A Fine Specimen

  Alex opened his mouth to reply but was sidetracked by the sight of that little pink tongue. This was another aspect of Caitlin Summers that he’d been trying to ignore, but that quick, mischievous grin, that tongue sneaking out to lick her luscious lips—making him think of her licking him—blindsided him.

  Alex kept sex and work strictly separate. Not that there had been that much sex lately to keep separate. He’d been busy. But still. If he met an attractive woman with any connection to the job, Alex just flipped that switch in his head that kept his dick down between his legs.

  That switch just broke.

  He’d already noticed how attractive she was but it hadn’t really affected him beyond a knee-jerk male reaction when she’d nearly become roadkill. He’d just filed it away as a distinguishing characteristic, as if compiling an Identi-Kit. Large, luminous eyes the color of a summer sky, beautiful pale blonde hair so thick it frothed out of its ponytail, high, sculpted cheekbones, long graceful neck. Five-four, slender build. Utterly gorgeous.

  But now all that feminine attraction seemed to reach out and grab him by the dick, forcing him to notice, to look at her as a woman. She wasn’t wearing any perfume, she didn’t have any makeup on, her clothes were cheap and wrinkled. His cock didn’t give a shit. It just reared straight up, the fucker.

  Damn Ray Avery! This woman was going to be a huge distraction. And now was the wrong time for him to be thinking with his little head. Just when he was zeroing in on Angelo Lopez…

  Maybe all this was happening because he hadn’t had sex in a while, sort of like punishment. Like going too long without giving your car a lube job. He had to see about getting laid, double quick, only not with Caitlin Summers.

  Not only was she definitely not his type, she’d been sent by Ray. It’d…it’d be like fucking Ray’s daughter. Ray didn’t have a daughter, he’d never married, but still.

  “Lieutenant?” He looked at her. Shit, even her voice was attractive. Soft, a faint hint of honeysuckle, though without that coyness he hated in Southern women. He shifted uneasily in his seat. The boner was not going down.

  Caitlin put down her cheeseburger and leaned forward earnestly, light blue eyes searching his. “Look, I’ve interviewed literally thousands of people at the workplace. What I said before is true. I can promise you that I won’t cause any trouble or distract anyone from their duties. I’ll be so discreet you’ll hardly notice I’m there. All I want to do is talk with the officers, get to know them well enough to evaluate the questionnaire. Find out how they feel about their jobs. Find out what their concerns are.”

  “Well hell,” Alex said, disgusted. “I can tell you that right now, without having to interview them. They want to put away the bad guys and stay in one piece while doing it.”

  “Of course they do.” She nudged her little round scholar’s glasses back up to the bridge of her nose. “But in order to do that, they need a strategy. A survival strategy. Cops are both predator and prey, so like any animal in the wild they need to hunt while convincing their enemies that they won’t make an easy meal.”

  Laughter rumbled in Alex’s chest but he refused to give in to it. This was not a laughing matter, damn it. He absolutely refused to be charmed by Caitlin Summers, no matter how pretty, no matter how smart she was. She was going to be a burden and a distraction.

  He was going to open the doors of his station house to her under duress and only because Ray Avery had asked him to. And Ray was the only human being alive he’d do this for.

  “Academic theory always has a positive rebound effect on the object of its study, sooner or later,” Caitlin said softly. “So you really won’t have been wasting your time or the time of your officers.”

  “Rebound effect?” Alex heroically refrained from rolling his eyes. “You mean you think you’re going to help us?”

  Alex knew he was in intimidation mode, but to his surprise, she didn’t back down. She clearly felt she was on safe ground here.

  Caitlin nodded. “Sure. A large part of behavioral psychology is based on the fact that we’re animals and we follow the rules any animal species does. You eat or be eaten. You mate and defend your young. You keep the troop or the flock or the pride together and orderly by following the rules of hierarchy. Aggression must be used under controlled circumstances or the group suffers. In this one aspect, the human species differs from all other animal species. No other species has as many rogue elements as humans. No other species requires that a percentage of the energies of the group go into keeping order. It’s also very unusual in primitive human tribes. That’s what makes modern law enforcement so fascinating.”

  Alex grunted and looked down at his plate, astonished to see that he hadn’t started eating yet. He’d been starving and she’d made him forget his food. Ms. Caitlin Summers was proving to be an even bigger distraction than he had originally thought. Not much could get between him and one of Hank’s burritos when he was hungry. Deliberately, he sank his fork into the now lukewarm burrito.

  Caitlin tilted her head and studied him. “Go ahead, Lieutenant. Why don’t you tell me about a case you’re working on and I’ll tell you what academic theory can do.”

  Alex stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth, turning her words over in his head.

  No. No fucking way. Police business stayed in the force. He wasn’t about to go blabbing about their problems to the first pretty face who asked.

  And yet…and yet. Alex was a good cop because he used everything he could, because he never spurned help, because he thought outside the box. And this was a woman who’d spent years studying law enforcement. Surely that counted for something…

  Shit.

  He was thinking about it. What was the matter with him? Had he suddenly gone loco?

  “You don’t have to give me names or details, Alex. Just give me the general outline of the problem.” Caitlin smiled at him, lips curving gently upward. It occurred to him that some women were smart not to use lipstick. Her lips were a very pretty color all their own—a smooth, glistening pale pink. He could kiss her without getting glop on his face. His cock pulsed at the thought of kissing her, diving into that pretty mouth, licking into it…

  He jerked himself back to reality. Think about something else, he ordered himself.

  Ratso escaping and Lopez laughing all the way to the bank came to mind, and his cock subsided.

  “We’re looking for someone,” he found himself saying.

  “Someone?”

  “Yeah.” Philosophically, Alex finally put the fork in his mouth and started chewing. With an inner sigh, he realized that he was going to tell her about Ratso Colby. He didn’t want to, but he was going to anyway. “He’s the bookkeeper for the man we really want, a major bad guy. We found out that the bookkeeper had been keeping the bad guy’s accounts—and I’m not talking about filing for the IRS here. If we can get this guy we’re looking for to talk, we can put the mobster away for a long, long time. Unfortunately, word is out on the street that we’re looking for the bookkeeper, so he’s on the run. From us and now from the mobster, who probably knows by now what we’re up to.”

  “What incentives are you offering this bookkeeper to flip?”

  She knew the lingo, that was for sure. Not only that. With a stab of surprise, Alex realized she’d cut straight to the heart of the matter. “Well, our bookkeeper has also been a bad boy in the past—he knows it and we know it. There are two or three counts we can nail him on. Minor things, but he’s been caught twice before and this would be the third time.”

  “Three strikes and you’re out,” Caitlin said softly, her eyes never leaving his.

  “That’s right,” Alex said with rich satisfaction. “And our friend spent some quality time in stir and hated it, and would do anything not to go back in. So we think he’ll give us names and dates about how and where our bad guy washes his money whiter than white. And so bang! We nail the bad guy.”

  “And what happens to the…bookkeeper?”

&n
bsp; “Witness Protection Program, probably,” Alex said, watching her as she winced. “What?”

  “I imagine that’s as unacceptable as prison for your bookkeeper. He’d be relocated somewhere at the discretion of the Marshall’s office, given an identity they choose for him, doing a faceless, nameless job the office chooses, always looking over his shoulder…he’s in a tight spot.”

  “Yeah, yeah. That’s just tough,” Alex said unsympathetically. “He should have thought of that before going to work for Lo— For the bad guy. So, are you going to look into your crystal ball and tell us where he is or not?”

  Caitlin looked up sharply but Alex wasn’t making fun of her. He wasn’t really sure if anything she might say could be helpful, but he waited politely for her response just the same.

  “There are basically two types of anti-predator behavior,” Caitlin said. “Escape behavior and crypsis, hiding to make prey detection more difficult. Do you think he’s escaped?”

  “No, he was spotted this morning, as a matter of fact.”

  “So there’s probably a reason why he hasn’t fled and you might want to look into that. Maybe he’s waiting for something or someone.”

  Waiting. Alex thought it over. He’d been astonished to hear that Ratso was still around when it would have made sense for him to get out of Dodge fast, what with both the cops and Lopez looking for him. The cops to make him talk. Lopez to shut him up permanently. So why hadn’t he skipped town? Something or…someone, she’d said.

  Alex thought it over and rejected the notion that Ratso had a love interest. The two things Ratso loved most in the world were himself and money. Now money… Maybe he’d stashed away some money and was trying to get his hands on it before leaving for good. It was a line to pursue.

  “Well,” he said, signaling Martha, “this particular predator has to get back to work.” He frowned as he watched her fumble with her purse. “What are you doing?”

  Caitlin froze, blinking. “Er…getting my wallet?”

  His frown deepened. “What for?”

  Caitlin looked around the four walls of the café as if they could help her. “Um…” She bit her bottom lip. “To pay my share of the bill?”

  Martha slipped the check near Alex’s right elbow and Caitlin reached for it. Alex clasped her wrist, feeling her skin warm and soft under his hand.

  “No, really,” Caitlin protested, “you must let me—” She pulled her wrist out of his grasp and knocked Alex’s glass of ice water straight into his lap.

  Alex closed his eyes for a second against the icy wet sensation in his groin. As opposed to the burning wet sensation of the coffee an hour before. He opened them to see Caitlin Summers’ mortified expression.

  Well, at least being doused with ice water had made his dick go permanently down. Count your blessings where you can find them, Ray used to say.

  “Tell me the truth, Ms. Summers,” Alex said dryly as he threw two tens on the table and stood up. “Did my dry cleaner send you?”

  Chapter Four

  “What are you doing here at this hour?”

  Caitlin jumped at the harsh, deep voice behind her. She had no doubt who it belonged to. Lieutenant Alejandro Cruz’s voice was unmistakable. It wasn’t just the deep timbre of his voice, but the firm tone of command. Yes, it was definitely Alex Cruz.

  She stretched and then turned around slowly, blinking and trying to clear her head to deal with the man. He always seemed to catch her at her worst moments.

  They’d walked back to the station house in silence after lunch, Caitlin’s cheeks red with embarrassment. Alex had disappeared into his office and Caitlin had wandered around, getting a feel for the layout, chatting with the officers.

  After a couple of hours observing the workings of the station, she’d asked Sergeant Martello if there were somewhere private where she could do some paperwork. Sergeant Martello had led her to a big corner room just off the squad room with INTERROGATION etched on the frosted upper panel of the door, and Caitlin had simply dived into the questionnaires.

  She knew that interrogation rooms were supposed to be windowless and featureless, stripped of any decoration that could distract a suspect’s attention during the interrogation so that the questioning could be focused. Almost a form of sensory deprivation. Unfortunately, since there were so few distractions, the room was also guaranteed to put her into a study trance, where she promptly forgot about the outside world and about time passing.

  The lieutenant brought her back to earth with a thump. Reflexively, she glanced at her watch and was horrified to see that it was almost quarter to eight.

  “Oh my God!” she gasped, rising and quickly shoving her papers together. In the windowless room, she hadn’t been able to see day fading to night. “Thanks for reminding me how late it is. I have to hurry. The last bus to Riverhead leaves at eight o’clock.”

  He stuffed two big, heavy books into her book bag and hefted a third in his hand. “I’m glad these aren’t landing on my foot,” he said wryly, then glanced sharply at her. “You don’t have a car?”

  “No.” Caitlin tussled briefly with him over who was going to carry her heavy book bag, then let him do it. She didn’t have time to waste arguing. It was a twenty-minute bus ride and it would be almost completely dark by the time she got to Riverhead. And it was at least a fifteen-minute walk from the bus stop to the Carlton. Ten if she hurried. She would definitely hurry. The thought of walking through Riverhead after dark was terrifying.

  Caitlin ran down the two flights of stairs to the ground floor, barely noticing that the lieutenant was right behind her. She had to battle her way down through laughing, joking officers walking up. The night shift was coming on. She was about to push her way through the heavy oak front doors when her elbow was caught in a hard grip.

  “Lieutenant,” she said hurriedly, trying to tug her arm free while reaching for her books. His grip didn’t hurt, but it was firm. “Thank you for carrying my book bag, but now I have to run—”

  He was glaring at her grimly. “You’re not running anywhere, Ms. Summers, you’re coming with me.”

  Caitlin stopped, all semblance of thought flown from her head. In gripping her elbow, he had swung her close to him. So close she had to look up to see his face. So close she could see the beginnings of a dark beard—he was the kind of man who probably had to shave twice a day if he went out in the evenings. So close she thought she could smell him—a faint tang of soap and leather and gun oil—over the station-house smells of must and sweat and disinfectant. Even though he was glaring down at her, Caitlin had an insane desire to move even closer, to see if he felt as wonderful as she remembered.

  Temptations were there to yield to—and she shuffled half a step closer to him.

  Oh God, yes, he felt so delicious. So very unlike anyone she’d ever touched before. Most of the men she touched were students, with soft, thin limbs. Touching them had never been a turn-on.

  Last fall, she’d dated a biology major who was hooked on weightlifting and could bench press her late, unlamented car. He had muscles coming out his ears. He’d felt lumpy and hard, like rocks in a sock. He had been so involved in his own body that kissing him had been like kissing her arm. That hadn’t been a turn-on, either.

  This was a turn-on, feeling that strong, lean, fit body against hers. The temptation to reach up and cup her hand to that dark face, just to see if she could soften it up, was almost overwhelming.

  Clearly the man played havoc with her thought processes and that was dangerous as hell. This was not a man you played around with. Not only was he tough and emotionally remote, she needed his cooperation for the next week. Touching him was out of the question.

  She curled her fingers into the palm of her hand and stepped back immediately.

  “I have to go now, Lieutenant,” she said, trying to tug her arm free. “The bus—”

  “I told you to call me Alex. And you’re not catching that bus.”

  Caitlin blinked. “I beg your
pardon?”

  He released her elbow and put a large hand to the small of her back. “You have to call me Alex if I’m going to be your babysitter.”

  Intimidating or not, Caitlin felt her indignation rise at his words. She’d lost her father at a young age and she’d held down a job of one kind or another since she was twelve. She’d put herself through college and graduate school by dint of sheer hard work and was used to taking care of herself. In fact, she prided herself on her independence.

  Caitlin stopped dead in her tracks, glaring up at him. “I don’t need a babysitter, thank you very much. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Which right now means making that eight o’clock bus, otherwise I’m stuck without a ride and I don’t have cash for a cab.” Caitlin was trying to be forceful and make him understand that she had to get out of the station house fast, but he was almost pushing her to a side door.

  “You have a ride,” he said. “Me.”

  “Lieutenant Cruz—”

  “Alex.”

  “Alex,” she said between clenched teeth, and dug in her heels. This was terrible and counterproductive. The last thing she needed was for him to feel that she was going to be a burden on him. That would be giving him ammunition to get rid of her as soon as possible. “There is no reason whatsoever for you to feel that you have to babysit me, or feed me, or drive me around. Now, I would stay and argue the point with you, but I really, really have to catch my bus.”She looked down pointedly at her arm, where he still held her by the elbow. He dropped his hand.

  “Ray sent you.” The lieutenant’s deep voice made the statement as if it were the clincher in an argument. He shrugged.

  Caitlin glanced at her ancient cheapo faux Swatch and the panic rose. 7:55. Another minute more and she’d be too late to catch the bus. “I realize you feel you should drive me back to the hotel, Lieutenant, but there’s no reason—”