LITMIR.BIZ

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Her voice didn’t tremble as she lied straight to his face.

      Reid felt his fist clench and wanted to hit something. This was a child they were talking about.

      “No problem,” he lied right back. “I’ll catch you later in the week. Thanks for these.” He lifted the finished folders in farewell and retraced his steps through the thirteenth floor to the elevator. He gritted his teeth and stabbed the elevator call button.

      He didn’t know what was going on, but he was sure as hell going to find out. And if Stephanie Alberts was screwing with his evidence, she’d be sorry.

      Very, very sorry.

      Chapter Three

      Steph was alone in the lab that night, just shutting down the last of the big machines, when the phone rang. The sound shattered the humming silence like a scream.

      “Damn!” She put a hand to her thumping heart and stared at the instrument as it rang a second time. She imagined a dead-sounding whisper, a snarl of accusation because she’d talked to a cop. A chuckle as he told her Jilly was gone.

      The phone rang again. “It’s not him,” she told herself. “Just pick it up.”

      But she couldn’t. Her feet were frozen in place, and she felt a sudden surge of the nausea that had been building ever since she’d looked into Detective Peters’s gorgeous golden-brown eyes and lied her ass off.

      She’d lied to a cop about an investigation. She was going to hell—or jail, whichever came first.

      If the voice didn’t get her before then.

      The phone rang a third, fourth and fifth time as she stared at it. Then it stopped. The answering machine did not click on.

      He’d hung up.

      Steph felt a massive shudder crawl down her back and she fled through the lab, slapping at switches and grabbing her purse almost as an afterthought. She was halfway to the elevator when she remembered.

      I know how you walk to work, bitch.

      The phone began to ring again. She shoved at the door to the elevator lobby and caromed into the little space, frantic to be away from the ringing phone and the voice in her head. Frantic to get to her daughter. She punched her security code into the door lock with trembling fingers and turned to jab at the elevator call button.

      The car was already moving up toward the thirteenth floor.

      He’s coming, she thought hysterically, he knows I didn’t tell Detective Peters that the Makepeace DNA was a match. He’s coming.

      She pressed the other call button again and again, as though she could hurry the second elevator by doing so.

      Eight…nine…ten…

      He’s almost here!

      Steph threw herself back at the security door and tried to key in the override code that would let her back in the lab after she’d punched in All Clear for the Night.

      Her mind blanked. “What is it?” She fumbled at the little round numbers. “Oh-four-four-six-nine, right?” The door didn’t click. The light flickered red, warning her that another wrong code would freeze the lock for the night. “Come on, you bastard,” she snarled. “I bought you. I programmed you. Let me in!” She miskeyed again.

      The lock buzzed angrily and the red light shone solid. She wasn’t getting in before morning.

      Eleven…twelve…

      Steph suddenly remembered the little gray canister in her purse—required equipment for any woman working in or near Chinatown. She scrambled for it. Grabbed it.

      Thirteen…ding!

      Screaming at the top of her lungs as her two-week self-defense class had taught her, Steph leaped for the widening crack in the elevator doors and aimed the nozzle directly at her attacker’s face with one hand while she swung her purse with the other.

      And at the last moment saw the surprise in his familiar golden-brown eyes.

      WHILE HIS MIND was still grappling with the sight of Stephanie Alberts attacking him with pepper spray in one hand and a leather purse in the other, Reid automatically chopped the canister out of her hand and tossed it toward a corner of the elevator, noting as he did so that it hadn’t fired because she’d failed to flip the safety. Once she was unarm—

      Bonk! The elevator tilted when something impossibly heavy thumped him upside the head, and Stephanie’s face—now looking more horrified than afraid, with her mouth making a big round O of surprise, loomed in front of him.

      “Detective Peters!”

      Afraid she might belt him with her purse again, Reid grabbed her wrist and stepped back, directly on top of the pepper spray. The metal canister shot out from underneath him and he flailed backward with one hand while the other pulled Stephanie with him on the way down.

      They landed in a tangle of arms and legs, half in and half out of the elevator door, which dinged impatiently when it tried to shut itself on his kidneys. Stephanie struggled to right herself, nearly unmanning him with a pointy kneecap. Reid grabbed her upper arms and tangled his legs with hers in self-defense before barking, “Quit it!” when she kept squirming. “You’re okay!”

      What the hell was going on?

      He shook her again, hoping to get through and she stilled. Froze. Seemed to realize where they were and how. Reid could feel her soft round breasts pressed against his chest, and he could swear he could feel her heart start to pound as the possibilities dawned on her.

      Or maybe that was his heart, tempered only by the cop in him that remembered she’d been geared for attack when the elevator doors had opened. Though he could neither see nor sense immediate danger, he could feel it thrum through her body and into his.

      Or maybe that was something else. Something far more dangerous. Far more insidious.

      “It’s okay,” he repeated as the warmth spread and he felt her body soften as his did the opposite. He lowered his voice, “I’m here, Stephanie. You’re safe.”

      It was the wrong thing to say, he could feel the change in her, though he couldn’t have explained it. She tensed, and he hoped she hadn’t just realized that he kept his gun in a shoulder holster, not his pocket. When she pushed herself off him and stood, the imprint of her soft curves hummed along his nerve endings like fire.

      “I’m sorry, Detective Peters. I…” He could see the shields slam back down, could see her tuck her problems back into that place he couldn’t reach and resisted the urge to bare his teeth. “I’m sorry. Being up here alone gives me the creeps sometimes, especially after what happened last year.”

      And by God, she wasn’t a half-bad liar. She brushed at her sleeves and patted her riotous red hair as though proper grooming would prove that everything was just fine.

      Nothing to see here. Move along.

      Reid stood and resisted the urge to grab her shoulders. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to kiss her or shake her. Or both.

      When he glanced pointedly at the pepper spray, she shrugged. “I don’t usually work this late, and it was so deserted, and the phone kept ringing—” She broke off. “Anyway, I’m very sorry I tried to spray you. Lucky for both of us it didn’t work. Although…” She frowned. “If you’d been anyone else I’d have been in trouble.”

      He bent and picked up the offending canister. “You forgot to flip the safety off.” He demonstrated. “See?” Then he tossed it back to her, not caring to ask whether she had a permit. He’d rather she have it than not, given the neighborhood they both worked in.

      Now that there was no longer a body obstructing their path, the elevator doors whooshed shut. Irritated with both of them—and particularly with the fact that he could practically taste her on his lips though they’d

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