looked at her again. “I don’t know what Zale has against you, but it’s obvious he doesn’t like me. He’s trying to make it close to impossible for my team to operate by assigning me…”
“I’m a reporter,” Syd told him.
“…what amounts to little more than baby-sitting duty and…” His impossibly blue eyes widened. “A reporter.” Now he was the parrot. His eyes narrowed. “Sydney Jameson. S. Jameson. Ah, jeez, you’re not just a reporter, you’re that reporter.” He glared at her. “Where the hell do you get off making us all sound like psychotic killers?”
He was serious. He’d taken offense to the one part of her story the police had actually requested she include. “Cool your jets, Ken,” she told him. “The police wanted me to make it sound as if they actually believed the rapist was a SEAL.”
“It’s entirely likely our man is a SEAL wannabe,” Lucy interjected. “We were hoping the news story would feed his ego, maybe make him careless.”
“Ken?” Lucky asked Syd. “My name’s Luke.”
Oops, had she actually called him that? “Right. Sorry.” Syd gave him the least sorry smile she could manage.
Lucky looked at her hard before he turned to Lucy. “How the hell did a reporter get involved?”
“Her neighbor was attacked. Sydney stayed with the girl—and this was just a girl. She wasn’t more than nineteen years old, Luke. Sydney was there when I arrived, and oddly enough, I didn’t think to inquire as to whether she was with UPI or Associated Press.”
“So what did you do?” Lucky turned back to Syd. “Blackmail your way onto the task force?”
“Damn straight.” Syd lifted her chin. “Seven rapes and not a single word of warning in any of the papers. It was a story that needed to be written—desperately. I figured I’d write it—and I’ll write the exclusive behind-the-scenes story about tracking and catching the rapist, too.”
He shook his head, obviously in disgust, and Syd’s temper flared. “You know, if I were a man,” she snapped, “you’d be impressed by my assertive behavior.”
“So did you actually see this guy, or did you just make that part up?” he asked.
Syd refused to let him see how completely annoyed he made her feel. She forced her voice to sound even, controlled. “He nearly knocked me over coming down the stairs. But like I told the police, the light’s bad in the hallways. I didn’t get a real clear look at him.”
“Is there a chance it was good enough for you to look at a lineup of my men and eliminate them as potential suspects?” he demanded.
Lucy sighed. “Lucky, I don’t—”
“I want Bobby Taylor and Wes Skelly on my team.”
“Bobby’s fine. He’s Native American,” she told Syd. “Long dark hair, about eight feet tall and seven feet wide—definitely not our man. But Wes…”
“Wes shouldn’t be a suspect,” Lucky argued.
“Police investigations don’t work that way,” Lucy argued in response. “Yes, he shouldn’t be a suspect. But Chief Zale wants every individual on your team to be completely, obviously not the man we’re looking for.”
“This is a man who’s put his life on the line for me—for your husband—more times than you want to know. If Sydney could look at Skelly and—”
“I really don’t remember much about the man’s face,” Syd interrupted. “He came flying down the stairs, nearly wiped me out, stopped a few steps down. I’m not even sure he turned all the way around. He apologized, and was gone.”
Lucky leaned forward. “He spoke to you?”
God, he was good-looking. Syd forced away the little flutter she felt in her stomach every time he gazed at her. She really was pathetic. She didn’t like this man. In fact, she was well on her way to disliking him intensely, and yet simply looking into his eyes was enough to make her knees grow weak.
Obviously, it had been way too long since she’d last had sex. Not that her situation was likely to change any time in the near future.
“What did he say?” Lucky asked. “His exact words?”
Syd shrugged, hating to tell him what the man had said, but knowing he wouldn’t let up until she did.
Just do it. She took a deep breath. “He said, ‘Sorry, bud.’”
“Sorry…bud?”
Syd felt her face flush. “Like I said. The light was bad in there. He must’ve thought I was, you know, a man.”
Lucky O’Donlon didn’t say anything aloud, but as he sat back in his seat, the expression on his face spoke volumes. His gaze traveled over her, taking in her unfeminine clothes, her lack of makeup. An understandable mistake for any man to make, he telegraphed with his eyes.
He finally looked over at Lucy. “The fact remains that I can’t possibly work with a reporter following me around.”
“Neither can I,” she countered.
“I’ve worked for years as an investigative reporter,” Syd told them both. “Hasn’t it occurred to either one of you that I might actually be able to help?”
CHAPTER THREE
THIS SHOULDN’T BE TOO HARD.
Lucky was a people person—charming, charismatic, likeable. He knew that about himself. It was one of his strengths.
He could go damn near anywhere and be best friends with damn near anyone within a matter of hours.
And that was what he had to do right here, right now with Sydney Jameson. He had to become her best friend and thus win the power to manipulate her neatly to the sidelines. Come on, Syd, help out your old pal Lucky by staying out of the way.
His soon-to-be-old-pal Syd sat in stony silence beside him in his pickup truck, arms folded tightly across her chest, as he drove her back to her car which was parked in the police-station lot.
Step one. Get a friendly conversation going. Find some common ground. Family. Most people could relate to family.
“So my kid sister’s getting married in a few weeks.” Lucky shot Syd a friendly smile as well, but he would’ve gotten a bigger change of expression from the Lincoln head at Mount Rushmore. “It’s kind of hard to believe. You know, it feels like she just turned twelve. But she’s twenty-two, and in most states that’s old enough for her to do what she wants.”
“In every state it’s old enough,” Syd said. What do you know? She was actually listening. At least partly.
“Yeah,” Lucky said. “I know. That was a joke.”
“Oh,” she said and looked back out the window.
O-kay.
Lucky kept on talking, filling the cab of the truck with friendly noise. “I went into San Diego to see her, intending to tell her no way. I was planning at least to talk her into waiting a year, and you know what she tells me? I bet you can’t guess in a million years.”
“Oh, I bet I can’t either,” Syd said. Her words had a faintly hostile ring, but at least she was talking to him.
“She said, we can’t wait a year.” Lucky laughed. “And I’m thinking murder, right? I’m thinking where’s my gun, I’m going to at the very least scare the hell out of this guy for getting my kid sister pregnant, and then Ellen tells me that if they wait a year, this guy Greg’s sperm will expire.”
He had Syd’s full attention now.
“Apparently,