Deadly Gamble

His strong grasp felt so treacherously good that I immediately pulled free.

“My half brother—his name is Geoff—was arrested that night, according to the newspaper accounts I read a lot later. He confessed, so there wasn’t a trial, and they sent him to a youthful offenders’ program in California.”

Tucker nodded in solemn encouragement when my voice faltered again, but he didn’t say anything. He might have looked like a biker, but he was in cop mode now.

“I saw him tonight, Tuck. At Talking Stick. He sat down at the slot machine next to mine—” I swallowed, pushed my hair back with the palm of my right hand. “It was the Sizzling Sevens.”

A faint grin flickered at one corner of Tucker’s mouth, gone as quickly as it appeared. His eyes were dead serious.

“Are you sure it was him? Not just somebody who looked like your brother?”

“My half brother,” I said. I didn’t want to claim even that much of Geoff, but we had the same mother. The thought made me want to check into a hospital, have all my blood drained out and replaced with somebody else’s. “And yes, Tucker, it was Geoff. He tried to pass himself off as Steve Roberts, but I know who he was.”

Tucker took a notepad from his hip pocket and scrawled the name on a page, but I knew what he was thinking. There were probably a dozen Steve Robertses in Phoenix alone, never mind all the once-separate cities butting up against its sprawling borders—Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Glendale.

“Google,” I said, catching sight of the computer across the room, and started to get off the couch.

Tucker pressed me gently back onto the cushion. “Take a few minutes to catch your breath,” he said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

An hysterical laugh bubbled out of my throat at the irony of that statement. Then I started to shiver.

Tucker got off the ottoman, disappeared into the bedroom and returned with an afghan, which he wrapped tightly around my shoulders. I snuggled in.

“Did he threaten you?” Tucker asked.

“Not exactly,” I answered, huddling inside a field of yarn daisies. Jolie had made the afghan for Nick and me, years before, as a wedding gift. God, I wished I could talk to Jolie, but she was a workaholic and probably busy in her Tucson lab, sorting bones.

“How come you never told me what happened to your parents?” Tucker asked. At the same time, he went to the computer, perched on the edge of the desk chair, and logged onto my Internet account. The password was stored, so there was no delay.

“The time never seemed right.”

“Uh-huh,” Tucker said tightly.

I bristled. “We were only together for six weeks,” I reminded him. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Oh, by the way, when I was five, my half brother slaughtered our parents, and a neighbor kidnapped me, and I’ve been living under an alias ever since’?”

Too late, I realized that I’d given away a lot more than I’d intended.

Tucker spun around in the desk chair. “What?”

“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“You’ve been living under an alias?”

“Not now, Tucker.”

He glared at me for a long moment, then spun back to the computer and started punching keys. On TV, cops usually use the hunt-and-peck method, but Tucker knew his keyboard, and all ten fingers tapped at a steady clip.

“Don’t think for one damn second,” he warned, without turning around, “that I’m going to pretend we didn’t have this conversation.”

He paused after a while, and peered at the screen.

“Is this him?”

I got off the couch, letting Chester roll unceremoniously to the cushions, and padded over to look at the monitor.

Sure enough, there was Geoff, smiling out of a Web page.

I sucked in a breath.

“I’ll take that for a yes,” Tucker said, and printed the page.

I leaned over his shoulder, studying the site.

“Steve Roberts” worked as a private nurse, an RN, no less. He sold vitamins for some network marketing outfit, too, and was available for consultations. Consultations! Have you been thinking of murdering your parents? I can tell you how to do it and get away with a slap on the wrist. Why, in no time at all, you’ll be back on the streets, looking for your next victim!

I shivered.

“I don’t think you should be alone tonight,” Tucker said.

“I’m not going to your place.”

“Then I’ll stay here.”

“On the couch.”

He sighed.

“On the couch,” he agreed, but belatedly, and with reluctance.

SOMETHING LANDED heavily on my chest. Sprawled in the middle of my bed, I opened one eye to sunlight and a purring white cat. I felt the familiar mingling of delight and sadness as I looked into Chester’s fuzzy face.

“I’m so sorry he killed you,” I whispered, stroking his back.

I heard the shower running and for a moment I was jarred, until I remembered that Tucker had spent the night. I’d no more than formed the thought when the pipes stopped rattling. I eased Chester off my breasts and rolled onto my side; I didn’t want to be caught petting empty air when Tucker put in an appearance.

He did just that, a minute or so later, standing naked in the doorway, except for a towel around his waist. I put down an unseemly urge to 1—summon Tucker to my bed and 2—lick the little droplets of standing water off every muscled inch of his flesh.

“Coffee’s on,” he said.

Chester hopped onto the broad window sill and sat looking down at the main street of Cave Creek, tail slowly sweeping the warm morning air.

I was grappling with my libido. In short, I wanted some nookie.

What harm would it do? said libido inquired.

I thought of Tucker’s kids. The custody battle. His beautiful ex-wife. Sure, they were divorced, but Allison still had a powerful hold on him. He visited regularly, despite their conflict; he’d been up front about that from the first. I couldn’t be sure all the emotional ties had been broken, and I knew it would kill me if they were still sleeping together.

The best orgasm I ever had with Nick happened an hour after we left the courtroom, with the ink still wet on our decree.