LITMIR.BIZ

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past, a promise for the future. And she’d had this firm. She’d built it painstakingly. It was her baby, born of her expertise and her guts and her talent. In large measure, her employees were her family.

      Stephen had swiped the Rose but she’d still had Concepts. Now, at one of the shakiest times of her life, her own staff was shielding her, closing her out.

      “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself,” she said quietly, then she waved a hand. “We’re done here. I’m going back to my office.”

      Suck it up, she ordered herself, heading down the hall again. Get a grip. Damn it, she could deal with this on her own. She knew her way through the dark.

      In her office, she inched up to the window again. She kept her eyes closed, then, with her palms pressed against the cool glass, she deliberately opened them again. And she looked down.

      The khaki guy was still there.

      At least it wasn’t Whittington, she thought helplessly. This guy wore a plain white button-down shirt under the ill-fitting raincoat that Debbie had mentioned. Absurdly, Tara found herself remembering how Whittington had been dressed Monday night, in that soft-as-butter leather jacket. She knew its texture because she’d had fistfuls of it when he’d first taken her down. The man definitely had a sense of style.

      And why was she thinking about that when the Rose was missing, when Whittington felt strongly enough about her involvement in Stephen’s death to have put a cop on her? She was losing her mind. Maybe the horrors of the last few days were getting to her, even more than she realized.

      Tara pressed a fist against her mouth while panic tried to fold her knees, both for what he was doing and for the effect he was having on her. Then she went back to her desk and forced herself to concentrate on the Maine proposal.

      Fox sat at his desk in the Robbery-Homicide den on the eleventh floor of headquarters. The cop standing in front of him spoke earnestly.

      “I talked to her doorman. He was pretty emphatic about her schedule,” Vince Migliaccio reported. “She always walks to and from her office, except on Wednesdays.”

      “This is Wednesday,” Fox responded.

      “Yeah. So she’ll be cabbing it tonight. It’s her dry-cleaning day. He says she always takes her clothes with her and comes home in a taxi. Maybe the cleaners is too far away for her to walk.”

      “You’re sure about this?”

      Migliaccio flushed and Fox felt sorry for him, but his caution was not misplaced. Migliaccio had had an outstanding opportunity to move up in the ranks last summer when he’d been assigned to back up Fox while Rafe had been out on suspension. He’d blown that job. Now—at least for the time being—he was back on patrol.

      Fox knew that Rafe had hand-picked Migliaccio for this assignment to give the kid another chance. Fox thought that was a good idea but he sincerely hoped the young man had learned to keep a wall up between himself and the females involved in a crime.

      Like he was doing? A sudden image of yards of black hair hit Fox’s mind hard. He saw it spilling over his hands the way it had when he’d struggled with Tara Cole in Carmen’s garden. He saw her tight, agile body encased in that black second skin.

      “Huh?” he said to Migliaccio.

      The officer looked at him strangely. “Are you all right?”

      “Of course I’m all right.” Fox deliberately cleared his mind.

      “She usually orders lunch in. That’s what the guy at the deli around the corner says.”

      “What’s the name of the place?”

      “It’s called Ernie and Vin’s and it’s on the corner of Brown and Twenty-fourth.”

      Fox filed that away for future use. “Okay, good. Presuming she doesn’t leave the office earlier, I’ll take the watch over from Currey at five o’clock.” Phil Currey was the guy currently standing in front of her office building.

      “Sure. I’ll tell him.” Migliaccio left.

      Fox opened the lady’s date book again. Tara Cole was dining with a friend named Charlie at the Four Seasons tonight. She would be attending a black-tie event at a local gallery tomorrow night at nine. Fox decided he was looking forward to that one. He enjoyed art.

      At twenty minutes past six, Tara stood up from her desk. Her nerves had been coiled like a child’s slinky toy all day, ever since she’d found out about the cop. She pressed the heel of one hand into each eye, then she turned to the window again and peered down.

      The khaki guy was gone. She blinked to be sure but when she opened her eyes again, there was no one down there. Tara spun back to her desk. She slammed her palm down on the mouse, frantically trying to turn her computer off, then she spun for the closet in one corner of her office. She shrugged into her coat while groping for her bag of dry cleaning stashed on the floor.

      “Eric!” she shouted. When she stepped out into the hall, her assistant popped his head out of his own office. “Lock up for me! I’ve got to go now, right now!”

      “Well…sure.”

      Tara ran down the hall and leaned hard on the elevator button. “Come on, come on, come on.” She wasn’t foolish enough to believe that Whittington wouldn’t send someone else to watch her. This would be the changing of the guard, that was all. She was pretty sure he had more than one officer spying on her. She’d noticed someone suspicious in the deli earlier.

      Whittington’s cop brigade would catch up with her again at home, but that wasn’t the point. Eluding him for a while was merely payback for what he had done with her date book Monday night.

      She had to let him know that he didn’t hold all the cards.

      There was an available cab idling right at the curb when she reached the sidewalk downstairs. Tara switched her dry-cleaning bag to her left hand and reached for the door handle with her right.

      “Allow me,” said a voice she recognized.

      Tara shrieked. She jerked around blindly and her hands came up as though to ward off a blow. The laundry bag dropped at her feet. “You!”

      “Northern women have such a hard time accepting hospitality.” Fox stepped around her and opened the cab door himself. “Ladies first.”

      “No!”

      “I won’t think less of you if you have a gracious moment.”

      She felt helpless temper fill her head. Tara looked down while she tried to get her breath and her equilibrium back, while she got it under control. He wore really fine alligatorskin boots, she noticed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d met a man who wore alligator boots. Why did he always have to look so damned good?

      “Isn’t that an endangered species or something?” she muttered.

      Amazingly, he followed her train of thought and looked down as well. “I’ve never met an alligator who didn’t deserve to be worn. Which may be more than I can say for that fur coat you’re wearing.”

      Tara’s head snapped up and her gaze narrowed on him. “It’s faux.”

      He grinned. “If that’s what gets your conscience through the night.” Then he ran a finger along her sleeve as though to be sure.

      Tara felt the jolt of his touch clear through her coat. His eyes caught hers and held on in something that felt like a challenge…and she didn’t think it had much to do with her fake fur. Her breath caught all over again. He really was the devil incarnate, but for a crazy moment she found herself tempted to lose her soul to him.

      The thought nearly stole her voice. “Go away,” she said hoarsely. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

      “Fine. You take this cab and I’ll take the next one. But, ma’am, we surely do need to talk.”

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