She glanced down at his hand as if the comforting gesture surprised her. When she didn’t pull away or protest, he trailed his fingers up the side of her neck and found skin as soft as the silk she wore and a racing pulse. Or maybe that was his own heart rate speeding up with awareness and concern.
“Do you need to lie down?” Her gaze darted to his lips and searched them as if she couldn’t quite grasp what he was asking. “Miss Winthrop?” he repeated, reminding himself to focus on first aid and not the way her eyes pooled and darkened as if she was having a hard time staying focused herself. “Are you hurt?”
He reached behind her head to probe for any cut or goose egg. As he gently nudged his fingers into her hair, his palm brushed against the small plastic hearing device hooked behind her ear.
The instant he touched the device, she blinked her eyes clear and pushed his hand away. “I’m fine.”
Rightly denied the contact that had slipped beyond professional, A.J. sat back on his haunches. But he never got the chance to apologize.
Instead, Claire Winthrop moved her fingers in a frantic dance that he knew to be sign language, even if he didn’t understand the words. Fortunately, she spoke out loud as she signed. “I think the mats have been switched.”
The discovery seemed to excite her, judging by the flush of color on her cheeks. A.J. grinned in relief and rose to his feet. This woman wasn’t hurt—he’d seen that distant focus dozens of times in his sisters’ eyes. Claire Winthrop was preoccupied. Obsessed, even.
A.J. offered his hand to help her stand. “What makes you say that?” When she didn’t immediately answer, he waited until she looked up into his face and repeated the question.
“This one is worn around the edges and has wheel dents.” She pointed out the damage. “I’m sure my father’s was replaced within the last couple of months when my stepmother remodeled his office. This one should still be smooth.”
Interesting eye for detail.
Seemed he couldn’t help noticing a few details himself.
About his witness.
After a moment’s hesitation, when he thought she might refuse his assistance or continue her explanation, she laid her fingers across his palm, giving him a glimpse of the evocative contrast between her creamy porcelain skin and his callused, olive-tinted hand.
To his surprise, there was nothing weak in her grasp as he provided an anchor for her to pull herself to her feet. The pink suit and delicate features had given him a mistaken impression of fragility. This woman possessed a sinewed strength from the tips of her fingers to the length of her shapely calves.
“Detective…Rodriguez?” She pronounced his name carefully, slurring the Rs with subtle W sounds. And while he mulled over the husky softness of her voice when she wasn’t desperate with confusion or shouting with excitement, she dropped her sky-blue gaze to the clutch of their hands. “Thank you.”
She hadn’t signed, but A.J. understood the prompt and quickly released her. He’d held on a shade too long to be proper; his grip had been a little too snug to be polite.
Bad move, A.J. He shouldn’t be noticing anything about Claire Winthrop except her reliability as a witness—which at this point was, unfortunately, questionable. He shouldn’t care one damn whether the pampered heiress was offended or turned on by holding a working man’s life-scarred hand.
It wasn’t like him to get distracted from his purpose, not by any woman. Certainly not by Cain Winthrop’s daughter. The job didn’t allow it.
He wouldn’t allow it.
He stuffed said workingman’s hands into the pockets of his jacket and told himself he hadn’t noticed the subtle perfume that clung to her hair and emanated from the heat of her skin, either.
Needing his space before his brain got addled with any more pointless impressions, A.J. strolled to the center of the room and placed the desk between them. “So you think the killer—”
“—and his accomplice,” she insisted. A.J. conceded the addition to her scenario. “The killer and his accomplice rolled up the body in the plastic mat and disposed of it? Then they put a new one in its place?”
“Isn’t that a realistic possibility to explain why Valerie’s not here?”
“Assuming Miss Justice is as least as big as you are, how do you smuggle out a body without being seen?”
“It’s a big building. They took the freight elevator or the stairs. Only the security lights are on inside. The sky’s overcast so there’s no moon outside. I don’t know.” Her shrug was an easy enough sign to read. So was the quick snap of her fingers. “But we should be able to check the mats.”
When she breezed past him and headed out the door, A.J. wondered if he was being polite or just plain crazy for following her and joining the search. At Claire’s pace, it didn’t take long to inspect every office on the floor to discover that there were no chair mats missing from beneath any of the desks.
He could almost feel her disappointment at a good idea refusing to pan out. Her frustration was such a tangible thing in the stiff set of her shoulders and crossed arms that he wanted to say he believed her story, even though the possibility of a woman being shot to death in Cain Winthrop’s office seemed more remote by the minute.
“How many offices are in this building?” he asked, knowing he didn’t have enough of a case here to warrant pulling any manpower off the Slick Williams murder and other homicides for an extensive room-to-room search.
“Hundreds.” She tipped the point of her chin at him, her blue eyes blazing. He recognized that look from his sisters, too. “And, yes, I’m sure I have the right room.”
She looked about as dangerous as a kitten, all huffed up and ready to spit in self-defense. A.J. respected her right to a temper, but couldn’t help smiling to himself at the notion she looked more cute than ferocious. “That wasn’t what I was thinking, amiga.”
Tiny fine lines appeared beside her eyes as she frowned. “What?”
She hadn’t understood him. “Amiga?” Reading lips in English was amazing enough. He supposed translating a foreign language on top of that would confuse most people. “It’s Spanish. It means friend.”
“Oh. Amiga.” She said the word again, touched her own lips as she repeated it, giving A.J. the feeling she wasn’t most people. She’d just expanded her vocabulary and wouldn’t miss that word again. “I’m bilingual, too.”
“You seem to communicate just fine.”
Her pale cheeks colored at the compliment. “It helps when someone really listens.”
Meaning there were others who didn’t listen to what she had to say? A.J. raised his guard a notch against his growing admiration for the woman. Maybe she had more of a reputation for making up stories than her father had indicated. Or maybe, like his own father had once told him, Winthrop will ignore the truth if it doesn’t suit his purpose. Or he’ll change things to make them fit his truth.
As a smart-ass teenager, A.J. had asked his father what he was smokin’ to come up with that deep thought. Antonio, Sr. had shoved his only son up against the wall and warned him to watch his mouth. Maybe if he listened a little better, instead of putting so much noise into the world, he could see the truth. If he heard the truth, if he championed it, then men like Cain Winthrop and his compadres at Winthrop, Inc. would lose their power to control and ruin other people’s lives.
His father, who had never once resorted to violence with his children, had been trying to tell him something important. But A.J. shrugged him off, called him loco and worse, ignored his warning and sped away in his muscle car.
It