The Wharf

The other two teens nodded in agreement. “She was swimming laps when we bolted.”

“Did you see anyone else out here? In the gym?” Ryan pushed to his feet.

“No, sir.”

“All right. Thanks.” Ryan exited the pool area, mopping his face with the towel.

He believed them. According to the security guard, those boys were probably messing around in the business center at the time Kacie was in the sauna. Besides, would they play a trick like that on a smokin’-hot cougar?

They got half of that right. Kacie was smokin’ hot, but she was no cougar—at least not for him.

He filled up his water bottle from the gym’s dispenser and then tossed his towel in the bin. She’d shot him down when he asked her to join him for dinner that night, but they planned to get together before her meeting with DB to give him another crack at finding the guy in the law-enforcement database.

As far as he could tell, Kacie had spent the afternoon holed up in her hotel room—working, she said. He smacked the elevator button with the flat of his palm. That woman ran hot, very hot, and cold.

Women. He sure loved ’em, but he couldn’t even pretend to understand ’em.

He’d spent his afternoon dropping that doll off at the local precinct, touching base with his brother’s fellow officers and then tracking down his younger brother.

He knew Judd was going to be out of town again, but he’d managed to catch him for about an hour before he headed to the airport, this time to work for the Saudi royal family. His P.I. brother had been getting higher-end gigs lately, a step up from spying on errant spouses.

Ryan shook his head as he slipped his key card into his door. He’d barely recognized Judd with his suit sleeves covering his tattooed arms, his long hair slicked back.

Once again, Judd had offered up his apartment to Ryan, but Ryan had passed. Judd was careless with his business and his women. Ryan didn’t want any surprises in the form of irate females dropping in—either ones Judd had spied on for their husbands or ones he’d loved and left.

That was the excuse he had given Judd, anyway. If he took his brother up on his offer, he’d have to check out of this hotel. And Kacie Manning was in this hotel, one floor below him. He wasn’t going anywhere.

He showered, changed and ate a burger at the restaurant in the lobby. Then he showed up at Kacie’s door, five minutes early.

She’d stacked the remnants of her own room-service meal on the credenza. Papers and notebooks littered the desk around her laptop. She’d swapped her business attire for a pair of black jeans and a dark green top that accented the copper highlights in her hair and an expanse of soft, creamy skin above the neckline.

Wedging her fist on one curvy hip, she tapped the toes of her bare foot. “You’re early—again.”

“Am I?” Had he betrayed his eagerness to see her?

“I was just going to clean up.” She flicked her fingers toward the abandoned dishes.

“Let me.” He hoisted the tray and carried it toward the door.

She scooted around him to pull the door open and then leaned against it while he pushed the tray against the wall in the hallway.

He rose, dusting his hands together. “I ran into those teenagers at the pool today.”

“Really?” She let the door slam. “Did they fess up to anything?”

“Just that they thought you were smokin’ hot.” He would leave out the cougar part.

Color rushed into her cheeks, and she snorted. “Must’ve been all that steam from the hot tub obscuring their vision. So, they didn’t see anyone else out there?”

“No.” He tilted his head and hitched his thumbs in his pockets. Was she fishing for a compliment or did she really not understand the impact of that body on a red-blooded American male?

She ducked her head and fussed with the laptop, her hair creating a veil over her face.

Nope. She didn’t get it. Self-confident about everything except her looks. He knew the type.

“I couldn’t get back to that system you were using.”

“I’ll find it.” He sidled next to her at the desk by the window and brushed her arm with his fingers as he reached for the keyboard.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with her, he felt her body quiver. Must be the excitement of discovering the identity of her contact. Couldn’t have been because of their close proximity, since she’d been shoving him away from her with both hands ever since he’d carried her bikini-clad body from the sauna.

He pointed to her screen background, a middle-aged couple with a spaniel between them. “Your parents?”

“And their faithful dog. They’ve had him for fifteen years.”

He studied the pair, a sleek blonde with straight chin-length hair and a balding man who looked fit for his age. Kacie must have taken after her dad because she didn’t resemble her mom at all.

He entered a URL and typed in his username, password and number from his token. The system whirred to life and he let out a breath. “It’s up.”

Kacie stepped away from him and planted a chair between them. “Have a seat. I’ll give you what I know.”

He settled on the edge of the chair, his hands hovering above the computer as he waited for it to connect. When the search bar appeared, he turned his head to look at her. “Date of incarceration?”

“Can you enter a range of dates?” She leaned over him and her fragrant hair tickled his cheek.

He swallowed. “Yeah.”

“Maybe twenty or twenty-five years ago.”

He typed in the date range. “Location?”

“Let’s go with Washington State.” She jabbed her finger at the display, and the side of her breast skimmed his upper arm. She pulled back.

He got rock hard. He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. “Washington. Crime?”

“Murder.”

He entered the man’s heinous crime, but even that couldn’t tame the heat surging through his body. He’d need a cold shower for that.

“I can’t exactly enter his initials, but I can enter B followed by an asterisk and that should give us everyone with a last name starting with that letter—unless he’s lying to you.”

“An ex-con lying? Say it ain’t so.” She knelt down beside his chair.

“Then this is it.” He entered the initials in the name fields and clicked the search button.

A little hourglass blinked in the center of the display.

“Uh-oh. This could take a while.”