Jill Sorenson - Dangerous to Touch

“Miss Hegel was found dead early this morning in Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Police officials have no comment-”

“You’re hurting me.”

He looked down at his hand, wrapped around her arm. “Sorry,” he said, loosening his grip. Sidney could tell he was furious, although he hid it well. He probably didn’t care for Crystal Dunn leaking details of a homicide to a possible suspect.

It had been petty and unprofessional of her, actually. With so much animosity between them, it was hard to guess who dumped whom.

“Detective Lacy, would you show Miss Morrow to one of the interview rooms, please?” he asked, looking down an empty hallway. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Lacy kept her face bland and authoritative. “Right this way, ma’am.”

The women’s locker room was clear. Marc breathed a sigh of relief, knowing he’d catch hell from Deputy Chief Stokes if she found him snooping around in here.

He located Lacy’s locker and began rifling through its contents. She had some girl stuff, makeup and deodorant, but no perfume or jewelry. A clean, pressed patrol uniform hung on a wooden hanger.

He grabbed a mesh bag from the bottom. Towels, shampoo. Damn.

Frustrated, he grabbed her oversize brown leather purse, preparing to dump out its contents and use it as his prop. Inside, however, there was a flimsy purple scarf, folded into a tiny square. Perfect.

He shoved it in his pocket, hoping to discredit Sidney Morrow for good. The look on her face, right before she got sick, had been damned convincing. He was still pissed off at himself for getting caught up in her ruse, even for a second.

Lots of women could vomit on cue. It was called bulimia, not ESP.

When he opened the door to the interview room, he was all business. Lacy was intimidating the subject with a cold, hard stare, arms folded over her chest. On the other side of the table, Sidney was fidgeting.

As he took his seat next to Lacy, he studied his quarry, confused by her appeal. He liked confident women. Bold, aggressive women who knew how to please a man. Women who were well aware of their own allure.

Sidney Morrow was as timid as a rabbit. If he touched her, she’d jump. If he kept touching her, she’d squirm. She was like a bundle of raw nerve endings. Against his better judgment, he speculated on what it would be like to go to bed with her.

“Dr. Vincent says you…know things,” he began. “Sense them.”

“I don’t.”

“Come on,” he said. “You knew the dog had been drugged. You knew his name and that he’d come along the river-”

“All perfectly reasonable assumptions.”

“Either you’re a psychic or a suspect, Miss Morrow. Which do you prefer?”

When she remained silent, he slid a picture across the table, an autopsy photo of Anika Groene, her bare skin riddled with red marks. “See those bites? Whoever killed her tied her up and let rats crawl over her. They feasted on her naked body while she was still alive.”

“Please,” she whispered, looking away, her eyes watery and tortured.

Marc steeled himself against the sight. “What was he doing to Candace Hegel yesterday, while you were insisting you didn’t know anything? What was he doing while you were pretending ‘Blue’ was just a good guess?”

“I don’t know,” she moaned, twisting her hands in her lap.

Marc felt a surge of triumph, sensing her upcoming capitulation.

“Tell us what you do know,” he urged.

“I had a dream,” she said finally. “Or something. I heard a dog barking, yesterday morning, as I was waking up. When I got to the kennel, there he was.”

It didn’t make any sense, but nothing about her did. “And?”

“And I did guess his name, okay? I called him Blue, and he came right to me, so I knew I was right. When I reached down to pet him-” She broke off, searching for the words to explain. “I just knew stuff.”

“Like what?”

“That he’d broken out of a vehicle, and he was groggy. I don’t know where he’d been, but I think he heard gunshots, and he spooked.”

“Gunshots? What kind?”

“A shotgun, maybe.”

“Would you know the difference by sound?”

“No. It’s just an impression.”

“Go on.”

“He ran through the river, trying to get back to his owner. That’s it.”

Mark’s eyes narrowed. She hadn’t told him anything specific, or anything that could be disproved. By keeping it vague, she was covering her bases. Tapping the tips of his fingers on the surface of the desk, he asked, “Anything else?”

“I had another dream this morning,” she admitted. “Of suffocating, drowning. Being restrained.”

“By what?”

She rubbed her wrists. “I don’t know. My face was covered with some sort of dark, thick plastic. I couldn’t breathe.”

Marc nodded thoughtfully, as if taking her at her word. There was no way she could know Candace Hegel had been alive when the killer had thrown her in the lagoon, or that the victim had been wrapped in a plastic tarp.

He reached into his pocket. “If we had an article of clothing belonging to the deceased, could you get an ‘impression’ from it?”

“Probably not. It doesn’t work on command. I can’t always-”

“Would you try?” he asked, pinning her with a look. “It would mean a great deal to her family.”

Her stormy-gray eyes were black-rimmed, thickly lashed and startlingly beautiful. “All right,” she said softly.

He handed her the gauzy purple scarf, noting Lacy’s sudden tension beside him.

Puzzled, Sidney focused her concentration on the swatch of fabric, letting it slide through her fingers, caress her skin. Marc watched her in utter fascination, mesmerized by the performance. She was very, very good. To look at her, eyes closed, moist lips slightly parted, breath coming in short, soft pants, one would think she was lost in sensation, completely unaware of their presence.

And sexually aroused.

As her chest rose and fell, her nipples pushed impudently against the cloth of her sleeveless cotton top, hardening before his eyes.

Damn, she was good. Marc didn’t have to look at Lacy to know she was equally riveted. He couldn’t imagine a more provocative display.

Unless she actually started touching herself.

To his disappointment, her eyes flew open and she pushed the scarf away from her, cheeks tinged pink.

“Very nice,” Marc murmured when he was capable of speech.

“What do you do for an encore? Strip naked?”

Her eyes darkened. “Why don’t you two play your twisted sex games with someone else?” she retorted, looking back and forth between them.

“ Our twisted sex games? That was a one-woman show you just gave us, Miss Morrow. Delightful, but all you.”

“Well, that game-” she pointed at the slinky, purple scarf “-involved two women. And neither of them was Candace Hegel.”

“Oh really?” he drawled. “My mistake.” He glanced sideways at Lacy. “I assure you I wasn’t a participant. What were these lovely ladies doing, by the way?”

“Drop it,” Lacy warned under her breath.

“Never mind,” he sighed, training an appreciative eye on Sidney Morrow. He’d underestimated her. She was frighteningly intuitive, a consummate actress and the best damned charlatan he’d ever seen.

Her distract and dazzle technique was wickedly effective, he had to admit. He couldn’t have been more turned on. “Let’s go,” he decided, stifling his lust. “No more games.”

“I can leave now?”

“After a brief stop, yes, you’ll be free to go.”

Lacy gave him an incredulous stare, which he ignored. Yes, it was foolhardy to let her walk; she might be an accomplice to murder. If physical evidence didn’t point to a male perpetrator, he’d consider her the prime suspect.