this time the message said: BACK OFF.
She felt a chill skate over her skin despite the late afternoon sun beating down on her.
It wasn’t just the words that were different, it was the style of lettering. Bigger and bolder.
Or was she wrong?
She’d been uneasy since Joe had gone to prison, jolting at noises in the night, jumping at shadows. She was overreacting, letting her imagination get away from her, envisioning dangers where there were none. No doubt this was another example of the same thing.
The message probably wasn’t even intended for her, but for the driver of whatever vehicle might find itself behind her on the road. And the logic of this reasoning soothed her skittish nerves.
Until she noticed the slashed tires.
Chapter Two
Scott arrived at Alicia’s apartment complex less than fifteen minutes after her call.
He recognized Detective Mel Rucynski from his years on the force and greeted his former colleague with a firm handshake.
“What are you doing here?” Rucynski asked.
“Alicia called me.”
“Alicia, huh?” Rucynski lifted his thick black eye-brows. “Well, your taste in women has definitely improved in the past couple of years.”
The cop’s suggestive tone made Scott realize he’d slipped in referring to Alicia by her first name, as he’d slipped throughout the day whenever thoughts of her came to mind. And although those thoughts had been anything but professional, focusing on her as a woman rather than a client—a woman with dark sparkling eyes, wide full lips, and temptingly round curves that he wanted to feel pressed against him—he didn’t want Rucynski to get the wrong idea about his relationship with Alicia.
“Actually, Miss Juarez is a client,” he said, reminding himself as well as Rucynski of that fact.
“A client, huh?” the cop asked doubtfully. “Well, if she has enough money to call you out to investigate a juvenile prank, she should have enough money to move out of this neighborhood.”
“What kind of prank?” Scott asked, ignoring the dig about his fees. A lot of his former colleagues assumed he’d made the jump to the private sector to fatten his wallet. And while he did take home a heftier paycheck now, it wasn’t money that had motivated the switch.
“Slashed tires.” Rucynski gestured to the parking lot behind him.
Scott looked over his former colleague’s shoulder and saw an ancient red Jetta in one of the few occupied slots. “Slashed tires” was something of an understatement, he thought, noting that the vehicle was actually resting on its rims because the tires had been so completely decimated.
“Looks like an unusually violent prank,” he noted.
Rucynski shrugged. “Some kids are carrying around a lot of anger.”
He nodded. It was an act of vandalism, possibly—probably—random, and yet there was something about it that bothered him.
“What did you tell Al—Miss Juarez?”
“The truth—that this neighborhood isn’t exactly upscale, and the fact that she’s lived here for three years without incident is only proof that she was due for some trouble.”
“What about the words on the back windshield?”
“By her own admission, the neighborhood kids sometimes leave messages in the dust on her car.”
Scott nodded, but he wasn’t convinced.
Not that he blamed Rucynski for looking for an easy answer. He’d responded to too many of these same types of incidents when he’d been in uniform, and usually the simplest explanation was the right one. But he’d also learned to trust his instincts, and his instincts were warning him that this might not be as straightforward as Rucynski wanted it to be.
“Is that going to be the conclusion of your report?”
“We’ll ask around, see if any of the neighbors saw anyone or anything suspicious. But at this point, yeah, I can’t see that it will play out any other way.
“I know that won’t satisfy your…” Rucynski paused deliberately “…uh, client, but the truth isn’t always what we want it to be.”
Which was exactly the same point Scott had tried to make when he’d talked to Alicia about investigating her brother’s case earlier, and he anticipated that she’d still be as resistant to it as she’d been then.
She responded immediately to his knock, and he saw that she’d changed out of the scrubs she’d been wearing earlier that day and into a pair of softly faded jeans and a simple scoop-neck T-shirt. Her hair was still in a braid, but her feet were now bare and her toenails, he noted with surprise, were painted blue and decorated with tiny white and yellow daisies.
Obviously there were layers to the woman he hadn’t suspected, layers that he was curious to explore.
“What did Rucynski tell you?” she asked without preamble.
“Probably the same thing he told you—that it looks like a juvenile prank.”
She folded her arms across her chest and paced across the threadbare carpet. There was an old—possibly even antique—couch against one wall, decorated with colorful pillows in various geometric shapes. Beside it was a newer-looking wing chair and ottoman. The coffee table looked sturdy, if scarred, and held a neat stack of magazines. Facing the couch was an ultra-modern entertainment unit of glass and aluminum that housed a small TV and modest stereo system, along with stacks of CDs and DVDs.
It was…eclectic, he decided. And yet somehow warm and appealing—like Alicia herself.
He turned his attention back to the woman who was still pacing.
The protective instincts that had sent him racing across town in response to her phone call rose up again and urged him to go to her, to wrap her in his arms and promise to take care of her. But he managed to resist the impulse, recognizing that holding her wouldn’t just be inappropriate but potentially disastrous for his peace of mind. After only one meeting with the woman, he’d already found himself daydreaming about her. God help him if he touched her and found she was as soft and warm as he imagined her to be.
No, there could be no personal contact. He needed to remember that she was a client, off-limits, and to keep his distance. But that was tougher than he wanted to admit when she had her arms wrapped around her middle to disguise the fact that she was trembling.
“I can understand why this has shaken you—”
She turned abruptly to face him. “I’m not afraid of whoever slashed my tires.”
He frowned. Whoever had done that number on her car had been wielding a dangerous instrument. Hell, he was scared just thinking about the possibility that Alicia might have interrupted the culprit in the middle of his task and had the weapon used against her.
“I’m
