All A Man Can Do. Virginia Kantra

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СКАЧАТЬ kiss with Denko on Wednesday night, Tess had been feeling pretty lousy.

      None of which she was confiding to Jarek Denko.

      “Was that before or after you saw Carolyn Logan?” he asked.

      “Before. We were talking, and then I went to the ladies’, and when I got back, she was sitting at the bar.”

      Denko scratched something down. “What time would that have been?”

      Tess did her best not to be intimidated by the damn notebook. Reporters used notebooks, too. It wasn’t as if anything she said was going to be used against her. “Ten? Around then, anyway.”

      “Was she with anyone? Friends? A boyfriend?”

      Tess shook her head. “She was alone. She had plans to come up with her roommate, but they fell through. She told me she didn’t want to waste a guaranteed reservation, so she decided to make the trip alone.”

      “A reservation? You know where?”

      Tess frowned. “The Bide-A-Wee, I think. In the lodge.”

      Jarek made another note. “Anybody hit on her while you two were talking?”

      “I…” Tess stared into her orange juice, trying to recreate the scene in her mind. At the cash register, Tim Brown hunched over a calculator and a legal pad, reconciling the previous night’s take. “Not really. She left a couple of times to dance. We both did. But mostly we just talked.”

      “We? You and Carolyn?”

      No point in muddying the waters, Tess thought. “Yes.”

      “And your brother?”

      Tess felt sick. Stupid. She had nothing to worry about. The years when she had to protect Mark were over. He was a grown man, a former marine who had returned from overseas with a chip on his shoulder, a tattoo on his arm and training in weapons and self-defense. None of which she needed to share with Denko. “I told you. He was tending bar.”

      “Right. He drive you home?”

      “No. He lives at the other end of the marina. He’s got an apartment over one of the boathouses.”

      “But you stuck around, maybe? Till he got off work.”

      “No.” She wished to God that she had. “I left early. Around midnight.”

      “And was the victim, Carolyn, still there at ‘around midnight’?”

      “Yes.”

      “Still alone. Sitting at the bar?”

      “Yes.”

      “And you don’t know what time she left.”

      Tess picked at her paper napkin. “No.”

      “You okay?” Denko asked gruffly.

      She straightened defensively against the vinyl seat back. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

      “Maybe because an hour ago you saw somebody you knew, somebody you’d talked with, hauled off in an ambulance?”

      She was getting used to his perception. She wasn’t quite as prepared for the way it made her feel: naked and warm.

      But then he spoiled it all by adding, “Or could be there’s something you’d like to tell me you haven’t gotten around to yet.”

      “You have a nasty, suspicious mind, did you know that?”

      His smile glimmered like a break in the ice. “Goes with the job.”

      “I’m not sure I like your job.”

      “Are you going to tell me about your ride in the police car when you were fourteen?”

      Ouch. “No. Are you going to tell me why you cleared all your officers from the scene and called in the state crime scene investigation team?”

      Something gleamed in his eyes. Respect, maybe. Or annoyance. “Noticed that, did you?”

      “Yes. Is it relevant?”

      “Relevant to what?”

      She pulled out her own notebook. Let him see how he liked being the one questioned for a change. “To my story about the attack.”

      “Police blotter stuff,” he said dismissively. “Not much of a story.”

      She tapped her pen against the blank page. “Maybe not in Chicago. But if tourists are getting raped by the side of the road in Eden, it is definitely a story.”

      She thought he tensed, but his voice remained calm as he corrected her. “One woman was attacked. That hardly constitutes a crime pattern, even in Eden. You shouldn’t sensationalize.”

      She glared. “I don’t call it sensationalism to warn the community.”

      “That’s very public-spirited of you.”

      “You have a problem with that?”

      “Not at all,” he replied. “If the public interest is your actual objective.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “Are you really interested in getting a warning out there, or do you just want to get a headline with your name under it?”

      She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, I’m a real glory hound, writing for the Eden Gazette.”

      “Big stories get picked up by bigger papers,” he observed.

      Her heart hammered. “And do you think this could be a big story?”

      His lips firmed. “I think you might make it into one. If it suited your purpose.”

      She ran a hand through her hair in frustration. “Look, I’m not acting from sinister motives here. I just don’t like secrets. I especially don’t like the police keeping secrets.” Boy, there was an understatement. She pushed away a sixteen-year-old memory. “And I don’t appreciate you standing in the way of a story.”

      “Understood. I don’t like secrets, either.” His eyes, cool and steady as rain, met hers. “And I won’t tolerate anyone standing in the way of an investigation.”

      Mark DeLucca had a face like an archangel on a cathedral wall and an assassin’s flat, black gaze. It was a look likely to appeal to a lot of women, Jarek figured. Daring ones. Dumb ones. It remained to be seen if the victim, young Carolyn Logan, fit into either category.

      “Your sister mentioned that Miss Logan spent a lot of time at the bar last night,” Jarek said.

      Mark continued to brush paint on the bottom of a skiff with sure, even strokes. Around the graying wooden dock, sunlight sparkled on dark water. The wind swayed the pines and tattered the white clouds high overhead. The whole СКАЧАТЬ