Private Investigations Read online

  “I got the number. We’ll call when we get back to the hotel and see where it is.”

  Joe paced away from her, then back.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, finally looking at the tense expression on his face. “I’ll cover everything.”

  He stopped pacing. “There’s one little problem with that scenario, Ripley.”

  She straightened.

  “If those goons this morning really are the FBI, they’ll be all over the car.”

  “Right,” she said absently. Then she was pacing alongside Joe, muttering under her breath the same way he was. Forget that they no longer had wheels. The box Nicole had sold to the pawnshop was in the car. A box that possibly held the key to unlock the mess Ripley was currently smack dab in the middle of. A box that she had hoped to dangle in front of Clarise’s eyes to get her to spill what was really going on. A box that was sitting under the seat of the car being towed out of the parking lot.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” she whispered, missing the turn as she paced with Joe and nearly colliding with him when she finally did pivot.

  She blinked into his eyes, her nose filled with the manly scent of him. Every sexy minute of the past few hours rushed back to her. She licked her lips, and he followed the movement, making her mouth dryer still.

  “Pardon me,” she murmured.

  “Sorry,” he said at the same time.

  Ripley watched as he rounded her and continued pacing. She gave up and leaned against the building, crossing her arms over her stomach.

  Could anything else possibly go wrong during the course of this case? She’d nearly been snowed under with the hopelessness of it all earlier. Then she’d found her legs again after incredible sex with Joe, and now here she stood, right back at square one.

  Twenty minutes later, darkness completely cloaked the area in which they stood, and the ceaseless column of people…well, ceased. Ripley stared, unsurprised, when the large door was closed with a dull clang and a key was turned in the lock. Joe had stopped pacing and was standing next to her, his arms crossed over his chest in the same way hers were. A few cars remained in the gargantuan, well-lit parking lot, probably belonging to the maintenance and security crew. Otherwise the place was completely deserted.

  Ripley tucked her hair behind her ear. “She must have gotten past us.”

  “Yeah,” Joe muttered. He glanced at her, clearly irritated. “So now what do you suggest?”

  She dropped her gaze. “I don’t know.”

  He sighed, then ran his hand over his face. He looked at her. “Don’t even think about busting into that place and checking the rest rooms.”

  She smiled. “The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.”

  “Good.”

  “Fine.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Wonderful.”

  His grimace turned into a half smile. “Do you always have to get in the last word?”

  “Always.”

  His gaze flicked over her face, lingering on her mouth.

  Ripley ignored the instant fire that ignited in her belly and rolled her eyes. “I’m not even going to ask what your suggestion is.”

  “What? That we go back to the hotel room, forget about your missing person and missing client and become reacquainted with the bed?”

  She pointed a finger at him and pushed from the wall. “Why did I know you’d say that?”

  “Because you’re thinking the same thing?”

  Maybe. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. She liked his handsome head the size it was. She turned toward the hulking pyramid and started walking on the off chance that Clarise was even now slinking from one of the other exits. She turned the corner and stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Why are you following me?” a female voice asked, two hands holding a gun pointed directly at Ripley’s stomach.

  8

  NICOLE BENNETT.

  Ripley stared directly into face of the very woman she’d been sent to find but who instead had found her, trying to ignore the size and nearness of the gun Nicole held tightly in both hands.

  Yet another first in what was adding up to a whole series of them.

  “I’ll repeat, just in case you didn’t hear me. Why are you following me?” Nicole took a step back when Joe rounded the corner at full throttle.

  Ripley put her arm out to stop him, and he held up his hands and said, “Whoa.”

  Ripley wondered how long it would take to get her gun out of her bag. Judging that it had taken her five minutes to get the sucker in there, it would probably take at least that long to get it out. And somehow she didn’t think pointing her black leather bag at Nicole and yelling, “Freeze,” was going to work, either.

  “We’re not following you,” Ripley said. She shifted, agitated. “I mean, I am…was looking for you, but I’m not now.”

  Nicole Bennett was prettier than the grainy picture Clarise had given her. With long dark, almost black hair, and wide gray eyes, she was strikingly beautiful and very dangerous. The fact that she had a gun pointed at Ripley could very well have a lot to do with the latter description.

  “Say that again?” Nicole asked.

  Ripley tucked her hair behind her ear. “Look, I’m a P.I. from St. Louis. I was hired to find you by someone concerned for your welfare.”

  Nicole’s expression was clearly skeptical, but she nodded. “Go on. I’m listening.”

  Ripley nodded. “Your sister. She wanted me to find you, and the things you, um, borrowed from her.”

  Nicole narrowed her eyes, but the gun never budged. “Interesting. My sister is in a sanitarium.”

  Ripley blinked at her. “Well, then, she was released. Because I met her. She gave me a picture of you, told me you have a habit of lifting things from her house, but that she never pressed charges, and asked me to find you.” She frowned. “Your name is Nicole Bennett, isn’t it? And your sister is Clarise Bennett.”

  The other woman was not looking very sociable. “Describe the woman who hired you to find me.”

  Joe leaned closer to Ripley. “Remember that fishy feeling I had earlier?”

  Ripley elbowed him in the ribs. “She, um, has blond hair. About your height. No, a little taller. Slender. Kind of a Grace Kelly look-alike with an edge.”

  The gun dropped to the woman’s side, and she shocked the hell out of Ripley by smiling. “That’s what I thought,” she said. She opened her black trench coat and slid the revolver into the waist of an equally dark pair of slacks, then covered the gun with the hem of her black mock turtleneck. “Did you find the stuff?”

  “By stuff, I’m assuming you mean the box you sold to the pawnshop?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Yes, I retrieved it.” Ripley stared at Joe, warning him not to say the same box was on its way to a holding lot even as they spoke.

  “Good.” She glanced one way, then other. “Give it to…my sister.”

  Ripley grimaced at her. “Well, that’s the problem. It seems your sister is now also running from me. In fact, we followed her here.”

  “Here?” Nicole looked suddenly antsy and mumbled something under her breath.

  “Yes. That’s what I meant when I said we weren’t following you. We were following her. Here.”

  Nicole began backing away, her expression wary as she scanned the area surrounding them. “Just make sure she gets that box.”

  She turned and began hurrying away.

  Ripley grabbed her purse, reaching for the gun in it, and started after her. “Hey, wait a minute!” she called. She supposed she should be glad she hadn’t yelled, “freeze,” although in her book, “Wait a minute” ranked right up there alongside it.

  Joe grasped her wrist. “What are you doing?”

  “Going to get some answers, of course.”

  Joe shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  “That’s funny, did you hear anyone asking for your opinion? I didn’t.” Ripley had just had a gun held o
n her by a woman she had been searching for but who had found her instead, and Joe wanted her to pass up the opportunity to get answers to the questions mounting in her brain?

  He released her.

  She turned. Only to find that Nicole Bennett had disappeared into thin air.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING Ripley pored over the contents of the too-thin case folder strewn across the bed in front of her, staring at the photo of Nicole Bennett, checking out the information Clarise Bennett had given her and trying to piece it together with what had gone down so far. She sighed and collapsed against the pillows, suddenly all too aware that the king-size hotel bed seemed big and awfully empty without Joe in it.

  She poked a sheet of paper aside with her toe and reprimanded herself. She and Joe were not a couple. She didn’t even want a relationship right now, much less one with an uptight and overbearing albeit super sexy shoe salesman who had sex on the brain.

  She turned her head to stare at his pillow. They’d had more of that great sex last night after getting back from the Pyramid. Well, not directly afterward. There had been the hour-long period where she tried to fit the puzzle pieces together and he questioned her sanity, but the instant she’d climbed into bed and turned her back, he was right in there alongside her. And the more she told herself she was not going to have sex with him again, the more her body rebelled, responding to the feel of his hot body pressing against her. She’d eventually given in and arched into him, and that had clinched it. They’d had sweaty, hot, wild monkey sex all night long.

  Ripley rubbed her fingertips against her forehead and stared at the door he’d disappeared through. He had said he was going to scare up some doughnuts. She didn’t need four days of detective experience to figure out it didn’t take nearly an hour and half to get them.

  She supposed that when all was said and done, Joe was being a pretty good sport about all of this. After all, it wasn’t every day that you woke up to find a strange naked woman in your bed, got chased from your second-story hotel room and dropped into a pool, had your car towed, then, as if all that wasn’t enough, had a gun pulled on you by the very woman you had been looking for, but hadn’t been looking for that minute.

  Then again, she supposed it could be the sex.

  But a guy like Joe…well, he could pretty much have any woman he wanted. He had it going on and then some in the looks department. And his sense of humor had her smiling even if she did want to sock him one when that acerbic wit was turned on her.

  And what about her? Why was she hanging around with Joe when she should be concentrating on her new career and figuring out what had gone wrong with her first case?

  She smiled. “Very definitely the sex.”

  She sat up and hung her legs over the side of the bed. She’d always thought the intimate act highly over-rated. She’d dated and had sex with three men before Joe. First had been Jack Basset in the back seat of his father’s Chevy after the senior prom, when she’d been left deflated and unfulfilled while he got out, his sky-blue suit pants hanging open as he cheered from the hood of his car. Number two had been Terry Sheen in college. He hadn’t owned a Chevy, but he had been a quick finisher. So fast, in fact, she wondered if what they’d had was really sex or more like a series of hit-and-run episodes, with more running involved than hitting.

  Then, of course, there was the guy behind door number three. She should have had Monty Hall close the door on him and opted for the lifetime supply of laundry detergent instead. Whoever said size didn’t matter? Well, they’d never slept with Tiny Tim Bensen. And here she had thought they jokingly called him Tiny because he was six foot four, two hundred pounds. Little did she know.

  Ripley laughed, unable to believe she was thinking of her sex life in such a lighthearted manner. It wasn’t so long ago—two days, in fact—that she had questioned her own sexuality as a result of those same three men, thinking it was her fault she had never achieved orgasm during sex. She’d never even imagined that the problem had been the guys, that they hadn’t been able to keep up with her.

  Then came Joe.

  She got hot just thinking about him. Was it ever nice to know that sex’s reputation was well deserved. While she suspected even former jock Joe might have the urge to climb onto the rooftop with his jeans open and shout the news of their great sex to the entire population of Memphis, he stuck around to make sure she was having at least as much fun as he was. And oh, boy, was she ever. Places were sore that she hadn’t even known could get sore. And every time she took a step, she was prompted to wonder if there might be such a thing as too much great sex.

  Naw…

  She gathered her papers, straightened them, then put them into the plain manila folder. Well, that was productive, wasn’t it? She’d sat down to figure out the case and instead ended up thinking about Joe. She’d suspected there had to be some drawbacks to what was happening between her and Joe. But for some reason she hadn’t equated a very good sex life with a sucky professional one.

  Of course, she couldn’t help but realize that both Joe and the case had a time clock ticking on them. There was only so long she could continue to pursue a case that she was now officially paying out of pocket to solve instead of the other way around. And Joe…well, as soon as she went home to St. Louis, he was—

  The lock on the door clicked. Ripley stared at it. She started when someone tried to open it, stopped by the security latch.

  “Ripley, it’s me,” Joe said, knocking.

  She let out the nervous breath she was holding and padded to the door. A moment later he stood inside, the latch firmly in place, grinning at her like he’d been gone days instead of ninety minutes…and like he was very happy to see her.

  He held up a bag, and Ripley snatched it from him, opening it before she even returned to the bed.

  “A thank-you would be nice.”

  She fished out a whipped-cream-filled éclair and wrapped her mouth around it, humming with approval. “Thank you,” she said with her mouth full.

  Joe shook his head and put another bag on the table. “Just save me one, will you?”

  Ripley looked in the bag. Five éclairs left. She didn’t know if she’d have the strength to leave him any.

  “Better yet, give me one now.” He stood next to the bed and held his hand out. She put the bag in it, then changed her mind, took it back and handed him one éclair instead. She smiled at him, dipping her tongue out to lap cream from her bottom lip.

  Joe very obviously had a difficult time swallowing. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “It was a great idea.” She moved the file then patted the bed beside her. “So tell me.”

  “Tell you what?” He did a move that left him bouncing on the mattress, legs crossed. Ripley saved the file from falling to the floor.

  She swallowed and reached for the coffee he was handing her from the night table. “I know it doesn’t take that long to get a couple of doughnuts, Joe.”

  He grinned at her. “Did you miss me?”

  More than you’ll know. “Nope.”

  He leaned over and pressed a kiss to her bare knee. “Liar.”

  She laughed and wriggled away from him, heat blazing up the inside of her thigh straight to the area that would like to be kissed. “Never come between a woman and her doughnuts. You’re risking serious injury.” She took another bite. “So give.”

  He ate his doughnut first. Very slowly. Ripley fidgeted as she dug into her second éclair. Okay, so the guy had been raised with manners. But she didn’t think talking with his mouth full was what he was worried about right now.

  “I went to the tow yard.”

  She raised her brows.

  “Yeah. The car’s stored behind eight-foot fences with two very hungry-looking dogs running around loose inside.” He frowned and took a slug of coffee from her cup, then handed it back to her. “And another familiar car full of stooges sitting outside.”

  Ripley had trouble swallowing. “They were there?”
/>   “Yep. All three of them.”

  “Great.” She collapsed against the pillows and sank down, not really thinking about the fact that she wore nothing but a T-shirt and panties. At least until Joe’s gaze caught on the patch of cotton between her legs.

  “Hmm. Yeah…great.”

  Ripley tugged on the hem of her T-shirt and covered the area in question. She didn’t want to be distracted by sex right now, no matter how much her body responded to his simple suggestive words. “Did anyone ever tell you that you have a one-track mind?”

  He grinned at her. “Yeah. You.”

  “Besides me.”

  He thought for a minute, then crossed his fingers over his flat, cotton-covered stomach. “Nope. You’re the first.”

  Ripley’s stomach tingled. “You’re lying.”

  “And you’re beautiful.” He reached over her for the bag of doughnuts. She moved it out of the way and smiled at him around another mouthful.

  “You’re not really thinking about eating all those?’

  She swallowed. “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll get fat.”

  She whacked him in the arm then tossed him the bag. “One more. That’s it.”

  He grinned and took out another one. “Okay, have it your way. But I think we’re going to have to come up with some inventive ways to burn off those calories.”

  Ripley licked her fingers then wiped her hands on the napkin he supplied. “I think we already did.”

  “Doesn’t count. You have to exercise after the, um, calories.” His gaze had drifted suggestively to the hem of her shirt again. She smiled and pushed from the bed.

  “Nice try.”

  She picked up the file from the bed and went to the table, away from temptation in the shape of Joe Pruitt. She opened the folder and fanned the documents.

  He sighed in exaggerated exasperation. “Well, since sex is not in my immediate future, you mind tossing me that bag next to you?”

  She absently grabbed the bag he’d left on the table when he came in and threw it to the bed, then sat down to concentrate on the case. She ignored the rustle of plastic coming from the bed and her curiosity about what else Joe had bought and stared at the closed file. There had to be something she was missing. What was it?