“I’ll bet that’s what you say to all the girls,” she shot back. The smart remark was out of her mouth before she could stop it. “Oh, crap. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that—”
“No worries. And no, that’s not in my usual repertoire of pickup lines.”
“You have a repertoire?” Darn it, she’d done it again! This guy was a cop, for crying out loud. Lord, he threw her off balance.
His mouth twitched, hopefully with humor. Great. At best, he thought she was ridiculous. At worst, he thought she was an annoying twit. Not that she could blame him. She was a hot mess tonight.
Frantic to distract him, she mumbled, “What does it mean that one of his captors used some special grip on him?”
The detective’s muscular shoulder lifted in a shrug. “It’s a detail we can use to help identify the assailants.”
“You think that was a real abduction then?” she blurted.
“I do.”
Panic erupted in her belly and promptly tried to claw its way out of her throat. Suddenly she felt light-headed and faintly nauseated. “But who...?” she gasped. “Why?”
The detective surged to his feet, looming over her. He grasped her upper arms in his powerful hands and guided her over to the sofa, where he sat her down. Which was probably wise. The room spun around her and lights danced before her eyes.
“Take a deep breath, Miss Price. Hold it for one, two, three. Now exhale slowly. Three. Two. One.”
He talked her through several more breaths, and they helped her brain engage again. Still. She couldn’t seem to keep her hands from fidgeting uncontrollably. She plucked at the seam in her jeans and then wrung her hands and tugged at her T-shirt. He sat down beside her and his hands closed over hers as she stared at him in anguish.
His gaze wasn’t the least bit gentle. Thank God. She would’ve burst into tears then and there. But maybe that was a hint of sympathy lurking at the back of his deep blue eyes. Huh. The tough guy might just be human beneath that hard façade.
She wanted to crawl into bed, pull the covers up over her head, and curl up in a little ball with Mr. Paddles, her stuffed turtle. Which was weird if she stopped to think about it. She didn’t revert to little girl behaviors, well, pretty much ever. Not since she’d run away from home all those years ago. She’d been barely more than a child then.
The detective spoke not exactly gently, but less harshly than before. “The New Orleans Police will do everything we can to find Mr. Hubbard as quickly as possible.”
“You’re sure it’s not a prank?” she asked in a small voice.
“I don’t think it is. Mr. Hubbard’s body language in the video is consistent with genuine surprise and fear as he’s being dragged away.”
“I followed them down the alley. I couldn’t run because the camera would jostle too much, but I walked at a good clip. It was under a minute until I reached the end of the alley. Where could they have gone in so little time? God, I’m such an idiot—” She broke off as it dawned on her she was babbling.
The detective snorted. “With a minute’s head start, they could have thrown your boss into a vehicle and driven away without you ever seeing their taillights.”
Her breathing started to speed up again, and the detective looked her in the eye, took a deep breath, held it, and then released it slowly. Staring at him, she followed along, matching her breaths to his. It was an intimate thing, breathing in concert with him. Their gazes locked—his focused and calm, and hers probably completely freaked out.
In any other circumstances, she would be wildly attracted to a man who looked like him. But as it was, she could hardly keep the panic at bay. And it wasn’t just panic over Gary. Merely being in the presence of this man scared the heck out of her. And not only because he was a cop.
“Why Gary?”
“I don’t know why Mr. Hubbard was a target,” he said reasonably. “You tell me. Was he in any trouble? Did he have any enemies?”
She stared up at him in dismay. They were really going to do this? He was going to question her for real? Lord, she hated questions from police.
Her panic galloped away from her then, and her entire body shook with it. She’d been questioned like this once before, and look how that had turned out. Her best friend had died. Because of her. Because she’d gone to the police. Had she done it again? Had she just gotten Gary killed, too?
Bastien stared down at the frightened young woman before him. She was a tiny little thing. And right now, scared out of her mind, she looked about twelve years old. Scratch that. She was too hot ever to be mistaken for a child. She was petite but she had curves in all the right places. Her hair was brown with gold streaks and currently pulled into a high ponytail that hung long and smooth down her back. Her eyes were big and dark, and her skin had a beautiful olive undertone. He’d place her ancestry as at least partially Mediterranean.
She was the kind of woman a man looked at twice. Maybe had some dirty dreams about. Had he met her in any other setting—at a bar or with a mutual acquaintance—he’d have done his damnedest to charm her into his bed.
Did she realize she was wringing her hands again? He really shouldn’t stop her—they were a useful body language tell—but damned if he could stop himself from reaching out to take her hands once more, rescuing her reddened fingers from death by squeezing.
Thing was, he was no rookie. He knew better than to fall into the whole comfort-the-family-member thing. It wasn’t his job and could end up being a giant distraction when it came to finding missing persons. He had become a cop to solve problems. To use his military training to catch bad guys. When he was on duty, he was all about the job. Put the pieces together. Solve the crime. Move on to the next case. He did his best to stay away from all the messy human emotions that came with his line of work. They were nothing but a distraction.
However, he wasn’t entirely without basic human decency. And that forced him to feel at least a little sympathy for this young woman in the face of her fear. Still, this was work, and it was not his job to pat her hand and say, “There, there.” It was his job to find the guy in the video.
And like it or not, he was sitting in front of his only currently identified suspect. She wasn’t much of a suspect as they went. After all, she’d come forward to the police with direct video evidence of the crime. But, he couldn’t rule her out, either. She was a known close associate of the missing person.
He prompted her, “Can you think of anyone who would want to do Mr. Hubbard harm?”
“That’s a complicated question where Gary Hubbard is concerned,” she finally offered up.
“Why’s that?”
A sigh. “His television show has devoted fans and equally devoted haters. There’s a whole group on social media devoted to debunking his ghost sightings.”
Seriously? Ghosts?
