Man with the Muscle. Julie Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ and blessedly quiet. Audrey glanced behind her to Gretchen’s house. They’d played hide-and-seek together on the massive grounds when they were children, and the memories of Gretchen’s easy laugh and adventurous imagination reignited the grief that was set to consume her.

      She needed to get out of here. Now.

      She darted around the brick pillar at the corner of the Cosgroves’ fence. Oh, Lord.

      The security lights in the neighbor’s front yard flashed on, reflecting off the white gold of her watch band. Reacting like the trespasser she was, Audrey tugged the sleeve of her jacket over her wrist and crouched down between the fence and hedge. The night was conspiring against her efforts to find a private moment to acknowledge her grief and center herself. Maybe she should just curl up in a ball here and let the tears flow.

      But that would only add fuel to the paparazzi’s rumor mill if they discovered an assistant district attorney huddled in the mud behind a burning bush shrub outside a crime scene.

      “Why didn’t I just stay home?” she muttered. Yet, as her jeans soaked up the chilly dampness from the ground beneath her knee, Audrey saw that she hadn’t triggered the security lights, after all.

      Instead, she got a clear look at the culprit. An armed

      SWAT cop, wearing a flak vest over his black uniform, was lugging a large metal box to the back of the SWAT van parked in the driveway. Where had he come from? He was grinching to himself, maybe complaining about setting off the lights with his approach.

      He set the box on the van’s bumper with a heavy thunk, and the entire vehicle rocked, giving an indication as to the considerable weight he’d carried. The man unsnapped the strap beneath his chin and pulled off his helmet, dropping it to the concrete at his feet before scrubbing his black-gloved fingers over the top of his hair.

      For a moment, Audrey forgot about the reporters and the mud and her grief. As he opened the back doors and hefted the box inside, his movements caught the lights in his short dark hair, revealing blue-black glints in the rumpled waves. Was he packing up? Did that mean the house had been cleared? The bomb discovered and dismantled?

      He had the doors closed before she could think to move, and now she was forced to kneel there until the motion-detector lights went back off or the officer climbed inside the van. But he didn’t appear to be in any hurry. With his rifle looped casually through the crook of his arm, he slowly turned, taking note of the vehicles in the street, the neighbors scurrying along the sidewalk to get a closer look at all the activity. Apparently oblivious to the approach of winter in the air, he unbuttoned the cuffs of his black shirt and rolled up the sleeves over a pair of muscular forearms. With a simple tilt of his head, he spoke into the microphone strapped to his Kevlar vest.

      He was on guard, looking for something or someone, scanning his surroundings, his dark gaze skimming past her hiding spot. Audrey hugged her arms closer to her body and made herself even smaller. Had he seen her? Sensed her presence? She could hide from friends and avoid the press, but something about the intensity of those watchful eyes warned her that it would be very hard to keep anything hidden from him.

      Audrey held her breath. Waited. Tried to ignore the little tingles of awareness sparking beneath the emotions she held so tightly in check. He wasn’t as tall as Harper or even her father. But he was all muscle, all alertness, all coiled energy. If the killer had planted a bomb inside the Cosgrove house, he looked like the type of man who could take care of it. He looked like the type of man who could have saved Gretchen’s life in the first place.

      Gretchen would have called him hot. She would have been introducing herself, flirting with him by now. She would have welcomed him as a friend and made him feel glad to be a part of her life long before Audrey even decided to admit he was handsome in an earthy, unpolished sort of way.

      A tear leaked out, its hot moisture chapping her cheek in the cool breeze. Gretchen would have thought hiding in the shrubs to avoid the press and spy on hot guys was a grand adventure, but for Audrey this was pure torture. Another tear trailed along the same path, marking her skin. Grief could no longer wait for privacy and a sob squeezed through her throat in a muffled gasp.

      Not here. Not now. The SWAT cop’s gaze swung back around and she shoved her knuckles against her lips, stifling the breathy whimper of each sob while the tears streamed over her hand. She could read the headlines now—Lawyer Can’t Handle Crime Scene, Muddy Misstep for Kline’s Daughter or Newest A.D.A. Runs and Hides. Just the kind of decorum and control that would inspire public confidence as she led the prosecution against gang-leader Demetrius Smith. Not.

      But then a KCPD pickup pulled into the driveway behind the SWAT van and she had her chance to escape public scrutiny.

      Audrey pushed to her feet, stumbling back against the iron fence, as that all-seeing cop walked up to meet the truck. Another uniformed officer—minus the armored vest and extra gear and weaponry of the first man—climbed out of the truck with a German shepherd bounding down behind him, to shake hands and trade greetings. By the time the SWAT cop had stooped down to wrestle the dog around its ears, Audrey was moving. Holding up her hand to shield her face from the prickly branches of the hedgerow, she jogged several yards along the fence until the bustle and bright lights from the front of the house could no longer be seen or heard.

      She inhaled a lungful of the cool night air and exhaled on sobs that shook through her. Curling her fingers around the cold, unyielding iron of a fence post, she held on and let the grief overtake her.

      Seconds passed, maybe a minute or two, as the pain knifed through her. With one hand braced on her knee and the other gripping the fence to keep from toppling over, she wept for Gretchen and for the void her death created in so many lives, including her own. She’d never learned Gretchen’s gifts for spontaneity and handling stress and sharing joy, and now she never would. Kansas City had lost a generous and enthusiastic young benefactor.

      Harper Pierce had lost a fiancée. The Cosgroves had lost a daughter. Audrey had lost another friend.

      Finally, the sobs became little gasps and hiccups as the worst of it passed. Audrey’s diaphragm ached, her sinuses throbbed against her skull, her eyes felt puffy and hot. But she could think again. She could feel something beyond the pain—anger, perhaps, determination to honor Gretchen’s memory and vindicate her murder.

      And she could hear.

      Footsteps.

      Audrey snapped her attention to the soft, even rhythm of someone moving through the Cosgroves’ backyard. Although muffled by the fallen leaves and dewy grass, there was no mistaking the tread of company cutting between the garden paths and towering oaks that shaded the yard on the other side of the fence.

      The police officers she’d seen all carried flashlights. But this, this was something different. A noise in the dark. The whisper of stealth.

      Pushing her hair away from her hot, sticky cheeks, Audrey peered between the iron bars to identify the source of the sound among the trees. Too big to be a squirrel or rabbit. Too real for her to feel safe. The breeze rustled through the hedge, sending a chill dancing along her spine. If that was a cop, where was his flashlight? And if it wasn’t, how had he gotten past security inside the front gates?

      She pressed her face against the bars, trying to spot the movement among the trees. But the footsteps had fallen silent. With no sound to listen for and nothing to see, her other senses took over. The breeze was damp and cool against her skin, and it carried the subtlest hint of cigarette smoke into her nose. Since when did cops smoke on the job?

      Audrey СКАЧАТЬ