Julie Walker - Born Wild

“Yeah.” Washington nodded. “Which means, short of a confession, I suspect it’s gonna take some old-fashioned police work to get to the bottom of this thing.”

“You and I both know a confession is out of the question.” Bill would like nothing better than that, but in order for a person to confess, they usually had to feel guilty about whatever it was they were confessing to. And in order to feel guilty, a person needed a conscience. As far as he could figure, Parish and Edens were each missing that essential ingredient.

“Maybe.” Washington shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

Bill opened his mouth to respond but snapped it closed again, his lungs seizing, when the gray door swung open and Eve and Delilah pushed into the room. Sweet Mother Mary, if there were ever two women who looked like death warmed over, it was those two. And one glance at Eve’s ravaged, splotchy face, at the hard line between her brows and the heavy bags beneath her brilliant blue eyes, and his foolish, sympathetic, insane heart turned a somersault in his chest.

Wee!

Yessir, and that would be the sound of his feelings for Eve, going for yet another roller coaster ride.

Well, for shit’s sake…

Watching the women make their way through the messy desks of the Chicago police station’s Homicide Department made Mac’s stomach ache with so much sympathy he felt nauseous. Like someone had sucker punched his happy sack. And, sonofabitch, but he wished he could fall into that wormhole Bill’d spoken of and go back to this morning.

If any day deserved a do-over, it was this day. Holy crow…

But if I had a do-over, I’d never have taken that ride with Delilah.

Okay, so there was that. Because despite everything she’d been through, despite the fact that she’d survived a gun battle where she’d witnessed one of her friends cut down in cold blood, the truth was that having Delilah Fairchild snuggled up against his back on the ride over to Patrick Edens’s condo had made it onto Mac’s personal highlight reel. Which probably just proved how much of a degenerate he really was, but hot damn!

To his utter chagrin, he’d always been a sucker for that whole pin-up girl, Sophia Loren type, and Delilah pretty much personified the category. Hell, if the woman was a mathematics discipline, she’d be Trigonometry as opposed to Algebra, because she was all curves: not a straight line on her. And even now, makeup washed away, T-shirt stained with blood, and auburn hair sticking out like she’d shoved her finger in an electrical socket, she was still in the running for the top slot in the Sexiest Woman on the Planet Contest, which…damnit…was exactly what he didn’t need in his life right now. Or ever, come to think of it.

What was that thing Ozzie liked to say? You better check yourself before you wreck yourself? Well, in the case of Mac’s prodigious attraction to, nah, lust for Delilah, that was damn good advice.

Ripping his eyeballs away from her rolling gait took considerable effort, but he finally managed it. And when he let his gaze fall on Eve, his nausea returned with a vengeance.

Good thing Bill’s taken to carrying around that bottle of Pepto again, because I might just have to borrow it…

For pity’s sake, poor Eve looked like she’d been put through the wringer, taken out, dried off, then put through again…only inside-out. And in his not-so-humble opinion, she deserved a gold medal for the way she’d handled herself today. Scratch that, she deserved a parade and a whole freakin’ statue erected in her honor.

Had Bill really likened her to a china doll? Had he really agreed with that comparison? It was hard to believe either of them could’ve been so far off the mark, like, not even on the same freakin’ playing field. Because Eve Edens was proving to be one of the toughest, most courageous women Mac had ever met. And ol’ Billy-boy didn’t know it yet—or maybe the guy just didn’t want to admit it to himself—but he was a complete goner where she was concerned. At the moment, the dude was literally vibrating beside him while watching Eve approach, strung tighter than a piano wire. And his expression? Well, if possessiveness had a particular look, then it was the one wall-papered all over Wild Bill’s face.

Mac wondered if the man realized he instinctively reached for Eve when she stopped in front of him. Pulling her under his arm and tucking her in close, he asked, “Are you okay?” while bending to press his nose into her hair, inhaling the fragrance of her shampoo like nicotine addicts inhale secondary smoke.

G-O-N-E-R. What does that spell? Bill Reichert…

Eve pulled back to look up at him, and from the expression on her face, Bill wasn’t the only one running for mayor of Lovey Dovey Land. In fact, if Mac listened real close, he imagined he could hear Eve making those sad, whimpering puppy dog noises. Of course, Bill was the big, handsome guy who’d been trying to help her and protect her for the last couple of days, so Mac could totally get why Eve was pulling the whole hearts and flowers and soft sighs routine. As far as he could figure, she’d placed Bill in the role of real life superhero, which, honestly, Mac could sort of agree with. Unlike Dale Pennyworth, Wild Bill didn’t need a weird bodysuit to make him heroic. His personal attributes did that for him: courage, honor, loyalty…

Although if Bill’s the superhero, that makes you the trusty sidekick, a voice whispered.

Okay, so he didn’t particularly like the sound of that. After all, everyone wanted to be the hero of his own script. And he was totally going to chalk up wanting to be the hero of his own script as the reason why he didn’t pull away when Delilah sidled next to him, tentatively reaching for his hand. He laced his fingers with hers, giving them a squeeze as he tried to convey his support and perhaps lend a little bit of comfort. Then again, with one of her luscious boobs pressed against the back of his arm, it was kind of hard to think comforting and supportive thoughts and—

For the love of Christ. Pull your head out of the gutter, McMillan, he mentally groused at himself, and stop being such a cockstain.

Delilah pressed closer.

All right, so cockstain it was, because he couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything other than the fact that he thought maybe, just maybe, he could feel her nipple rubbing against his triceps.

And so much for being the superhero of his own script. Unless, of course, he was dressed as Batman in the porno movie playing in his head. Shit.

“Is there anything I or the Chicago Police Department can do for you, ladies?” Chief Washington asked, and right, so that did it. That was enough to distract Mac from the feel of Delilah’s warm hand laced with his, to take his mind—kinda, sorta, maybe—off the sensation of her breast pressing against his arm. Because if he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes, he wouldn’t have believed the man standing beside him, dark face as smooth and serene as an angel’s, was the same guy who’d just accused them of working for a government blow-job factory.

“You can find the thugs who shot up my bar and killed Buzzard,” Delilah said, her usually breathy, sex-star voice sounded hoarse, belying the fact that she’d been crying, freakin’ crying her pretty green eyes out, while she’d been giving her statement.

Right. And he’d been thinking about her boobs. He really was a degenerate. Worse than that. A shit-heel. A bona fide, grade-A shit-heel…

“We’re doing everything we can,” Washington assured her. “We’ve got alerts in to all the local hospitals and clinics. If a man comes in with shot pellets in his leg, we’ll be the first to know. And we’ve sent a sample of his blood for DNA testing. If he’s in the system, we’ll have his identity in seven to ten days.”

Okay, and shit-heel or not, Mac knew seven to ten days was probably optimistic. Because, unlike Bill, he was well-schooled on how slowly things worked outside the high-tech realm of top-tier government intelligence. So, despite the police chief’s assurance, if the CPD had the results of the DNA test by the end of two weeks, Mac would be shocked.

“And my father and ex-husband?” Eve asked, staring up at Washington with those wide blue eyes of hers. They were bruised and, at the same time, so innocent looking. Eyes like that, women like that, were the reasons men went to war. And, yessiree. No two ways about it. Wild Bill was toast. Just cover him in butter and jelly and slap him on a plate. “What are you going to do with them?” she asked.

“We’re going to question them and figure out which one of them is behind the attacks,” Washington assured her. “It appears they both have a motive to—”

“Wait,” Eve interrupted, shaking her head and looking as if the only thing holding her up was the fact that Bill had his arm around her. She lifted her hand to start gnawing on the side of her thumb. “What motive does Blake have again?”

Washington opened his mouth, but Mac beat him to the punch. “If what he said was true,” he explained, “then it’s possible your father could use your life insurance and inheritance to save their bad business deal, thereby savin’ Parish’s ass in the process.”

“But then why would he come out and admit the business deal was a bust?” Her brows formed a perfect V. “Why wouldn’t he try to keep his motive a secret?”

“Maybe to throw us off the scent,” Washington said. “Maybe he thought if he pointed the finger at your father, we wouldn’t look as closely at him.”