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William’s brows shot up. Now that was… Before he could catch himself, he looked down at his left hand and blinked in confusion. Shit. He shouldn’t have done that.
“Where were you last Sunday night?” Anne barked.
“Out of town,” William muttered.
“Anyone who can vouch for that?” her partner asked smugly.
“The plane ticket. I was picking up some merchandise in Southern California.” William unglued his eyes from the ring to level a serious glare at the man. “Didn’t get back until late Monday night. You can check with the airport. You can show my picture around all y’like.”
“Then how did this end up at the crime scene by the body?” Anne pressed.
“Dunno.” William relaxed his shoulders and expression with practiced ease. “Maybe he dropped by the shop when I wasn’t around and stole it. Maybe it slipped off my finger walking around town, and he thought it was pretty. Maybe there’s more than one ring out there with a garnet stone. I couldn’t tell you.”
“What will you tell us when the labs come back saying you’ve worn that ring?” she countered.
“I’d go back to the ‘lost it’ defense. It’s circumstantial, and you know it. I wasn’t in town.”
“You’re awfully calm for someone who might be charged with murder,” her partner said.
“Well, you’ll find that when a man isn’t afraid of someone finding something on him, he tends not to care too much,” William said.
“No. I find that when people are falsely accused of something, they get angry,” Anne replied.
“And when people are falsely accused, convicted, and serve part of the time that belongs to someone else, they have more faith that the system will sort it out eventually, even if the cops can’t seem to manage,” William drawled.
Oh, there it was. That beautiful little wrinkle in her forehead, the scrunch in her nose, the glint in her eye. He’d right pissed her off. And the way he was grinning now was probably only pissing her off more.
“Y’know what I think?” William folded his arms over himself loosely. “I think you have no idea what happened here. I think you don’t have a bit of real evidence, and you’re just here hoping to find a clue amongst all this dust.”
He shook his head and started to stroll around them. Both turned to follow him, and her partner’s hand moved instinctively to his side, probably where he kept his gun. William made note of that. This guy was ill-trained, insecure, and possibly a coward. Anne knew she could take an unarmed perp down without using her weapon.
“You’re connected to this. And there’s something you aren’t telling us,” Anne said. Her tone was almost gentle now. Was it a ruse? An attempt to play on their old feelings for each other.
If so, the joke was on her. His feelings were anything but in the past, but he still wasn’t going to let her manipulate him.
“If you really think that, darling, you ought to come back with a warrant.” William raised one brow and pressed his lips together as he scanned over her one more time. “I think you know that I have an excellent lawyer.”
Anne reached into her jacket, and William didn’t flinch. She pulled out a card.
“Call us if you hear anything on the street,” she said. “That’s a suggestion in your best interest. You don’t want to be caught obstructing an investigation.”
William turned the card over between two fingers. “Tisk-tisk. Hurts a man’s feelings. Is that all you want me for these days? To pump me for information?”
“What else would I want to pump you for?” Anne said dryly, before turning and leading her partner out of the store.
William clenched his jaw and bent the card from the pressure of his grip.
***
William prowled about his penthouse suite like a tiger, muscles rolling powerfully as he moved back and forth, temper simmering just below the surface. He’d barely been out a month, and the authorities were already sniffing around his door. And with Anne leading the charge…
Anne hadn’t been the one to take him down. On the contrary, by the time the Feds had gotten together enough evidence to charge him, he’d charmed her so thoroughly into his bed that they’d spent more time in his place without clothes than with. Their bodies had left a trail of sweat across the Vegas Strip, marking a path of their affair as it had grown from forbidden passion to a deeper, more intractable affinity.
When they’d led him away in cuffs, William had been planning on proposing to her.
But now, they were back to the dynamic that had first defined them. Anne was the cop. William was the criminal. She trusted him about as far as she could throw him. (Though, with proper leverage, she probably could give him a nice flip.) Twisting his fingers and stretching his neck from side to side, William looked out over the city through the floor to ceiling window that his suite offered. Pretty lights twinkled over a city of sin and shady dealings. It was the ideal place for him, really.
