Tainted Mind (11 page)

“Holler when you're in the shower. I'll come grab your clothes and leave some of my sister's.”

She glanced at the opaque shower curtain before nodding. He handed her a black beach towel and left, closing the door behind him. She sat on the lid of the toilet seat and managed to pull off her jeans without causing too much pain or making too much of a mess. Then, after piling her clothes on the floor by the door, she flipped on the shower and stepped into its warmth. She heard Ian come in to gather her things and gave a fleeting thought to how familiar their actions felt. Not that she was reading anything into it, but the way they were handling this situation seemed pretty in sync for two people who had just met a few days ago. But then again, once Ian had gotten past his suspicions of her and his moment of manipulation,
he'd been nothing but straightforward, practical, and for lack of a better word, strong. There wasn't any doubt in her mind, even after such a short time, that Ian was a man who could be counted on. Which was kind of nice.

*   *   *

Ian flipped the lid on the washer, set it to rinse, and hit the switch. He acknowledged that in a perfect world, or even a nice one, he might spend some time thinking about the attractive woman in his guest shower. But the reality was, while he wouldn't be able to shut down that awareness altogether, now was not the time or the place. Back in his room, he stripped out of his own clothes and jumped into the shower. Five minutes later, he emerged, pulled on some jeans and a t-shirt, and made some calls. He had just hung up from his last conversation when he heard Vivienne calling. He left his bedroom, headed down the hall, and stopped outside the bathroom.

“Everything okay?” he called through the door.

“Sort of. I'm fine, but I'm going to bleed all over everything so it might be better if you brought me the first aid kit and I took care of it in here.”

Ian remembered the splintered wood and dirt around her leg and didn't think it was a good idea for her to do her own patching up. “Are you decent?”

“I'm wrapped in a towel the size of a bedsheet.”

“Good enough,” he said, entering the room. Vivienne's head whipped around in surprise. She sat perched on the edge of the tub with her back to him and her legs still inside. He walked over and peered in. Her right ankle was swollen and her left leg looked good and chewed up.

“Here,” he said, grabbing a hand towel. “Wrap this around your leg.” She frowned but did as she was told. Without asking, he reached down and scooped her up into his arms. Her cry was more of surprise than protest, though he didn't miss the unhappy grumble that followed as he carried her down the hall.

“I thought women liked to be swept off their feet,” he teased as he placed her on the guest bed.

“We like to be carried off to bed for all the good reasons, not because we're invalids. We're not all that different than men when it comes to bruised egos.”

“Bruised ego?” His lips lifted into a smile even as he plucked her left leg up to examine it more closely.

“Oh, right. You would probably have to be missing two legs
and
an arm before you let one of your colleagues carry you anywhere,” she said with a roll of her brown eyes.

Ian smiled but couldn't argue her point so he said nothing, taking a moment to step away and grab the first aid kit.

“What are you doing?” Vivienne asked when he returned to the bed.

“I'm going to clean you up. There are splinters and dirt in some of the scratches.” Ian slid onto the edge of the bed and lifted her left ankle. Resting her calf and foot across his lap, it didn't escape his notice that he was almost literally between her thighs. God would surely reward him for his restraint, he thought as he broke an instant ice pack and placed it on her swollen ankle. After handing her a bottle of water and some ibuprofen, he turned his attention to her other leg.

“When was your last tetanus?”

“About a year and a half ago.”

“Good,” he said, starting to clean the wounded area. Vivienne let out a surprising litany of curses when he sprayed some disinfectant on it, making him laugh.

“I'm glad you find this amusing.” Her remark could have been bitchy but wasn't—for which he was glad.

“I'll do the best I can and we'll put some antibiotic ointment on it, but you might want to get some oral antibiotics just in case.” She mumbled something in assent and he kept picking and pulling and cleaning. It wasn't a horrible set of scratches, but a lot of dirt and splinters had been embedded in her skin. He could feel Vivienne's tension under his hands so he tried to distract her by filling her in on his phone conversations.

“I made a couple of calls while you were in the shower. Wyatt got the warrant paperwork filled out. Depending on when he can track
Judge Edgars down, we should have a decision by tomorrow morning, at the latest. This is probably the most exciting thing Edgars will do in his career.”

“Such as it is,” Vivienne commented on the car-crash appeal this case would have to many folks who would work on it in the days to come.

“I called the NYPD precinct that took the missing persons report and filled them in. They aren't all that concerned and just want to be kept in the loop. They're emailing me the original report so we can take a look at what her friends said.”

Ian paused and, for a moment, stared at his large hand lying across her leg. “What do you think the chances are that Rebecca's disappearance has nothing to do with the body you found?” He knew the answer. He knew it in his gut. But he needed to hear her opinion. Her opinion that held so much more experience than his in this type of death.

He glanced up when she sighed. “I've seen stranger things happen. TV shows are always making comments about coincidences not being coincidences, but weird things do happen. It's possible the two things are completely unrelated.”

He searched Vivienne's eyes, forcing her to say what she wasn't saying. She bit her lower lip and turned to look out the window. “I can't give you any stats, but I would be surprised if they weren't related. Two women who look alike, both with ties to this area, one recently missing and one long dead. It doesn't look good.”

“We don't know that the Jane Doe has ties to this area.”

“No, we don't, but it's not really about her having ties in the traditional sense to Windsor, it's about the killer having ties here and extending those, even in death, to the victims.”

Ian went back to her wounds for several minutes. When the last splinter he could see was out, he wiped her leg clean with an antiseptic cloth and bandaged the whole area. He mulled the case over in his own mind—who, what, why—and as the questions faded and he acknowledged he had no answers, Ian realized he'd been lost in thought.

Looking down, he found his left hand resting on Vivienne's bare inner thigh. He hadn't even noticed that his other hand had been
rubbing her calf. And she hadn't moved or said a word. He turned to meet her gaze.

Her dark brown eyes, open and frank, met his. The end of her damp ponytail fell over her bare shoulder. He felt her watching him as his eyes traveled, unbidden, from her face to her shoulders, down over the beach towel, under which he knew she was naked, then back up again—pausing for a moment on the little knot holding the towel together above her breasts. It would be so easy to get lost, to make it all go away, if only for an hour or two. And she looked like she knew it, too.

“Dinner,” Ian said, clearing his throat and forcing himself to extricate his body from hers. “Why don't you get dressed,” he said, gesturing to the clothes he'd grabbed from his sister's dresser, “and come into the kitchen. I'll throw some steaks on the grill.”

Vivienne nodded and he left, fighting the urge to go back to her every step of the way.

*   *   *

Vivi entered the kitchen wearing a pair of sweatpants and an NYU sweatshirt. Although she wasn't all that hungry—she always seemed to lose her appetite when working a case—she felt she needed to make the effort. If she declined, she was pretty sure he would think she was making too much out of that moment in the bedroom.

Ian was talking on the phone when she caught his eye. She motioned an offer of help. He shook his head and gestured toward a bar stool as he continued listening to the call while pulling potatoes out of the microwave.

She laid her cell down on the counter and watched him move around the kitchen then step outside. When he returned, he had a plate with a steak on it and his cell was off. He set everything down on the counter in front of them and spoke only when he was seated on a stool himself.

“We got a hit on the facial recognition database for our Jane Doe.”

That brought her up short. “And?” she prompted, fork halfway to her mouth.

“Her name is Jessica Akers. She's been missing three years. A nurse from New York City. Her parents filed the report, but they live in DC.”

Vivi frowned. “That name sounds familiar. Prominent family?”

He shrugged. “I'm not sure, but the department down there is sending us what they have. They also have the unenviable job of going to talk to the family.”

“We're ordering a DNA comparison, right?”

He nodded as her cell rang. She glanced at the number then frowned, hitting the ignore button. One of Ian's eyebrows went up in question. She ignored him too and turned back to her steak. Until her phone rang again. She cursed on an exhale.

She told Ian to listen in, then hit the speakerphone button. “Yes.”

“Hello, luv.”

“Hello, Nick. What do you want? I'm in the middle of dinner.”

“I'm on speakerphone, where are you?”

“Nowhere public, now talk.” Vivi was keenly aware of Ian watching her, though she kept her own eyes focused on the phone.

“Imagine my surprise when your name turned up on one of the cases I've been keeping an eye on.” It was hard to believe that she'd once found Nick's British accent, and the way he used it, charming.

“My name is probably on a lot of cases you keep your eye on, Nick.”

“Jessica Akers,” Nick responded.

She glanced up at Ian. She was as confused as he was. “What about her?”

“You found her?” Nick asked.

“Yes.”

“And did the preliminary, including the reconstruction,” he added.

She didn't like where this was heading. “She army?” Vivi asked, trying to suss out why Nick, an Army CID agent, would be involved in a missing persons case and how much she should tell him.

“No, but her family is,” he answered. “Now, why don't you tell me what you know?”

“Or,” she paused for effect, “you can tell me what you know, and then I'll decide if I want to share.”

“Ah, luv. You're breaking my heart.”

“Were that the case, Nick,” Vivi said under her breath. Across from her, Ian set his knife and fork down.

“Ah, that must be the enigmatic Deputy Chief MacAllister I hear scraping around in the background,” Nick said.

“Tell me what you know,” Vivi said before Ian could answer.

“And then you'll tell me what you know?”

“No, then I'll verify what you know with my reliable sources and then
maybe
I'll share with you what I know,” she corrected.

“You were never this territorial, Viv. It doesn't become you.”

“I never had to watch my back with a colleague before, now did I, Nick?”

His sigh came over the line, and when he spoke again, he still spoke with his native accent, but the cajoling jocularity was gone. In its place was the seasoned agent she knew him to be. “Jessica Akers is the daughter of Hammond Akers.
General
Hammond Akers. He has a proclivity for young girls that, embarrassingly enough, escaped without notice until someone provided evidence against him. He's in Leavenworth now, having very quietly and discreetly been court marshaled a year and half ago.”

“And Jessica provided the evidence?” Vivi asked.

“Yes, three weeks before she disappeared.”

Vivi glanced at Ian. “I'll see what information I can get you,” she said.

“Ah, Viv, you're really going to make me wait?”

“Goodbye, Nick. I know where to find you.” She hung up.

“Will he call back?” Ian asked, curiosity written in his expression.

“No, he knows better now,” she said, shaking her head.

“
Now
?” Ian asked. “As in, there was a point in time when he
didn't
know better?”

“It's a long story. We were involved at one point. Together, not on a case,” Vivi clarified. “We used to talk shop. A few years ago he was working a complicated, awful case. He bounced ideas off me, and when I gave him my feedback, he laughed. Well, not literally. But he didn't take me seriously. Didn't want to believe that psychology
could explain anything. It caused a—well, to call it a rift is a bit of an understatement. He was ridiculing half my life's work. He had full confidence in all the science, but not in anything else.

“The long and short of it is the case got worse, and I was called in, by his superiors mind you, to consult. I walked into the briefing room to hear him espousing my theories and taking the credit for them.” Vivi paused, taking a bite of her dinner. That moment, when she'd walked into the briefing room had felt so profound all those years ago. Now, here in this homey kitchen, it felt like nothing but a mild, unpleasant memory.

“To be honest,” she continued. “I don't care who gets credit and who doesn't but—”

“But when he used you after being so condescending, it was kind of hard to let that part go,” Ian finished.

She nodded. “Nick is very good at what he does. But the case was more my specialty than his. The fact that he was so disrespectful to me personally and professionally ended our relationship, which has, for obvious reasons, made our subsequent dealings a bit tense. Even though he is one of the best agents I know.”

“I can understand that. But, all that aside, do you think he's onto something? With Jessica Akers's death being linked to her father's crimes?”

“Before we jump the gun on that, I want to confirm his story.” Vivi picked up her cell, scrolled through the phonebook, hit a number, then put it on speaker.

“Danielson,” came the voice picking up the line.