Steven Womack - By Blood Written

He kept trying to figure out what could possibly have triggered her outbursts. There were only two options he could come up with. First, Taylor Robinson was so far in love with this guy that she was simply unable to grasp the concept that he might not be what she thought he was. Either that, or she knew what he was and was part of it.

But could that really be an option? What were the chances that Taylor Robinson was as psycho as her fiance? What were the chances that two such completely evil people could find each other in this world and glom on to each other?

“Probably better than you think,” he whispered to himself.

He reached for his third cup of coffee just as the phone rang. “I’ve got Max Bransford on line one,” Sallie said.

“Thanks,” Hank answered, pressing the blinking button on his desk set.

“Good morning, Max,” Hank said brightly. “How’s tricks?”

“Hank, I gotta talk to you,” Bransford said, his voice serious.

Hank felt his neck stiffen. “What’s up?”

“Yesterday morning, I got called into Major Katz’s office.

He’s my division commander and immediate supervisor. He reports directly to the assistant chief.”

“Okay,” Hank said. “And?”

“It was a come-to-Jesus meeting on the Exotica Tans murders.”

Hank sat there for a moment, holding the phone, waiting for Bransford to continue.

“Anyway, he wanted the case summarized right then and there. Apparently there’s some political pressure on this one.

Either that or somebody leaked to the chief that we had a possible suspect. So I didn’t have any choice. I laid it all out for him.”

Hank had a bad feeling about where this was going. “And?”

“And,” Bransford continued, “he called the DA’s office then and there and arranged a meeting. We were in there for four hours yesterday.”

“So what happened?”

Bransford sighed heavily, almost wearily, into the phone.

“Bottom line, Hank, is the DA’s going to the grand jury. The shit’s gonna hit the fan down here.”

“No!” Hank said. “You can’t do that, Max. It’s too early.

We don’t have enough.”

“The DA is talking about getting one of the judges to sign off on a search warrant. He’s gonna try and get hair and tissue samples from Schiftmann.”

“No judge is going to issue that kind of warrant without an indictment.”

“In the state of Tennessee, if there’s enough there to jus-tify a probable cause search, then a sympathetic judge can do it. And it can be done in secret, as part of the grand jury hearing.”

Hank’s head throbbed. This was a big, major, earth-shaking screwup. “Yeah, and how long will it stay secret, Max?

You know what this is going to do when it hits the media.

We’re going to have a circus on our hands.”

“I know that, Hank,” Bransford said. “That’s what I told the major. This is the kind of cluster fuck that can cause us to lose our amateur standing. You gotta be a pro to fuck up this bad.”

“Can you put this back in the bottle? Get them to hold off maybe even a few days?”

“Too late,” Bransford said. “The DA red-balled this one right into the grand jury. I finished testifying an hour ago.”

Hank Powell moaned. “Okay,” he said. “If they think they’re good to go and ready to launch, who am I to get in the way? I’m going to get on the horn and call my boss and tell him to hunker down.”

“Hang in there, buddy. We’re both gonna have to keep our heads down.”

Hank felt the coffee churning away in his gut. “Mine already is.”

Taylor stood at the kitchen counter, her eyes burning from lack of sleep, her neck stiff. She poured another cup of coffee, took a small sip, and grimaced. The coffee made the already foul taste of bile in her mouth even worse. She poured the coffee into the sink.

She sat down at the counter and stared at the clock for a few moments. It was almost eleven-thirty in the morning and she was still in her bathrobe. Ordinarily, she’d have put in three or four hours in the office by now. But that was after nights when she actually slept.

Not like last night …

Michael was still upstairs asleep. Lately, he’d been staying up even later than usual, watching old movies on television or reading, and usually with a drink in his hand. He’d been at her apartment for almost two and a half weeks continuously now. For the first few days it was like a honeymoon, but lately they’d not even been going to bed at the same time.

Taylor just couldn’t stay up half the night, then get up at seven to be at work by eight. And Michael couldn’t go to bed before about two at the earliest.

Last night, she pretended to be asleep when he finally came to bed at three-thirty. He nuzzled her neck, kissed her shoulders. After a few moments of no response, he’d rolled over and was soon snoring.

And she lay there the rest of the night, staring up into the darkness, unable to turn her brain off, unable to let go.

At five in the morning, shortly before the sun came up, she found herself wondering if it was even possible that the FBI agent could be telling the truth, but she pushed that thought out of her mind as quickly as it came in.

She’d gotten out of bed as quietly as possible, then gone downstairs and sat in an easy chair, her feet up on the coffee table, staring into the darkened spaces of her loft. At some point, she might have dozed off for a short time, but it wasn’t the good, hard sleep she needed. It was like skating over the surface of a pond when what you needed was to dive in.

She heard a shuffling upstairs and water running. She pulled her bathrobe tighter around her as, a few seconds later, Michael came down the stairs in a T-shirt and a pair of running shorts. He walked over to where she was sitting, leaned down, and kissed her on the top of the head.

“Hi, gorgeous,” he said cheerily.

“Morning.”

“You’re not going to work today?” He opened the cabinet door and took out a large coffee mug.

“Later,” she answered. “I wasn’t feeling all that well when I woke up. Didn’t sleep well.”

“You were sleeping pretty good when I came up,” Michael offered, pouring a cup. “I tried to wake you up, see if you wanted something to sweeten your dreams. But, alas.”

“What time was that?” Taylor asked.

“I don’t know. Sometime around three, three-thirty.”

“Kind of late, wasn’t it?”

“Well,” he said, pausing to take a sip of the hot coffee, “I decided to stay up until eight London time so I could call the agent.”

Taylor looked up. “And?”

“Looks like it’s a done deal, my darling. That two-bedroom flat in Earl’s Court is where you and I can stay on our honeymoon if you want. I have to fly over in a couple of weeks for the closing. Maybe you’ll come with me?”

“Michael,” she said cautiously, “are you sure this is such a good idea? You bought the condo in Palm Beach and now a flat in London?”

He sat on a barstool across the counter from her and leaned in toward her, smiling. “Look, until you got me a decent book deal, I’d never even been to London. I fell in love with it! And now we’ve got the money. Let’s enjoy it. I’ve got a lot of time to make up.”

“You have the money,” she said. “Not us.”

He reached over and took her hand in his. “Soon it’ll be us. And we have to decide about the house, too. You haven’t even seen it.”

“I know,” Taylor answered. “I’ve just been too busy. Besides, I’m not sure I’m ready to give this place up. I worked so hard for it, and I’ve made it so much mine.”

“So I’ll let the house go and we’ll live here. Whatever makes you happy.”