The 17th Suspect (Women's Murder Club 17)

Right after smacky-kisses and huggy-wuffles, we locked the front door, turned off the lights and the electronics. Then Joe and I went to our sky-blue corner bedroom for the rare early night to bed.

Minutes later Joe was lying facedown in the bedding and I was massaging his bum arm. This was only one of his healing injuries from that explosive blast four months ago that killed dozens of people.

I warmed the massage oil in my hands and worked his muscles, gratified by the happy groans coming from my big, handsome man. I worked on his back and then turned my attention to his leg, which had been broken in two places.

He was walking fine now but still had pain, so we were keeping up with the physical therapy techniques.

Joe sighed. “That’s all I can take, Lindsay. Thank you.”

He rolled over onto his back and reached for me, and I went into his arms. He kissed the top of my head, and I held on to his chest and listened to him breathe.

We’d come so close to losing it all.

First there was Joe’s marriage-splitting, government-sponsored escapade that involved a professional femme fatale. Whatever had happened between Joe and the mystery blonde, I would never know and now I didn’t want to.

She was out of our lives. And Joe had promised nothing would ever come between us again.

Then there was the explosion that broke his bones, cracked his head, and almost made me a widow and Julie a fatherless child. But Joe was back. In many ways he was better than ever, and I thought I was growing, too.

But.

Well, there’s always a but, right?

Having come so close to death, having reordered his priorities, Joe had told me that he wanted to have another child. We barely had enough time for the child we had. My job was dangerous and had never been nine-to-five. Joe wasn’t working full-time. He had been Mr. Mom when Julie was tiny, and he was there for her when I needed him during the eight months when we lived apart and our marriage was a very tenuous thing. So Joe got top marks for Great Dad.

But another child?

How would that work? Even now he was working as a freelance risk management consultant in a laptop-at-home capacity.

That could change.

He had once been deputy director of Homeland Security. He had worked for the FBI and the CIA. He was trustworthy, experienced, cleared for classified everything. And in the current climate of terrorist attacks breaking out at random, I could see him being ripped out of his home office and pressed into service. The very qualities that had sent him into a bomb-struck and unstable building looking for survivors could be activated again.

Joe said my name.

I said, “I’m here.”

He’d gotten massage oil on his hands and now used them to stroke me, warm me up, and my God, I was responding to his touch. I wanted to tell him to wait. Was I ovulating? I wasn’t sure. And before I could protest, reach for protection, it was too late.

I loved him.

He was dying for me.

And the feeling was mutual.

CHAPTER 19

YUKI WAS ON the phone with Claire, both of them at their respective desks, two floors and three hundred yards apart.

Yuki said to Claire, “I’m pretty sure a juror is going to question how a man can have sex when he’s afraid of getting shot to death. You have any thoughts on that, Dr. Washburn?”

“You think I’m a sex therapist?”

“I think you may have a free and informed opinion.”

“Hmmm,” Claire said. “Well. My opinion may be worth what you pay for it, so by all means, talk to an expert. But here are my thoughts. There’s a wide spectrum of sexual response, and some men may actually find the threat of violence exciting. S and M, bondage, for instance. There’s an element of that in your case, right? Maybe the defendant knew or surmised that her victim might find rape a turn-on.”

“I see,” Yuki said. “That’s possible. Or maybe she didn’t care if he would like it, but she did and thought it would turn him on.”