Deadly Fall (7 page)

Augusta had never heard such soft concern in Hayes’ voice before and it made her blink. Her vision cleared immediately.

“I-I’m fine,” she said quietly, not looking up from the paper. “I just need a second. Or two.”

“Estranged Wife Top Suspect in Andrew Langan’s Murder,” the headline pronounced, accompanied by a black-and-white photo of an unsmiling Augusta, looking somewhat shady in her slick suit and head lowered, being personally escorted by a grim Detective Nick Markov from the Nineteenth Precinct.

* * * * *

Nick took two steps away from the door, stopped, scrubbed his face with his hands and made a low sound of frustration in his throat.

A hand landed on his shoulder. “Hey, partner, you going to be okay?”

Nick inhaled deeply and exhaled through his teeth. “Yeah. Just give me a moment.”

Ethan Murtagh studied his partner as the other man stalked to his desk. It hadn’t been good. From the moment they had stepped into the squad room, it hadn’t been good. There was the usual frantic orderliness that was customary for the precinct, or any precinct in the city. Noise from the arguments, deprecations, orders and any and all exchanges was at a moderate level, or for the Nineteenth it was. None of the noise, however, was from officers calling around for leads on Andrew Langan’s murder. Not anymore. Over two hundred calls had been made in the first forty-eight hours. It was roughly three days since Andrew Langan skydived to his death, and the chances of catching the perpetrators decreased dramatically. Slim to none, came to mind. Historically, if no arrests are made within forty-eight hours, more likely than not no arrests would be made at all.

His lieutenant and captain, whom they had been talking with earlier, knew this. Perhaps
talk
wasn’t the right word. They had been subjected to a diatribe about the importance of the case, the victim and how the chief had city hall breathing down his neck and the chief, in turn, had been breathing down the captain’s neck since Ethan had called in the homicide in the wee morning hours on Wednesday. However, they could no longer assign so many people to the case.

The situation, much to Nick’s disgust, was salvageable, they had said.

Augusta Langan was the key.

Everyone was demanding an arrest. And the most…convenient suspect was “the wife.” It had taken considerable effort on Nick’s part not to lose it then and there.

Ethan perched himself on Nick’s desk. His expression promised more of that they’d heard earlier.

“They have a point.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you start. She didn’t do it.”

“How do you know? She has motive, opportunity and no alibi.” There was a frustrated edge in Ethan’s tone.

“My gut says so.”

Ethan was off the desk. “Your gut? Or is it something lower?”

Nick gave his partner a look that could’ve sliced through concrete. His next words were very low and very succinct. “Go to hell.”

Ethan made an exasperated sound. “Use your brain, damn it, not your dick.”

Nick rose from his chair.

Ethan, correctly reading the murderous intent in Nick’s eyes, raised his hands in concession. He turned his palms out and started to say something. But Nick’s attention shifted and his gaze locked on the figure coming towards them. Augusta Langan, looking as ready to commit murder as Nick had felt mere seconds ago. The stirring was neither dead nor anxiety, but, perverse as it was, anticipation.

When the officer at the front desk had refreshed her memory and told her the general direction of Nick Markov’s desk, Augusta had only tunnel vision. Anger, fury, outrage burned away everything else, leaving her oblivious to all that had made her uneasy upon her initial visit to the station house. Augusta weaved through the pandemonium that was the station house, eyes trained on one person and one person only. She halted not two feet away from the man she held responsible for the sudden upheaval of her quiet life.

Head tilted back so she could glare into his eyes, Augusta slapped a rolled up newspaper against his broad chest, regretting not having anything handy that could do real damage.

“
This
is all
your
fault, Detective,” she gritted out between her teeth, voice low and lethal, a perfect accompaniment to the daggers shooting from her eyes. She hit him again with the newspaper. “I can’t believe you did this to me. And to believe I almost—” Her words ended on a strangled sound.

Nick caught the paper before she could hit him a third time. A brief tug of war, then the paper was stolen from her grasp. He snapped it open and his gaze scrolled down the paper.

Augusta narrowed her eyes. She knew a stall tactic when she saw one, and Nick Markov wasn’t being too subtle about it.

“So,” Nick began, “do you want to hear an explanation in private or do you want to continue with this scene?”

Augusta dismissed their audience, including Nick’s partner, with a flick of her wrist, but her voice lowered a notch. “What I want to know, Detective, is…is how could you?”

To her disgust, she felt her eyes burn and quickly blinked. But it was too late. She saw an answering emotion very much like pity in Nick Markov’s eyes and took a step back, needing to move herself beyond his reach.

But she underestimated him, in more ways than one. Without moving from his spot, Nick slid his fingers around her right hip to settle on her back and instructed for her ears only, “Come this way, Augusta.”

She wordlessly did as he asked, trying not to think about the last time he had made her come with him. The large palm splayed on the small of her back directed her and did nothing more. And yet it took more than Augusta realized not to shrink from his touch and the astounding heat that seared her skin through the thick material of her skirt.

They were halfway down a short hallway when Nick curved his fingers about her right hip and pulled her back. He then pushed open the unmarked door to their left and Augusta went in first, eager and, yet, disappointed, to escape his touch. The room was small, dim and windowless. Well, maybe not windowless, Augusta corrected herself, noticing the large sheet of glass that took up nearly the far side wall. But the window didn’t look outside. Instead, it looked into an even smaller room on the other side. A cheap, worn-looking table with three equally cheap, equally worn-looking chairs were in the center of the unlit room.

She was looking through a two-way mirror, Augusta realized, and her arms tightened about her chest. She inhaled deeply, her nails digging into the fleshy part of her palm. Was he trying to intimidate her? Was that what he was trying to do by showing her the interview room he could’ve kept her in for hours on end?

“Take a seat,” came the order from behind her.

The inherent command in his voice had her spine straightening. She turned very carefully on her heel and faced him. He was leaning back too casually against the door she hadn’t heard him close. Augusta shook her head once, then she stood motionless as he studied her from beneath a hooded gaze. She took that chance to study him in turn.

She hadn’t seen him in nearly a day and found herself disgustingly eager to refresh her memory. Not that her memory needed refreshing. She had him, his looks, his scent, his taste, his very presence, engraved in her mind. Quite simply, she couldn’t forget him had she wanted to. And if it was only lust, she could’ve handled that.

“Why are you here?”

His question made her blink twice. It was obvious, wasn’t it?

“This,” he began, holding up the rolled
Times
, “wouldn’t have been enough to send you here. Not when you balked at the mere thought of walking through the doors yesterday.”

Augusta’s hands shot out and gripped the back of a chair. Her knuckles were white. “I went home earlier and found reporters camped out in front of my house. But,” she continued, her voice rising and the words coming out more quickly with the resurgence of her anger, “that was only after I discovered the vultures circling the campus building where my office is and was consequently told by the faculty dean to take a leave of absence until further notice. They might as well have outright fired me. All because of that damned article. And you.” She took a deep breath, released it and regained a measure of control. “A ‘trusted source within the NYPD’ confirmed that you are concentrating your efforts on me because the latest theory is that I hired an assassin to do away with my estranged husband before the divorce could be finalized.” A sardonic eyebrow inched upwards as her voice cooled considerably. “Trying to sway public opinion so the trial’ll be easier? I didn’t think you would resort to such underhanded measures, Detective Markov.”

There was the scraping of chair legs on the floor, then he was suddenly looming in front of her, over her, but Augusta refused to back down. She wasn’t about to give him the pleasure of knowing he could intimidate her. He had already taken enough from her. Her job, her privacy, her life. The life she was only beginning to reconstruct again.

Nick cupped her shoulders and gave her a small shake. “Do you think I’d set you up? That I’d leak that garbage to the press?” When she didn’t answer, he shook her again and her hair came free of the loose swirl she had pinned above the nape of her neck. Her hair fell forward to obscure the sides of her face. “Jesus Christ. I spent the good part of my morning defending you. Everyone else is ready to hang you. Can you understand that? I’m the only one on your side at the moment.” His fingers tightened on her shoulders, making her wince, but she didn’t pull away. “And when I find the leak, he’s going to be writing traffic tickets for the rest of his career.”

The anger dissipated, replaced by burgeoning hope tempered with wariness as she considered the possibility that he was on her side…and not simply biding his time. Very slowly, very carefully, her head tipped forward to rest against his sternum.

His rough palms slid up her shoulders, lightly scratching her skin and leaving a trail of heat in his wake. His long fingers encircled her neck, his thumbs gently tilting her chin up. “How can you think that I would do something like that to you after what happened?”

Her smile was sad and fleeting. “That was lust.”

She felt his muscles stiffen and his fingers flex, and she prepared herself to be shaken once more. But he only said evenly, “It was more than lust, and you know it. You’re just too damned scared to admit it.”

Perhaps that slide of hot-cold emotion she felt in her middle was the fear he mentioned.

He pulled her closer and Augusta let him, but her arms remained limp at her sides. A low, masculine chuckle ruffled her hair. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Then don’t,” she whispered, but she didn’t move away.

“I can’t help it,” he said, equally quiet. His right hand lifted and he drew his fingers through her hair, brushing it back from her face. He lowered his head even more, his frame almost stooped over hers. “And,” he added right against her ear, the light, tentative brush of his lips on the outer rim making her want to melt like butter all over him, “neither can you.”

Augusta tried to bite back the sensuous, needy moan and failed.

His strong, even teeth came together with exquisite care on her lobe. Her breath hitched in her throat. His tongue flicked out to tease her flesh even as he tugged with his teeth. Augusta’s lashes fluttered close. He was as gentle and giving now as he had been rough and demanding before. Both made her equally aroused.

“All I’ve thought about since I dropped you off is getting my hands on you again…” And those clever hands swept a slow path down her sides, briefly tormenting the overly sensitive sides of her breasts with his thumbs. “And again…” Down to her waist, the small of her back, the gentle flare of her hips. “And again.”

He filled his eager palms with her buttocks and lifted her up and closer to him, rubbing her in a circular motion against him. Hot, liquid sensation rushed through her and she exhaled sharply, fingertips digging into his shoulders.

His name was a low moan as she blindly sought his lips with hers and wrapped her legs reflexively about his hips. His lips trailed to hers, nipped. Her mouth fell open, wanting more. He rubbed his pelvis against the warm notch between her legs, circling, pushing, and did it again.

He groaned. “Not here,” he muttered harshly. “Not like this.” Another groan, then he pressed one final hard kiss on her lips and gently but firmly untangled her legs behind his back. Then bracketing her hips with his hands, he lifted her away from him and set her on feet. It was a few long moments before she was steady enough to lean back.

Augusta refused to look up at him. The heat suffusing her face, neck and chest was now more due to embarrassment than passion, but passion still had her taking shallow breaths through her mouth.

One final deep inhalation, then she swung away from the man who had just rejected her and gripped the back of a chair as if it was a lifeline. She stared into the interview room on the other side of the two-way mirror, the image out of focus.

She should be grateful to him, though. If his common sense hadn’t kicked in, she wouldn’t have stopped him. They would’ve made love in a viewing room. No, she rectified, it wouldn’t have been making love. It would’ve been sex.