Dangerous to Touch (4 page)

“I’ll pull over,” he offered, probably more for his leather interior’s sake than her own.

She waved him on, because she didn’t have anything left in her stomach anyway.

In front of Oceanside Police Department, a crowd of reporters had congregated. Lieutenant Cruz let out an inventive combination of expletives. “What do they want?”

Lacy shrugged. “Go around back.”

He maneuvered his car into the rear parking lot and jumped out. To Sidney’s surprise, he opened the door for her. As she exited the vehicle, a tiny blonde strode toward them with a purpose, cameraman in tow.

It was Crystal Dunn, Sidney realized, mildly starstruck.

“No comment,” Lieutenant Cruz said before the pretty reporter could ask a question.

“Are you a witness in the investigation of Candace Hegel’s death?” Crystal asked anyway, shoving the microphone in Sidney’s face.

“Death?” Sidney repeated dully.

“She has no comment,” Lieutenant Cruz grated, clamping his hand around Sidney’s bare upper arm. Even in public, on camera, no less, his touch elicited a shiver of excitement. And a startling secret: He’d been romantically involved with Crystal Dunn, at one time or another.

Her pleasure fizzled. No wonder Sidney wasn’t his type, if he chased after doll-sized blondes with rapacious personalities. As he strode across the parking lot, practically dragging her along, she could hear Crystal Dunn’s no-nonsense voice as she shared the details of the latest homicide:

“Miss Hegel was found dead early this morning in Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Police officials have no comment-”

“You’re hurting me.”

He looked down at his hand, wrapped around her arm. “Sorry,” he said, loosening his grip. Sidney could tell he was furious, although he hid it well. He probably didn’t care for Crystal Dunn leaking details of a homicide to a possible suspect.

It had been petty and unprofessional of her, actually. With so much animosity between them, it was hard to guess who dumped whom.

“Detective Lacy, would you show Miss Morrow to one of the interview rooms, please?” he asked, looking down an empty hallway. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Lacy kept her face bland and authoritative. “Right this way, ma’am.”

The women’s locker room was clear. Marc breathed a sigh of relief, knowing he’d catch hell from Deputy Chief Stokes if she found him snooping around in here.

He located Lacy’s locker and began rifling through its contents. She had some girl stuff, makeup and deodorant, but no perfume or jewelry. A clean, pressed patrol uniform hung on a wooden hanger.

He grabbed a mesh bag from the bottom. Towels, shampoo. Damn.

Frustrated, he grabbed her oversize brown leather purse, preparing to dump out its contents and use it as his prop. Inside, however, there was a flimsy purple scarf, folded into a tiny square. Perfect.

He shoved it in his pocket, hoping to discredit Sidney Morrow for good. The look on her face, right before she got sick, had been damned convincing. He was still pissed off at himself for getting caught up in her ruse, even for a second.

Lots of women could vomit on cue. It was called bulimia, not ESP.

When he opened the door to the interview room, he was all business. Lacy was intimidating the subject with a cold, hard stare, arms folded over her chest. On the other side of the table, Sidney was fidgeting.

As he took his seat next to Lacy, he studied his quarry, confused by her appeal. He liked confident women. Bold, aggressive women who knew how to please a man. Women who were well aware of their own allure.

Sidney Morrow was as timid as a rabbit. If he touched her, she’d jump. If he kept touching her, she’d squirm. She was like a bundle of raw nerve endings. Against his better judgment, he speculated on what it would be like to go to bed with her.

“Dr. Vincent says you…know things,” he began. “Sense them.”

“I don’t.”

“Come on,” he said. “You knew the dog had been drugged. You knew his name and that he’d come along the river-”

“All perfectly reasonable assumptions.”

“Either you’re a psychic or a suspect, Miss Morrow. Which do you prefer?”

When she remained silent, he slid a picture across the table, an autopsy photo of Anika Groene, her bare skin riddled with red marks. “See those bites? Whoever killed her tied her up and let rats crawl over her. They feasted on her naked body while she was still alive.”

“Please,” she whispered, looking away, her eyes watery and tortured.

Marc steeled himself against the sight. “What was he doing to Candace Hegel yesterday, while you were insisting you didn’t know anything? What was he doing while you were pretending ‘Blue’ was just a good guess?”

“I don’t know,” she moaned, twisting her hands in her lap.

Marc felt a surge of triumph, sensing her upcoming capitulation.

“Tell us what you
do
know,” he urged.

“I had a dream,” she said finally. “Or something. I heard a dog barking, yesterday morning, as I was waking up. When I got to the kennel, there he was.”

It didn’t make any sense, but nothing about her did. “And?”

“And I did guess his name, okay? I called him Blue, and he came right to me, so I knew I was right. When I reached down to pet him-” She broke off, searching for the words to explain. “I just knew stuff.”

“Like what?”

“That he’d broken out of a vehicle, and he was groggy. I don’t know where he’d been, but I think he heard gunshots, and he spooked.”

“Gunshots? What kind?”

“A shotgun, maybe.”

“Would you know the difference by sound?”

“No. It’s just an impression.”

“Go on.”

“He ran through the river, trying to get back to his owner. That’s it.”

Mark’s eyes narrowed. She hadn’t told him anything specific, or anything that could be disproved. By keeping it vague, she was covering her bases. Tapping the tips of his fingers on the surface of the desk, he asked, “Anything else?”

“I had another dream this morning,” she admitted. “Of suffocating, drowning. Being restrained.”

“By what?”

She rubbed her wrists. “I don’t know. My face was covered with some sort of dark, thick plastic. I couldn’t breathe.”

Marc nodded thoughtfully, as if taking her at her word. There was no way she could know Candace Hegel had been alive when the killer had thrown her in the lagoon, or that the victim had been wrapped in a plastic tarp.

He reached into his pocket. “If we had an article of clothing belonging to the deceased, could you get an ‘impression’ from it?”

“Probably not. It doesn’t work on command. I can’t always-”

“Would you try?” he asked, pinning her with a look. “It would mean a great deal to her family.”

Her stormy-gray eyes were black-rimmed, thickly lashed and startlingly beautiful. “All right,” she said softly.

He handed her the gauzy purple scarf, noting Lacy’s sudden tension beside him.

Puzzled, Sidney focused her concentration on the swatch of fabric, letting it slide through her fingers, caress her skin. Marc watched her in utter fascination, mesmerized by the performance. She was very, very good. To look at her, eyes closed, moist lips slightly parted, breath coming in short, soft pants, one would think she was lost in sensation, completely unaware of their presence.

And sexually aroused.

As her chest rose and fell, her nipples pushed impudently against the cloth of her sleeveless cotton top, hardening before his eyes.

Damn, she was good. Marc didn’t have to look at Lacy to know she was equally riveted. He couldn’t imagine a more provocative display.

Unless she actually started touching herself.

To his disappointment, her eyes flew open and she pushed the scarf away from her, cheeks tinged pink.

“Very nice,” Marc murmured when he was capable of speech.

“What do you do for an encore? Strip naked?”

Her eyes darkened. “Why don’t you two play your twisted sex games with someone else?” she retorted, looking back and forth between them.

“
Our
twisted sex games? That was a one-woman show you just gave us, Miss Morrow. Delightful, but all you.”

“Well, that game-” she pointed at the slinky, purple scarf “-involved two women. And neither of them was Candace Hegel.”

“Oh really?” he drawled. “My mistake.” He glanced sideways at Lacy. “I assure you I wasn’t a participant. What were these lovely ladies doing, by the way?”

“Drop it,” Lacy warned under her breath.

“Never mind,” he sighed, training an appreciative eye on Sidney Morrow. He’d underestimated her. She was frighteningly intuitive, a consummate actress and the best damned charlatan he’d ever seen.

Her distract and dazzle technique was wickedly effective, he had to admit. He couldn’t have been more turned on. “Let’s go,” he decided, stifling his lust. “No more games.”

“I can leave now?”

“After a brief stop, yes, you’ll be free to go.”

Lacy gave him an incredulous stare, which he ignored. Yes, it was foolhardy to let her walk; she might be an accomplice to murder. If physical evidence didn’t point to a male perpetrator, he’d consider her the prime suspect.

Whatever her role, he’d be watching her like a hawk until he figured out what she was up to, and before he let her off the hook, he couldn’t pass on the chance to shake her up again.

With grim determination, he led her down to the morgue.

S
idney shot daggers into Lieutenant Cruz’s well-formed back with her eyes as she followed him down a dark staircase. He’d set her up on purpose by giving her an article of clothing that belonged to Detective Lacy, not Candace Hegel. The attempt to prove her false had backfired, yet Sidney was the one wallowing in humiliation.

When she’d held the slippery fabric in her hands, a thrill had raced through her, as undeniable as any of the emotions she channeled secondhand. She’d felt the scarf trailing over her naked body, followed by a woman’s eager mouth, and she’d responded.

She couldn’t believe how she’d responded. Intensely aware of his presence, even while under the sensual spell, she had mistakenly assumed she was witnessing a
ménage à trois
between Lieutenant Cruz, Detective Lacy, and another woman.

The very idea of it heated her cheeks.

Equally embarrassed, Detective Lacy had made her excuses, leaving Sidney to complete whatever sinister task Lieutenant Cruz had in store for her. They stopped in front of a heavy door marked Morgue.

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head.

“Oh, yes,” he countered. “You’re going to use that psychic touch on Candace Hegel.”

“No,” she repeated, shivering. This morning’s chill was back with reinforcements.

“I still have that arrest warrant, if all else fails,” he warned.

“Have you ever heard of a body cavity search, Miss Morrow? It’s very invasive, I assure you. Especially for someone as sensitive as you.”

Fury washed over her. “You are such a bastard,” she said.

A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he made no reply as he unlocked the door. Leading her into the depths of the cavernous interior, he located a metal locker and pulled out the horizontal drawer. Before she could turn away, he unzipped the body bag.

Sidney felt the color drain from her face.

“What do you want? Her hand?” With callous indifference, he opened the bag further, exposing a woman’s head and upper torso.

It was Sidney’s first glimpse of death.

Candace Hegel’s attractive features were slack, robbed of beauty, devoid of expression. Her naked chest was bisected with a hideous, Y-shaped incision, and with no oxygenated blood pumping through her body, her skin was strangely discolored. Her lips were dark and her areolae an odd purplish-gray. She looked…cold.

Taking the corpse’s pale, limp hand away from her side, Marc held it out toward Sidney, his expression inscrutable.

Her eyes filled with tears as she pressed the dead flesh between her two palms.

With no warning, cold enveloped her, encompassed her, consumed her. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Pain exploded inside her head, a quick flash, and she sank heavily into the darkness
.

Marc caught her as she fell.

He couldn’t believe she’d actually held her breath until she passed out-what kind of grown woman would resort to such extreme measures? Laying her out on the floor carefully, he reevaluated her motives. Maybe she was just a sad, lonely basket case, one who truly believed she had special powers.

However she’d come by her information, he couldn’t imagine her hurting anyone, and she didn’t deserve to be treated this way. He rarely used cruelty as an investigative technique, and had to admit his motivations for doing so now were more about his personal bias than about her.

In his opinion, psychics were little better than vultures, picking on the bones of the bereaved. Because of people like her, his mother was still trying to communicate with his father via the spirit world. She couldn’t let go of him, a man who hadn’t been worthy of her affection while he’d been alive.

It drove Marc crazy, thinking about all the time she spent chasing ghosts. Walking down dark alleyways and being ushered into back rooms. Paying money in exchange for lies.

Clenching his jaw in annoyance, he stared down at Sidney’s chalk-white face, waiting for her to resume breathing. She didn’t. After falling unconscious, the body’s natural inclination was to kick up the oxygen, yet she lay there, as quiet as Candace Hegel’s corpse.

What the hell?

Her pulse was visible, throbbing delicately in her slender neck. While he watched, it slowed, then stopped altogether.

Muttering a curse, he leaned over her prone form to give her two quick breaths. Her lips were soft and cool, completely slack. If this was a trick, he was buying it hook, line and sinker. He checked her pulse, couldn’t find it, panicked and gave her two more breaths.

Gasping, she lurched forward, clutching her chest.

Weak with relief and stunned to the core, he lay stretched out on the ground beside her, placing a hand over his own heart, which was knocking hard against his ribs.

“What happened?” she wheezed.

“You died.”

“Oh my God.”

“He didn’t save you,” Marc asserted. “I did.”

She leaned to one side and wretched pitifully, her shoulders shaking.

Marc put Candace Hegel back in place, folding her arms across her chest with careful reverence and zipping up the body bag. His hands were trembling as he grabbed some paper towels for Sidney and a plastic cup of water.

She accepted his tepid peace offering in silence, dabbing at her damp mouth. “Why did you do that?” she asked after a moment, her huge gray eyes swimming with tears.

He looked away, hating the reflection of himself he imagined there. “Because I’m a bastard, just like you said.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

His gaze jerked back to her face. He’d just forced her to hold hands with a dead woman, and she was apologizing to him? “Don’t worry about it. It’s true across the board.” He watched her take a small sip of water. “So what did you see?”

“Nothing. It was just…black.”

Bleakly he wondered what she’d see in his soul. “I’ll take you home,” he offered.

“I have to get back to work,” she argued.

“You just died, woman! Take the afternoon off.”

She chuckled weakly. “I don’t have anyone to cover for me.”

Marc stared down at her in disbelief, frustrated with the entire situation. He couldn’t decide what he thought about her, and that was a complication he didn’t need. No way she was legit. So what the hell was she?

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant. You’ll find the real killer.”

“Are you a prophet, too?”

“No,” she said with a rueful smile. “I was just trying to be supportive.”

Although he was wary of misplaced kindness, he couldn’t resist smiling back at her. “Don’t you think you can call me Marc now? After all we’ve been through?”

“Okay,” she said, taking his proffered hand. “And I’m Sidney.”

Ignoring the burst of warmth in her eyes, and the matching sensation in the middle of his chest, he helped her to her feet.

At Vincent Veterinary Clinic, Marc attached a GPS tracking device to the chassis of Sidney’s pickup truck while she went inside to get Blue. When she came out, mangy-looking hound in tow, both dog and woman regarded him with mistrust.

“Can you take some time off tomorrow?” he asked, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Why?”

“I thought we could drive him around. Walk him along the river, maybe. See if he…smells anything.”

She released the tailgate. “Why would you waste your time? You don’t believe me.” When he made no reply, she gave the dog a brisk order in a foreign language. Blue jumped up and went inside the carrier.

“You speak German?”

“No.” Realizing she just had, she said, “I’ve picked up a few commands. A lot of people train their dogs that way, and he’s part shepherd.”

“Really? I thought he was half wolf, half hyena.”

She shot him a dirty look as she shut the kennel door.

“What did you say to him?”

“Get in,” she decided.

She’d said “up,” but he didn’t bother to correct her. “So how about tomorrow?”

“We could go early, before the kennel opens,” she offered with a tense shrug. “It would be cooler.”

“Five-thirty?”

“I guess,” she said in a resigned voice.

“I’ll come by your house,” he tossed over his shoulder as he walked away.

“Don’t you need my address?” she called after him.

He shook his head, because he already had it. By late afternoon, he’d not only located her small, two-story residence, he’d familiarized himself with every square inch of it. The covert-entry search warrant he’d obtained allowed him to rifle through her personal belongings at his leisure. Sidney would be notified of the “sneak and peek” search when she was no longer under investigation.

Unfortunately there was nothing incriminating inside.

Nothing interesting, either. All of her clothes were well-worn, casual and inexpensive, from her pocket T-shirts to her simple cotton bikini briefs.

The place was quaint and spotless, with mismatched furniture, unusual knickknacks and colorful accents. She saved things like birthday cards and photos in a disorganized drawer, as if she meant to go through them later. Flipping through the photos, he saw a great-looking blonde with two dark-haired girls and a middle-aged couple who must have been Sidney’s parents.

There was no indication of a man in her life, but she had a smush-faced little cat, sitting proprietarily atop her wrought-iron bed. The powder-blue chenille bedspread looked as soft as a cloud, the hardwood flooring was polished to a dull shine and the pale yellow paint was warm and unassuming.

It was…cozy.

On impulse, he reached out to place his palm on the pillow where he imagined she put her head. His hand stood out against the white pillowcase, obscenely dark and masculine in the feminine space, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled with awareness.

It was just like his mother’s house, he realized with horror. Nothing new, nothing matching, nothing expensive and a sense of complacent loneliness that tugged at the heartstrings.

He jerked his hand away from the pillow, unsettled by the revelation. Sidney’s cat startled at the sudden movement, flying off the bed and losing her footing on the slippery floor as she rounded the corner. Berating himself for the moment of sentimentality, he went downstairs and attached a listening device to the cordless phone on his way out.

In addition to the search warrant, a judge had signed his request to run video and audio surveillance. If the killer was in contact with Sidney, feeding her specific details about the murders, that made her an accessory after the fact.

If she was telling the truth…

Marc shook his head, because he couldn’t fathom it. Maybe he was a cynic, but at least he wasn’t a sucker. There was one born every day, his father had always said, and he’d been a master at spotting them. He claimed there was nothing more rewarding than pulling off the perfect con. Marc respectfully disagreed. Catching the player at his game was far sweeter.

So why did the thought of arresting Sidney leave a bitter taste in his mouth?

Deputy Chief Stokes had given him the authority to run full surveillance, if not the budget. He’d booked a cheap hotel room less than a block away, but he couldn’t get a visual on her back door from there. They couldn’t afford to have undercover officers parked on the street in front of her house or hanging around the beach behind it.

He grabbed the white hard hat he kept in the trunk of his car for assuming alternative identities and climbed the telephone pole closest to her house, hoping anyone who saw him would think he was a well-dressed phone company employee.

Near the top, he saw the angle gave him a bird’s-eye view into her backyard. It was a miniscule space with an array of potted plants and a large outdoor shower, probably for washing off sand from the beach. He set up a small, nondescript video camera, similar to the ones that come with your basic home computer nowadays, but of marginally better quality, and made sure it was pointed toward her back door.

With that done, he returned to the hotel room, engaged the feed for the bugs and the video camera and waited.

Detective Lacy arrived after he’d done all the work, but she brought excellent takeout so he didn’t fault her.

“I was thinking,” she said around a mouthful of mu shu pork, “maybe she’s not faking.”

Marc gave her an expression that meant she was incredibly naïve, and kept eating his beef and broccoli.

“I mean, how did she know about the scarf?”

“Your face is an open book,” he said, because he didn’t know, either.

She grunted in disbelief. “Next time you’re going to pull a stunt like that, could you let me in on it? I almost died of embarrassment.”

“How was I supposed to know you had kinky stuff in your locker? It was the only article of clothing I could find in there besides a uniform.”

“Well, I don’t see how she could have known-unless she talked to Gina.” She narrowed her eyes. “They did smile at each other.”

Marc laughed at her display of jealousy. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“She’s straight.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” he said, aware that he sounded very arrogant.

Lacy crossed her arms over her chest. “Not every woman is after your schlong, Marcos.”

“Well, if I stick with the ones who are,” he said lightly, taking no offense, “I still have a variety to choose from.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

“What?”

“Fulfilling a badge-and-holster fantasy for jaded bimbos?”

“No. Why would I?”

“Because it’s degrading.”

“Not to me.”

“To them, then.”

He shrugged, because he didn’t care.

“Sidney Morrow is not your type,” she announced, coming around to the point she really wanted to make.

“She’s not yours, either,” he retorted, starting to get pissed off.

“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “She might go for it. A bottle of wine, a couple of scarves…”

Over my dead body, he almost said before he realized she was teasing. Then he scowled at his reaction. Since when had he been possessive over a woman-a suspect no less-one who was unequivocally hands-off?

Lacy was right, anyway. She wasn’t his type.