them confirming Christian Hawkins as a member of the U.S. armed forces—every branch. U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps. It was enough to raise her eyebrows all the way up to her hairline.

Criminy. He even had one saying he worked for the National Security Agency. They all had his photograph on them, they were all current, and they all looked absolutely valid.

Yessiree, it was definitely time to get the hell out of Dodge. Whatever he was into, and at this point she was guessing major felonies and quite possibly gunrunning for somebody, maybe even the DOD, she didn’t want any part of it.

She dropped the cards back on the dresser and turned to leave, when something pink and sparkly on a worktable in the other room caught her eye. Her heart came to a sudden stop, and her hand came up to her mouth.

Oh . . . my . . . God.

Her tiara. She’d forgotten about it.

Slowly, she walked out of the closet and over to the table. There had been a man with Alex last night, waiting in her apartment, and he’d given the tiara to Hawkins.

How in the world, she wondered, had her tiara ended up in her and Alex’s apartment? And where had it been all these years?

None of the Prom King boys had ever confessed to having it. So why was it here? Now?

Fighting an awful premonition of disaster, she reached over the row of pistols laid out on the table and picked up the tiara. It was tagged and bagged like a piece of evidence and as she picked it up, the tag caught on a manila envelope underneath it. The envelope was from last night, too, she remembered. She tucked it under her arm as she looked over the tiara. When she turned over the tag, there was a note written in the same bold handwriting that had been on his dinner reservation:
Superman, It’s clean as a whistle, no fingerprints. Skeeter.

She looked across the hall to the bathroom door on the other side. Complicated, he’d said, and she was beginning to see exactly what he meant.

Glancing down at the tiara, she swore under her breath. None of this was good. It was all bad, the whole damn thing, starting with last night and continuing on until now.

She took the manila envelope out from under her arm and snapped it open. Whatever was in it, if it had something to do with her and the mess she was in, she’d prefer to know it now rather than later.

At least that’s what she thought until she looked inside.

H
AWKINS
found her exactly where he’d left her, except she’d put on one of his shirts and a pair of his jeans. She’d been in his spare room and in his closet. He’d known immediately when he’d gone in to get a change of clothes. The scent of her perfume had lingered in the air, the way it no doubt lingered in his bed.

She didn’t look happy, and considering what she was holding in her hand, he wasn’t surprised.

Well, nothing about this was easy, least of all what he’d put off long enough. She had to be told about Ted Garraty.

“More tea?” he asked, bringing the iron pot and her cup with him from the kitchen.

She nodded.

He refilled her cup and poured one for himself, before setting the pot on the slate table in front of the fireplace and settling into a chair.

“You’ve seen these?” she asked, taking the opening gambit and lifting the manila envelope, her voice tight.

Oh, yeah, he’d seen them, spent quite a bit of time last night looking them over as a matter of fact, which hadn’t done a damn thing to improve his chances of getting any sleep.

“Yes,” he said, keeping his face expressionless, his tone of voice flat and professional.

“How long have you had them?” From the ice in her voice, he was guessing she thought he’d had them about, oh, thirteen years or so. That pissed him off a bit, but he kept his cool.

“Your secretary and my partner found them when they entered your apartment last night. They were inside the front door, along with your tiara.”

“Alex saw these?”
she gasped, her voice little more than a strained whisper.

Reaching over, he took the envelope from her and belled it open. A quick look inside netted him a score, and he pulled out the top photo.

“Just this one,” he said, handing the photograph and the envelope back to her. Talk about ice. He was so cool, he was damn near glacial.

She looked down, and all the color she’d lost came flooding back into her cheeks. He understood. The look on her face in the eight-by-ten glossy made it the hottest picture in the group. There was less of her body exposed than in the other shots, but her expression was one of pure, raw pleasure, and he’d been the one giving it to her.

He wondered if now would be a good time to tell her about Ted, while she was already halfway into a state of shock.

“Who . . . wh-who,” she started, stammering again, and he decided to wait a minute longer, let her catch up with the facts a little.

“Were any of the Prom King boys shutterbugs? Any of them into photography?” It was a question he’d wanted to ask her since he’d hauled her out of the alley behind Toussi’s. There’d been a lot of buzz on the street last night. A lot of the people he and Mickey had talked to about Ted Garraty had made the connection to the Traynor case. A few of the old-timers had even brought up Lost Harold and the Jane Doe floater, remembering the whole crazy summer that year. No one had seen Ray Carper in the last couple of days, but they’d assured Mickey the guy was still around and that they’d get the word out: Superman was looking for him.

“No, not that I . . . you think one of them . . .” She lifted her gaze, her voice trailing off.

“Yes, I do,” he said clearly. “I think one of the boys snagged your crown out of the alley, and later somehow got himself into a position to take these photographs. I have no idea why, or what he’s done with them all these years, or why he suddenly decided to give them and the crown and a piece of your prom dress— Did you see the piece of material in the bottom of the envelope?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t know why whoever it is decided to deliver everything to your apartment last night. What about you? Do you have any idea why someone would do this?” He kept the part about him maybe getting framed for Ted Garraty’s murder to himself for the moment.

“No,” she said, her attention straying back to the photograph. “No, I don’t . . . except maybe blackmail.”

His gaze accidentally strayed back to the photo, too, and he let out a short breath.
Geezus.
Just looking at it was enough to remind him of how she’d tasted. It’s what he’d struggled with in the night, the memory of her and how he’d felt every time he’d been with her—like he’d slipped into a fantasy dream, her skin so pale, her curves so delicate against his much larger, darker frame. Every time they’d made love he’d felt washed through with satisfaction, and infused with magic. That she would give so much to him. At nineteen, he’d given her everything—and now, to top off an already shaky start to the day, he was a little more than halfway primed for more of the same.

Perfect.

Getting a hard-on was so professional.

“Has anyone contacted you, wanting money?” he asked calmly.

“No.”

Of course not, he thought, shifting slightly in his chair. Extortion would have been too easy, and it wouldn’t have addressed the problem of Ted Garraty getting double-tapped between the eyes.

“Have you kept in touch with anyone from that time in your life?”

“N-no . . . I haven’t seen any of them in years.”

Well, things were moving right along, he thought. They weren’t getting anywhere, but overall, the interview was going pretty well. She hadn’t cracked, and he hadn’t caved in, leaped over the table, and ravished her.

God, he really did need his head examined.

“Any of your girlfriends?”

“No, not really. I tried at first, but it was difficult, and I, well, it was difficult.” She passed her hand over her face, rubbing her brow. “Look, is this really necessary? My insurance company will investigate what happened, including the break-in at the gallery. I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble for tampering with evidence, but really, shouldn’t you have left all this at Toussi’s and let the authorities handle it?”

Her faith in him was utterly demoralizing, just exactly what he needed to get his other problem under control.

“I’m going to send the tiara and the piece of dress over to Lieutenant Bradley at the Denver Police Department today,” he told her. “Along with Skeeter’s analysis. But I thought I’d keep the photos, just send a description.” He’d be damned if he wanted half the cops in Denver ogling her, or a bunch of guys staring at his ass. The photographs were grainy, but there was no doubt about who was in them. “Other than that, I am the authority on this case.”

And he was. She could take it to the bank.

She let out a heavy sigh and looked up at him through her fingers. “Since when does the Department of Defense, or the FBI, or the U.S. Army, or the State Department, for crying out loud, get involved in charity art auctions?”

So she’d looked through his stuff. He wasn’t surprised.

“Since I was called off a high-priority mission and assigned to be there. It took somebody with a lot of power in Washington, D.C., to pull that off.”

“You mean my mother,” she said wearily, then covered her face again. “You can’t possibly work for all those government agencies you have identification for in your closet.” She said it as a statement, but the question was clear.

“I’ve worked
with
all of them, and other than that, what I do is pretty much classified.”

“How convenient,” she said flatly, still hiding behind her hands.

Usually, he admitted to himself, but it wasn’t proving very convenient this morning.

“Or criminal,” she mumbled, apparently as an afterthought.

Well, he wasn’t going there with her, not right now. There was only so much he could prove to her under their current circumstances. After that, she’d either come around to believing him, or she wouldn’t.

“I’d like your cooperation on this, Katya. With your help, I think we can clear this up in a couple of days.” And be the hell done with it.

She slumped even further down in her chair, her fingers sliding up over her head, her eyes squeezed shut against the pain he knew she was feeling. She looked like a whipped puppy—with completely wild, long blond hair and slinky curves wrapped in a man’s shirt and a pair of too-big jeans that still managed to look sexy as hell, which kind of ruined the whole puppy thing he’d had working.

“I can guarantee you my mother doesn’t have anything to do with those photographs or the tiara, or that piece of dress material,” she began slowly, “but it is entirely reasonable to assume she would hire bodyguards behind my back, sic them on me at her whim, and have me followed every freaking place I go.” She stopped for a second and rubbed her fingers across her brow, and if he wasn’t mistaken, swore under her breath before continuing. “Therefore, if you qualify as a government bodyguard, one whose assignments could be manipulated by a senator with deep ties to the military establishment, it’s true my mother, much to her horror if she ever finds out the bodyguard was you, could have gotten you pulled off a high-priority mission and assigned to a security detail at my party.”

Nicely said, but nothing he hadn’t already known, except for the fact that her mother had her followed, consistently, relentlessly, despite her wishes. No wonder she’d been so adamant about not calling Linebacker last night—for all the good it had done her. With Alex Zheng on the senator’s payroll, Hawkins figured Marilyn Dekker had kept herself very well informed as to her daughter’s comings and goings.

“It’s not my usual line of work, but I’ve been a bodyguard for three U.S. ambassadors, the secretary of state, two envoys, and the occasional governor or congressman, and I can guarantee you are safer with me than you’ve ever been with Alex Zheng or with anyone else on this side of the Mississippi.”

She looked up at that, her eyes peeking out from under her hands, blatantly curious. “Who’s on the other side of the Mississippi?”

“The D-boys at Fort Bragg,” he said with a grin. Even hungover, she was quick. “If one of them wants to take you out, we might have to run.”

Miraculously, the faintest hint of a return smile curved the corner of her mouth as her gaze slid away. “I don’t think I’ve got any Delta operators mad at me. They love my mother. She fights for them in Congress, and they know it.”

Dragon Dekker, Hawkins knew Kat’s mother was sometimes called, for her fire-breathing, saber-rattling support of the armed forces. She especially championed Special Forces, which benefited SDF, the irony of which had never been lost on him.

“Katya . . . I need your help to get to the bottom of this. I need you to call up your old friends, set up a few meetings for today and tomorrow, just casual, social stuff,” he said, outlining his basic plan, well aware that he still needed to work in the part about Ted being dead. “Ask each one to meet you for coffee, or a drink. Then when the time comes, I’ll go alone and make your excuses, tell them I’m your secretary and hit them up for a charity donation or something. I want to keep it low-key, just check them out, see what they’re up to.” At least that’s what he was telling her. “I’m sure the police will be contacting them, but with your help, I can get to them first.” And Lieutenant Bradley could have whatever was left when he got finished with them.