Pitch Black (28 page)

Hearing a hint of embarrassment, Lily reassured her. “They’re all good guys, Sam. I can promise you none of them went through your underwear drawer.”

The other woman looked away, not meeting her eye. Her hands fisted on the windowsill. “You don’t know that about Agent Lambert yet, do you? Isn’t he pretty new to your team?”

Lily nodded slowly, hearing the frank curiosity. She had the strange suspicion, as she had earlier at the office, that their witness was personally interested in the newest member of the Black CATs. “He just started this week.”

“But he’s doing a good job.”

“A very good job,” Lily admitted. “Nobody was quite sure how it would work out, but I think it’s going to be great. We’re lucky to have him.”

She didn’t know Alec very well yet, though she suspected she was going to like him. Still, there were a lot of stories about the agent. Stories about him getting too close to a female witness, and another agent getting killed because of it.

She had no business warning Sam off—though she wouldn’t hesitate to say something to Alec if she thought it needed to be said. Still, something made her murmur, “Agent Lambert’s a very handsome man.”

Sam’s head jerked.

Lily hid a sigh, knowing her intuition had been right. “Look, Sam . . .”

The other woman put her hand up to stop her. “You don’t have to say it. I am well aware that I’m a witness and he’s an agent, and there’s no way he’s going to let down his guard around me and get himself shot again.”

Lily gawked. It sounded as though Sam knew a lot more about Alec than even his coworkers.

Sam’s eyes were wide, as if she feared she’d revealed a secret. “You . . . everyone knew he had been shot, right?”

“Well, yes. I’m just surprised you do.”

“We talked.”

That was obvious. “So, he told you about the shooting? That, uh . . .”

“That a woman shot him? Yes, he did. And I felt about two inches tall for being so judgmental about it at first, until I found out she was the elderly mother of a suspect whom he felt sorry for.”

Lily remained very still. This was more than even she knew. Not that she couldn’t have found out, if she had chosen to dig around in her new colleague’s past. She hadn’t, not wanting to be nosy. But she couldn’t deny an interest.

“This transfer to your team, it was kind of a new start for him, right? A chance to rebuild his career?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “More like a chance to bury it.”

Sam left the window and sat on the couch, eyeing her quizzically. “What do you mean?”

Taking the seat opposite her, Lily admitted, “They call us the Black CATs. But what they really mean is the black sheep.”

“You’re kidding? You guys are all so good.”

“We all have baggage.”

“Baggage,” Sam snapped. “I hate that word. What does it mean, anyway?”

“Okay, then let’s say we all have reputations.”

“Even your boss?”

Lily curled one leg under her and made herself more comfortable in the chair. “Him more than anyone. Wyatt has a lot of integrity, and he sees things very black or white, right or wrong.”

Which made it even harder to tell him how far she’d gone into shades of gray regarding her job.

“He took a stand against a few things,” she said, not going into detail. “That earned him the enmity of some of our colleagues.”

Not pressing for more information, as if knowing Lily couldn’t provide it, Sam moved on. “And the rest of you?”

“Dean Taggert’s a badass former street cop with a temper.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Jackie has an attitude.”

Sam grinned. “Also not a surprise.”

“Mulrooney is a bit of a blowhard. Brandon’s a wild card.”

“And Alec?”

“The circumstances surrounding his shooting were . . . less than ideal.”

Sam rolled her eyes. “Especially for him. Getting shot and all.”

The woman was absolutely right, and Lily agreed with her. There was simply no way to explain bureau politics, that Alec’s survival might have been viewed with skepticism because the other agent had not survived. It wasn’t fair, especially now that she knew more about what had really happened. No more than what had happened to Wyatt was fair. It was just the way things went in an agency made powerful by J. Edgar Hoover, the king of intrigue himself.

“What about you? What’s your story?”

Lily wrapped her arms around one upraised leg, staring down at her own knee. “I’m a little too emotional.”

“Considering I’ve felt like screaming, crying, or punching someone since just about the minute you guys showed up in my life, I can see where that would be a problem.”

Unable to resist Sam’s sarcasm, Lily had to smile. She seldom spent time with anyone outside of the office these days, and had forgotten, in the months since Laura’s death, how much she enjoyed simply hanging out and talking with another woman. As much as she liked Jackie Stokes, the other agent was older, and in a different place. Lily honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone for a girls’ night out, or indulged in a man-griping session with a single woman her own age.

It had been at least two years ago; that was certain. Before Zach’s life had intersected with a monster’s.

The dark thoughts immediately pulled the smile from her lips and the good humor from her heart. Sam eyed her curiously, but before she could ask anything, Lily’s cell phone rang. Seeing Anspaugh’s name, she took a deep breath and answered.

“Where are you? What the hell’s this message you left, that you might have a problem?”

“Sorry, Anspaugh. Something came up. I’m at a hotel in the city. I have to stay with a witness all night.”

“Damn it, Lil, we need you!”

She bit back an annoyed
don’t call me that
response and said, “You guys know what you’re doing. It’s not like the suspect is going to realize a man is typing rather than a woman. None of us are children.”

“Yeah, but you can make it sound more legit, I know you can. Just that shit about knowing whether a real boy would call himself Peter Pan. I wouldn’ta thought of that, and you did.”

She didn’t know that Anspaugh had the sense to know a boy wouldn’t call himself Cinderella.

“And if the son of a bitch suddenly asks for a voice chat, you’ve got a whole lot better chance of pulling that off.”

Lily blew out an impatient breath. “I in no way sound like an eleven-year-old girl.”

“Well, you sure as hell sound more like one than me or my guys do.”

Closing her eyes, she rubbed at the inside corners of them with her fingers, trying to figure out a way to give everyone what they needed. “Look, if I can work something out, I’ll let you know, all right? Otherwise, you’re just going to have to proceed without me. I’m sorry.”

When she opened them, she saw Sam waving and mouthing something from the other side of the room. Lily covered the mouthpiece with her hand and raised a brow.

“I can stay here by myself,” the other woman insisted in a loud whisper. “You don’t have to babysit me; it’s not like anybody in the known universe knows where I am.”

Lily was shaking her head before the other woman finished speaking. “If I leave my assigned position, I would not only lose my job, I would deserve to.”

Sam opened her mouth to persist, then closed it again, realizing Lily was right and not arguing it. A woman of common sense, this one, which made Lily like her even more.

“Look, if you’re sitting on a witness,” Anspaugh was saying, “why don’t we swap? I’ll send one of my guys over to keep watch. You come do this, and you’ll be back there in two or three hours, tops.”

She waffled. It made sense. She wouldn’t be leaving Sam with anyone other than another FBI agent.

“Come on, I know you want this guy as bad as we do.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“He’s been on this site for weeks. No telling how many kids he’s already been in contact with. Christ, for all we know, he’s already molested some of them.”

Lily felt the blood drain from her face. Anspaugh definitely knew which buttons to push.

“Let me think about it. . . .”

“We don’t have time for you to think about it,” he said, his belligerence showing.

She kept cool. “Then the answer is no.”

Anspaugh breathed heavily through the phone, his anger a living thing. Men like him didn’t like being told no. One more reason Lily wanted to finish this double life and stop working with the man. Because sooner or later, she knew, he was going to ask her a more personal question, and would like hearing
no
even less.

“Would you just think about it?” he asked, every word bitten out from what sounded like a rigidly clenched jaw. “If you’re in the city, I can have a car pick you up within a half hour. It’s only seven twenty. If you can swing it anytime before nine, call me, okay?”

“Fine.”

He disconnected without another word.

“Problem?”

“Another case,” she admitted, shaking her head and wondering how on earth she’d gotten herself into this situation.

“Why would you need to talk like a little girl?”

Reaching into her purse and pulling out a bottle of aspirin, Lily popped a couple of them to ward off the headache building in her temples. Then she admitted, “I’ve been helping another team try to capture a sexual predator.”

“Sick bastards.”

“Yeah. This one is especially bad.” At least, if they were indeed on the trail of Lovesprettyboys, he was. Whatever else he had or hadn’t done, the degenerate had definitely tried to set up the pay-per-view murder of a little kid.

She looked at the door, wondering if she dared take Anspaugh up on his offer to have someone replace her. He was a supervisor, requesting her assistance, providing another agent to cover her. It was a legitimate solution.

Somehow, though, she sensed Wyatt wouldn’t see it that way.

Besides, she didn’t totally trust Anspaugh. He had such a big chip on his shoulder about her boss, she couldn’t count on him to send over somebody really good to protect Sam.

No. She couldn’t do it. If Anspaugh called back, she’d just have to make it clear she was not abandoning her post. Hopefully they could string Peter Pan along, get him on the line, and tomorrow she would be there to help reel him in.

It wasn’t an ideal solution for her, personally, but it was the professional one. She owed Wyatt her loyalty. And she owed Samantha Dalton the best protection she could give her, not a pass-off to someone she didn’t even know, who had no idea of the kind of crazy man who was after her.

“It’ll work out,” she mumbled, talking more to herself.

“If you say so.”

When a knock suddenly sounded on the door to the suite, Lily leaped up, gesturing for Sam to remain quiet. She skirted the wall, not approaching the entrance head-on. They had not ordered any food; no one was supposed to know they were here. Sam hadn’t even contacted her family members, who, she said, were used to her being out of touch and wouldn’t miss her.

Her hand on her service weapon, Lily moved to the peephole, looked out, and saw a familiar face. “It’s okay,” she said, reaching for the handle.

Definitely okay. As she opened the door, she nodded in decision. Because a solution to her problem had just landed in her lap.

She was going.

Alec didn’t seem too happy
about playing babysitter. He’d agreed, when Lily had asked him to step in for a couple of hours, but he sure wasn’t smiling about it. Sam had the feeling he wished one of his fellow agents had been the one to swing by the hotel with a suitcase of clothes and toiletries from her apartment.

She knew why. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be around her. She suspected the problem was that he did, a little too much. And he didn’t entirely trust himself to be alone with her in an anonymous hotel room.

Which was why, since Agent Fletcher had departed a half hour ago, Alec had been sitting on a chair by the window, far from the couch where she sat. His very posture discouraging conversation, he’d spent his time looking out at the cityscape. He’d answered a few questions—mainly confirming that they found nothing suspicious in her apartment—but beyond that had managed only a few comments asking whether she was hungry and if the room was too cold.

Finally, she’d had enough of it. “Would you please stop acting like you’re afraid I’m going to jump on you?”

He jerked his head to stare at her over his shoulder. “Excuse me?”

“For heaven’s sake, Alec, you’re sitting over there with an invisible chastity belt wrapped around yourself, as if you’re in need of protection. Like you have to be stern and pissy to keep the horny divorcée from tempting you into letting down your guard while on duty.”

He half coughed, or might have laughed. “Horny divorcée?”

Sam stood and crossed to the window, staring down at him. The lamplight didn’t extend far into this corner of the room. His face was bathed in shadow, so she couldn’t tell if those sensual lips were smiling or those amazing green eyes glinted with humor.

“I get it, okay?” she said. She wrapped her arms around herself, surprised by how much cooler the room was over here. “Despite what happened last night, this thing between us isn’t going anywhere else until the case is over. I’m not Eve. I know I can’t seduce you, and I’m not going to try.”

He slowly rose to stand before her, so close she felt the warmth of his body and the brush of his clothes against her own. The chill permeating the glass windows was suddenly banished, pure heat washing over her. His voice thick, he admitted, “It’s because you could that I’ve been staying put over here.”

She managed a weak whisper. “Could?”

“Seduce me,” he admitted. He lifted a hand, brushing the tips of his fingers across her cheek, sliding them into her hair. The touch was simple, restrained, nonsexual, but also loaded with possibility. She could tilt her face into his palm, kiss the pulse point at his wrist, whisper a plea for an even more intimate touch.

“You could make me forget what I’m doing here tonight and what the stakes are.”

“Really?” she asked. Part of her reacted with pure excitement, knowing she could make something happen between them tonight if she pushed it. Another with pure feminine pleasure that this amazing man genuinely wanted her.