"Black at Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parrish Leslie)

Chapter 11

Wyatt spent most of Thursday night calling himself an idiot. All the promises he'd made himself, all the resolute certainty that what he felt for Lily was sympathy and protectiveness, and he'd let himself kiss her as if he needed her kiss to survive.

He wished he could regret it. He really did. But when he evaluated his most base response, his innermost reaction, it wasn't regret he found.

It was hunger.

Hell, maybe he did need her kiss to survive. Maybe he needed that warmth, that vibrancy, that keen mind, and the will that seemed to grow stronger by the day.

Maybe he did. That didn't, however, mean he should take it. Because he wasn't what she needed. Whatever she said about not regretting it, not wanting him to, and not needing to be protected, he was still her former boss, still the man taking care of her, still ten years older and a good deal more jaded.

Well, perhaps not that. Lily had seen things in the past few years that could harden even the most tenderhearted person.

"She's not hard," he reminded himself as he sat outside on the back patio Friday morning, sipping the steaming cup of black coffee he'd just made. The enclosed courtyard behind the town house offered privacy and was lush with vines and vegetation that made it seem more like a secret garden than a backyard. He'd had the stone wall heightened and the plantings increased soon after he'd inherited the house, so now neither next-door neighbor could look down from a higher floor and see anything other than the top canopy of shady trees and flowering shrubs.

No, Lily was not hard. The strength she'd fought for, that stamina and will, hadn't come at the cost of her kindness and her good heart. Lily hadn't buried her former self to become the powerful woman she was today. She'd simply blended two parts, the old and the new, until an altogether different woman had been formed. Not the innocent girl she'd been long ago. Not the angry, scarred woman he'd known this past spring.

She was neither. She was both. She was so much more.

And she was walking out the back door toward him right now, wearing a short, silky bathrobe and carrying her own cup of coffee. Wyatt looked away, not liking the sudden flash of interest that had shot through him at the sight of her long bare legs, revealed nearly to the tops of her thighs. High enough for him to see the puckered flesh, the scars. Yet she wasn't self-conscious about it anymore, as if she knew there was nothing about her he could look at and find unattractive.

"Morning," she said, sitting opposite him. She smiled, as if their tense evening hadn't happened. And it had been tense. After he'd come back into the house, they'd barely exchanged ten words beyond his telling her how to find her room.

He wondered if her sleep had been as restless as his.

"Good morning." About to ask her how she'd slept, he was interrupted by the ringing of his cellular phone, which sat on the table. He'd already spoken with Brandon this morning, and with Jackie, who had asked him if he was going to come in to deal with the increasingly furious Deputy Director Crandall.

Yes, he would, but not until he was ready to. Not until he knew what he was going to do with the woman watching him with sleep-heavy eyes from across the table.

He glanced at the caller ID and saw the name G Vincent with a Virginia area code. "Boyd's attorney," he said, nodding in approval. He'd suspected the woman wouldn't be able to resist returning the call Wyatt had placed to her less than a half hour ago. Lawyers were nothing if not predictable, and she was probably strutting her stuff over her big win in appeals court. The chance to throw that win in the face of an FBI agent-so often the enemy in a criminal trial-would probably be irresistible.

Placing his finger over his lips to instruct Lily to remain silent, he flipped the phone open. "Blackstone."

"Hello, Agent Blackstone, this is Claire Vincent. I just arrived in my office and was given a message that you called."

"Yes, I did. Thanks for returning the call." He winked at Lily. "I wasn't sure you would."

The woman on the other end of the line laughed softly.

"Oh, don't be silly. I'm always happy to talk to law enforcement." Her laugh ended abruptly. "Especially when they do me such enormous favors."

He sat straighter in his chair. "Favors?"

"Of course. If not for you, my client Jesse Boyd might still be sitting in his prison cell."

Wyatt slowly rose to his feet, tucking the phone into the crook of his neck. He lifted his coffee mug and walked to the edge of the patio, sipping slowly, waiting for the lawyer to explain.

"You are calling about Jesse, aren't you?"

"I am."

"I'm not surprised. It must be difficult for you. I mean, you must know that your exposure of the shenanigans in the FBI crime lab couldn't have helped my client any more than if you'd gotten a signed confession from another suspect."

He lowered his mug to his side, closing his eyes. This was what he hadn't wanted to hear, but what he'd feared he would discover from Boyd's attorney. The details hadn't been laid out in the article. It had said only that there had been some problems with the original case against the man. Problems involving evidence and, of course, the loss of the witness.

"The fact that the victim's aunt was your employee didn't hurt, either. But the real icing on the cake was you reporting that evidence tampering when you did. I mean, if you'd blown the lid off that a few months later, I might not have had as much legal maneuvering room. As it was, the timing was just close enough for the judge to buy it as a reason to throw out the evidence."

An almost tangible wave of red washed over his vision and a vicious headache began to pound in his brain. Each thud of his pulse ratcheted it higher until the pressure felt likely to blow through his temples.

"Can't imagine how tough it must be for you, since Fletcher worked for you. Thank God she's not alive to know your whistle-blowing helped get the guy accused of killing her nephew off the hook."

The woman's chipper voice assaulted him with every syllable. No, he hadn't been taken completely by surprise. A tiny part of him had worried that his actions might have had something to do with this case.

He had long ago accepted the fact that, by doing what he had done, reporting what he knew, he could be costing the convictions of some pretty horrific criminals. That knowledge had kept him up night after night, racking his brain, trying to find some other way. In the end, there had been no other way. He was an officer of the law surrounded by lawlessness. He'd done what he had to do, fully prepared to accept all consequences.

But not this one.

Jesus, not this one. He did not want to put the phone down, turn around, and admit the truth to Lily.

"Now, is there something I can actually help you with, Agent Blackstone? Or did you simply call out of morbid curiosity?"

Wyatt pulled his thoughts together, focusing only on getting information. Not on past cases, not on old mistakes. Only on now.

"I'm curious," he said, wondering whether she could hear the tightness, the barely controlled anger in his voice, "about how you got involved with the case."

The woman didn't answer.

"I mean, you weren't the original attorney of record. Who brought you into the case at this late date?"

Ms. Vincent sounded a little less amused and a lot more cool when she answered. "I am not at liberty to discuss my clients You know that."

"I'm not asking you to. I'm simply curious. From what I remember, Boyd doesn't exactly come from a wealthy background. He couldn't afford more than a public defender at the original trial."

"I repeat, I'm not at liberty to discuss my clients, nor who's paying their bills. Now, if you'll excuse me, I am due in court this morning. Good-"

"One more thing," he interjected smoothly. "I was wondering, since I haven't seen your name in any local cases, where your practice is located."

A brief hesitation said she was considering whether to respond. The question was a perfectly innocuous one, though Wyatt very much wanted to know the answer. Finally, as if realizing he could get the information if he dug for it, anyway, she admitted, "My firm is located in Williamsburg, Virginia, Agent Blackstone. Now, I really must go. Good-bye."

Brandon lived close to headquarters, so rather than taking the Metro down to Alexandria first thing in the morning, he went to the office first. He had something he needed to retrieve.

As soon as he got there, though, Jackie waylaid him, pulling him into her office before he could even get close to his. "Anspaugh's here again," she explained as she softly closed the door behind him. "And he's been barking your name since yesterday. The minute he sees you, he's going to want to question you."

"Does he have a warrant?" he snapped.

"Get real. You know you can't refuse."

Right. Which meant he better make sure he remained scarce so Anspaugh never got the chance to ask.

"Where's Wyatt?"

"At home, as far as I know," he replied.

"Crandall has called twice and he sounds like he is going to shout his office walls down if Wyatt doesn't show up this morning. He calmed down about yesterday when I forwarded him Wyatt's actual airline itinerary, proving he'd gone up to his place in Maine, and couldn't come in. But that also means he saw the trip was for one day only and he was coming back last night."

Brandon smiled. Forwarding the itinerary as a way to get Crandall off their backs for a day had been his idea. It had, however, as Jackie had just reminded him, bought them only one day. Which wasn't enough.

He and Wyatt had already been on the phone this morning, and they'd both agreed they needed more evidence before they allowed Lily to turn herself in. Evidence in both cases-to show that not only was she not the lily killer, but somebody else was setting her up to take the fall. And that she was in very real danger.

They needed time. They also needed help. Which was why he was about to take one of the biggest gambles of his life.

"Jackie, do you have some sense about what's going on around here?" He stared at her directly, letting her know he was done covering up, skirting around the real story.

"It involves Lily."

"Yes, it does."

Jackie lifted a shaking hand to her throat. "You know what happened to her."

He nodded once. But before he could say another word, the door to her office burst open. Kyle Mulrooney stuck his head in and said in a loud whisper, "Anspaugh heard somebody say you were here, Cole, and he's looking for you. He's in Alec's office right now, but Alec won't be able to stall him for long. Get outta here unless you want to be questioned all day."

No, he couldn't afford that. Lily couldn't afford that, either.

"My office is next in line. I'll try to hold him up, too," the gruff, older agent said, shooting him a conspiratorial look. It was as if all the other team members knew Brandon was up to something, and they trusted him enough to cover his ass without asking a lot of questions.

He had never been more thankful to work with this team, these people, than right now. He only hoped every one of them didn't hate his guts when they found out he'd helped Wyatt cover up the truth about Lily for so very long.

After Kyle ducked back out, Brandon strode toward the door, peering out into the hall. Anspaugh's blustery voice was easily heard from down the hall, two doors past his own office.

It was incredibly risky, but he wasn't leaving here without what Wyatt had asked him to get. Namely, the audio files from the other medical conventions that he'd been working on until yesterday's impromptu trip to Maine.

Before he left, he grabbed Jackie's arm. She was watching him, wide-eyed, tense, and silent. "Come to

Wyatt's when you can," he insisted. "Just come and you'll understand."

Then he checked the hallway again, dashed down it as quickly as he could, and ducked into his own office. The audio files were backed up on a flash drive. Considering a lot of his stuff had been gone through, he only hoped Anspaugh had been as inept in his search as he was at everything else.

The voices moved closer, out in the hall. Then he heard Kyle Mulrooney ask Anspaugh to step into his office on some pretext. He was almost out of time.

Spying the drive still sticking out of his CPU, Brandon yanked it free, breaking every one of his own rules about how to handle his backups. He shoved it into his pocket, then, still certain the voices were coming from inside the next office, dashed out of his own. He didn't turn around, didn't even hesitate; he simply hurried to the main doors of the suite and burst through them into the outer corridor.

"Secret Agent Man," he told himself with a laugh as he hurried toward the elevators. "Running away from your own damn desk. Pathetic."

He'd wanted to do fieldwork, wanted to get away from the lab and the computers and see some action. Well, now he was seeing it. Hiding from an idiot like Anspaugh-it was fricking embarrassing.

But a little embarrassment he could handle. He only hoped it didn't end up costing him his job altogether.

Or landing him in jail.

Brandon looked like a kid playing a dangerous game when he showed up at Wyatt's later that morning. Lily almost found herself laughing as he described his game of hide-and-seek with Tom Anspaugh. She knew the game could have had very serious consequences if he'd been caught out, but couldn't deny she would have liked to see Anspaugh's face when he realized he'd been misled.

"You rule breaker," she said, shaking her head and eyeing him with affection.

He dramatically threw himself down on the lounge chair, which stood beside the patio table. "God, I need a drink. All this clandestine stuff is giving me the jitters."

"I think it's your hyper personality that gives you the jitters."

"Hey, I'm not hyper." He shot her a wide grin. "I'm just exciting."

This time, she didn't control her laughter. She let it spill from her lips, so happy to have Brandon flirting with her, acting completely at ease, like a playful little brother, that she just couldn't help it.

His happy smile widened when he saw he'd made her laugh. And when it faded, he reached for her hand, squeezed it, and said, "It's good to have you back, Tiger Lily."

Thoroughly relieved he'd gotten over whatever kind of feelings he'd thought he had for her, and gone back to being the adorable, roguish player she knew him to be, she squeezed back. "It's good to have you back, too."

"If you two are finished, we have work to do."

She hadn't even heard Wyatt return from the house, and he nearly growled the words. He'd been in an awful mood since that lawyer had called, barely meeting her eye, not wanting to even have a conversation until after Brandon arrived. Now he looked even more irritated.

It didn't take a genius to figure out why. He'd been kicking himself for kissing her, and tried putting up that wall between them afterward. Now, though, he was afraid someone else might be going around it.

It almost made her laugh again, the idea that Wyatt might think she would prefer Brandon. Men were such strange creatures. He wanted her but wouldn't take her. Yet he didn't want her with anyone else, either.

When, she wondered, would Wyatt realize he was falling in love with her?

"Are you ready to listen to the new clips?" he asked, not meeting her eye.

"I suppose."

For some reason, since the moment Wyatt had finished his call with that scumbag Boyd's attorney-who, judging by whom she took on as a client, had to be pretty scummy herself-he'd been anxious for her to listen to the audio clips Brandon had brought down. The speakers had been recorded at the same annual medical convention she'd listened to before, only one year previously. He hadn't said why it was so important, just that something the lawyer had said made it even more imperative that she listen again for the voice of the man who had attacked her. With any luck, he'd attended the previous year as a speaker. That was the hope, anyway. Then they'd have his identity.

She was due for some luck. Right?

"I've uploaded the files off the flash drive onto your laptop," Brandon said, sitting up in the chair. "Whenever you're ready, Lily."

"Are you sure you don't want to go inside to make sure there are no outside noises distracting you?" Wyatt asked.

"Now that I know exactly who I'm listening for, I don't think I'll miss him even if your next-door neighbor decides to jackhammer his driveway."

She'd never forget that voice. Never.

Lily scooted close to the table, sipping from the glass of iced tea she'd poured for herself when she'd gone in to change her clothes. Coming outside in a short bathrobe might not have been a big deal with Wyatt, but she wasn't nearly as comfortable with Brandon or anybody else

When, she wondered, was he going to realize she was falling in love with him?

Oh, yes, falling so hard. This was nothing like the silly crush she'd once had on the man. It was no longer about being dazzled by someone smart and handsome and mysterious. She wasn't awed by him anymore; she'd become his equal. And the way he'd acknowledged that more with each passing day-how she'd changed, how she'd strengthened-had made her fall for him even more.

She no longer doubted she was woman enough for him. She doubted only whether he'd let her be.

"Okay, let's do this," she said, forcing all the crazy personal thoughts out of her head. There was still a long road to travel before she could think about any kind of future, a life with Wyatt, or one without him. For now, she just needed to focus on staying alive.

Wyatt handed Brandon a sheet of paper he'd carried out from inside. He'd gone to check something on the Internet, and he'd returned with a list of the medical workshops presented two years ago. "Go right to number nine," he said, putting the paper on the table. He tapped his finger on the line in question. "This group workshop."

Lily glanced over, catching sight of the first speaker's name. "Alfred Underwood… Why does that sound familiar?"

Wyatt remained standing behind her, blocking out the sun with his broad frame. "The woman whose car was stolen-Dr. Kean? Her maiden name was Underwood. Alfred is her father."

Lily gasped in surprise. "You said you didn't suspect her!"

"I don't suspect her of being involved in your kidnapping. But I think she and her sister-in-law might be hiding something. Why would two women who strongly dislike each other stick together to cover up for someone unless it was a member of their own family?"

With all that had gone on in the past forty-eight hours, Wyatt hadn't had time to tell her everything about his interview with the surgeons, but she didn't think he'd have kept such a tidbit from her if he'd suspected before now. The only thing she could think of that could have led him in this direction was this morning's phone call.

"What did the attorney tell you?" she asked.

He didn't seem surprised that she'd put it together. "She told me her office is located in Williamsburg."

Interesting. But certainly not a stop-the-presses revelation. "We knew Lovesprettyboys was in that area back during the initial investigation. That's why the stakeout was conducted there. So why do you think the attorney might be specifically linked to Dr. Kean or her family?"

"Call it a hunch. I had some misgivings when I left the office Tuesday."

"I trust your hunches more than I trust most people's studied findings."

"Ditto," said Brandon.

"Hearing the attorney's location just made me a bit more suspicious and I wanted to check a few things out." He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a small stack of folded pieces of paper, handing her the top sheet. On it was a printed screen shot from a Web page, one of those doctor report-card sites, and it was focused on Dr. Alfred Underwood. He had been sued for malpractice twice, which, in his line of work, probably wasn't a bad record.

"Look who represented him," Wyatt said.

She did, and felt absolutely no surprise when she saw Claire Vincent's name. "You really ought to patent your hunch method."

"It gets better." He handed her the next sheet. This time, the page was a printout from an online newspaper article. Wyatt had cropped out most of the text to focus only on the photograph, a woman identified as the attorney Claire Vincent herself.

"She might be attractive if she got the stick out of her ass," Lily muttered, predisposed to disliking the woman intensely.

"And got rid of the awful hairstyle and glasses," Wyatt agreed. "She's rather distinctive, isn't she? I recognized her immediately when I saw the photo."

Lily tilted her head in sheer surprise. "You've met her in person?"

Shaking his head, he explained cryptically, "No. Just held a door for her."

"Must have been a pretty impressive door."

His eyes glittered as he dropped the next bombshell. "It was the door to the Eastern Virginia Plastic Surgery

Center. Ms. Vincent was coming in just as I was leaving the other day."

"Bingo," Lily whispered, realizing why he was so confident that this whole case was somehow connected to Dr. Kean and her family. It all made sense now.

Someone in that practice had gotten the family's trusted attorney to work on Jesse Boyd's appeal and there could be only one reason why.

They were getting close-she could feel it right down to her very core.

"Ready?" Wyatt asked. When she murmured her assent, he nodded at Brandon. "Go ahead."

Brandon clicked the touch pad to start the clip, skimming through the introductions to the meaty part of the workshop, when the actual speakers all got their turn at the microphone. Lily listened intently as the first one began educating his audience about the most recent procedures in sucking the fat out of people's posteriors. Charming. And his pompous, older-sounding voice was utterly unfamiliar.

"Not him?" Wyatt asked, frowning.

Almost feeling as though she'd disappointed him, she slowly shook her head.

"Continue." He bent over the back of her chair, his hand on her shoulder, listening along with her to the next speaker. This one sounded younger, forthright, and brusque. And, again, was no one she'd ever heard before.

Wyatt s hand tightened on her shoulder, not a lot, just enough to indicate his rising tension. "Keep going. We're not finished yet."

Lily nibbled on her bottom lip, leaning so close to the laptop's speakers, her hair brushed the screen. Her heart pounded furiously. Wyatt seemed so sure. She almost held her breath as the next speaker began. Then disappointment made her release it in a gush.

"No," she said after the third man spoke only a few words. He sounded young and even a little flirtatious. Not the cold, arrogant voice she remembered. "It's not him. None of them are him."

Brandon sank back in his lounge chair, muttering a curse. Wyatt straightened and turned away, crossing his arms and tilting his head down, as if studying his feet. Though he appeared disappointed, he certainly didn't look thrown. Nothing ever really threw the man for long.

"A miscalculation, then," he said, sounding thoughtful. "I don't believe in coincidence, of course. I still strongly believe Dr. Kean and her family have something to do with this and that they brought that attorney into Boyd's case. But who…" He shook his head, visibly frustrated. "I'm sorry I got your hopes up."

"Don't apologize to me," she said. "Not for anything, not ever. I intended to listen to clips from every workshop, anyway. This just knocks one out of the way. We'll figure it out."

He nodded absently, rubbing his clean-shaven jaw.

"Hey, there a party going on back here?" a woman's voice suddenly called, shocking all three of them into near immobility. "Nobody answered out front, so I decided to come around."

Lily didn't have to turn completely around to recognize Jackie Stokes, who had opened the gate at the side of the house and stepped into the courtyard. Her heart started to pound, and on the table, her hands clenched into tight fists.

Please don't let her hate me.

Jackie, who still stood just inside the gate, suddenly froze. Her keys, which she'd been holding in one hand, slipped unnoticed from her grasp, landing on the flagstone walkway.

She hadn't even gotten a good look at Lily yet; from where she stood, she couldn't have seen more than her profile. But it had apparently been enough.

"Oh my God," the other woman whispered. She appeared in shock, her mouth open in confusion, her eyes wide and quickly filling with tears. "Is it you? Is it really you?"

Lily pushed the chair back and rose, turning to face the woman who'd become so close to her in the months they'd worked together. "It's me, Jackie."

They stared at each other from about a dozen steps away, not moving for a second, as if Jackie needed to give her brain a chance to catch up with what her eyes and ears were telling her. Then, with a shriek, she cried, "Lily!"

Flying across the courtyard, Jackie threw her arms around Lily, hugging her tightly enough to cut off her circulation. "It's you, it's you, it's you," she kept whispering, stroking Lily's short hair, wetting her cheek with her tears. "Oh, thank you, Jesus."

Lily was crying, too, by the time Jackie released her and stepped back to stare her in the face. Jackie might be angry when she found out Lily had been hiding all these months, but at least for a few minutes, her friend had made it clear that she was very happy Lily was alive.

Offering Jackie a tremulous smile and reaching for the other woman's hand, she drew her over to where Wyatt and Brandon stood, watching silently, shoulder to shoulder.

*'If you're going to thank somebody, these two would be a good place to start. Because they saved my life."