Kansas City Secrets (12 page)

“I'll be keeping an eye on you, Krolikowski. If you take advantage of Rosemary in any way, I will have your badge. And know I'll be asking around to find out what kind of cop you really are.”

“Detective?” a quivering voice asked.

Max propped his hands at his waist, ready to take whatever threat this blowhard threw at him. “I intend to make sure no one takes advantage of her in any way.”

“If you're using Rosemary as some kind of pawn in your investigation—”

“Max.”

Rosie's sharp voice demanded his attention. “What is it?”

He braced a palm on the desk and leaned in to see what had alarmed her.

She held a picture that had fallen out of his file on Leland Asher. A picture of Asher and his entourage from a hoity-toity society event at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Only, Rosie wasn't pointing to the crime boss. She was pointing to the younger, shorter man with glasses standing on the other side of Asher's date.

“I know him. This is the man from the prison.”

Chapter Eight

Rosemary wondered how she was ever going to survive the first night with Max Krolikowski living in her basement.

If she couldn't stop this restless pacing, flitting from one room to the next, she'd never get any sleep. She'd start a project in the library, leave it at the first unfamiliar noise and wind up in the kitchen, refreshing the dogs' water bowls. She'd hear the muffled voices of a television newscast through the floorboards, then head off to the front room to adjust the blinds. She'd peek out a window to look at the clouds gathering in the sky and covering the moon, but she'd hear the rumble of thunder in the distance and go back to the kitchen to make sure it was Mother Nature talking and not her new tenant grumbling about something downstairs. Then the dogs would woof at something outside and the whole anxious cycle would start over again.

Max's Cold Case Squad hadn't been able to immediately identify the man in the picture with Leland Asher, since he didn't have a record and wasn't in their criminal database. But she was certain the narrow-framed glasses and nondescript brown hair belonged to the man who'd smiled and taken her picture at the penitentiary. Knowing there was a mystery man out there somewhere, bent on terrorizing her, who might or might not have some connection to organized crime, was upsetting enough. But adding in the disruption of having a man on the premises once again, a man who seemed to occupy her thoughts the way Max did, left her unable to find any sense of calm or control. Routine, and the secure normalcy that went with it, had flown out the window.

Max had probably only needed a few minutes to put away the items he'd brought in his backpack and duffel bag and familiarize himself with the bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette, which he said would serve him just fine. And why wouldn't the man just go to bed already? One time she'd discovered Max out front, installing the new glass globes on her porch lights.

“The weatherman says we're having thunderstorms tonight,” she warned.

“I know.” He continued his work, sounding far too nonchalant about making himself at home here. “I want to make sure everything is secure before I head to bed.” He nodded for her to go back inside. “But you go ahead.”

Much later, she peeked out the door to find him reclining in her rocking chair, sitting in the dark with his big booted feet crossed on the porch railing. His shirt hung unbuttoned and loose from his shoulders, the tails flapping in the breeze that was picking up as lightning flashed in the clouds overhead. He still wore his gun and badge on his belt, and a stubby, unlit cigar that made him look like the gruff Army sergeant he'd once been was tucked into the corner of his mouth.

“Go to sleep, Rosie,” he'd ordered, before removing the cigar and turning those watchful blue eyes to catch her spying on him. “You're safe.”

Safe from her stalker, maybe. There'd been no phone call, no threat, no visit from anyone who wanted to hurt her for twenty-four hours now. But she wasn't so safe from the curious attraction she felt toward the unrefined yet inarguably masculine detective. And she certainly wasn't safe from the troubling memories of being alone with another man who'd turned her home into a prison where he'd inflicted pain and fear until fate alone had allowed her to escape.

“You won't bring that cigar into the house, will you?”

“No, ma'am.”

Her fingers curled and uncurled around the edge of the door. “You need your sleep, too.”

“Good night, Rosie.”

Rosemary locked herself in her bedroom after that, counting down the hour until she heard the apartment door open and close at the back of the house. Duchess sat up from her cozy pillow beside Rosemary's bed, and Trixie yipped at the unfamiliar sound.

Lightning flashed and thunder rattled the window panes. A few seconds later the rain poured down, whipping through the trees and drumming on the new roof, finally drowning out the sounds of the house and the man in the room below hers.

“Settle down, girls,” she whispered. “It's just a storm.” The dogs curled into their respective beds and fell asleep long before Rosie turned out the bedside lamp and crawled beneath the sheet and quilt.

But it was hard to follow her own admonishment. Normally, the sounds of a summer storm lulled her into relaxing, but her sleep was disrupted by memories of the moonlight gleaming through the golden hair that dusted Max's muscular chest, and the desire to run her fingers there to discover the heat only hinted at when she'd touched him through his shirt. She remembered that kiss, too, and the way his hands had moved with such urgency through her hair. Maybe he'd put his hands in other places, skim them over her skin and pull her against all that brawny strength and heat. Maybe he'd kiss her again, and this time he wouldn't hold back. Maybe she wouldn't hold back, either.

Later, the bold wishes that filled her dreams and left her perspiring and uncomfortable in her crisp cotton sheets mutated into darker, more disturbing images.

Max's tawny jaw and imposing shoulders gave way to a shadow that was taller, slimmer, darker than the night. Rosemary squirmed in the tangle of covers as the shadow darted past her window. The black figure swirled around the walls of her bedroom, spinning closer, moving so fast that the sea of black miasma soon surrounded her bed. She moaned in her sleep as the blackness closed in all around her, stealing away the light, robbing her of warmth.

Her breathing quickened as the chill permeated her skin. But her arm was too weak to push it away. The darkness consumed her, reached right into her very heart and ripped it from her chest. Then she was burning, bleeding, begging for a reprieve.

A tiny circle of light flared in the darkness and a voice laughed. The tiny light was a fire, glowing brighter, hotter with every breath. She was powerless to move, powerless to do anything but anticipate the coming pain. Laughter rang through the darkness as the fire moved closer and closer, until the hot ember hissed against her cold skin, branding her.

Rosemary came awake screaming. She shot up in bed, her hand clutching at the scars on her collarbone, her heart pounding in her chest. In the instant she realized the torture had been a dream, the instant she realized the shadows were no more than one of the Dinkles' trees, silhouetted by lightning against her window shade, the instant she realized she was perfectly fine and lowered her hand, she realized the laughter was real. High-pitched. Distorted. Distant.

The threat was real.

Duchess was on her feet, growling at the window. Trixie jumped onto the bed and barked. The repetitive laughter, fading in and out like a clown running in circles, was coming from outside in the storm.

“Max?” Fear hammered her pulse in her ears. She needed Max.

A clap of thunder slammed like a door in the distance, and Rosemary jumped inside her skin. “Rosie?” She heard a rapid knocking, like gunshots at her back door. “Rosie!”

“Max?” Rosemary quickly kicked away the covers twisted around her legs and slid off the edge of the bed. She pulled her sleep shirt down to her thighs and crossed to the door. “I'm coming!” But the laughter started up again behind her and she froze. It grew louder, tinnier. The knocking at her back door stopped and a chill skittered down her spine.

Grabbing Duchess's collar as she walked past, Rosemary went to the window. With her heart in her throat, she pulled back the curtain and peeked between the shade and the sill. Lightning flashed and she jumped back from the faceless figure in a black hood standing there.

She screamed again.

A deeper voice shouted outside in the storm. “KCPD! Get on the ground!” The laughter stopped abruptly and when the next bolt of lightning flashed, her window was empty. She saw a blur of movement in the blowing rain as she dropped the curtain and backed away. She heard a familiar grumble of curses.

“Max!” she shouted. What was he doing? If the intruder could threaten her dogs and terrorize her, what would he do to Max? What if he bashed in Max's head with that baseball bat? Would he kill the detective guarding her? Then who would stop him from coming after her? Saving Max was imperative to saving herself. Saving Max was imperative, period. “Max?” Tripping over the excited barking dogs, Rosemary turned and ran. Her fingers fumbled with the stupid lock on her door before she finally opened the thing and slung it open. “Max!”

The wood floor was cold beneath her bare feet, the kitchen tile even colder. She ran through the darkened house but skidded to a stop and abruptly changed course at the furious sound of knocking at her front door now. “Rosie!” He was safe. She would be safe. “Open the damn door! Rosie! Answer me!”

“I'm here. Is he out there? Did you catch him?”

“Rosie!”

She punched in the alarm code, unhooked the chain and dead bolt, turned the knob. Max jerked the storm door from her grasp the moment she'd turned its lock. The blowing rain whooshed in sideways around him, splashing her face and shirt before he pushed her back inside the foyer.

“You've got too many damn locks. I couldn't get to you.” While he griped away, she ran straight into his arms, pressing her cheek against the wet skin of his chest, sliding her hands beneath his soggy shirttails and linking them together at the back of his waist. He walked her back another couple of steps, shutting the steel door behind him. “I lost him. You have to answer me when I call you. You can't scream like that and not answer... Okay.” Once the adrenaline was out of his system, once he realized how she shuddered against him, clinging tightly to his strength and heat, he curled one arm behind her back and set his gun on the front hall table with the other. His growly tone softened. “Okay, honey.” He reached behind him to throw the bolt yet never let go. Then he came back to wrap both arms around her and nestle his jaw at the crown of her hair. She willingly rocked back and forth as his chest expanded and contracted against her after the exertion of chasing a shadow through the storm. “I'm gettin' you all wet.”

She shook her head against the strong beat of his heart. “I don't care.”

He pulled her sleep-tossed hair from the neckline of her pink T-shirt, smoothing it down her back in gentle strokes. “You're okay. He's gone.”

“Did he hurt you?” A crisp wet curl of chest hair tickled her lips. A muscle quivered beneath the unintended caress.

“Me? Nah, I'm too tough for that kind of thing. Are
you
hurt?” He sifted his fingers through her hair until his warm, callous palm cupped the nape of her neck. “Ah, hell, honey. Your skin's like ice.” He shifted his stance then, curling his shoulders around her, rubbing his hands up and down her back. “I heard a noise and saw that guy outside your window, but I lost him in the rain once he jumped the Dinkles' hedge out front. And it's way too dark to be firing blindly into shadows. I didn't want to take the time away from you to do a search, in case he doubled back and broke in. I couldn't risk leaving you alone.”

Rosemary's shirt and panties were slowly soaking up the moisture from his rain-soaked clothes. But the furnace of heat on the other side of those wet jeans and unbuttoned shirt that he must have hastily tossed on seeped right through the layers of damp material, warming her skin and easing her panic.

Once they were both breathing normally again, he pressed his lips against her temple before easing some space between them, although he continued rubbing his hands up and down her back and the arms she crossed between them. “Tell me what happened.”

She watched the rain from his scalp run in rivulets down to his scruffy jaw, pooling at the tip of his chin before dripping onto her arm. “I had a nightmare.”

His hands stopped their massage and squeezed her shoulders, demanding she meet his concerned gaze. “Uh-uh. That guy was real. Standard-issue hoodie and dark jeans. At least six feet tall. Wish I'd taken the time to grab my flashlight so I could have seen his face.”

The cop was returning. The warmth was leaving. Rosemary hugged her arms more tightly around her waist, suddenly self-conscious to be standing toes to toes in a puddle in her foyer wearing little more than her long pink T-shirt. A wet T-shirt now. Not that she had any illusions about turning Max's head, but she didn't want to embarrass him, either. “I was dreaming of things Richard did to me. When I woke up, that man was at my window. For a split second, I thought...” She shrugged away from Max's touch and shivered. “It was the same man who vandalized my porch. I'm sure of it.”

“Your scream woke me. When I got outside, I heard that crazy caterwauling.” He picked up his gun and tucked it into the back of his jeans before scrubbing his fingers over his chin and wiping the moisture on the front of his shirt. Was she really still standing there, staring at the glistening wet skin of his chest? “Sorry,” he apologized, mistaking her fascinated longing for some kind of effrontery. His big fingers fumbled to pull the soggy cotton together over the hills and hollows of muscle and hook a few buttons to the placket. “He's long gone. There were footprints beneath the sill. I went back to snap a picture, but they're washing away.” Max reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a little red plastic box. “I found this out there in the grass.” He pushed a button, and a warped recording of laughter played.

Rosemary recoiled from the sound. “That's what I heard.”

“It's cheap. A noisemaker from a party store. Sounds as though there's water in the mechanism. With the storm, there's no way we're getting fingerprints off this thing. Maybe on the inside, though. Looks like there's something wedged in there. Do you have a plastic bag?” Although she missed the warmth of his body pressed against hers, she knew this businesslike interchange was more important than her own foolish cravings for physical contact. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she nodded. The dogs fell into step beside her, joining their little parade to the kitchen. Max brought up the rear, stopping in each doorway along the hall, checking inside the rooms to make sure everything was still secure. “Sorry about your floor. I'm making a mess.”