On the List Page 4
“No, not right now.” Even Paul Broden, as supportive of her as he was personally, didn’t believe her conclusions. “What else?”
“Isn’t that enough? What did you expect—that I would have the answers?”
Gabe was grinning at her again and Renata shifted in her chair. She wished he would stop that—disarming her at every turn. He flustered her, made her lose her train of thought. It took some doing to recoup her concentration.
“Look, I’m the new agent in the Chicago office, and if I screw this case up…”
“So we won’t screw up.”
“We…that’s the other thing. If Elliott Mulvihill found out I was working with an outsider, he would crucify my career.”
“I won’t tell. How about you?”
“There are other ways he can find out.”
“That’s a risk you’ll just have to take.”
“But are you worth it?”
He sat back and stared at her. “That’s something only you can answer.”
Gabe Connor was definitely a wild card.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But you’re still a civilian. I can’t use you.”
What passed for a smile softened his rough beard-stubbled features, giving her another glimpse of that charm. There was something of the con man about Gabe and Renata wondered about his background.
Trusting him was out of the question.
Chapter Four
Gabe could tell Renata didn’t trust him, that he had a ways to go to convince her to go along with his program. Talk about someone he shouldn’t trust…she was a government agent. Not that he meant her any harm. On the contrary, he hoped his involvement in her investigation would do her some good.
And maybe he would get the answers he needed.
He automatically checked the monitors to make certain no one was paying too much attention to the storeroom doors. Maybe he should have brought Renata into the main security office downstairs, but he figured they had less chance of being interrupted or overheard up here. He hadn’t wanted one of the other members of Team Undercover to preempt him before he heard the facts and manufactured a plan of some kind.
“Just out of curiosity, if I had said yes, how much would your help have cost me?” Renata asked, a touch of cynicism in her voice.
“I’m not for hire,” he said, relaxing, making sure not one set of eyes was aimed their way before moving his gaze to her. “Think of me as a volunteer.”
“No one does anything for nothing.”
He couldn’t deny that. Neither could he tell her what he hoped to gain. If he did, she would stop him. Anyone working for the government seemed to think that was his or her right. Or so experience had taught him.
“Maybe I simply have too much free time on my hands,” he said, letting his lips curl into a crooked smile. He lifted one eyebrow and gave her a heated look. “Or maybe I simply want to impress you.”
She raised both eyebrows, seemingly unimpressed. “You don’t know me.”
“But I plan to.”
Renata blinked and seemed to be trying to hide her thoughts on that one. Gabe always knew when a woman was interested in him, and he had no doubt this one was.
The idea of something developing between them beyond the investigation set his own hormones racing. Eyes dark and smoky, lips well-defined with bright red, Renata was stunning tonight. Her lush dark hair fell like a silky cloud around her, but that was no body of an angel. Encased in simple black, every curve tempted him.
Preferring to hold the reins and keep control, he shifted away from her and said, “Let’s say I accept your refusal to let me help you. Can I just ask about your involvement in the case? That should be a matter of public record, right?”
She blinked again. “I’ll have to go some to be on the same wavelength with you.” But she pulled herself together fast enough. “Telling you won’t hurt anything, I guess. Director Mulvihill asked me to look at all the facts of the case to see if I could come up with some kind of profile on the shooter. Maybe stop him from killing again.”
“You’re trained to do that?”
“Not by the FBI. Not formally. But I am trained to know people and how their minds work. I was a corporate mediator and had to be able to read people to do my job.”
“But that’s on a one-to-one basis. In the City Sniper case, you only had paperwork to go on, right?”
She nodded. “That’s mostly how it works anyway. Unfortunately, the lack of pattern threw me at first, but eventually I realized that each of the victims had something in his or her past that took him or her off the straight and narrow. Some more than others. But you already know that from the media coverage. While everyone believed the shootings were random, I found that link that told me otherwise.”
“Which you thought would go where?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But you have a theory.” From her expression, Gabe could see that she had.
“I wondered if they could all have been in on some plan together,” she admitted. “I don’t know what—a robbery, or maybe a con job. Maybe they had information that threatened the shooter. Maybe they were planning a crime together and turned on him. Or they could have committed a crime as a team and the shooter was covering his back by getting rid of his partners…and therefore witnesses. I simply didn’t have enough to go on.”
“So you told Mulvihill about the connection when?”
“As they were rolling out after Hawass. I tried to stop the operation, but it’s impossible to stop a witch-hunt in progress when you don’t have any power.”
“You gave your boss the report?”
“Later. Mulvihill didn’t even stop to consider my theory…then when I did turn in the written report the next day, he buried it. His reasoning was that, unless there actually was a sniping incident, he was going to assume they got the right target. He didn’t want the kind of bad press S.A.F.E. got after Embry Lake last spring.”
Gabe cursed softly. The sniper fiasco fit Mulvihill to a T—he was a man too eager to pounce on his prey to listen to reason. If nothing else, someone had to stop the director of S.A.F.E. from doing more harm, and that someone was going to be him. He’d been looking for a way to get to the man and now this opportunity had fallen in his lap.
He wasn’t going to pass that up.
“I might not have done anything,” Renata admitted, “but then Hawass’s sister gave her brother an alibi for one of the shootings.”
“I didn’t hear about that.”
“I wonder why. And she claims the day her brother was shot, he had no intention of leaving the house until after he received a phone call.”
“From whom?”
“She didn’t know. He up and left without an explanation.”
“And Mulvihill knew to go after him how?”
“Another phone call,” Renata said. “From a reliable informant. And since Hawass was already under watch, Mulvihill jumped at the chance to get him.”
“Sounds like a setup.”
“Someone who wanted Muti Hawass out of the way,” she agreed. “I wondered if the caller realized he would be ruining the Hawass family, as well.”
Gabe could see that fact concerned her. “So what about the victims?”
“This was all covered in the news reports.”
“Indulge me.”
“I’m not going to tell you anything you couldn’t get with a little digging.”
Yes, she would, whether she thought so or not, Gabe thought. But all he said was “So?”
She frowned at him, tried to stall him, but he could see she needed someone to talk to.
“The struggling actress, Mae Chin—she’s also been a personal escort.”
“So you think she’s a high-priced hooker.”
Renata shrugged. “We don’t have proof of that, but that’s a fair assumption. Then there’s Maurice Washington, the owner of a club on the South Side—he’s suspected of selling Ecstasy at his club.”
“Any arrests?”
“But he wasn’t incarcerated.”
“No. He got a stern lecture and probation. He’s lucky they didn’t try him under the Patriot Act.”
Gabe thought about the victims. There could have been a link between a hooker and drug dealer. But a peacenik? That didn’t compute.
There had been five victims, so he asked, “So what about the other two?”
“Heidi Bourne, aide to U.S. Congressman Carl Cooper, was caught in a government scandal, but she made a deal and was going to testify against her boss. And Gary Hudson, a divorce lawyer, was arrested for domestic violence. His wife thought twice and dropped the charges.”
The last stuck in Gabe’s craw.
How many times had his abused mother cut his father some slack until one day he almost killed her?
It was only then, with her stuck in a hospital bed, that Gabe had convinced his mother that it was time to leave the bastard and disappear forever. Even then, she’d been afraid to do it, but he’d told her that if his father laid a hand on her or him or his kid brother one more time, he would kill the man himself and let the law do with him what it would. Gabe had been thirteen at the time, his brother Danny only eight.
His mother had realized Gabe was serious when he detailed how he would kill his own father. Which gun he would use. What kind of ammunition.
After all, he’d been bred to it…
Fearing for her sons, if not for herself, his mother had taken them and fled the day before she was to be released from the hospital. But once on the run, the running never seemed to stop. The fear that his father would catch up to them had always hung over their heads.
The fear that he would become his father hung over his.
Realizing Renata was staring at him, her brow furrowed as if she were trying to read him, Gabe cleared his throat and asked, “But you didn’t find any actual connection between the five victims, right?”
“I never had a chance to find out. It wasn’t in the case files.”
“Can you get me a copy of your report?”
“Excuse me? If you’ll remember, I refused your help.”
“But you’re still talking to me.”
“I guess that was a mistake,” Renata said. “Coming here to tell you no in person was a mistake.”
“The mistake was your saying no. You need me.”
“No, I really don’t.”
“Even if your life is on the line?”
He heard her quick intake of breath before she recovered. Was she afraid of seeming too vulnerable?
She might read people for a living, but reading people was part of his life experience. He’d gotten good at it from the time he was a kid, gotten better as an adult. If he hadn’t, he might not be alive today. She was torn. She wanted his help even if she hadn’t yet accepted it.
“We’ll get him, whoever he is,” Gabe promised Renata. “It’ll be a career-maker.”
“Or breaker.”
“Not if you succeed,” he said.
“Seeing justice done is reward enough for me.”
“I stopped believing in justice long ago.”
“Maybe when I nail the guilty one, I’ll turn you into a believer.”
For a government agent, Renata Fox really was naive, though Gabe counted it as one of her many charms. Then again, if Mulvihill went down, she just might succeed in turning him around.
Renata said, “This is my case. You have nothing to do with it, do you understand? I’m going to work alone and find the real sniper before he can score another victim.”
As in her, Gabe added silently, not wanting to see anything happen to this woman.
When she rose as if to go, he said, “Wait. One more thing. Tell me what happened last night. I swear I know nothing about it.”
She looked at him closely when she said, “I was on my block when someone rushed me from behind—a guy wearing a hoodie and camouflage that hid his identity. And, oh, yeah, he was carrying a big knife.”
Gabe’s gut tightened on the word knife. The attacker had meant to kill her.
She went on. “We struggled, and I pulled my weapon and got a drop on the bastard, who then booked on me.”
Either she was very, very good or very, very lucky. “Then he didn’t believe you would shoot him.”
“He seemed to be convinced of that.”
Which convinced Gabe of Renata’s vulnerability and of her need for support from him and Gideon and the others. Using her to get the dirt on someone was one thing. But he didn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s life in the process.
“Let’s head back downstairs,” he suggested, wondering how he could talk her into a Team Undercover mood. “Reese’s twenty minutes are up.”
Beating her to the door, he held it open. Indeed, his security guard was cooling his heels at the bar. Gabe signaled him and Reese nodded and headed back to VIP control central, such as it was, for the rest of the shift.
Renata set her half-filled glass of wine on the bar before leading the way across the lounge. Gabe couldn’t help but admire the sway of her hips, clad close in a sexy black dress. When they got to the stairs, he lightly touched the back of her waist as they descended. Either she was too preoccupied to notice his hand on her again or she chose to ignore the fact.
He leaned into her and got a whiff of her scent, exotic and spicy, and it took effort to remember what he wanted to say. Oh, yeah…
“It doesn’t have to be just me,” he said. “I can al ways bring in reinforcements to speed up the process, get this over quicker.”
“No! No one else. Not even you. I work alone.”
He ignored her protest, saying, “The bartender you were interrogating earlier, for instance—Blade Stone—he was Special Ops.”
And had been a major participant in one of Team Undercover’s cases when Gabe had arrived at the club. He’d saved a woman from being killed by her stalker.
“No one!” she insisted.
Damn! She was going to make his mission more difficult than it needed to be, not to mention the protection angle. Just thinking about finding her stabbed to death made his gut knot. Why couldn’t she simply take a chance on him?
He guessed he didn’t blame her, though. Hell, considering the way he’d been playing her, he didn’t blame Renata for being suspicious and cautious—he wouldn’t trust him, either. Hopefully, once he wore her down and she agreed to his help and they started working together, she would loosen up and give him the benefit of the doubt.
Then he could bring in the others.
If she thought she could make him give up and go away, then…well, she simply didn’t know him.
As they neared the dance floor, Gabe spotted Gideon at the club entrance, looking around, probably for him. Gideon knew Renata was here and would assume he’d sold the Team Undercover package to her.
Knowing he needed to keep Renata away from the boss—and the others—at least for now, Gabe said, “Let’s dance.”
And even though getting this close was insanity, he swung Renata fully into his arms and onto the dance floor.
SHE WAS TRAPPED. Gabe Connor had gone and wrapped her in his arms on a dance floor, where she could do nothing to free herself without making a scene.
“Were you always a rebel?” Renata asked tightly. “When you were a kid, I mean. Did you always do things people told you not to do?”
“Always. Revolutions make life worth living.”
Which meant he hadn’t given up, even if his statement sounded more ironic than serious, Renata thought. As if that was the last thing in the world he really believed.
What did he believe in? she wondered. What made Gabe Connor tick?
At the moment, he was making her tick.
Renata inched her hips away from his slightly, but there was no getting aw
ay from the man, not really. Their fit seemed custom-made, and Gabe surrounded her with himself in a way she couldn’t resist. A grand tease, that’s what this was. Enough to make her yearn for more, to get even closer, even though she knew Gabriel Connor was the last man on earth she should involve herself with personally.
She would have to be careful…not let this hap pen again…but for now…for this one crazy moment, she would allow herself to get lost in the music and the closeness and the fancy footwork.
“Someone taught you to make all the right moves,” she said, as his thighs brushed hers, the sensual contact nearly making her lose her breath.
“Actually, I make them up as I go along.”
He demonstrated, doing a twisty-turny thing that made her laugh.
“Nice sound,” he said then. “Practice it much?”
“Not lately,” she admitted.
“We’ll have to fix that.”
He synched his movements to the end of the piece so they finished in an exaggerated dip, their position that of two lovers. The noisy room faded in an instant and Renata imagined Gabe was about to seduce her.
Then he let her up and scanned the room as if he were looking for someone.
Uneasy now, she asked, “Lose something?” and looked, too.
Then Gabe focused totally on her again and patted the spot over his heart. “Only inside.”
Despite the fact that she knew he was joking, Renata felt her own chest squeeze a little tighter. This flirtation thing was getting to be too much for her.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“I’m getting out. You have a job here.”
“Which I’m trying to do. I’m seeing to a patron’s safety by escorting her home.”
“That won’t be necessary.” His seeing her home would be a mistake with her in this crazy mood.
“I disagree. With me along, there won’t be a repeat of last night. To that point, you probably should find some temporary digs.”
Feeling as if his company were inevitable no matter what her protest, Renata stopped at the check station to get her coat. “I won’t be driven out of my home.”
“How about carried?”
“You’re a real comedian.”