"Gary…" She shook her head, then folded her arms. "I've heard rumors for a couple of weeks now about the fishermen. Care to tell me if they're true?"
"No."
"Want to confide in me about what you're doing?"
"No."
She gritted her teeth. "Where were you the night before last while the Anna Marie was burning down to the waterline?"
"Camping."
"Try again," she shot back. "I saw you in the photos Chapman took of the crowd."
He shrugged. "I went to the mooring basin to spend the night on the trawler, but I hooked up with Chuck instead. Satisfied?"
"Not by a long shot." He wasn't telling her everything, and the knowledge that he didn't trust her to help him hurt so much she was having trouble breathing. She forced herself to pin him with her hardest interrogation stare. "Did you go onto the Anna Marie?"
"No." He leaned forward, close enough to pump up her pulse rate. His eyes shone with a feverish intensity. "You know I didn't kill Ken. Quit playing cop for just one damn minute and listen to me. Kaz is in real danger. Did she tell you someone broke into her house last night?"
Lucy swore.
He smiled grimly. "Yeah, I didn't figure she'd raced to the phone to call you."
"Do you know what they wanted?"
"Yeah."
She glared at him. "You going to share with me?"
"No." He stood and walked to the back door. "Figure out a way to keep her safe—that's all I'm asking."
"You can't just waltz out the door! I'm an officer of the law and there's a warrant out for your arrest."
"You never saw me—I wasn't here." He paused in the open doorway. His expression was hard, but his eyes were haunted. She shivered as cool air wafted over her. "Watch your back, Luce."
Two seconds later, he was gone, and she was left sitting alone in her kitchen, listening to the quiet ticking of the clock on the wall and the sounds of the soccer match playing in the background.
Well, hell.
~~~~
Chapter 15
When Kaz awoke around nine, her first sleep-fogged thought was that she felt like a mummy, wrapped from shoulders to toes. Then she remembered that Zeke was stretched out along one side of her, on top of the covers.
After Gary had left, she'd given in and let the dog sleep on the bed. She had a sneaking suspicion that Zeke was afraid of the dark. He'd been so rattled by their late-night visitor that the only way she'd gotten him to quit pacing, his claws click-click-clicking on the hardwood floor, was to invite him into her bed.
Zeke's forepaw now lay across her stomach, holding her down, and his head lay on her shoulder, tucked into the crook of her neck. He was sound asleep, his hind legs twitching as he chased imaginary prey. She lifted his paw and tried to roll him over. He groaned, snuffling against her neck and licking her ear, then went back to sleep.
It was the same ear that Michael Chapman had licked the night before.
Muttering to herself about the male gender, she lifted the edge of the covers and eased sideways out from under Zeke, half-falling onto the floor beside the bed. She dragged herself to her feet and went into the bathroom to splash water on her face.
After brushing her teeth and throwing cold water on her face, she glanced in the mirror. Big mistake. Two nights of little sleep had left her with purple smudges under her eyes. Worry about Gary had added hollows to her cheeks.
Taking a quick shower, she turned it to a bracing icy cold toward the end, forcing herself to stand under the stream until she felt more awake. Then she tamed her wet hair into a French braid and applied light makeup. Rummaging around in her dresser, she pulled on a clean pair of jeans, a turtleneck, and a heavy cotton sweater.
As she dressed, she assessed the weather. The wind was picking up in velocity, splattering raindrops against the panes of her bedroom window. Another storm was moving in, and it looked like it might have some punch to it. She'd check the marine forecast, but she was certain there'd be gale force winds and at least fifteen feet of storm surge, even close in to shore. No one would be going out crabbing today.
Sighing, she grabbed the pair of running shoes she had drying on the heat register and headed downstairs. Rounding the corner into the kitchen, she came to a halt.
There was a cup of freshly brewed coffee sitting on the edge of the counter, doctored the way she liked it with a small amount of cream, still steaming. It held down a handwritten note. She picked up the coffee and the note, noticing that Zeke was gone. Before she could read it, the phone rang.
She reached for the handset, then hesitated, unsure if she could cope with another hang-up. The phone rang again. She couldn't ignore it—it could be anyone, even Gary. Just this once, she wished her brother was into technology and had installed Caller ID. She sighed and picked up the portable unit.
"So glad you thought to call me about the break-in." Lucy's voice had a distinctly sarcastic edge to it.
Kaz relaxed. "What could you have done? Send the lab guys over to dust for fingerprints?"
"For starters, yeah."
"He was wearing gloves."
She heard Lucy groan. "I don't want to know how you know that."
"I noticed when I swung the baseball bat at him."
"Jesus Christ." There was a pause while Lucy drank something. "Does the word caution mean anything to you? The guy could've had a gun."
"That's already been pointed out to me, more times than I wanted to hear," Kaz said mildly. "Did you call for a reason?"
"Where the hell was the surveillance team? Jackson or Brenner should've been right outside."
Kaz shrugged, then realized Lucy couldn't see it. "You tell me. When I chased the guy out the front door, there was no one out there." She didn't add that Jackson had been there later, when Gary had shown up for a visit.
Lucy sighed loudly. "All right. I'll send over a team to check for fingerprints, just in case. And I'll also find out where Jackson was—he should've been out there. Can you please stay out of trouble for the remainder of the day?"
Kaz didn't bother to answer. She could hear Lucy shutting a door and walking somewhere outside, her steps crunching on gravel. She was probably leaving for the station. A new thought occurred to Kaz. "Hey. How did you know that someone had broken in here?"
"Your jerk of a brother." Lucy disconnected, leaving Kaz standing in the middle of her kitchen holding a dead phone. She realized her mouth had fallen open, and she snapped it shut.
So she wasn't the only one Gary had visited last night. Interesting. And since Gary wasn't behind bars this morning, that meant Lucy hadn't arrested him. Even more interesting.
It appeared that the men in their lives were giving both of them trouble. Speaking of which—she stared at the note she still held in her hand, focusing on the bold, black scrawl. Michael's handwriting was as forceful as the rest of his personality.
"I assume the weather's too lousy to go out," he'd written in large, slanted letters. "And I didn't figure you'd want me to join you in the shower—at least, not yet." She smiled a little at his cockiness, feeling a trickle of heat as an image of the two of them together under all that steam snuck into her mind. As he'd intended, no doubt.
Then she frowned as she read the rest of the message. "STAY PUT. Zeke and I have work to do. We'll be back this evening. GET SOME REST."
That was it—he hadn't even bothered to sign it.
She crumpled the note in her fist and tossed it into the trash. The man had more than his share of arrogance.
Unfortunately, it didn't make him any less attractive.
#
By late morning, Kaz was pacing her living room like a caged animal. Each wind gust rattled the loose pane in the south window that they'd never gotten around to glazing. Even though she'd closed the damper on the fireplace, puffs of ash floated onto the floor. Rain now came down in drenching sheets, and she could feel the barometric pressure dropping like a stone. The coastal storms had always made her twitchy, and this one was no exception.