Harlequin Intrigue, Box Set 2 of 2 (18 page)

He'd known Katie had a rockin' body. What fool male wouldn't want to put his hands all over those decadent curves? But he hadn't expected how responsive she'd be to every needy touch. How eager she'd be to explore him, as well. That was the free spirit he'd imagined her to be in his youth. That was the Katie who'd first captured his young heart.

And he sure as hell hadn't expected this gut kick of pain when he realized their time together—a crazy mix of comfort, caring and passion—didn't mean as much to her as it did to him. Hell. She must have left before dawn. The painkiller in his system had knocked him out eventually, and he'd slept longer than usual, oblivious to her efforts to escape and erase any evidence of their time spent together.

The phone was still ringing in his hand when he strolled back into the bedroom and sat on the black-and-gold comforter that had been draped neatly back on the bed—after he distinctly remembered it sliding off onto the floor last night. Katie hadn't left so much as a dent in the pillow beside him this morning. She'd taken every stitch of clothing, even her damaged bag and the contents that had been scattered across his bathroom floor, leaving no trace of
them
behind.

Well, he'd gotten exactly what he'd asked for, hadn't he? One night with Katie Lee in his bed. If only the two of them had been lousy together. If only the hushed conversation and cuddling in between hadn't made him think that it had meant something life changing to her, too. Trent hadn't felt that right inside his own skin for ten years. But expecting Katie to suddenly love him the way he loved her...?

The bedroom door burst open and a nine-year-old and the excited dog chasing him jumped onto the bed. “Aren't you going to answer your phone?” Tyler asked, bouncing up and down on his knees. “It's been ringing forever.”

“Tyler.” Katie followed a few steps after, hanging back in the doorway. She'd already dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and had pulled the sexy waves of her hair back into a tomboyish ponytail. “I told you not to wake Trent.”

“But, Mom, he was already awake.” Tyler threw himself on the bed, which bounced like a trampoline with his light weight. “Padre and I peeked.”

Katie shook her head at the bouncy boy and whining dog and frowned an apology at Trent. “I didn't know if I needed to answer the phone for you.”

Was this entourage the reason she'd left him this morning? Letting Tyler see the two of them share a kiss was one thing, but explaining what it meant when Mommy and Trent slept in bed together was something else. Or was that just the excuse she was using for pretending as though last night had never happened?

“Nope. I got it.” He punched the button on the phone and put it to his ear. “Olivia. What's up?”

“Sorry to wake you, Sleeping Beauty, but I'm at the ME's office at the crime lab. My brother Niall just completed the autopsy on your private detective. We got an ID on John Smith.”

“Hold on a sec, Liv. Katie's here with me. I'm going to put you on speakerphone.” Katie hustled Tyler out of the room with orders to finish his bowl of cereal and get dressed for school. Then she nodded and came back to stand beside Trent and listen in on the call. “Tell us about John Smith. Which one of those aliases was real?”

“None of them. None of those identities existed until about ten years ago. John Smith is the most recent incarnation. The man had a knack for reinventing himself.”

Normally, all the details were important. But he was only in the mood for straight answers this morning. “You said you had a match.”

“We do. His fingerprints are in the system.”

Katie pulled the phone down to her level and asked, “Then why didn't this guy's real identity pop when I ran the search on him?”

“Because Niall found the prints in the archives.” Katie tilted her confused frown up to meet his. The KCPD archives were the files where cases that had been solved were stored. Or where crimes that had passed their statute of limitations—meaning the police could no longer pursue them—had been filed away. “Does the name Francisco Dona ring a bell?”

Katie's encyclopedic memory came up with the connection first. “Isabel Asher's boyfriend? The guy Leland blamed for her death?” She shook her head. “There was a motorcycle accident. Francisco Dona is dead.”

“He is now.” Olivia's sarcasm wasn't entirely for humor's sake. “The fingerprints don't lie. This guy has been able to fly under the radar for ten years. Somehow, he got his prints in a DB file and a John Doe was cremated in his place. He was reborn as a new man several times over, most recently as John Smith, private eye.”

Trent tried to have some respect for a man who could change his identity as readily and completely as the WITSEC division of the US Marshals' office could. But all he could see was a criminal who'd gotten far too close to Katie and Tyler. “So if he knew we were tracking Leland Asher and putting together a case against him, Francisco Dona—Mr. Smith—would have a personal stake in finding out what we know.”

Olivia agreed. “If Asher found out the man he blamed for his sister's death was still alive, he'd make fixing that mistake his number-one priority once he got out of prison. He'd certainly want to make sure the man paid before the cancer got him.”

That dimpled frown had reappeared between Katie's eyebrows. “I get why Francisco Dona would come after me. I'm the information guru—I'd be his best source for finding out where we are in the Asher investigation and what the team's chances are of putting him back in prison for life.”

“But?” Trent prompted, wondering what wheels were turning in that clever mind of hers.

“But if he had access to my laptop, which he did when he or someone else planted the mirroring program, then why threaten me? Why warn me to stop? He should want every piece of information he could steal from me.”

“Are we dealing with two different cases here?” Trent suggested. “Smith might have been after Katie, but somebody else was after Smith.”

Olivia had her own idea. “Or maybe trailing Katie was Smith's effort to try to escape from Asher's retribution one more time, but he failed. Still, how did Smith get access to Katie's computer in the first place?”

Katie spoke up this time. “I have a theory on that.” She glanced up at Trent, perhaps offering an explanation for her hasty retreat this morning. “A couple of weird things happened at the theater last night.”

“Besides finding a dead body and getting shot at?” What else had he missed besides Francis Sergel putting his hands on Katie?

“I did some research this morning. The bullet just dented my laptop—it still works.” When she gestured for him to follow, Trent went into the spare bedroom with her. He tried to ignore that all her things had been moved in here and focus on the restraining-order record she pulled up on the screen. “There have been sexual harassment complaints filed against Doug Price. I found a record of a college student who went to a judge after she discovered Doug hiding a camera in a women's dressing room and taking pictures without her consent.”

Trent borrowed one of Max's choice curses. “How does this guy get to work in community theater?”

“Because it's a volunteer position with a volunteer board, and sometimes it's hard to find people with the skills to organize and run a show who are willing to give up that much of their time.” Katie shrugged. “And probably because people don't talk about it enough. I've found three different theater companies where Doug has volunteered in Missouri and Kansas.”

“And you think he planted the device to sabotage your computer?” Olivia asked.

“He could have been blackmailed into doing it. It fits our
Strangers on a Train
theory about someone manipulating others to commit crimes for them.” Trent was less than thrilled to hear about Katie's encounter with Doug Price last night. “He was eager that I not touch or see whatever was in that envelope. I wonder if they were photographs, or copies of them. And the price to keep them from going to the police or going public was tampering with my computer.”

Olivia seemed to agree it was a strong possibility. “Do you think he killed John Smith? Or Francisco? Or whatever we're calling him now?”

“I don't think he'd have the guts to pull a trigger. But maybe he saw something and that's why he was in such a hurry to leave—especially if Smith was his blackmailer.”

“You want me to bring Doug Price in for questioning?” Olivia offered.

“Yeah. Put Max to work, too.” Trent had a feeling that after months of hard work and dangerous setbacks, a lot of cold cases were about to break wide open. “I want to know if John Smith was tracking Katie for his own survival or if someone else hired him. If so, who? And why?”

Katie nodded. “And if last night was a hit ordered by Asher, how did he find out John Smith's real identity?”

Trent headed back to his own room. “I want Leland Asher in my interrogation room. Today.”

“I'll clear it with the lieutenant and have Max pick him up.”

“Katie and I will stop by Smith's office to see what we can find there before coming in.”

Trent hung up and went to work, unlocking his gun from the strongbox in his closet and sliding the weapon onto his belt. He started to pull on a thermal undershirt but realized the dressing on his wound needed changing. Unfortunately, it was a two-handed project. He pulled off the twisted tape and soiled gauze and dangled it at Katie's door. “A little help?”

“Come on in.” She set down the blouse and sweater she'd been getting ready to change into and picked up her bag with the first-aid supplies. He sat on the edge of the double-size bed while she doctored him. “Jim's coming by to take Tyler to school again and watch him until we pick him up. And then I'll start pulling everything KCPD has on Francisco Dona and John Smith. I'll get a brief together on Asher and his minions before you run your interviews this afternoon, so you know who all the players are.”

After the first piece of tape was secured on his shoulder, Trent caught Katie by the wrist. Even if she was going to pretend it hadn't happened, he needed to say something about last night. “Damn, you smell good in the morning.” He watched the blush of heat creep into her cheeks as he lightly massaged the warm beat of her pulse. “You were amazing last night. But I missed you when I woke up. I gather you don't want Tyler to know what happened.”

Katie twisted her wrist from his touch and cut another length of tape. “If he doesn't know how close we got, maybe he won't get his hopes up and think—”

“That you and I could be a real couple.”

She positioned the tape over the gauze and gently smoothed it into place. “Trent. Last night was like a fairy tale. Tyler had a dad and a dog, and you were completely wonderful to me.”

“But?” He was wary of where this explanation was going.

“Obviously, this isn't over yet. Between a mob boss and a dead private detective, there are still so many things that could go wrong. You've already been hurt. Tyler was frightened out of his mind. And, let's face it, I wigged out on you.” She picked up his thermal shirt and helped him slide his arm into the sleeve without disturbing the bandage. “I've never been part of the story where they all live happily ever after. I'm afraid a few moments like last night, that idyllic perfection, aren't real.”

He pulled his shirt on over his head and slipped the rest of it into place before standing beside her. He dropped his head to whisper against her ear, “It is for me, sunshine. As far as I'm concerned, the fairy tale is real.” He inched in a little farther and pressed a kiss to her hair. “I just need you to decide when or if you're going to accept that I'm in love with you and that you're in love with me. I want to be a father to your son and a husband to you. And you know damn well that I'd be good at both.”

He couldn't lay it on the line any plainer than that. With his heart and future in her hands now, Trent left her standing there in pale silence and returned to his own room to put on his badge and go to work.

CHAPTER TWELVE

What John Smith's office lacked in decor, it more than made up for in messiness.

Katie helped Trent sort through the rows of file cabinets, looking for anything useful. Folders had been stuffed into drawers without regard to labels or alphabetizing. Whoever had gone through the office before them hadn't been there to rob Smith because they'd left behind a bottle of scotch and bag of marijuana that had been stashed in the back of one drawer.

She'd at least been able to make more sense out of his desktop computer. It appeared he'd used it mainly for word processing and internet research, so she'd easily tracked several of the searches he'd recently made—including a floor plan for the units in her apartment complex, news updates on Leland Asher's release from prison and several searches of medical sites to find the prognosis and life expectancy for a sixty-year-old man diagnosed with lung cancer.

“Looks like he's been tracking Asher for years,” Katie reported.

Trent nodded, looking over her shoulder to read the monitor. “That clued him in on when he needed to change his identity again. If Asher got too close to finding out he was still alive, Francisco would go underground for a few months and reinvent himself as someone else.”

“The medical searches probably meant he was hoping Leland would die soon. Maybe that was why he was at the press conference, to see with his own eyes whether the man who wanted him dead had long to live.”

Trent went back to the file cabinets to continue his search. “Unfortunately for him, he miscalculated. Leland's men got to him first.”

Katie rolled the chair away from the desk to help Trent dig through the remaining mess for other useful clues. There was one more piece of information she could get off Smith's computer—who had hired him to spy on her—but they needed a different warrant to breach the confidential agreement between investigator and client. While Lieutenant Rafferty-Taylor pleaded their case to a warrant judge, she and Trent were spending their morning in dusty cabinets, sharing terse, business-only conversation.

“Katie.” His sharp voice pulled her from her thoughts. He set a bent folder on top of the cabinet and opened it. “Is this who I think it is?”

Katie joined him, reading the name scrawled across the top of the first page. “Stephen March.” She flipped through the pages to see copies of March's time spent in drug courts and rehab, along with a criminal complaint Stephen March had filed against his sister's fiancé, Richard Bratcher, which had been thrown out of court. “This shows March's motive for wanting Bratcher dead, as well as blackmailable offenses that could be used to get him to kill Dani Reese.” She dug farther into the drawer in front of her. “These are all people Smith investigated?”

“Looks like it.” He peeled a tiny slip of masking tape off the inside of the drawer. “I wonder.”

“What is it?”

He showed her the hyphenated list of numbers before crossing over to the safe behind Smith's desk. He knelt down and twisted the numbers on the dial. “This guy was resourceful, but I don't know that he knew much about security precautions.” Trent opened the door and pulled out three thick manila envelopes and stacked them on top of the safe. He pulled a fourth one out and dumped the contents out beside the stack. Out tumbled bundles of money. Twenties, fifties, hundreds. “I'm guessing this was a cash business. Probably a smart idea for a man who had to change identities and bank accounts every couple of years.”

“Trent.” She pulled another folder from the file drawers. “This says Hillary Wells.” There were other files in this cabinet that matched names in her own research. “That creep piggybacked off all my work. In some of these, he's gone to websites I checked and printed off the exact same information.” She didn't know whether to feel angry that he'd stolen her months of dedicated research to use for some nefarious purpose or violated to think John Smith, aka Francisco Dona, had followed every thought, every move, she'd made on her computer—and she hadn't even known he'd been lurking, watching.

“I think we're onto something here, sunshine.”

Katie snapped out of the emotional debate. Trent hadn't used her nickname since that conversation about fairy tales earlier that morning. In fact, he'd barely looked at her. And he certainly hadn't kissed her or held her or touched her in any way since dropping that bomb of an admission this morning.

I just need you to decide when or if you're going to accept that I'm in love with you and that you're in love with me. I want to be a father to your son and a husband to you.

That promise was everything she'd wanted growing up. But a life's worth of mistakes and tragedies made it difficult to believe in that promise. How was she supposed to do the right thing when she wasn't sure what that was anymore? How could Trent love her enough to risk a relationship with a woman with all her phobias and eccentricities and emotional baggage that came with the package? And was it worth the risk of her and Tyler losing him from their lives if the relationship didn't work? Then again, maybe she'd lost him already by not giving him the answer he'd wanted this morning.

And the idea of not having Trent's strong arms and stalwart presence and beautiful soul in her life anymore already felt like a very big mistake.

But Trent was talking work now, not their personal lives, where she got him shot and broke his heart. She circled around the desk to join him. “What did you find?”

He pulled another manila envelope from the safe and handed it to her. “Check inside. I'm guessing that envelope you saw with Doug Price held something similar.”

Katie pulled out a stack of photographs. “Oh, my.” These were images of scantily clad women, obviously taken by a hidden camera. She even recognized an image of the college student who'd sued Doug for harassment. “Oh. My.”

“You blackmail a man into doing a job for you, then you keep an extra copy of the evidence for insurance purposes.”

Katie stuffed the pictures back inside the envelope. “This man was horrible.”

“Which one?” The phone in Trent's pocket rang before she could answer. Katie waited in anticipation until he nodded. “Yes, ma'am.” She sat at the desk again and booted up the private detective's computer, waiting for the order. “We've got the warrant. Do it.”

One keystroke and she'd know who'd hired Smith to spy on her. She leaned back in the chair, surprised by the answer on the screen. “There's only one name here. One person who hired Smith to watch over all these people.”

“Please tell me it's Leland Asher.”

“No. Dr. Beverly Eisenbach.”

* * *

T
RENT
GLANCED
AROUND
Ginny Rafferty-Taylor's office, as anxious to get this show underway as the drumming of Katie's fingers or Max's pacing would indicate.

Four suspects. Four different strategies. Four different plans of attack.

And if the team was as good as the lieutenant seemed to think, then Leland Asher would be on his way back to prison by the end of the night.

The petite lieutenant picked up the stack of folders Katie had prepared and handed them to Trent. “Are you ready to do this?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“How do you want to handle it?”

Trent glanced over to Katie's big blue eyes staring up at him. He couldn't, wouldn't put his heart out there again for her to torment until she decided whether she was going to live her life taking risks or holed up in the security of lonely nobility. But whether he got his fairy-tale ending or not, he'd be damned if anyone was going to hurt her or Tyler again.

He nodded to her, making that silent vow, and headed out to Interview Room 1. “I'm going to pick off the little fish first.”

In the grand scheme of things, Doug Price was an easy interrogation. Trent was twice the older man's size, and all he had to do was stand and dominate the room to get the play director to talk.

He tossed the stack of lewd photos he'd gotten from John Smith's safe and fanned them across the table in front of Doug and his attorney. “Anything look familiar to you, Mr. Price?”

His lawyer tried to keep Doug from saying anything, but the man already had some of that oversprayed hair falling out of place. He sat forward in his chair. “Where did you get these?”

Trent tossed a crime-scene photo of John Smith's bloody face on top of the other pictures. “From this guy.”

Doug cringed and pushed the photos away. But he cracked like an egg. “John Smith. He's a private investigator. He told me he'd given me the last copies of those pictures when I saw him last night. I had no reason to kill him. I was doing him a favor.” A favor in the sense that Smith hadn't given Doug any choice. “Smith said if I kept an eye on Katie and helped him get access to your team's investigations that he wouldn't turn any of those photos over to the police.”

“So you sabotaged Katie's laptop and left those threats for her? You assaulted her in the women's dressing room?”

“It wasn't assault. I was removing a camera. I wasn't expecting her to be there. I just wanted to get away.”

“I think we can safely say that your career in community theater is over.” Trent pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the gray metal table. Doug started to relax, but Trent decided to stay on his feet and catch him off guard. He pulled three more photographs from the file Katie had prepared. Three more links in the chain of related crimes she'd dug up in her extensive research. He set the pictures down in front of Doug, one by one. “Do you know any of these people?”

“No. No.” He pointed to the last one. “Her. I don't understand what she has to do with any of this.”

Interesting.
“Who is she to you, Doug?”

“My therapist. I saw Dr. Eisenbach for a few months years back. Court-ordered sessions. The judge said I had an addiction to pornography.”

* * *

B
EV
E
ISENBACH
AND
Matt Asher clammed up behind their attorneys when they were separated into two interview rooms. But as Olivia slyly observed when she and Max
accidentally
allowed the two suspects' paths to cross in the hallway across from the restrooms, the twenty-two-year-old and the woman old enough to be his mother clearly knew each other. They'd called each other by their first names in a quick, hushed conversation, and their fingers had met in a quick squeeze.

Now, there was an odd couple.

They each truthfully claimed to have shared nothing with Trent, then whispered something about promising to remain silent.

So the two had a plan that they'd clearly been working on together for some time...while their uncle/boyfriend had been locked away in prison. Instead of kowtowing to the boss, they'd been plotting behind his back. Setting Leland up for murder? Or taking over the criminal empire from a dying man?

The information Olivia had fed Trent between interviews made him grin. Bev and Matt's conversation had given Trent some key intel to use as he moved on to his final interview with Leland. He grinned because while they acted as though Leland was on his way out of the business, and they were setting themselves up to take his place, someone had forgotten to tell Leland.

Trent's approach to a man of Leland Asher's self-appointed stature was different than the intimidation he'd used with Doug Price or the friendly charm he'd turned on his nephew and Bev Eisenbach. “How long do you have to live, Mr. Asher? Years? Months? Weeks?”

Leland smiled. “I like a man who's direct, Detective. I can talk to a man like that.”

Trent leaned forward in his chair, matching Leland's confident posture. “Did you have any dealings with Craig Fairfax at the penitentiary infirmary?”

“Fairfax?” Leland scratched at his gaunt cheeks. “Poor bloke. Terrible cough. I always thought he was going to hack up a lung. Very difficult to have a conversation with him.”

“So you did interact with him. Did you ever talk about Katie Lee Rinaldi?”

“Who?”

Trent steeled his gazed on Asher, knowing Katie was watching in Lieutenant Rafferty-Taylor's office through the closed-circuit camera overhead. This would be a tough line of questioning for her to hear, but since she was part of the team, she'd insisted on listening in. “A girl Fairfax kidnapped ten years ago.”

“Oh, that Katie. Tragic upbringing from what I hear. Yes, I believe she's the district attorney's daughter now.” Close enough. Apparently, Fairfax had been filling Asher in on Katie's family history. “Goodness knows, Mr. Fairfax has a vendetta against that man. If he could get out of prison, I'm sure his first stop would be the DA's house, or perhaps his wife's school—or at the home of this Katie you mentioned. Yes, I remember he definitely has a score he wants to settle...
if
he were ever to be released from prison.”

Trent's hand fisted beneath the table at the indirect but abhorrent threats, although he betrayed nothing to Asher. “Do you have a score to settle, Mr. Asher? With Francisco Dona, perhaps?”

“I have no comment.”

“What about John Smith? Do you know anyone by that name?”

“Not very original, is it?” Trent waited until Leland answered the question. “No, I don't believe I do.”

“But you know Dona.”

“Knew, Detective. Past tense. Dona died in a motorcycle accident several years ago.”

“Did he?” Trent wasn't intimidated by the man's condescending tone. “If you discovered Mr. Dona was alive after all these years, you'd want to do something about it, wouldn't you?”

Leland checked his brittle nails before leaning forward and resting the elbows of his tailored suit on the table. “I liked you better when you were straightforward, Detective. You know as well as I do that Francisco is a sensitive subject for me. He turned my sister on to drugs and then killed her with them. At the very least, he was a coward and let her die without raising a finger to help. Isabel was the light of my life. Francisco snuffed that light out.”