and you don’t even remember who I am.
Not that she’d care if she did.
“Hold still, please,” he said, taking her wrist and pressing her thumb into the ink pad, rolling it from one side to the other.
No, he thought as he held her inked thumb apart from her other fingers and moved her hand over to the blank sheet, Louisa knew nothing about him at all.
He rolled her thumb over the white surface until the print was complete. She muttered a colorful oath under her breath and pulled back as he began to thoroughly smear her index finger with ink.
“Would you hold still, please?” He tried to tamp down the irritation spiking sharply through him. But as Dylan began to roll Louisa’s next finger through the ink, a movement outside the window caught his eye.
He glanced up to see an Aston Martin DB9 Volante coming to a bone-jerking halt in front of the station, the high-performance engine stalling. Dylan felt an odd reflexive rush as he recognized Megan Stafford, looking like some Hollywood star in a casually elegant short dress, silk scarf, bare sunbronzed arms and giant shades, Louisa’s two blue heelers on the seat beside her like Lord and Lady Muck.
He saw her mutter what could only be an expletive as she swung open the convertible’s door, extending long athletic legs. And Dylan felt a smile tempt the corners of his mouth.
He tried not to watch those lean legs walking towards the entrance of his station, tried to focus on Louisa’s prints, but at the same time he was compelled to sneak another peek, grudgingly acknowledging that Fairchild’s grand-niece really was hot, even with clothes on.
Heat coursed softly through Dylan as the image of Stafford in that barely there bikini reformed in his consciousness—and his body hardened in instant response. He banked down the unbidden and annoying rush of physical anticipation, reminding himself Stafford had probably come to the station to wheedle herself into Louisa Fairchild’s good graces—if there were such a thing—and right into the octogenarian’s will.
This helped steel his focus.
But as she entered the reception area he felt the chemistry of the smoke-tinged air in the small brick station shift, and his pulse quickened anyway.
“Louisa?” Megan called, leaning her body over the counter. “Are you all right?” Her mouth opened in shock as she saw her aunt being fingerprinted down the hall, and her green eyes flared at Dylan. “I need to talk to her,” she demanded. “In private.”
The cop speared her with those intense blue eyes of his. “It’s her right, Detective Sergeant Hastings. I…I’m a lawyer.”
His brow crooked sharply up, and Megan felt her cheeks grow hot. She swore to herself. She had no idea what had possessed her to say that. The man flat-out unnerved her.
“Would you take the dogs outside, please, Ms. Stafford? And I’ll let you in the back as soon as we’re done with the prints here.”
Megan muttered another curse as she returned Scout and Blue to the car. He was playing power games with her by ordering her out with the dogs like that. It was probably also a ploy to rattle Louisa.
Megan reentered the station, removing her scarf and using it to tie her damp hair back into a ponytail as she did. She wished she’d managed to get out of her wet bikini before coming. It was now uncomfortable.
Detective Sergeant Hastings unlocked a door to the side of the reception counter, admitting her into the working part of the police station.
It was deserted at this hour, and his presence seemed to suck up all the air in the place. Megan suddenly felt nervous. But when she peered beyond his broad shoulders and saw the normally statuesque Louisa looking so frail and vulnerable as she tried to scrub the ink from her hands at a grimy, gray, industrial-sized enamel sink, a fist of anger curled deep in Megan’s belly, squeezing away the nerves.
“I need a moment with her,” she said quietly. “Alone.”
He held out his hand. “Room down on the left.”
“Come, Louisa,” she said, taking her aunt’s arm, feeling the cop’s eyes burning into her back as they went down the corridor to the interview room. He had a way of stripping her naked just by looking. It made her legs feel like jelly and she had trouble concentrating on the simple act of walking.
“Leave the door open so I can see you both,” he called out as they were about to enter the windowless neon-lit room.
She glowered at him.
Dylan checked his watch. The longer he left them, the more chance D’Angelo had of showing up before he could squeeze Louisa. Yet he was legally obligated to give them time alone. He unhooked his phone from his belt, was about to punch in his home number and let Heidi know he wasn’t going to make it for dinner, when his mobile beeped.
He flipped it open. “Hastings.”
“Sergeant, it’s the lab. We’ve managed to lift the serial number of the murder weapon. The Smith & Wesson .38 that killed Sam Whittleson is registered to Louisa Fairchild.”
Bingo!
This was going to make things a hell of a lot easier. He’d now be remiss not to have brought her in.
He flipped open his phone, relief rushing through him as he called his daughter.
Megan placed her hand gently over Louisa’s slender veined one. It felt as fragile as a bird under her own, and beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting her aunt looked much older, drained. It wasn’t surprising. No innocent person deserved to be fingerprinted like that, to be forced into an airless and sterile room with one-way mirrored glass, seated at a table that had been bolted to the floor. Especially not an eightyyear-old woman of Louisa’s stature in the community. “How are you holding up, Louisa?” she asked softly, studying her aunt’s blue eyes.
“Where the blazes is Robert?” she snapped. “I’ll be fine as soon as he gets me out of this hell hole.”
Megan hesitated, not wanting to upset her aunt further by telling her Robert might not make it through the APEC barricades tonight. “He’s…on his way. He instructed you not to say a word, Louisa. Silence cannot be held against you, but anything you do say can be used in court—”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Megan, this is not going to get to court!” But a flicker of fear in her eyes belied her bluster.
Megan glanced at Detective Sergeant Hastings talking on his phone down the hall. “He must have some reason to hold you here, Louisa,” she said in a whisper.
“Impossible!”
“Then why do you think he brought you in?” she said calmly. “I mean, they already questioned you after the Lochlain fire, and cleared you, didn’t they?”
Louisa went silent, her eyes suddenly uncertain, and without the habitual steel they were startlingly reminiscent of grandmother Betty’s eyes. And of Megan’s mother’s eyes. An acute sense of love and loss rustled so sharply through Megan that it put a catch of emotion in her throat.
This irascible grande dame really was her family.
And
