He located the photograph he was searching for and took a closer look.
Interesting.
He handed the photograph over to Cameron. She pointed. “This is one of the photos you showed me the night of the bachelorette party.”
“His name is Grant Lombard,” Jack said. “He does private security for Senator Hodges. He carries a gun—I noticed it the night we interviewed him. He had the proper permits, and since Mandy had been suffocated the gun didn’t jump out to us as a red flag. I remember him from the interview—sort of a cool, professional type. I also recall him being about five feet eleven and one hundred seventy pounds, so he matches the physical description of the guy we’re looking for. I thought I remembered him having brown eyes, too, although I wanted to confirm that with the picture.”
“The guy who attacked me had brown eyes,” Cameron said.
“Yes, he did.”
“By any chance does Grant Lombard have an alibi for the night of Mandy Robards’s murder?”
“He says he was at home sleeping. Alone,” Jack said.
“Given the time of murder, there’s probably not too much we can make of that,” Cameron said.
“True. But perhaps I need to ask him if he has an alibi for the time of your attack.”
Cameron took a second look at the picture. “He can’t exactly use the ‘at home sleeping’ excuse for four thirty in the afternoon. There’s certainly enough here to make it worth checking into.”
Jack pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Wilkins. His partner didn’t answer, so he left a message on his voicemail. “Wilkins—it’s Jack. I might have something in the Robards case—a lead worth looking into, at least. Call me when you get this message. I’ll fill you in then.”
Jack hung up, glad to finally have an actual lead to pursue after two weeks of hunting and pecking in the dark. “We’re not going to talk to anyone about this except Wilkins and Davis,” he told Cameron. “Not yet, anyway. I don’t want to take any chances that the wrong person could find out that you know more than we’d originally thought.”
Although he didn’t say it out loud, Jack knew that Cameron, as a prosecutor, understood that the gun could be a key piece of evidence. If Lombard did turn out to be the guy they were looking for, she had just inadvertently stumbled upon the link that could ultimately lead to his arrest.
The idea left Jack feeling very skittish.
“I’m sorry I didn’t remember this right away,” Cameron said. “That night at the hotel, you warned me not to be sloppy—I should’ve thought of this earlier.” She looked annoyed with herself. “After all the times I’ve raked a witness over the coals for claiming to remember something after the fact. Now I’ve done exactly the same thing.”
Jack reached for her. “I hate to break this to you, Cameron, but you’re only human.”
“Shh . . . I’ve been trying to keep that under wraps for years.”
He smiled and kissed her forehead. “Your secret is safe with me.”
She leaned into him, resting her cheek against his shoulder. “So where does all this leave us for tonight?”
Jack wrapped his arms around her. “Unfortunately, it means I have some work to do. There are a few things I want to check into.”
Cameron pulled back, running her hands over his chest. “What kinds of things? And more important, how long will they take?” she asked with a coy smile.
Two days, Jack thought. For two days he’d been tortured by Martino’s interrogators and had never broken once—not a single word. But this woman had him wrapped around her finger in one second flat with just a smile.
He knew he should probably run as fast as he could in the opposite direction.
Instead, he kissed her.
She kissed him back playfully at first, until he moved her against the counter. He wound his tongue around hers and slid his hands to her waist.
“I need to get to work,” Jack said as he kissed the spot on her neck that he knew drove her crazy.
“You do,” she agreed, as her hands wandered down his stomach. “And I need to unpack.”
“I’ll walk you to the stairs,” Jack said. They kissed the entire way as he backed her through the kitchen and to the staircase. By the time they got there, his hands had somehow made their way underneath her shirt.
“So you’ll come upstairs when you’re done working, then?” Cameron asked.
“Yes. Shouldn’t be too long.” There was a lot of kissing after that, and suddenly they were on the stairs and he was between her legs. He pushed her shirt up and scooted down, trailing his lips across her stomach.
She sucked in her breath. “Okay. I’m going.”
“Yes. Go.” Jack pulled himself up and kissed her—just one last time. Then he felt Cameron’s hands unzipping the fly of his jeans. She reached into his boxers, and he groaned as she wrapped her hand around him.
He peered down and saw the sparkle in her eyes.
Work would just have to wait a few damn minutes.
“Do you have any condoms left in your suitcase?” he asked raggedly, at least having the presence of mind to think of that while she worked him over. The woman had the most incredible hands.
“Top outer pocket,” Cameron said.
Jack stepped away, swore as he rummaged around, finally realized he was in the wrong pocket, grabbed a condom, and came back.
Holy fuck.
The little minx had taken the initiative of slipping off her jeans.
But she’d left the naughty-boots on.
“You know I feel naked without my heels,” Cameron said.
Jack tossed the condom onto the stairs. He shrugged off his blazer, then took off his gun harness and set it on the stairs next to the condom.
“Slide up two steps,” he ordered her.
She did. He spread her legs and knelt between them on a lower step. He watched her eyes widen as he slid one of her legs over his shoulder, then the other. He felt her tremble as he bent down and licked the top lacy edge of her panties.
“Jack . . .” she murmured, threading her fingers through his hair.
He hooked his finger around the waistband of her panties and pulled them down a few inches. He lowered his mouth.
Cameron moaned. “Oh god, you are the devil . . .”
Enough said.
Twenty-eight
CAMERON STOOD IN her closet, zipping her bridesmaid’s dress into a garment bag, when she noticed a figure hovering in the doorway.
“Were you just singing ‘Bette Davis Eyes’?” Jack asked with a lazy grin.
Cameron blushed, not having realized that’s what she’d been doing. Nice—a mind-blowing double orgasm and Jack literally had her singing.
“I might have been humming a little,” she said nonchalantly.
He cocked his head. “I thought that was your song with Collin.”
She laughed at this. “I don’t have a ‘song’ with Collin. It’s just a song I like.”
Jack appeared somewhat appeased by this. “Your Internet connection is too slow.”
Thank God—he was cranky about something. This Jack she could handle. The Jack who cupped her face as he whispered the most romantic and sexy things anyone had ever said to her as he made love to her on her own staircase, on the other hand, was a force of a different nature.
“You mentioned that the other day,” she said. “I’ve never had a problem with my connection before. Are you trying to run some super-fast secret agent program?”
“Yes. But it’s slow even for that.”
His teasing eyes made her stomach do a little flip. So this is what it’s like to fall in lov—hold on—not going to go there yet, Cameron told herself. She’d been dating Jack for all of—what—two days?