Read Online At Close Range by Jessica Andersen - Free Book Online

ached, her arm hurt where the needle had left a fist-sized bruise, and she was tired. So tired. She had the almost overwhelming desire to ask for a hug.
    Instead, she wandered over to the brochure rack while Varitek paid for her room, and tried not to feel as though it was somehow tawdry.
    The impression was only magnified when they rode up in the elevator together and he followed her to her door. She didn’t bother asking why. She already knew.
    “I’ll pass the clothes out in a minute,” she said, tight-lipped.
    He shifted, and she thought she saw discomfort in his cool expression. “Sorry, no can do. I’ve pushed it as far as I can by letting you leave the scene. I’m not willing to let the evidence out of my sight. If—and it’s unlikely, but still—if we get something off your clothes and I wasn’t in the room when you changed out, then there’s no chain of evidence.” He spread his hands and something like regret flickered in his eyes. “No chain of evidence, no evidence at all.”

    “Fine.” She forced the word between her tense lips because he was right, damn it.
    She should have stripped on-scene. Who knew what contact evidence her attacker had left on her? Maybe nothing. Maybe something. But she hated that once again, Varitek had control of the situation, control over her.
    She jabbed the keycard into the electronic door lock and pushed through. The room looked like any other midpriced hotel room she’d ever seen—beige and generic with the odd splash of color and polished wood. There was a bathroom to the right of the door with a closet beside it, and then the room opened up into a large rectangle with a big bed.
    A really, really big bed.
    The tawdry feeling increased a thousandfold when Varitek followed her through.
    She wondered whether this was what a wife felt like when she started an affair, knowing it was wrong but not able to stop the momentum that had built up.
    Not that she and Varitek were going to have an affair, of course. But stripping for him was pretty damn close, official business or not.
    He made a noise that sounded halfway between a laugh and a growl, and crossed to the full-length sliding window at the far side of the room. He pushed the curtain aside and looked down at what she assumed was the parking lot. His shoulders were tense, as though he was looking for their perp out there among the four-wheel drive vehicles and their ski racks.
    But when he spoke, his voice was low as a lover’s. “They stock hotel robes in the closet.”
    She slid the mirrored door aside and found a heavy terry-cloth robe folded and sealed in plastic. No doubt it would go on Varitek’s credit card, too.

    “Fine.” She told herself that this was nothing, that they’d agreed to keep their relationship professional. “I’ll leave the door open to preserve the chain of evidence. Okay?”
    “Okay.” His voice was gravelly and pulled at something deep inside her.
    She swallowed hard and stepped inside the narrow bathroom, with its waist-high counter, double sink and soft piles of folded towels.
    And began to strip.
    HE HEARD A ZIPPER slide down, and the soft sound of shoes being kicked aside, and focused his attention on the parking lot, which was lit with orange sodium lights.
    There was no sign of a watching presence, but one prickled along his nerve endings like a warning. A threat. He scanned the area again, looking for a misplaced shadow, a telltale hint of motion, a—
    Cloth rasped against cloth, derailing him. No matter how hard he stared out the window, he was too aware of Cassie in the bathroom, taking off her clothes, piece by piece.
    Leaving her naked.
    “You got a paper bag for this stuff?” she asked suddenly, her voice as loud as if she’d been standing beside him.
    A faint quiver in her tone betrayed…what? Nerves? Excitement?

    No, he told himself with a mental curse. Call it what it was. Stress. For God’s sake, in the space of two days she’d been involved in a foot