Tempting Danger (19 page)

“Thanks.” Mick had always been crazy about Toby. But then, Rule didn’t doubt that Mick was basically a good man. And what lupus didn’t rejoice in children?

“Though I’d like that explanation, too.” Mick’s expression wasn’t that different from Toby’s, Rule thought—mulish, with a hint of hurt feelings. “I’d like to know why you don’t trust me with the lovely detective.”

“Good God, Mick, it’s nothing to do with you.”

“And you don’t intend to tell me.”

“Not now. And the plain fact is, I owe Lily an explanation, not you.”

Mick stared at him a moment longer, then gave a quick shrug. “I guess you’d better leave so Lily can go solve crime. At least this time they can’t pin it on you. You’re alibied by a cop.”

Lily shook her head. “I don’t yet know the time of death, so we have no idea who’s alibied. But I do have to go.”

“Then I’ll tell you
hasta la vista,
too,” Mick said, the warmth in his voice matched by his smile. “This surely won’t be the only time we meet. The Lady wouldn’t be so unkind.”

“
Hasta la vista,
Mick. Rule—
now
would be good.”

It wasn’t her voice that gave Rule the idea, though the way it changed between speaking to Mick and speaking to him irked him. Nor was it Mick’s flirting. It was simple courtesy, after all, to let a woman know you appreciated her.

No, it was the way Lily refused to see him, as if she could pretend she didn’t feel the pull as long as she didn’t look directly at him. He took two steps closer, stopping near enough that her scent welcomed him, even if the rest of her did not. The jump of his heartbeat warned him to make this quick.

“Yes, we’ll go,” he said. “But first . . .” And he leaned in to plant a kiss on her frowning mouth.

He expected a punch, and not just from the kiss. He’d already decided to let her connect. But he didn’t expect to land on his butt in the dirt.

Mick hooted with laughter. Rule stared up at her, astonished. She’d hooked her leg behind his knee, pulled—and down he went, before his mouth even touched hers.

“Ask, don’t assume.” She opened the car door. “Oh, and you can give me that explanation,” she said, climbing in, “on the way back.” And she slammed the door shut.

THIRTEEN

MS
.
Tough Guy
, Lily jeered at herself silently as she pulled the seat belt in place. She’d overreacted . . . but it had sure been satisfying to see the look on his face.

That satisfaction flickered and went out all too quickly. Beneath it she was shaky, like the time when, still a rookie, she’d been first on scene for a five-vehicle pileup. There’d been some reason, then, for her insides to squeeze and quiver and morph into jittery Jell-O. Now . . .

She’d dumped him on the ground because she’d been scared. Not because she didn’t want his kiss, but because she did. Badly.

Lily inhaled slowly. She felt like an engine revving and revving but stuck in park. As if she were hitting some dangerous pitch and had to find a way to either shut off the engine or throw herself into drive.

The driver’s door opened. He got in.

She stared straight ahead. “I hope you don’t expect an apology.”

“Not at all.” He started the car and put it through a quick three-point turn. “I’m amazed, not angry. It’s been a long time since I was taken so completely by surprise. On the other hand, I’m not planning to offer you an apology, either. Not for the kiss I didn’t get. I do regret making you wait.”

Lily thought of the kiss he
had
taken and shifted slightly. “If you’re going to tell me there’s some kind of weird lupus rule—”

“Not in the way you mean. But you’ll consider my reason weird. And unwelcome.” His words came out clipped, as if he were pushing them out through a tightening channel.

Never had she felt so hot just sitting next to a man. Or so unsettled. Automatically she switched mental channels, pushing the button sure to get her back on track. “Never mind that right now. Do you know a woman named Therese Martin?”

“You’re avoiding the subject.”

“I don’t recall giving you permission to choose the subject.”

He made a small sound, somewhere between exasperation and amusement. “All right. I don’t remember her. She’s the one who was killed?”

She gave him a hard look. “Why do you think that?”

“Benedict heard both sides of the call you took.”

“That’s . . .” She wanted to say impossible. “Can you do that, too?”

“My hearing isn’t as good as his.”

“Which doesn’t answer my question.”

“Vanity insists I retain some mystery.” His voice turned grim. “If a lupus killed her—”

“If?”

“We don’t harm women. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but a lupus who would kill a woman . . . we’d call him insane.”

She frowned, trying to remember the lupus kills she’d read about. Surely some of the victims had been female?

“I’ve been assuming Fuentes was killed as part of a larger scheme against Nokolai,” Rule said. “My father spoke to you about that.”

“Some. I have questions.”

“Why does that not surprise me? But this newest killing—it doesn’t fit. I wasn’t involved with Therese Martin. I didn’t even know her.”

He’d spoken to her at some point, though, and been “real respectful.” “She was a working girl. Had a corner on Proctor.” And about a hundred dolls, all with yellow hair. Did she have a mother or sister who’d want those dolls now? “She was almost certainly the last party to see Carlos Fuentes alive, other than the killer. Her testimony narrowed the time of death enough to get you off the hook.”

“Shit.”

“Pretty much so, yeah.” O’Brien was handling the scene, and Mech was there. She knew they’d do a good job, but she needed to
be
there. She needed to see the place, get a sense of what had happened. She needed to touch things, while they still held the buzz of magic.

Pity she couldn’t smell the way that . . . wait a minute. “Could you sniff out her killer? If I got you to the body quickly enough, could you tell who did it?”

That surprised him. He didn’t say anything for several moments. “In this form, probably not.”

“You’d have to Change.”

“Yes. I can’t guarantee anything, but it might work.”

How much grief would she get if she gave him access to the body? Plenty, she thought, scowling. Because of what he was. If he’d been any other sort of expert consultant, no one would bat an eye over her asking for his opinion now that he wasn’t a suspect himself. And that was just wrong. Someone had ended all Therese’s possibilities, stamping out the stubborn spark that had made the girl surround herself with yellow-haired dolls. It was Lily’s job to find out who.

Damn those torpedoes and all that,
she thought.
I’m not going to get anywhere with this one by playing it safe on half throttle.
“All right, then. Will you, um, need privacy to Change?”

“I’d like to have earth beneath my feet, if possible. Privacy might keep your associates from freaking. Lily—”

“What?” They’d left the valley behind and were drawing near the gate. The same redheaded guard opened it for them. “We don’t want the press to guess why you’re there, but I can’t get you into the scene itself. Aside from the risk of contaminating it, a defense attorney would have entirely too much fun coming up with scenarios about that. So . . . the coroner’s people will be ready to transport the body by the time we get there. Once I’ve looked things over, I’ll have them bring her into the stairwell, and you can do it there.”

“I can Change there if I have to. You’re avoiding the subject.”

“You know, I don’t think you get to choose the subject. Were you at Club Hell last night?”

His fingers drummed once on the steering wheel. “I ate with friends at my apartment. They left about eight-thirty. I spent the rest of the evening at home alone. Why? I thought I wasn’t a suspect.”

“Dot those
i
’s, cross those
t
’s,” she said absently. Something about this second murder didn’t add up, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. “I guess someone could have watched to see that you were alone. Who knew you’d be at the club the night of Fuentes’s murder?”

He shrugged. “Any number of people. Thursday was my usual night to meet Rachel there.”

“Did you have a usual time, too?”

“It varied.”

“Did you tell anyone other than Rachel when you’d be there that night?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Humor me.”

“All right. I told Max when to expect me. I believe he told Cullen. But Rachel could have mentioned it to any number of people.”

“True.” She chewed her lip. If only she knew how the killer lured Fuentes to the playground . . . Fuentes’s two main interests seemed to have been women and the Church of the Faithful.

The playground wasn’t a likely spot for a romantic tryst. “Have you ever heard of the Church of the Faithful? They’re also called the Azá.”

“You asked about them before. The name doesn’t ring any bells. Lily, I’ve something to tell you. It’s important.”

“So’s murder. Give me a minute. I’m onto something.” She thought hard for a moment. “Okay, working hypothesis. Let’s say that Fuentes was killed to implicate you. Naturally, the killer wanted to do it when you weren’t alibied, but that’s tricky. He also wanted to do it on your date night so us dumb cops didn’t miss spotting you as a suspect. He knows it’s hard to pin down time of death, though, without a witness. Anyone who reads mysteries or watches crime shows knows that. So what he needs is a window when we don’t know where Fuentes is.”

“I’m with you so far. How did he go about creating that window?”

“Maybe he made it, maybe he found it. Either way, his main concern would be witnesses. He picks the playground because it’s near the club and should be deserted. If he’s smart, he wants to get there before Fuentes does and make sure no one else is around. But Therese didn’t see anyone on the street or at the playground. She talked to Fuentes just before ten, and she didn’t see anyone else nearby.”

“If he was in wolf form, it wouldn’t be hard for him to hide.”

“Maybe, but then why did he go ahead and kill Fuentes? If he was there, if he saw Therese talking to Fuentes, he knew there was a witness for when Fuentes arrived.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t fit.”

“Okay, then, he didn’t arrive before Fuentes, so he didn’t know about Therese. When he found out . . .” Rule’s voice trailed off.

“Yeah.” A hard knot of nausea lodged in her throat. She swallowed. “That’s the question, isn’t it? How did he find out?”

“She might have talked to others about seeing Fuentes.”

“She swore she hadn’t, and I warned her. I warned her not to talk about it. Maybe she did anyway. Or maybe someone saw us go to her place, but they wouldn’t have known what she told us. The killer might have panicked—but why? We didn’t arrest him.” The nausea was growing. “He had no reason to think she ID’d him. He shouldn’t have known what she told us. Unless . . .”

Rule finished it for her. “Unless a cop told him.”

A sick sort of vacuum claimed her gut. Her mouth was bone dry.
Follow it through,
she ordered herself. Who had known about Therese? Phillips . . . but if he’d been bent, he wouldn’t have brought her to Lily’s notice.

Who else? Who all had she told, who would have read the report about Therese?

Mech. Captain Randall. The chief. Those two FBI agents.

God. She ran a hand through her hair. Not the captain. Surely not. Mech? She couldn’t believe it, but he was already at the scene. And the two FBI agents could show up there. No one would think a thing of it.

“How fast will this thing go?” she asked.

“A hundred and twenty.”

“Open it up.”

Rule took her at her word. He didn’t hit top speed—even with his reflexes, there were limits imposed by physics and a winding mountain road. But he pushed those limits pretty hard.

It was wonderful.

“You’re enjoying this,” his passenger said.

“Guilty as charged.” He didn’t glance at her. At this speed, that would be a bad move. “You’re not throwing up,” he observed.

“Yet.”

She sounded more tense than frightened, though. “Maybe you’re enjoying it, too, just a little.”

“Trust me on this. I’m not.” She paused. “Tell me something. You have two brothers, and at least one of them is older than you. Yet you’re the heir. Why is that?”

“Lupi don’t follow primogeniture.”

“So what do you follow?”

Rule hesitated. He’d decided to hold off on telling her what it meant to be chosen. She’d just had a blow, one he understood all too well. Realizing there might be a crooked cop involved must have been a lot like hearing there was a traitor in Nokolai. But she needed to learn about the clan. “Custom. This varies from one clan to the next, but essentially the Lu Nuncio—”

“What does that mean?”

“Roughly, the acknowledged heir. The Lu Nuncio must prove himself through blood, combat, and fertility.”

“You have a child,” she said slowly.

“Yes. Benedict does, too, but not a son.”