of my back pocket, my gaze still trapped by his. “Albertini,” I said, my voice beyond husky.
“Did you go to the spa to see Cheryl?” Nick Basanelli’s voice held an urgency that drew me up short.
Aiden’s expression smoothed out, but he didn’t move away from me.
I gulped. “Yeah, why?”
“Because I’m looking at a dead kid we just identified as Randy Taylor,” Nick muttered. “I’m on the dike road off Tamarack Lake. You’d better come down here.” He clicked off.
I froze in place, the phone still held to my ear.
Aiden eyed me, wiping my lip-gloss off his bottom lip with his thumb. “I take it I’m not staying the night.”
I shivered. Had I gotten Randy Taylor killed? Was Aiden a murderer? The dike road was only a couple of miles around the lake from my bungalow. There was no way Aiden dropped a body and then showed up on my porch to kiss me, right? Emotion clutched me, and I plastered both hands against his chest, the phone still in one. Then I shoved. “Did you kill Randy?” If he did, I was in danger, and right now, I didn’t care. This was too much. All of it. Way too much.
Aiden straightened to his full height, and all lazy lust disappeared from his eyes, sharpening the blue so brilliantly they cut. “What are you talking about?”
“Randy Taylor is dead down by the dike road. Two miles from here.” I punctuated each word with a smack of my phone against his chest. “Did you kill him?”
Aiden’s brows drew down. “No.”
“Did the Lordes?” I snapped.
His face lost all expression and somehow hardened at the same time. “I have to go.” He turned and strode down the steps and across the walk, moving quickly past my car toward the road.
My mouth gaped open, and my chest hurt. Bad. He’d walked? Seriously? He reached the end of the drive and disappeared behind a couple of trees. The roar of a motorcycle engine pierced the night, a flash of taillights pierced the darkness, and then he was gone.
I hadn’t seen his bike, but I hadn’t been looking.
Why had he hidden it? The wind whipped up, snapping into me, and the chill that shook me had nothing to do with the weather.
Chapter 16
It was the first crime scene I’d visited where I hadn’t been shot at, and it looked just like the ones on television. Red and blue lights flashed from different emergency vehicles, shining through sweeping tree branches, yellow tape cordoned off the area, and techs milled around, searching for evidence. It had taken me a little while to attach the top to my car, so I’d probably missed a lot of the activity. Detective Pierce snapped orders near the water’s edge where two uniformed officers tripped over the rocks to finish setting up a white tent that glowed eerily in the dark.
As if even the sky feared Pierce, it waited until the tent was in place before opening up with a crash of thunder and a pummeling of rain. He caught sight of me where I’d pulled my car over at the beginning of the dike road, where many people usually fished or swam, and I swear, even from that distance, his gaze narrowed.
I lifted my hand through the rain as if in a wave, but he didn’t return the gesture.
Nick came around the tent, said something to Pierce, and then headed my way. His shorter hair was mussy from the rain, and his whiskered jaw gave him the look of a pirate. He wore long athletic-type sweats, a matching sweatshirt, and tennis shoes. Basanelli after-hours wasn’t bad to look at. The rain smashed my hair to my face, and I pushed it away, trying not to shiver. He reached me, already shrugging out of the dark blue zip-up sweatshirt to reveal a tight gray T-shirt. “Where were you when I called?” He threw the sweatshirt over my shoulders.
“Home.” With Aiden, my mouth still tingling from his. I shook my head and tried to hand the thick material back, noticing Detective Pierce still watching us.
“Jesus.” Nick shoved my arm through one sleeve, and I let him, not wanting the cop to see us struggle.
The jacket smelled like foresty cologne and something else. A wood fireplace? I settled into it. “Thanks.”
Nick wiped rain off his forehead, looking more Italian than ever with his olive-colored skin and sharp angled face. “You ever see a murder scene, besides Scot’s?”