In Bed With the Badge (13 page)

“Is what just happened going to get in our way?” she asked.

He was quiet for a moment, as if considering what she’d just asked from all possible angles. “Well, that depends.”

Her eyes never left his face. She’d looked at him countless times. So why did she suddenly feel this onrush of heat, of excitement? How had the dynamics between them changed so much?

“On?” she asked.

Sam ran the back of his hand along her cheek. Wanting her. “On whether or not we stop to do this when we’re supposed to be going after the bad guy.”

“Seriously,” Riley pressed.

Humor played along his mouth. “What makes you think I wasn’t being serious?” Pulling her to him so that her body was suddenly on top of his, Sam stroked the sides of her torso. Watching in fascination as he saw desire flaring in her eyes. “I was deadly serious,” he told her, raising his head to capture her lips again.

Instantly undone, she didn’t press the subject again for a good long while. It amazed her that she could be so hungry so fast after feasting for so long.

But she was.

I
t didn’t take long.

Another home invasion occurred Wednesday, four days later. The invasion had all the earmarks of the other three cases. The thieves entered the house without having to resort to force despite the fact that, according to the frightened homeowners, every single window in the house was closed and locked, as were the front and back doors.

The inhabitants, this time a couple in their early seventies, had been in bed, asleep, like all the other victims. They’d been rousted, dragged from their bed, tied up and then chloroformed while their home was ransacked.

“There’s got to be a common element here, there has to be. What is it that we’re missing?” Riley demanded for the umpteenth time, pacing in front of the bulletin
board where they had religiously tacked up all the available information on each invasion.

“A lot of sleep,” Sam murmured. He sat at his desk, his chair turned around so that he faced the bulletin board. Nothing seemed to stand out to him either.

The tone of his voice wedged itself into her admittedly scattered thoughts. Riley turned looked at her partner.

Afraid that Saturday night would change things between them, she could have saved herself the trouble of worrying. The following Monday, when she came into work, Sam had behaved as if it was business as usual, making absolutely no mention of what had transpired between them. Taking her partner’s cue, relieved and yet not so relieved, Riley had done the same. And continued to do so.

But occasionally, she’d catch Sam watching her, an unreadable expression on his face.

Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part—or her pride. After all, what woman wanted to believe that she was forgettable or could be so easily dismissed?

She hadn’t exactly expected Sam to sweep her into his arms when she walked into the squad room, but a random private word or two, a secret, intimate glance, wouldn’t have been entirely out of order. After all, she was fairly certain that the sheets on his bed had gotten really scorched Saturday night before she, exhausted, had elected to go home rather than come up with an excuse for Lisa in the morning as to why she was still there in the clothes she’d worn the day before.

“You losing sleep over this, Wyatt?” Riley asked archly.

“This among other things,” he answered. And then he lowered his voice before continuing. “Lisa wants to know when you’re coming over.”

“Lisa,” she repeated.

Was he being straightforward and just relaying his daughter’s question, or was he using his daughter as a shill to cover up the fact that
he
wanted to know when she was coming over?

God, when did things suddenly become this complicated?

“Yeah, Lisa.” His expression continued to be unreadable. “You remember, short little thing.” He held his hand up approximately three and a half feet from the floor. “Talks like an old person even though she’s only six.” He paused, as if debating whether or not to say the next thing. “She wants to know if I did something to make you stop coming over. I told her I didn’t think so, but she’s not convinced.” His eyes held hers, pregnant with things that weren’t being said. “Did I?”

“No.” She cleared her throat, wondering where this sudden case of nerves came from. Nerves neatly wrapped around a ray of sunshine. “Then I guess I’ll have to come over.” This time, she was the one looking into his eyes. “If Lisa wants to see me.”

He glanced away, back at the bulletin board. Sam tilted his chair. “Yeah, she does.”

“If you two are finished talking about your social agenda,” Barker bit off, suddenly materializing behind them, “maybe one of you can tell me how the investigation’s coming along?”

The lieutenant’s dark brown eyes shifted from Sam to her.

That proved it, Riley thought. The man was the devil. “Which one?” she asked him politely.

“All of them,” he growled.

Sam rose from his chair, moving so that his body was between Barker and Riley.

“The Hayworths kept to themselves for the most part,” Sam told the lieutenant. “According to the descriptions they gave the first officer on the scene and then again to us, the two robbers were the same ones who robbed the other three houses. As far as McIntyre and I can see, this new couple has almost nothing in common with the other victims.” Before Barker could comment, Sam enumerated. “They all drive different cars, have different careers—the Hayworths are retired,” he inserted. “Move in different circles.”

Barker was in no mood to play review. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before and I don’t want to hear it again,” he snapped. “I also don’t want to hear any more excuses. The next thing I want to hear is that you’ve cracked the case.” His eyes swept over Sam and Riley, then took in the two detectives sitting closest to them, Sung and Allen. His manner was clear. As far as he was concerned, the whole department was responsible for this less-than-stellar performance. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Absolutely,” Riley replied with the kind of cheerful enthusiasm she knew annoyed Barker and got under the man’s skin.

The lieutenant’s dark brown eyes grew even darker
as he narrowed them to focus only on her. “As long as we understand each other.”

With that, the former marine turned on his well-worn heel and stalked back into his glass office. The blinds remained opened so that nothing would escape his attention.

“He makes Darth Vader come off like Pollyanna,” Riley commented, keeping her voice low even though Barker had closed his door. She’d turned her back to the man’s office. Barker was ornery enough to have learned how to read lips. “By the way, you didn’t have to run interference for me,” she told Sam. “I can take care of myself.”

“Haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about, McIntyre,” Sam said, his expression giving nothing away. He took his jacket off the back of his chair and threw it on. “C’mon, let’s see if we can get the Hayworths to remember what they did in the last forty-eight hours.” He saw the puzzled expression on her face and explained. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and that’ll give us the clue we need to solve this damn thing.”

“I had no idea you were an optimist,” she commented, grabbing her purse. She hurried after him.

Sam considered her remark as they walked out. “Must be the company I keep,” he decided.

Riley smiled in response.

They tracked Professor Cahil to his office at the college.

“You again?” the professor groaned as he looked up to see who was coming into his office. Biting off an oath, Cahil set aside the less-than-engrossing term paper
he was reading. “Aren’t you people out of questions yet?” he asked, exasperated.

“Just a few more, Professor. It’ll be painless and we’ll be out of your hair before you know it,” Riley promised.

The professor seemed less than convinced. “Not soon enough to suit me,” he assured the two detectives. “Well, sit down.” He gestured to the two chairs before his desk. “We might as well get this over with.”

Sam waited for Riley to take a seat before he sat down in his. “Can you tell us what you did the two days before the robbers came into your house?”

Suspicion narrowed the professor’s gaze. “Why?” he challenged.

This time Riley ran interference. “We’re trying to see if you and the other victims might have all done the same thing.”

Cahil had an air about him that said he didn’t consider himself to be like anyone else. That would have been too common. “Like what?”

“That’s just it,” Sam interjected. “We don’t know.”

Contempt flared in the professor’s expression. “There isn’t a hell of a whole lot you people do know, is there?”

“We know uncooperative people when we talk to them,” Riley said simply. She moved forward in her chair. “Now, you don’t like being a victim, we get it. And I’m sorry if we’re bothering you, Professor, but we’re doing our best to recover your property. But to make any headway, we need your help. Yours and the other people who were robbed.

“We’re working under the assumption that there’s
some common thread, something that you all did, that pulls this together.” Her tone was polite, but firm as she said, “Now if you could please just go over the two days before the robbery in as much detail as possible, we would greatly appreciate it.” She looked at Cahil, waiting.

“Very well.”

Sighing, the professor closed his eyes. To the best of his ability, he began to summon back the two days in question.

“You’re pretty persuasive when you want to be,” Sam commented as they left the professor’s office less than twenty minutes later and walked through the visitor parking lot just beyond the criminology department’s three-story building.

Riley grinned. “As the next to the youngest of four, I found being persuasive rather essential to my survival.” She waited for Sam to unlock the doors, then got into the car. “Two down, two more to go.”

“Can’t say I’m feeling too hopeful,” he admitted, putting the key into the ignition and turning it. The car started. “So far, beyond the essentials of eating and doing a few basic things involved with getting ready to face the day, the professor’s two days don’t sound as if they have anything in common with the Hayworths’ two days.”

“Keep the faith, Wyatt,” she urged as they backtracked their way off the campus. “The day is still young.”

He blew out a breath as he just missed a light that would have allowed him to get onto the main thorough
fare. Where was all this impatience coming from? “Yeah, but I feel like I’m getting older by the minute.”

She smiled at him. “You’ll feel young again once we make a breakthrough.”

But they didn’t and consequently, he didn’t.

The case began to wear on Sam. Riley was right, they were missing something in plain sight and it frustrated the hell out of him.

Once they were finished taking information from the Marstons and the Wilsons, it was time to clock out for the day.

True to her word, Riley followed him to Brenda’s house where they picked up Lisa. The little girl was nothing short of overjoyed when she saw Riley. The second she did, Lisa ran up to her and, standing on her toes, she wrapped her small arms around Riley. Lisa held on tightly and had to be coaxed to let go, which she did only after Riley promised to come over.

A warm feeling spread through Riley as she caught a glimpse of the three of them in Brenda’s hall mirror when they were leaving the house.

They looked like a real family, she thought.

She’d never thought of herself in those terms before. Never really thought about being a wife
or
a mother. But now, there it suddenly was, front and center. And the idea had a charm and a pull that was very difficult to ignore.

Too bad, Riley thought as she adjusted the straps on Lisa’s car seat, that it was never going to happen.

A pattern began to form. A pattern Riley knew she could easily get accustomed to and one that she was equally aware that she
shouldn’t
allow.

It was happening anyway.

By day, she and Wyatt were professional partners, working feverishly to handle all the cases they caught while still seeking that one breakthrough. They needed to solve what had become a major obsession with the news media: the home invasion robberies.

And then, most nights, they were lovers, burning away the edges of the night until it was time for her to finally go back to her house.

Every time she did, she would find Howard waiting up for her like a doting grandfather, an indulgent, knowing expression on his face.

“So how’s it going?” the retired engineer asked after another three weeks had passed.

“The case?” she responded.

He waved his hand at that. “I know you can’t talk about an ongoing case—Egan taught me that,” his voice swelling with pride the way it always did whenever he mentioned his late son. “And everything else I want to know about them is plastered all over the news anytime I want to catch up. No, I’m asking how’s it going with you and that young man you’ve been keeping company with?”

Keeping company with. What a lovely, old-fashioned term for what she and Wyatt did together. Four weeks since the first time and the lovemaking was only getting
better. Hotter. If it became any more so, she would need the fire department on standby.

“What makes you think I’m ‘keeping company’ with anyone?”

“You’ve got the same glow my Katie did when we were,” and here he cleared his throat, whether because he needed to or by design wasn’t evident, “keeping company. Is it that partner of yours?” he asked, then smiled. “It is, isn’t it? Nice-looking boy,” he said with a nod. “Hair’s a little long for my taste, but he seems all right otherwise. He treating you well?” Howard asked.

“Howard, I think you’ve just exceeded your allotment of questions.”

“Because if he isn’t,” Howard continued as she walked up her driveway toward her front door, “you just send him on to me and I’ll set him straight.”

It was hard not to laugh, given that the man had the body of a large Halloween skeleton, but she wouldn’t have hurt Howard’s feelings for the world. “Good night, Howard,” she called out.

“Good night, Riley. Sleep tight.”

Sleep fast, she corrected silently, because there weren’t all that many hours left until daylight and her shift arrived.

But as well intentioned as Howard’s concern was, it stirred up some questions that hovered in the back of her mind, questions she would have rather put off. Questions she knew she had to face eventually.

This “thing” with her and Wyatt wasn’t a fling anymore, or just a flirtation that had temporarily deepened
and she knew it. It had become so much more. She was attached to Lisa and, what was worse, she realized she was falling in love with Wyatt.

What falling?
she silently jeered as she got ready for work the following day. She’d already fallen for the man, hook, line and sinker. For better or for worse, she was there, treading through No Man’s Land, most likely alone because even as she felt the words “I love you” bubbling up in her throat, threatening to come spilling out of her mouth, she was almost certain those same words would not be echoed back to her.