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“You.”
“Me?” she screeched.
“I’m going, too.”
“What the hell, Tom? We’ve got twelve additional people here now, and this is a job for a first-year deputy.”
He couldn’t tell her that the real reason was that he wanted to spy on Isabelle. He also could
n’t tell Mary that he wanted her to meet Jill. She’d dig in her heels and tell him to mind his own business. She was always telling him to mind his own business; he never did. “Those guys need all their attention on the courthouse. We know how to pace ourselves. You can sleep in the next day if you need to.”
“I don’t need to sleep in!” she growled before stomping up the stairs. That was the end of the discussion. Good.
They’d debriefed in the meeting room after court had adjourned, but that didn’t mean there weren’t twenty emails waiting for him. So far there’d been no activity at the judge’s place, and Stevenson hadn’t been spotted in Jackson or Boise or anywhere in between.
Tom wrote an update for his chief, laying out his plan to feed only the smallest bits of information to the press so as not to inspire any of the defendant’s sympathizers. Then he sent an email to his team with a few more specifics about tomorrow’s detail, requested an expedited review of the letter from the consulting psychiatrist and was finally ready to turn in at eleven.
But he had something else to look into.
He’d considered taking a long-range photo of Isabelle and feeding it into a reverse image search, but if she’d kept a low profile for the past fourteen years, it probably wouldn’t pan out. No point stepping that far over the line into invading her privacy. He’d also considered that he could’ve lifted some small piece of garbage from her trash to get her fingerprints, but that felt even more wrong. He really wanted to leave a moral pathway open to sleeping with her.
At this point, the best he could do without compromising his own convoluted sense of integrity was to do it the hard way. He knew she was thirty-six and that she was maybe from Cincinnati, but probably from Chicago if his ear was right, and it usually was. If there was news or an event or an arrest, it would be pre-2002. That was it, really. He cracked his knuckles and got to work.
He searched missing persons in Cincinnati first, but considering that was the location she’d given, he didn’t trust it. When he found nothing related to Isabelle, he moved on to the Chicago area. There weren’t any missing women in her age group that looked like Isabelle there, either. Next up were the fugitive lists. It didn’t take long to get through the FBI list, but the local Chicago lists were extensive and broken down by district. An hour later, his eyes swimming from all the scrolling he’d done, he sat back in his chair with a sigh.
She wasn’t a fugitive, as far as he could tell. Which meant, as a marshal, he should just drop it. But he’d never been very good at dropping things. And he had more than a professional interest now.
If she wasn’t a wanted fugitive, then she was running from something else. She had a gun, a fake identity, a Chicago accent and no pictures of her family, who she’d implied were dead.
Trying to ignore the clock screaming 12:15 at him, he searched for murders in the Chicago area for the five years previous to when Isabelle West’s name had appeared on the record. There were a lot of murders. He started filtering out the least likely scenarios, but by 1:00 a.m., he realized it was useless. There was too much crime in a place like Chicago, and he still couldn’t be sure he had the city right. Could be Milwaukee. Cleveland. Or any place in between.
He needed to sleep. And he needed not to care. And he really needed to drop this.
He fell asleep ten minutes later with theories about Isabelle West still spinning through his brain, but when he dreamed, it was all about that kiss.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS TURNING out to be a truly glorious day.
Isabelle had awoken to a warm band of sunlight snaking across her bed and turning January into pure heat. No matter how cold it was outside, the sun at this altitude was scorching, so she’d kicked off her covers and stretched out naked in the warmth, feeling like a self-satisfied cat.
Self-satisfied, indeed, because thoughts of Tom had turned her slick and tight, and Isabelle had touched herself. Slowly. Lazily. Thinking of his subtle tongue and hard cock and the very good things she’d like from both of them.
He was dangerous. Maybe not to anyone else, but definitely to her. He could destroy everything she’d worked hard to build. Yet something about him drew her in. Maybe that very thing. The danger. Or maybe just that even though she didn’t trust cops anymore, even though she wanted nothing to do with any of them... She’d spent her whole life around cops. She knew how they moved and spoke and thought.
She loved the wariness in his eyes each time he entered a darkened room. The way his hand went to his gun when he was on alert. The way he studied her face when she spoke, trying to figure her out.
That was the problem right there. That he looked at her and saw her. But just the thought of it turned her on, so she imagined that. Imagined him watching as she touched herself in lazy strokes. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t order her around and ask to be touched. He just watched, took her in, devoured her with his eyes. Then he reached down and unzipped his pants and tugged down his underwear, and Isabelle whispered, “Yes.”
Yes, she’d said, fingering herself, stroking her clit, her other hand sliding up to pinch her nipple hard. Yes, she wanted him just like that. Standing above her. Watching her fingers slide deeper. Wanted him stroking his cock. That beautiful jaw of his would get so tense. His lush mouth would flatten. The sun would glint off his chest hair, and it would shine on the wetness of her pussy and—
“God,” she choked out as everything inside her coiled tight. “God, yes.” She came saying his name and picturing him coming right along with her.
Just that long, shuddering orgasm would have been enough to make the day special, but she’d followed it up with a spectacular day of painting, putting the final touches on one piece before starting on a clean canvas that was the very last work of the contract.
And now...now she was in the mood to party.
Jill, well aware that Isabelle’s domestic skills consisted of occasional grilled cheese construction and charring a perfect steak, arrived early with little puff pastries to be thrown in the oven. “Cheddar and jalapeño,” she said.
