“Well, lover boy,” Carrie cooed in a husky voice that slid over his senses. “I’ll try not to rile you up. I wouldn’t want to find out about your temper firsthand.”
“That’s wise, sweet thing.” Linc was fast becoming aware that Carrie McCall could stir him up just by being in the same room. “While we’re on the subject of getting riled, is there a man who’ll have a problem with your spending the next handful of nights with me?”
“No.”
“How about some hulking cop who’ll thump me with a sap just for dancing with you?”
“You don’t have to worry, Reilly. I have this ironclad rule about not getting involved with other cops.”
“Guess that rookie’s wife didn’t know about your rule.”
“Guess not. Your questions work both ways. Is there someone who’ll have a problem when you cozy up to me at The Hideaway?”
Linc looked down at the reports spread on the table while emotion scraped at him. At one point he’d had a life outside the job. A woman he couldn’t wait to go home to. He would forever carry her blood on his hands.
“There’s no one.” He looked up in time to see compassion flash in Carrie’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I know what happened to your wife.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought there might be someone…recent.”
“No.” He never again wanted a real life. He had his job, a safe place in which he hid his grief in the ruts of routine.
“Okay.” Easing out a breath, Carrie looked back at the stack of photos in front of her. “So, our undercover personas are new to Oklahoma City. How’d we wind up at The Hideaway?”
His new partner asked good questions, Linc thought. When you worked undercover, you needed a believable reason to be wherever you showed up. You could die if you didn’t have one.
“There’s a dive motel about a mile south of there,” he said. “The Drop Inn. After I snagged this assignment, I rented a room on a weekly basis. I told the clerk I was new in town and asked where I could get some booze, food and action. He told me about The Hideaway.”
“Are you staying there during the operation?”
“Off and on, in case someone decides to check on me. When I don’t stay there, it’ll look like I went home with you. It will help our cover if you’re seen at the Drop Inn with me. We can go into the office and I’ll ask the clerk some question. We’ll want him—and anyone else watching—to see you go into my room. We’ll stay a while, leave the bed looking like we really are lovers.”
“When do we start?”
“Tomorrow night. Does that give you time to get whatever clothes you’ll need?”
“You think I work at my Mom’s nursery in designer jeans? Think again, Reilly. I dig in the dirt, haul bags of manure and peat moss. I’ve got plenty of appropriate clothes.” Leaning back, she steepled her fingers. “Of course, if our undercover personas are engaging in illegal activities, we’d have money for nicer clothes. I’ll have to think about my wardrobe. Maybe wear quality stuff I could have bought in a consignment shop.”
When he remained silent, she asked, “Am I off base on the clothes deal?”
“No, you made a good point.” He angled his chin. “I’m trying to picture you wielding a shovel. Hoisting bags of manure. The image won’t gel.”
“Proves you don’t know anything about me.”
“That’s a fact.” He didn’t want to, either. Unfortunately, this assignment required him to get to know her.
Just then the door swung open. Linc’s shoulders tensed instinctively when Don Gaines stepped in.
The detective’s dark, deep-set eyes flicked from Carrie to Linc, then back to Carrie. “You’d be Carrie McCall.” Stepping to the table, he offered his hand. “I’m Don Gaines. I was out of the squad room when you got introduced around.”
Carrie offered a smile and her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Gaines looked back at Linc, handed him a message slip. “I took a call from a detective in Tulsa. He wants to talk to you about a homicide they had over the weekend.”
Linc bit back a curse when he read the victim’s name. Arlee Dell had a mountain of priors by the time his name came up as a suspect in a series of home invasions Linc investigated. He’d pulled Dell in a couple of months ago, but could never prove his connection with the crimes, so he’d walked. Linc suspected Dell pulled another invasion two weeks ago where an elderly couple had been tied up, tortured and strangled.
Linc met Gaines’s gaze. “Thanks, I’ll give the cop a call.”
“He said Dell was shot,” Gaines added. “Twice in the heart, once in the head.”
Linc tightened his jaw. The man who had once been his closest friend was a good, thorough cop. Had Gaines also picked up on the fact that over the past year and a half a number of scum handled by SEU cops had wound up shot in the head? If so, Gaines would know Dell was victim number seven.
A knot settled in Linc’s gut as his mind worked. In college, Gaines had been crazy about Kim; though she’d chosen Linc over him, his feelings for her had never cooled. Gaines blamed Linc for Kim’s death. He would like nothing better than to see Linc pay for what had happened to her. Was that why Gaines had gone out of his way to deliver the phone message? Linc wondered. Because he wanted Linc to know he’d connected the killings that had commenced one month after Kim’s body had been found tossed in a ditch?
While his mind continued its systematic, methodical analysis, Linc felt a cold realization settle inside him. Suspicion. As a cop, he lived with it, always casting as wide a net as possible, encompassing every possibility, distasteful or not. Which was why he now found himself wondering if the deep loathing Gaines felt for him had, over time, taken on an intensity so dark that Linc had failed to see it. Was Gaines so obsessed with making Linc pay for Kim’s death that Gaines had decided to make him a mark for the murders?
After all, Kim’s killer had never been found. The bastard had escaped justice, just as the now-dead seven other maggots had. It was possible a grieving husband might begin a killing spree to avenge his wife. If that husband were a cop, he would know how to get away with those murders. The last of which occurred during the past weekend. Somewhere in Tulsa. Linc had spent the weekend with Kim’s family in Claremore, a twenty-minute drive from Tulsa.
Linc’s sense of unease gathered strength when he remembered sitting at his desk last Friday, telling Tom Nelson his weekend plans. Gaines could have overheard the conversation. He knew where Kim’s parents lived.
Linc lifted his eyes from the message slip. He could read nothing in Gaines’s face. Linc couldn’t afford to trust, to discount, to filter possibilities through a screen of denial the way most people did. He’d learned a long time ago that the simple truth of the world was that people, even otherwise decent people, regularly did rotten things to others. Now, Linc needed to figure out a way to find out if Gaines had allowed himself to step over the line. If he’d become one of the people they had both spent their lives pursuing. If his bitterness over losing Kim to the man who he blamed for her torturous murder burned so hot he would commit seven homicides with the intention of pinning them on his former friend.
Gaines nodded to Carrie. “Hope to work with you soon.”
“Same here.”
Gaines flicked Linc a look before walking out.
“That homicide sounds serious,” Carrie commented.
Linc’s shoulders