By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс

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СКАЧАТЬ Piper MacPherson. Therefore, he’d used the wrong approaches so far. A first for him and totally due to the fact that for the last seven years he’d tried to avoid thinking about her, period.

      So he did what he’d avoided doing for seven years. Biting into a slice of pizza, he put himself in her shoes, the same technique he used on the cases he profiled. She was tired. There were dark circles under her eyes and a little worry line on her forehead. The worry line struck a chord in his memory. When they’d played together as children, she’d always been the worrier about one or the other of her sisters. Protective, too.

      And today of all days, why wouldn’t she be tired? She’d been instrumental in writing a brief that had let a convicted murderer go free. Monticello’s personal hunger for media attention had protected her so far, but now she was suddenly being credited with putting Patrick Lightman on the streets. And someone didn’t like that at all.

      She didn’t like it, either. He’d seen both guilt and regret in her eyes that morning when Abe had been bragging about her brilliant brief. He’d recognized it at the time, but there’d been other things on his mind, including handling his response to her.

      He took another sip of his wine. There had to be a better way to convince her.

      As silence stretched between them, Piper picked a piece of pepperoni off of her slice and ate it. “Abe is so concerned about my safety that he replaced me as second chair on the Bronwell trial.”

      “That sucks.” The case had made all the papers and hit the national news nearly a year ago. Alicia Bronwell, the trophy wife of one of D.C.’s most highly paid lobbyists, had been accused of slowly killing her much older husband with arsenic. When Abe snatched away Piper’s opportunity to participate in the trial, that had to have been a blow. On a day when she’d already sustained a pretty good one.

      But it didn’t escape him that the loss of the Bronwell trial was foremost in Piper’s mind—not the fact that someone might be intending to harm her. The woman had courage. He’d noticed it when they’d been children. There’d been one day in particular when they’d been playing a pirate game on the cliffs. Duncan recalled finding her clinging to the rocks, frozen with fear. She’d climbed down to the beach with him—in spite of the fact that she’d been scared stiff.

      She selected a slice of green pepper.

      “Monticello offered you second chair as your reward for the work you did on the Lightman case.”

      When she met his eyes, he saw the anger. “Yes. Then he took it away and gave it to Richard.”

      Duncan’s eyes narrowed. “The guy who barged in here this morning.”

      “Yes. And he’ll take full advantage of the opportunity. Richard’s good at that.”

      “You’ve had a hell of a day. First a nutcase who wants to annoy and scare you at the very least and, worst case scenario, wants you dead. Then your boss reneges on his offer.”

      “If you’re trying to cheer me up, you’re failing.”

      “I’m not here to cheer you up. I’m just laying a foundation for the case I’m going to make. Isn’t that what you’d do with a jury?”

      She lifted her glass and studied him over the rim. There was a challenge in her eyes, and they didn’t appear as tired anymore. “Go for it, Sutherland.”

      “Seems to me you have two choices.” Holding up a finger, he talked around another bite of pizza. “You can stay here in D.C., deal with the press and hide away in your boss’s office while you wait for the guy who staged the scene this morning to make his next move.”

      She sipped her wine and waited for him to continue.

      “That is your current plan, right?”

      “Close enough.”

      His eyes narrowed suddenly. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try to find out who set up the little scene this morning.”

      Her eyes widened full of innocence. “Okay, I won’t tell you that.”

      He grinned at her and had the pleasure of seeing surprise flicker over her features. “It’s exactly what I would do. But I have a better proposition for you.”

      The second he saw the pulse flutter at her throat and the color of her eyes darken, Duncan knew he’d chosen the wrong word. Proposition had other connotations, and they were both now thinking about the possibilities. They were alone. And it would be so easy to just propose that they finish what they’d started in that alley. Better still, he could shove the pizza aside, pluck her out of that chair and do what he’d wanted to do since they’d walked into her apartment.

      Except that wasn’t what he was making a case for right now.

      “Why don’t you help me put Patrick Lightman back in jail?”

      She narrowed her eyes, studying him. “Why do I have to go to the castle to do that?”

      “Because I’m having all the FBI’s files on him delivered up there. My current assignment at work is to review all of the RPK cases and find something that will allow us to charge Lightman again. Cam has been bugging me to go up there and get a feel for the intruder who may come back. So my proposition is—come with me to the castle and help me find what I need in the files.”

      “Are you serious?”

      “I am. I can work there just as easily as I can work in my office at Quantico. My boss thinks it’s a great idea, and your boss will be happy if you’re safe and out of the public eye for a bit.”

      She frowned at him. “You’ve put a sugar coating on it, but it sounds like you want to whisk me off to the castle so that you can babysit me.”

      He met her eyes very steadily. “I don’t think that you can afford to take what happened this morning lightly. To pull off what he did, he had to have stalked you. And I don’t think he’s through yet.”

      “Scaring me is not going to work.”

      “You’ve made that clear.” He selected another slice of pizza, and leaning back in his chair, stretched out his legs. They nearly reached the back of the couch. “You know this place reminds me of a dollhouse.” He chewed a bite of his slice, then said, “And you eat like a doll. Don’t you like pizza?”

      She picked off a mushroom and popped it into her mouth. “I love pizza. But when I’m playing the role of jury I like to give the argument my full attention.”

      “Okay, scaring you is the stick part of my strategy. The carrot part is that I really want you to work with me on the RPK files. You found things in the trial transcript and in the case files that got Lightman off. That means you have a damn good eye. I saw the proof of that right here this morning. Thanks to you, I think I found the bag the guy used to carry in a brand-new sheet from Macy’s.” He elaborated on the search Nelson was doing. “I could really use your help. There’s something in one of the cases that I’m missing. And I want Lightman back in a cell.”

      So did she. “I’m not ashamed of the work I did on the case.”

      “I wouldn’t be either. Under all the bombast and drama, Abe Monticello serves an important СКАЧАТЬ