Sandra Brown - Ricochet

He stepped into the shower beneath the spray.

He had looked at what he’d done from a practical, professional, and moral standpoint, forcefully keeping his emotions at bay, fearing that they would prevent him from making the right decisions.

But the warm water of the shower dissolved his control. Moaning, he leaned against the tile wall and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. The ache inside his chest was guilt. He was suffering the torment of conscience. Regret had sunk its sharp teeth into him.

But he still wanted Elise with every breath he drew.

He couldn’t turn it off, this all-encompassing desire. Both tenacious and urgent, it was unlike anything he’d felt for any other woman. It had gripped him the instant he saw her, and tonight, having had her, it was even more acute than before.

Tomorrow he would atone. “I swear I will,” he vowed in a ragged whisper.

But tonight…

He closed his eyes tightly and let the recollections flow through his mind as freely as his blood surged through his veins. He remembered every detail, vividly. He relived every sound, smell, taste, every touch, every sensation he’d experienced. That first turbulent kiss. Discovering her wet for him. The last sweet ripple of her orgasm.

A raw groan escaped his tight throat. The warm water rained down over his body as a tide of sensation coursed through him, inexorably and uncontainably. As it spilled from him, he shuddered and permitted himself to say, with all the emotion he felt, what he hadn’t allowed himself to say before. “Elise. Elise.”

Towel around his waist, he walked from his bathroom into his bedroom and sat down on the bed. He was physically exhausted, but knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he’d unburdened himself to DeeDee. This couldn’t keep till daylight.

He picked up his cell phone, took a deep breath, and before he could talk himself out of it, speed-dialed her number.

She answered on the first ring. “How’d you hear so fast? Did Worley call you, too?”

“Huh?”

“You know about Napoli, right?”

“ Napoli? No. What about him?”

“They found him on the Talmadge Bridge, deader than a hammer. I’m ten minutes from you.” She clicked off before he could say anything else.

For several seconds, he stared at the phone in his hand, wondering if the bizarre conversation had actually taken place or if he’d imagined it. Then, having assimilated what she said, he bounded off the bed and dressed hastily. He finger-combed his wet hair and jogged downstairs, only barely remembering to set the house alarm before leaving.

He was pacing the sidewalk in front of his town house when DeeDee turned the corner onto his street. He jogged to meet her. She stopped only long enough for him to scramble in, then sped away.

“You were farther than ten minutes out.”

“I stopped for coffee, Grumpy. Please don’t bother to thank me for being kind and considerate enough to guarantee that you get your minimum daily requirement of caffeine.”

She had a Big Gulp of Diet Coke wedged between her thighs, but he was too grateful for the coffee to remark on it.

“Are we still mad at each other?” she asked, looking at him out the corner of her eye.

He took a sip of coffee. “I wasn’t mad at you.”

“You were mad.”

“We had a difference of opinion. It happens. Even between people of like minds.”

“Well, I was mad at you.” He looked over at her. She shrugged. “First for sneaking off to Atlanta without me.”

“You wouldn’t like Tony Esteban. Trust me on this.”

“Then I was mad because you were being so mulish about Elise Laird. For a while there, I was afraid you’d gone round the bend. I was relieved when you decided to bring her downtown tomorrow. Or today, actually.”

“Wait, DeeDee. Before you give me too much credit, which I don’t deserve, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.” He hesitated, trying to find the words for his confession that wouldn’t send her into orbit. “Tonight I-”

“From the minute we walked into the Lairds’ house the night of the shooting, I’ve felt that something was out of joint,” she said. “I still do. Now this.”

“ ‘Now this’? What do you mean?”

She took the entrance ramp of the bridge too fast. Duncan, never entirely comfortable on the bridge, gripped the armrest and tried to keep from spilling hot coffee in his lap.

From just about any point in downtown Savannah, you could see the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge. That was especially true at night, when its well-lighted struts dominated the northern skyline of the city. Tonight, it was even more visible. At its crest, the flashing colored lights of several emergency vehicles had it lit up like the Fourth of July.

“Forensics is already here. Good,” DeeDee said, noticing their van. She brought the car to a halt and opened her door.

Duncan reached across the console and stopped her from getting out. “What did you mean by ‘now this’?”

She stuck out her hand, palm up. “I’m betting a hot fudge sundae against an egg white omelet that our dead Meyer Napoli is somehow connected to our dead Gary Ray Trotter.”

Duncan looked down at her open palm then reluctantly slapped it.

She was out of the car like a shot.

His confession would have to wait.

Meyer Napoli didn’t look as dapper in death as he had in life.

Vain as he was, Napoli would have hated making such a bad-looking corpse. His olive complexion had faded to the color of biscuit dough. It looked even paler in the flash of the crime scene photographer’s camera.

“Bled quarts on the inside, I bet,” Worley remarked around his toothpick and stepped aside to give Duncan and DeeDee a better view into the car, which was parked on the shoulder of the inbound lane.

Napoli was in the driver’s seat. His chin was resting on his chest; he had died gazing at the bullet hole in his upper abdomen and possibly wondering how a wound that small could wreak such havoc.

His hands were lying in his lap, palms up. They’d provided a reservoir for the blood that had trickled from the fatal wound. Perhaps he’d tried to contain the internal hemorrhage by pressing on the bullet hole, until he’d become resigned to the inevitable.

“Bullet must’ve passed through several organs,” Worley told them. “Bursting them like water balloons. He bled out.”

“Is that what Dothan said?”

“He hasn’t got here yet,” Worley replied, “but I’ve seen enough men gut shot to know what it looks like.”

“Did you find a weapon?”

“Not yet.”

“Have you looked?”

Worley removed his toothpick and sneered at DeeDee. “No, Detective Bowen. I’m a damn rookie. Would never occur to me to look for a weapon at a shooting.”

Duncan jumped in before they got into one of their verbal skirmishes. “No weapon rules out suicide.”

“Correct. Besides, this asshole was too conceited to off himself. But I’m guessing he may have been shot with his own pistol. He always carried a Taurus twenty-five in an ankle holster, with a bullet in the chamber.”

“Trusting guy,” DeeDee said.

“He bragged about it. One time I personally saw him pull up his pants leg and show it off.” Worley bent down and raised the cuff of Napoli ’s left trouser leg with the tip of a ballpoint pen. A holster was strapped to his ankle with Velcro. It was empty.

“Shell casing?” Duncan asked.

“No sign of one yet. And I’ve looked,” he added for DeeDee’s benefit. “Along with forensics. They checked under the car seat. Nothing.”

DeeDee said, “Time of death?”

“ Dothan will have to nail that. But the blood isn’t quite congealed, so I’m guessing not too long ago. Besides, it couldn’t have been too long because he would have been discovered sooner.”