Tempted by Fate (17 page)

She focused on the desk.

Is finding a labeled picture of the Bad Man too much
to hope for?
She pushed the chair away to clear space in front of the desk and tried the first file drawer. Locked.

She stared at it, considering her options. She could pick the lock, but she’d never been good at that, no matter how hard Morgan had tried to help her refine that skill. It was probably because of the metal. If she’d been the Guardian of the Book of Metal, she would have been set; she was sure of that. Or she could look for the key, which the owner probably had in a pocket.

She turned to the body and patted him down for keys. Finding them in his left pants pocket, she knelt in front of the file cabinet and began trying each one. If the number of keys was an indication of importance, this man was God.

She was on the fourth key, when the office door opened. She began to draw on
mù ch’i
to provide her cover, but the moment she saw the familiar silhouette in the doorway, she lost her concentration and faltered.

Ramirez.

She was caught. Damn his timing. She set the keys on the desk and sat back on her heels. “Never would’ve expected to see you hanging out in a sex club.”

“I’m here on business.” His gaze was cold as it raked over her. It stalled on where her skirt was hiked up on her thighs.

“Of course you are, Starsky.”

He ignored her snarky comment. “I came to talk to Quentin, but it appears you got to him first.”

“Appearances aren’t everything.” She stood up, taking her time before tugging down the skirt. “Like what you see?”

Despite her attempt at seduction, she knew, by the way
his face hardened, the second that he noticed the body in the chair. “I can’t say that I do,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

Her internal alarms sounded, loud and insistent. She needed to get out of there, if she didn’t want to spend the next couple days explaining why she’d been found in a dead man’s office, sitting next to the corpse and going through his stuff. She edged around the desk and drew
mù ch’i
around her. “A pleasure to see you as always, Inspector, but if you’ll excuse me.”

Ramirez lunged forward just as Willow began to fade out. The cold snap of steel on her wrist made
mù ch’i
falter, and she blinked. “What the hell?”

Yanking her against him, he leveraged her arms behind her and clicked the handcuffs shut on the other wrist. “You’re not going anywhere, Willow Tarata.”

The chilled metal burned against her skin. She tested the hold and realized she was stuck, but at least now she knew it was Ramirez, and not the Bad Man, who’d cracked her identity. She was surprised to find herself relieved, which pissed her off. She didn’t enjoy feeling like she could trust him. Trust led to disappointment at best, and death at worst. Yet that was exactly how she felt. She narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been busy.”

“So have you.” He glanced at the owner.

Hoping to distract him, she pressed herself against Ramirez. “Not as busy as I’d like to get. The cuffs are kinky, but I’m willing.”

His body reacted to hers instantly. She felt him stirring against her thigh, and she slipped a leg between his, rubbing him to encourage his response.

Unfortunately, her body reacted, too. She tried to
ignore the rush of warmth between her legs and the tightness of her nipples.

His arms tightened around her. Wrapping his hand in her hair, he arched her back until his eyes filled her vision. His energy surrounded her, trying to drug her and pull her under. She fought to distance herself, but she kept getting caught in her own spell. Her plan had backfired.

Focused on her lips, he lowered his head, stopping a breath away. She waited, unable to breathe, not sure which was worse: being kissed by him again, or not having the pleasure of feeling his lips against hers.

His mouth parted, hovering just above hers. “ ‘You have the right to remain silent.’ ”

Always the cop. She wanted to be annoyed, but she couldn’t help but be impressed. “I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to keep quiet.”

“ ‘Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.’ ”

“I’d rather
you
be used against me.” She’d meant it teasingly, but it sounded entirely too sincere to her ears. She rubbed herself against him, because she wanted to, and not because she needed to distract him. Her motives were so screwed up.

“Stop it.” His jaw tightened.

But he didn’t push her away, and that thrilled her. Talk about being screwed up. “I don’t think you want me to stop.”

“What I want doesn’t matter here.”

“Doesn’t it?” She grazed his neck with her lips.

His teeth were gritted, but his hands tightened as if not wanting to let go. “If what I wanted mattered, I wouldn’t have found you standing over another dead body.”

“I was kneeling, and it’s the only dead body you’ve found me with.”

He cocked his brow.

“You can’t prove I was at the park.” She nuzzled the skin right above his collar, below his jaw.

“We’ll see about that.”

“I’d rather see about you.” She smelled his skin, and warmth spread through her. He smelled like home.

What was she thinking? She couldn’t let herself be drawn to him. The feelings made her too soft, too vulnerable. She couldn’t be soft, so she made it about pure animal attraction, instead. “Unbutton your shirt for me.”

He tugged on her hair so she had no choice but to lift her head. “Why did you kill him?”

“I didn’t.” She smiled wryly. “Not that I expect you to believe that.”

He studied her, silently and thoroughly. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her, and was almost tempted to ask, when he said, “If you didn’t do it, you have nothing to worry about.”

She gave him an ironic smile. “Because the police deal in justice?”

“Yes.”

She snorted. “If that were true, we wouldn’t be standing here.”

His brow furrowed, but right as he was going to speak, she threw herself forward into him.

“
Willow.
” Ramirez grabbed her as he lost his balance.

She immediately kneed him—high in the thigh rather than the groin. Groaning, he doubled over and grabbed his leg. Before he regained his balance, she kicked his leg to take him down, being careful not to do any damage,
an unprecedented show of mercy. She vaguely wondered what Morgan would say about that.

She shook her head. She needed to get out of there before he recovered. She stepped over him and walked to the door. Arching backward, she awkwardly grabbed the doorknob with her cuffed hands and let herself out. Being cuffed was a serious inconvenience. Morgan was going to cackle herself to tears when she found out.

Worse than the inconvenience, the metal scrambled her energy. She tried to cloak herself with
mù ch’i,
but she couldn’t connect.

“I’m going to regret not knocking him out and searching for the key,” she muttered, striding down the hall. Except the thought of hurting him didn’t sit well with her. Shaking her head, she used her hip to push open the door. She’d just have to improvise.

The guard outside the door frowned at her when she walked through. She shrugged. “It was fun, but the bastard lost the key. You wouldn’t be able to pick it or something, would you?”

He blinked. “Uh, no.”

“Oh, well. Maybe someone below will have a key that works. At the very least, maybe I can get a little more action.” She winked at him and sauntered down the stairs. Ignoring the few intrigued looks she got, she pushed through the crowd to the bar and out the side door.

The moment she was outside, she dropped the blithe attitude. “Damn, damn,
damn.
”

Not only was she in this predicament, but she hadn’t managed to glean any information on the Bad Man, except for the fact that he knew she was close. Screw Ramirez and his interference.

She winced, thinking of him writhing on the floor. He was going to be pissed.
Really
pissed. Not to mention that he wanted her for murder now. She’d have to take extra care to avoid him.

Willow rounded the corner and walked into a solid mass. As strong, relentless hands closed on her arms, she looked up. Ramirez’s dark, furious eyes glared at her.

R
amirez stared down into Willow’s stunned eyes and felt anger rise like a dark tide from the center of his being. He wasn’t sure if he felt admiration or fury at being taken so easily by her, but he knew it wasn’t going to happen again. He twirled them around so he bracketed her against a building wall, gently, so her arms wouldn’t be scraped by the concrete.

God, he was a fool. As much as he wanted to believe she wouldn’t have given him the same consideration, he realized that wasn’t true. He’d seen her fight, and he knew she could have done damage back at the office. She hadn’t, and that didn’t compute.

He didn’t like not understanding. “Why?”

“You didn’t seriously think I was going to hang around and wait for you to arrest me, did you?”

“That’s not what I was asking.”

“I should think you’d be happy I didn’t feed you your balls,” she said, looking away.

He lifted her head with a finger under her chin. She
met his intense brown eyes head-on with her usual bravado, but he looked past it and saw vulnerability. He cursed mentally. Was she manipulating him again?

Wrapping his hand around the nape of her neck, he held her in place and leaned closer. “I’m not happy at all. Do you want to know why?”

“Do I really have a choice?”

He ignored her sarcasm. “I don’t know who you are and what you’re doing here. First, I see you walking away from the scene of a double murder—”

“That’s pure conjecture,” she interrupted.

“—where I also found the imprint of a woman’s shoe, size eight. What size do you wear, Willow?”

She clamped her lips shut and glared at him.

“Then I find you lurking around the place of employment of one of the victims. And if that wasn’t bad enough, tonight I find you leaning over another body. What do you have to say about that?”

“I never lurk.”

Anger coursed through him. “I’m trying to understand so I can help you out. I need you to cooperate.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “So you can lock me up instead of looking for the real culprit? Please. Don’t think I don’t know how your type works.”

“My type?” he said through gritted teeth.

“The officious, black-and-white type who only sees what he wants to.” She lifted her head as if defying him to deny it. “You want your cases wrapped up in a pretty bow, solved and filed away so you can eat your donuts in peace. Well, sometimes it’s not black and white. Sometimes there’s murky gray, where nothing is what it seems.”

She sounded just like Carrie and his
abuelita.
That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “Gray is just black and white overlapped. It only needs to be sorted out.”

“Sometimes it can’t be,” she said louder, as if he were having trouble hearing her.

“It can if you’d cooperate.”

“If I cooperated, I’d be in prison.”

“You’ll be in prison if you don’t cooperate.” He exhaled to calm himself. “I could book you for murder right now, with the suspicion of two others.”

She scowled at him.

He could feel her gathering herself to attack. Refusing to be taken off guard again, he prepared himself for her to strike out. He wasn’t letting her get away this time, until he got some answers out of her.

When she launched herself at him, he was ready. He grabbed her around the waist, setting his weight to keep from losing his balance. The thing he wasn’t ready for was the way she pressed her mouth to his and kissed him.

Her arms were bound behind her back, but he still felt like she had him in a vise. He wanted to resist. He needed to take her to the station and proceed by the book so he wouldn’t screw up the investigation. But she parted her lips and touched his with a flick of her tongue, and any thoughts of following procedure flew out the window.

A shock of heat shot through him. His arms tightened around her, hands tangling in her hair. He should let go—he needed to let go—but he opened his mouth to hers and let her in.