vivid image. No, not an image, really—a full sensory mirage. McCarthy moving her back to her desk, sweeping the top of it clean. Her legs wrapping around him, their lips meeting and devouring. His hands …
She cleared her throat and stood up, aware that she was flushed, and not sure whether it was a product of the whiskey or her imagination. She reached for the glasses, and he was there ahead of her, handing them over.
Their fingers brushed, and it was like an electric current. The slow drag of his skin on hers made her pull in an involuntary breath, and she saw the answering response in the pupils of those blue eyes.
No, she told herself sternly. This is not you. You are not reckless and foolish. You hardly know a thing about this man, and for God’s sake, he just came out of prison….
Which wasn’t necessarily a downside; ungovernable passions were terrifying and compelling at the same time. She wished she hadn’t thought of that. Gasoline on a brush fire, that thought.
She transferred the glasses to her other hand and reached past him for the bottle. Close enough that their chests touched, brushed. It would be easy to kiss, from that intimate distance. Easy to do a lot of things.
He didn’t move.
He didn’t move away, either.
“Excuse me,” she murmured, and looked into his eyes. Just for a second, and then her nerve failed and she turned and walked to the cabinet, where she put the Glenmorangie away and placed the crystal tumblers in the small bar sink. Her hands were shaking, ridiculous as that was; she’d been through firefights with less emotional reaction.
Lucia stayed with her back to him, facing the cabinet, head down, fighting against an unexpected tidal wave of longing that was threatening to drag her under.
“You okay?” His voice came from close behind her. She felt herself flinch.
“Fine,” she said. Her voice was, as always, calm and controlled. “I need to make a couple of calls. Would you mind …?”
“No. I’ll be in my office, going over my important work,” he said, with dry amusement in his voice. He knew. He damn well knew what kind of effect he was having on her, and he knew how much it was angering her to lose control.
She didn’t turn around. McCarthy walked away—she was acutely aware of the sound of his shoes on the carpet—and opened and closed the door. The deep breath she took in smelled faintly of him—the hair products they’d used on him at Lenora Ellen’s, an elegant cologne, an underlying crisp male scent that she was starting to understand was uniquely his own.
She went back to her desk and sat down, hands flat on the surface. The couch at the far end of the room was a nice tan leather, a match for the one in Jazz’s office. The walls were a cool, clean cream. Black-and-white, oversize photographs hung there, plus a selection of color photos that showed her in air force dress uniform, and receiving a civilian commendation from a former president. As much of her history as she wanted to officially remember these days.
She was contemplating the couch, and possibilities, when a knock came at the door and Pansy opened it wide enough to look in. She was a cute, efficient woman whom Jazz had hired—partly out of spite—away from James Borden’s law firm of Gabriel, Pike & Laskins. Her sleek dark pageboy framed a heart-shaped face that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a silent movie.
Even, just now, to the wide eyes.
“What?” Lucia asked. Pansy was hardly the wide-eyed type. She’d been cool under fire, literally, when a sniper had taken out Jazz’s office window, and nearly Jazz herself. It took a lot to get a reaction from her.
For answer, Pansy held out a FedEx envelope—the stiff cardboard kind—and opened it to take out a red envelope. She held it in two fingers, carefully, as if it were a dead roach. “For you,” she said. “Do you want it, or do we make the shredder people happy?”
In Lucia’s experience, it was always better to make an informed choice. “I’ll take a look,” she said, and Pansy crossed the room with it and handed the crimson paper over. Lucia examined the outside of the envelope, but as usual there were no clues to the naked eye. A plain red envelope, like a greeting card. Her name block printed on the outside. “Who sent the FedEx?”
Pansy checked the label. “GP&L.”
“Not specifically from Borden or Laskins.”
“Nope. Mailroom. Could have been anybody.”
Lucia nodded and turned the envelope over. It was sealed.
She took a sharp letter opener from her drawer and slit it carefully across the top.
She had just put the letter opener down when Pansy yelled, “Stop!”
She looked up. Pansy was staring down into the open FedEx envelope, and her face had taken on a death-white pallor.
“Don’t open it,” she said.
Chapter 5
“What is it?” Lucia asked. She didn’t move a muscle, though her heart had accelerated into a fast, nervous rhythm.
Pansy looked pale enough to pass out, but her voice was steady. “Just put it down on the desk and step away. Now.”
It was too thin to be an explosive device, but there was something in Pansy’s voice that warned Lucia not to argue. She set the letter, carefully, in the center of her clean desk, and backed up. Pansy stepped forward and laid the FedEx envelope, with infinite care, down next to it.
“Outside,” she said.
“What is it?”
“Fine white powder grains in the FedEx envelope,” Pansy said. “I think they leaked out of the red envelope.”
Lucia was suddenly, acutely aware of her hands. Her fingertips. She rubbed them gently together and felt grit.
Oh, Christ.
“Go,” she snapped, and held up her hands like a surgeon preparing to operate. “Move. Bathroom. You know the drill—scrub as hard as you can. Go, Pansy!”
“But you—”
“I’ll be there in a second. McCarthy!” She yelled it, full-throated. He emerged from his office, half-glasses still in place. “I need you to dial the phone,” she said. “I may be contaminated.”
The glasses came off. “Contaminated how?”
“Envelope,” she said. “Powder.” She struggled to keep cool on the outside; fear was strangling her, making her breaths shallow and fast. “Dial this number for me and put it on speakerphone.” She recited it from memory. He punched it in, short stabbing motions, and stepped back as it rang. And rang. And rang….
“Pansy?” Manny Glickman’s cautious voice.
“No, Manny, it’s Lucia,” she said. Absurd, how useless she felt, unable to use her hands; she was holding them in midair, acutely aware of the tingling in her fingertips. Imagination,
