“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?

“I hope you’re not looking to me for answers about this Internet thing,” she told him. “If there’s a problem, I turn the computer off and then on again. If that doesn’t fix it, I call Collin.”

Jack folded his arms across his chest. “I think we need to talk about this Collin dependency. Because there’s a new sheriff in town.”

“Hmm. That’s a little alpha for my tastes,” Cameron said with a disapproving air.

She tried not to look totally turned on.

“I’m going to take a look upstairs at your computer,” Jack said. “Maybe one of your neighbors is tapping into your wireless signal. It’s easy to do in the city, with houses as close as they are. What’s your password?”

“You won’t need one. I leave the computer running and just let it go into sleep mode whenever I’m not using it.”

Jack threw her a look that said this was a big no-no. “I think I now know why you’re having Internet problems.”

“What is it you’re trying to do from your laptop, anyway?” Cameron asked.

“Just a few things I want to have ready when Wilkins calls. I can log onto the Bureau’s network remotely—I want to take another look at Lombard’s cell phone records that we pulled a couple weeks ago. Plus I’ve been thinking about setting up a trace on his phone, although I’ll need one of the tech guys to help me with that. Then we can track everywhere Lombard’s been—at least with his phone—over the last few days.”

Cameron put the bridesmaid’s dress back into its spot on the rack behind the door. She glanced over her shoulder. “Without a warrant, that sounds highly illegal.”

“Legal, illegal, there are so many gray areas.”

“I didn’t hear that, Jack.”

“Nothing to hear, counselor. I never said a word.”


WHEN HE REACHED the third floor, Jack turned left and headed into the office. Cameron’s desk faced the window, overlooking her front yard and the street below. Jack went over to the desk and took a seat. When he moved the mouse, the computer sprang to life.

Possibly, he just needed to reboot the system since she’d left it running for who knew how long. Still, he wanted to be sure. He checked to see how many computers were linked to her router—as he’d said to her, maybe someone was pilfering her wireless connection and that was slowing everything down.

It took a second for the screen to open. What he saw threw him for a loop.

That can’t be right.

There were fifteen devices using Cameron’s Internet connection. Jack was aware of two—his laptop and Cameron’s desktop computer.

So what the hell were the other thirteen? It was possible that a neighbor could be stealing her signal, maybe even a couple, but thirteen neighbors using her Internet was extremely unlikely.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t thirteen computers, but something else. That was what Jack checked next. He pulled up the data stream for the first device.

Strange.

It was transmitting an audio signal.

But Jack heard nothing. He turned up the volume on Cameron’s computer. Still nothing. He moved onto the next device—this one was also transmitting an audio signal.

Again, nothing.

What the hell?

He quickly checked the other signals—all audio—and finally found something being transmitted through the eighth one.

It was the sound of a woman singing softly. A smoky voice he recognized well.

All the boys think she’s a spy, she’s got Bette Davis eyes.

Cameron. In her bedroom.

Jack could hear the sound of a drawer shutting, then a zipper, as she continued unpacking her suitcase.

Son of a bitch.

He deliberately began drumming his fingers on the desk—making enough noise for a test, but not too much—as he hurriedly checked the remaining devices. He knew what he would eventually find. When he got to the last audio signal, the sound of his fingers rapping against the wood echoed through Cameron’s computer, clear as day.

Jack would’ve sworn out loud if he could have.

The goddamn house was bugged.

His mind raced, dozens of thoughts all at once. The masked man . . . Thursday afternoon . . . they had assumed he’d been waiting to attack Cameron when she came home from work. Jack realized now that Mandy’s killer hadn’t been in the house at four thirty in the afternoon to avoid police surveillance; he’d been there because he was after something else entirely. He wanted to listen.

He wanted to know what Cameron knew.

Nowadays, microphones used for eavesdropping were smaller than ever—less than the size of a button. And all one needed was a computer, a wireless network, and the IP addresses of the monitoring devices. Not much harder than setting up a nanny cam, particularly for someone who knew what he was doing.

Jack pulled out his BlackBerry—luckily, now that they knew what the guy was up to, they could turn things around. Assuming Mandy’s killer was actively monitoring the bugs, they could back-trace the link to the IP address of the computer he was using to listen to them. And once they had that information, they could pinpoint the location of that computer—and the killer.

Jack started to type a text message to Wilkins—obviously, he couldn’t call him or anyone else from the house with it being bugged. Then he stopped, realizing it would be faster to simply take Cameron out to his car and make the call from there. He’d have to slip her a note explaining the situation, of course, because they couldn’t say anything that would tip the killer off—he could be listening to them right then.

Jack’s stomach twisted into a knot.

The killer could be listening.

Assuming he’d been monitoring them, the killer would’ve heard every word he and Cameron had said that evening. Fragments of their conversations echoed through his head:

I’m pretty sure the guy who killed Mandy Robards was wearing a gun the night he strangled her . . .

His name is Grant Lombard. He does private security for Senator Hodges . . . He matches the physical description of the guy we’re looking for . . .

By any chance does Grant Lombard have an alibi for the night of Mandy Robards’s murder? . . .

Perhaps I need to ask him if he has an alibi for the time of your attack.

Then Jack recalled a separate conversation, an earlier one, and his whole body went cold.

To disarm the alarm, you just enter the security code.

What’s five-two-two-five?

It spells “Jack” on the keypad. Should be easy enough to remember.

The killer knew the code to the alarm.

“Cameron,” Jack whispered, his heart leaping into his throat. He’d left her alone . . . he couldn’t hear her right then . . . the second floor was too quiet . . . Jack dropped his BlackBerry and reached for his shoulder harness—

“Don’t make a fucking move,” commanded a low voice behind him.

The distinctive sound of the slide of a gun chambering a round echoed through the room.

With his hand frozen at his harness, Jack looked over his shoulder. He took in the man standing in the doorway, aiming a gun right at his head.