Chapter Eleven

“Kandy sent some lasagna. Is that good for you for dinner?” Abby asked, peeking into the refrigerator. “I don’t feel up to cooking tonight.”

“I’m astounded you’re still standing upright.” Rick tossed his laptop onto the coffee table and opened it. While Abby fed Moonlight, he took the flash drive Kathy Pecorrini had given them, plugged it in, and began uploading the files. “You had a busy day, going from the hospital to the courthouse, the office, and then your old firm. It’s a wonder you’re not dropping.”

“You went all those places with me, you know. You’re not dropping.”

“I didn’t spend the weekend in bed with a fever, Abigail. I’m not in recuperation mode.”

He wasn’t sure, but she might have murmured, “You’re such a pain,” while she put the lasagna dish in the microwave.

“Where’s your laptop?” he asked after the program was copied into his system.

While pulling plates from the cabinet, she ticked her chin toward the living room. “I left it on the couch last night.”

He stretched over and pulled it onto the table. After plugging in the connector, he inserted the flash drive. “I’m gonna upload this to your system, so we can go over the files in tandem.”

“My password is—”

He waved his hand at her. “I’m already in.”

“Okay, that’s just wrong.” She moved from the kitchen to stand in front of him, hands fisted on her hips and war on her face.

Christ, she was gorgeous.

“How do you know my password?”

He leveled a glare at her that she returned in full.

“How? Tell me.”

“I seem to remember a little conversation we’ve already had about this, Abigail, but since you were sick, maybe it slipped your mind.”

She stood, rooted glowering at him.

He took a breath, then waited a moment before he said, “You tend to use familiar words and numbers, like most people do. Anniversaries, birthdates, even street addresses are pretty common because they’re easy to remember and are ingrained in our brains.”

“So I’m like everyone else in the world.” She shrugged. “How is it you can so easily figure out what I use?”

“Because I know you. But even if I didn’t,” he said quickly when she started to interrupt, “it wouldn’t be hard to figure out. You like birthdays. They seem to be the easiest thing for you to remember. Your birthdate unlocks your phone. Kandy’s unlocks the computer. Gemma’s unlocks the remote. Although why you lock the tv is beyond me, but…” He lifted his hands from the keyboard. “Ellie’s is your password for your voicemail. None of it was hard to figure out. If I can do it, an identity thief can, too. You need to mix those passwords and codes up. Change them. For your own security.”

Anger slashed across her face, replaced in the next breath by the corners of her eyes narrowing, and her lips twisting to the side. Something…devious danced across her eyes.

“That look is terrifying me,” he said in all honesty. When she stayed silent, simply kept assessing him, he swallowed. “Really terrifying me.”

“You’re not scared of anything, Bannerman.”

Only five foot nine lawyers with crystal-blue eyes and midnight-colored hair.

The microwave alarm dinged, and Abby readied their meal.

After dinner Abby changed into sweats and a T-shirt with Behind every successful Attorney is an exhausted Paralegal blazoned across the chest. They settled back down at the table, laptops opened.

“How do you want to do this?” She lifted Moonlight to her lap and tickled her furry neck.

“Before we start, I have to show you something. Something that came into my possession today when you were in session with one of your clients.”

“Define ‘came into your possession.’ ”

“Abigail.”

“Don’t use that tone with me, Richard.”

Rick sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “Actually, it’s Fredrick, not Richard.”

Her mouth dropped open, and she sat back flat against the chair. “For real?”

He nodded.

“No lie?”

“Why would I lie about my name?”

“Does anyone else know?”

“Josh does. My parents did. No one has ever called me by my proper name, so”—he lifted his hands—“I’ve always been Rick.”

She continued to stare at him across the table. Usually, he could tell what was running through her mind because every thought showed on her face. Oh, he knew to most people she was unreadable, something which worked well for her as a lawyer. But no one else had devoted so much time to studying her, in memorizing every angle and plane on her face, in deciphering her habits, her tics, her tells.

When her lips started to pull up at the corners, eyes narrowing, and head bobbing a bit, he realized he didn’t have a clue what she was thinking. “Scaring me again, Abigail.”

She repeated what she’d said earlier. “You’re not scared of anything. Now. Answer my question. How did you come about what you want to show me?”

“I finally heard back from the detective in charge of the judge’s stabbing. Guy named Donovan.”

“Kyle Donovan?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“I met him once at a bar-association dinner. His wife’s a criminal defense lawyer.”

“Pillow talk in their house must be fun.”

She waved her hand for him to continue.

“He told me witnesses stated the suspect who knifed the judge ran down into the subway after the attack and disappeared onto one of the trains.”

“So?”

“The witnesses described the attacker as a white male, young, maybe a teenager. Wearing a hoodie.”

Abby sat back upright in the chair. “Holy cow.”

“My thought, exactly, so I asked a guy I know who works for the city’s transit authority to try and find me some video footage of the subway entrance across from the courthouse.”

“Don’t you think the police are doing that?”

“Sure they are. But if I’d asked Donovan to see the footage, he wouldn’t have shown it to me. It’s one thing to talk to an investigator off the record, it’s another to actually show them anything pertinent to the case.”

“So, you’ve got this video footage from your friend?” She put the word in air quotes.

“Yeah. But I’ve also got something else.”

“Do I want, or need, to know where you got it?”

“Want and need are interchangeable. But aside from that, it came from the same guy. I asked him to shoot me the feed from the train platform the night Marty Fields was stabbed.”

“We’re getting into murky waters here, Bannerman.” She shook her head. “You’re a civilian. You’re not involved in either police investigation. You shouldn’t have access to this information.”

“What I should or shouldn’t have is moot. I have it. And if you’ll watch both of them, you’ll see why I’m convinced the cases are connected.”

Abby took a deep breath. Her sense of right and wrong, legal and not, was so strong, he suddenly had a sense he shouldn’t be involving her in this in case any of the methods he’d used to get the information came back to bite them in the ass.

She took the decision out of his hands the next moment.

“Show me.”

He queued up both streams and put them side by side on the monitor.

“The left is Field’s; the right, the judge’s.”

He’d formatted them so the actual attacks didn’t show. She didn’t need to see that. The footage he pulled up was grainy in both shots but showed the same image.

Lithe, not too tall, and with the dark hoodie pulled up and over the head, shielding the face, the figure was either a very undeveloped girl, or a teenaged boy. The shoulders were slim, as were the hips; the legs long. Black and white Converse sneakers shod the feet, dropping down from drainpipe jeans.

In both images, one hand was out, the other in a pocket of the hoodie.

“He’s white,” Abby said.

Rick nodded. “If it weren’t for that hand in both shots, we’d have no way to tell skin color. He, or she, is completely covered from head to toe.”

“So how do you think this relates to your case? I understand how Marty’s and Judge Aaronson’s are connected by this, but why do you think yours is? Castle died in a car crash. She wasn’t stabbed.”

“The method may be different, and I don’t have a video feed of a kid in a hoodie, but something tells me all three of them are related. I’m hoping we can figure out how when we go through these files.” He pointed to his computer. “So here’s what I’m searching for.”

Hours later, he glanced up from the screen when she placed her cell phone back down on the table. After the last call, she’d made a cup of tea for herself, passed him a requested bottle of water, and pulled some cut fruit from a storage container Kandy had sent and placed it on the table between their laptops.

One glance at the watermelon and grapes made Rick’s taste buds scream for something spicy and salt laden.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any chips hidden anywhere in this place, would you?” he asked. “For emergencies?”

Abby glanced at him from across the table, her lips lifting into a smirk he was dying to kiss off her mouth. “Not feeling the healthy stuff…Fred?”

Rick stopped typing, sat back, and leveled his own gaze at her. For several seconds, he stayed quiet. His silence, he knew, was an effective tool to get people to squirm. Just what he wanted her to do.

When she started to shift her luscious butt in the chair, he said, “I’m gonna say this once, Abigail, and then never again. No one. No. One. Calls me Fred. Or Fredrick. Or, God forbid, Freddie. If you refer to me by any of those names, I won’t be held responsible for what I’ll be forced to do to you.”

Something flashed in her eyes so quickly if he hadn’t been watching her he would have missed it. But he had, and the knowledge she’d taken his words as the warning they were intended to be shot a heated rod of lust straight through his core.

“You realize, don’t you, that statement is a not-so-veiled threat and, as such, can be subject to…punishment?”

“There’s nothing veiled about it. I’m telling you outright there will be consequences if you call me by any name other than Rick.”

“Oh, really?” She waved her hand in the air in a blasé circle. “Consequences? Care to elaborate?”

Oh, challenge accepted, sweetheart.

He rose from the chair in one subtle lift, moved to her side of the table, and lifted the cat from her lap. Moonlight’s grumble of irritation echoed in the charged silence around them as he placed her on the floor.

“I’ve always been a big fan of show, not tell.” He bent down and fisted his hands on the armrests of her chair. She stared right back at him, her gaze defiantly never wavering as his own drifted down to her mouth. He waited a beat before moving back up to her eyes. The widening of her inky pupils pushing through the cobalt was a gratifying reward.

But he wanted more.

He wanted to see her come undone and know he was the cause. He’d tried his best to ignore the attraction and sexual tension darting all around them for the past four years. He’d convinced himself leaving her alone, not pursuing this thing between them Josh had alluded to, was for her own good. And it was, he knew that.

Why, then, couldn’t he stop thinking about how it would be if they released the tension flowing back and forth between them?

He edged closer. She swallowed when he removed her glasses. Her arms were crossed over her torso again, giving her an air of bored tolerance. But the rapid rise and fall of her chest with each breath told him she wasn’t as unaffected as she wanted him to believe.

Good.

Sliding one hand under her crossed arms, he unfurled them, then tugged her upright.

“The last guy who called me Fred had trouble saying anyone’s name for a few days after.”

Her left eyebrow quirked up her forehead. Rick splayed his hands a little lower. If he curled his fingers, he’d be able to cup her delectable ass.

“Is that how you get people to do what you want? By getting physical with them?”

“There are times it serves a purpose.”

“A Neanderthal one. I wonder why you insist on calling me Abigail since you know I hate the name. Maybe I should make it impossible for you to say it for a few days.”

“Never issue a challenge you’re not prepared to see through,” he told her.

“I can take care of myself.”

“Is that so?” He tightened his grip so her body was now pressed solidly along the length of him. “I outweigh you by at least a hundred pounds, so trying to hurt me isn’t going to happen.”

She shuddered against him. “You don’t scare me.” She licked her lips, her gaze staying glued to his. “I’ve made a career of standing up to people who bully and threaten. And I don’t have to use my fists to do it. I can slay you with something much more powerful. My words.”

He grinned down at her. “Sticks and stones, counselor.”

“Freddie.”

“Abigail.” The warning hissed from his lips. “Be careful.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be.”

His mouth crushed against hers, claimed it. Without seducing her into acceptance, he boldly entered her mouth and captured her tongue, mating with it.

Good Lord. If this was punishment she wanted to do penance for the rest of her life.

Gladly.

Willingly.

Hell, she’d volunteer for it.

Rick’s hands slid down her butt and, when he squeezed, managed to lift her to the tips of her toes. Pressed against him from shoulders to knees, every hard, firm inch of him confirmed what she’d repeatedly fantasized about: Rick Bannerman was solid and big all over. She slid her hands up the fortress of his chest to loop around the back of his neck. The growl that rumbled up from deep within him spurred her on to further explore.

While she reached down, kneading and rubbing along the muscles coiled and rippling in his back, Rick’s own hands never stilled. He skimmed his long fingers across her cheek, down her jaw to the bounding pulse at her neck, and then settled on the outside swell of her breast. Plumping it, he dragged his thumb along her stone-hard nipple.

A violent shudder vibrated along her spine and a whimper of loss pushed through her lips when he abandoned them to nuzzle her neck and pull her earlobe into his mouth. The same moment he bit down on the fleshy mass, his hand moved between her thighs, his fingers spreading them apart.

“Fuck. You’re drenched.” His voice was thick and raspy as he dragged two fingers along the seam of her sweat pants slowly, front to back, back to front. His fingers pressed against the fabric, pushing it into her. His mouth took hers again in a punishing kiss robbing her of all sanity and reason. She’d wanted this—wanted him—for so long.

So damn long.

When Rick bit down on her bottom lip, her eyes flew open and locked on to his gaze. Twin dark caverns stared back at her, filled with blistering heat and…promise.

Abby dropped down from her toes and swiped a finger across his lips. Rick sucked it into his mouth, bit down just enough to make her pant.

“Tell me what you want,” he demanded. “Tell me—” He cupped her neck making her arch back, forcing her eyes to stay on his. “—what you need.”

“You.”

Before she could take a breath, she was in his arms, lifted as if she weighed no more than a whisper of smoke.

He carried her to her bed, then touched his forehead to hers, his hands fanning her cheeks in the gentlest of holds. “Are you sure? Please, be sure.”

Charmed he was letting her decide, she circled her fingers around his wrists, pulled up, and kissed him lightly on the mouth. Rick’s tongue swiped across her kiss.

What would he say if she’d told him she’d been sure for years? Had wanted this moment as much as she’d wanted her next breath for so, so long?

“I am.”

“Thank God.” He kissed her again.

How could his mouth be so divine and so wicked at the same time? Abby opened her thighs and made a nestling spot for him when he stretched out on top of her. His tongue traced a wet line of want along her skin inch by inch as he pushed up her T-shirt. When he got to her bra, Abby almost shot off the bed as he flipped open the front clasp with a flick of his lips and tongue.

A giggle welled up, only to die on a moan when he pulled a hard and sensitive nipple between his teeth.

His shoulders shook under her hands. When he lifted his head, she was surprised she didn’t immolate from the heat of his stare.

“Do you know how much I’ve wanted to rip every one of your T-shirts off you? How much they’ve been driving me insane?”

“Why?”

Rick tugged the fabric back down until it lay, bundled, across her unbound breasts. Lightly, he traced the lettering with the tips of his fingers. Every nerve in her body fired at his feather-soft stroke.

“Because every time I read the words written over these beautiful breasts”—he lifted the material again and cupped each mound—“all I can think about is how jealous I am it’s touching your skin instead of me.” He bent and swiped his tongue across one nipple, then the other. “How insane is it that a grown man is resentful of a piece of fabric?”

He blew a hot puff of air across her distended tips.

“Holy, holy!” Her back arched off the bed as her eyes slammed shut again.

The heat from Rick’s deep chuckle wafted across her torso down to her belly. He shifted, pulling up on his knees while he snuck his fingers under the waistband of her sweats. “Open your eyes.” When she did, he commanded, “Lift up.” He tugged her pants down her legs in one swift motion, then tossed them over his shoulder.

His eyes zeroed in on her jet-black, lacy thong as he traced his index finger along the waistband from hip to hip. Abby’s thighs shook, her gluteal muscles contracting at his touch.

“When you were sick,” he whispered, his attention still on her panties, “and I had to rifle through your dresser to find you something to sleep in, I almost had a heart attack when I found your lingerie drawer. Matching bras and panties in every color of the rainbow. So soft. So seductive.” His finger slid under the fabric and moved over her mound. He flicked a glance back up at her, a tiny smile playing at his mouth. “Who knew under all those perfect and professional lawyer clothes, you wore such fucking sexy underwear? Or that you’d look like a supermodel in them? My mind’s been going crazy ever since, imagining what they’d feel like against your skin.” His tiny grin grew into a wicked leer. “And trying to figure out how I could get you out of them.”

He bent and pressed a kiss to her navel, then swirled his tongue below it, lower, lower, stripping the panties down her in a slow, smooth slide.

“Should I take my time and glide them down your gorgeous legs?” He nuzzled the tangle of curls covering her skin. “Or rip them off and devour you?”

Lifting, he stared down at her and licked his lips.

Abby swallowed.

Before she could take her next breath, he ripped the delicate lace and silk, ruining it, and tossed her legs over his massive shoulders. Abby slammed her hands down on the bed, her fingers reflexively gripping the sheets when his tongue swept along her labia and then dove inside.

Arching again, she pressed her shoulders down on the mattress for support while Rick’s skilled mouth and fingers drove her to the edge of madness.

“I’m gonna make you come like you have for no other man,” he declared, lifting his head to gaze at her face, replacing his tongue with his hand.

“Rick.” Her body danced to the rhythm of his pistoning fingers, matching them move for move. When he pressed into her clitoris with the tip of his thumb, then roughly rubbed it back and forth, all the while his fingers pumping in and out of her, Abby dove over that ledge.

“Let go, Abby.” He kissed her belly, his hand never stopping. “Let go.”

When the orgasm pushed through, she screamed his name again, her hips and back lifting clear off the bed.

Rick stayed with her until her body stopped shaking, the aftershocks lasting longer than ever before. Her mind and body numb, she dangled on the brink of consciousness with one thought: he’d been true to his word. He had made her come like she had for no other man.

Through her hazy musings, she felt a blanket cover her. It took a great deal of effort, but she opened her eyes to find him bending over her. He was still fully dressed.

“Get some sleep.” He kissed her cheek.

“Wait.” She shot out a hand from under the blanket and grabbed his arm. “Wait. Where are you going?”

His smoothed her brow with a finger and then bent to kiss it. “I’ll be right outside, don’t worry.”

“But you…we…didn’t…” She could barely keep her eyes open.

“Shh. Don’t worry. We will.” He kissed her mouth this time. Abby sighed into the kiss. He pulled back and, with a wicked smile, told her, “I want you wide awake for what I’ve got in mind, and I’m willing to wait until you are. Sleep now. We’ll continue this later.”

Her very last thought before slipping away was she was going to be sure to hold him to his word.