No Holds Barred

3

TWO HOURS LATER, DUNCAN STOOD in the alley gazing at the wooden staircase that led to Piper’s small apartment. Finally, he was alone.

Monticello had left first, waiting only until Piper had showered and changed so that he could personally escort her to work. Most members of the press who’d finally tracked down Piper’s apartment had scurried after Abe’s limo.

Mike Nelson had lingered longer. His men had talked to Piper’s landlady, who owned the high-end dress shop beneath Piper’s apartment, but the spare key was hanging from a rack in her office. One of the police department’s tech men had tracked down the email message that had been sent to the TV stations. Both it and the attached video clip had been sent from a stolen smartphone. The owner hadn’t even noticed it was missing.

The uniformed officers had questioned shop owners, but the incident had taken place hours before most of them had unlocked their doors. When Nelson had left, he’d taken everyone and everything with him— crime scene techs, the uniforms, the sheet and the rose petals. Back at the precinct, Nelson and his partner would begin the tedious job of trying to track down where the roses and the sheet and the vellum note paper had been purchased. Tedious work, but it might pay off. They might get a description, even a name.

Duncan had hung around, instead of getting a late start to his golf game, because he did some of his best thinking as he wandered through a deserted crime scene. The quiet, the lack of other people, helped him to see things more clearly. He was frequently called in to consult on cases to do exactly what he was doing now. Lingering, noticing the small details, theorizing. He agreed totally with Piper. It wasn’t Patrick Lightman who’d done this. Adrienne was checking on the man’s alibi, but there were too many things about the scene that didn’t fit into the RPK’s M.O.

So who had done it? And why? Those were the key questions any profiler asked.

First, the perpetrator was smart. He’d had to gather data on the Lightman case and on Piper’s schedule. And to pull it off as a media event in such a short amount of time, he’d had to have contacts at the local new stations.

No matter what angle Duncan viewed it from, he didn’t think it was the work of a copycat who was planning to kill other women in the “style” of the RPK. His gut told him that the “who” was someone who had a personal vendetta against Piper. But whoever was trying to get to her was going to have to go through him.

Duncan wasn’t sure when he’d made that decision. Perhaps it had been when he’d been studying the rose petals strewn across the sheet and Abe Monticello had mentioned her name. For just an instant, he’d seen the image of her he’d carried somewhere in his head all these years. He’d seen her lying beneath those petals.

Or perhaps it had been a decision that had been made for him seven years ago, when he’d stood under that stone arch with her. He was Scottish enough that he couldn’t ignore the power of legends.

When he made the decision, it was irreversible. And it would lead to complications. While she’d been kneeling next to him studying the little picnic scene, he’d wanted his hands on her. And once he started down that path….

When his cell phone rang, he wasn’t surprised to see Reid’s number on the caller ID. That meant that the news about Piper had made its way to Scotland. And when there was trouble, Cam always made the first call to Reid, the oldest brother.

“I’m assuming you’ve got Piper’s back,” Reid said.

“Yes. I assume that our family in Scotland got the news and contacted you.”

Reid laughed. “Sibling jealousy just never completely fades away. If it makes you feel better, no one has contacted me. I’m in France again with the VP and I caught it on the evening news. I thought I’d check with you before I got the call. I knew Piper was living in D.C., but I wasn’t aware that she was working for Abe Monticello or that she was working on the RPK case. Your paths didn’t cross during the trial, I take it.”

“The FBI refused to share anything for that appeal.”

“What’s going on?”

“Wish I had a better handle on that.” Then Duncan gave his brother a condensed version of what had happened and what they knew or theorized so far. While it helped to run through all the essentials again, it increased his sense that Piper could really be in danger.

“Could be it’s someone who’s unhappy with the fact that she helped to set Lightman free.”

“That’s a long list, but the police will have to start with Suzanne Macks’s family, especially her twin brother, Sid.” They’d been through quite a bit already. So if he could find anything that would narrow the list and eliminate them….

“I assume you have a plan,” Reid said.

“Working on it.”

“If I were you, I’d consider getting her the hell out of Dodge. Working on the vice president’s security detail, I don’t often have the luxury of doing that when my guy becomes a possible target.”

“I’m considering that.” The problem was to get Piper to agree.

“I’ll leave it in your very capable hands, and I’ll call the Scotland group to let them know that you’re handling it.”

After glancing at his watch, Duncan glanced down the alley, trying to see and think about it the same way the man who was threatening Piper’s life had. She’d told Nelson that she ran at the same time every morning. That didn’t surprise him. Her route took her past the shops on the street. Turning, he stepped out of the alley and glanced up and down the street. It was bustling now with both cars and pedestrian traffic. At six o’clock, she would have been easy to spot from a variety of locations. A regular routine made a serial killer’s work easy.

The perpetrator hadn’t had much to carry in, Duncan mused as he turned to walk down the alley and climb the stairs. The sheet, a couple of plastic bags filled with petals and the note. Everything could have been easily tucked into one bag. Maybe a backpack or a shopping bag. He recalled Piper’s observation that the sheet had been new with the folds from the original packaging still apparent. She had a good eye for detail.

On the landing he crouched down to examine the lock. Duncan found nothing to contradict Nelson’s judgment that it hadn’t been tampered with. He took a slim tool out of his pocket, and twenty seconds later he was inside the apartment. Then he pantomimed moving the coffee table aside, shaking out the sheet. Thirty seconds. Adjusting and tucking the edges to replicate a perfect square took two minutes. Scattering the petals ate up another thirty. Tops.

He gave himself another thirty to examine the scene in his mind and thirty after that to make adjustments. Then he backed up to the door, took his cell phone out of his pocket and took a video, first panning the scene, then zooming in on the sheet and the petals.

It took him another minute to prop the ladder-backed chair against the door. Halfway down the stairs, he glanced at his watch. Seven or eight minutes from start to finish. Ten if the guy let nerves slow him down. But nothing else in the apartment had been disturbed. Whoever it was had come for one purpose only. To set up the scene, record it and get it on TV.

Mission accomplished.

Then he remembered the bag or whatever the guy must have used to carry in his props. If it had been a shopping bag, it hadn’t been in the apartment. And it wasn’t needed anymore.

On a hunch, he stopped by the Dumpster at the end of the alley. Duncan held his breath, ignoring the mix of odors he released as he lifted the lid. A Macy’s bag lay right on the top, and inside he found a sales slip and the plastic covering for a single sheet.

Bingo.

He had his phone out, intending to pass the information along to Mike Nelson, when a long dark sedan pulled up to the mouth of the alley and his boss stepped out.

Adrienne Monticello was a tall, slender blonde with long curly hair. Today, she wore it pulled back into a ponytail. She had the same camera-ready good looks as her brother and she knew how to dress to enhance them. Her jacket and slacks were purple, her shoes designer. Gold winked at her ears and on her wrist. Although he knew she was in her mid-fifties, she could pass for a decade younger.

She whipped her oversize sunglasses off as she approached, and her expression was worried. “You aren’t answering your phone.”

“I don’t like to be interrupted when I walk through a crime scene.” And that’s how she’d figured out where to track him down. The fact that she’d left the office to do so didn’t bode well.

“Abe called me. He says you don’t believe that Lightman was involved in this.”

“He wasn’t.”

She studied him for a moment, and then nodded. “He’s worried about Ms. MacPherson. He’s been watching the TV coverage at his office, and they’ve located a photo of her from law school. They’re running it along with the little petal scene.”

“And Abe noticed that she’s the Rose Petal Killer’s type. Slender, long brown hair,” Duncan added. Serial killers often had a type. Some even went for females who were left-handed or played a certain sport in high school. There’d been one who’d even chosen his victims because of the number and sequence of vowels in their first and last names.

“It isn’t just Abe who’s noticed it. The press is announcing it to the world about every fifteen minutes or so.”

Not good, Duncan thought. That put an even bigger target on Piper’s back. One that might tickle the fancy of Patrick Lightman. “Where is she right now?”

“In Abe’s offices. He wants protection for her.”

What he wanted, Duncan suspected, was for his big sister to help him out of the mess he’d created when he’d ignored her advice and taken the Lightman case.

“I thought you might have some ideas,” she said. “Piper MacPherson is your stepsister, right?”

“Yes,” Duncan said. “My mother married her father seven years ago, but we’ve never shared a home.” And his feelings for her were definitely not brotherly. “You’re having Lightman watched. Does he have an alibi?”

She nodded. “They didn’t see him leave his apartment.”

“I’m betting there’s someone else who has a beef with Piper.” He told her about the Macy’s bag and the rest of what he was thinking. “It could be Sid Macks, Suzanne’s brother.” The young man had appeared on all the talk shows he could get himself booked on to protest the release of Lightman and the miscarriage of justice.

“Yeah. He confronted Abe a couple of times outside his office, but he never made any personal threats. He didn’t seem the violent type.”

“Maybe he or someone else is doing this to get Lightman’s attention focused on Piper, hoping he’ll do the dirty work.”

“Shit. You’re making me remember why I hired you. You can really get into the twisted way someone like Lightman would think.” She glanced up at the apartment building. “Maybe it’s a onetime thing. And maybe you’re being paranoid about Lightman. He should be grateful that she helped get him off of death row.”

“Hard to bank on that with a crazy psychopath.”

“Hannibal Lecter had a soft spot in his heart for Clarice.”

“Lecter was a fictional character. Lightman’s not. But I may have a plan to keep her out of harm’s way for a while.” Duncan supposed it had been forming in his mind from the moment she’d walked into her apartment that morning.

“Then it was worth tracking you down in an alley,” Adrienne said.

“The problem will be selling it to her.”

Adrienne smiled at him. “I can’t imagine the day when you won’t be able to sell something to a woman.”

AT A FEW MINUTES PAST SIX THAT evening, Piper started down the back stairwell in the building where Abe Monticello rented office space. She was wearing dark glasses, and she’d tucked her hair into an old golf cap her boss had dug out of one of his desk drawers.

A disguise.

Abe and Richard were, at this very moment, exiting through the front of the building, thus distracting the few die-hard reporters who had hung out all day hoping to interview her about the Rose Petal Killer’s visit to her apartment.

No use telling the media that it hadn’t been the real RPK who’d broken into her home and strewn those flower petals around. Some official spokesperson from the D.C. police department had already tried to clarify what had happened. And although the clips had aired all day on the twenty-four-hour cable news stations, first impressions were lasting. And whoever had taken that original video clip and released it to the press had created a dilly of a first impression.

Within hours some enterprising reporter had located her graduation photo from Georgetown Law and she’d become the celebrity of the moment, the latest face that could be blamed for letting Patrick Lightman out of jail.

Duncan had said that she had a target on her back. And by the end of the day, she’d felt it grow brighter and heavier by the moment. It hadn’t helped one bit that every time she thought about the target, she thought about him and what she’d imagined doing to him and with him on that sheet in her apartment.

Seeing him again had blown open a floodgate of feelings that she’d successfully buried for years. The intense attraction she’d felt for him at their parents’ wedding should have been history.

Piper started down the last flight of stairs. All day she’d tried to convince herself that what she’d felt when she’d seen him that morning had been a fluke. A onetime phenomenon that had been caused by the adrenaline rush of coming home to that terrible scene in her apartment.

But try as she might, she couldn’t seem to get Duncan Sutherland completely out of her mind. Even as a child, she’d liked him the best of the triplets. He’d helped her out of an embarrassing situation once. She could still remember it as if it were yesterday. They’d been playing pirates, and Nell had drawn the short straw, which meant that she had to play the captured princess and sit in those dumb caves in the cliff face for hours on end until someone rescued her. Boring. But even though Reid had offered his help, Nell had looked frightened at the prospect of climbing up the cliff face to get to the cave. So Piper had volunteered to take her place.

She’d gotten there just fine because she and Cam, who’d been the pirate that day, had climbed up from the beach. For a while she’d amused herself by poking around in the small string of caves, three of them in total, but after a couple of hours, she’d known them like the back of her hand. Bored out of her mind, she’d decided to rescue herself. But when she’d started down the cliff face, she’d frozen.

When Duncan had arrived to “rescue” her, he’d found her just below the cave, clinging to the rocks. He’d told her he’d be right up, and when he was beside her, he simply told her that he’d go first and tell her what to do.

And he’d done just that, coaching her through it, telling her where to put her hands and feet. He had to have sensed her fear, but he’d never mentioned it or teased her. More importantly, he’d never ratted her out to his brothers or her sisters.

Duncan Sutherland was a man who could be trusted. She only wished she could trust her boss as unconditionally. But something was stopping her. Frowning, she strode down the hallway that led to the alley door. At five o’clock, Abe had called her into his office for a little heart-to-heart talk. He was worried about her safety. There might be other incidents.

Then he’d given her the really bad news.

He wanted her to take some time off. Maybe take a trip just until the media found something else to focus on. When she’d objected and pointed out that she was sitting second chair for the Bronwell trial in two weeks, he’d told her that he’d had to reconsider that decision. Richard Starkweather was going to take her place.

Her already much less than perfect day had become a whole lot worse.

Not that she could fault the logic of Abe’s argument. The media circus that had surrounded him right after Lightman had been released had begun to die down. And the break-in at her apartment had stirred everything up again.

Just as seeing Duncan Sutherland had stirred her up again.

No. She was not going to think about him. What she’d felt had been a fluke.

She had bigger problems, not the least of which was the implied death threat on the vellum notepaper. Thus, her Greta Garbo-like exit down the back staircase. Her ride home, arranged by Abe, would be waiting at the end of the alley. And maybe, just maybe, her improvised disguise would allow her to sneak into her apartment unnoticed.

She turned the knob on the alley door. A relaxing bath, layered with bubbles and accompanied by a glass of icy white wine, would help her to think. There’d be other trials. And other setbacks. Piper MacPherson didn’t believe that getting depressed or discouraged was ever an effective way to handle life’s rough patches.

She was never going to become her father’s daughter. He’d avoided life for years after her mother had died. She believed in facing life head-on. She’d figure out a way to deal with the rose petal incident and she’d win back the opportunity to sit second chair with Abe.

The instant she stepped out of the building into the alley, she stopped short and every thought or plan she had in her mind disappeared. All she could do once again was stare.

Duncan stood leaning against the hood of a very shiny red convertible. The kind that was meant for the open road and speed. Not at all the kind of car she’d expected the quiet, studious Duncan Sutherland to drive.

Neither of those adjectives seemed to apply to the man leaning against the sexy car. He looked as big as he had in her apartment that morning. And his effect on her senses was just as intense. She could see more of him now. A lot more. Broad shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist and then long, long legs crossed at the ankles. With each passing second, the sizzle in her blood grew stronger, hotter.

He’d changed into a black T-shirt and jeans that made him look just a bit dangerous. His face, with its slash of cheekbones, broad forehead, unruly hair and strong chin, was nearly movie star perfect. That was the image of him that had kept sneaking into her mind all day, even when she’d been talking to Abe and losing her dream assignment.

When she met Duncan’s eyes, they had the same effect on her senses they’d had that morning, sending a shot of heat that hit her dead center, then radiated right out to her fingers and toes. Okay. The way she was reacting to him was not a fluke and not the result of an adrenaline rush.

Terrific.

As if she hadn’t had enough to deal with today. A nut who wanted to scare her, a boss who wanted to protect her, not to mention himself, and now this.

It was only then she realized she wasn’t moving. It was the second time today Duncan Sutherland had stopped her cold.

Time to put an end to that. She’d talk to him and send him on his way. Striding forward, she forced a smile. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

Duncan threw back his head and laughed. Her straightforward, no-nonsense approach was one of the things he’d always liked about Piper. And he was grateful for it now since it had effectively brought him back to the present. For a moment after she’d stepped out of that alley door, she’d wiped his mind clean.

“What are you doing here?” Piper asked as she reached the hood of his car.

He had to think for a second. Looking at her was slowing his thought processes down. But the reason was the same one that had brought him to her apartment that morning. “Your boss called my boss and asked for a favor.”

Her brows shot up. “Favor? What kind of a favor? And why would your boss owe Abe Monticello a favor?”

“Family thing. My boss is Adrienne Monticello. She’s Abe’s younger sister. I suspect she grew up trying to get him out of trouble, and old habits die hard. They’re both worried about you.”

Duncan watched her absorb the information. While he absorbed more of her. The pantsuit was a pale gray linen with a slim fit that tapered down to narrow ankles and killer heels. When he slowly swept his gaze back up to her face, he saw by her frown that she didn’t like his answer, but she got it.

“You’re my ride back to my apartment.”

“Yes.” For starters. He wouldn’t tell her his entire plan, not while they were standing in an alley and they hadn’t yet discovered who’d set that nasty little scene that morning.

She shifted her gaze to the car and ran her hand over the hood. “Nice ride.”

“Nice disguise.”

“I had to improvise.” She tipped her sunglasses down as she met his eyes. Duncan took the hit dead center and he struggled to keep his thoughts from scattering again. When she pulled the cap off and a rich cascade of dark brown hair tumbled out, he gave up on thinking of anything but the way the sun showered over her long, loose curls, lightening some strands, darkening others. He reached out and wound one of those curls around his finger. He couldn’t be sure who had moved, but they were close enough that their fingers had suddenly tangled on the hood of his car. Close enough that he could see a ring of lighter gold surrounding the deep, rich amber shade of her eyes. And he could smell her. Spring flowers—he hadn’t forgotten the scent.

If he lowered his head, he could finally taste her. Something he’d been wondering about all day. No. Longer than that. He’d been wondering about her taste for seven years.

Piper’s mind was racing almost as fast as her heart but she couldn’t seem to latch onto a coherent thought. When she’d started toward him, she’d had a plan. She was going to handle the Duncan problem by politely accepting his ride home and then sending him on his way. And now her fingers were linked with his and the heat from that flesh-to-flesh contact was zinging through her blood.

She could try to blame it on the car. If she hadn’t run her hand over the hood, she wouldn’t have gotten this close. But a good defense attorney would tear that excuse to shreds and claim she’d put her hand on the hood because she’d wanted this to happen—that she’d been thinking of touching him ever since she’d seen him in her apartment that morning.

Guilty, she thought. And, dammit, now that his mouth was only inches from hers, she wanted to taste him, too.

No. She had to think.

Breathe. The air she gulped in burned her lungs.

Say something. But the desire she was feeling was so huge, so consuming, she couldn’t get any words past the dryness in her throat.

They touched nowhere else except where their fingers were linked, but he might as well have been touching her everywhere. And she wanted him to so badly.

With whatever brain cells she had left, Piper figured she had two options. Run or do what she really, really wanted to do. And why not? It had taken a Pandora to open that box and an Eve to sample that apple. Maybe she just needed to know how big a problem she was dealing with. A good attorney built her best cases once she’d read through the discovery. Gripping his shirt with her free hand, she rose on her toes and pulled his mouth to hers.

She might have made the first move, but once she had, Duncan Sutherland was no slouch in the kissing department. The scrape of his teeth had her gasping, then moaning as his tongue seduced hers. Those hands, quick and clever, were everywhere, enticing, exciting. She couldn’t get her breath, didn’t care if she ever did.

She thought she’d known what to expect.

The jolt was no surprise. But how could she have known it would knock her off her feet? Or had he lifted her?

The heat, too, she’d been prepared for. When a man could make your blood sizzle with a look, heat was a given. But she hadn’t imagined it would have the power of a blast furnace. Or trigger a need to crawl right into him until she dissolved.

Excitement was too tame a word for what was pounding in her blood.