Sweet Arrest (2 page)

With her hands outstretched, she shuffled in the direction of the kitchen. The sun hadn't come up yet, and she recalled that she had taken the risk of jogging with only the street lights to illuminate her path—unsafe but necessary.

Her foot bumped something, and when she tried to step sideways thinking Cammie had set a delivery box in the way, her foot slipped. Cursing her assistant for not cleaning up the mess she made, A'isha slammed down to the floor, banging her knee but cushioned by ... a body?

She screamed.

Too late, her fingers slipped into the same mess her foot had. Now she knew what it was. The coppery scent could not be mistaken. Blood. Nausea threatened. Just short of throwing a soiled hand over her mouth, she stopped and fought to get to her feet. Grasping a stool, she clamored around the counter and over to where the phone had been the night before. Of course, it wasn't there.

Her legs were so shaky, it took a while to cross the narrow space between where she stood and the kitchen. At the toss of the switch just inside the doorway, the store brightened. Thankfully, the counter blocked her from seeing who was lying dead on her floor, but she did see the pool of blood thickening.

In a daze, she turned her head to the wall where she had grasped her way to the kitchen door. A bloody print was smeared there.
Her
print. Darkness swirled, and her forehead knocked against the wall as she sank in slow motion.

Someone banged on the door. An authoritative voice called, “Open up. Police."

Before she could register how they knew without her calling, the officer outside the door tried the lock. She had a moment to consider if it was really the killer back to add her death to his crimes. But the man holding the badge and brandishing a gun was not the bad guy. He was Connor, the sexy man from the park.

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Connor froze in the doorway. When he had gotten the anonymous call about hearing screams for help in the bakery on Curzon Avenue, he didn't know what he would find. He did not expect to find the body of a young woman with her throat slashed nor the very beautiful, very sexy woman he had landed on top of in the park the other day.

For all intents and purposes, she looked guilty, covered in what he guessed was the victim's blood. But something in him wanted to believe she was pale and crying not from remorse at what she had done, but from the horror of what someone else had done and left for her to find.

He stepped farther inside, his partner following with a curse falling from his lips. Right away, Carl called it in. Connor gestured to her. “Ms.... “He pretended not to remember her first name, but he did. A'isha. As sweet as she had looked in her tight jogging outfit. Damn, he loved a woman with extra softness to her curves. The moment his body had connected with hers, he grew hard. He pushed those thoughts from his mind. He had work to do.

"Can you come over here please?” He didn't holster his weapon. “Are you alone?"

She nodded. He knew she was taller, so he thought she had been about to faint. Her soft brown skin seemed paler, and tears coated her cheeks. “Y-Yes, I guess,” she whispered.

He clenched his jaw. “Carl, check it out.” As his partner disappeared in the back, Connor carefully picked his way around the body, trying to keep his contamination of the crime scene to a minimum. But A'isha would never have made it to him without assistance. He gently took he arm. “Come with me outside where we can talk."

She sobbed. “Out there? They'll see me like this. I can't."

"Then come with me over to that corner there.” He nodded with his head in the direction farthest from the body, where he could block her view of it. “Everything will be okay. Just come with me."

Why did he say it like that?

"Come with you? I'm being arrested? I didn't do it!” she screeched, setting his ears to ringing. She wiggled past him, her ass rubbing against his thigh. Connor bit down on an expletive when she jetted for the door. He put his gun away and took off after her.

The woman could move in a panic. Half way down the block, he caught up with her and yanked her back into his arms. “A'isha, you need to calm down. I can't help you if you don't.” She continued to fight, clawing his arms with her nails. He growled, pinned her hands to her sides and shouted. “Stop it! I'm not going to hurt you! I'm not arresting you either ... at this time."

Her shoulders shook. He spun her in his arms to face him, and those full lips looked ripe for kissing just inches away from his. She fit in his hold like no woman had. When he would have lost himself in a fantasy of kissing her, the stains on her clothes snapped him out of it. He stepped back, but watched her.

"You're not going to run anymore, are you?” He narrowed a suspicious glare on her. She shook her head but didn't speak. The tremors continued, making her look like she was having mini-seizures. He hated himself for wanting nothing more than to comfort her.
Get a grip, Connor. You don't know this woman. She could have murdered that young woman.
He tugged his notebook from his pocket. “Now, do you know who the victim is back there in the bakery?"

Again, she nodded.

"I need you to speak to me, A'isha. If we're going to find out what happened, I need the facts.
All
of them.

She wrung her hands and glanced around. People had begun to arrive to open their businesses in the block, but stayed in their doorways when they spotted the police cars blocking the street. Connor sighed and flipped his book closed. He would get nowhere here.

He took her arm in a gentle grasp. “A'isha, I'm going to put you in my car—"

She shrieked.

"—and take you home. I'll question you there, but I don't want you to try to run again. You're not under arrest. Do you understand?” In his line of work, he had come across many people, male and female, who were so upset at seeing violent death, they went into shock and had a hard time understanding simple statements. Even while A'isha exhibited the symptoms, he hoped she wasn't too far gone to hear him. He needed to get her story before the details began to fade.

"Y-Yes, I understand."

Irrelevantly, he wondered if she remembered him or if under normal circumstances she would date a white man. Shaking himself to focus on the task at hand, he moved her in the direction of his unmarked car. After slipping her inside, he returned to the scene, Carl approaching with a plastic bag in hand.

"Murder weapon?” Connor inquired.

Carl held up the bag. “Ever seen a pocket knife with a pink handle? Not a giveaway at all."

"Shit.” Connor took the bag and examined the contents, careful not the rub across the surface, possibly marring fingerprints. “Let's not jump to conclusions.”
Did you really do this, A'isha?

Carl squatted beside the now covered body and opened his notebook. “The vic is Cammie Clark. She worked as the baker's assistant. A'isha Greene is the baker. Testing will show, but it looks like Ms. Clark was killed with that knife here in the store sometime before five. Check this out.” He pulled the covering down.

Connor trusted his team and knew the CSI techs had already taken a million photos in the time it had taken him to chase down A'isha and calm her enough to wait for him in his car. Thinking of her, he decided he had better wrap this up before she lost patience and bolted. He did not need another fiasco like what had happened four months ago.

"Whatcha got?” he asked Carl.

His partner pointed with his pen. “See here? Footprints, small. I'd say what, size six, six and a half? And over here, she rests her hands there. It looks bad for Ms. Greene. All we need now is a motive to bring her in."

"Fuck!"

Carl glanced at him curiously. Connor saw the wheels turning in his head as he wondered if the rumors had been true. Connor had a fetish for women who killed. For fuck's sake, one incident—a lie—and his reputation had been called into question. He would go by the book, keep A'isha at a distance and do his job. That was it. He grumbled as he stood and moved toward the door. The first thing he needed to do was start thinking of her as Ms. Greene.

Outside on the street, he hailed a tech and had the man follow him to his car. With trepidation, he opened the passenger side door. “Ms. Greene, I'm sorry, but I'm going to need you to take off your shoes and hand them to this man."

Confusion clouded her beautiful face, but she obeyed. The tech caught the shoes in an oversized baggie, zipped it, added a note and strode away. After Connor had slammed the door, climbed in on the driver side and pulled away from the curb, he realized he had already broken protocol. He should not be taking her home.

Pulling up to A'isha's house, Connor lectured himself. Get in, question her and get out. His train of thought zigzagged the second she stepped out of the car, and he locked onto her ass. He liked to think he was not normally led around by his dick, but not having had a woman in almost a year since his last ugly breakup, and the jarring attraction he felt for A'isha was screwing with his head.

He suppressed amusement when she held her arms out to the side, hands turned upward while she tiptoed up to her front door. Waiting for her to search out her keys from the expansive red leather bag she carried, he became aware that someone was watching them. With a deliberate movement, he lifted a hand to his hair, shielding the direction of his eyes with his palm. A man leaned a shoulder on a streetlight not far away.

"Hey, A'isha, baby. What's up?"

She jumped. Connor would have approached the guy except she held a hand in front of him. The tremors were no longer visible, and she seemed less pale. “Just a neighbor,” she told him. “Hey, John."

"I thought you were going to give me a try after that last guy. Now you got you a white boy? What's up with that?"

He shouldn't be, but Connor was ready to defend her against a man who thought there was nothing wrong with standing in a line to have a shot at her body, but she didn't give him the chance to say anything.

"Please, I don't want him or anyone around here to know.” Fresh tears wet her lovely cheeks. “Silly, right? Especially when in the next few minutes, you could determine to arrest me, and I come right back out of my house in handcuffs."

"Then if I do, I won't put them on you. We'll just leave together as we arrived.”
Strike two
, he complained silently. Not cuffing her was not following protocol. At this rate, he would be out of a job before the end of the week. Women never got to him while he worked, even the sexy ones like A'isha.

Inside her house, his trained observation skills snapped on the second he passed the threshold. While A'isha informed him she would locate another pair of shoes, he took in the dated furniture in her living room and the family photos on the walls dating back to black and whites of folks in fashions from the fifties. If he had to guess, he would say this was her family home. He wondered if her parents were still around or if she had any siblings. He himself had one sister who barely bothered to remember his number these days. An hour in A'isha's presence, and he realized just how much his life sucked.

She returned wearing jeans, a tee and sneakers. At her invite, they sat in the living room on a plastic covered couch. She blushed, wringing her hands. “Sorry, I meant to take that off, but I guess I feel a little scared to do it."

At his raised brows, she continued.

"My mother was forever fussing at me to stay off of it, because I liked to put sticks in my pockets as a child."

Disappointed and relieved at the same time, he came to the conclusion that she wasn't all there. “Sticks?"

She chuckled then banged a hand over her mouth. He thought she might have injured herself, but made no comment. “At the time, I wanted to be a gardener—to her horror—and I liked to clear away dead leaves and sticks from the yard out back. She did enjoy the weeding, but not that I would stuff the sticks in my pockets rather than toss them out. I can't figure out why I did that.” Her eyes were dazed remembering. “My brother just thought I was crazy, like you do."

Coughing noisily, he put a hand to his lips. “I don't think you're crazy."

Her grin spread wide and brightened her eyes. He lost focus. Reaching out without thinking, he took a lock of her brownish black hair between his fingers. Silky and smooth, it made him want to stroke deeper and pull her closer to—He dropped his hand. “So, you have a brother. Where is he?"

Sadness filled her eyes. “Iraq. My parents are gone, and Andre is the only close family I have left. We have cousins, aunts, and uncles, but we weren't close. My parents never went into detail about why.” She shrugged. “Andre and I developed a sort of resentment about it over the years. We haven't tried to mend the rift."

"Ms. Greene, can you tell me—"

"You called me A'isha before. You remembered me from the park.” She offered a shy smile that had him growing hard of all things. Shifting the position of the notebook was necessary to cover the tent in his pants.

"Uh, yes. I tend to remember details."

Her face fell. “Oh, I thought ... Never mind. You can call me A'isha, if you'd like."

Suspicion rose in him. Was she playing him for a fool like that previous suspect? He had to admit pouting lips and big eyes did something to him. But A'isha went beyond that. Her entire body called to him, and he had to fight not to stare at her heavy breasts, especially since her nipples were defined through the thin fabric of her blouse and bra. He imagined the kitchen in a bakery grew hot and called for minimal clothing. To add to his frustration, she had a sweet personality from what he had seen so far. The total package.

He closed his eyes, forcing himself to focus. When he opened them, he gave her a steely stare and frowned, which usually sent the message home that he was in charge and wouldn't accept any BS. “I think I will stick to Ms. Greene. This is a murder investigation, after all.” At his words, she paled again.

Her full lips trembled, and for a moment, he thought she would break down, but she stiffened her back and blinked the tears clear from her eyes. To his disgust, he admired her for that.