Hot Pursuit (41 page)

The hair stood up on the back of Sam’s neck, and he scrolled back a few pages to the info that he’d barely skimmed.

About the man’s teeth …

And there it was.

The victim had recently lost a tooth, quite possibly earlier in the day or the evening that he was killed, or even shortly before he died.

The medical examiner was aware that both police and hospital reports noted that he’d fallen, suffering a blow to his head. It was entirely possible he’d lost the tooth at that time.

But Sam flipped to the report on Maggie Thorndyke, using the computer search function, typing in
teeth
.

Victim’s mouth was badly damaged, as if struck by a blunt object, many of her front teeth broken or missing, one of her molars curiously extracted …

“Holy fuck.”

“Uh-oh,” Robin said. “Daddy said a bad word. Ning-a-nang, Daddy.”

Sam looked up to see Ash, holding tightly to Robin’s hands as they walked toward him, all smiles and drool and sheer innocent pleasure.

Not so much drool from Robin, though.

“Ready to blow Daddy’s mind, punkin?” Robin asked the little boy. “Daddy needs to be ready, too. Laptop to the side please, so we can demonstrate what we’ve been hard at work on all morning. We were going to master crawling, but Ash had something else in mind.”

Sam shook his head, but then nearly tossed the computer onto the couch, because here came Ashton, on his own steam, taking two or three drunken, staggering solo steps before starting to accelerate into a nosedive.

But Sam was there to catch him, lifting him up before he fell. If his side hurt, he didn’t feel it.

“That was amazing,” he told his son, who was giving himself a round of applause, which was pretty damn funny. “I gotta call your mama.”

But he wasn’t quite sure what to tell her first—that their baby boy was walking, or that Sam was more convinced than ever that his instincts had been right.

Alyssa was the real target.

And if he
was
right? The man who’d killed both Maggie and Winston was just getting warmed up.

Izzy went into Maria’s kitchen, looking for coffee.

He’d volunteered for the first watch last night, sitting out in the hall as Lopez and Vlachic crashed in Maria’s second bedroom.

It was crazy. He knew he was being crazy. Just because the woman had cried on his shoulder didn’t mean she was going to try to jump him.

Except he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was going to try to jump him.

Maria Bonavita was, hands down, one of the ten most beautiful women he’d ever seen in his life—and that included women he’d seen in movies and on TV. She had a lot going on behind her eyes, which—okay, yes—he found enormously attractive.

But she wasn’t Eden.

The coffeepot was nearly empty, and he poured what was left into his mug. The swallow and a half provided just enough energy for him to search for another filter and the ground coffee, and he stood there, leaning against the counter as the new pot slowly brewed.

“Good morning.”

Izzy jumped, which made Maria laugh and add, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No,” he said, “I was just… Um …”

She was wearing jeans today, and a long-sleeved T-shirt that hugged her curves, and okay, yes, the woman was stacked. She was also smiling, and even an idiot could tell she was not only used to rendering men speechless, but that she liked doing it—and particularly so to him.

And maybe that was his giant ego talking—the same Jupiter-sized beast that had pushed him out into the hall last night to avoid any awkward invitations.

As if.

“I thought we were moving back to the hotel this morning,” Maria said, as she reached up to get a mug from the cabinet, as he tried not to look at her ass.

“Yeah,” he said, suddenly aware that he’d crawled in here straight from bed. His hair was probably sticking up in odd clumps,
like Wolverine having a bad hair day. Once it got that way, only a shower would tame it so there was no use attempting to flatten it down. He’d just look like a flipping moron if he tried. “No. We, um, got a call from Lt. Starrett—Sam. He asked us to hold up. He also asked Tony to go over there. Lopez is still here, though. And we’ve got a team of FBI agents standing guard in the hall. So …”

Thank God we’re not alone
, he refrained from screaming at her.

She’d taken a position directly opposite him, on the other side of that coffeepot. Like him, she was watching it and waiting for it to fill. But she glanced up. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Sam was in commanding officer mode, so … He said to stay put, not let anyone in. When you’re in the Navy, when your CO gives an order, you say
Sir, yes, Sir!
Not so much with the
What up, dawg?”

She smiled. “My father and both brothers were military. Not Navy, though. Two Marines, one Army infantry. But it’s pretty much the same. My dad was a sergeant and my mother used to get in his face
—I am not one of your grunts, Victor Bonavita, I am your wife. …

“The flip side,” Izzy said, “is that those of us who’re enlisted—the grunts? We follow orders really well.
Honey, will you take out the trash? Ma’am, yes, Ma’am!”

Her smile broadened. “Why do I get the feeling that following orders isn’t exactly instinctive for you?”

“Actually, it is,” he said. “I was the youngest in a big family. My survival pretty much depended on my doing what I was told. Not that I always did it.”

“You never thought about being an officer?” she asked. “I was talking to Jay Lopez, and he said there was a program in which a qualified enlisted man could make the jump to officer.”

“OCS—Officer Candidate School,” Izzy said. “Yeah. I thought about it for, like, two minutes. It’s not for me.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for starters, I’m not exactly qualified. I got into trouble a few years ago, and … It’s taken me this long to get back on track. I’m a little long in the tooth now, to go O.”

“What kind of trouble?” she asked as the coffeepot finished filling with a hiss and sputter.

“I kind of went UA.” Izzy filled her mug first.

“Thanks,” she said, with a smile and flash of her pretty brown eyes. She carried her mug to the kitchen table. “Tony got doughnuts before he left.”

Tony got
wha …
? But indeed, on the table was most of a mighty mixed dozen from the double D. Izzy’d missed seeing it, completely, in his pre-coffee haze. “Bless you, young Tony,” Izzy said.

But suddenly, there he and Maria were, like Mr. and Mrs. Brady, sitting across the breakfast table from each other, as he clogged his arteries with a chocolate-covered Bavarian cream, taking the express train to Sugar Shock Land.

“What does it mean?” Maria asked, delicately dabbing her pornstar-worthy lips with a napkin. “You
went UA?”

“Unauthorized absence,” Izzy explained. “It’s the Navy’s version of AWOL—absent without leave.”

“That’s a pretty serious offense,” she said, frowning slightly, “to have on your record.”

Why did this suddenly feel like a job interview?

“Yeah,” he said, “it’s not. On my record. I pretty much became the senior chief’s bitch for a really long time, though.” He translated, because he could see she was confused. “A chief’s the equivalent of a sergeant in the Army, and the senior chief is like the king of the chiefs. He’s big and he’s loud and he’s mean, and when he said jump, I had to jump. I couldn’t blow my nose without asking his permission. But I took my punishment, and earned his trust again, and … Here I am. In New York instead of using up my liberty washing his office floor.”

She took a sip of her coffee as she gazed at him.

“What?” he asked. “Do I have, like, a bat in the cave?”

Maria laughed. “No, your nose is … very nice.”

Okay, now he was really scared. “Thank you,” he said, standing up. “But my very nice nose and my attractive hairdo and I are in dire need of a shower, so …”

She stood up, too.

Dear Penthouse, Why me?

He was halfway to the sink, so he just kept going, keeping his back to her. He rinsed his mug and saw that the dishwasher door was slightly open. Maybe if he simply ignored her, if he didn’t look at her, gave her zero eye contact. “Dishes dirty or clean?”

“Dirty,” she said, so he opened the door and put his mug on the top rack.

But yeah, okay, she was blocking his route to the door, so he had to look at her, and when he did, she smiled and stepped closer—too close—except she was just getting herself another cup of coffee, but he couldn’t back up because the dishwasher door was open now, and in his way.

Instead, he just tried to make himself smaller as he stood in front of the sink, as he tried not to think about how good she smelled—which, was, of course, what women who wore perfume wanted other people to think about. Among other things …

He could’ve escaped by going around her, but it would’ve been clumsy. And yeah, part of him wasn’t really all that scared. Part of him—the Jupiter-sized ego-beast part—wanted to see what she was going to do.

What she did was blow on her hot coffee as she glanced up at him, which made it hard not to think about sex, which was stupid, because it was coffee and she was blowing on it to cool it down—her actions didn’t have anything to do with anyone’s naked anything.

But okay, now he was standing here thinking about it, and she was a woman, and all women had highly tuned sex-radar, which
meant that she absolutely knew that he was, indeed, thinking about sex.

And she didn’t move back, and she didn’t move back, and she didn’t…

She put her coffee mug down on the counter.

And she spoke. “Isn’t it crazy how, with some people you just have this … instant chemistry?”

And there she was, standing there, still too close, her hand now on his arm, her thumb brushing the inside of his wrist.

It felt nice—too nice, and any second now she was going to stand on her toes and kiss him, which, okay, yes, she did. Only Izzy turned his head so that her mouth bounced off his cheek. He pulled his arm free and stepped around her, away from her.

He’d surprised the shit out of her—and she wasn’t the only one. Had he really just done that?

“Sorry,” she said. She’d probably never been shut down before, in her entire life. “I just thought…” She laughed a little as she told him, “I don’t know, maybe I could save you another trip to Germany … ?”

“Wow,” Izzy said. “That’s um
… very
tempting …”

He knew from looking at her that
she
knew he was lying. But she didn’t call him on it. She was already embarrassed enough.

So he gave her the truth.

“I’m still in love with her,” he said. “With Eden. And I gotta give it one more try.”

He went, then, not to take his shower, but to call Lt. Starrett to see if he couldn’t trade assignments with Tony, ASAP.

S
am Starrett was on the phone as Jenn followed Dan past the FBI agents standing guard in the hall, and into the hotel suite.

Whoever Sam was talking to, it was serious, but rather than make them all be quiet, he pointed at Dan, said “Don’t go anywhere,” then went into one of the bedrooms and shut the door behind him.

“What’s going on?” Dan asked Robin, who was sitting on the sofa, giving the baby a bottle.

“Something about teeth in the autopsy reports,” the movie star replied. “It’s gruesome and horrible, and I’m not sure I really want to know the complete details. You guys want to stay for lunch? We’re sending out for Chinese. Maria says there’s a really great place nearby that delivers.”

Dan glanced at Jenn, as if trying to gauge her reaction to being asked to stay for lunch by an Emmy-award winner, even if it was Chinese all over again. He was willing to stay if she wanted to—she could tell just from his body language.

It was sweet.
He
was sweet.

The way he’d held her hand as they’d walked over here was sweet. The way he smiled, his sense of humor, the way his brown
eyes danced when he laughed, and yes, his dazzling good looks and beyond hot, hard-muscled body were all unbelievably … sweet.

And she still couldn’t quite believe that he was smiling at
her
, that he was kissing
her
, that he was holding
her
hand.

For two weeks. No, not quite. Eleven more days, not counting the rest of today. God, it was going by so quickly—it was happening too fast.

She pulled herself back into the moment. Chinese food for lunch? They hadn’t had breakfast yet. She shook her head. “I have work that I need to do,” she said, when in truth she didn’t want to share her remaining eleven Dan days with anyone—not even a movie star. “We really just stopped in to pick up Dan’s book and … I thought Maria would be here.”

“No, she’s still back at her condo,” Robin reported as he watched Dan look around—on the tables, on the floor, even under the window drapes that extended from the ceiling to the carpeting. “Sam called a time-out. Again, it’s about this teeth thing. I’m surprised he didn’t get in touch with you guys.”

Dan stopped looking for his book and dug for his cell phone. “Maybe he called while we were in the cone of silence. Jenn’s building has this ancient elevator and yep, I got a missed call and a message.” He plugged in his code so he could access his voice mail. He listened and … “Yes, the message was to stay put. Great. No wonder he didn’t look happy to see me.”

He pocketed his phone and went back to searching for his book, neatly dropping to the rug as if he were going to start doing pushups, but in truth to peer beneath the sofa.

Robin obligingly lifted both his feet.
“What
is it that you’re looking for?”

“The book I was reading,” Dan said. “I’m pretty sure I left it here.”

“Maybe someone moved it,” Jenn suggested.

“They wouldn’t have moved it far,” Robin said. “Just out of baby
range—onto the table. Or maybe into the conference room. I haven’t seen it, but my hands have been pretty full. What’s it called?”

Dan cleared his throat. “
Ex-Me
. It’s, um, a memoir. I was lying on the couch while I was reading it. Not last night, the night before, and, um …”