“I’m not going to tell you a third time!”
“Yes, ma’am.” The stranger acquiesced. But when he raised his hands, they went only as high as his shoulders. At what looked like six-three and in excellent physical condition, he all but towered over her.
There was definitely amusement in his eyes.
Was he a psychopath, coming back to review his handiwork? Eileen Stevens had been found bound and gagged. Cause of death looked like strangulation. From the wet marks on the comforter beneath her body, a wet leather strip had been tightly tied around the woman’s throat and then apparently allowed to dry. As it did, it slowly shrank, depriving her of air until she finally choked to death.
It had struck Taylor as a particularly cruel way to kill someone.
Was this man capable of that? She tried her best to make a quick assessment.
In the meantime, more immediate questions needed answering. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
He began to shrug and drop his hands. She quickly motioned for him to raise them again. Her eyes told him she meant business. Or thought she did. For the sake of peace, he raised his hands again.
“Same as you,” he answered casually. “Looking around.” And then he added with an amused smile, “Except I’m not talking to myself.”
She had no doubt that the man was accustomed to getting along on pure charm. She knew any number of women who would probably go weak in the knees just looking at him.
But the circles she moved around in were full of good-looking men. The Cavanaughs had all but cornered the market and her own brothers didn’t exactly look as if their secondary careers involved house haunting. All in all, that made her pretty much immune to the ways of silver-tongued charmers.
Her eyes narrowed now. “No, but you’ll talk to me. Turn around,” she demanded, whipping out a set of handcuffs from the back of her belt.
The stranger obligingly turned around for her. “Now, nothing kinky,” he warned. Taylor found herself wanting to hit him upside his head for his mocking tone. “We haven’t even been introduced yet.”
As she came close enough to the man to slip on the handcuffs, he suddenly swung around to face her and in a heartbeat, Taylor found herself disarmed. He had the gun now.
“Never let your guard down,” he counseled.
The next moment, the tables turned again as the stranger received a sudden, very sharp jab from her knee. Pain shot from his groin into the pit of his stomach, radiating out and making him double over.
“Right,” Taylor snapped. “Good advice.” She wasted no time as she grabbed one of his wrists, snapping a handcuff into place.
“You’re making a mistake,” he protested as the second handcuff secured his wrists behind his back.
Taylor rolled her eyes, stepping back and training her gun on him. “Oh, please, I expected something more original than that.”
For the first time, the intruder seemed put out, but only marginally, as if he still thought of her as a minor annoyance. “Lady, who kicked you out of bed this morning?”
“That,” Taylor informed him crisply, “is none of your business.”
The fact that there was no one in her bed, no one currently in her life, was not a piece of information she was about to share with a lowlife, no matter how good-looking he was or how well he dressed. Given the charm he radiated, she pegged him as a successful con artist.
The stranger shook his head and a sigh escaped his lips. “Okay, let’s back up here—”
“Too late,” Taylor countered. She glanced around to see if anything had been moved from this afternoon, when she’d first come on the scene. It didn’t appear so, but she couldn’t swear to it. “This is a crime scene and nobody’s supposed to be here.”
“You are,” he pointed out glibly, trying to look at her over his shoulder.
Taylor couldn’t resist tossing her head and saying, “I’m special.”
He eyed her for a long moment. “No argument, but—”
The smile on his lips went down clear to her bones. Taylor shook the effects off, but it wasn’t as easy as she would have liked.
“No but,” she said sharply. “Just move. Now,” she underscored.
He took a step toward the door, then glanced at her again. “Okay, but I have a perfectly good reason for being here.”
Taylor fought the temptation to jab him in the ribs with the muzzle of her gun. “This is a roped-off crime scene. There is no perfectly good reason to be here—unless you’re Santa Claus making an early pit-stop or you’re a cop.” Her eyes swept over him. “You’re definitely not Santa Claus. Are you a cop?” she demanded, knowing perfectly well that he wasn’t. She knew all the cops on the force, and, due to her mother’s marriage, was now related to more than just a few of them. Even if she hadn’t known so many, she would have taken notice of this one had he been on the force.
But he wasn’t. She’d never laid eyes on him until a couple of minutes ago.
“No,” he answered as nonchalantly as if he were taking a telephone survey, the outcome of which had absolutely no consequence in his life.
“Then, again, you shouldn’t be here. Now move.” She brought her face closer to his. “Don’t make me tell you again.”
The expression in his eyes said that he knew he could take her. Even with his hands secured behind his back. But then he merely shrugged and grinned affably—as well as irritatingly.
“No, ma’am,” he answered in a voice that was far too polite to be believable, “you won’t have to tell me again. I’m moving. See?” he pointed out. “Feet going forward and everything.”
What kind of a wise guy was he? Taylor wondered. In the next moment, she silently answered her own question. The kind, she realized, stopping dead, who had managed to get her to stop her normal mode of investigation.
For a reason?
Was there something this man didn’t want her to see? Was he the killer? Or could he be working for the killer? Had he hidden something, or had she come in time to stop him?
“Hold it,” she ordered.
The stranger turned around to look at her. “Come to your senses?” he asked mildly.
“Never left them,” Taylor informed him tersely.
Moving behind him, she removed one handcuff and then, rather than undo the other the way she knew he expected, she cuffed his hands around the Doric column that rose up from the center of the living room like an ambiguous statement.
“Now you stay here until I’m finished.”
To her surprise, he offered no protest, no angry words at being shackled in this manner. Instead, he merely watched her for another long moment, then asked, “And just what is it you’re going to be doing?”
Why did that sound so damn sexy? As if he was implying that she was about to have her way with him instead of just surveying the apartment the way she intended?
It occurred to Taylor that she didn’t know his name and hadn’t even asked. But then, she had no doubt that he would probably just give her an alias. There was no point in asking.
“What I came here to do,” was all she said.
“Then I’m guessing it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“First right answer of the evening,” Taylor replied curtly. About to walk away, she stopped and tested the integrity of the handcuffs—just in case. To her satisfaction, they didn’t budge. “Now stay put. I’ll be back when I’m