Mallory, Alex and Lincoln Frazer stood on the pool deck outside Dominic Sheridan’s beautiful home. Except it wasn’t so beautiful anymore. The downstairs windows were trashed. Shattered glass everywhere, gleaming edges jagged and dangerous.
The sun was coming up even though it wasn’t yet six AM. The security company had been monitoring the place but had been unable to reach Sheridan or Sheridan’s boss, Quentin Savage, who was listed as the emergency contact. They’d eventually tracked down someone in the Crisis Negotiation Unit who’d known enough about what was going on to call Frazer. The security company had called the local cops, but by the time they’d got out here nearly forty minutes had passed and the culprit was long gone.
Alex showed her and Frazer the video surveillance footage using his phone. A dark figure approached wearing heavy black clothing, a ski mask, black gloves. There were no identifying features. No tics. No tells. No way of figuring out who the hell had perpetrated the vandalism—or why.
“They obviously knew he was away,” Frazer said. “They made no effort to break in. Where’s Sheridan’s dog?”
“Staying with a neighbor who has a farm,” Mallory replied.
“They walk in and out of the woods like they know the way and aren’t in any hurry,” Alex said calmly.
“Think they’ve been spying on Sheridan?”
Alex met her gaze. “They’ve definitely been watching him.”
Mallory glanced at the woods with a shiver. “Should we get tracker dogs in?”
At the place where they’d found Caroline Perry’s car the bloodhounds had led them back to the road but they’d become confused about which direction to go in. After an hour the handler had given up.
“Wouldn’t do any harm. Might lead us to some sort of hide. Although…” Alex started walking in the direction of the woods.
Even though Mallory didn’t want to follow, she did, and so did Frazer. Being summer, the undergrowth was thick and lush, draped in ominous shadows. The scent was of pollen and crushed grass, not the rot and decay of fall.
Mal was grateful that birds were sitting on branches and singing happily. It helped. A little.
Alex followed the path into the trees and led them to a gate in the six-foot tall wooden fence that surrounded the property. Alex stepped aside as Frazer slipped on a glove to carefully open it. Evidence Recovery Techs would dust for prints and DNA later, but it was unlikely the trespasser had left anything behind.
“Why do this?” Mallory asked Frazer, slowing down to catch her breath. No matter how she tried to pretend otherwise, her pregnancy was making it harder to do her job. Maybe she should have stayed in the office like Frazer had suggested. One day she’d listen to someone besides her own stubbornness.
“You okay?” Alex asked, coming back to her side.
Frazer glanced at her sharply and stopped walking.
“I’m fine.” She waved them both off, although she could already do with a nap. “Why break his windows? It seems petty and small for someone who has committed murder.”
Frazer put his hands on his hips and shrugged. “Maybe it was an associate of Robin Elgin’s who knew what was going on and was angry but not murderous about the FBI foiling the plot.”
“Or the UNSUB is alive and pissed,” Alex said. “The bombs didn’t kill Chavez or Warren like they wanted. Sheridan and Kanas found Peter Galveston’s corpse, which was obviously important enough to them to dig up and rebury, then Sheridan shot dead Robin Elgin. They can’t get to Sheridan so they lost their temper, wanted to punish him and,” he shrugged, “this is juvenile but pretty effective in terms of trashing his house.”
“Shows a distinct loss of control,” Mallory mused.
Frazer nodded. “If this is the UNSUB and not some underling then they’re making mistakes, unraveling. They know it’s only a matter of time until we catch them.”
“Unless they go to ground…” Alex looked up at the trees and then back down at the forest floor.
“We have so much evidence to go through it could take too much time. They might get away.” Mallory felt the rising sense of dread she was trying to push down.
“We’ll find them wherever they are,” Frazer told her gently.
She blinked. Her boss, while not perfect, was a formidable guy. If he said they were gonna catch this UNSUB, then they’d catch them. But the fact remained…when?
“Here.” Alex had wandered away and crouched on the ground, staring at a shoe print in a small patch of dirt. “This person knows all about covering their face and hands but seems to forget some of the other basics. Get the ERT out here to photograph and cast this sucker.”
Mallory went to walk closer, but Frazer caught her arm.
“Careful.” He drew her backward, and she realized she’d been about to tread on a piece of evidence she couldn’t even see.
She took a step back. “I need to inform Sheridan what happened here. I doubt he even knows yet.”
“I’m going to the lab. Put a fire under their asses about the DNA results.” Frazer looked pissed.
Mallory was glad she wasn’t a lab tech right now. She pressed her fingers into the small of her back and started walking to fetch an evidence tech while Frazer guarded the footprints.
“Did those shoe prints look like the ones from the riverbank?” Mallory asked Alex when he caught her up.
“Yep.” He showed her the two images side by side on his phone. Pattern on the sole looked identical. Someone had a favorite pair of sneakers.
“I don’t think this is over, Alex.”
“Neither do I, baby. Neither do I.”
She tried Sheridan again, but the number was showing unavailable so he’d probably turned it off to get some sleep. She didn’t blame him.
“Why do people do this? Why hate and destroy when it’s so much better to love?”
“Greed, revenge, rage, pain? Maybe they have an appetite for destruction?”
She appreciated the Guns N’ Roses reference.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged like he didn’t care, but they both knew that was a lie.
“We have dinner in DC tonight with my mother. Did you remember?”
“I remembered that I’m probably going to have an emergency come up in the office at the last minute.” Her husband wiggled his brows and she grinned.
“It would be nice if we could catch this UNSUB, lock them up and then I can go have our baby in peace.” Hopefully too sedated with an epidural to feel pain. She interlaced her fingers around her beachball belly as she glanced at Alex.
His fingers joined hers. “You can stop work any time,” he murmured against her brow.
But if Mallory had a flaw, and she had many, not being able to let things go topped the list.
“Can you drop me at work and I’ll meet you in DC tonight?” she asked.
“I can drive you to DC.”
“I thought you had an appointment there this afternoon?”
“I do but I can—”
She touched his lips with her fingers and they were warm against her skin. “I can drive myself. See you tonight, Mr. Parker.”
A grin cut across his face. “Have it your way, Mrs. Parker, but go take a nap on Frazer’s couch. He’s gonna be busy chasing his tail all day anyway.”
Frazer groaned pitifully. “I heard that.”
She nodded.
“Promise?” he asked.
“I promise.”
* * *
“Do we have to go back to Quantico today?” Ava spoke quietly into the pillow.
Dominic’s entire body trembled with aftershocks. This woman had completely destroyed him, last night and again this morning, and he was left wondering what was going on between them. Was it just good sex? Although stupendous was a more accurate word. Had he abstained for so long he’d forgotten what it was really like? He honestly didn’t remember having sex with Suzanna which had scared the shit out of him and left him celibate in the months since. Sex with Ava, however, was something he’d never forget.
“Ah, damn.” He groaned, remembering something he would rather forget.
“What is it?”
“We have to go to DC today.”
She turned her head to look at him. “I thought Gross told us to stay away from the task force operation?”
He curved his lips, but it wasn’t a smile. Mark Gross had been a pain in the ass. “We have a party to attend.”
She swore, echoing his thoughts. “I thought you’d forgotten about it. Or changed your mind about me attending.” Ava turned all the way over until she was facing him, and he was treated to the long naked sight of her. He kissed her mouth and kept kissing her until her breath caught.
Finally, when his body was growing hard again from wanting her, he pulled away. To prove to himself that he could. “I don’t suppose you packed a ballgown?”
“Ballgown?” she asked, looking startled and aroused and confused.
“It’ll be black tie.”
“Black tie?” She sounded horrified. He felt her pain.
“My father takes being governor very seriously. Usually he’s back home during the summer, but I suspect the president couldn’t get away to Vermont. And if the president is invited then it will be formal. I have a tux at my apartment, but I don’t have any dresses.”
Ava looked down at herself and raised one long leg in the air, pointing her toes. “I could wear a tux.”
Dominic laughed, but his mouth was dry as ash. He’d never considered himself a leg man, but everything about Ava defied what he’d considered his norm. “It’s tempting just to see what you would look like.” He wanted to say something dirty and inappropriate, but they needed to have a conversation about work. They needed to get up, shower, get in the damn rental car and drive back to their real lives. “You don’t have to attend.” He touched her cheek. “It’ll be boring as hell, and my family will take your presence as my date way out of proportion. But as much as they annoy me, I don’t want them worrying about me or knowing a killer targeted me—so I will want you to keep that secret even though the threat is probably over.”
She held his gaze, and he was struck again by all the faceted colors in her eyes. “We don’t know for sure that it’s over.”
He shrugged. “If the president is attending, security will be tight. I’ll be safe enough.”
“Would you want me there?” she asked. “If we weren’t working together?”
He could tell she regretted the question as soon as she said it because she tried to roll away. He stopped her. She’d made herself vulnerable, and he refused to be any less courageous.
“Yes.” Honesty was scary, and his heart revved with fear.
Slowly, she smiled up at him. “Can we stop at Walmart somewhere on the way?”
“Walmart?”
“For a party dress.”
He laughed. While he didn’t care if she came in jeans and a t-shirt, the society crowd were going to tear her apart. He eyed her carefully, which wasn’t a hardship. His sister was too short. He had a sudden thought and went through to the other room, grabbing his cell, turning it back on. He had dozens of missed calls. Shit. He dialed one number. “Agent Rooney?”
“I’ve been trying to get hold of you, SSA Sheridan.”
Ava tried to sit up, but he put his thigh over hers. He wasn’t done with her yet.
“I turned my phone off to try to get some sleep last night. Before you tell me why you were calling me, would it be weird if I asked if you had a formal gown I could borrow for tonight?” He figured she was a similar height to Ava and when she wasn’t pregnant, they’d be a similar size. He could drive to Quantico to pick up the dress and then head back to the lion’s den of DC.
Rooney laughed. “I do, but you’ll need to talk to Alex about heels.”
He chuckled and saw the uncertainty lingering in Ava’s eyes. “What dress and shoe size are you?” he mouthed to Ava.
She told him using her fingers.
“Anything in a dress size six and a shoe size seven will work. Agent Kanas is accompanying me to my father’s engagement party tonight and is in need of something to wear.” He didn’t qualify that she’d be his bodyguard. He wanted her there as his date.
“I’ll need something where I can access my gun,” Ava added.
Dominic repeated that to Rooney, and she promised to deliver something to his apartment that night because she was planning to be in DC anyway. He gave her his address. “So, what’s the bad news?” he asked. Because he doubted Rooney would be calling in the middle of the night with anything good.
“Someone trashed the windows at the back of your house.”
“Anyone get hurt?”
“No. And by the time the local cops arrived the vandal was gone.”
“You think it was the UNSUB.”
“Yes.”
He dragged his hand down his face. “I thought it was over.” He wanted it to be all over. For Sandy and Fernando to be safe, for him to get back to living a normal life. The unsettling thought of Ava not being in it swirled confusingly in his brain. They still had tonight. It wasn’t over yet.
“Any update on DNA or lab work or Robin Elgin’s cell phone data?”
“Frazer plans to go lean on the lab today until they give him answers.”
Dominic winced. He wouldn’t want Frazer hounding him, but damn, they needed results.
He realized it was really early and she probably wasn’t even at work yet. “I’ll call my cleaning company to come do clean up and get a glazier in there ASAP to board up until they can fit new glass. Call me if there’s any news and thanks for everything. I owe you.”
He hung up and tossed the cell behind him. There were so many things he should be doing. Returning all those missed calls. Talking to Sandy to check on Ben, talking to Gross about what the FBI had dug up at the cabin. Needling Lincoln Frazer about any other developments and checking in at CNU. Instead he ran his finger over Ava’s eyebrows, lingering on the scar on her forehead, then down her nose and across her petal-soft lips.
Down the graceful length of her neck, over her winged collarbones which he found unreasonably attractive. Her breasts were full and pert. Begging for a little attention which he willingly administered. Allowing the hunger to grow, fanning the flames, but carrying on with his exploration all the way down to her toes, which he kissed one at a time.
She watched him, eyes bright as glass. And when he finally started to make his way back up her body, she turned the tables on him before he could sample the tasty bits. She flipped him on his back.
He told himself he could take her if he had to, but from the firm grip she had on him and the fact she knew how to fight dirty, he wasn’t sure he was being honest. There were a lot of things Dominic was pretty sure he wasn’t being honest with himself about in regards to Ava Kanas and as her lips closed over him and he lost his mind for the third time that night, he was starting to wonder what would be so bad about having a proper relationship with this woman?
As long as his heart wasn’t involved, as long as he kept the most vital part of himself separate, so that if and when she left him, he wouldn’t be completely destroyed. Maybe, just maybe, they could make this work.