She opened her eyes to find him watching her with a satisfied smile, his eyes grown dark with arousal. ‘Don’t die,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’

His smile faded. ‘I won’t.’ His thumb swept over her lips once before he drew his hand away. ‘I think your friend knows we’re here.’

Scarlett jerked so hard that her back smacked the armrest on the driver’s-side door, her face now flaming with embarrassment. She’d completely forgotten where they were and why they’d come. And he was right. Arms folded across her chest, Delores leaned against one of the columns supporting her front porch, a patiently benevolent expression on her face. At her side sat an enormous dog whose head reached past her hip. The dog would have looked big sitting next to anyone, but it dwarfed petite Delores, who couldn’t be more than five feet tall.

‘Goddammit,’ Scarlett hissed. ‘This is going to be public knowledge within about five seconds after we leave.’

Marcus sat back in his seat, a frown crunching his brow. ‘Did you plan on hiding me?’

‘No,’ she answered, flustered. ‘I just . . . Hell, Marcus. I’m private about things like this. Not like I’ve had to be very often,’ she rolled on, inwardly yelling at herself to shut up.

‘How many times is “very often”?’ he asked, purposely using her own words against her.

‘Two,’ she said honestly, then shrugged. ‘And a half.’ Because Bryan didn’t really count as a whole relationship. He’d just been . . . convenient. Which had been wrong for both of them.

Marcus’s dark eyebrows shot up, his eyes gleaming. ‘A half? What the hell is a half?’

‘Don’t even go there,’ she warned, ripping off her seat belt. ‘Come on. We have work to do.’

‘Yes, sir, Detective, sir,’ he barked, then smiled, causing her to stare stupidly once again. ‘As long as you know that we’ll finish this conversation once we leave here,’ he said silkily, ‘seeing as how it’ll be public knowledge anyway.’

‘Fucking hell,’ she muttered. ‘Whatever. Let’s figure out who owns that damn poodle.’

Fourteen

Cincinnati, Ohio

Tuesday 4 August, 12.00 P.M.

Ken stood at his living room window, watching as Burton gently lowered Reuben’s sleeping wife into the front passenger seat of her car. He wasn’t certain if Burton’s care was due to genuine affection or simply to keep from putting any marks on her body. He wasn’t convinced of Burton’s loyalty, but he had to admit that the man was a professional in all the ways that counted.

Ken’s cell phone rang as Burton drove away, the caller ID belonging to Demetrius. ‘I was getting worried,’ Ken said tersely.

‘Aw, you do care,’ Demetrius drawled.

‘Where are you?’

‘In Loveland, for God’s sake. On foot, in the damn woods. You owe me fifteen hundred bucks.’

‘What the fuck, Demetrius? Why?’

‘Because these Testonis were brand fucking new and now they’re ruined.’

Ken gritted his teeth. One of these days he was going to kick Demetrius’s fancy shoes up his friend’s ass. ‘I meant, why are you in Loveland, walking through the woods?’

‘Because that’s where O’Bannion is. He’s with some chick cop.’

‘Fanfuckingtastic,’ Ken muttered. ‘Why are they in the woods?’

‘They aren’t. I am. I got to O’Bannion’s office after she’d gone in, so I don’t know when she got there. She came out at 11.20, stood on the sidewalk staring at her phone, then went back in. A few minutes later she came back out with O’Bannion. They got in her car and drove away, her at the wheel. It’s a CPD unmarked. They turned into a private drive. If I’d followed, they would have made me, so I parked and hiked through the damn woods. Hold on, I’m sending you a picture of the cop. I think you’ll find her . . . interesting.’

Ken’s phone buzzed with the new text and, putting Demetrius on speaker, he opened the picture. Then blinked. ‘Wow.’

‘Yeah,’ Demetrius agreed. ‘She’s a looker, all right.’

Demetrius, as usual, was the master of understatement. The woman was tall, with a thick black braid wound intricately around the back of her head. She was . . . exceptional.

For the first time in a long time, Ken’s mouth actually watered. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

Demetrius chuckled. ‘Probably not. You never think as kinked as I do.’

Ken rolled his eyes. ‘I’m wondering how much we can get for her. Maybe even pair her up with Stephanie Anders and sell them as a set.’

‘You sell all the best toys right out from under us,’ Demetrius grumbled. ‘I bet she’d be a real fighter in bed. She moves like a coiled spring. I could test her first,’ he said slyly.

‘We’ll see,’ Ken said, frowning as he studied the picture more closely. ‘She looks familiar. Do I know her?’

‘Yeah, you do,’ Demetrius said, suddenly all business. ‘She looked familiar to me too, so I had DJ dig up some pictures of her for me.’

Demetrius’s son DJ had – much like Sean and Alice – proven himself extremely trustworthy over the years.

‘She’s a homicide detective,’ Demetrius went on. ‘She’s working the murder of the girl in the alley this morning. Detective Scarlett Bishop. She transferred to that CPD/FBI task force a little less than a year ago. MCES or some such shit. She worked the serial killer case last fall.’

Ken put it together. ‘She’s the woman who came to visit O’Bannion in the hospital. She was also at his kid brother’s funeral.’

‘Yep. The photos DJ found were ones I took of her at that funeral and outside the hospital back in November.’

‘Did DJ run a background?’

‘He did. She’s squeaky clean.’

‘No cop is squeaky clean. I’ll have Sean do some deeper checking, see what he can find. Why are Bishop and O’Bannion in Loveland?’

‘I have no idea,’ Demetrius said, sounding puzzled. ‘They came to an animal shelter. It’s called Patrick’s Place.’

‘An animal shelter? O’Bannion’s adopting a dog?’

‘I don’t know. It didn’t appear that they were there on any case-related business, though. I think they’re . . . involved. O’Bannion woulda had his tongue down her throat in another few seconds if the lady they were visiting hadn’t come out on the front porch.’

‘Shit,’ Ken muttered. ‘A cop and a reporter. Together.’ It was a bad combination.

‘That’s what I thought. We take him out and she’ll come after us and then it’ll be so long to a low profile. Unless we take them together. What do we know about the Anderses? What’s O’Bannion’s link to them? How did O’Bannion find out about the girl he met in that alley?’

‘I’ll find out. I’ve still got the three Anders in the basement.’ Ken glanced at the security monitor on the counter. All three of his captives were trying to escape their bonds. Which would accomplish nothing more than marking their skin with rope burn. They would not break free of Ken’s knots. ‘The mother is the lynchpin holding them together. Chip and little Stephanie will tell me what I want to know once she’s incapacitated. Stephanie knows something, but she’s holding on to it because Chip believes someone will soon miss them and go to the cops.’

‘Someone who?’

‘Maybe the poodle’s handler – you know, for dog shows – but we’re not certain of that. Decker just left here to make sure no one was hiding in Anders’s house. He would have gone sooner, but it seems that Chip’s bullet did a lot more damage to our guard than he originally thought. Took him quite a while to get the guy stitched up.’

‘Do we need to switch places? You can pull in O’Bannion and Bishop. I can get answers out of the Anderses.’

‘I think I can manage,’ Ken said dryly. ‘The Anderses are just a bit more stubborn than most. I hooked Marlene up to my shock box, but none of them broke. I gave them a breather to let them stew while I was taking care of Miriam.’