Man with the Muscle

“This is a restricted area. If you don’t leave, I’ll have you arrested.”

“Are you friends with Miss Kline, officer? Why were you holding hands? Is she in danger?”

“I said—”

“I’ll handle this.” Audrey blinked her vision clear. It was up to her and no one else to pull it together. She touched Alex’s arm as she moved beside him, and gave him a squeeze of silent apology for getting dragged into her society-page world. His tricep was as hard and sinewed as his forearm, his skin as warm and reassuring as the grip of his hand had been. But it was time for her to be strong now. “I’ll handle this,” she repeated, pulling away.

His questioning gaze met hers over the jut of his shoulder. “You don’t have to talk to them.”

“Who knows what they’ll say if I don’t?” She stood in front of him, grateful for the wall of heat at her back as the vultures circled around them. “Officer Taylor is securing the scene of a crime. Please respect his orders and move back to the street so that KCPD can do their job and find Gretchen Cosgrove’s killer.”

“Do you think this death is related to Valeska Gallagher’s unsolved murder? You knew both victims.”

“No comment.”

“Can you comment on the Demetrius Smith trial?” the heavyset reporter asked. “Not tonight.”

“Are you and—Officer Taylor, is it?—an item?”

That was the news they wanted to report? “One of my best friends was murdered tonight. My love life is not up for discussion.”

Audrey startled at the broad hand at the small of her back and the hushed voice against her ear. “Don’t let ‘em rile you up, Red.” And then Alex was reaching around her, moving the reporters back. “Miss Kline has no further comment at this—”

“What are you doing way over here?” The small crowd parted as Harper Pierce nudged his way to the front. Without so much as a nod of acknowledgment to her or Alex, he pulled her hand through the crook of his elbow. “I leave you alone for a few minutes and you get lost.”

“Harper.” Even in that teasing tone, it felt like a reprimand, as if she was a child.

“Take the help when you can get it,” he whispered. He patted his hand over hers, pinning her fingers to his arm so that she couldn’t pull away without making a scene and really giving the press something to talk about. “I need you. Gretch’s parents want to know if you’d read a statement to the press for them.”

“I appreciate the rescue, but I don’t think I’m the best person for that right now.” But Harper wasn’t slowing down. He wasn’t taking no for an answer. Maybe he just needed a friend at his side right now. Audrey set aside her own discomfort and summoned compassion. “Of course. Any way I can help.”

Although he didn’t seem to have the will to smile either, Harper paused with her to allow a picture of the two of them together before escorting her out to the sidewalk. Then his hand was blocking the next camera and they were striding on.

The number of people in the crowd was still growing, and Audrey couldn’t help but glance at the technician by the news van, the parking attendant who was retrieving a car for one of the guests, the man in his bathrobe, pajamas and a pair of galoshes on the opposite sidewalk looking on. Alex Taylor said the police suspected that Gretchen’s killer was here somewhere, watching the chaotic results of his gruesome handiwork. Had she just brushed past a killer? Been photographed by him? Looked him in the eye? Was it that man? That one there?

Audrey’s gaze swept past two young black men, barely out of their teens, if that, lounging against a car at the fringe of the crowd. The shorter one, wearing a white ball cap twisted sideways on his head, leaned over to whisper something to the tall one in a black hoodie. The tall one laughed and looked right at her. At her.

And then they both raised two fingers and pointed them at her, flicking their thumbs as if they were firing a gun.

“Oh, my God,” Audrey gasped. She quickly turned away, missing a step and stumbling into Harper’s side.

“Are you all right?” he asked, pausing a moment to help her regain her balance.

What was that about? Did they have something to do with Gretchen’s murder? Did those boys know her? Or were they just taking delight in compounding the misery of an easy target?

“I’m fine,” she lied, knowing her focus should be on Gretchen and Harper and whatever the Cosgroves needed from her tonight. “I’ll be fine.”

She looked over her shoulder to see Officer Taylor herding the reporters who’d found them back to the restricted area. He was watching the two young men who’d mimicked a shooting, too, and was already weaving through the crowd toward them. He looked up from whatever message he was relaying into the radio on his shoulder. She caught one last glimpse of those dark, watchful eyes focused on her before the crowd shifted and he was blocked from view.

Suddenly, she felt oddly alone, even attached to Harper’s side in the midst of the crowd. The enormity of potential suspects—of one man, or maybe two—knowing, gloating, getting off on this chaos, closed in on her, constricting her breathing, making her skin crawl. She felt like a specimen under a microscope, completely at the mercy of unknown eyes.

Without really considering the significance of her actions, Audrey shoved the bandanna she still carried into her jeans. She kept her fingers in her pocket, clinging to the one true piece of comfort she’d had since hearing of Gretchen’s murder.

Chapter Three

One Month Later

The strains of chamber music muted as Audrey closed the kitchen door behind her. The din of eager, friendly voices from all the polite conversations she’d endured tonight still seemed to echo in her ears, leaving her nearly deaf in the empty room as she breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s what I needed.”

After allowing herself a moment to savor the quiet, she kicked off her strappy Gucci heels and curled her aching toes against the cool tile, wishing she could shed the fitted gown with the stays that poked into her ribs, as well. But since hostess nudity wasn’t the kind of buzz she wanted to generate with this holiday fundraising event, she settled for padding across the kitchen and opening the fridge in search of some caffeine. “Great.” She scoped the shelves up and down. “Just great.”

Not one diet cola to be found. Coffee? She closed the refrigerator and turned to the empty coffeemaker on the counter.

Out of luck. The only caffeine in the house was on the serving tables the caterers had set up, and she wasn’t going back to the party any sooner than she had to. The whole point of sneaking off to the kitchen was to find ten minutes of silence where she could nurse her headache and maybe think a bit more about how she wanted to open her statement to the jury when Demetrius Smith’s trial started in the morning.

She already had her arguments lined up. Her evidence was all in order, the witness list approved. Her boss, District Attorney Dwight Powers, had signed off on her strategy for putting away the reputed gang leader. Smith claimed he’d been an innocent bystander as the ten-year-old boy had been shot and killed in his backyard, thinking he could plead out to lesser charges. But Audrey intended to nail him to the wall for a list of crimes ranging from drug-dealing and witness intimidation to Calvin Chambers’s murder.

As it did every time she read or thought about the ten-year-old’s death, Audrey’s memories went back to the night of Gretchen’s murder—to the much more personal understanding she now had about violence and innocent lives so cruelly and callously taken. Inevitably, her thoughts of that night ended up at a shadowed hedgerow, where a dark-eyed, opinionated, compassionate cop had given her a few moments of respite from her grief.

You get Smith.

Alex Taylor had angered her, touched her heart, held her hand and handed down an edict. Right. No pressure.

Apparently, the support of KCPD, as well as career success and personal independence, hinged on winning this trial.

No pressure whatsoever.

No wonder her head ached.

It was Audrey’s first big case as a prosecutor. Her chance to prove she was smart enough, gutsy enough and tough enough to win a case without the backing of her father’s firm. Rupert Kline expected her to fail and was waiting to pick up the pieces with a hug and a told-you-so. He expected her to come to her senses and accept the lucrative partnership he’d offered in his firm. All his money and influence hadn’t been able to save her mother from the cancer that had ravaged her body and ultimately silenced her beautiful spirit. So, by damn, he wasn’t going to let anything happen to his little girl.

Even if all that love was smothering her.

So in the kindest, most reassuring way she knew how, Audrey was fighting to be her own woman, to create her own success story—to build her own life that included her father, but wasn’t dominated by him. Her mind was more focused, her goals clearer now, than they’d ever been. She didn’t need Daddy’s money to get the job done. She didn’t need his name to give her clout.

She didn’t need lectures from some doubting Thomas of a cop, either. She could do this.

She had to do this.

Beyond getting a ruthless criminal off the streets, she needed to succeed in order to prove that, at twenty-seven, with a degree from Smith and a juris doctor from the University of Missouri, she was no longer Daddy’s little girl. She was more than the pretty princess in the gilded Kline cage.

So why had she agreed to help her father host this fundraiser for a scholarship to honor Gretchen’s memory on the night before the trial began?

Proof that she was her own woman, indeed.

Audrey pulled out a glass and filled it with water from the tap, hating that vulnerable place in her heart. “Why can’t I say no to you, Daddy?”

Probably because the arts and friendship were worthy causes. Probably because she was as fiercely protective of her father as he was of her. Audrey had moved back home those last few months when her mother had been ill—to take care of Rupert as much as her mother. Despite the tragedy, Audrey had finally understood what it felt like to be needed. Her. Not her family’s money, not her father’s name. Her parents had needed their daughter to be there, to love them, to be strong when they couldn’t be.