Trigger Effect

Yes, she thought. Especially when the person was a man with the type of charmer’s grin that put a sizzle in her blood. She’d been pulled in once by a blinding grin that prevented her from seeing the truth. Never again.

She ran a hand across her briefcase while acknowledging how bitter, vindictive and totally lame she sounded. “Look, I had a rotten morning even before I got lost twice on my way here. That little encounter with you went all over me.”

“So you pulled out my paper on the off chance you could hammer me? What if I’d spent all day yesterday volunteering at an old folks’ home or something?”

It was her turn to arch a brow. “Then I doubt you’d have mentioned turning on the lights.”

“Lights,” he repeated with derision. “Your area of expertise might have merit, Carmichael, but I’m not buying your explanation that you know someone’s got sex on their mind just because they walk into a dark room and flip on a light switch.”

She smiled at the temper smoldering in his eyes. “Was I wrong about what happened between you and your companion?”

“We argued. The way you came up with that makes sense. And it isn’t a huge mental step to figure the odds are low of two people in the midst of a fight winding up in bed.”

“You think it was a good guess on my part?”

“Exactly.”

Paige eased out a breath, reminding herself it had also taken her time to buy into the merits of statement analysis. “You’re entitled to your opinion, Sergeant. Maybe as we get deeper into the subject matter it will change.”

He started to say something just as his cell phone chimed. Shoving back one flap of his suit coat, he pulled the unit off his belt and answered.

Watching him, Paige saw the way his eyes went flat and cool as he listened to the caller. No one had to tell her she’d just witnessed McCall slide into his cop’s skin. She’d done it often enough herself when she carried a badge.

After a minute passed, he said, “I’m on my way. Make sure the uniform keeps the scene secured. Until the lab guys get there, he doesn’t allow anyone in that freezer, including himself.”

He hung up, clipped the phone back on his belt. “I’ve got a homicide to work. Don’t expect me back today.”

Paige blinked. “You’re enrolled in my workshop and on call to work cases?”

“Have to. My partner’s on maternity leave. With three of us from Homicide taking your workshop, things are spread thin.”

“Hopefully you’ll rejoin us tomorrow.”

He paused and looked at her. Paige had the sense he was sizing her up with the same intensity he would if she were a suspect in the murder case he’d just been assigned.

“If I do make it back, how about giving me a break?”

She hoped he would be back. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she felt an intense challenge to make a believer of Nate McCall. “I’ll consider it, Sergeant.”

Hours later, Paige rose from behind the desk in the office used by the center’s guest instructors. Grateful she had the first day of the workshop behind her, she set the locks on her briefcase, then retrieved her coat from the closet tucked into one corner. The headache that had stayed with her all day hammered behind her eyes, tension knotted her shoulders and she hoped she could find her hotel without repeating the wrong turns she’d made that morning.

“Dammit,” she muttered after she pulled on her coat and turned back to her briefcase. She’d had the secretary run a copy of each of the workshop assignment sheets so she could leave the originals untouched when she analyzed them. But she’d stuck the copies in her briefcase and left the original statements stacked on one end of the desk. Not wanting to take time to rekey the briefcase’s combination, she coiled the sheets like a roll of paper towels and slid them into her red suede purse.

Swinging its strap over her shoulder, Paige grabbed her briefcase, then headed out of her temporary office. The click of her heels echoed against the now-deserted main hallway.

To acknowledge the three-year anniversary of her life getting blasted to smithereens, her evening plans included cracking open the minibar, room service and a long soak in the tub. With her headache drumming, she revised those plans to include a couple of aspirin.

Car keys clenched in one hand, briefcase in the other, she shoved open the door and stepped into the cold afternoon gloom.

With thoughts of the escaped Edwin Isaac never far from her mind, she paused just outside the door. The wind gusted, raking through her dark hair like wild fingers while her senses strained to catch the slightest noise, the slightest movement.

Maybe it was just the low, ominous-looking gray cloud bank sucking up what was left of the daylight that compelled her to settle her briefcase at her feet and slip her hand into her coat pocket. When her fingers failed to connect with the asp she habitually carried there, she swore a silent oath. She’d stowed the collapsible tactical baton inside her suitcase for yesterday’s flight from Dallas to Oklahoma City. In her haste this morning, she’d forgotten to retrieve the weapon.

“Can’t just stand here,” she muttered. Picking up her briefcase, Paige hunched her shoulders against the chill and headed around the side of the building.

The instant she came abreast of a thick, bushy shrub she sensed a presence. Motion. The hair rose on the back of her neck. Her right hand instinctively went for the holstered Glock she hadn’t carried in three years.

At the edge of her vision she glimpsed a towering black-clad figure wearing a leather mask charge from the shadows. Adrenaline blew through her system, and she had a crazy half second to think how her day was about to get worse.

Chapter 2

Paige’s elbow swept up toward the man’s jaw at the same instant the side of his hand slammed into her temple. The blow shot jagged lights behind her eyes.

Stumbling off balance, she smashed against the hood of her rental car.

She had no time to think, to work out if the attacker was Isaac. No time to wonder if he had a weapon. There was no time to do anything but act and react.

Sucking in a breath like a diver going under, she tightened her hold on the briefcase, spun upward. Her mind catalogued her attacker’s black leather mask and gloves as she slammed the briefcase into his gut.

His breath exploded in a grunt. It turned into a cursing rush when the toe of her shoe plowed into his knee. She knew if he had a weapon, odds were he’d have gone for it by now.

He locked an arm around the briefcase and yanked. Snarling, she held on like a pit bull.

Still gripping the keys in her right hand, she shoved one between her clenched fingers. She jerked on the briefcase’s handle, yanking him into a forward stagger as she jabbed the key at his left eye.

He feinted and, instead, the teeth of the key raked a furrow along the side of his neck, drawing blood.

Howling, he swung his fist.

The blow to Paige’s cheekbone sent pain grinding down her face. Reeling, she knew she was going down, and made sure she took him with her. She hit the pavement hard, and though she rolled, he landed on top of her.

The impact stole her breath.

He lunged up. Jerked the briefcase from her hold. Bolting in a half limp, he veered across the parking lot toward a six-foot cement block fence.

Paige shoved herself up, ignoring the flash of pain in her side and the throb in her cheek. She set off running after him. Eyeing him from behind, she realized the mask fitted over his entire head, like something out of an S&M flick.

She was a foot away when he swivelled. She dove under his arm and hit him hard. Instead of toppling, he took the impact, swung the briefcase. She twisted, deflecting the brunt of the blow with her shoulder.

She wished like hell she had her asp baton.

He lobbed the briefcase over the fence, then scrambled after it. She caught his pant leg when he was halfway over.

“Give it up, bitch!” he snarled, kicking wildly.

The toe of his shoe caught her in the jaw, snapping her teeth shut. She lost her grip on his pants, staggered back and landed on her butt. She was on her feet in a flash.

And knew there was no way she could get over a towering cement block fence in her snug straight skirt and three-inch suede heels in time to catch the scum.

“Dammit!”

Lungs heaving, breath ragged, adrenaline rocketing through her system, she crammed her trembling hands on her hips. Her jaw clenched as she listened to the bastard race through what sounded like high brush on the other side of the fence.

“Freaking February tenth,” she muttered.

The patrol cop whose brass name tag said Vawter sat behind the wheel of his black and white, jotting a note on a report form clamped to a metal clipboard. He sent Paige a speculative look across the front seat. “You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital, Ms. Carmichael?”

“Positive.” A crackle of police traffic from the radio accompanied her reply. Even though she had a stinging sensation in her jaw and her right cheek was just now getting the feeling back, Paige had gotten roughed up a lot worse when she was a street cop. Nothing a couple of Advil couldn’t help. “The other guy was doing all the bleeding.”

“A stroke of luck, considering the way you said you went after him.” Vawter was tall, with a linebacker’s shoulders beneath his uniform jacket. His thick hair and vivid blue eyes reminded Paige of her Grandpa Carmichael. “It’s going to take some doing to get the grime out of that expensive coat. And it’s my guess you’ve got a few bruises underneath it.”

“A couple.” Already, her hip ached like a bad tooth.

“Might have been smarter to let the guy have your briefcase. Especially if you think it could have been the escaped shrink.”

“Like I said, I’ve got my doubts it was Isaac.” With the after-attack adrenaline still pricking at her wrists, Paige stared out the windshield toward the cement fence the scum had slithered over. “The voice didn’t sound like Isaac’s. And his waging an assault like that doesn’t fit his profile. He first likes to play mind games with his prey. Attack comes later. When that happens, he doesn’t leave his victim behind. He takes her with him.”

“You said he called you after he escaped. Maybe he’s ready for a face-to-face.”

“Anything’s possible.”

“But you don’t think it’s probable.”

“I don’t know. He’s been locked in a cell for three years. That changes a person.” Paige pursed her mouth. “My partner and I suspected Isaac had an accomplice, but we could never prove it. If we were right, that could have been who mugged me.”

Vawter nodded. “Let’s look at things from another angle,” he said. “In my experience, a run-of-the mill mugger wants cash, credit cards. Stuff a woman carries in her purse.”

“You’re wondering why he stole my briefcase. Maybe because I slammed it into his gut? Though he didn’t even try for my purse.”

“Plus, hanging around the police training center is a strange place for a masked mugger. Unless he’s got a specific target.”

“You’re not saying anything I haven’t already thought of, Sergeant.” Fingering her cheekbone, Paige winced when she hit an extratender spot. “The briefcase is old. It first belonged to my mother, so it shows a lot of wear and tear. If the guy was some druggie aiming to boost something he could pawn for enough money to score a hit, he struck out.”

Vawter studied the list he’d jotted on the report form. “Inside the briefcase was an extra training manual, a file folder with copies of reports and newspaper articles on Edwin Isaac, another file containing personal papers, written assignments the people in your workshop turned in and a premeasured syringe of epinephrine, used to treat your allergy to peanuts.”

“And one banana,” Paige added. Luckily, she’d left her laptop at the hotel.

“So, you said you cut the guy’s neck with your car key?”

“I was aiming for his eye. He dodged.”

“What color were his eyes?”

“I couldn’t tell. The mask wasn’t just your ordinary leather one. It fit over his entire head and had some sort of gauzy material over the eye holes. It looked like some kinky sex mask.”

“Guess we’d better take a look at the local deviates. And we’ll alert clinics and hospitals, in case someone with a wound to the neck comes in.”

“I doubt I hurt him badly enough to need stitches.”

“Gonna do the alert before my shift ends, just in case.”

Paige furrowed her brow. “It just hit me that I forgot to put the original assignments in my briefcase, so I stuffed them in here.” She patted her suede purse on the seat beside her.

“Are there just police officers in your workshop?”

“No, I’ve got some civilians who run security for local corporations. The subject I teach, statement analysis, can help them zero in on potential problem areas when they conduct hiring interviews. And if they discover their employer is being ripped off by someone on the inside, they can use S.A. to develop questionnaires to be filled out by possible suspects.”

“So, it doesn’t sound like you’ve got any criminal types for students.” Vawter considered her for a second. “You ever been to Oklahoma City before? Made any enemies here?”

“My mom and I spent a day here a couple of years ago at the Murrah bombing memorial,” Paige said quietly. “I haven’t been back until last night.”

“Did you manage to ruffle anyone’s feathers today?”

Paige shifted her gaze out the windshield at the bushy shrub where her attacker had hidden. “I got on the wrong side of one of your Homicide cops.”

“Yeah? Which one?”

“Nate McCall.”

Vawter barked a laugh. “His daddy was my training officer when I was a rookie. You maybe got on the wrong side of Nate, but I don’t expect he’d have mugged you for doing it.”

“I agree.” Paige thought of the way McCall had advanced on her, angry for picking on him in class. “Sergeant McCall utilizes a more direct approach.”

“From what I hear, lots of women would agree with you on that.”

Paige was determined to have what was left of her day end on a positive note. So, the first thing she did when she limped into her hotel suite was pour herself a glass of merlot. While sipping her wine she soaked out the majority of her aches in a tub frothing with vanilla-scented bubbles. Then she treated herself to the priciest steak on the Waterford Hotel’s expansive room service menu.

Now, dressed in a white cashmere tunic and black tights, she sat cross-legged on the bed’s sapphire-and ruby-toned comforter, her laptop humming, the assignment sheets from the workshop stacked beside her. The suite was large and airy with heavy, dark wood furnishings. Floor-to-ceiling windows bordered by emerald drapes spanned one entire wall. A love seat and chair upholstered in a rich, muted tapestry and a coffee table polished to a mirror finish were tucked into a cozy sitting area. On the table sat a silver bowl piled with fresh fruit that had been delivered sometime during the day. The accompanying card said the bowl was compliments of the Waterford’s manager.

On the few times she’d had to travel during her tenure as a Homicide cop, the department’s budget had barely covered a room in some concrete-block motel with a dollar-a-minute surcharge on the telephone.

Her present employer, the Lassiter Group, was Dallas’s most elite security, protection and private investigations firm. Paige’s generous salary and fat expense account definitely had its perks. Perks that she would give up in a heartbeat if she could have her badge back, she thought as thunder rumbled in the distance.

Flexing her fingers, she stared down at the scar. Where would she be if certain events on that night three years ago had never happened? If she and her partner had taken down Edwin Isaac before he’d squeezed off the one shot. If she hadn’t wound up in that hospital’s E.R. and summarily found out…

She shook her head. She had found out. And she’d dealt with the emotional upheaval that came from learning the husband she’d loved and trusted had betrayed her. She’d gotten on with her life. No sense dwelling on it.

She had work to do.

The rumble of thunder drew nearer while she began processing the workshop assignments. She circled pronouns, sketched boxes around phrases that indicated gaps in time, inserted asterisks in places where words had been omitted, drew lines to connect similar words and phrases.

After processing each assignment, she typed notes into her laptop. She paused after analyzing five assignments. Her word-by-word analysis revealed that several of the attendees had gotten caught in unmentioned time crunches at a point during their day. Some had spats with spouses, others unwittingly revealed frustrations over dealing with children, in-laws and neighbors. By the time she read to the end of an individual’s statement, Paige knew far more about the life of that person than she was sure they intended.

She plucked the next statement off the stack and went to work. When she’d finished her analysis, she leaned back against the bank of pillows while she slid her pen end-over-end through her fingers. The author of this statement was clearly one of the female cops enrolled in the workshop. The woman had written about a family gathering she’d attended, listing her husband only after mentioning several other people. Without meaning to, she had revealed that she considered her husband the least important of those people. Not the best of relationships, Paige mused. If anything criminal happened to the husband, and the wife claimed they’d been close, the statement in Paige’s hand would shine an entirely different light on the relationship.

She was adding information to her typed notes when her cell phone rang. Paige reached for it, then hesitated. After Isaac called her two weeks ago and left the voice mail message, she’d been tempted to get a new number and list it under an alias. Doing so, though, wouldn’t help track the bastard. So she’d allowed the cops to insert a state-of-the-art tracking chip inside her phone. If Isaac called again, they had a good chance of nailing his location.

She checked the phone’s display. The number beaming via the caller ID feature had her smiling.

“Hey, handsome.”

“How’s my favorite girl?”

She relaxed against the pillows. “How’s my favorite guy?”

“I asked first.”

“Couldn’t be better, Grandpa.” Toying with the long silver chain she always wore around her neck, Paige gave silent thanks that the rough-hewn retired Texas Ranger couldn’t see her bruised cheek. Not only would Tate Carmichael grill her like a rack of ribs about every aspect of the mugging, he would strap on a revolver and hightail it to Oklahoma City to act as her personal bodyguard. “What are you and Mom up to?”

“Sara Sue’s off doing her volunteer work at the legal aid clinic tonight. We’ve been thinking a lot about you today.”

Because it’s February tenth, Paige thought. If it hadn’t been for her grandfather and mother, she wasn’t certain she’d have gotten back on her feet after her life upended. Even now, whenever she found time to visit her grandfather’s small cattle ranch outside of Dallas, she occasionally caught one or both of them watching her with narrow-eyed concern.

Thunder crashed; Paige glanced up as rain frozen to sleet began pelting the floor-to-ceiling windows. “I could tell you and Mom to stop worrying, but I’d be wasting my breath.”

“You always were as sharp as barbed wire.” Her grandfather waited a beat before continuing. “I’ve been checking with my law enforcement contacts, Paige. No one’s caught sight of Isaac.”

“If he’s smart, and we both know he is, he’s out of the country by now. Sitting on some beach, drinking rum.”

“And thinking about you, like he said he’d do on that voice mail he left.”

Closing her eyes, she replayed Isaac’s clipped, cultured voice. A shiver ran down her back.

“As long as all he does is think about me, that’s fine.” She half hoped her grandfather would agree with her about the high probability of Isaac’s leaving the country, if for no other reason than to ease the edgy tension that seemed to prickle across the phone line. But she knew he wouldn’t—her grandfather wasn’t that type of man. The facts were the facts, he would see no purpose in padding the truth to soften the blows.

“Consider the man, Paige. You tracked him down. He blames you for destroying his life. He’s still thinking about what he’d like to do to you. Isaac wants a second act. We both know it.”

“I refuse to go into hiding,” Paige said, trying to waylay what she knew was coming next.

“I’m not asking you to tuck your tail between your legs, girl. I’m just saying it’d be smart for you to pack up and come on home. Stay on the ranch with your mom and me until the law finds that murdering bastard.”

If Isaac was planning to exact revenge, Paige knew staying on the ranch would put her family in danger. No way would she chance that.

“I can take care of myself, Grandpa. You know that. Just because Isaac’s on the lam isn’t reason for me to change my schedule.”

“How about to keep an old man from worrying himself into the grave?”

She couldn’t help but smile. “You’re not old. And you’d worry about me whether I was sitting in your living room, or a thousand miles away.”

“Can’t argue that. You wearing your lucky necklace?”

She glanced down at the handcuff key and miniature Texas Rangers badge that hung on the silver chain. Her grandfather had given her the necklace the day she graduated the police academy. “I even sleep in it.”

“What about the asp?”

“It’s on the nightstand. Consider me armed and dangerous. Now, enough about me. How many head of cattle did you buy on last week’s trip to Fort Worth?”

After Paige said good-night to her grandfather, she called her former partner in Dallas PD Homicide. His answering machine picked up so she left a message. Not only did she need replacement copies of the reports that had been in her briefcase, she also wanted to talk to him about a vague theory they’d developed during their investigation into Isaac.

Too unsettled to go back to the workshop assignments, she slid off the bed, wandered to the sitting area and plucked a banana out of the silver bowl. Tapping it against her palm, she moved to the wall of windows. Ice hazed the glass and marred her view of what she’d learned was the priciest real estate in Oklahoma City. Frowning, she conjured up the mugger’s voice.

Give it up, bitch. The voice, the words didn’t fit Isaac. From all witnesses’ accounts, “Gentleman Jim” had conducted himself in a mild, meek manner when he approached each intended victim who worked the dimly lit streets of Dallas’s red-light district. His demeanor had stayed the same after his arrest—in all her dealings with Isaac, Paige had never heard him utter a curse or say anything crude. Even his promises to exact revenge against her had been delivered in formal, polite tones.

One thing about it, she thought, getting mugged had put a cap on the day.

She was just about to peel the banana when the phone on the nightstand rang. Halfway expecting it to be someone from the hotel’s laundry calling to tell her they couldn’t remove all the stains from her cashmere coat, she walked over to the phone by the bed and grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

“You said you were going to give me a break.”

Nate McCall. “That’s correct, Sergeant.”

“Then why drop my name to the patrol cop who took your mugging report?”

Paige, caught off guard by the question, blinked. “He asked me if I’d gotten on anyone’s bad side. Your name popped into my head.”

Silence.

She tucked the phone between her shoulder and cheek and began peeling the banana. “What’s the deal, McCall? It’s not like I told Sergeant Vawter I thought you were the creep who mugged me.”

“Yeah, he made that clear.” Paige heard the rattle of dishes and hum of conversation in the background. “Do you think the mugger is the escaped shrink you mentioned this morning?”