"Talk to me, Reilly," he said quietly.
"You just ... you don't strike me as a man who needs luck with the ladies."
"You'd be surprised." As he piloted them toward the line of checkouts, going by the deli and the salad bar, he felt like explaining himself for some reason. "Look, my father's well-known for an evil reason, and people are attracted to me because of the notoriety. The women are not like you. Either they've got tattoos in stupid places and piercings all over themselves and dumb-ass, overdyed hair or they're Barbies who want to 'save' someone or are hungry for a safe walk on the wild side. Then there are the ones who seem normal, but turn out to have pictures of my father in their purses, and letters they want me to get to him - it's a f**king mess, to be honest. I've learned that I can't trust anyone, but the good news is that I'm never surprised anymore."
He pulled their cart into a U-serve and began swiping stuff as Reilly handed him things. "But like I said, you aren't in any of those categories," he finished.
"Definitely not." She passed over the bag of tomatoes. "I'm sorry, I had no idea."
"There are worse things to get saddled with." Like his blood tie to that maniac father of his, for instance. Hell, the groupies who wanted to f**k him just because of his name were bad, but the fact that he had that killer in his very marrow was the true nightmare.
"Are you going... in the middle of next week?" she asked.
"I'm sorry?"
"To the execution," she said gently.
Veck froze with the yellow Old El Paso box in his hand. "It's going forward?"
"If the governor doesn't issue a stay. There was an article in the paper today."
Ah, yes, the three columns he'd skipped at the diner. "Well, I hope they fry the bastard. And no, I'm not going. I have to see that son of a bitch every time I look into a mirror. Enough is enough."
He took his wallet out and snagged his ATM card.
"Here, let me give you some - "
Veck shot a stare over his shoulder. "The man should pay. I'm traditional like that."
"And the woman can damn well make a contribution. I'm a realist like that."
As she shoved a twenty-dollar bill into his palm and leveled her eyes at him, he knew he wanted to kiss her - and not just in his fantasies: He wanted to know what it was like to pull her in close and take a taste of that no-nonsense mouth of hers.
Not going to happen.
Refocusing on things that weren't going to get him written up or rightfully slapped, he swiped his card, punched in his PIN, and waited for the transaction to go through. After he snagged the receipt and threw it out, they headed for the exit, where he left the cart with the others and grabbed the bags.
As they walked back over to her car, he murmured, "You're quiet. Did I say too much."
She glanced up at him as she hit her remote and unlocked everything. "About your father? God, no ... anytime you want to talk about him, or anything else, I'm happy to listen."
Veck believed her. Which was a miracle of its own.
Just as he reached for the trunk release, she went for the rear passenger door and said, "Wait, here, put the groceries - "
"I'll just throw them in - "
As the top rose on its own, he got a gander at three big Victoria's Secret bags.
He couldn't help it: His eyes shot over to her and scanned up her body ... all the way to her brilliant red cheeks.
Which told him that chances were good there weren't a whole lot of fuzzy pajamas and fluffy bathrobes in those damn bags.
"Uh ... backseat," he muttered, "yeah ..."
"They were having a sale," she said as he shut the trunk.
He was getting hard again. Right now. Shit.
After the groceries were in the car, the pair of them got in their respective seats and she started the engine. The seat belt cut into his erection, but he figured the damn thing deserved the pinch. He had no business fantasizing about a fashion show.
The fine Officer Reilly was into that stuff?
Man, he needed a smoke -
"Shit," he said.
"What?"
"We have to go to your place to do it." With a curse, he amended, "Dinner, I mean. Do dinner at your place - I don't have any pans."
As they stopped at the light that led out of the parking lot, she glanced over ... and started to laugh. Before he knew it, he was smiling.
"You don't know how to cook anything, do you," she said.
"I'll be lucky if I can get the box of tacos open." He put up his forefinger. "But I'd still like to make you dinner, if you're game."
Shaking her head, she smiled. "Okay, but can you do me a favor?"
"Name it."
"Can you forget what you saw in my trunk?"
His eyes drifted to her mouth and then went farther down to the pale column of her throat and ... "I'm sorry," he said darkly. "That I can't do."
She inhaled on a sharp suck, as if everything he was thinking was showing in his face.
"Fuck," he breathed. "I mean, yeah, of course. Consider it done. Totally forgotten."
A loud honk sounded behind them, and she jumped before hitting the gas.
Well, this was going smoothly. Maybe he'd top off the night by burning her frickin' house down.
Chapter 10
During his years as a black ops solider, Jim had learned that good intel was mission critical in any assignment. Of course, back when he'd been working for Matthias the Fucker, his job had been killing people, and that was not the situation with his new boss or his current targets. But a lot of the principles were the same, however.
And the stakes were even higher.
Sitting on his bed in the Marriott, with his Dell propped on his thighs, the CaldwellCourier Journal's Web site was front and center on the screen, and the headache he had was not from the glare.
His work was cut out for him. Assuming Devina hadn't lied about the soul.
Last night Thomas DelVecchio Jr. had been in the woods with a guy who he'd been investigating - business as usual for a homicide detective, right? Wrong. The wrench in the works was the fact that David Kroner, believed to be a serial killer, had been driven back to town in the business end of an ambulance. Where he'd been all but tomato sauce.
And that was just the start of the fun and games. After spending nearly two hours combing the Net, Jim knew enough to fill a book about DelVecchio ... and the guy's dad.
None of it was good news.
"Damn, Dog," he muttered.
Dog let out a little chuff and put his paw on Jim's forearm, as if offering support.
The question was, where was the crossroads with DelVecchio? Had it been in those woods last night?
No, because then Jim would have lost before they'd gotten started, and he had to imagine that was outside the scope of the rules. Didn't mean Devina couldn't have given that a shot, though.
And on that note. "Where are you, bitch ..."
The demon was somewhere in all this, working behind the scenes, trying to pull strings so that DelVecchio the younger would get in deep with her.
The route could be through the father. Retyping the guy's name into Google, Jim went on another surf of the Web, and what he found made him question whether humanity was worth saving: Web site after Web site of hero worship, blogs on the bastard - oh, look, role-playing based on his killings. Artwork for sale on eBay. Autographs.
The guy was his own cottage industry - but it wasn't going to last, apparently. He was due a lights-out in Connecticut very, very soon.
Then again, maybe he'd live forever in infamy: There were round-the-clock vigils going on outside the prison. No doubt that collection of protesters wouldn't stop the execution, but they were an indication that the bastard might be even more of a celebrity once he was in the ground.
According to the CCJ archives, the elder DelVecchio had done most of his killings in New York and Massachusetts, and the first of the AP reports on the victims dated all the way back to the mid-nineties, when an initial body had been found in ... Caldwell, New York. It had taken about three years of seemingly random butchering for the authorities to kick in that they had a serial killer on their hands. Part of the lag was the fact that he had left bodies in multiple states and the disparate investigations had been carried out with varying degrees of competency by local police. But the other thing was, at least in the beginning, DelVecchio had made it his business to hide the remains well - and creatively.
The dots had been connected, however, and then it had become a race to catch whoever the killer was. The ass slapper was that DelVecchio had been in the public eye the whole time, a dealer of antiquities - and not just trinkets or fakes. He'd been at the top of the heap with that one, importing statuary and artifacts and tablets from Egypt and the Middle East.