Sex, Lies, And Online Dating

Chapter 12

Wazcookin: Seeks Hunk

of Beef Cake…

“Oh my God!”

“Lucy, come look at this.”

“What now?” Lucy shoved the carafe under the iced tea maker and moved to the back door. She rose on tiptoe behind her friends, who were all crammed in the doorway looking out at the electrician in her backyard.

“Not every man can make Carhartts look that good,” Maddie said, her face glued to the glass.

The man in question bent at the waist and pulled something from the bed of his truck. His brown Carhartt work pants molded to his hard behind. His name was Randy, and Quinn had sent him to Lucy’s house that morning.

“He must do special butt exercises,” Adele speculated.

“Squats,” Clare added. “I wish he’d bend over.”

Maddie nodded. “Yeah, maybe I’ll go throw a dollar on the ground and see if he’ll pick it up.”

Lucy dropped back on her heels. “You’re all perverted.” As one, they turned, and three pairs of eyes looked at her as if she’d just sprouted a horn in the middle of her forehead. Lucy held up her hands and backed away. “I’m just saying he’s young.”

“And?”

Good Lord, she was starting to sound like Quinn. “I don’t know.” She placed a palm on the side of her face and shook her head. “I think I’m losing my mind.” She turned and walked back into the kitchen. After everything, she still preferred to look at Quinn’s behind. Yeah, she was losing it, all right.

Concerned, her friends followed. “You’re under a lot of stress.” Clare reached into a cupboard and pulled out four glasses. “And we’re supposed to be here helping you out, not eyeing the workman.”

Adele placed ice cubes in the glasses, and the four friends sat with a pitcher of tea at the kitchen table and discussed Lucy’s problem. Lucy had spent the night before with her mother and probably would again before the nightmare was over. But she always felt like a kid when she stayed with her mom, and she did not want to camp out there.

“I just hate being scared,” she said and raised a glass of tea to her mouth. She took a drink and added, “I’ve always seen myself as a strong person. Someone who could take care of herself in every situation.” She set the glass on the table. “Someone fearless in the face of sinking ships or shark attacks, but this psycho woman scares me.” She shook her head as the sound of a power tool made its way inside. “Yet, at the same time, I don’t know if I even should be scared. I haven’t been threatened, and this woman is killing men. Not mystery writers.”

“Yet.” Maddie pushed her glass aside and placed her forearms on the table. “A serial killer has contacted you, and you have to take it very seriously.” Maddie knew that of which she spoke. She talked to serial killers all the time.

“I am taking it seriously. It’s just that I wonder if I’m being paranoid,” Lucy replied.

“Not everything is a paranoid delusion.” Adele stirred her ice cubes with her finger. “Sometimes freaky things do happen.”

“What has Dwayne left on your porch now?” Clare asked.

“One sock and my Some Bunny Loves You coffee mug.”

“What a weirdo.”

“That’s creepy.”

“You actually have a Some Bunny Loves You coffee mug?”

By the time the pitcher of tea was finished, the four women had decided that Lucy would take turns staying in their homes or they would stay with her in her house. They assured her that it was no imposition, but she knew it was. She just hoped that Quinn caught Breathless sooner rather than later.

Adele rose from the table and grabbed the empty pitcher. “I volunteer to go first,” she said as she moved toward the sink. As she passed the back door, she glanced outside. Her feet stopped, and she took a few steps back. “Whoa Nellie.”

“What’s Randy doing now?” Lucy asked.

“It’s not Randy. Someone new has come to play.”

Clare rose and joined Adele. “Now that’s a gorgeous chunk of hunk.”

Lucy and Maddie stood and joined their friends. “That’s a cop,” Maddie said. “I can tell by his bulge.”

“You can see his bulge? From all the way across the yard? You’re good.”

“His gun. You can see the outline of his service revolver under his suit jacket.”

Lucy didn’t need to lower her gaze from Quinn’s face to know all about his bulges, revolver or otherwise. He stood next to Randy, talking to him and pointing up to the eaves of Lucy’s house. He wore a chocolate-colored suit and a beige shirt. A slight breeze messed his hair, and dark glasses covered his eyes. “That’s Quinn.”

“Hardluvnman?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.” Clare shook her head. “I mean, what a jerk.”

Quinn dropped his hand, then moved up the sidewalk to Lucy’s back door. He knocked twice and opened without bothering to wait for her to answer. Seeing the four women, he stopped in his tracks and reached for his sunglasses. “Well, hello,” he said, and Lucy could practically hear her friends melting. Or maybe that was her. Quinn shoved the glasses in the inside pocket of his jacket. “You ladies must be Lucy’s writer buddies. I’ve seen your pictures in her office.”

Lucy introduced her friends, who did a pretty good job remaining cucumber cool to the man who’d lied to her-until he lowered his chin and looked into Lucy’s eyes. “How’re you holding up, Sunshine?”

Sunshine? She was pretty sure she’d told him not to call her Sunshine. “Okay.”

“I brought your mail.” He reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a restaurant flyer.

“This is it?”

“Yeah.” He tilted his head to one side, and his brown eyes continued to stare into hers. “I need to talk to you.”

He meant alone. She walked into the backyard and he followed. Beneath the shade of an old oak he told her, “The Breathless letters came back negative for prints.” A shadow from the limbs overhead shaded the top of his face. “The envelopes are being tested for DNA. We put a rush on it, but I don’t expect the results for a few days. If we’re lucky.”

That was disappointing as hell, but police work was never as easy as it was in books or on television. Never nice and tidy.

“How are you really holding up?”

Scared. Disoriented. In shock. “I really am okay. My friends are going to take turns babysitting me.”

His gaze moved over her face and settled on her mouth. A slight breeze blew strands of her hair across her lips, and Quinn lifted a hand as if he meant to brush them behind her ear. Lucy pressed her back into the uneven bark and waited for his touch.

A frown wrinkled his brow, and he took a step back. “Call me if you need anything,” he said as he turned and walked away.

For the next three days, Quinn drove to Lucy’s PO box, only to find it filled with junk mail. As promised, he took it to her, and with each passing day she seemed a little more on edge than the day before. She tried to hide it, but he could tell the stress was getting to her. He could see it in her eyes, and he was afraid she was going to shatter before it was over. He was afraid there wasn’t anything he could do but stand back and watch it happen. She’d made her feelings for him clear. The few times he’d reached for her, she’d recoiled, as if she couldn’t stand his touch.

After the episode in her backyard, when she’d tried to push herself into a tree to avoid his touch, he’d made sure to keep his hands to himself. He should give the PO box task to Kurt. Yeah, that’s probably what he should do, but he wasn’t going to. Lucy might not want to see his face every day, but he wanted to see hers. He couldn’t explain it, even to himself. It was more than lust, although there was plenty of that. He was drawn to her in ways that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with her. Dangerous ways that had him thinking about more than just his career and a dog to keep him company. And that kind of thinking had never given him anything but a chest full of grief.

Sergeant Mitchell and the other detectives had discussed ways of using Lucy to draw out Breathless. They’d talked about a videotaped public appearance. Quinn hadn’t liked the idea, but he’d mentioned it to Lucy yesterday when he’d driven by to give her the latest junk mail. Her flat refusal had been a relief.

The only real thing he could do for Lucy now was to catch a killer. It was a little after nine on a Saturday, and he’d come into the office to do just that.

He and Kurt had interviewed half the presidents of The Peacock Society, and he’d just received the last five membership rosters from each chapter president. Unfortunately, not all of them had included membership profiles, and he’d had to phone them and make a second request. While he waited, he cross-checked the names against the Women of Mystery roster. None of the Peacock ladies belonged to the mystery writers group, but some of the chapters of the Peacocks conducted their meetings at bookstores throughout the valley. He had a feeling Breathless was on one of the lists. Quinn leaned forward in his chair and placed the Women of Mystery roster on top of a pile of paperwork sitting on his desk. He read over each of the thirty-five names. She was there; he could feel it.

He reached for the latest crime lab reports and reread them. There wasn’t a lot of good news. Except for the one set of usable prints they’d lifted off the leather passenger seat in Robert Patterson’s truck there wasn’t any hard evidence. They’d lifted a palm and four fingers from the left edge of the seat, where a person’s hand would naturally grasp. The prints didn’t belong to anyone in Robert’s circle of family and friends, and they didn’t belong to the victim. They didn’t match any of the prints lifted from the hotel room, but Quinn wasn’t surprised. Just as he’d suspected, that room had been lousy with prints and DNA, and he doubted any of it would prove useful.

He held up a copy of the lift card and studied the nice ridges of the hypothenar zone and the tented arch and whorls of all four fingers. INDENT had fed the prints into AFIS but unfortunately hadn’t received a hit. Just like it was with the list of names on the writers list, Quinn knew in his gut that he was staring at the hand of a serial killer.

The cell phone hooked to his belt rang, and he answered without reading the caller ID. “Detective McIntyre.”

“Quinn. It’s here.”

He straightened in his chair and set the copy of prints on his desk. “Lucy?”

“Yes.” There was a pause, as if she were trying to swallow. “It’s here.”

“What?”

“The letter. It came to my house. She knows where I live.”

Shit. “Did you open it?” He gathered the papers on his desk and put them into his notebook.

“No.” A sob broke in her throat.

“You’re not there alone, are you?”

“Yes. Adele spent the night, but she had to leave. I thought I’d be okay here by myself. It’s broad daylight and I thought-”

“Are your windows and doors locked?” He grabbed his notebook and laptop and headed for the door.

“Yes.”

“I’m on my way.” He walked out the front doors and headed toward his unmarked car. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“It’s a twenty-minute drive.”

He unlocked the car door and set the laptop and notebook on the seat next to a dozen pink roses. “Not for me.” Probably not for her either.

Quinn hung up and called Sergeant Mitchell’s and Kurt’s cell phones. Neither picked up, and rather than leaving a message, he decided to call back once he had more information. Breathless had sent the letter to Lucy’s house, and that changed everything.

The drive took him fifteen minutes. He parked his car by the curb and grabbed his evidence collection duffle out of the trunk. With the duffle in one hand and the laptop and his files in the other, he jogged up the sidewalk. The door to the house opened as he took the steps two at a time. He stopped on the porch and looked at her standing within her dark house, the curtains and blinds drawn against the sunlight. Her white pajamas had red lips printed all over them and were a stark contrast within the gray shadows. A sob broke between the fingers she pressed against her lips, and then she was in his arms. He wasn’t quite sure how it happened. One second he was standing on her porch waiting for her to invite him inside, the next he was inside with the door closed behind him and the duffle at his feet.

She buried her face in his neck. “I thought I could handle this,” she cried as her hands grasped the front of his black polo shirt.

“Shh. It’s okay now.” He slid his free hand up and down her back, bunching the flannel shirt. “I’m here. I’ll take care of it.” He pressed a kiss to the side of her head as his palm slid up her spine to her shoulders. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.” Beneath the soft flannel of her pajamas, he didn’t feel bra straps. He tried not to think about what that meant.

“I always thought I could handle anything.” She shook her head, and her grasp on his shirt tightened. She seemed to want to burrow under his skin. “I always thought I was one of those fearless people who could survive a tsunami and outrun a bear. One of the smart ones who jumps in the life raft and doesn’t go down with the ship. But I’m so scared I can hardly think straight.”

He smiled into her hair. “Honey, no one can outrun a bear.”

“I know, but I always thought that if I had to, I could do it. I thought I was the smart one, the strong one, but this whole thing has just knocked me on my ass. I’m not brave or strong or in control.”

His gaze fell on the stark white envelope sitting on the coffee table. There would be plenty of time to deal with that later. “I’ll help you.”

“How?”

Yeah, how? He pulled back far enough to see her face. Dark circles smudged the skin beneath her eyes, and she was very pale. “When was the last time you ate?”

“Last night. Adele stayed here, and we had takeout.”

He brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “A real meal.”

Her forehead wrinkled in thought, and he fought the urge to press a kiss there. “Like in cook?”

“Yeah.”

“Wednesday Maddie made lasagna, but I haven’t been really hungry.”

“You’re going to make yourself sick.” He set his laptop and files on the table, then he grabbed her hand and pulled her with him into her kitchen. He flipped the light switch on his way toward the refrigerator. He let go of her hand, then opened the door to discover several boxes of old takeout and half a bag of chick salad, the kind that looked like weeds and flowers. He also saw a half gallon of milk, three beef weenies, and a brick of cheddar. “There’s not much here.”

“Except for last night, I haven’t been here all that much. Just a few hours during the day to try and get some writing done and to meet you with my mail.”

He shut the refrigerator and moved to open a few cupboards. “Your friend shouldn’t have left you alone today.”

“Adele’s a writer and is busy. All my friends are busy with deadlines. They can’t stay with me twenty-four/seven.”

His gaze skimmed over cans of soup and vegetables, jars of olives, and two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. “You should have called me.” He pulled out the macaroni and cheese and turned to look at her.

She shrugged but didn’t answer. He supposed she didn’t need to. They both knew why she hadn’t called him. “You’re going to cook?”

“Sure. I’ll make you something my mom used to make me when I stayed home from school sick. Where are your pots and pans?”

The bottoms of her slippers made a soft skidding sound as she moved across the tile floor. She walked to a cupboard next to the stove and bent over at the waist, drawing Quinn’s gaze to all those red lips on her butt. He wondered what she’d do if he grabbed her up and placed kisses everywhere those lips were printed.

“This ought to work,” she said as she straightened with a pot in one hand. She walked toward him, and his gaze lowered to the lips printed on the pockets covering her breasts. He thanked God she wasn’t a mind reader, or she probably would have tried to slap his head off like she’d done the morning he’d told her he wasn’t a plumber.

She handed him the pot, and he filled it with water. “Weenie mac and cheese is exactly what you need.” He tore the top off the blue box and dumped the noodles in the water. “Good old-fashioned comfort food.”

While the noodles boiled, he shredded cheddar cheese and cut the weenies. She stood with her hip shoved into the counter next to him with her arms folded beneath her breasts. To fill the time and take Lucy’s mind off the letter in the living room, Quinn talked about the Raymond Deluca case. Yesterday, Mr. Deluca had been convicted of killing his wife and her three children, and Quinn talked about the case and the evidence that had hung him.

“I remember when that happened,” Lucy said, watching as he drained the macaroni. “And the faces of those little kids in the newspaper.”

While Quinn mixed the cheese sauce and tossed the cheddar and weenies into the pot and turned the burner on low, Lucy set the table. She poured two glasses of milk. “This usually gets baked for a while with extra cheese and little croutons on top,” Quinn said as he filled two plates, “but you look too hungry to wait.”

“Maybe I am a little more hungry than I thought,” Lucy confessed as he held her chair. He sat across from her, and they ate for a few moments in silence.

Lucy reached for her glass of milk. “This is better than I thought it would be.”

Quinn stabbed a few noodles and a slice of weenie with his fork. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had weenie mac? It was a lunch staple at the McIntyre house.”

A little white mustache rested on Lucy’s top lip when she lowered the glass. She shook her head and licked it off with the pink tip of her tongue. “I did most of the cooking in my house. My mother had to work late a lot, so I made dinner for me and my brother. I got to be a really good cook.”

Quinn recalled the chocolate torte she’d made him and how she’d said chocolate was better than sex. Granted, the torte had been good, but not that good.

She yawned behind her hand until her eyes watered.

“Am I boring you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m tired.”

“Are you having trouble sleeping?”

“It’s more like I’m staying up late trying to work. I have a book due in four weeks and I haven’t written a word since I found those letters. My deadline stress is adding to my insomnia. I’m a mess.”

Yeah, she was. Her hair could use a brush, but that didn’t keep him from wanting her. Spiffed or messy, he didn’t care. “Why don’t you take a nap? I can do some work here while you sleep.” They both knew what work he was talking about, but neither wanted to talk about it just yet.

“I doubt I could sleep, but I would appreciate it if you’d stay while I took a shower.”

Quinn pictured her naked and wet and all soaped up. “That’s fine,” he uttered as he picked up his plate and walked to the sink. He didn’t have to try and imagine her naked. He knew what she looked like. He’d seen her from the waist up, and what he’d seen had rocked his world. Turned it on its head until he’d lost his friggin’ mind.

Quinn rinsed while Lucy loaded the dishwasher. The late morning sun streamed golden light through the window and into Lucy’s hair. It got caught in her lashes and poured across her cheek and into her parted lips. He’d lived with Amanda, had thought he’d spend the rest of his life with her, but he couldn’t recall if they’d ever washed dishes together.

He handed Lucy a wet plate, and a drop of water slid from the edge to slip across her palm and wrist and disappear beneath the long sleeve of her pajamas. It wasn’t until the machine was loaded that he brought up the subject they’d both been avoiding.

“Do you want to know what’s in the letter?” he asked as he dried his hands with a dish towel.

“I’m not sure.” She took one end and dried her hands too. “A part of me does. The curious part that killed the cat, but I know I’ll regret it. So, no.” Her fingers brushed his, and a wrinkle appeared between her brows, as if she was confused about something. “Thanks for lunch.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And ah…if Snookie meows at you, don’t feed him. He’s on a diet.” She moved across the kitchen to the doorway leading to the bedrooms. “And if you have to leave-”

“I’m not leaving.”

She looked at him one last time and disappeared.

Quinn tossed the towel on the counter and moved into the living room. Instead of turning on lamps, he opened the drapes and let the sun in. He grabbed his duffle from the floor and tossed it on the couch, then took out a pair of rubber gloves and snapped them on his hands. He picked up the letter sitting on the table and sliced open one end with the small utility knife he kept in the front pocket of his jeans. As he sat on the couch, he pulled a letter from the envelope. This time there was no newspaper clipping.

Somewhere in the house, Quinn could hear the water turn on as he unfolded the paper and read:

Well, I am so disappointed, Lucy. I saw you with him. The cop. The one with the dark hair and eyes. He looked at you as though he was picturing you naked. Dirty man.

I thought we had an understanding. I thought I could trust you. I have felt such a deep connection to you through your books. I thought you felt it too. Through your writing, I have come to understand myself. Your words speak to me and give me power. In turn, I told you some of my secrets and shared with you my deepest thoughts. Quid pro quo-remember? You betrayed me. I know you’ve shown him my private letters to you.

What’s to be done, now? I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. I’m so upset with you. You’ve plunged a knife into my back.

Shall I return the favor?

The hair on the back of his neck stood up, which didn’t happen to him very often anymore. He slid the letter and envelope in a clear evidence bag, sealed it shut, then pulled the gloves from his hands. He tossed them on the coffee table and skimmed the letter once more. He was going to have to tell Lucy about this one. He couldn’t keep it from her. She had to know that Breathless was clearly threatening her.

When Lucy had called with this last letter, Quinn had known the stakes had changed: He just hadn’t known to what degree. Now he did. Lucy was going to have to relocate for a while or agree to have two undercover cops move in for around-the-clock protection. Those were the options-he just hoped she’d agree to one of them.

He opened his notebook and booted up his laptop. Breathless had seen him and Lucy together. She knew Quinn was a cop. Either she’d seen him on the news at a press conference, or he’d interviewed her. Quinn had a gut feeling it was the latter.

First, he wrote down all the places where he and Lucy had been together. The list started with Starbucks and included restaurants and Barnes and Noble. The list ended with the last time he’d been in her house.

Next, he flipped to his notes and wrote the names of everyone he had interviewed since the first killing. He pulled the Women of Mystery writers profile and membership roster from the notebook and circled the three members who worked at Barnes and Noble and possibly could have met the victims. Then he circled the four Peacock chapters that met in bookstores and the presidents of the group he’d already interviewed. He checked the three employees and Peacock members against the victims’ phone records and e-mails. He came up with a big fat zero.

Across the house, the water shut off, and he took out the xerox copies of the other letters and laid them side by side on the coffee table, checking to see if there was anything he’d missed. There wasn’t, and frustration tightened his forehead. Finding a clear connection would have been too damn easy. And nothing about the case had been easy. He flipped pages in his notebook until he turned to the interviews he’d done with employees at bookstores where all four victims had purchased books.

Bookstore receipts were just one link connecting all four victims. There were others, but the receipts were looking to be a bigger piece of the puzzle than Quinn had originally thought. If Breathless wasn’t communicating with men online, then she was probably meeting them in the bookstores. Trolling the aisles for victims.

Quinn didn’t have all the personal profiles from the Peacock ladies, and he didn’t know which, if any, worked in bookstores. A week ago he’d seen several of them in the Barnes and Noble where Lucy had been speaking to the mystery writers group. It was possible they knew he was a cop. Even if none of the Peacocks worked at bookstores, they were readers who hung out there and could not be excluded.

“Christ,” he cursed and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. He was going around and around in circles. Each break in the case added as many questions as it answered. Each time he crossed off one suspect, it seemed like ten more were added. Breathless was on one of those lists, though. He knew it. If he kept whittling away, he’d find her. He had leads and suspects. It would take time to get through them all. Unfortunately, time was one thing he didn’t have. Once he turned over the latest letter, the sergeant would be more determined than ever to use Lucy as bait.

Hell, if this were happening to anyone but Lucy, Quinn would be the first person to want to use her to establish more communication with Breathless. Use the media to anger Breathless into doing something stupid like showing up at a staged event, or baiting her into a physical confrontation. But this wasn’t happening to anyone else, and the last thing he wanted to do was place Lucy in even more danger.

The thought of something happening to her twisted his insides into knots and burned a hole in his gut. He thought of Merry and the pink roses in his car. It was the thirtieth. He always put flowers on Merry’s grave on April thirtieth.

There was no way he was going to have the death of two women on his soul. No way in hell that he would let anything happen to Lucy. He didn’t care if he had to hog-tie her and shove her in a closet. His closet. The one in his bedroom was big enough.

Of course that was out of the question. Mitchell would have a fit. Besides, having her in his house would drive Quinn insane. He couldn’t have her, and he couldn’t keep his hands off her. Oh, he would have every intention of keeping his hands to himself, but something would happen and she’d be in his arms again, pressed up against him, and he’d be feeling for bra straps. Getting all hot and bothered and thinking about all the places on her body he wanted to put his mouth. At the same time knowing her feelings for him and that it was never going to happen.

He was thirty-six. A grown man. If he really put his mind to it, he could control his hands. The bigger problem was that he couldn’t seem to control his body, and the last thing he wanted was to walk around his own damn house with a constant hard-on.

Frankly, he just wasn’t up for that kind of abuse.