She smiled tiredly, as if she was remembering that first day, as well. “Don’t worry yourself, Simon. I’ll be fine so long as I’m not anywhere near you. At least, that’s your theory, isn’t it?”
She looked at a point over his shoulder, her back to Karen’s front door. The other woman was waiting inside and had promised to lock the door again as soon as he left. She even had a state-of-the-art security system. There was no reason to delay his departure any longer.
Except, of course, for the fact he didn’t want to leave her. But that was his heart and his body talking. His mind—that little voice he listened to when assessing life-and-death situations on the job—was telling him this was the right thing to do. He hadn’t listened to that voice where Lana was concerned, and look how that had ended. This time, he wasn’t taking any chances.
“I’ll be at the office,” he told her, “until I have to leave for the gala. Even if I’m not at the office, remember what I said before. If you need something, you can call anyone in SIG. Even Stevens. They all care about you, Nina, and won’t hesitate to respond if you need them.”
“How convenient for you,” she said. “You can ensure I’m protected without having to put yourself out any longer.”
“Damn it, don’t! I’m not abandoning you. If you need me, if you call me and I can be here, I will be here. Do you understand?”
“Sure.”
“Then promise me you’ll call me if you need me.”
She just looked at him, then turned to walk inside.
He grabbed her arm. “Damn it, Nina, promise me!”
She wrenched her arm away. “Fine,” she said. “I promise. Now, is that all?”
“No,” he said, before bending his head and stealing a kiss from her. He’d much rather she’d kissed him on her own, but her mouth softened under his and that was enough. He buried his hands in her hair and cradled her face, trying to communicate to her with his lips and tongue how very much he cared about her. And how scared he was about letting her down. She raised her own hands and touched his face. The contact was electric and jolted him back to reality. Already the thought of walking away from her was unbearable. He was only making it worse. He pulled away, once more said, “Be careful,” and then left.
As soon as he got into his car, Jase called to tell him he had information about the security cameras in the SIG parking lot and the vandalism of Simon’s car. “You’re not going to like it,” Jase warned. And he was totally right.
* * *
BACK AT SIG, JASE TOOK a sip of coffee, then said, “Whoever broke into your car and set up the doll did it in exactly five minutes, between four and five after four. That’s when the security disks were tampered with, resulting in a five-minute blank. This guy was smooth. And he knew our system.”
“Another cop?” Simon asked, a hollow feeling in his gut. DeMarco? he wondered.
Impossible.
But was it really?
Davenport had gotten into Nina’s house despite a security system that DeMarco had just installed. And then there were the initials—BD—that matched those of the kid, Billy Dahl, who DeMarco had shot in New Orleans. He couldn’t bear to think that another cop—a friend—could be doing such vile things, but he also recalled his conversation with Nina, the one they’d had on the beach before they’d made love. She’d said that trauma could affect someone who’d exhibited no prior signs of mental illness and skew his reality so much that he would do things he normally wouldn’t. DeMarco had talked about some of the symptoms he’d been experiencing, including hearing things, and if he was hearing things, who knew what else was going on...whether his link with reality had truly slipped.
“Let’s assume it’s a cop, Simon,” Jase said. “Can you think of anyone who has a personal vendetta against you?”
He thought about it, then shook his head. “I’m not everyone’s favorite person around here, but I can’t think of anyone I’ve pissed off lately.”
“How about not so lately? When you were away from SIG? When you were a captain?”
“I was captain for three weeks. The men I worked with during that time seemed to respect me. Like me, even. Of course, I wasn’t there to make friends. I made some tough decisions, one in particular...” He frowned. He wondered