Cal wondered, too. Seems like when you’re sleeping with someone, they’d tell you all their secrets. Family shouldn’t be a secret. But not Deme. From the get-go, their passion singed any other thoughts from his head. When he finally got around to asking, she’d gone. Completely out of his life. There one day, gone the next.
“One of the reasons I brought you in on this case was because I knew you had dealings with Deme Chattox and probably knew a little about her and her family. When Brigid told me what the Chattox sisters had planned, I knew I needed one of Chicago’s best detectives on the inside.”
Brigid shook her head, her lips twisting. “He didn’t trust us to do it on our own.”
“Damn it, Brigid!” Marty pounded his fist on the conference table so hard, even the ubercalm Brigid bounced, her eyes widening.
Marty’s lips pressed into a thin line, his face beetred and getting redder by the second. “We’ve already lost one young woman to whoever or whatever kidnapped her. I don’t want to lose four more.”
Brigid uncurled her legs and pushed off the table, standing tall. “She’s not gone for good. We just can’t find her.” Her jaw tightened. “But we will, I have no doubt. I only told you because I wasn’t going to refuse a little help.”
“And rightfully so. A missing girl on a campus is not something to take lightly. The police need to be just as involved in returning the girl to her family as bringing the perpetrator to justice.” He aimed the remarks at Brigid, then he turned to face Cal. “Back to my original question. Is your relationship with Deme Chattox going to cause you any difficulties?”
“I don’t have a problem keeping on track.” Heat rose in Cal’s belly as he recalled the feeling of Deme’s lips on his. She could be a major distraction, but he refused to let her. Their “thing” had ended a year ago.
Brigid’s hand brushed his, ever so lightly and briefly, the heat burning a path across his nerve endings. “Yeah, and you didn’t want to kiss her, but you did,” she whispered to him, low enough only he could hear.
“Huh?” Cal jerked away from the woman. How’d she know?
Brigid’s lips twitched. “You heard me. Play nice with my sister. She had a nasty time of it with a man almost a year ago and hasn’t dated since. If I’d known who it was, I might have been tempted to inflict some bodily harm on him.”
Cal almost laughed out loud. The petite woman with the long, black hair didn’t look as if she could harm a fly, much less a full-grown man. Besides, she had her facts all wrong.
A year ago placed Deme with him. He had to be the man Brigid was talking about. But Deme hadn’t had a nasty time of it. More like she’d given him a nasty time. As soon as he’d asked her to marry him, she’d left. Talk about cold feet.
It wasn’t as if he’d meant it—he’d blurted it out immediately following the most mind-blowing sex he’d ever had. Hell, they’d spent every night for a month in his bed, in his apartment. It must have seemed like a natural progression for her to marry him and move in permanently.
He’d waited two days, thinking maybe she’d been thrown off balance by his proposal.
Those two days had been the longest he’d ever experienced. When he’d gone by her apartment in downtown Chicago, she’d moved out. Nothing left but an empty roll of box tape.
Apparently Deme hadn’t told her sisters any more about him than she had told him about them. Why all the secrecy? If she didn’t want to be a part of his life, all she had to do was say so. Moving away had been extreme.
When Marty had told him about Deme’s involvement in the case, his first instinct was to walk away. Getting answers to why she left was one of the reasons he’d agreed.
In the back of his mind, the need for a little payback had spurred him into action. Thus his kiss in the student commons. And if he wasn’t mistaken, Deme Chattox was not immune to him…unfortunately, not any more than he was immune to her.
“Very well, then.” Marty turned toward the white board hanging on the wall. “Let me fill you in on what’s been happening on or around campus. Maybe you’ll understand why the Special Investigations Team is working this case.”
Brigid shot a narrow-eyed glance at Cal before turning her attention to the board as if to say, I’m watching you.
Cal could have laughed out loud, but the lieutenant was talking.
He pointed to a time line on the board with a tick mark near the start of the line. “Two weeks ago, a male student attacked a female student while she was walking through the campus. She’d never talked to him, he’d never expressed any interest in her. Up until the attack, he’d been a model student, making good grades, working toward a prelaw undergrad degree. Clean record, no criminal history. Nothing. Out of the blue, he attacks a girl.”
“So? Doesn’t it happen every day?”
Marty nodded. “You’d think. But when questioned, he broke down in tears claiming it was as if he had no control over his actions. One minute he was worried about his economics test, the next he’d jumped a girl and practically raped her before a member of the faculty came along and pulled him off.”
“Again…so?” Cal had seen rapists claim temporary insanity too many times to believe. If a man could rape a woman, he had to have something wrong with him and needed to be taken off the streets.
“At first, it looked like a cut-and-dried case of attempted rape…but then it happened again.” Marty shot a glance over his shoulder at Cal and Brigid before he pointed at the second hash mark. “Two days after the first incident, another boy attempted rape.”
“Same one?”
“No, a different boy. Same thing. He was a model student, premed degree. On his way to the library when he lost it and tried to rape a girl.”
“Power of suggestion?” Cal offered.
“You mean because news got around the other boy wanted to get in on the action?” Marty shook his head. “That’s what I thought at first. The university didn’t let the information out about the previous attempted rape for fear the parents would yank their kids midsemester. That and we had their rapist.”
“Is there any connection between the two guys? Are they in the same fraternity? Do they live in the same dorm? Involved in a hazing event or something?” Cal asked.
Marty shook his head. “We checked into all that. Again, one of the students is prelaw, the other premed. Neither has joined a frat house. One lives on campus and the other in an apartment nearby. As far as both are concerned, they didn’t even know each other existed until these events occurred.”
“Where did the attempted rapes happen?” Brigid stared at the campus map, her gaze so intense her blue eyes appeared steel-gray.
Sweat popped out on Cal’s forehead. “Is it me, or is it getting hot in here?”
The lieutenant tugged at the tie around his neck, loosening it, a bead of perspiration sliding down the side of his head. “It’s getting hot.” He stared across at Brigid. “Do you mind?”
She flushed, a weak smile crossing her lips. “Sorry.” Then her smile disappeared, she clasped the medallion hanging around her neck and closed her eyes.
Within a few seconds, the room temperature dropped enough that Cal could tell a marked difference. He looked around for who might have adjusted the room’s temperature. When he located the thermostat, nobody stood near it. The only occupants of the room were the three of them.
His gaze returned to Brigid, who clutched at the medallion, her eyes blinking open.