Love by Association

It excited him—all the murder-mystery tension. He was telling her what he was going to do to her.

Her video chip might not be getting picture, but it would record sound.

She asked him, in a perfectly calm tone, if he knew how to do the things he was saying he was going to do. Told him he was nothing more than a daddy’s boy who wished he were a man. She laughed at him.

The effort sent a sharp pain through her head.

Nearly slobbering with his disgusting passion, he told her about another night, another woman, as he continued to squeeze her butt. He told her she’d know soon enough that she didn’t get to choose whether or not she allowed him to do what he said he was going to do. He was going to show her.

He gave her details. She remembered a desperate spin around, a fourteen-year-old knee that fate had placed in just the right spot for her...

Sound was good.

Like the sound coming from outside the room—footsteps storming up the stairs, voices in the hall asking what was going on.

More footsteps.

And just after the door burst open, the lights came back on.

“Get up, you bastard. I’m going to kill your sorry ass.” Colin burst into the room, reaching for Junior.

Telling the video he was going to be a murderer.

Not Colin. He was the good guy.

Still thinking about that, Chantel realized that David Smyth Jr. was reaching for his ankle. Recognized the holster beneath his raised pant leg. He had a gun! She’d miscalculated.

“Police! Freeze!” she said, all Harris as she sprang up, dizzy but capable, grabbing her gun and running straight into Colin, knocking him back just as she got a shot off.

Junior’s gun fell to the floor.

And so did Chantel.

* * *

“YOU WERE AMAZING.”

Colin heard his sister gushing. Didn’t disagree with her.

But he couldn’t look at the woman she was talking to, either.

Police! Freeze! As if in a bad movie, the moment kept replaying itself in his mind. Chantel was a cop?

A cop!

One who’d shoved him aside like he was of no consequence and then shot at another human being.

A cop. Who worked for Commissioner Reynolds.

A cop. And a liar.

She’d betrayed him—worked him—knowing that he was a man who didn’t trust easily.

“I can’t believe you’re really a cop...” Julie had said the words half a dozen times at least. In a far different echo than Colin’s thoughts were repeating them. “Even with a head injury, you pulled your gun—I can’t believe you had a gun strapped on beneath that dress you were wearing—and shot his hand before he could pull the trigger. Colin would have been dead...”

Julie’s voice broke again. She’d been crying on and off for the past hour. Reliving the night, and another night, as well. Ridding herself of years’ worth of pent-up anguish, Colin figured.

“I just did my job.” Chantel’s words were slightly slurred. And not at all cultured. She’d been given something to help with her headache. They’d taken her straight in for tests the second the ambulance had arrived and already had the results back. There were no brain bleeds. The swelling was only surface. Other than a mammoth headache, she was going to be fine.

“I’m sorry I had to lie to you. To both of you. I had to do my job.”

He got the message, whether Julie did or not.

She hadn’t been in love with him; he’d been part of the job.

Even as he had the thought, Colin recognized that it wasn’t completely true. But he clung to it, anyway. Because he could.

Because it was easier.

She’s a cop!

Chantel...Harris, he now knew, was in a hospital bed. Just for the night. Under direct order from Commissioner Reynolds. Her boss.

She was being held for observation.

He still couldn’t believe she’d planned the whole thing. The woman who’d lain so sweetly in his bed over the past weeks had purposely put herself alone in a room with Julie’s rapist.

To avenge his sister and all women like her. Because it was her job to do so. She was a cop.

Her intelligence had missed the fact that Leslie Morrison had been one of Smyth’s victims, though. And apparently the fact that Junior wore a loaded ankle holster.

And then there’d been the breaker glitch. Old breakers had a tendency to stick or snap. Thankfully, the one at the old Estrada mansion had merely stuck. As soon as James had reached the breaker box, he’d managed to get the lights back on in the building.

“I understand why you lied,” Julie said, holding Chantel’s hand from the side of her bed where she’d been sitting for the past fifteen minutes. “You had a job to do. Besides, you were just there to help Leslie. What you did for me...you didn’t have to. You did that because you cared. How could I possibly be upset about that?”