Lorie O - Strong, Sleek and Sinful

“I’ll contact the family tonight for a list of her friends.” Turning to his car, he parted ways with the Chief without saying good-bye. Whatever had crawled up Rad’s ass, Perry wouldn’t challenge it. Not tonight. He had Rad’s permission to pursue the investigation and that was what Perry would do.

When he headed across town half an hour later, after visiting with the Longs, the list of numbers he needed to contact was already on his clipboard next to him. Ramos had headed home to have dinner with his mother. A cop didn’t get to do that enough and Perry would give his partner the next hour or so before calling him. Rad was all over them all of a sudden to work together. As well, the new policy about logging in with passwords every time they used a computer so that everyone’s actions online would be kept track of bugged Perry, too. It appeared there was suspicion in the department over something, which would also explain the wariness Perry was certain he saw in Rad’s eyes earlier.

There was something else that annoyed the crap out of Perry and had since he saw Kathleen Long lying crumpled behind the Dumpster earlier this afternoon. He wasn’t sure if she was one of his nieces’ friends, but the young girl looked familiar. Her parents had shown him pictures of a very pretty girl, who was in the same grade as Dani.

The image of the child, and yes, damn it, a fifteen-year-old girl was a child, lying on the ground, abused to the point of death, curdled his stomach. It also pissed him off. That teenage girl would never know the wonders of life, of adulthood, of falling in love, going to college, getting married, having a family and a good job. All of that was robbed from her by a motherfucker Perry couldn’t wait to get his hands on.

He turned onto the street where Kylie lived and slowed in front of her house. Parking, he bounded up the sidewalk toward her house, trying to put the case out of his mind for a few minutes at least while he spoke to Kylie.

He walked past her green hybrid and touched her hood. It was warm. She hadn’t been home long. He wondered where she’d been as he climbed the one step and then stood at her front door, rapping his knuckles against it.

Kylie was quickly making a habit of not answering her door right away when he knocked. It could be that she did it on purpose to get under his skin. Something told him that she didn’t think about him enough for that. He stepped away from the front door, glancing both ways at the front of the house, and then headed away from the drive, taking in the outside of her home and the windows.

Blinds were closed over each window. The white siding was slightly dirty but in good shape. The small bushes along the house had been trimmed back, probably a landlord’s doing before she moved in. She hadn’t said, but he put money on the fact that she hadn’t lived here long at all. Her house barely looked lived in and wasn’t homey. Kylie struck him as the kind of woman who would make a place her own given time. It was part of her need to feel in charge of her life.

Power lines extended from the street pole to the house, and it looked like someone, at some point, had drilled cable into the house to accommodate different rooms. Perry turned slowly toward the front door and squinted, noting a small wire under the roof overhang just above the door. Walking closer, he followed the wire with his eyes to where it disappeared inside the home. He traveled the length of it, looking up as he moved closer, and then stopped, gawking at the small, barely noticeable camera that was secured at the edge of the overhang.

“Fuck me running,” he muttered under his breath, moving past it to the front door and paying close attention to every detail of the rest of the house. “I wouldn’t have guessed this about you.”

He made a show of knocking on the door again, although there really wasn’t any point. Kylie knew he was out here, knew it without looking through her peephole. She had her entire home wired with some incredibly expensive-looking spy equipment. Studying the back side of the tiny camera, noting that it didn’t move but remained focused on the side of the home he’d just walked down, he turned around slowly, prickles attacking his spine, as he already felt the sensation that he was being watched carefully.

“There you are,” he whispered, spotting the other camera down the length of the house, just underneath the guttering. “Damn.”

He ran his hand over his hair, taking this new bit of information in about Kylie, and turned his attention to the doorknob when the lock inside clicked.

The door opened and he stared at her flushed face. Sleep had made her eyes slightly puffy and her lips were full, moist, and reminded him of how much he enjoyed kissing them. But it was her hair, tousled and turning in small waves that caressed her slender nape, that made him instantly hard.

“You’re late,” she murmured, her voice scratchy, further proof that possibly she hadn’t been inside watching him but instead asleep.

“You weren’t here at five,” he said, and knew instantly by the slight twitch of her lips that he was right.

She licked them and then raised her baby blues to his eyes, looking a lot more alert than she did a moment before.

“And I can’t stay,” he added.

“What do you have to do?” The scratchiness in her voice was gone and she moved around her door, pulling it open farther so he could enter.

Her curiosity didn’t surprise him. He knew he’d pegged her right when he’d listened to her question his nieces. Possibly she was working on a thesis. But there was another side of her, a side that craved action, adventure, and even a mystery. More than likely when she had picked up on teenage girls being abducted and showing up dead she decided to become a private detective.

His protective instincts kicked into overdrive as he stepped inside and let his gaze drop to the swell of her breasts, accentuated by how her oversized T-shirt draped over them. The fact that she didn’t wear a bra and if she had shorts on underneath the large shirt they weren’t visible made it damn hard to keep his cock from getting hard as a rock. Her long bare, slender legs and no shoes or socks somehow made her even sexier.

“Work,” he said, knowing not elaborating bugged the crap out of her.

“What are you working on?” She combed her blonde hair with her fingers and pulled her attention from him, looking into her home.

Her living room looked exactly like it did the last time he was here. Not as much as a cup on the coffee table, pillows in the corner on each end of the couch, and no media on anywhere. She spent all of her time back in her bedroom, and probably in that middle room she kept locked. He took a moment to glance toward her hallway, betting that room probably held the equipment for those cameras outside. No wonder she kept it locked.

“I get to go talk to the family of the young girl we found earlier today.”

“Oh.” Pain registered on Kylie’s face as if she actually knew what it was like to talk to parents of a child who’d just died. “Do you want something to drink before you go?”

“No time right now.” He looked down the hall. Both bedroom doors were open. “I stopped by for this.”

Kylie fascinated him, sexually and otherwise. There really wasn’t room in his life for any kind of serious, long-term relationship, but he was compelled to pull her in close, tighten the reins he decided needed to be put on her, and keep a close eye on her.

“What?” she started to ask, returning her attention to him.

He didn’t let her ask anything else. Grabbing her arms, he pulled her to him and then attacked her mouth with savage need that unleashed the moment his fingers moved over her flesh.