Bait (29 page)

“Wow,” Maddie breathed, picturing all those relatives with bedazzlement. “Are you close with them? Do you see them often?”

“When I can.” His mouth curled into a smile. “I make it to all the big holidays, anyway.”

“Sounds wonderful,” she said. She was so cozy and comfortable that she was feeling almost boneless now. With McCabe only an arm's length away, the twin specters of bad dreams and determined killers seemed impossibly distant. “Do you live near each other?”

“Everybody except my lawyer brother and I live in Greenville, South Carolina, where we grew up. He lives in Savannah, and I keep a condo near Quantico.”

Her brow contracted, and she tilted her head a little on the armrest so that she could see him better. Kicked back in the chair, with the light from the TV playing over him and his long legs stretched out in front of him, he looked about as relaxed as she felt.

“So what were you doing in New Orleans?” she asked.

His eyes cut to her. His hands tightened on the arms of the chair.

“My job,” he said. “Just like you.”

His job. For a little while there, she'd almost forgotten what he was. Anxiety twisted her insides, and suddenly she wasn't quite as sleepy anymore.

“McCabe,” she said. “What happens when somebody at your job says it's time for you to leave?”

He met her gaze. Alive with the glow of the TV, his eyes gleamed at her.

“What happens to you, you mean?” he asked. Maddie gave a little nod. “I won't leave you until I'm sure you're safe. You don't have to worry.”

“I wasn't worried,” she said, although she was. “I just wanted to know what to expect.”

Although she'd known, of course, from the very beginning. The FBI used people, and when they had no more use for them they discarded them like so much trash.

How stupid was she to let herself forget that?

SIXTEEN

Monday, August 18

 

 

When Sam opened the door to Gardner at shortly before eight the next morning, he was not in the best of moods. After Maddie had finally fallen asleep on the couch, he had let her be for a while, trying to concentrate on the TV and his own thoughts instead of noticing the picture she made lying there or her occasional restless movements or the soft sound of her breathing. But ignoring her had proved impossible. Curled on her side with one hand tucked beneath her cheek, she had looked sweet and sexy and vulnerable. Her lashes formed dark crescents on her cheeks; her lips were just barely parted. Her body—no, he wasn't going there; he wasn't even going to
think
about her body. But even when he'd kept his eyes resolutely glued to the screen, he had been unable to push from his mind the knowledge that she was curled up little more than an arm's length away. When he caught himself glancing her way when he should have been watching Shaq mow down Yao Ming, he knew he had to do something.
Out of sight, out of mind,
he'd thought—too optimistically, as it had turned out—and had scooped her up in his arms and carried her to her bed. She hadn't so much as flickered an eyelid, and, deadweight, she'd been a substantial armful, but as he'd lugged her into the bedroom and deposited her, still wrapped in her robe, in the middle of her big bed, he'd made a grim discovery.

His deep, atavistic response to their kiss had not been an aberration. Holding the soft, curvy warmth of her in his arms, inhaling the sweet, light scent of her, feeling the satiny smoothness of her skin, he'd gotten hot all over again. So hot, in fact, that it had taken a large effort of will to stop himself from dropping down beside her and awakening her with a kiss and taking up where they'd left off. She would have welcomed him, he knew. He wasn't a kid; he'd had his share of women. The look in her eyes as she had followed him around after Gomez and Hendricks left was unmistakable. She might as well have been wearing a sign reading
Do me now.
What had stopped him was the knowledge that he was on the job, dammit, and her last line of defense besides.

And the little voice inside his head warning that with her, he just might be heading for trouble.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that zing.
Damn Grandma anyway for putting the phrase in his head.

Because with Maddie, he'd recognized it: zing. Zing in spades.

In the very last place he ever would have wanted to find it. His job was to keep her alive, not get her into bed. Although he seemed to be having a problem keeping that firmly fixed in the forefront of his mind.

“Hard night?” Gardner looked at him keenly as she walked past him into the apartment.

Sam replied with a grunt, then asked, “Did you bring it?” as he closed the door behind her.

“Right here.” Gardner jiggled the black vinyl tote she was carrying. Her hair was brushed close to her head so that it looked sleek rather than spiky, her eyes were bright, her makeup relatively subdued. She was wearing a black blazer over a white T-shirt and black pants. Her waist was cinched, her pants were tight, and her heels were high, but clearly she'd taken the information that she would be protecting Maddie in a business environment to heart as she dressed.

“I heard about your visitor last night,” she added. “Think it was our UNSUB?”

Sam shrugged. “I don't know. Seems kind of amateurish for this guy.”

“That's what I thought, too.” She looked toward the closed bedroom door and raised her voice. “Morning, Maddie.”

“Oh, hi, Cynthia,” Maddie called back from the other side of that door, her voice faintly muffled. “I'm almost ready.”

“Take your time,” Gardner responded. “Nobody's going anywhere without you.” She glanced at Sam. “Is that coffee I smell?”

He grunted again, this time as an affirmative. He had, in fact, made a fresh pot—his third since he'd walked away and left Maddie peacefully sleeping in her bed—when he'd heard Maddie get up. Busying himself in the kitchen had meant that he didn't have to watch her emerge all tousle-haired and sleepy-eyed from her bedroom. Which, considering the
zing,
was probably not an image he wanted to burden himself with. Not until he had a handle on how he felt.

“What, are you two bosom buddies now or something?” Sam asked sourly, following Gardner to the kitchen. Last time he'd paid the matter any attention, the two women had seemed to be just about civil and that was it.

“We talked.” Gardner dropped the tote on the kitchen table, snagged a cup from the cabinet, and filled it while Sam moved to lean against the counter beneath the window. Outside, he saw at a glance, the world was awash in sparkly sunshine. Birds twittered. Butterflies fluttered. Branches burst with leafy greenery. Inside, he just felt grumpy. “We bonded,” Gardner added.

Something about that didn't sound like it boded well for him. “You
bonded
?”

“Yep.” Gardner gulped down some coffee and made a face at him. “Over men. Over
you.
”

“What?”

“She's your type, isn't she? I recognized it as soon as I saw her.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” God deliver him from women. They were all—every single one he'd ever met—screwy as hell.

“Maddie. She's your type.” Gardner sounded regretful. “It's one of those things nobody can do anything about. That's why I decided to cut my losses.”

“What?”
Sam scowled at her for a second, then decided that he really didn't want to go there. Not this morning, not ever. He shook his head. “Never mind. I don't want to know.” Time to change the subject. “Any of that stuff we sent off come back yet?”

He was referring to the evidentiary material from both New Orleans crime scenes that had been sent off to the FBI lab for analysis.

Gardner assumed her game face, thank God. “Not yet. They said it would take a few days. They're busy.”

“Aren't we all. How about the in-depth backgrounds on our two Miz Fitzgeralds?”

“Stuff's coming in in bits and pieces. The ex-husband's alibi seems to be holding up.”

“Yeah. I'd already pretty much crossed him off my list.”

Gardner looked at him over her cup. “I take it the UNSUB hasn't called again?”

“Not yet.” Along with the
zing
factor, that was one of the things that was making him so antsy. Where
was
the guy? Of course, if he was creeping around Maddie's back stairs, maybe at the moment he had priorities other than picking up the phone.

But Sam didn't think so. Didn't think he was creeping around Maddie's back stairs, and didn't think he had other priorities. The sick bastard enjoyed the chase too much. In fact, Sam got the feeling that the sick bastard enjoyed taunting
him
too much.

It was personal.

Sam suddenly felt as if bells and whistles had just gone off in his brain and somebody inside there had just stood up and shouted,
“Eureka!”

“What?” Gardner said. Sam didn't know what his expression looked like, but Gardner had lowered her cup to stare at him.

“I know this guy,” Sam said, the wheels still turning. “Or he knows me. He's got to be somebody I've busted, or somebody connected with somebody I've busted, or somebody somehow connected with one of the cases I've worked.”

“Well, that narrows it down.” Grimacing, Gardner resumed drinking her coffee. “To maybe a cast of thousands. How long you been with the Bureau? Ten years? You work on what, maybe a hundred cases a year? Yep, a cast of thousands.”

“Not just anyone could pull this off,” Sam said slowly. “This guy's a pro. A sick fuck, but a pro.”

Maddie appeared in the doorway just then, and Sam shelved the matter as something to be looked into as soon as he got back to their command post in the hotel room where Wynne, hopefully, was holding down the fort.

“I'm ready to go,” Maddie addressed Gardner, ignoring Sam completely. So far that morning, she hadn't said a word to him. She hadn't so much as looked at him. As determined as he was to get their relationship back on strictly professional footing, he had to admit that it bugged him to realize that she seemed to have pretty much the same idea.

“Not so fast,” Sam said. “Gardner brought you a present.”

She looked at him then. Raised her eyebrows inquiringly. Sam felt the impact of those honey-colored eyes in places he didn't even want to think about. God, she was pretty, with her big do-me eyes and waves of shiny, dark hair and her soft, kissable mouth.
Okay, don't go there.
Like Gardner, she was wearing black and white, only her outfit consisted of a sexy little black dress that ended just above her knees beneath a loose white jacket. Unlike Gardner, though, she looked so hot he could practically feel the sizzle from where he stood.

Which wasn't good.

“What kind of present?” she asked suspiciously. They were the first words she'd spoken to him that morning.

Sam straightened, took the few steps necessary to reach the table, picked up the tote, and handed it to her.

“Here you go.”

Maddie looked at him, looked at the tote, then pulled out what, if someone didn't know better, could possibly be mistaken for a pale gray, sleeveless windbreaker. For a moment, she simply frowned at it in evident bewilderment.

“It's a bulletproof vest,” Gardner said.

Maddie's eyes widened. She unfolded the Kevlar vest and held it up in front of her, looking at it incredulously. Lightweight and thin, the garment was state-of-the-art.

“You've got to be kidding me.” Her eyes met his.

“Nope. Ordinarily it goes under your clothes, but since you're only going to be wearing it while you're outside, you can put it on over your dress and under your jacket, if you want.”

She looked from the vest to him again. “Do I really need this?”

“Let's see, aren't you the person who got shot a couple of days back?”

Her lips compressed, her eyes flickered, and he could tell that had registered.

“Good point,” she said, and, putting the vest down on the table, took off her jacket. Sam couldn't help noticing how slim and shapely she looked in the formfitting dress that somehow managed to be business-appropriate while still hugging every delectable curve. Then she had the vest on and was struggling to zip it up. Still distracted by the view, he reached out to help her automatically, only realizing that this might not be the best idea when his knuckles brushed against cool cloth covering the flatness of her belly and he felt an unexpected spark of heat. Then the scent of her hit him—fresh and clean, with that mysterious hint of strawberries—and he had an instant flashback to how she had felt in his arms. Gritting his teeth, banishing the memory to outer darkness, he pulled the zipper up with cool efficiency and stepped back.

Hoping like hell that he was only imagining the sweat popping out on his brow.

“You wear it from the time you leave your apartment until you're safely inside your office building,” he said as she pulled her jacket back on and looked down at the result doubtfully. “When you leave your office building to come home, you wear it. If you leave your office building for anything, you wear it. Anytime you go outside for any reason, you wear it. Got it?”

She nodded. He thought, maybe, that she might have turned a shade paler than before.

“Okay, I have to ask it.” She looked up, met his gaze, turned sideways, and gestured at herself. “Does this bulletproof vest make me look fat?”

Then, as Gardner gave a snort of laughter, Maddie grinned at him. And his heart turned over. It was as simple as that.