Duncan was currently on the phone with a friend of his, Detective Mike Nelson, who was officially handling the case. One of his officers had already placed the three letters in evidence bags and taken them away. Reid was sure there wouldn’t be any prints, other than Piper’s and Nell’s. Whoever had orchestrated the one-two-punch attack on the MacPherson sisters today had planned it too carefully to make a careless mistake. According to the young officer on the landing, the second part of the punch had come within a hairbreadth of being successful. The bastard would have run Piper down on the street if not for Nell’s quick thinking and amazing reflexes.
Reid shifted his gaze to where she stood arranging mugs on a tray and once more absorbed the overload to his senses. He was almost getting used to her effect on him.
Almost.
He certainly hadn’t been prepared when she’d opened the door of the apartment. That first sight of her had hit him in the gut with the power a double-barreled shotgun. The sexual pull had been even more potent and primitive than he’d recalled. Seven years ago, he could blame it on hormones, but he found it harder to rationalize it now and impossible to deny.
Thinking back, he recalled that he’d sensed her the instant she’d opened the door—a tingling awareness along all of his nerve endings. And he’d caught her scent—something he couldn’t quite describe. When he had turned away from the young officer and looked into her eyes, his mind had gone clear as glass, and all he’d seen was her.
All of her.
He was trained to take in numerous details in one glance, but they’d never registered so clearly on his senses before that he’d lost track of his surroundings. In that freeze-framed instant in time, he was completely absorbed in taking her in. The golden-blond hair that was clipped back from her face fell below her shoulders. The jacket and pants in some clingy fabric revealed a neat athletic body with more curves and longer legs than he remembered. Even as he registered all of that, his gaze hadn’t wavered from her face. He couldn’t look away from those eyes. They were still that dark, deep blue—the color of Eleanor’s sapphires—and every bit as fascinating. Then there was the pale-as-milk skin, the soft unpainted mouth, the lips that were slightly parted. In surprise? Anticipation?
Nell? There was a question in the word he’d spoken, but he still wasn’t sure what he’d been asking. What he knew was that for an instant he’d been tempted to step forward and take a taste of that mouth. It was fear that had kept him from moving. Fear that he might not be able to stop with a kiss.
No woman had ever made him afraid before.
Then Piper had come to the door, and he’d remembered who he was, where he was, and that this was Nell.
His stepsister.
He wished he could think of her only that way—the tiny and fragile girl who had to be cared for and protected. But the girl he’d carried around in his memory was turning out to be a sharp right turn from the woman who’d rescued her sister with a flying tackle. As a man who had fine-tuned his abilities to anticipate the future, Reid normally didn’t like surprises. But in Nell’s case, there was a part of him that was looking forward to them.
As long as they didn’t distract him from the job he had to do. The MacPherson sisters were currently the priority he had to focus on.
He shifted his gaze back to the table where Piper was frowning down at her cell phone, examining the photos she’d taken of the three letters as if she had missed something. But she hadn’t missed anything. The message was clear. Someone, and he was betting it was Deanna Lewis’s partner, wanted Eleanor’s sapphires badly enough to kill off the remaining members of the MacPherson family to get them. The would-be killer’s focus seemed to be on the sisters for now, but the threats extended to their father, his mother, their aunt Vi. And because of their relationship with Adair and Piper, Cam and Duncan could also be on the list.
“Send me something as soon as you have it,” Duncan said, then ended his call. “Nelson says that the car was just reported stolen from a hotel parking garage. But two of the eyewitnesses have arrived at the precinct. They’re going to work with a sketch artist. If all goes well, they’ll have something to put on the early-evening news.”
“The sketch probably won’t help us much,” Nell said as she served tea to Piper and Duncan. “Both witnesses said the driver was wearing a hat low on his forehead, a beard and sunglasses. Those are pretty standard items for a disguise. In fact, he could even be a she.”
Reid exchanged a glance with his brother. He was impressed with her analysis. And her focus. It was stronger than his was.
Piper frowned at her cell. “You should have told us the second you received the first letter.”
Nell moved forward and rested a hand on Piper’s shoulder. “I should have acted faster after I received the first letter. I won’t make that mistake again. Whoever is behind the notes planned everything very carefully, and I must have been under surveillance. In Louisville, the letter was delivered to my work. To do that here in D.C., the job was trickier. The manager of Pages told me the sign’s been in the window for almost a month, so the author of the letter knew exactly when I’d be there to sign for it. Arranging for the instant delivery was a piece of cake. But he had only a few hours to verify that Piper was with me and that we’d eventually have to cross the street to get to the apartment. It was a good bet that we’d stop for lunch or coffee at the café. We’ve done that every day since I arrived. All he had to do was wait.”
“I agree,” Duncan said. “He planned everything meticulously.”
High praise from a profiler, Reid thought.
“But here’s the thing,” Nell said. “He couldn’t have possibly known that Piper would step into the street alone. We could have been together just as easily.”
As she described what had happened just before the attempted hit-and-run, Reid pictured it in his mind—something he should have been doing much earlier. “Why weren’t you in the street with her?”
“She left fast,” Nell said.
“And Nell always moves slow,” Piper added.
“Wait. I remember now,” Nell said. “There was a woman who came up to me and asked me for an autograph.”
“I didn’t see that,” Piper said.
“You were talking to your boss on your cell. The woman said she’d missed the signing, and she wanted me to sign a copy of my book for her daughter. Then I was distracted by that horn again, and I heard the motor racing. I just pushed past her.”
Reid reached for his jacket. “C’mon. Let’s go down to the street and walk through it.”
THE STREET IN front of Piper’s apartment had returned to normal. Tourists and shoppers strolled along the sidewalks, some stopping to peer in windows. Nell noted that both Duncan and Reid were in full bodyguard mode, walking on the outside as they escorted the sisters across the street and along the sidewalk to the café.
They stopped just in front of the table where she and Piper had sat earlier. Reid made sure that she was just a bit behind him and to his left. That way he could shove her out of the way with his left hand and draw his gun with his right. Perfect, Nell thought. She had to stifle the urge to stop and make a note of it on her pad.
“Tell us what happened, Nell,” Reid said, “just as if you were writing it. And we’ll act it out.”
Nell pointed to the street. “Piper, you were right there.”
As Duncan and Piper moved into position between two parked cars, she said,