Criminal Deception Page 2

  “He’ll find out soon enough.”

  “He’s not going to like it.”

  Because she couldn’t disagree, Liz shrugged, then leaned one hip against the stair railing and studied Natalia. She was older than first glance suggested, although with her bottom lip edged out, she still resembled a pouty adolescent. Joe had been sitting with her when Liz walked into the coffee shop; they lived next door to each other. Just friends? Or more?

  Judging from Natalia’s animosity, Liz would guess very good friends, or the girl wanted a whole lot more.

  A little jealousy somewhere deep inside her prickled. Did Joe go for the big-eyed, underfed waif type? Because if so, he couldn’t possibly appreciate anything about her. She was so far off that target that she might as well be another life form.

  But Joe’s love life was none of her business. She was here to find out what he knew about Josh. No doubt the hostility he’d displayed toward his brother was genuine; she just didn’t know whether he’d told the truth about not seeing him. Families tended to stick together. Seven years with the marshals service, and she hadn’t yet met the family willing to turn on their loved one, no matter what he’d done.

  “Your puppies are cute.”

  Natalia watched the dogs collide, then tumble across the grass, legs tangled together, and almost smiled. “They’re not mine. I found them.”

  “Finders keepers doesn’t apply?”

  “Mrs. Wyndham says no.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Joe’s gonna keep them. First he said no, but then he got distracted and said okay.” Natalia gave a tiny grimace of a smile and grudgingly added, “Thanks.”

  So Liz’s appearance had been enough of a distraction to make Joe agree to take two dogs he didn’t want. It wasn’t a warm welcome; she never expected those.

  But it was something.

  Raven was late coming into the shop. Joe waited on a few after-work customers, hiding his impatience to leave. Usually when he got antsy, he went for a bike ride. A fast twenty-five miles could work it right out of him. This evening he didn’t have that option, at least not until he went home and faced Natalia, her puppies and her questions about Liz Dalton.

  He couldn’t believe Liz had tracked him down. When he left Chicago, he’d cut off contact with pretty much everyone but his parents, and they’d moved away, too, soon after. A few aunts and uncles knew where he’d gone, but most of them wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Josh. Especially not Josh.

  Besides, he didn’t want to think that Josh was important enough to Liz that she’d bothered to track him down.

  There’s no accounting for taste, his grandmother used to say.

  A muffled thud from the storeroom indicated Raven’s arrival. He walked into the room, stopping so suddenly he practically toppled over. If he didn’t know she was the only other person with a key to the shop, he would have thought a stranger had wandered in.

  Gone was the jet-black hair that looked like it came straight from an ink bottle, and in its place was a warm, natural-looking brown. He’d never seen Raven with a hair color even close to natural. All the excess holes—lip, nose, brow, ears—were empty, and her makeup actually flattered her instead of making her look like a walking corpse. Add a green shirt and faded jeans in place of her usual black, and she looked normal. He’d never seen her looking normal.

  First Liz Dalton showing up, then Raven transforming into the girl next door…This couldn’t be good.

  “What?” she asked hostilely, snapping Joe out of his shock. Hostility he was used to.

  “Nothing. I’m out of here. Call me if you need anything.” He wheeled his bike into the alley. As he tightened the strap of the helmet and swung one leg over the bike frame, he wondered what was responsible for Raven’s new look.

  Love or, at least, lust.

  Look at Liz. She hadn’t changed her appearance for Josh, but she’d surely lowered her standards. Women like her just didn’t get involved with men like him. She was too smart, classy, law-abiding. At least, she had been. Who knew what all those months with Josh had done to her?

  Now that he was gone, why was she looking for him? To renew the relationship? To punish him? To reclaim something he’d taken of hers?

  Joe regretted not asking.

  His edginess still sharp, he rode onto Oglethorpe, then made a left onto Calhoun. Too soon, he braked to turn into the Wyndham gate and bumped along the gravel road until he reached his house. Natalia’s lime-green bike was parked next door, but there was no sign of her or the dogs he’d agreed to take in the stupidity of his fog over seeing Liz. Maybe she’d changed her mind. Maybe she’d decided that trying to hide them from Miss Abigail was worth a shot…though he couldn’t imagine anything escaping the old woman’s attention.

  He’d reached the top of the steps when a screen door thumped shut. He was accustomed to neighbors on either side, but this sound had come from the other side of the yard. It was only Tuesday, so neither granddaughter would be home from college, and the middle house had stood empty longer than he’d lived there.

  The hair on the back of his neck prickled. He didn’t want to look over his shoulder. He’d done too damn much of that in the first six months out of the hospital; a balloon popping had been enough to make him dive for cover. But once he’d come to Copper Lake, the uneasiness had faded. He’d felt safe here.

  But if Liz could find him, so could the Mulroney brothers, the Chicago businessmen who’d proven once that they couldn’t tell the difference between him and Josh. Maybe if they did come around, he’d have time to show them the scars left from their previous run-in as proof. If they didn’t kill him first and look later.

  Slowly he turned. And stared.

  Oh, man, hadn’t he thought on seeing Raven that life was taking a turn for the worse?

  Liz was seating herself on the top step of the cottage directly across the lawn. She’d changed into really short denim cutoffs that made her mile-long legs look two miles long, and topped them with a plain white T-shirt like those that filled his top dresser drawer. His had never looked that good.

  Her olive skin damn near glowed in the late-afternoon sun, and her hair gleamed blue-black. She’s Italian, Josh had said with a wink and a leer. You know what that means. Hot-blooded as hell.

  Just looking at her made Joe’s blood hot.

  He should go inside his house. Lock the door. Pull the shades. Do his best, damn it, to pretend that he hadn’t seen her again, that she wasn’t sitting fifty feet away, that she’d never been Josh’s girl.

  Instead he slowly walked down the steps and across the yard. The grass was thick and smelled sweetly of spring and the promise of summer. He stopped ten feet from the porch and watched as Liz took a drink of bottled water.

  Big mistake. He shouldn’t be watching anything involving a mouth as sexy as hers. The plumping of her plum-colored lips as they closed around the bottle neck, the movement of muscles as the cold water flowed down her throat, the slight grip of pink-tipped fingers around the bottle’s sweaty plastic…

  Finally—thank God—she lowered the bottle and met his gaze. “Hello, neighbor.”

  He swallowed hard, his own mouth suddenly dry. “Do you know how many millions of those bottles wind up in landfills and how long they take to decompose? The least you could do is buy a gallon jug and drink it from a glass. Better yet, buy a filtering system, or hey, here’s an idea—drink from the tap. It won’t kill you.”

  She blinked, then looked at the bottle. “Sorry my drinking habits offend you.”

  Heat flushed through him. He wasn’t a crusader. He did what he could to be environmentally responsible, but he didn’t push it on others. But instead of apologizing, he asked, “Why are you here?”

  “I told you. I’m looking for Josh.”

  “And I told you, I haven’t seen or heard from him.”

  Her smile was small and tight. She didn’t believe him. She thought he was protecting his seven-minutes-
older brother. That just proved how little she knew him.

  Of course, they didn’t know each other at all. He’d seen her four times before the Mulroneys had tried to kill him in Josh’s place. Four excruciating evenings with Josh between them.

  Except that last time. For a few short minutes they’d been alone in the room, and the tension between them had been unbearable. They had almost touched that night—had almost kissed. But she had whispered exactly the right words to stop him, and he’d bolted from the room before his brother had returned.

  Remember Josh.

  That was probably the only time in his life he’d managed to forget him.

  “So what do you think? That if you hang around here long enough, Josh will show up and prove me a liar?” He folded his arms over his chest. “You’ve mistaken me for my brother. I don’t lie.”

  “Never?” she asked, one brow arched.

  He’d fled the kitchen that night, nearly plowing over Josh on the way. What’s wrong? he’d asked, and Joe had brushed him off. Nothing. Everything’s fine. Except that he’d almost kissed his brother’s girl. Except that he’d wanted a hell of a lot more than a kiss from her.

  Now he just wanted her to go away.

  “How did you get Miss Abigail to rent to you?” The old lady didn’t need the income from the cottages. She only rented to people she knew and liked. She’d been a regular at the coffee shop for three months before she’d agreed to let him have the purple house.

  “I told her you and I were old friends.”

  He scowled. “And she believed you?”

  “And provided me with keys, furniture and dishes.”

  “I’ll have to tell her you lied.”

  Liz’s eyes widened innocently. “What kind of gentleman would do that?” Then she smiled. “See? I haven’t mistaken you for your brother. No one would ever call Josh a gentleman.”

  It was an incredible smile, and it did incredible things to him. The knots in his gut changed to an entirely different kind of knot. Not stress, not anxiety, but tension of a much more intimate nature. He liked that smile. He could grow used to it very quickly. He could learn to need it.

  If only he could also learn to forget.

  Resolutely he stiffened his spine and scowled at her again. “Why are you looking for Josh?”

  She took another drink from the bottle, her gaze on him as if expecting another lecture. After capping it, she set it aside, then rested her arms on her bent knees. “Let’s just say he’s got something I want.”

  It figured. His brother was a liar, a cheat, self-centered to the max and, now, a thief, too. “You won’t find him hanging around me.”

  “Maybe not. But it’s the last place I have to hang around.”

  “Leave your number and go back to Chicago. I’ll call you if I hear from him.”

  She shrugged. “I’m in no hurry to get back. I’ll stick around and experience Georgia in the springtime. Mrs. Wyndham says it’s very nice.”

  He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Pivoting on his heel, he stalked back across the grass to his own house. Before he reached it, though, Natalia’s screen door slammed open and eight scrabbling feet dragged her onto the porch. He wasn’t sure whether the yelps came from her or the lunging, yipping dogs she held, more or less, at the ends of two leashes. She scrambled down the steps, barely keeping both her balance and her hold on the leashes, then managed to dig in her heels as both dogs began sniffing and dancing around his feet.

  Her smile was brave if not particularly confident as she offered the leashes to him. “Your puppies,” she said breathlessly. “You’ll love them.”

  He looked down at the dogs, one sniffing so fast that he was surprised it didn’t hyperventilate and the other trying to climb up him with paws the size of salad plates. “Puppies,” he repeated. He’d expected something small, cute and cuddly that would fall asleep with nothing more than a brief belly scratch. These two were both quivering nose to tail as if they might never sleep.

  Liz, Raven and now this. Life was going downhill fast.

  Chapter 2

  Liz woke up at five-thirty without the help of an alarm, but her eyes were heavy and her brain slow to kick in as she crawled out of bed. After a stop in the bathroom, she padded into the living room to look across the grass at the lavender house. The windows were dark, and there was no sign of the black heavy-duty bike that was Joe’s only mode of transportation.

  Even back in Chicago, he’d been into recycling. Ever juvenile, Josh had thought it a hoot to toss out pop cans and newspapers when his brother was around. But she hadn’t realized until prepping to come here that his commitment to going green extended to not even owning a car.

  She felt a twinge of guilt when she opened the refrigerator and took out a bottled water and the foam container that held leftovers from last night’s dinner.

  She knew from her briefing that A Cuppa Joe opened at 6:00 a.m. Business was good enough that Joe had a part-time helper, a retired schoolteacher by the name of Esther, from opening until nine. There was another part-timer, Raven, who worked from 5:00 p.m. until close. After Esther and before Raven, Joe was usually on his own.

  For at least part of that time today, he would have company.

  She ate bites of cold vegetable lo mein while getting dressed. Makeup done, hair pulled into a froth of curls on top of her head, earrings matched to her cobalt-blue sheath, Liz stepped into strappy sandals with three-inch heels, grabbed her purse and went to her rental car.

  The sky was turning rosy in the east, and lights were on in most of the houses she passed on her way downtown. Back home in Dallas, lights were always on, and morning traffic was a nightmare. Chicago, where she’d spent two months before the botched murder attempt sent her, Josh and the rest of the team out of state, was the same. Copper Lake’s early morning traffic consisted of only an occasional car.

  She parked in the same spot she’d taken the day before and just sat for a moment. Most of the buildings that faced the square were dimly lit, but A Cuppa Joe, Krispy Kreme and Ellie’s Deli were bright and welcoming. Visible through the large window of the coffee shop, Esther, her hair a startling orange, was filling mugs for seated customers while Joe was behind the counter, a line of about ten waiting.

  He moved quickly, efficiently, with a few words and an easy smile for each customer. Two years ago, he’d been a destined-for-success financial planner in one of Chicago’s top investment firms and had looked the part in Armani suits and Alden shoes.

  He looked just as handsome and even a little sexier in faded jeans and a pale blue T-shirt bearing the shop’s logo.

  She waited five, ten, twenty minutes, but business didn’t slack off. Finally she went inside, took a place at the end of the line and waited, nerves tightening each time she moved forward.

  Joe turned from the cash register and his smile disappeared. Mouth tightening at one corner, he curtly asked, “What do you want?”

  She would bet this month’s salary that his question had nothing to do with taking an order, but she smiled and gave one anyway. “Just plain coffee.”

  “Topéca, Jamaica Blue Mountain, Sumatra Mandehling?”

  “You choose.” Her coffee generally came crystallized in a jar and was reconstituted with microwaved water. She wasn’t picky.

  “To go?” There was a hint of hopefulness in his voice, although his expression remained impassive.

  She smiled again. “No. I’ll drink it here.”

  He bypassed the paper cups and cardboard sleeves, both bearing the emblem signifying recycled materials, and took a white ceramic mug from a shelf above the back counter. Dozens of mugs were lined up there, in all colors, sizes and designs, most marked with a regular’s name. Natalia’s was tall, pale yellow with emerald grass and a cartoon drawing of a lime-green bike.

  Liz bet she could come in five times a day for a month and still not get her own mug added to the collection.

  She paid
no attention to the type of coffee he poured into the cup. It was steaming, fragrant and loaded with caffeine. That was all she needed. He traded the mug for the two bucks she offered without coming close to touching her, and he laid the change on the counter rather than in her outstretched hand.

  Maybe some bit of sizzle remained on his part, after all.

  She chose a table where her back was to the wall, not out of any sense of security but because it allowed her to see everyone in the shop and afforded a good view through the plate glass windows that lined the two outside walls.

  Copper Lake had twenty thousand people or so and was prosperous for a small Southern town. The downtown was well-maintained and occupation of the buildings seemed about a hundred percent. The grass in the square was manicured, the flowerbeds were colorful and weed-free, and the gazebo bore a new coat of white paint. It looked like the small town of fiction: homey, welcoming, safe—a place where people looked out for each other.

  Was that what had drawn Joe? Had he needed that sense of refuge?

  She’d doctored her coffee with sweetener from a glass bowl in the middle of the table, stirred it with a real spoon and nursed her way through half of it when a presence disturbed the air. Glancing up, she met Joe’s gaze, unsmiling, serious blue. At the moment, he looked as if the only thing he needed refuge from was her. She might feel something about that later. Regret. Disappointment. Maybe even satisfaction, that he felt enough of something to need to keep her at a distance.

  He slid into the seat across from her, resting his hands on the table top. Good hands. Strong, tanned, long fingers, neat nails. “You were keeping Josh on a pretty short leash. How did he get away?”

  She resented the idea that she was the clingy sort but could see why he thought so. From the time she’d been assigned to Josh’s case, she’d rarely left his side.

  Until the day he’d knocked her partner unconscious, handcuffed her to the bed and waltzed out of the San Francisco safe house where they’d been staying. She’d cursed herself hoarse and sworn that she would find him. Getting handcuffed, and to a bed, no less, by her protectee was the lowlight of her career.