Guarding Kelsey ((Books We Love Romantic Suspense)) (4 page)

"He's been here," she muttered.
Fear ripped
through
her in numbing waves.

"Who's been here?" Wolf asked.

"Him.
The man you're looking for.
He's been in my home."

“You must be mistaken.
He’s trying to scare you.”

“Well, it worked.”
This time, she feared she really would be ill.
She spun around and ran towards her bathroom.

* * *

Wolf started to follow and then thought better of going after her.
The woman deserved a moment to collect herself before she had to answer another round of questions. Instead he went to the telephone to put the receiver back in place. The answering machine was stil
l recording.
He
played back the conversation that had such an unnerving effect on the otherwise cool, Miss Winston.

He could easily understand why she looked ill.
There was no veiled message in the caller’s words that she might have misconstrued. She’d received a death threat.

“Maybe I should check on her.”

Martinez shook his head and laughed.
“Do you want to see if you can make it any worse?
What is it with you?”

His partner was probably right.
He did tend to rub her the wrong way.
Which made him wonder, how she would respond if he rubbed her the right way?
A thousand volts of pure desire slammed though his body.
Damn!
He needed to get a grip and start thinking with his brain again.

“You’d think the bastard would be long gone by now.
We'll have to get the captain to provide some additional protection for her.”
Something wasn’t right.
Wolf couldn’t put his finger on it, but the pieces didn’t add up to the big picture.

"What’s bothering you?" Martinez asked.

"If Harrison was taken out by a professional
hit man
, I doubt the guy would stick around.
I don't imagine the mob would take chances on using an amateur for
.
."

A loud crash cut him off.
Both detectives removed their guns from their shoulder holsters and ran in the direction of the noise.
From the hall corridor, Wolf saw the half open door.

He paused outside, his gun drawn, and quickly scanned the room.
The area seemed secure.
He took another step inside and saw Kelsey slumped against a glass top vanity and staring at the bed in utter terror.
On the pillow sat a small Cleopatra doll with a knife stuck right through the heart. Where the hell had it come from?

Martinez went to the bed and lifted the doll up with a handkerchief from his pocket.
He took it into the other room while Wolf checked on Kelsey.
She was shaken, and she had every right to be.
Apparently someone had gotten into her apartment, with no sign of forced entry and despite a rather sophisticated security system.
How did he manage to trace her so quickly?
Wolf didn’t like the direction his thoughts led.

He put a comforting hand on her shoulder which she immediately rebuffed.
"Don’t worry.
We will arrange to have a police officer protecting you until the man is brought in."

She raised her head.
Her smoldering glare burned right through him.
"And who is going to protect me from the police?"

"What do you mean?"

"How did he know my name?
My address?
My unlisted phone number?
As far as I know nothing was released to the press yet, was it, Detective?"

He neither confirmed nor denied her suspicions despite the fact that he agreed.
There had to be a leak.
“Do you live alone, Miss Winston?”

“Of course I do,” she said indignantly.

“Do you have a maid who might have inadvertently let someone into the condo or given out a copy of your key?”

“No.”

“Anyone else have keys?”

She nodded.
“My uncle, my mother, my grandparents. And of course, the condo association.
That’s all.”

That’s all?
Hell, with so many keys floating around out there it would be impossible to secure the place.
"Where did you go today?"

"I had a business breakfast with my uncle across town and then I went to the library.
And, no, I didn’t call anyone to tell them my plans today,” she said, reading his very thoughts.

Damn, she was smart.
Most women in her position would beg for police protection.
The caller knew that two police detective were with her.
The leak came from somewhere in the station house and she knew it.

Still, something bothered him.
Hit men
didn't terrorize their victims first. If she made a habit of interviewing crime victims, she might make a few enemies of the perpetrators of those crimes.
He shook his head. The Cleopatra doll was a direct reference to the charity ball the night before.

"No answers, Detective?" Kelsey queried.

"Not yet.
But I will get to the bottom of it.
In the
meantime
, Martinez will stay here while I speak to the captain.
We will arrange to have an officer with you at all times.”

Her blue eyes held him in check.
“When you send somebody, please choose someone you would trust with your life, not mine.”

If he had to choose a person he could trust then she was in deep trouble.
How could he trust anyone in the precinct?
How could he trust himself to keep her safe when he had been responsible for his own partner’s death?
He was better off leaving the matter of her safety in somebody else’s hands.

"You’ll be taken care of."

"That’s what I’m afraid of."

The woman had an uncanny knack for twisting his words and meanings.
She also had an uncanny knack for getting to him in a way no one had before.
More than her beauty drew him. She reached him on a more basic level tapping the part of him that he’d thought long dormant.
If he wasn’t careful, he might start letting his hormones rule his actions. Then they would both be in real danger
.

* * *

Wolf fought the urge to walk back into the captain's office and resign.
He hadn't worked ten years towards his detective's shield so that he could babysit a witness.
She needed a security expert and he needed to be out on the streets finding the gunman.

Loose
cannon
, his captain called him.
Wolf preferred to think of himself as a cop with an edge.
He was a homicide detective, not
a freaking bodyguard
.

Kelsey Winston had spent the afternoon going over the mug books.
She made a positive identification of the shooter.
Unfortunately, he didn't fit the profile.
Jake 'Iceman' Robbins was a mob hit man. Seven arrests and not one conviction.
He took care of any witnesses before he ever came to trial.
Clean, precise hits.
He didn't terrorize his victims first.

Wolf’s gut instinct told him he missed something and he trusted his instincts more than he trusted any person.
Without knowing which officers might be involved in a leak, he couldn’t leave her with just any cop.

How would she take to being confined to her home for a while? In a city the size of New York, it would be impossible to protect her if she roamed around freely.
Although, confinement in the lap of luxury shouldn’t be that much of a hardship.

He picked through his notes from the witnesses he had interviewed that afternoon.
No matter how he tried, he couldn't concentrate.
His mind wandered to Kelsey Winston and his current assignment.
He couldn't think about it and not feel his temper rise.
Not to mention other parts of his anatomy.
It had been a long time since he’d felt such a strong attraction to a woman.

Martinez passed in front of Wolf's desk, holding a manila folder.
He sat in a chair and picked through the papers.
First he snickered, then followed with a snort, and progressed to a
full-blown
laugh before he finished.
He looked towards Wolf, and laughed again.

"What's so funny?"

Martinez pulled a serious face. "Nothing.
What time are you relieving O’Brien?"

"I'm going to pick up some dinner and then head over there."

"Let me make a suggestion?"

Wolf let out grunt. "The last time you sent me for that crazy Mexican crap it repeated on me for a week."

Martinez flipped him the bird for the mocking reference to his ancestral food.
"I was going to suggest a slice of humble pie."

Wolf rocked back in his chair and cocked his head. "What's that
supposed to
mean?"

"When you were back in the academy, what was the first lesson you remember?"

"Always know where your gun is."

"Well, I remember being told don’t rush to judgment until the facts are in."

"Is that some useless trivia you wanted me to know, or is there a point?" Wolf asked.

"Kelsey Winston.
She's a graduate student working on her thesis in sociology.
I spoke to her professor this afternoon.
She's been doing research on domestic violence. No blackmail involved there."

"Well, she wouldn’t need to resort to blackmail if she’s a kept woman.”

Martinez chuckled.
"There you go again, taking a flying leap to the wrong conclusion.
Richard Carlyle, real estate tycoon and owner of the Park Avenue condo, died three months ago in a car accident, leaving one heir.
His daughter, Kelsey Carlyle Winston.
The will is in probate, which is why the records still list him as the owner. That is one very rich young woman."

He muttered a curse.
So, she wasn’t a mistress, but she might as well have been one.
Mistresses and society women were opposite sides of the same coin.
One could be bought and one bought anyone she wanted.

“So Miss Winston is actually
Mrs
. Winston?”

"She got married at nineteen while she was a student at UCLA and was divorced six months later.
According to a California police report, there was an incident involving domestic violence that landed her with a
four-day
stay in the hospital.
No charges were ever filed against her ex-husband, but she paid a bundle to get out of the marriage in a hurry."