APB Page 13

  He needed her here. Safe. Close enough to see and hear. Close enough to breathe in the exotic scent of her shampoo. Close enough to touch.

  Decision made, Niall pushed away from the counter where he’d been leaning and picked up a diaper to cover Tommy’s bare bottom as Lucy lifted him from the sink. She laid Tommy on a hooded towel and dried him while Niall anchored the diaper into place before the baby watered either one of them.

  Once Lucy had Tommy swaddled in her arms, Niall reached out and brushed the smear of bubbles off her cool cheek and wiped his finger on the towel at Tommy’s back. “How long do you think it’ll take you to pack an overnight bag for the two of you?”

  He noted the blush warming her cheek where he’d touched her, and his blood simmered with an answering heat. She tilted her eyes up to his, and Niall wondered if she knew just how many shades of moss and jade and even a hint of steel were reflected there. “Are we going somewhere?”

  “I can’t leave you two here alone. I’ll call Dad, see if it’s all right to drop you off at his place.”

  “You don’t have to bother him. We’ll be fine.”

  He sifted his fingers into the hair behind her ear. “I won’t be. Too many people know how to find you now. I need to know someone I trust is keeping an eye on you around the clock.” With the pad of his thumb he brushed a few wayward curls away from her temple before leaning in to press a kiss to the edge of the gauze bandage there. Tommy turned his face toward Niall’s voice and wobbled against Lucy’s chest, either startled or excited by him coming so close. Although he trusted Lucy to keep a sure grip on the baby, Niall splayed his hand across Tommy’s back. “Easy there, munchkin.”

  He could feel Lucy trembling, too. Her eyes shone like emeralds beneath his scrutiny of her reaction to the simple contact. But there was nothing simple about the heat stirring inside him. Niall dipped his head a fraction of an inch and her pupils dilated, darkening her eyes. He moved even closer, and a ripple of contractions shimmered down her throat as she swallowed. Niall’s heart thundered in his chest, nearly drowning out her soft gasp of anticipation that clutched at something inside him and ripped it open. Niall closed the distance between them.

  Her lips parted beneath his, and he hungrily took advantage to sweep his tongue inside her mouth and lay claim to her soft heat and reaching, eager response. Niall tightened his fingers in her hair with one hand and palmed her hip with the other. He turned her, pushing her back against the counter, crowding his thighs against hers to soothe the ache swelling behind his zipper. He slipped his hand beneath the nubby wool of her sweater and clawed at the layer of cotton undershirt she wore until he could slide his fingers beneath that, too, to find the cool skin along the waist of her jeans.

  Squeezing her generous curves between his hand and thighs, Niall angled her head back into the basket of his fingers and kissed her harder, deeper. His chest butted against the hug of her arms around the baby, and the earthy sensuality of mother and child ignited something protective, possessive inside him. He captured the rosy, tempting swell of Lucy’s bottom lip between his own, then opened his mouth over hers again, matching each breathy sound of pleasure she uttered with a needy gasp of his own.

  The coo of a baby and tiny fingers batting against his chin returned Niall to his senses. With a deep sigh that was a mix of frustration and satisfaction, he pulled his hands from her hair and clothes and moved them to the baby. He caught Lucy’s lips once more, then kissed her again. Each peck was less frantic, more tender, as he eased himself through the withdrawal of ending the incendiary physical contact. Finally, he angled his hips away from hers and retreated a step, pressing the last kiss to the top of Tommy’s head as the curious infant clung to the scruff of his evening beard and squiggled with excitement at the sensation, which probably tickled his sensitive palm. “You want to be in on the action, too, hmm?”

  Lucy’s lips were swollen and pink from the same sandpapery rasp as they curved with a shaky smile before she stepped aside and turned her back to him. She set Tommy in the bouncy seat on the counter before reaching behind her to straighten the shirt he’d untucked and smooth her purple tweed sweater down over the curvy flare of the hip that was branded into his hand. “Niall, you didn’t have to do that. I’ll go to Thomas’s for the night. I’d love to visit with your dad and Millie again, if I won’t be in the way. You don’t have to persuade me with a kiss.”

  “Persuade?” He took her by the elbow and turned her to face him again, his eyes assessing the relatively blank expression on her face. “You said when I felt raw and unsettled inside that I could kiss you.”

  “I meant—”

  “You said never threaten to kiss you, to just do it.”

  Her cheeks colored with a blush, bringing the animation he was used to seeing back into her face again. “I did say that, didn’t I?” She reached up to comb her fingers through that glorious muss of hair. “I forgot for a second how well you listen. Did it help you feel better?”

  “Yes.” Releasing her, Niall drew in a deep breath, trying to cool the fire Lucy McKane stoked inside him. He felt as though there was something unfinished between them, and he wasn’t quite sure how to verbalize it. “And no. I’m more concerned about how it made you feel. I don’t want to scare you off or make you uncomfortable. But then your response is so natural, so...combustible—it feeds something inside me.” He scratched his fingers through his own hair before adjusting his glasses at the temples. Her frowning eyes following his every movement didn’t tell him where he was going wrong in this conversation. “I know that there are rules about men and women and...and we don’t have time to explore that right now.”

  “You worry too much about rules and logic.” She reached up to stroke the hair off his forehead. Niall felt that tender caress and her returning smile all the way down to his bones. “There are some things in this world that can’t be fully explained—like a mother’s bond with her child or what makes one person attracted to another. Sometimes you just need physical contact to feel better. We all do. I’m not quite sure how you manage it, but you damn sure know how to kiss, Doctor. Sweeps a girl right off her feet.” He liked those words, too, and was glad he wasn’t the only one left a little off-kilter each time they touched. “I just need you to understand your motives if this...attraction...develops into something more than a friendly alliance. I need you to be fully aware of what you’re getting with me, so that neither one of us gets hurt.”

  “What I’m getting with you?” That sounded like some kind of warning. “I’m not like Campbell. I have no intention of hurting you. I don’t understand.”

  “I know.” She touched that springy spike of hair again. “I’m not about to put words into your mouth or try to tell you what you’re feeling. But if anyone can figure it out, you can.” She pulled away to pick up Tommy and push him into Niall’s hands. “If you’ll get Tommy dressed, I’ll go pack a bag for us.”

  The lights of the city turned streets into a foggy twilight as Niall wound his SUV through the back roads south of Kauffman and Arrowhead Stadiums until he could catch Blue Ridge Cutoff and take a straight shot to the two-story white home where he and his brothers and sister had grown up. He stepped on the brake, slowing behind the last dregs of rush-hour traffic, and waited to make a turn.

  While he waited, he glanced over at Lucy in the passenger seat, nodding and drumming her fingers against the armrest in time with the tune playing through her head. Or maybe it was nervous energy. She hadn’t really explained herself to his satisfaction after that kiss in the kitchen, so he couldn’t be sure what ideas were going through that quirky mind of hers. She wouldn’t surrender herself so completely to an embrace like that if she didn’t feel something for him, would she?

  Lifting his gaze to the rearview mirror, he glimpsed the royal blue knitted cap peeking above the top of the car seat, where Tommy dozed in the back. It seemed he understo
od the baby’s needs and moods better than he did the woman beside him. Niall hated to trust what most people called instincts, but something inside him was telling him that he was on the verge of finding something—or losing it—if he couldn’t figure out a better way to communicate his thoughts clearly to Lucy.

  He understood right and wrong, yes and no, justice and crime. He understood fear and anger—had known both growing up when he’d lost his mother or when one of his brothers or sister had gotten hurt in the line of duty, or when he’d seen his grandfather fall at the church shooting. But this fascination with Lucy, this overwhelming urge to protect her, to find answers for her—that irrational desire to touch her and listen to her ramble and see her smile—he needed to put a name to it and understand it before he said or did one wrong thing too many and he pushed her out of his life or, God forbid, someone took her from him.

  “You’re staring again, Dr. Watson.” She giggled and the soft sound made him smile, even though her amusement with his name continued to confuse him. “Better watch the road.”

  “It’s a red light.”

  “Well, it’s about to change.”

  Not yet, it hadn’t. “Why do you find my name so funny?”

  “Dr. Watson?” She was still grinning. “It’s the irony. The revered Dr. Watson makes me think of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries I read in school. But you are so much more Holmes, with your intellectual prowess and manners and lack of empathy for lesser mortals like me, than you are the earthy sidekick doctor.”

  “Lack of empathy? I feel things.”

  “Of course you do. It’s clear how much you love your family and your work.” She glanced back over the seat. “How much you care about Tommy and making sure he has a good, safe life.” By the time she turned her wistful expression to him again, the light had changed, and he had to concentrate on moving with the flow of traffic. “But you’re always thinking so many steps ahead of everyone else in the room that you sometimes miss what’s going on right in the moment. I always thought Dr. Watson was sort of the Everyman for Holmes. He understood the witnesses in the cases they worked on together and, to my way of thinking, translated the world for him. You know, he took what Holmes was thinking and expressed it in a way the other characters and readers understood. In turn, he took what others said or did and helped Sherlock Holmes understand their emotions and motivations.” She nestled back in her seat. “I feel like I’m Watson to your Holmes. You’ve got the wrong name for your character. And that’s why it’s funny.”

  Niall turned the SUV onto Forty-Third Street, organizing his thoughts before commenting. “You do translate the world for me. I see things differently when I see them through your eyes. I’m learning through you—things that don’t come from books. I admit that I’m more comfortable talking procedure with other cops or talking about a dead body into a digital recorder than I am conversing with...”

  “Real live people?” He glanced over to see her sympathetic smile and, after a moment, nodded. “Niall Watson, I think you’re a little bit shy. You live in your head most of the time.”

  The woman was as intuitive as his mother had once been. “And you live in your heart.”

  Lucy’s lips parted, then closed again as she turned aside to look out the passenger window. “That gets me into trouble sometimes.”

  Definitely. But it also enabled her to smile often and laugh out loud and feel joy and passion and even sorrow to a degree he sometimes envied. He slowed as they neared a stop sign. “Don’t ever change.”

  Her head whipped around to face him as his phone buzzed in his pocket. “You say the oddest things sometimes.”

  Niall felt himself grinning as he reached into his pocket. “Translate it, okay?”

  The call was from Keir. Niall instantly put on his work face. This could be something about Grandpa Seamus or the follow-up he’d asked his brother to run on Roger Campbell and the owner of the silver Camaro. He handed the phone to Lucy. “Answer that and put it on speaker for me, will you?”

  She tugged her glove off between her teeth and swiped the screen. “Hey, Keir. This is Lucy. Niall is driving right now so I’m putting you on speakerphone. Okay?”

  “Hey, Lucy. Is he giving you any trouble?”

  Niall cut off the teasing before she could answer. “What do you need, little brother?”

  “It’s work, Niall.” The sudden shift in Keir’s tone indicated as much. “The lab said you’re the ME on call. I’ve got a DB at Staab Imports over on Truman Road. It’s up in the old caves in the bluffs off I-435.”

  “I know them. Businesses rent the old limestone quarries now for warehousing inventory or running electronic equipment.” But Niall had a feeling that the underground caverns being naturally cool and practically impossible to break into had nothing to do with a dead body.

  “That’s the spot. And I think you’d better bring Lucy along.” That put him on alert.

  Lucy’s gaze sought his across the front seat. “Why?” And then the color drained from her face. “Oh, God. Please tell me it’s not Diana.”

  Niall reached over to squeeze her hand as Keir quickly reassured her. “It’s not your friend. Our dead body is a Latino male. There’s no ID on him. But there are a couple of things at the scene I need you to see.”

  Niall looked across to see her blinking away tears. “You okay with this? Crime scenes aren’t pretty. I can have an officer stay with Tommy in the car.”

  Her grip tightened around his. “I’m okay. If I can help...”

  Niall nodded and released her hand to end the call with his brother and turn the SUV around. “We’re on our way.”

  Chapter Eight

  Lucy knew she had issues with staying warm. But even with gloves, a knit cap and her sweater coat, this man-made cave cut out of the limestone bluffs rising above Truman Road was downright freezing.

  “You’re sure you’re okay with this?” Niall asked, pulling out the squarish attaché that held his crime-scene kit and a rolled-up package that looked surprisingly as though it might have a body bag inside from the back of his SUV. He tucked the package under the arm where he held the kit before closing the back of the SUV and facing her. “It’s not for the faint of heart. Not that anyone would accuse you of being that.”

  Lucy huddled inside her layers and shivered. “I suppose there’s a joke here somewhere about this not being my first crime scene.”

  He squeezed her shoulder, then rubbed his hand up and down her arm, feeling her reaction to the unheated open space at the mouth of the cave where he’d parked behind two police cars and an unmarked police vehicle. His eyes narrowed, and she suspected he was trying to determine whether her trembling was from the chilly temps or nerves. She wasn’t sure she had an answer for him. “I’ll be right there with you, the whole time. Keir, too. If it proves to be too much for you, one of us will bring you back to the car and Tommy. I’ll leave the engine running so he can stay warm.” He nodded toward the compactly built detective leaning against the front fender of the SUV. “In the meantime, Hud—Detective Kramer—will keep a close eye on the baby.”

  Lucy glanced at the young man in a denim jacket, with work boots crossed at the ankles, chewing on a toothpick while he texted someone on his phone. “Does he know anything about infants?”

  “I didn’t know much about infants a week ago.”

  Leave it to Niall to point out the logical reason she shouldn’t be worried. Detective Kramer was wearing a gun and badge that looked authentic enough. “Are you sure Keir trusts him?”

  “They’re partners. I know he does. Let’s go.” Niall looped his camera around his neck and nodded to the detective left to guard the infant in the backseat before heading down the stone driveway in the middle of the high cave. “Hopefully, whatever Keir wants you to identify won’t take long.”

  Lucy hurried her pace to
catch up with him. “Is it bad form for me to hold the ME’s hand when he’s on his way to a crime scene?”

  Niall reached over and caught her fingers within his grasp. “It wouldn’t matter if it was.”

  Lucy held on as they walked past the sliding gate that had a broken padlock dangling from one of its steel bars. Deeper inside the cave she noted a serpentine trail of conduits mounted to the squared-off walls and ceiling. Niall explained that they were used to run electricity, water, fresh air exchanges and computer lines deep under the ground to supply the offices, repair shops and storage units housed inside. Lucy had seen the openings in the bluffs several times but had never had a reason to go inside before. It surprised her to see cages and iron bars shielding the businesses after hours, just like the shops on a city street downtown.

  “How far back does this go?” she asked as they turned a corner around a limestone post and entered another, wider area that had only one office front next to a pair of garage doors that were large enough to drive a semitruck through. One door stood open, and the lights shining from inside the entrance bathed the whole area in an artificial yellowish light. “Is that really a whole warehouse under the ground?”

  “Feeling claustrophobic?”

  “A little.” She tightened her grip around his hand. He didn’t protest her desire to cling to something steady and familiar as they approached the line of yellow tape strung crossways in front of the open garage door. A large commercial fan over each door helped circulate the air deeper inside the bluff. The moving air tickled her nose with a familiar scent. She sniffed again and slowed her steps. “Wait. I recognize that smell.”

  Then she saw the sign painted on the office window and closed garage door—Staab Imports: Mediterranean Spices & Delicacies.

  Lucy stopped in her tracks. “The man in the elevator smelled like that.” She supposed a man who smelled like a restaurant could also work for a company that stored and shipped the spices and ingredients a restaurant chef would use. She swiveled her gaze up to Niall. “Does your brother want me to identify the body?”