Chapter Sixteen #2
He peppered kisses on her belly, her inner thighs, the back of her knee and then back up while Sam tried to relax and enjoy the pleasure that had her so hot, she worried she might implode before the big finish.
When he returned to her core, he went right for the gusto, sucking her clit and sending her into orbit in a matter of seconds.
Her slow return to reality was interrupted by a deep thrust that immediately had her full attention.
She clung to him, holding on as he chased his own release.
Right when she thought he was there, he reached between them to coax another from her.
Holy moly.
Afterward, she was completely spent. Every muscle had turned to jelly as she vibrated with the aftershocks of explosive desire. “You’re wicked good at that, my friend.”
“Gee, thanks.” His lips moved against her neck, sending goose bumps over her sensitive skin.
“Even when I’m being impatient, I always love you.”
“That’s good to know, because I always love you, too. It was hard to watch you suffering when Ethan was missing.”
“Thank you for staying with me through it all.”
“Nowhere else I want to be. Ever.”
After spending hours at the hotel reviewing the results of the canvass and speaking to the hotel manager—and what a joy that had been—Freddie was now back at HQ and sitting with Sergeant Walters as they reviewed the video from the lobby and sixth-floor hallway.
He’d never given much thought to how tedious it was to sift through hours of video until he offered to help Walters and found out how mind-numbing the process could be.
“How do you guys do this all day, every day?” he asked as he stifled a yawn.
“You get used to it.”
“I’m not sure I would. I’m cross-eyed after a couple of hours.”
Walters chuckled and then sat up a little straighter. “Cruz, look at this.”
Freddie rolled his chair closer to Walters’s desk and leaned in for a closer look at a man in a black hoodie with a black knit hat entering the lobby.
He was tall, thin, white and had acne on the lower part of his face.
Freddie noted that he kept his sunglasses on as he made his way to the elevators.
They lost him when he was inside the elevator but were able to match the time stamp on the sixth-floor footage to see him stepping into the hallway and making his way to Carver’s room. He knocked on the door and was admitted.
“That’s our guy,” Freddie said with the rush of excitement that came with identifying a suspect, even if they were a long way from having what they needed to issue an arrest warrant.
They watched the sixth-floor footage, waiting for something to happen, for close to thirty minutes before Dale Carver emerged from the room, ice bucket in hand, and made his way toward the ice room.
“Wait a minute,” Freddie said.
“The guy is still in his room when Dale goes to get the ice?”
“I didn’t see him leave.”
“So that’s not our guy.”
They watched Dale walk down the carpeted hallway and enter the ice room.
Freddie stared without blinking, waiting to see someone approach, but that never happened. “The killer was waiting for him inside the ice room.”
“That’s what I think, too.”
“Can we back up the hallway footage to get to where we can see the person go into the room?”
“Yep.” Walters reversed the video by ten minutes, looking for the moment when someone entered that room to wait for Dale.
When they didn’t see anyone, he went back further until they saw a shadowy figure dressed similarly to the other guy emerge from the stairwell and duck into the ice room.
At no time could they see his face, which meant he’d been there before and figured out where the cameras were.
Shortly after Dale entered the ice room, the man left as efficiently as he’d entered and escaped down the stairwell.
“This was a setup. Two guys working together. Take me back to Dale’s room from the time he left to get the ice.”
They watched his door until it slowly opened. The guy in the dark clothing took a look up and down the hallway before he left Dale’s room and went down the same stairwell the other guy had used.
Freddie rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “Well, now we know how it went down. What doesn’t make sense to me—well, in addition to the murder, which will never make sense—was why did the guy in the room leave the heroin? If this was a drug deal gone south, why wouldn’t he take the product?”
“Maybe the whole point was to show what Dale had been up to before he was killed.”
“Yeah, that’s possible, but who would care enough about a recovering addict to want to set him up that way?”
They glanced at each other.
“What do we know about the wife?” Walters asked.
“Not enough yet, but it’s time to find out her deal.”
“That’s where I’d start. This was a long way from a drug deal gone bad.”
“Yeah, it was well planned and executed. Thanks for hanging in there with me.”
“No problem. I’ll put all the relevant footage on a thumb drive for you.”
“Perfect.”
“Let me know what you find out. I’m invested.”
“Will do.”
Freddie headed downstairs to the Homicide pit, which was empty except for Carlucci and Dominguez, who’d arrived for the overnight shift.
“What’re you still doing here?” Carlucci asked.
Dani Carlucci was tall, blonde, blue-eyed and fit, while her partner, Gigi Dominguez, was petite and dark-haired with soft brown eyes and light brown skin.
They made for a formidable team as detectives, and even though Freddie wanted to dig into the new info himself, he decided to turn it over to them so he could get some sleep.
“You think his wife in Washington state set him up to be bumped off while he was on a business trip to DC?” Dani asked skeptically.
“It’s a theory. Maybe she’d discovered he was using again and decided he’d be worth more dead to her than alive. Let’s look at their financials and find out if he has life insurance.”
“We’ll get on it,” Dani said.
“I’m going to head home. I’ll be back at zero seven hundred.”
“See you then.”
Eager to get home to his wife after missing all day Sunday together, Freddie headed out to the used pickup truck he’d bought from a friend to hold him over until he found something worthy of replacing his beloved old Mustang that had finally died.
He missed that stupid car and was thinking about the Nova he’d seen online that he wanted to check out when someone stepped out of the shadows created by the parking lot lights.
Freddie’s hand immediately went to his weapon.