“Maxwell’s not answering his door or his phone.” Cormac broke the news to Emily just after they ordered and ate dinner.
She had cleared away the leftover dinner debris but was otherwise silent, and had been more focused than he’d seen her in a while as her gaze moved from computer screen to the legal pad on one side of her and the files on the other. It was as though their conversation—which had left him nowhere, with nothing settled, since she’d failed to accept his proposal or even indicate she was leaning that way—had somehow given her whatever answers she’d needed.
Her life was at risk. Their baby’s future hung in the balance, and she was consumed by work.
She’d warned him.
Truth be told, he had been focused on work, too, until he’d just had the text about Maxwell and looked up at her beautiful face across from him, with the knowledge that she was in extreme danger. He faced her grimly. “And because I can’t seem to find one piece of concrete proof that he’s behind any of these threats against you, we can’t get a warrant to enter his place. We can bring him in again for questioning, but only if we get him to answer the door, and Sean isn’t sure what any more questioning is going to do, except let the man know we’ve basically got nothing on him. He’s managed to outsmart all of us at least to the extent that he’s, so far, getting away with terrorizing you.”
“But he hasn’t gotten me,” Emily said, her gaze warm as she landed on him.
“He’s found a way to get past the detail watching him,” he said, refusing to fall into the compelling pool of emotion that Emily seemed to invite him to. “Some disguise, maybe, I don’t know yet, but I’ve got Sean sending me all the surveillance footage he can find from all sides of Maxwell’s residence. If he’s coming and going as someone else, I’ll find him.”
He had timetables, knew when the man was at work. When he picked up the cleaning van, when he dropped it off. Knew when he’d been seen coming and going. If another body—most likely female was his guess—was coming and going only at times when they didn’t have eyes on Maxwell...
In the meantime, “Nygren’s out,” he told her, while he had her attention. “Sean’s had a tech at the precinct spending hours scouring footage from Atlantic City, and they finally got him. He wasn’t even in New York the other morning during your attempted abduction. And he was picked up last night, back in Atlantic City for assault. He was drunk off his ass.”
Not a good guy. But not their stalker either.
And the list of recent prison releases from cases she’d prosecuted was dwindling. He was going over it one more time, just to cross his t’s and dot his i’s. Was down to just a few names.
“This Peter Bezos,” he said, Willa firmly in mind as he kept himself focused on keeping Emily safe. “How sure are you that he’s not a concern?”
“About as sure as I can be,” she told him. “He emailed me a couple of days ago to say he’d heard about my near abduction, to offer his condolences...”
Sitting up straight, Cormac homed in on that. Perps liked to insinuate themselves into investigations. Especially ones who were mentally wrong enough to stalk an ADA. “He emailed you?”
“Yeah.” She scrolled. Typed. “I just sent it to you.”
How could she not be concerned? She was no rookie. She knew how this kind of offender had to be a part of things. “Two days ago and you’re only just now telling me?”
“I didn’t tell you about the other couple hundred or so emails I’ve received from lawyers, judges and clerks, either,” she replied. “My work and my colleagues are my life and my family.”
Okay, but she hadn’t put any of the others away.
“I’ve had emails from some victims, too, and from a few others that I prosecuted who’ve been out with lack of recidivism. People who’ve written to thank me in the past, that kind of thing. Bezos is one of those. Besides, as you can see, he’s reapplying for his law license,” she finished.
He verified that with the post that had just come in from her.
It left him feeling like a bit of an overreactive fool. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he said, trying to save face, while he was pissed at himself for feeling like he needed to do so. He wasn’t there to impress Emily.
Had nothing to prove.
He had a job to do, one that he excelled at, and that meant not overlooking anyone. Not assuming anything.
“In the state of New York, you wait seven years after being disbarred, and then, depending on a pretty specific set of circumstances, you can reapply. He qualifies and is doing so. He thanked me for helping him earn his second chance with my letter to his parole board.”
Could he keep his distance from the woman who was pregnant with his kid and still admire the hell out of her? She didn’t just care about numbers, cases won, convictions made, her career count. She cared about people. Even the ones she put in prison.
That said a hell of a lot more about her than anything else he knew.
The screen on his computer populated, drawing his attention, and everything else faded away as he read.
“What?” The sudden alarm in Emily’s voice grabbed him. It mirrored his senses, which were on full alert.
“What?” he asked back, focused on her first and foremost. He had a situation—but that didn’t make hers any less important.
“I was asking you what, your expression, something just happened over there...”
She’d been watching him. No time to like the fact.
“James Kinney...”
The seventy-year-old man she’d dismissed as not a threat. She’d said she’d spoken at his parole hearing. He was mean, violent when he drank but had been dry for five years.
“What about him?” She still didn’t sound concerned.
“I identified him in the crowd gathering around the courthouse about an hour after your abduction.”
“He lives in the area.”
“Yeah, but I’ve just been running a series of searches on him, as well as his family, friends, any known associates, and this isn’t good.”
He turned his computer around so she could see. The family of the woman he’d killed on a drunken binge thirty years before, but hadn’t been prosecuted for until ten years later, had just posted that they feared for their lives. The man was out to get everyone who he claimed lied about the woman’s death. And he was drinking again.
Face white, Emily looked from the computer screen up to him. “Can you verify this?”
“I just sent a screenshot to Sean,” he told her.
And found it a little hard to breathe when her eyes filled with gratitude. And something more.
It was that something more that made him uneasy as hell and filled him with an intense need to take her to bed.
She had to excuse herself. Get away.
Before she did something she’d regret for the rest of her life. She could not fall for Cormac Colton. She just couldn’t.
In her normal life, there wouldn’t even have been the possibility. But with all the drama, her life in danger from a deranged stalker, finding out she was going to be a mother, being cooped up with the one man who’d managed to turn her crank far enough to unhinge her for a moment when he broke things off...it was getting to her.
Cormac’s phone rang seconds after he’d turned his screen to her; he’d shown her the caller ID, it was Sean, and she booked.
Grabbed her computer, her files, and went down the hall to her bedroom.
Half an hour later, when she heard Cormac moving around the apartment, she texted him to say that she was turning in early.
He’d texted back immediately, asking if she felt okay.
Yes, she’d sent back and left it at that.
His concern was because of the baby, she surmised. She’d given him a long rundown on all the increased risks to her pregnancy due to her age. And he loved that unknown child. The thought broke her heart a little—broke it enough to let in the surge of good feeling that realization brought her. Her baby was going to be one very lucky, very loved child.
In an atypical family setting.
Young dad. Older mom. Not married. Not in love. Just friends.
Or married, but just non-platonic roommates?
She couldn’t see it.
But if it would be best for the baby? Better than living with a single, workaholic mother, and only getting visitation with the single, workaholic father?
Really, with both her and Cormac working such long hours, typically gone so much, how hard would it be to share the same apartment?
And the baby would have one or other parent around, in the same home, with more frequency. She was always home at night. And Cormac, as she remembered it, had been home until noon some mornings. When he was using technology to ferret out information.
As he had that night.
On James Kinney.
It hadn’t felt like a seventy-year-old arm squeezing her and pushing her toward the car door the other morning. But what did she know of a seventy-year-old newly released convict’s physical state? If he’d worked out the nearly twenty years he’d been put away. Had worked manual labor, and needed to keep himself fit to stay alive?
She soaked in the tub for a bit, trying to relax, but instead, she was getting het up, thinking of Cormac so close, pretty sure that if she called out to him, he’d join her in the bubbles. So she ended bath time and took her computer to bed instead. Looked over the James Kinney file.
And got agitated in an entirely different way.
Giving herself a break, considering that she’d been working for more than twelve hours and she was pregnant, she switched to a streaming app, scrolled to an old sitcom she practically knew by heart, and, with the computer propped by the pillow next to her, fell asleep.
The next time she opened her eyes, the view outside the opened curtain in her room was blanketed with snow.
And activity on the street below was...nil.
Pulling up the weather app on her phone, she saw why. An overnight snowstorm had dropped more than eighteen inches of snow in the city, pretty much trapping her and Cormac together in his apartment.
When a burst of anticipation surged through her, she dropped her phone, gathered gray pants, a black sweater and underthings, took herself to the shower, and kept the water tepid. Warm enough not to make her uncomfortable, but not hot enough to feel really good.
Life was giving her challenges beyond anything she’d ever faced before. She was not going to fail herself.
Or the child that was already dependent upon her.
She was a mature woman. With a notable, successful, somewhat high-profile career. Not a youngster who could be forgiven a girlish crush.
As she reminded herself, with little patience, when she walked into the dining room, satchel over her shoulder, and computer and files in hand, to see Cormac, in flannel pants and a T-shirt, already in his seat hard at work.
“We’re snowed in,” he said, his glance barely grazing her before he returned his attention to the screen.
His hair looked fresh-from-the-shower combed. He hadn’t shaved.
Would it be completely inappropriate to ask him to go put on some jeans?
Figuring the obvious was better left unsaid, she set her things down, plugged in her computer and went out to make tea.
If ever a day could be excruciatingly endless, Cormac figured that one trapped inside with Emily Hernandez was it. He’d known he was going to be glued to her, and that keeping her out of sight was better than not, but with no ability to leave...the job took on all new meaning.
They weren’t just in protective custody; they were in a world that was literally just the two of them.
“At least we can assume this means that Maxwell can’t get to me,” she said, sometime around lunch, when he’d come back from the kitchen with a plate of leftover pasta. He’d offered to heat some for her, but she’d said she was going to have a salad, instead.
The baby diet and all, he figured.
He’d spent the morning weeding his way through hours of tape Sean had sent over on Eugene Maxwell. Sean was good. He’d managed to procure footage from cameras all along Maxwell’s block, as well as from buildings behind and beside Cormac’s.
He’d moved from the dining room table. He just couldn’t continue to sit so close to Emily that he could catch whiffs of the soap she used. Or see her beautiful face every time he looked up. He hadn’t been able to stay in his bedroom for long, either, as very real erotic memories of her in there with him kept surfacing. He’d changed into jeans. And his tightest pair of underwear. As punishment to the body part that refused to follow orders.
Less than an hour post lunch, after gazing out the front window to the deserted street below, watching the flakes still floating down on top of what was already a crippling amount of snow, he landed his butt on the couch.
Emily, hard at work on the Westmore case he assumed, was flashing through various screens and taking notes. He could see her laptop if he turned around.
So he quit doing that.
Amazing how two people forced into severely close proximity could say so few words in so many hours. He was grateful for their mutual dedication to their jobs. To their similar abilities to focus.
Not surprisingly, he was slowly filling with tension, too, brought on by all of the things unspoken between them. He’d asked, midmorning when she’d taken a five-minute break, how she was feeling. Had received a one word “fine” for his effort.
His offer to provide lunch had come back rejected.
And...there it was again. The purple hood, tied with a pink scarf. Midthigh-length purple coat belted at the waist, boots zipped over pants. Pink gloves.
Scrolling back and opening multiple files, he observed, checked time stamps and sat up.
Double-checked.
Opened copies of tapes he hadn’t yet seen.
And sat up.
“Maxwell’s using a disguise,” he said aloud. Just blurted it right out there.
And turned around to see Emily sliding quickly in her chair to stare at him. Mouth open. Fear chasing across her expression. It was the first time since she’d walked out the night before that their glances had met.
The power there, the tumult of emotions—hers and his—spilled all over him.
“I have to look at the other tapes,” he said, grabbing his phone to call his brother. “On the street by the baby store. Outside your place. As soon as this damned weather lets up, we can get a recanvas of bodegas and subway stops for flower purchases. If he’s this far gone, is this determined to get his revenge, he’s probably got a fake ID, too. Wouldn’t be a stretch to assume he’s got the connections to do so...”
He just kept looking into those compelling brown eyes, speaking his thoughts aloud, as though if he just kept talking, he could keep her from speaking. He could prevent her from releasing her fear and blinding him to what he had to do. He continued to hold on to her gaze as, still talking, he dialed his brother. Repeating a lot of what he’d just said, he ended with, “I need the tapes from Emily’s building, too.” A techie could check for the purple and pink attire, but he wanted to do it himself.
Had to do it himself. One way or another, he was going to find the evidence they needed to get Emily’s stalker off the street, to free her from the debilitating fear that was robbing her of the freedom she valued so highly. That was making her look at him with a helplessness he couldn’t bear.
He would not fail her.
Nor was he going to get up off the couch and take her in his arms. Not even for a second. He couldn’t afford the distraction.
“We’ll get him, Em,” he said, schooling his voice as he had when speaking with his brother. He was all business.
Breaking eye contact with Emily, he went back to work.