Hidden Agenda. Maggie Price
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His gaze flicked to her hand while he caught another whiff of her scent that was as hot and steamy as the contents of his mug. Dammit, he had to get the hell away from her. He didn’t want a reminder of how a certain woman’s looks, voice, scent had the power to pull him in.
“Linc Reilly. Excuse me while I run out and pick up some stevia.” Turning his back on her, he headed across the squad room. By the time he reached his desk, she had sauntered—that was the only way to describe the slow, loose swing of her hips—halfway to Quintana’s office.
Linc settled into his chair, noting all conversation in the squad room had ceased. He glanced around. It didn’t surprise him to see every pair of male eyes tracking McCall’s progress.
“Who’s the babe?”
Linc shifted his attention to the cop at the desk across the aisle. In an unofficial vote of all the PD’s undercover units, Tom Nelson had won the title of worst dressed. Today’s stained sweatshirt and threadbare jeans looked disreputable, as did his dark, rumpled hair and unkempt beard. Propped back in his chair, his scuffed loafers on the desk, he held a report in one hand and a donut in the other. He had his eyes glued on the door to Quintana’s office through which McCall had just disappeared.
“Her name’s Sergeant McCall,” Linc answered. “Transferring in from Patrol.”
“Hallelujah.” Nelson pounded a fist against his heart. “About time this office got some worthwhile scenery.”
Linc raised a brow. “We’ve got two women in this unit. If Annie or Evelyn hear you, they’ll grind you into dog meat.” Linc frowned at Annie Becker’s desk. His partner always beat him to work, but he’d seen no sign of her this morning.
“Our gals are attractive,” Nelson conceded. “Just nothing like the McCall sisters.”
“Sisters?”
“You know Grace Fox? Ryan Fox’s widow?”
Linc sipped his coffee, and scowled when he found himself thinking about the additives he was consuming. “I’ve met Grace.”
“She’s the oldest. I heard the youngest sister is a few months out of the academy, but I haven’t run into her yet. If she’s as seriously gorgeous as the other two, mamma mia.”
Linc shook his head. Nelson’s looks were as memorable as a telephone pole, but that didn’t stop him from viewing himself as the department’s answer to Casanova. “Keep talking like that, you’ll get slapped with a sexual harassment suit.”
“Nah.” Nelson’s toothy grin lent charm to his bearded, gaunt face. “All I did was pay the McCall sisters a compliment.”
“Some women wouldn’t view it that way,” Linc said as he unlocked his desk and pulled out a file folder.
“Reilly’s right, Nelson.” The derisive voice coming from just behind Linc stiffened his spine. “And we all know he’s an expert in looking out for a woman’s best interests.”
Jaw locked, Linc swiveled his chair around. The detective who stood inches away was a little over six feet tall, with black hair, olive skin and deep-set eyes guarded by heavy brows.
After his lousy weekend, a run-in with Don Gaines was not going to lighten his mood, Linc thought. “Don’t talk around the subject, Don. You got something to add, say it to my face.”
Gaines sipped his coffee. “I’ve made my feelings clear.”
“Crystal.” Linc didn’t add that he agreed with the man who had once been as close as a brother. He, Lincoln Reilly, had put work above his wife and in the process got her killed. “Since rehashing old ground won’t change things, I suggest you switch subjects or move on.”
Nelson’s scuffed loafers hit the floor, his wary gaze darting between both men. “I was just mouthing off about women. Talking garbage. I didn’t mean to get this thing started again.”
“This thing is ongoing,” Gaines commented, then glanced toward their boss’s office. “As for Carrie McCall, you’d better watch what you say, Nelson. She might look like a piece of fluff, but she’s got the rep of being a good street cop who can kick butt whenever it’s necessary.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Nelson muttered as Gaines turned and headed toward his desk. “Sorry, Linc.” Nelson raked a hand across his beard. “I don’t know what else to say.”
“Nothing to say,” Linc swivelled his chair around. “Not your fault, Tom.” It’s mine.
As if reading Linc’s thoughts, Nelson leaned forward. “Not yours, either, buddy.”
“Yeah.” Linc’s voice remained steady while anger and guilt boiled inside him. He didn’t need a reminder of what he had carried like a ten-ton stone on his conscience every day, every night, every cursed second for the past two years. He had as good as killed Kim. Because he had not put her first, she had died horribly. If he had been a better husband, she would be alive. If he had been a better cop, he would have dug up something on the slime in the ski mask who’d kidnapped, raped and murdered her. As it was, Linc knew only what the grainy surveillance tape at the crime scene had picked up.
But he did, finally, have something, he reminded himself. After two years of searching for the white male with a snake tattoo on his forearm, the bastard had been spotted. Once. That one sighting had been enough to give Linc a place to start. He would find the slime. Find him, and make him pay.
Linc eased out a breath. The pain he’d endured since Kim’s death had taught him that tormenting himself over what couldn’t be changed was futile. So, while he waited for his partner, he opened the file and scanned the notes he and Annie had compiled on a string of murders that had begun a year and a half ago.
Unlike Kim’s, these homicides held no personal undertones. His and Annie’s interest had merely spiked when they realized six do-wrongs handled by various detectives assigned to the SEU had wound up murdered. Linc himself had dealt with four of the victims. All had been career criminals who preyed on innocent citizens and had sidestepped punishment in the criminal justice system. All had died the way Linc would have expected: ambushed and head-shot in apparent incidents of street violence. Still, his cop’s instincts had him wondering if there was something more about the killings than what appeared on the surface. He simply didn’t know.
“Reilly!”
Linc looked up, saw Quintana leaning out of his office door.
“Yeah, Lieu?”
“Need to see you. And bring an extra cup of coffee.” Quintana glanced across his shoulder, then looked back at Linc. “Black. Make sure there’s no sugar in it.”
Eyes narrowed, Linc checked the glass panel on Quintana’s office. The coppery-red flash he caught through the open miniblinds told him Carrie McCall was now seated in a visitors chair.
Setting his jaw, Linc slid the file into the drawer and locked it. Damn if the woman hadn’t gotten that cup of coffee out of him after all.
Even without looking toward the office door, Carrie McCall knew the instant Linc Reilly stepped inside. She’d felt the same sizzling awareness when she’d spotted him at the coffeemaker. She had spent a week studying his file. Learning about the man. Yet none of that had prepared her for the electric current that had zipped through every nerve in her body when she came face-to-face with her prey.
Forcing the cadence of her breathing to remain even, she told herself her reaction was to be expected. After all, she was under strict orders to get close to Reilly. Take him down for murder, if the evidence was there. He was her first undercover assignment—one that was risky at best. Dangerous at worst.
Carrie kept her attention centered on Lieutenant John Quintana, sitting at the tidy desk in front of her. SEU’s commander was a toughly built, compact man in his mid-fifties who gazed at her with serious, dark-brown eyes. The stark bareness of the office walls and