Page 64 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

I wrote him another note. I distinctly remembered telling her that Wyatt was a cop and that he was reviewing the mall parking lot security tapes, trying to get a tag number of the car that had almost hit me. No, Ihadn’ttold her he was a cop, not exactly, but who else would be reviewing security tapes and getting tag numbers, and when she’d said something about it being nice having a boyfriend who was a cop I hadn’t corrected her, so indirectly I’d confirmed it for her.

In any case, Wyatt hadn’t been able to pull any useful information off the tape, but she hadn’t known that. So she’d switched cars, to a white Chevrolet. And now I hadn’t seen the white Chevrolet in a while, so possibly she was in something else, which to me meant she either had access to a used-car lot or she was using rental cars.

Forester grinned when he was finished reading my notes. “You think like a cop,” he said approvingly, and I was so proud of the compliment that I blushed.

When we got back to the police department he insisted I go in, so we rode the elevator up to what I thought of as the cop floor. I guess technically they were all cop floors, except for the ones where the cells were, but that one seemed to be where the actual cop work was done.

I naturally went to Wyatt’s office, while Forester went to his desk. Wyatt’s door was open and he waved me in. He was on the phone, pacing in his small office, his suit jacket off and his sleeves rolled up as usual. I paused in the door for a moment, admiring his ass as he paced, because Wyatt had a mighty fine ass and I appreciate art wherever I find it. In this case, it was in his pants.

He looked a little sweaty, I thought, as if he hadn’t been here in the office all this time. In fact, he looked as if he’d just come back in. It was a nice warm day, warm enough to make a man sweat if he was wearing a suit jacket, so he’d been out on a scene somewhere. That was why Forester had gone with me to the hospital instead of Wyatt; he’d been available, and Wyatt hadn’t been. Actually, Forester would normally have gone anyway, but Wyatt took a close interest in my cases.

He noticed that I was still standing in the door and he solved that by tucking the phone against his shoulder, holding it with his head tilted to the side as he pulled me into his office with one hand and closed the door with the other. I could hear some man’s voice on the other end of the call, droning on and on. Still holding my arm with his left hand, Wyatt grabbed the phone with his right and held it down against his thigh while he bent his head and kissed me very thoroughly.

He definitely smelled a little sweaty, too, damp heat rising off him, and that was enough to flash me back to our lovemaking the night before, to the hot, sweaty intensity of it. I clutched at his ribs and put a little extra into the kiss—okay, a lot extra, melting against him, automatically checking out the status of Old Faithful. He broke away from me, growling a little, his pants tented. His fierce green gaze promised,Later.Then he patted my butt and returned the phone to his ear. After listening a second or two he said, “Yes, Mr. Mayor,” as he resumed his seat.

I was sitting decorously on one side of the desk and Wyatt was leaned back in his own chair when Forester knocked on the door a moment later. Well, I didn’t know it was Forester until I got up to open the door, but it was. Wyatt waved him into the office, too. Forester’s eyes were very bright and full of anticipation.

Finally Wyatt was able to get off the phone and he clicked it into its cradle with a snap, his focus already on Forester. “What did you find?”

“She was on the tape, but not in the employee photos. Because of certain behaviors, plus the lack of photo I.D., Lawless, that’s the chief of security, thinks she isn’t a hospital employee. So we don’t have an I.D., which puts us back at square one—almost.” Forester shot a glance at me. “Blair came up with a theory that makes sense to me, though our information is so slim I don’t think we have enough to cross-check it.” He handed my notes over the desk to Wyatt.

Wyatt swiftly skimmed my notes, shot a quick look at me, and said, “I agree, she was probably driving the Buick, which means that wasn’t a sudden fit of road rage, it was a deliberate attempt at murder. But we can cross-check by the dates. The rental agencies have some overlap in the type of cars they rent out, but not all of them will have Buicks available. Find the ones that do. If she’s using rentals, the beige Buick would have been turned in last Friday. She would have gotten the white Chevrolet the same day, but I very much doubt she would have used the same rental agency. I think she would have gone to another agency, but hell, there’s a row of them at the airport. If she’s that smart, then she would have turned in the white Chevrolet and gotten something else on Wednesday, before she set the fire. Since Blair survived that, too, I’d say she would have turnedthatvehicle in yesterday. So now she’s in something else, and we don’t have a clue what to be on the lookout for.”

Forester was taking notes, writing rapidly, pausing once to scratch his jaw. “I can get the rental agencies to give me the names of all females who rented vehicles on these particular dates. If any of them pop up twice, I’d say we have a person of interest.”

Wyatt nodded. “Get on it. We’re running out of time today, if any of them balk and require a warrant.” For routine investigation stuff like that, most judges wouldn’t deal with signing a warrant on the weekend; it would have to wait until Monday.

Forester glanced toward the door, and in it appeared one of the female detectives, her eyes big with excitement—and focused on me.

“Ms. Mallory,” she gushed, her voice loud enough to attract the attention of everyone on the floor. “I’m so excited to meet you! Would you autograph this for me, please? I want to post it in the women’s locker room.” She handed over a sheet of paper with ragged edges, while a crowd gathered behind her, peering into the office. I could almost feel the accumulation of glee.

Automatically I took the sheet of paper and looked down at it, recognizing it immediately. It was one of the notes I’d written while I was locked in DeMarius Washington’s squad car, and stuck to the window with chewing gum. But what was it doing here?

In a flash I remembered DeMarius leafing through the notes and grinning, and Forester doing the same. One of them must have filched this particular note, instead of dropping it in my tote with the others.

“Let’s see that,” Wyatt said with resignation, recognizing a setup when he saw one.

Very helpfully, Forester plucked the note from my hand and placed it on Wyatt’s desk, while everyone gathered outside the door burst into raucous laughter.

In very big block letters, which I had gone over several times to make them darker, was what I had meant to be the coup de grâce on all the asshole men who hadn’t let me out of that stinky squad car:

SIZE MATTERS

Chapter

Twenty-eight

“Size matters, huh?” Wyatt growled, grabbing me around the waist when he entered the house not five minutes behind me late that afternoon. I’d escaped his office amid the howls of laughter and made a beeline for the third fabric store, where—tah-dah—I’d found my fabric. I’d been so happy and relieved I hadn’t even questioned the price, which had been steep, but then you don’t get quality fabric for a dollar ninety-nine a yard. My booty now rested safely in the trunk of my rental, and I was taking it to Sally’s house in the morning. She intended to work on the dress all weekend.

Now I had to deal with Wyatt.

“Well, yeah,” I managed to gasp between voracious kisses. What, you expected me to lie?

“Then it’s a good thing I have enough to handle you.” He’d unsnapped my jeans and was peeling them down.

He did; oh, he did. He knew it, too, and proved it once again. At least he got me to the couch that time, instead of simply taking me down to the floor as he’d done on more than one occasion.

And then he lingered, stroking in and out, looking down at my body as he clasped my hips between his strong hands. “It makes a difference,” he said roughly. “No birth control. It makes a difference.”

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