The Midnight Hour Page 20

  “It’s been so long, I wouldn’t even know where to start.” This confession was offered up with a flickering smile as she released her grip on his shirt at last, splaying her cramped fingers flat against his body, enjoying the juxtaposition of the softness of the flannel over the hard resilience of the muscles beneath. Her hands rose and fell with the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, and she liked that, too. In fact, she liked everything about him, from the way he smelled—she had never before realized what an aphrodisiac the scent of Downy could be, when mixed with the underlying aroma of man—to the physical facts that he was taller than she was, broader than she was, harder than she was, and stronger than she was, to the concern and genuine human caring he showed her. Taken all together, it was a dangerous combination, and she knew it. What she really needed to do, if she was smart, was move out of his arms and recover her equilibrium on her own. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it, not yet. She felt warm and comfortable and cared for, the latter for the first time in years.

  “You could start with me.”

  Meeting his gaze, she frowned, not comprehending. “Start with you? How?”

  He smiled down at her, his expression rueful. He really was very handsome, she decided, whether one liked the type or not, with his brown eyes twinkling and his mouth twisted up into that self-deprecating smile. “Has it even occurred to you that I find you very attractive?”

  Grace’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Her fingers curled into the front of his shirt again. “No-o.”

  “You don’t think I’m on twenty-four-hour-a-day call for everybody in the city, do you?” The question, and the smile that accompanied it, were wry.

  “I . . . hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Then I suggest you think about it, Your Honor.” With exquisite sensitivity, his hands slid up her back. Grace tracked their movement even through the thickness of her sweatshirt. Her fingers tightened on the folds of flannel she held, and fascinated, she watched his eyes as his head bent toward her. His lids drooped and the golden-brown depths darkened until they were mere rings around the blackness of his pupils. Grace felt her lips part with anticipation as she realized that he was going to kiss her.

  God, she wanted him to kiss her!

  Her hands slid up to rest on his broad shoulders, and she rose on tiptoe to meet his mouth. When their lips first touched, the contact was gentle, almost clumsy, but the sheer heat of it made Grace gasp. She pressed her body against his with sudden, fierce need, and she slid her arms around his neck.

  His mouth lifted from hers for an instant and their gazes met.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that since I first laid eyes on you,” he whispered, kissing her again, his lips hard and sure as they closed over her mouth. His tongue slid between her lips, and Grace felt fire shoot clear down to her toes.

  “You have not,” she protested breathlessly, pulling her mouth away from his, striving to keep things under control, to keep a clear head. He smiled down into her eyes, then pressed another quick, hungry kiss on her mouth, and the idea of her clear head went right out the window.

  “I have too. Bossy women turn me on.” It was no more than a murmur, spoken as he lifted his head. Grace only smiled a little in response, feeling almost dizzy with anticipation. Their mouths touched, and then she was kissing him greedily, her lips and tongue as hot and hungry as his. Aching and yearning, she pressed tightly against him, desperate for more, for the feel of his hands on her skin and his body joined to hers and . . .

  “Wait! Wait!” she whispered frantically, pulling her mouth from his, her hands lying flat on both sides of his bristly jaw now as she sought to put a little distance between them. She needed to slow things down, to think. . .. “I don’t even know—are you married?”

  He lifted his head, and his eyes met hers. She found warmth and humor and an intense, burning desire for her in their depths.

  “No, I’m not married.” His voice was low, husky with passion, with a little thread of amusement running through the words.

  “Oh. Good. Uh . . .” Grace knew there were other things she needed to know, questions she needed to ask, matters that needed to be discussed between them before this progressed any further, but she couldn’t think while he was kissing her and his body was pressing hers back against the cabinets and his hand was sliding up the front of her sweatshirt—

  Jessica’s scream was as sudden and shocking as a deluge of icy water.

  His hand stilled, his mouth lifted, and for a moment the two of them merely stared at each other, so dazed with passion that they weren’t quite sure what, if anything, they had heard.

  Then Jessica screamed again.

  Grace pushed free at the same moment that he let her go, and they both ran for the stairs. He was ahead of her, bounding up the steps, drawing his pistol from the back waistband of his jeans as he went, with Grace racing at his heels. Jessica burst from her bedroom while they were still only halfway there. Grace could hear her feet pounding along the upstairs hall. Sweet and childish-looking in a pale-blue nightgown, her hair hanging loose around her face, she hung over the upstairs railing, gasping and sobbing hysterically.

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Marino was shouting the questions at her as he gained the top of the stairs.

  “Jessica! Jessica!” Grace was right behind him.

  “Mom! Oh, Mom! It’s in my bed!”

  “You two stay here.” It was an order—he was good at giving orders, Grace thought—tossed out as he ran past Jessica toward her bedroom. Grace was at the top of the stairs then, and Jessica fell into her arms.

  “Sweetie, what is it?” Grace wrapped her arms around her sobbing daughter and hugged her close, their earlier contretemps temporarily forgotten. Jessica clung, weeping and trembling, as if she would never let her go.

  “Oh, Mom, it’s so sick! Why would anybody do that?” Jessica was crying noisily, her face buried in Grace’s shoulder, her arms wrapped around her mother’s neck. Grace could barely understand her words.

  “Baby, what? . . .”

  “Grace.” Marino stood in Jessica’s bedroom doorway, beckoning to her. His gun had been tucked out of sight again, which gave Grace to understand that whatever crisis had occurred, they were in no immediate danger. “I think you need to see this.”

  He looked, and sounded, grim. Hard to believe that this was the man who had been kissing her so passionately just a few scant minutes before. Hard to believe that she had been kissing him so passionately just a few scant minutes before.

  She had been kissed by two different men tonight, and she could barely remember the first. The second was to the first as the sun was to a candle.

  “Jess, let me go look. . ..” Grace tried gently to disengage herself.

  “I’m coming with you!” Sobbing, clinging, Jessica would not let go. Mother and daughter moved with arms around each other toward the bedroom. Marino watched their approach, his face set in harsh lines, his eyes hooded and difficult to read. As they reached the doorway, he shook his head at Grace.

  “She doesn’t need to see this again,” he said quietly. Grace met his gaze, read the warning there, and nodded.

  “Wait here, baby.” Disengaging from Jessica, she left her leaning against the doorway as she crossed the room to join Marino, who stood at the foot of Jessica’s bed.

  “I was in bed. I turned over and stretched out my foot and . . .” Jessica said from the doorway, the explanation ending with a sob and a shudder.

  Only the small bedside lamp was lit. Shadows shrouded the corners of the room. Jessica’s discarded clothes lay in a heap on the floor—another bit of defiance from a child who had been taught to hang up her clothes or put them in the hamper as soon as she took them off, Grace thought. A soft circle of golden light touched the pillow with its lace-trimmed, pink-striped case that still bore the imprint of Jessica’s head. Her headphones lay near the pillow, silent evidence that Jessica had been listening to music in bed. The covers had been pulled al
l the way back so that they hung over the footboard, puddling on the carpet.

  “Look there.”

  Grace reached the bed and looked where Marino indicated, down at the very foot of the mattress, which was cheery in its pink-striped sheet. For a moment she did not comprehend what she saw. Then she did, and gasped.

  There, at the very bottom of the mattress, in a sealed plastic freezer bag filled with water, lay Godzilla. He was dead.

  Chapter

  30

  “OH, NO!” Grace clapped a hand to her mouth and took a step back from the bed. Her gaze remained fixed on the horror at its foot. “Oh, no!”

  “Somebody killed him,” Jessica said in a choked voice from the doorway. Barefoot, looking very thin and fragile in her blue nightgown, she was leaning against the jamb, tears streaming down her face. Grace backed away from the bed until she reached her daughter’s side. The two of them came together, clinging to each other for support.

  Marino looked around at them, his expression grim.

  “Somebody killed him.” Almost disbelievingly, Grace met his gaze and repeated Jessica’s words.

  “Poor Godzilla.” More tears spilled from Jessica’s eyes. Grace, her heart aching for both her daughter and the dead pet, hugged Jessica close. “Why would anybody do something like that to him? He was just a—just a hamster.”

  “Oh, baby, I don’t know.” Contemplating what had been done to the hamster was horrifying. Contempla ting the kind of person it would take to do such a thing, then deliberately put the grisly evidence in Jessica’s bed for her to find, was even worse.

  It was downright scary.

  “All right, ladies, let’s go downstairs. I don’t want to disturb anything until the crime unit gets here.” Marino came up behind them, wrapping an arm around their shoulders, hugging them, giving what comfort he could as he urged them toward the stairs. Even in this moment of crisis, even as sick at heart and upset as she was, Grace was conscious of his welcoming touch. Jessica seemed to accept the hug as natural under the circumstances, Grace was pleased to see.

  “I told you these things weren’t pranks!” she said fiercely over her shoulder to him as they moved toward the stairs. At the top of the steps he let them go, and they proceeded downward on their own, with Jessica going first. A thought assailed Grace halfway down, and she looked back at him with narrowed eyes. “You can’t possibly think this is a prank, can you?”

  “I don’t think this is a prank, no,” he said as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “I’m not sure what it is. The first thing that needs to be ascertained is how the hamster actually died: did it drown in that bag or did it die of natural causes before someone put it in there? That will determine the arc of the investigation. What I need to do first is make a few phone calls.”

  Grace turned to face him, her gaze suddenly steely. Jessica’s safety was at stake; she knew it as well as she knew her own name. No matter how she felt about Marino—and she would have to work that out in her own mind at a later time—Jessica’s well-being was her first priority.

  “No, I need to make a phone call. I’m going to call the district attorney. I want police protection for my daughter, right now. And I mean to see that it happens.”

  “What do I look like, chopped liver?” The question was dry.

  “Official police protection.”

  “Are you talking about going over my head, Your Honor?” The look he gave her was narrow-eyed.

  “That’s what I’m talking about, Detective.” Her gaze met his, and held. An awareness of the passion that had burned so hotly between them was there, silently acknowledged by both. But overriding that was the fact that she was a judge and he was a cop, and in the local authority rankings, that gave her the upper hand.

  “Fine. Call anybody you want.”

  “Mom, do you think somebody’s really after me?” Jessica sounded frightened. Sliding a hand into Grace’s, she huddled close against her mother’s side.

  On the verge of denying it, Grace hesitated. It would not do, under the circumstances, to give Jessica a false idea of her own safety. Tonight’s trip out the window still blazed vividly in Grace’s mind. Under the circumstances, they could not afford a repeat.

  “I don’t know, baby,” she admitted.

  “I’m scared.” Jessica’s voice was small and squeaky.

  “I’m scared, too.”

  Marino looked from one to the other of them, exasperation and concern mingled in his expression. “Grace, take Jessica in the other room and let me handle this, will you please?”

  “I told you, I want police protection for my daughter.” Grace was absolutely determined.

  “I’ll see that she gets it.”

  They exchanged measuring looks.

  “Fine. Then do it,” Grace said shortly.

  “Thank you. I will.”

  He stepped past them into the kitchen, picked up the phone, and started dialing. Somewhat against her better judgment—she had learned long ago that trusting others to do a necessary job was a bad idea—Grace took Jessica on into the family room and left him to it. Mother and daughter curled up together on the couch while Marino made his calls. Jessica had stopped crying, but she was shivering, and Grace wrapped the afghan that always lay along the back of the couch around her shoulders. Grace was sitting on one corner of the couch, her shoes kicked off and her feet tucked up under her, her daughter’s head on her shoulder, when Marino finally entered the room.

  “Well?” Grace asked, the single word a challenge.

  “The cavalry’s on the way,” he said. He was carrying two mugs and had Jessica’s pink chenille bathrobe thrown over one arm.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you get the whole nine yards. Total police protection for both of you.” He sounded a little terse as he set the mugs on the low wooden table in front of them. “In the meantime, coffee for you, Your Honor”—he looked at Grace—“hot chocolate for you”—he looked at Jessica—“and your robe.” He handed Jessica her robe and the sugar-free cocoa. “They’re going to be wanting to ask you some questions when they get here,” he said to Jessica. “You probably want to put this on.”

  “Thank you,” Grace said, not missing that pointed Your Honor, and she was not referring to just the coffee. For a moment their eyes met and held. Grace smiled slightly, conciliatingly, and his eyes softened just a fraction.

  “No problem.” Marino turned and went back into the kitchen. Grace took a sip of coffee while Jessica sat up and shrugged into her robe. Jessica’s face was pale and splotchy. Her nose and eyes were red from crying. Even now, with the worst of the storm over, her breath came in intermittent hiccups.

  “Don’t you want your hot chocolate?” Grace asked, when Jessica ignored her cup. In general, Jessica loved hot chocolate. Thus reminded, Jess picked up the cup, looked at it, and put it down again with a little shudder.

  “Do you suppose Godzilla suffered?” Jessica asked in a subdued voice.

  Grace’s heart turned over with sorrow for her daughter and her pet. “I don’t know, baby. I hope not.”

  Marino walked back into the room carrying his own mug. The family room was simply set up, with the couch placed along one of the two long walls, flanked by a rocker on one side and a navy-blue leather chair with a matching ottoman on the other. An oval coffee table sat in front of the couch, with the TV directly opposite, in a multiple-unit walnut entertainment center that also held tapes and books. More bookshelves lined one of the shorter walls, while the other was a bank of windows, with curtains drawn now to keep out the night. Round brass lamps on either side of the couch were turned on, as was the overhead light, making the room very bright.

  “Somebody wants to kill me, doesn’t he?” Jessica asked him, her voice tiny now, as Marino sat down in the blue leather chair. “Is it something to do with that drug thing at school?”

  “I don’t think so,” Marino answered, before Grace could reply. “And I don’t think anybody wants
to kill you. I think somebody’s just trying to scare you a little, for whatever reason. We’re going to find out who, and why. In any case, we’ll keep you and your mom safe, I promise.”

  Grace and Jessica both looked at him as he sipped from his mug. She believed him, Grace realized, and felt her tense muscles marginally relax. Whatever was or was not between them, she absolutely believed that as long as he was around, they would be safe.

  For her part, Jessica frowned as if something had just occurred to her.

  “What are you doing here in the middle of the night, anyway?” she asked him. Her glance slid around to her mother. “Did you call the cops on me?” Her voice was equal parts disbelief and outrage.

  “I didn’t even know you were gone until you fell off the roof,” Grace said with some asperity. “I would have called the police if I had known, believe me, but I didn’t. Detective Marino was very kindly following up on the other things that have happened when we saw your shadow sneak past the window.”

  Grace’s gaze was drawn to Marino as she finished that speech, and for a moment their eyes met. The memory of the kisses they had shared shimmered in the air between them, as tangible as a heat wave on a hot August afternoon, and then was gone. He was still exactly the same obstinate, exasperating, thick-headed macho lug she’d been dealing with for weeks now, Grace realized. But with those kisses, everything between them had changed.

  A knock, muffled, since it came from the front of the house, interrupted the conversation.

  “I’ll get it,” Marino said when Grace instinctively started to rise. “It’s probably a couple of uniforms. They’re usually the first to arrive. Jessica, we’re going to need to know exactly where you were tonight and who you were with, and the same for any other times you’ve snuck out lately, so be prepared.”

  Having delivered this warning in an unexpectedly stern voice, Marino left the room. Reminded of Jessica’s transgression, Grace glanced at her daughter, her expression chiding.