Don't Look Back
Joanne Rock
Men are a risky proposition. It's a lesson NYPD detective Donata Casale learned the hard way. But she's moved beyond her disreputable history and is climbing the ranks at her precinct. That is, until this case–which threatens to resurrect her past–lands on her desk. Suddenly she's paired with the man who once arrested her: the dangerously sexy P.I. Sean Beringer.Donata knows Sean's rebellious ways brought an end to his career as a cop. But his methods are still more than effective at getting her motor revved high. Despite her best intentions, they're soon burning up the sheets together. With all that steamy action between them, can she distract him long enough to solve this case?
Don’t Look Back
Joanne Rock
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Brenda Chin, who gave me that all-important first chance. Thank you for your guidance and support, and for expertly reading my story pitch over my shoulder when I couldn’t seem to get the words out of my mouth. Six years after that first call, this is still the coolest job imaginable.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
1
“I’M NOT WATCHING this with you.”
Detective Donata Casale tossed the DVD case on the table in the 10th precinct’s media room and glared at her so-called partner.
“Fine.” Mick Juarez dumped a steady stream of sugar into his coffee and shrugged with the blasé confidence of a man who didn’t have anything to prove. “Don’t do your job. It’s no skin off my nose.”
The scent of java mixed with the stale stench of sweat and crime and cheap aftershave that permeated the building most days.
“Do you ever disagree with anyone about anything?” Donata resented Mick for his refusal to get riled up over stuff when life seemed hell-bent on pissing her off at every turn. “Doesn’t it irritate you to know I got stuck with the porno case just because I’m new on the force and a woman?”
She picked up the DVD sleeve again and wondered why her lieutenant thought it would be a good idea to give the sex footage to her and Mick to watch when they were one of the few mixed-gender detective partnerships in the precinct’s detective squad. Thankfully, at least Mick had sworn off women after his ex-wife did a number on him a few years back, so Donata never had to worry about any guy-girl chemistry getting in the way of a solid partnership.
“Maybe we got it because our past investigative work might connect to this somehow.” Mick stirred his coffee for so long Donata thought she’d scream if he banged the spoon against the mug one more time. “Or maybe we had the lightest caseload to take on something new. Who knows? But to answer your question, no, it doesn’t irritate me to be handed an important assignment.”
Gently, he pried the DVD cover from her hand and Donata wondered how he could deflate her well-deserved fury so readily. The guy might have a serious sugar habit, but he was a rock. At thirty-eight, he was one of the most respected detectives on the squad. Patient and smart, Mick had outlasted four other partners to end up with her—the rookie no one else wanted because of her checkered past.
She might have been promoted quickly based on job performance, but in her years as a patrol officer, she’d seen the way cops could close ranks against outsiders. She’d overcome some of that bias in her last precinct, but then her promotion to detective had moved her to a new squad and put her at the back of the class all over again at the age of twenty-seven.
“Fine.” Donata dropped into a chair near the computer screen and opened the file folder that had been given to them along with the DVD of an underage girl allegedly filmed without her knowledge. “But I’m closing my eyes during the naked parts. I really fail to see how us watching cheap porn will lead to finding any clues about a shady film distributor. From what I understand, the producers usually operate far away from the site of any actual studio humping.”
Disgruntled to have been given an assignment surely intended to embarrass her, Donata studied the reports in the file while Mick clicked the necessary commands to load the video footage. New York’s lower West Side might be home to a new adult filmmaker, but to her way of thinking, cops had more violent criminals to track than the lowlifes shipping porn across state lines. Possibly they could help a few mildly underage girls leave the business though, and at least that was a goal Donata could get behind. Then maybe watching this with Mick wouldn’t feel like such a punishment.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Mick pointed out in typical unflappable fashion. “But one thing’s for sure, lady, you’ve got to get over thinking the whole precinct is out to get you.”
Donata stiffened, surprised even easygoing Mick would tread those waters.
She’d been about to remind him of a few choice comments their fellow officers had made the first day she’d been promoted to the detective squad two months ago, when a sudden outburst of profanity halted her.
Shocked at the uncharacteristic response from her partner, Donata looked up from the file notes to see a girl—fifteen at the oldest—slowly undoing her blouse in what appeared to be her home bedroom. Stuffed animals and posters of screen idols competed for space around her bed while the dim light of her computer screen provided the only illumination for her room.
“What the hell is this?” Mick stood so fast the rolling chair went flying out from underneath him as he thundered away from the PC.
Donata, on the other hand, couldn’t look away.
“She’s got a webcam,” Donata replied softly, knowing Mick had a sixteen-year-old daughter who wanted nothing to do with him after being raised by her mother abroad. The sight of this girl on the screen had to suck all the more for him.
And yeah, it was tough for Donata to look at the footage, too.
But unlike Mick, Donata had just found a new mission in life because she recognized the young woman on the screen. Not the girl’s name or any part of her identity, maybe, but Donata recognized the desperation. The determination to take charge of life even though you had so few options at that age.
Donata remembered the overwhelming desire to please a lover after being raised with little love to speak of. She understood the innocent willingness to do anything for a guy who showed you a few scraps of affection.
And worse, she knew what it felt like to be betrayed by that same person you once worshipped.
Because the girl on the screen had been Donata once. And not for all the world would Donata let this anonymous young woman face the private hell that she had.
SEAN BERINGER didn’t like being in a police station on a good day. But pacing the corridors of the 10th precinct when he knew damn well the cops inside the media room were about to invade his private investigation of a so-called reality adult filmmaker had his blood simmering, his skin crawling and his head about ten minutes from exploding.
“Who’s on this case anyway?” he asked a passing detective who’d grudgingly admitted the pending investigation since they used to walk a Harlem beat together back in the day.
Back when Sean was still naive enough to believe wearing a badge could actually accomplish something.
“Look, man, don’t bust my balls about this. I only told you we were on the case because I thought you’d be satisfied someone was working it.” The detective, ballistics expert Warren Vitalis, looked as though he wanted to say more as he rapped his pencil against a stack of papers at the desk sergeant’s cubicle.
Sensing possible information, Sean forced himself to quit pacing and focus. He had made good friends on the force for nearly ten years. But he’d walked away from the NYPD after his sister was molested. Family trumped friends every time.
“Please say it’s somebody good on this case and not some tight-ass yes-man.” At thirty-two years old, Sean had battled a tendency to speak his thoughts most of his life, but he didn’t even try to curb his mouth for the sake of a cop he’d probably walked a thousand miles with during their year of shared foot patrol.
“More of a yes-woman,” Warren noted before pointing his pencil toward the media room as the door finally opened. “And I’m making no comment on the ass.”
Sean followed his gesture toward the woman emerging with a determined strut, her curves cloaked under a conservative suit jacket and knee-length skirt but still obvious to any discerning male eye. Her hair was darker blond than the last time Sean had seen her—more natural-looking than the platinum Marilyn Monroe locks she’d once sported—but she still outlined her lips with bold red lipstick in a flagrant in-your-face to the stereotypes about women cops. Her audacious figure and heart-shaped face made her look more like an old-time gangster moll than a detective, but then, Sean had the benefit of seeing her at home in her old life before the decision to switch sides.
“No need for comment,” Sean finally managed to say when he found his voice. Donata Casale was the very last person he’d expected to see walk out of that media room, although a few years ago he remembered hearing that she’d been trying to see what life looked like on the other side of the law. “An ass like that speaks for itself.”
Warren smothered a laugh, but not soon enough to stop Donata from looking his way. Sean’s way.
“Damn you, Vitalis.” Straightening, Sean ignored the sexual zing a woman like Donata brought to any room. “The one time I manage to keep my commentary to a whisper you sell me out anyway.”
The station quieted for a moment as petite Donata changed direction and came straight toward him. Sean was intrigued to note the way the whole precinct paid attention to her, and not necessarily in a good way.
You could tell the women who hadn’t acclimated to the predominantly male world of a police station. They either ignored the men around them in a continual effort to distinguish themselves with kick-ass work and be accepted, or they tweaked the male egos around them at every turn in an effort to show their lack of concern for male approval.
Sean didn’t have to ask which type of woman detective Donata Casale made. Her lipstick told the tale at ten paces.
“A P.I. in our midst?” Donata observed lightly, tugging her white shirt cuffs down as she approached. “Perhaps Mr. Beringer finds himself in need of professional assistance.”
It had been four years since he’d faced off with this woman, but from the glint in her eyes, Sean guessed she hadn’t forgiven him for their last encounter. He also noted that the blouse under her conservative jacket appeared to be pure silk—a glitzy holdover from her old life, perhaps.
“Actually, I came here to offer assistance.” He looked over her shoulder, hoping for an ally who didn’t already hate his guts. “Is your partner around? I wouldn’t want to get slapped with sexual harassment charges because we shared the same air space.”
Apparently he hadn’t completely forgiven her either. He hadn’t realized he held a grudge until the pissy accusation left his lips. Then again he wasn’t some navel-gazing sensitive guy to sit around and weigh his state of mind when there was work to do.
If his words found any leverage in this woman’s conscience, she didn’t show it. If anything, her deceptively innocent baby blues only narrowed in preparation for battle.
“Still finding it tough to keep your hands to yourself?” Her tight smile let him know that she’d entered this skirmish for show and not because she had any interest in a discussion with him. “It must be hell to discover you’re so victimized by your libido, but I’ll let my partner know about your offer.”
Pivoting on her heel, she presented him with her back and walked away.
Definitely a tight ass.
And damn, but he’d let that conversation go to hell in a hurry.
Sean cursed himself for being a prick when he could have used a bit of goodwill from the investigating officer on this one. He definitely needed to work on the amount of free rein he gave his mouth, but not once in his life had he ever given his hands too much freedom when it came to a woman. Especially not a woman he held in custody, the way he’d once held Donata.
Swallowing his pride and praying for a little more reserve, Sean stalked after her, not giving a crap about the field day the rumor mill would surely have with this incident. He needed Donata’s assurance she was going to back off this case and he wasn’t leaving the building without it. Ignoring the whistles and the comments pelted his way as he dodged metal desks and dilapidated rolling chairs spilling into the aisles, Sean told himself he needed to mentally regroup.
Donata wasn’t the same woman she’d been four years ago, and even then he hadn’t understood her. He’d made a costly error in judgment with an old case when she’d been working in conjunction with the feds, but that was the price of taking risks in police work. You might make more headway in some cases, but following hunches could sometimes give you just enough rope to hang yourself.
Cornering Donata in the vacant break room, he helped himself to a powdered doughnut while she poured herself a cup of coffee nearby. He had no idea how to get back in her good graces, but this case was important enough that he’d try.
Clearing his throat, he lowered his voice and came straight to the point.
“I take it you’re still pissed off about that night I arrested you?”
2
DONATA TOLD HERSELF that this man probably had no idea how badly his timing sucked.
In fact, she told herself repeatedly while she contemplated the added calories of coffee creamer and decided she’d rather not do the extra sit-ups required and she’d really rather not have this discussion with a man who’d caused her so much grief.
“You give yourself a lot of credit, don’t you?” She turned to face him, clutching her coffee cup and hoping her nosier colleagues could restrain themselves from wandering in for at least a few minutes. No doubt the whole place would be buzzing about her run-in with the man whose accusations had been her biggest obstacle to overcome in securing a spot on the force.
Damn him for showing up today when she should be formulating a plan to unearth a first-degree pervert who was filming girls in their home bedrooms and then mass-marketing their mistakes for public consumption.
“Honestly, no. I only asked because the incident seems like it’s not going away until we deal with it, and I’ve really got to talk to you about your new investigation.”
His sudden switch to seeming forthrightness caught her off guard even though that was exactly the same way he’d snuck under her radar long ago. She hadn’t known what to make of a direct man back then and she sure as hell didn’t know what to make of him now.
Everything about Sean Beringer was entirely too good-looking. He was the kind of man Donata had always avoided because she suspected a man like him would require far too much work. A woman who succumbed to an exterior that attractive would certainly spend half her time beating off other women with a stick. And—from a purely practical standpoint—a man like him would have to devote too much time to battling temptation continually waved under his nose.
He was tall, loose-limbed, broad shouldered. A hot body currently clothed in jeans, a Mets T-shirt and a long wool coat that a more discerning dresser would have paired with a suit. But the incongruity of the dress coat and the T-shirt did nothing to detract from the dark male beauty of deep-set hazel eyes under angular brows.
“What would you know about my caseload?” She sipped the coffee and wondered where Mick had gone. Shouldn’t her partner be in on this conversation? He probably even knew Sean since they’d no doubt crossed paths when they were both detectives.
“I’ve still got a crony or two I can call on when I’m keeping tabs on a particular case.” He leaned back against an ancient soda machine and watched her through his heavy-lidded eyes.
Had the ballistics guy—Vitalis, she seemed to remember—given Sean insider information? She’d seen them talking earlier when she first spied Sean, but she didn’t want to believe the firearms analyst would do anything remotely shady. He struck her as an upstanding guy despite his intimidating looks.
“And just what are you keeping tabs on lately?” She knew he’d had a special interest in her former boyfriend, a mobster type she’d eventually sold out when she learned what kind of person he was beneath the expensive veneer.
It had taken her a long time to see herself as more than a naive female who’d fallen for a Svengali-style lover in an effort to get away from a crappy upbringing. But she was more than that. Her record on the force proved it and no innuendo from Sean Beringer could make her think otherwise.
“An adult filmmaking outfit that packages their illegal webcam footage as reality porn. I heard an arrest was made out on Long Island last week after a girl was molested by a guy who contacted her on the Internet.”
Instantly alert, Donata was more than willing to put aside a good grudge against Beringer—temporarily at least—for the sake of her case. On a trip into Manhattan, Sara Chapman had indeed been molested by an older man she thought was a high school guy after a few online chats. Patrol officers had captured the perp without much trouble, but apparently further questioning revealed her molester had found her through her picture on a Web site advertising a reality porn DVD.
Her parents were devastated. Sara wasn’t talking.
“Are you working for the family of the girl?” She knew rich people sometimes hired outside P.I. help if they were concerned the police couldn’t get the job done.
“I’ve got a more personal interest. I’ve been following this case since you and I crossed paths four years ago.”
She waited for him to continue, but he just turned and snatched another doughnut instead, wolfing half of it down and showering the break room floor with powdered sugar.
“Obviously there’s more to this story if you’re still pursuing leads on a case this old. Why don’t I grab my partner and we can—”
“No.” Sean imprisoned her arm before she could turn away to find Mick. “Don’t you think we ought to work out the issues that are ours alone first before we go involving anyone else?”
His touch communicated to her more quickly than his words, the heat of his hand penetrating her jacket and warming her skin beneath. How long had it been since a man had touched her?
“Actually, no.” She pulled out of his grip and set her coffee aside to devote her full attention to the conversation. “Private discussions were how we ended up in trouble last time, remember?”
Her heart pounded strangely, making her hyperaware of her body and the heat simmering inside it.
“No problems with remembering here.” He held up his hands like a suspect trying to remind her he didn’t have a weapon.
Except that he did. Sean Beringer possessed a boatload of sexual attraction that Donata didn’t want any part of.
“Then why don’t you let me get Mick and we’ll make sure there are no more…incidents.”
It was tough to think with him standing so close to her and suddenly she wanted to flee as far and fast as she could. A stupid reaction since she was on a four-year quest to prove to herself she was a woman of strength and integrity. But nothing made her feel weak as quickly as attraction to a man.
“Did you really think I was sexually harassing you back then?” Sean’s forehead furrowed enough to let her know the idea bothered him.
“I—” She hesitated, not sure how to explain. “I thought you were hitting on me.”
Her pulse fluttered in her throat at the memory of being in an interrogation room with him. She’d been working as an informant for the FBI, a position that left her in uncomfortable limbo selling out the ex-boyfriend she’d grown to despise but still needed to stay with. She’d looked like a guilty mobster’s girlfriend to the outside world but inside she knew she was just a blind, stupid idiot who fell for a much older man with a worldly edge that appealed to dopey girls with no judgment.
“For the record, I would never hit on anyone in my custody when I was a cop, and I wouldn’t think of it now that I’m a P.I.” He backed away from her slowly, his dark eyes steady on her face. “I know I messed up your investigation with the arrest and I take full blame for not doing my homework where you were concerned. But I guarantee I’d never make a move on someone I arrested.”
Gulping down more coffee to clear her head of wayward thoughts, Donata wondered if Sean ever hit on lady cops he worked with. A wholly inappropriate notion. She seriously needed to think about finding a lover to take the sexual edge off for her before she combusted from four years’ worth of pent-up frustrations.
“Donata.” A male voice called to her from the door and she looked up to see Mick holding his car keys.
“You’re leaving?” She swallowed the urge to drag him into the break room by his collar. She needed the barrier of his presence to make sure her thoughts didn’t linger on Sean as that potential lover.
“The school called. Katie’s not in class today even though I dropped her off at school at seven-thirty.” His square jaw tightened. “She’s probably just playing hooky at a friend’s house, but she’s not answering her phone.”
“Do you need help?” Concern for Mick’s daughter had her halfway across the room.
“No. Just cover for me here.” He nodded tersely at Sean. A nod of recognition. “I’ll head out to Massapequa after I locate Katie and see what I can learn from the parents of the Chapman girl. I have the feeling the Long Island police will try to move jurisdiction there, but we’re fighting to keep this case since she was molested in our jurisdiction.”
Which meant she’d get stuck here with Sean. Alone.
“Call me when you find out anything.” She could manage without Mick, couldn’t she? She certainly owed him the time to take care of his family when he’d always been so good to her.
His support on the force had bought her far more credibility than her arrest record as a beat cop.
“Will do.” He was gone two seconds later, leaving her in a precinct crowded with officers who resented her presence on the force and a P.I. who had every reason in the world to want to see her fail.
Donata against the world.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
She spun on her heel to face Sean and caught him staring at her from his new perch on the break room table. Right beside the doughnuts. He’d obviously served his time on the police force given his love of the profession’s notorious indulgence.
“Alone at last.” He smiled crookedly at her as he tossed a balled-up napkin in the trash can and slid off the table to stand. “You think we can head somewhere more private now to clear up a few things? Seems like we both have reasons to want to keep this quiet.”
“We can leave the precinct, but I don’t have much time.” Life experience had taught her not to linger with men who made her uncomfortable and she had no intention of ignoring that hard-won wisdom now when Sean’s proximity made her skin heat and her throat go dry.
SEAN SENSED THE runaround when Donata tried to claim she suddenly needed to interview a witness on the NYU campus that afternoon. He tagged along for the ride, figuring she needed to settle down after the sudden way he’d reappeared.
But he drew the line at stepping into the role of her partner while she ran around New York pretending she didn’t feel the sizzle that had damn well always been there between them.
Harassment my ass.
Maybe ice queen Donata had no clue what attraction felt like so she’d rather label it unwanted attention and shove it away from her with both hands than own up to her feelings. Whatever her reasons, he wasn’t letting her stall tactics trip him up.
“I’m not going with you to interview any suspect that isn’t directly related to the filmmaker case.” He nodded toward a park bench in Washington Square, where students congregated between classes despite the recent bout of unseasonably cold October weather. “Have a seat and we can exchange information so I can let you go about your day in peace, okay?”
She hesitated when her cell phone rang and she took the call with brusque efficiency before hitting the off button.
“Sorry about that, but I’ve got a lot on my plate today.” She cinched the belt on her dark wool coat tighter. “Maybe we should reschedule this so we have more time?”
“So we have to wade through the awkwardness of seeing each other all over again?” He resisted the urge to pull her to the damn bench and sit her down because he remembered how much any extraneous touching set her off.
But damn. She was a tough case.
“You’re right,” she relented finally, walking toward the vacant bench under her own steam, her soft breath making a visible puff in the cold air. “I’d appreciate any information you can give me on the illegal filmmaker. I look forward to sending that particular creep to prison for a very long time.”
“I don’t think the actual producer is illegal.” Sean didn’t have any intention of sharing everything with her since he had worked his tail off to hunt down the bastard for himself.
“Of course he’s illegal if he’s filming underage girls.” She filched two napkins from a coffee kiosk nearby and swiped them across the bench before taking a seat.
“What I mean to say is that he probably dabbles on both sides of the business—legitimate and illegal—so that he’s covering his butt with one for the other.” He couldn’t disguise the bitterness in his voice.
“You think he’s distributing porn through traditional film venues?” She kept her voice low in deference to the hundreds of people who passed through the square even though no one paid them any attention. They were more alone here among hundreds than they had been in a precinct break room.
“No. I think he distributes the illegal stuff mainly online, but he cloaks his operations behind the front of a legitimate filmmaker.” He knew all of it to be fact, actually, but he didn’t want to reveal how deeply he’d immersed himself in this investigation just yet. And for all his efforts, he still didn’t have a name to go with the profile.
“So how did you get involved with this shining example of humanity?” She tucked her hands into her coat pockets and stared out over the crowd gathering around two guys in red superhero capes who were playing guitars in exchange for donations.
“I left the force because my kid sister was molested by some guy she met on the Internet and the cops wouldn’t do jack shit to nail the bastard.” He dug a couple of bucks out of his wallet for the street musicians, appreciating the way the folk songs provided some mental distance from what he was saying.
Donata remained silent. Listening. Waiting.
“The guy who met her online found out who she was after a video of my sister had been distributed without her knowledge. When she was eighteen, she had a webcam set up to send video of herself to her boyfriend but apparently the dude forwarded pictures to some trash sites with her personal information attached. That’s how this other guy found her.”
“Is she okay now?” Donata’s hand landed gently on his arm, the unexpected touch more comfort than he would have expected from someone as seemingly reserved as her.
“She’s put it behind her pretty successfully. In fact she lives ten states away and it pisses her off that I’m still on a quest to bring down the whole operation since it brings back bad memories. But I can’t stand the idea of kids unknowingly exposing themselves to scumbags who will turn around and sell video snippets for a profit.”
“And you’ve been after this group for how long?”
“I’d just started the investigation when I arrested you, so I guess it’s been four years. But I’m on the verge of cracking the power behind the ring now…as long as the cops don’t elbow their way in and mess up the sting I’ve got in the works.”
Okay, that was a stretch. But he had names and addresses for hundreds of people who subscribed to the sites specializing in youthful exhibitionists, and that in itself made for powerful information.
“Basically, it’s fourth quarter and you’re asking me to take a knee while the clock runs out.” Her hand slid away from his arm and back into her pocket. The crowd around the guitar players burst into applause at the end of the song.
“Is that a problem when you’re already ahead in the game and victory is imminent?” He suspected from her suddenly rigid spine that she wasn’t liking the idea.
“You forget we’re playing for different teams. I don’t have the luxury of working for myself and making my own calls on handling cases. I’m responsible to my department. To taxpayers.”
Frustration pounded in his head as he began to see the many ways his operation could blow up in his face if the cops started crawling all over things.
“You don’t understand how close I am to smoking out these bastards.” No reasonable person would deny him this opportunity after all the years he’d put into cultivating inside contacts. “I’ve got a girl ready to sell out the filmmakers and put the last nail in the coffin for me.”
If she didn’t change her mind. Sometimes it was tough to tell with connections you’d made online.
“Sean, I appreciate that this case is personal for you, but you can’t ask me to just pretend it doesn’t exist when it comes under my jurisdiction. Half my precinct thinks I’m crooked anyway for reasons I’m sure you can appreciate.”
He knew it had to be tough to cross over into the police world after she’d seen prison bars—if only briefly—from the inside. Still, it said a lot for Donata’s character that she’d managed to wrangle her way into the NYPD at all.
Rising to his feet, Sean tossed the money in the open guitar box at the players’ feet and turned back to her.
“All the more reason to steer clear of this investigation, Donata. The brains and the wallet behind the operation might belong to someone you know well.” He dealt his best card to send her off the case for good. “My sources show your old pal Sergio Alteri is running his business as usual from a prison cell.”
3
LATER THAT NIGHT, Donata didn’t remember the details of how she’d got through the rest of the day.
Hearing her former lover’s name cast into conversation like a gauntlet had scrambled her thoughts, feelings and kick-ass veneer until she’d had no choice but to make lame excuses to get away from Sean long enough to regroup. Reassess. And find out for herself how the hell her old boyfriend—the man who’d been the center of her world when she was a teenager, the man who saved her from an emotional breakdown when her father died—could have possibly orchestrated crimes from behind bars.
At home in her apartment on the Upper East Side, Donata stroked her tabby cat’s head and clicked through her personal files on Sergio. Her first instinct had been to ignore Sean’s suggestion that her ex could continue to exert power from a federal prison. But how naive would that be, especially when she’d seen organized crime up close and personal during her years with Alteri?
The buzzing of her apartment’s intercom system had her cat jumping off her lap a moment later and Donata rose to see who would be downstairs at 8:00 p.m. Neighbors knew better than to buzz her when they locked themselves out since she was super cautious about security.
“Yes?” Her building was an old brownstone between York and East End Avenue. Normally she appreciated the privacy of her homey little building with no doorman, but on nights like this when she was already jumpy she wondered if she’d be better off somewhere else.
Somewhere that Sergio would never find her if he decided to take revenge for all she’d done.
“Donata, it’s me. Sean.”
Relief washed over her for a moment before her heart stuttered and she found herself smoothing her fingers over her clothes, flattening wrinkles and assessing her appeal at this hour when her work clothes were in the hamper. Not that her appearance should matter, damn it.
But the idea of having him here, at her apartment, unsettled her. She liked to face professional acquaintances when properly armed in her I-mean-business suits, whereas at home she liked to remind herself of the femininity she stomped down all day.
“Can we talk about your investigation tomorrow?” Not having the man-woman skills needed to dance around this kind of sexual tension, Donata figured avoidance would be a good policy until she had Mick around as a buffer.
She’d used up all her steely reserve at work today. At home she took comfort in falling into more relaxed—less contentious—surroundings. She found herself wishing she had her cat to snuggle, but Duchess was hiding under a chair.
“No. You told me earlier today that we could talk later, remember?” Impatience laced his voice. “Would you just open the door so I can at least come inside? It’s freezing out here.”
Seeing no graceful way around it, she hit the button to admit him downstairs and prayed hard for a clear mind to at least muddle her way through a conversation. Mick had called her earlier, sounding as weary as she felt, to let her know his daughter had been at a friend’s house but that he had some issues he needed to square away with Katie and was taking a personal day tomorrow. Not a problem for Donata, but it left her to contend with Sean—and the pressure to drop the case—on her own.
Something she damn well refused to be afraid of.
Still, it rattled her to realize she was raking her fingers through her hair while she waited for him to arrive at her third-floor apartment. In defiance of her stupid female primping, she purposely scrubbed her locks into disarray again. What did she care what she looked like to talk to a pit bull P.I.?
By the time the knock arrived on her door and she peered through the peephole, Donata’s nerves were already stretched taut. Yanking open the door, she couldn’t help but resent that he’d blasted right through the boundaries she worked hard to keep in place at the police station.
“I’m off duty, Beringer.” She heard the bitchy tone in her voice but was powerless to call back the words.
“Didn’t anyone warn you there’s no such thing as off duty when you’re a New York cop?” He seemed oblivious to her bad mood or else he was very good at ignoring people’s boundaries. “And call me Sean. I think we’ve been through enough together to warrant a first-name basis, don’t you?”
Ignoring the reminder of a most unpleasant evening spent in jail, she took a deep breath while she closed the door and bolted the lock, hoping to steady herself and instead inhaling the vaguest hint of aftershave.
She’d forgotten what it was like to be inside a man’s personal space. She’d hardened her heart to Sergio long before she’d sold him out. Her need to punish him for breaking the law and his promise of faithfulness to her had helped her ignore the old tug of attraction she’d once felt. But she hadn’t learned how to defuse the heat between her and the man now in her apartment. It would singe her if she wasn’t careful.
“Fine, Sean. I knew what I was signing up for to be on the force.” She backed away from him, retreating deeper into the safe haven of her home. “I’m just not used to tripping over pushy P.I.s at every turn on an investigation.”
“Good cops cultivate their sources, they don’t lock them out.” He followed her into the living area that doubled as her bedroom in the small space. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
So technically, she had a man in her bedroom after a long, long time. A shiver accompanied the thought as her gaze lingered on the foldout sofa where she slept.
“Not quite as grand as my Long Island digs, but at least it’s all paid for honestly.” She’d inherited a house in the Hamptons from her father when she was eighteen and she’d used the proceeds from the sale to set herself up in this apartment with a nice savings account for a rainy day. Everything that Sergio had ever given her she’d donated to charity after the split.
She hated what it said about her that she’d been involved with a crook. The police background check may have forgiven the transgression, but forgiving herself was far more difficult.
“I knew four years ago that you weren’t guilty of anything but poor judgment, Donata. I only made the big show of putting you under arrest in the hope you might spill something about Sergio’s connections in the filmmaking industry.” He took off his coat and tossed it on her couch, making himself at home before she’d invited him to stay.
The intimacy of the act suggested an ease around her that men didn’t usually feel with a woman accustomed to being labeled “cold.” One of the police cadets she’d gone through training with had gone so far as to suggest she could wither a man’s sexual interest at twenty paces with just one glare. Not exactly flattering, but a helpful kind of superpower for a female who was scared spitless of dominating men.
And yet Sean remained immune to the glare.
“I knew you didn’t have any evidence,” she admitted, figuring she might as well come clean if they were going to work together. “And I could have called in my FBI connections to set things straight, but I figured the threat of me being busted would buy me street cred with Sergio. He was starting to get suspicious of me. The big bust happened just a few weeks later.”
“So all that surly silent treatment was an act?” He strolled around her living room, checking the titles of the books on her shelves, the DVDs next to the TV and the wine bottles on the rack near the kitchen.
The attention to his surroundings was typical of a good cop and she wondered why he’d felt the police department couldn’t bring his sister’s molester to justice. The department always needed good investigators and she had the feeling his leaving was a loss for the city.
“I honestly didn’t know of any connection Sergio might have had to the film industry. But as for the tough-girl behavior, I did a lot of acting those last few months with him.” What scared her more were the hours where she’d forgotten it was an act, the dates they went on that had seemed like old times and had made her forget for a little while that she was staying with him only to bust him.
It had all felt so unclean. So dishonest.
“What about the harassment charges?” Sean turned on his heel to stalk straight toward her now, all pretense of interest in her apartment gone as he focused on her. “Was that an act to buy points with your boyfriend, too?”
“No.” She stifled the impulse to step backward, away from him. “But I realized afterward that I was just scared and…acting out…to even the odds between us. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about that.”
She’d rescinded her verbal accusation and refused to formalize it in writing after her head had cleared from the sensual haze that enveloped the room when she and Sean had been together.
“Luckily, I was already making plans to leave the department by then so it wasn’t as big of a deal as it might have been.” He stopped a foot from her, his sleekly muscular body making its presence felt even though he didn’t touch her.
Four years ago she’d thought the resulting shaky feeling inside had been from harassment. Now she recognized it for what it had been all along.
She had the hots for Sean Beringer.
EVEN AS SEAN BEGAN to realize it had been a mistake to seek out Donata after hours, he still couldn’t make himself back away from her.
He’d seen hints of the old over-the-top sexiness at the precinct today in the pure silk blouse she’d worn beneath her navy suit. The fire-engine-red lips had been another clue, even if the rest of her face hadn’t been made-up.
But in the safety of her own apartment, she obviously gave her diva leanings more room to play. Her blue-and-yellow lace camisole blouse outlined spectacular cleavage while a fuzzy blue sweater was tied closed with a satin ribbon around her waist. The crocheted sweater was full of so many holes a man could see everything through it, from the spaghetti straps of the blouse to the hummingbird tattoo on her lower back that showed between her low-rise jeans and the camisole.
What man could see a tattoo like that and not fantasize about tasting it?
Exotic perfume clung to her clothes and her skin, a scent that hadn’t been present during her workday. Most women came home and stripped away the material trappings of beauty but apparently Donata cloaked herself in sexy feminine decor the minute she left the police department behind. The thought of her switching roles like that turned him on at a primal level.
“What did you want to discuss?” Her throaty words floated through his consciousness to distract him when all he really wanted to do was close the space between them and see if she felt as good as she looked.
From the satiny blouse and the fuzzy sweater to the sleek silken swish of her hair, everything about Donata was a tactile temptation, begging to be touched.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t in any position to cop a feel.
“I need to know where you’re going with this investigation since our conversation ended prematurely today. You seemed freaked out about Alteri’s possible involvement in the filmmaking scheme, and I’m here to ask you nicely to back off if you think you can’t separate feelings for your ex from the job.”
“How dare you insinuate I can’t keep my personal feelings out of my work?” She lowered her voice to a fierce whisper even though there was no one around to overhear them. “It’s because of me that Alteri is behind bars in the first place.”
“Hey, I couldn’t keep my personal life out of my work, which was why I left the force.” Frustration replaced some of the heat between them and he was grateful for the impetus to back away. He didn’t need attraction to Donata screwing him over now that he was close to finally busting the sleazy video outfit. He needed to know more about the Sara Chapman case to see if her situation coincided with some of the other girls’ experiences of having their video images posted online.
Donata seemed to think over what he said, her arms folded tight while she stared up at a framed photo of herself as a flamboyantly dressed teenager with her arm wrapped around a skinny old guy wearing a Doors T-shirt and a poorly fitting dinner jacket.
Had she started dating ancient men that young?
Alteri had to have been twenty years her senior and this guy looked closer to thirty.
“I respect your need to go after somebody who hurt your sister.” Slowly, Donata turned on him, her eyes wearier and wiser than he remembered. “In turn, you have to respect that I’m going to be all over this investigation. Not just because it’s my job, but because I have a particular axe to grind with men who try to take advantage of innocents. That doesn’t make me sloppy. That makes me driven.”
He barely recognized the woman who delivered the words. Outside, she looked the same with her too-sexy clothes and killer body. But the steely strength that emanated from within—that was all new since the last time they’d crossed paths. This Donata was a woman with a mission and Sean thought any guy would be damn lucky to have her on his side.
Except he didn’t want a professional partner. If she wanted to partner in other ways, however…
“Heard and understood. I appreciate the honesty when we—”
“You ready for some more?”
“What?” He blinked.
“Honesty.” Cool purpose gleamed in her eyes and Sean got a mental picture of her heading up a boardroom instead of a police investigation.
That mental picture lasted about three seconds before being replaced by one of Donata naked and in his bed, his fingers exploring the soft terrain beneath the hummingbird tattoo.
“Su-sure.” He loosened his collar before he remembered he wasn’t wearing a tie. Damned if a Mets batting jersey could strangle a man, but somehow, his managed to do exactly that.
“Focus on this case is important to me and I’m having a hard time finding it with you and me working on it.”
Of all the things he might have expected her to say, this would have been the farthest from his mind. She couldn’t honestly be…flirting with him?
“Are you coming on to me?” He’d gotten rusty at interpreting signals from women in the years since his wife had left him, so chances were good he’d read Donata wrong. But since he’d never had enough finesse to muddle through blindly when asking a direct question could clear up everything in an instant, he figured he had nothing to lose by confronting her.
“Just the opposite.” She fidgeted with the long blue ribbon dangling from the bow where her sweater was tied closed. “I’m asking for your help in keeping our interaction as impersonal as possible given our…unusual history.”
The way she said it made him wonder how much of those hours they’d spent together she remembered. When she had refused to call a lawyer and he had been hell-bent on interrogating her anyway. There had been anger, resentment and undeniable sparks.
“No one at that precinct gives a crap about the past. Cops are only interested in your present and future and what you’re bringing to the table that will help catch crooks.”
“Perhaps I’m less concerned with what my colleagues think than what I think.” She released the ribbon and the satin fabric swung like a delicate pendulum for a moment before coming to rest on the snap of her jeans.
The sight of that sleek fabric pointing the way south on Donata’s voluptuous body would have distracted him under the best of circumstances, but now when he was trying to navigate his way through her cryptic words…his brain seemed to short-circuit.
“I’m not getting it.” The scent of her—darkly sexy and warmed by the heat of her skin—drugged any remaining sense right out of him. “You’re going to have to spell it out for me, Donata, because I’m not following you.”
“Then let me make it clear as crystal.” She swept aside the hem of her loose sweater to cock a hand on one denim-clad hip. “I’m not even sure I like you, Beringer, but there’s something undeniably sexual in the air when we’re in the same room and I want to avoid that at all costs.”
Okay, this he could understand. Something sexual? Yes ma’am. This was finally making sense.
“You don’t mean sexual in the negative sense, right?” He just needed to get this one last point straight because no way, no how, would any woman accuse him of something like harassment again.
Thinking hot thoughts wasn’t a crime. Just so long as he didn’t act on anything without two thumbs up from the woman in question.
“No. I mean sexual in the distracting sense and I’ll tell you right now I’m not going down that path with any man who knew me back in my questionable youth.”
Her eyes were so cool and remote that he couldn’t reconcile her overtly sexy exterior with the uptight words.
“I met you four short years ago. Hardly during your childhood.” Reason clamored through the haze of lust in his brain, urging caution.
“But you saw me in the setting of the criminal underworld.”
“You were working undercover.”
“As an informant, not a paid detective. Big difference in respectability, don’t you think?”
A knock sounded at her door before he could pick apart how ludicrous it was for her to write him off because they met under inauspicious circumstances. But then, he was too rocked by her admission that he distracted her to process anything else with much speed.
“Yes?” Donata answered the door after peering through the peephole.
A middle-aged woman wearing a long caftan waited on the threshold, a mug of something steamy in one hand and a FedEx package in the other.
“Sorry to interrupt.” The woman peered over Donata’s shoulder to take a visual inventory of Sean and for a moment she seemed to forget what she was saying.
Obviously, his charm still worked. Just not on the right woman.
“That’s okay, Charlene. Did you need anything?” Donata’s clipped tones were completely at odds with the sweet words she used to employ around her old boyfriend.
“Oh. Um, yes.” The woman thrust a box through Donata’s doorway. “One of your deliveries came to my door by mistake.”
Thanking her, Donata took the package and closed the door even though the woman clearly had been angling for an invitation inside.
“Do you do this to every woman you meet?” Donata hissed out a breath between her teeth, somehow finding him at fault for her neighbor’s nosiness.
“I’m sure she just wanted to know who you were hanging out with these days.” Although, judging by Donata’s quick squashing of any attraction between them, maybe there wouldn’t be any hanging out involved.
“Yeah, tell me another one.” She squinted at the box and frowned. “The shipping label doesn’t look right.”
He looked over her shoulder but didn’t see anything unusual.
“There’s no bar code. No return address.” She spoke softly to herself as she reached for the pull-tab to open the package while Sean sought a way to get their conversation back on track.
He needed to leverage information from her on this case, convince her to let him proceed applying pressure in non-traditional venues because he couldn’t allow the scumbags who’d hurt his sister to walk away.
“Oh God.”
Donata dropped the manila envelope she’d pulled from the FedEx box.
“What?” Instantly on alert, Sean shifted his attention to her. He bent to retrieve the padded envelope and noticed her hands shook as he set it on her coffee table.
He wasn’t rude enough to look inside the package, but he was curious enough to note the corner of one document stuck out the open end. It appeared to be a photograph or short stack of photos, the size of the corner suggesting they were large and glossy color prints.
“They’re photos of me from when I was with Sergio.” Her voice bore none of the steely determination he’d heard from her earlier. The hitch in her throat and high pitch quavered closer to tears. “The son of a bitch must have kept them for their future blackmail potential.”
That didn’t sound good. And judging by the suddenly chalky pallor of her skin, he’d say the photos weren’t your garden-variety vacation shots.
“Are they…compromising?” He suddenly wondered if this case they were pursuing could possibly be even more personal to Donata than it was to him.
“If you mean are they naked, the answer is yes. Go ahead and have a look, Beringer, and you’ll see just how bad of a girl I once was.”
4
“WAS THERE A LETTER with it?” Using the corner of his T-shirt to prevent any extra fingerprints, Sean picked up the box the envelope had arrived in without looking at photos that obviously embarrassed her. “The package couldn’t have gone through FedEx with no labels. Somebody must have dropped it in front of your neighbor’s place.”
“I didn’t see a note.” Donata shook her head, her pale skin even whiter than usual as she stared at the envelope full of photos. “I didn’t even look at all the pictures.”
And who could blame her? She had to have busted her tail to climb the ranks of the police force the way she did, even with key recommendations from two FBI agents she’d worked with to get the dirt on her old boyfriend. No wonder she wasn’t in any hurry to look through a package of photos that could destroy her career or—at very least—shred her credibility.
“I’ll look through them if you want me to, Donata. But if you’d rather keep them private, I’m going to ask you to scan through everything before we decide what to do next.” He knew he wasn’t the cop here, but she didn’t look ready to take on the lead investigator role right now.
This had to suck big-time for her.
What the hell kind of partner did she have to leave her hanging on a huge case like this? He knew of Mick Juarez’s reputation on the police force, but the guy sure didn’t seem to be living up to it today. But Sean prayed she didn’t want him to take a peek because he didn’t know how well he’d handle seeing naked pictures of this woman. And she definitely didn’t need a P.I. with a hard-on trying to straighten out this mess.
She nodded. Blinked.
“I’ll do it.” With shaking fingers, she reached into the envelope and withdrew the stack of photos, keeping the backs of the prints to him. About ten in all. “I don’t see any—Wait.”
Sean set the box by the front door as a reminder to her to bring it into the lab guys tomorrow so she could have it run for prints. The incident might not have anything to do with her investigation, but she’d want to follow up on it anyhow.
“You got something?”
“Yeah. It says, ‘I have a few photos that will make nice wall art for the 10th precinct. Leave the filmmaker case alone and I’ll keep the pictures our secret.’ There’s no signature.”
The note made him wonder how explicit the photos might be but he didn’t think he could handle that discussion right now with his thoughts running wild. His imagination was too damn vivid when it came to supplying possibilities.
“Your friends at the FBI would be interested in this. Even without being processed through FedEx, using their packaging might make a case that this was a federal crime.” The selfish half of him didn’t want the feds swarming around any more than he wanted city cops treading over his terrain.
But if Sergio had his people coming after Donata personally, Sean could see the benefit to creating a world of trouble for the prick.
“No.” She slid the stack of photos into the envelope and laid the pack on her coffee table. “This is my case and I’m not handing it over to you, or the FBI or anyone else.”
Resolve glittered in her blue eyes.
“I know this is a low blow—”
“It’s more than that.” She paced around the living room and pulled open the front of a wooden cabinet that turned into a minibar, her hand shaking ever so slightly. “This is his way of trying to tear down everything I’ve worked for. My self-respect. My standing in the workplace. My first real career.”
Sean had an inkling how hard it must have been for her to come up through the ranks to get where she was today. Beyond the obvious physical challenges for a woman who was all of five foot four, Donata had to pass the interviews, the character background check that would have grilled her on her relationship with a criminal, and then there would have been the high chance of prejudice within the department. No matter how good her intentions as an informant, her fellow cops couldn’t have appreciated her time spent living with a well-known gangster.
And naked pictures of her on the loose would cause more of an uproar given her history. Not to mention the problems it would cause for her in getting her job done. Her colleagues might have trouble taking her seriously and damn it but he didn’t want anyone else seeing her naked.
“Let me handle this and we can keep it out of the police department. If I need backup, or I think you could be in physical danger, I can call in the FBI instead of the NYPD.” He’d been working on this case for so long he’d accumulated thousands of names of subscribers to the illicit reality porn services. As soon as he had enough proof to arrest a few of the key figures, he’d take down supporters of the industry all over the country. Restricting NYPD’s access to anything that touched the investigation was a win for him and a win for Donata’s career.
She set a bottle of Amaretto on the bar with excessive force, inciting a clink of every glass hanging upside down over the minibar.
“Damn it, Sean, will you wake up and see that this isn’t about what you want anymore?” She hadn’t even poured her drink when she snapped the cabinet closed again and walked. “I understand that you’re pissed off on your sister’s behalf and I don’t blame you. But there are more girls than her getting hurt every day that you wait to break this case.”
“Jesus, Donata. It’s never been about me.” How could she think that when he’d thrown his whole life into turmoil by quitting the force so he could investigate this ring the way he wanted and not the slow way some giant bureaucratic agency wanted it handled? His choices had cost him plenty.
“Come on, Sean. You think I don’t know why you’ve been waiting to blow the whistle on this operation?” She shook her head as she picked up a book of matches and lit a fat candle with four separate wicks. “I know enough about being an outsider to recognize someone else’s need for vindication. But this can’t be the story of ex-cop vigilantism that you want it to be. Too many people are getting hurt along the way.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong.” At least, he wanted her to be wrong because he sure as hell didn’t like the picture of him she painted. “I’m just trying to make sure there’s enough evidence to put this crew away for a long time. You know as well as I do, they’ll be back on the streets abusing kids in no time otherwise.”
“Fine. We’ll make sure we’ve got evidence. I’ll go through the files tomorrow and I’d appreciate it if you’d share what you know so we can move forward. But I can guarantee you, I’m not walking away from this.”
For the first time since he’d become reacquainted with Donata Casale, Sean realized he couldn’t ask her to turn her back on the case.
A fact which left him working with a fiery dynamo of a woman to close an investigation that had become a huge powder keg.
There wasn’t a chance in hell they’d come through this unscathed.
“NO FINGERPRINTS on the box,” Mick reported after hanging up the phone with the lab two days later. “And since Sergio Alteri is in jail, he has an iron-tight alibi on this one. Any ideas where to go now?”
Donata spun in her desk chair, unable to think clearly about the case with Sean an ever-present fixture in her brain. Desks and detectives blurred as she twirled back and forth, searching for ideas and wondering if she’d ever make peace with her past.
She’d confided in Mick about the pictures since she trusted him to be discreet. He hadn’t asked to see the photos, nor had he tried to strong-arm her into entering the pictures for evidence, for which she’d be eternally grateful. Mick was a good friend and damned attractive too. But the chemistry just wasn’t there—not the way it had always been present for her whenever Sean walked in a room.
“The prison log shows a lot of letters going in and out of Ray Brook Correctional Facility, but no visitors for Alteri.” That made the investigation tougher, but the news had pleased Donata on a personal level since she liked to think that his so-called friends had all forsaken him. Even his mistress—the obnoxious Rosie Gillespie—hadn’t bothered to keep in touch.
“We’d better get a list of his correspondents. In the meantime, I’m meeting with Sean today to go over his evidence again since he’s been working on connected cases for a while.” She felt self-conscious bringing Sean up and couldn’t say why, except that she’d been thinking about him far too often. He’d surprised her with his thoughtful handling of the picture episode the other night. “We didn’t come up with any great ideas the first time, but I was still reeling from the appearance of the photos. I think today we’re going to visit some of the more prominent webcam streams and see what happens when we subscribe to the services advertised online.”
And wouldn’t that be interesting to spend time in close quarters with a man who occupied a few too many of her fantasies the past few days?
“You’re traveling risky terrain.” Mick didn’t approve of methods that involved her in anything illegal.
Three days ago she would have nixed the tactic, too. But that was before the stakes had been upped. Clearly, whoever had been planting webcams in teenagers’ bedrooms was starting to sweat the possibility of getting caught.
“I’ll be careful.” She wouldn’t jeopardize her career—or her shot at destroying an illegal business making a bundle off insecure girls.
“What if it’s not Sergio behind it all, Donata?” Mick stirred his coffee slowly, the inevitable clank of his spoon a rhythmic ringing that seemed to echo his subtle warning.
“We’ll get this guy either way.”
“Just don’t let your anger at him cloud your judgment.”
Good advice. Except that she wondered if he thought her judgment might be off when it came to the case—or when it came to men in her life.
SEAN RAN HIS P.I. business out of a squat building in SoHo. He owned a storefront on the street and lived in the loft a few stories above it. The loft was Donata’s destination now that it was after business hours even though they would be technically talking business.
She traced the neatly etched lettering on the glass door at street level that read Beringer Investigations. Sean’s neighborhood had a warmer feel than her more sterile residential street full of working couples and upwardly mobile singles who left the neighborhood vacant during the day. Here, a nearby coffee shop kept a busy flow of foot traffic and the funky old architecture of the building across the street had attracted a photo shoot with two stylists scampering in and out of a fashion scene featuring an elegant-looking man and woman wearing long spring jackets while they battled playfully with closed umbrellas as if they were swords.
What was the world coming to when the only people having fun had been paid for their elaborately staged efforts?
Turning the doorknob, Donata tried to remember the last time she’d felt as light-hearted as the people in the photo shoot pretended to be. Unfortunately, her most fun memories had all been tainted with the later realization that her partner in fun had been a liar and a cheat, and now possibly a perv to boot.
Inside the building, a second door labeled Beringer Investigations was closed while an old elevator sat side by side with a staircase. Donata started up the stairs as Sean’s directions had suggested, and after a single flight she heard a door open above her then a familiar voice shouted down.
“You won’t believe this.”
She looked up to see Sean hanging over the rail two floors above. The central staircase wound around a corridor open throughout all the floors. Apparently he owned this side of the building, while a landlord rented apartments to a handful of tenants on the other side of the building that opened onto the next street.
She’d half hoped she’d imagined the sizzle factor between them, but it was back again in full force judging by the pleasant buzz of attraction humming through her veins just looking at him. So frigging inappropriate. But she liked the way he treated her with a certain amount of respect. Sean’s attraction communicated itself through subtleties rather than a gaze fastened to her cleavage like some guys.
Too bad she’d screwed up so badly with him four years ago when he’d taken her in for questioning. No way would this guy ever act on the heat between them now. Not that she necessarily wanted him to. But she still regretted the misunderstandings of their past.
“What won’t I believe? Did the bad guys confess?” She picked up her pace, her aerobic conditioning one of the sweetest side benefits of her job. She could bang out flights of stairs as easily as most people strolled through a park.
“No.” He dangled some black cords over the stairwell. “After I set up that fake ID online I’ve got pervs from all over the country mailing me electronic equipment to help me set up a Web site with high-quality imagery.”
She closed the distance between them, winding her way around the highest landing to see the gadgets he’d been showing her—and swallowing back some major drool over the man. A webcam was the only item she recognized in a small pile of technological-looking loot.
“How can anyone send you equipment without knowing your real name?” Her years as a patrol officer had given her face-to-face experience with more overt crime—rape and domestic abuse. Drug sales gone bad and drive-by shootings. The Internet criminal was new to her, although she’d read case files on a few online money-making rackets. Normally, the NYPD handed over those investigations to specialized departments.
“Some guy who’s buying into the fact that I’m a teenaged girl showed me how to set up a wish list through an online superstore. Anyone who knows my wish list name can send a present through the site while my personal information remains anonymous.”
“And you wished for a webcam?” She didn’t want to break department protocol to make this bust, and she wondered how this tactic would go over in court.
“Of course not. I just went along with it to let the guy think I was a teenage girl. I put some bubblegum pop CDs on there and other stuff then forgot about it until a box showed up with all kinds of equipment that would allow me to set up a video feed so I can show myself to admiring fans.”
“I think the jig is up because you’ll never pass for a girl.” She had to laugh at the image because if she thought for too long about the young women who got sucked into that kind of life in a bid for friendship or acceptance—or even money—Donata wouldn’t be able to do her job.
“So we’ll play shy and see how much effort these guys go to in order to push their victims into the spotlight. I’m starting to think there are a hell of a lot more people at work on these kinds of schemes than just the filmmaker who packages the video snippets for sale.” He shoved the equipment into a shipping box and Donata saw that the pieces were labeled as a four-port hub that advertised it could be used for multiple cameras. Another box contained a memory upgrade.
Her insides felt hollow to glimpse this new world of potential violation for mixed-up teenagers. She knew how it felt to have compromising photos follow you through life. These kids wouldn’t just have a few pictures to worry about. They’d have hours of video footage readily available online. How badly would that suck?
She followed Sean into his apartment. The expansive space was circled with windows on two sides thanks to its corner position. The real estate had to cost a small fortune.
“The P.I. business is paying you well.” She wandered over to the closer wall of windows and looked down at the street. She’d waited until after her regular shift to work with Sean, so by now the commuter traffic was kicking into high gear. Cars had their lights on because, even though the sun hadn’t set yet, twilight would be stealing through the sky soon. By the time the bridge and tunnel crowd arrived home, it would be fully dark.
“Not really.”
“I’m sorry. That was a tacky observation by me, anyway.” She rolled her eyes, wondering if she’d ever shed the lower-class sensibilities that had come with her upbringing. Sergio had always been too easily impressed by money, a quality she definitely didn’t want to share.
She liked seeing this side of Sean. The private side. His home was tasteful but comfortable and it smelled vaguely of him. Was it possible to be turned on by an apartment? Her mood lightened a bit at the thought.
“Not at all. I’m sure the investigators who work for big-time divorce attorneys with wealthy clients probably make a bundle, but that’s not really my style.” Sean set the box on a massive cherry desk that sat in one corner of the loft that looked like a home office. “I inherited this half of the building from an aunt. My sister used to live on the next floor down before she moved out west.”
“It seems like a great neighborhood.” She wondered how he got along with his sister and if she’d moved away to escape some of his staunch protection. But Donata didn’t want to pry. Removing her coat, she stared at the computer screen where Sean seemed to be in the middle of a chat room discussion.
“It’s usually fairly quiet around here.” He took her coat and pulled out the sole desk chair for her. “Have a seat and you can see what I’ve been looking over this afternoon. Did Mick tell you he checked his daughter’s computer history recently and he found a bunch of visits to a teen Web portal that’s well known for attracting pedophiles in addition to the regular clientele?”
She took a seat beside him, heart jumping just a bit. She found herself enjoying the reality of being attracted to a man who wouldn’t manhandle her, a man who’d made it a personal crusade to save unsuspecting women from the heartaches that awaited them in the form of online predators. Women could dish about men’s butts or abs all day long, but at the end of the day, that dedication to a worthy cause seemed way more attractive than nice pecs.
Although, wouldn’t you know, Sean happened to have both.
“When did you talk to Mick?” Call her paranoid, but something struck her as strange about a P.I. and a cop who’d been marginally suspicious of one another suddenly developing enough rapport to discuss an ongoing case.
Without her. And yes, she’d be the first to admit she carried a chip on her shoulder when it came to precinct politics.
“I called the station a few minutes before you arrived to see if you’d left yet. When Mick picked up your extension, he mentioned the concerns for Katie, who’s been lying to both parents about her whereabouts lately.”
Donata clicked through some of the windows Sean pointed out while they spoke, including the Web community Mick’s daughter had been visiting. Some of the teens’ sites were innocuous enough and others had a decidedly sexual tone although none of them came close to the content on the subscription sites Sean had bought into for the sake of the investigation.
They worked side by side for the first hour or so, with Sean bringing Donata up to speed on the investigation he’d been picking away at for years. His sister’s molester had been locked up long ago, but that hadn’t been justice enough for him and frankly, Donata could understand why. The bastard who’d hurt his sister had found her through the massive network of sex criminals linked by seemingly endless online communities. And Sean wanted to bring down as many of those communities as possible. The ones who trafficked in webcam porn or more innocent webcam footage turned into porn by spurned lovers or boyfriends as an act of revenge were the highest on his list.
Donata’s eyes were starting to cross two hours later when she hit a site that advertised innocent girls showing off on their teen webcams. Most of the footage looked harmless enough—girls having pillow fights at sleepovers with an occasional hint of undies and other video clips that were probably posted by the unsuspecting girls themselves. She was about to leave the site when a name on the index caught her eye.
Donata.
Curious, she moved the mouse over the name. It wasn’t that common, but she’d certainly come across it a few other times. Still, when you had a more unusual name, you felt a little sense of kinship with anyone who shared it. Or maybe that was just her. Her life wasn’t exactly overflowing with friendships and supportive connections so maybe she tended to seek out whatever ties she could in a hostile world.
Sean’s computer was fast, but the graphic images still moved slower than other pages and it took a moment for the photo to load. As soon as the top band filled the width of the screen, however, Donata knew she wasn’t going to find any kinship here. She recognized the backdrop for the picture before the rest of the image came over the screen.
Sean had disappeared into the kitchen to grab them each a beer, but he returned now to settle their drinks on the folded sports section of the Times.
“I don’t know why the bastard thought he could blackmail me into staying off the case when he’d already turned my photos into public property.” She couldn’t look away from the ancient picture of herself, the one she’d let her ex-lover take in a moment of trust. It would have been like looking away from an oncoming train wreck.
What did it matter if Sean saw the photo now that people all across the country had the option to copy and save it to their hard drives? Clearly, she wasn’t going to be able to keep all her dirty little secrets as private as she would have liked. Her few moments of reckless stupidity had been captured in full color to haunt her for the rest of her days.
And the tug of her attraction to Sean—something normal and healthy, even if she never acted on it—would be tainted by the ugliness of her old life.
“Holy hell,” Sean whispered, his voice deep and ragged a few inches from her ear as he leaned closer to the computer screen to get a better view. “That’s you?”
5
SEAN DIDN’T WAIT for her answer.
He grabbed his beer off the desk so fast it spilled out the top of the long neck, trailing dark lager across the back of his hand as he made tracks away from the computer screen and away from the image now deep-fried into his mental sexual circuitry. He didn’t know whether he needed the cold beer more for his dry mouth or to combat the raging hard-on he’d fought successfully sitting next to Donata for two hours until that damn photo materialized on his monitor. Drink the brew? Or pour liberally over his lap?
God. Damn.
He settled on a long drink, knowing neither option would solve his problem. He’d never forget the image of Donata strapped to a board that might have been a weight bench or an incline sit-up support. Thick black strips of leather wound around her naked body to hold her in place so that the juncture of her thighs was covered—barely—although her breasts were visible between two other strips. Her hair, longer then, spilled over the board in a mass of messy curls and her eyes were rimmed in black like a rock star or an Egyptian queen. A tattoo of a rose in full flower had been inked inside one hipbone and her spread legs seemed to strain against the bonds. But she’d been staring at the camera with an exaggerated pout on her red-painted lips as if to assure the viewer her light S&M pose was only for show.
And what a hell of a show it had been.
He looked through the bottom of his suddenly empty beer bottle and wondered where it had gone.
“Yeah, it’s me.” Donata’s voice didn’t penetrate his consciousness for a long moment after she spoke. “I guess we can’t hide my past any longer, but I appreciate you not pushing me to make the photos part of police records when the hard copies arrived a few days ago. I’ll add the information first thing tomorrow morning and—”
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