Read Online Dirty Rotten Scoundrel by Liliana Hart - Free Book Online Page B

functional. In fact, as I did so now I was reminded of those days.
    I had on clean jeans an d a lightweight black sweater before I asked Jack what the emergency was.
    “What’s wrong?” My voice was hoarse—barely discernable—from the crying jag I’d had earlier and Jack looked at me sharply. My eyes were probably puffy too so I kept my gaze averted and slipped on black boots. I headed down the stairs and grabbed my medical bag, and I heard Jack’s footsteps behind me.
    “We’ve got a mess on our hands. Ben Carver just called me.” Jack took the keys from my hand and he instead led me to his police cruiser. Whatever was going on he wanted to have an official presence.
    “If there’s a body I need the Suburban. I can follow you to the scene.”
    “There’s no body.” He didn’t say anything else until I was seated in the passenger seat of his cruiser and belted in. He hit the sirens, did a U-turn, and sped out of the long driveway and onto the main road. There was still tension between us and my hands were clasped on the handle of my medical bag so my knuckles were white with strain.
    “What did Ben want?”
    “Colburn ran the prints we took today, and when they went through the system they sent up all kinds of red flags. Carver was giving us a courtesy call to let us know we’re going to have the FBI breathing down our neck in the next few minutes.”
    I jerked in my seat and had the urge to jump out of the car and run back to the house so I could hide the boxes we’d left out on the table.
    “I put them in the safe,” Jack said, and I relaxed a little. “I warned Colburn to be ready for them and to cooperate, but I thought you’d want to be there when they serve the warrant to retrieve the body from your lab.”
    “Warrant? Are they going to search the whole premises?”
    “No, it’s specific to the body and any information, materials, or samples taken from the body in the course of our initial investigation.”
    “You’re not telling me something.” I watched his jaw c lench as he pressed on the brake a little. We were getting closer to town and the traffic was heavier. Most people in cities learned to get out of the way when emergency vehicles had their lights on. The people in Bloody Mary slowed their pace and gawked as much as possible while whispering speculation.
    “The print s belonged to Dean Wallace. He was a SWAT officer out of DC and transferred six years ago to join the Capitol Police. He was a sergeant there and had a good record.”
    “Six years ago. He was one of yours?”
    “Yeah. He was one of mine.” Jack hit his hand against the steering wheel in a rare showing of temper.
    The late afternoon sun was a flaming ball of orange in the sky and it glared through the windshield as we turned onto Catherine of Aragon. Jack turned the sirens off but left his lights flashing as he parked the cruiser at an angle in the driveway.
    “Tell Carver I owe him one,” I said, looking at the fleet of black SUVs that pulled up seconds after us.
    “You can tell him yourself. He’ll be here a little later to check on things.”
    “What exactly does Carver do at the FBI?”
    “Nobody knows. But he’s a good friend to have in our corner. Let’s go get this over with. The easier we make things for them the less complicated it will be.”
    “They’ll have run my background before they got here.” I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and reached for the door handle.
    “Yeah. They’ll have done a full background. We’ll deal with that too.” His voice was strained and he didn’t reach out to soothe me like he normally would have. He was still angry. Still hurt I hadn’t confided in him.
    I hadn’t realized how much I’d gotten used to his touch—a squeeze of the hand or the way he always ran his hand down the back of my hair. I felt the absence of it now.
    I stepped out of the car and my boots scraped across the driveway as I moved to stand next to Jack. A squat rectangular building