You Really Got Me (22 page)

Dedra’s head jerked up and she stared at Kendall. Her mouth opened, her lips moved, but nothing came out. Finally she said, “No. I didn’t hear that. What…what did they find?”

Kendall made a face. “I don’t know. There’s no official statement yet. I’m hoping the police will call us as soon as they can tell us something.”

“Oh. Oh. Yeah.” Dedra lifted a shaky hand to her head. “You know, I’m not feeling so well after all. I must be coming down with something.”

“Oh.” Kendall studied the younger girl. She didn’t look well, truthfully. “Maybe you should go home.”

“But…who will work for me?” If anything, she looked even paler.

“I’ll work,” Kendall said. “I need to keep busy or I’m going to go crazy waiting. You go home and go to bed. Hopefully you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

Dedra didn’t argue and disappeared out the door.

Chapter Sixteen

They’d talked to the three people who’
d been in the lab where the lab coat was found, but dammit, Nicki Barden was right–a lot of people had had access to that lab since
last Saturday.

“Call Cade Busher,” Jason ordered Paul Janko. “We need him.”

Paul lifted an eyebrow. “The narcotics unit?”

“Just call him.”

Cade walked into the office, wearing a tight black T-shirt that showed off impressive pipes, faded blue jeans and a ball cap. He slouched into a chair they’d pulled into Jason’s now crowded office.

“This is turning into a criminal investigation,” Jason said. “Not a missing person case. I want surveillance on a couple of people.” He pushed a piece of paper across the desk to Cade. “Get your whole team on this. Keep it low key for now. I want to know what they’re doing every minute of the day. And I want to make sure neither of them skips on us.”

Cade looked at the names. “Kevin Vioget?” One of his eyebrows disappeared up under the brim of his cap.

Nicki Barden glared at Jason. “Kevin Vioget?” she repeated. “Chief Holloway—”

Do it,” he snapped.

“But you know he—”

“We don’t know anything for sure at this point.” Jason held her gaze with a glare of his own. “We don’t know if that lab coat was Natalia’s and as far as we know, she walked out of that lab alive Saturday afternoon. So even though this is the first evidence we’ve come across that there may have been foul play involved, we still don’t know anything. And Kevin Vioget lied to us. He failed the polygraph test. He told us he was here in town the whole time when we have a witness who saw him in Santa Barbara that night. We don’t have an explanation from him about that. And we can’t arrest him without more evidence. So we’re putting surveillance on him. For now he doesn’t need to know that.”

He thought of Kendall and the fact that the narcotics unit would be surveilling her home too, and pushed away the discomfort that caused. She was hiding something too. He had to keep reminding himself of that.

“Okay, Chief.” Cade rose to his feet. “We’ll get on it right away.”

“None of this gets leaked to the press,” Jason ordered. “I don’t want either of these men knowing we’re watching them. At least not right now. We may turn up the heat if we find anything more. Or…” He paused. “If we
don’t
find anything more.”

Jesus.

“We’re going in tomorrow with the dog,” Special Agent Barden said. “If there’s anything else in that lab we’ll find it. We’re also going through the trash that’s been taken away from the lab.” She shrugged. “Don’t know what we might find, but we’re doing it.”

“We have to check everything.”

“Yes.” She eyed him and they waited as Cade and Paul left his office. When they were alone, she gave him a hard stare. “You said earlier you weren’t fixated on Kevin Vioget as a suspect.”

Jason swallowed a groan. “I’m not.”

“But you’re putting him under surveillance.”

“I told you why. Do you disagree?”

She leaned back in her chair, tipped her head to the side and pressed her fingers to her chin. “No. I don’t disagree.”

“Then why are you riding my ass about that?” Crap. He was sounding all defensive. But hell, she kept bugging him about this.

“Just doing my job.” Special Agent Barden stood, smiling. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

Sunday. Usually a day for Jason to go for a long run, work on his house, make a trip to the home store or the garden center, hang out with Denny, watch some sports on television. This Sunday was actually supposed to be the kids’ open house they’d planned to hold at the station. But that probably wasn’t going to happen now.

He sent Paul and Marco to the Vioget estate to update them on today’s events. The Vioget and Debarros families were going to hear it on the news anyway, if they hadn’t already, so they might as well hear the truth from them. It wasn’t good news, that was for sure, but at this point they still had nothing to indicate Natalia Debarros wasn’t alive.

 
He left the police station and picked up a pizza and some beer on his way home. Another exciting Saturday night at home alone.

Unlike the other night when Kendall had been there. When she’d let him tie her up. Sizzling images from that night flashed through his mind as he carried the pepperoni-scented pizza into his house.

The fact that she’d let him do that had damn near undone him. He took that responsibility seriously, determined not to make her regret it, determined to stay in control and make it good for her. The trust she’d placed in him meant so damn much.

He wanted her there with him now, wanted to make sure she was okay. Jesus. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, worrying about her, wanting her.

He set the pizza on his kitchen counter and popped open a cold beer from the fridge.

He knew what it was like to feel responsible for a younger sibling, to want to take care of them no matter what. He also knew what it was like to fail at that.

If only he could convince Kendall and Kevin to tell the truth, maybe he could help them. Neither of them was doing themselves any favors by covering up something that was sure as shit going to come out at some point. And in the worst case scenario—Kevin Vioget was guilty of murder—he was going to have to face the consequences of that. And Kendall had to know that.

A burning need to talk to her, to try to tell her that, swept over him and for a moment, he actually considered driving out to the winery to see her. And then he remembered.

They were watching her house.

How could he show up there, all alone, in the middle of the evening, not on any official police business?

He couldn’t.

Dammit. He tipped up the beer and took a big chug.

He could call her though.

Gnawing on his bottom lip, he found his cell phone and speed-dialed the number he’d programmed in weeks ago. It rang a couple of times, and his gut tightened. Then her smoky voice answered.

“Hello?”

He hesitated. He shouldn’t be doing this.

“Hello?” Her voice sharpened. “If this is the media, then all I can tell you is—”

“Kendall. It’s me.”

She was silent.

“How are you?”

He heard her sigh. “Oh, Jason. Your men came to see us today. They told us what you found.”

“Yeah.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “We don’t know what it means yet.”

“It can’t be good.”

He had to agree. “Come to my place.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. I want to see you.”
I need to see you.

After a short pause, he heard her near whisper. “Okay.”

He took the rest of the pizza and slid it out of the cardboard box and onto a pan, then put it in the oven to keep it warm until she got there. Maybe she’d already eaten, but he wanted to wait for her. He looked down at himself, still wearing dress pants and shirt and tie, and rolled his eyes.

Taking the stairs two at a time, he worked the buttons of his shirt open and quickly changed into jeans and a gray LCPD T-shirt. Then he laughed at himself for being in such a rush, as if Kendall could time travel and appear there in his bedroom two minutes after he’d talked to her. His eagerness to see her was…whatever. He wasn’t going to bullshit himself. He wanted her there.

In his dark living room, he flicked mindlessly through channels while drinking his beer, until finally he heard a car pull up out front. He opened the door to her as she was climbing the steps, his front light making her dark hair gleam. God, she was gorgeous.

“You okay?” he asked, kissing her forehead.

She nodded. He shut the door and then she was in his arms. She fit there so perfectly. “I wanted to see you too. Tell me it’s all okay. Tell me again.”

“Ah babe.” He cupped the back of her head. He so wanted to tell her that. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, if you can’t tell me everything is going to be okay…” She drew back and looked into his eyes. “Then…make me forget.”

“Yeah. Oh hell yeah.” He bent his head and found her mouth with his. His lips moved on hers gently even as his hand worked its way beneath her hair at the nape of her neck and twisted into it. Her soft moan heated his blood, and he used the fistful of hair to move her head so he could deepen the kiss. His mouth opened on hers and she responded with another soft sound of pleasure, her tongue brushing over his bottom lip.

Her breasts pressed against his chest, full and soft, and as their tongues slid together, he tightened his grip on her hair. He could make her forget. His other arm pulled her closer still, up against his hardening cock.

“Do you have handcuffs?” she whispered against his lips.

He paused. “Ah. Yeah.” His dick twitched. He waited.

“Would you use them on me?”

He drew back a little and met her eyes, dark and shadowy, and the tentative request made his cock stiffen even more. His blood raced hot. “I would fucking love that,” he said hoarsely. “Upstairs. Now.”

He patted her butt when she turned, and she gave him a sultry look over her shoulder.

They ate the pizza much later.

The warble of Jason’s cell phone somewhere in the distance finally penetrated the fog of sleep surrounding his brain. Awareness of the warmth of a body beside him slowly filtered into his consciousness, his arm around her waist, one of his legs twined with hers. Kendall. The softness of the bed enveloped them, and as he breathed in, her scent mingled with his and the scent of sex filled his head. Damn, he felt good.

He disentangled himself from her and rolled over, dragging sheets and comforter with him. He smiled at Kendall’s moan of protest as he slid out of bed and reached back to tuck the covers around her.

Where the hell was his cell phone? He rubbed the back of his head as he stood gazing around the room. It had stopped ringing and he was about to climb back into bed when it started again. He sighed. Whoever it was wanted to talk to him.

He tracked the noise to the pocket of his jeans, which lay crumpled on the chair in the corner of his room where he’d tossed them last night. He fished it out and answered the call, noting it was barely past seven in the morning.

“Holloway,” he said, keeping his voice low.

“Chief. Special Agent Nicki Barden here.”

His gut tightened and he glanced at the bed, turned away and quietly left the room.

“What is it?”

“I’m at the lab. We need you to get here right away.”

“The lab?”

“Yes.” She paused. “We found a body.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Hidden in a crawlspace in the basement,” Nicki told him as they stood in the Vioget Research Center. “Full of utilities and cables. Nobody would ever go in there except maybe electricians or repairmen. In fact, we had to remove part of a wall to get to the body, it’s such a small space.”

“We’ll get the family to ID the body, but that’s her.”

“Yup. ’Fraid so.”

Even tough FBI agent Nicki Barden looked disturbed.

“Cause of death?”

“We’ll get an autopsy. Jim’s on his way,” she said, naming the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department coroner. “I’m guessing traumatic asphyxiation.”

“She was strangled.”

“Looks like. She fought back. We’re pushing to have the DNA samples analyzed as fast as possible.”

“I’ll need to make a statement to the press,” Jason said wearily, the feeling of relaxed languor and satisfaction long gone, left back in his warm bed with Kendall. Crap.
Kendall.
Tension seized him. “And talk to the family.”

“Jim has to notify them.”

“Yeah. I know. I’ll go with him.” He rubbed his eyes, then looked at Nicki. “She was supposed to get married yesterday.”

She nodded, and he saw the tightness of her mouth, the shadows in her eyes. “Yeah.”

Investigators milled about the basement of the lab, carefully gathering evidence. It wouldn’t be long before this leaked to the press. Where the hell was Jim?

The coroner showed up moments later, grim faced. It was some time before he’d finished examining the body, taken more photographs, arranged for it to be transported to the Sheriff’s Department in Santa Barbara.