The last thing she’d expected was to be knocked so off-balance by Griff that she forgot her own game.
He was nothing like she’d expected.
Okay, he was brilliant. That was a given. And clearly obsessed with his work.
But he was also gorgeous. The dark curly hair that made her fingers itch to run through it. The finely chiseled lines of his face. A slender nose. A wide brow. A strong jaw that added a stern masculinity to his features.
His eyes were velvet brown and he had a boyish, crooked grin that melted her heart.
Then there was the lean, sculpted body that made women stumble when he jogged past them.
She wasn’t a nun; there had been men in her life. But none of them had made her brain shut down when they glanced in her direction.
In all honesty, it was supposed to be the other way around.
She smiled, sometimes she fluttered her lashes, and they did what she asked.
Was it any wonder she’d so badly blundered her attempt to lure him into giving her an interview?
“Making yourself at home?” a dark voice drawled from behind her.
She abruptly turned to discover Griff standing in the doorway, his expression stern.
“I’m sorry, I’m just naturally curious,” she said, trying not to notice the awareness that sizzled through her. The last time she’d approached this man she screwed up everything by allowing her raw attraction to cloud her thinking. She couldn’t afford to let it happen again. “You have a lovely home.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “You sound surprised.”
“I suppose I am,” she admitted, her gaze skimming over the cushy furniture. The place reminded her of her grandparents’ home in Indiana. Warm. Inviting. Lived in. “I saw your partner’s condo featured in a magazine. This is nothing like it.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t like feeling I’m living in a fishbowl. This is much more . . .”
“Comfortable,” she said when his words trailed away. “The condo is a showroom. This is a home.”
Something flared through the dark eyes before his lips flattened. Had he reminded himself that she was the enemy?
“Tell me why you came here.”
She studied him. Was this a trick question?
“I told you. I need to convince the police these are real,” she reminded him.
A sharp shake of his head. Apparently, she’d given the wrong answer.
“One last time,” he warned. “Why me?”
She glanced down at the envelope in her hand.
A part of her understood his confusion. She had pictures of dead women. The cops should be all over the case, even if they didn’t personally like her, or the book she’d written.
And deep inside she knew if she tried hard enough, she might find a police department that was willing to at least check into the possibility there was a killer out there.
So why was she here?
The answer was simple. She wanted him to find proof that the pictures were real so she knew beyond a doubt that this wasn’t a hoax.
There.
She’d admitted it to herself.
She didn’t want to press the issue if there was a chance she was making a fool of herself.
Acutely aware of his gaze that was watching the emotions flit over her face, she squared her shoulders.
“I need to know the truth,” she told him. “You’re the only one who has the skill to give me that.”
He frowned, but he didn’t throw her out the window. She considered that a win.
“Flattery, Carmen?” he instead drawled.
“It’s not flattery,” she retorted. “You’re the best, and you know it.”
“If I find out this is some sort of stunt, I’ll make you regret trying to screw with me.”
She spread her arms. “You can do your worst,” she assured him.
Or his best, a wicked voice whispered in the back of her mind.
Carmen was quick to squash the voice. Griff wasn’t doing anything to her or with her that didn’t involve photos of dead women.
She grimaced. And as a means of dampening her lust, that was a doozy.
Releasing an exasperated breath, Griff pointed toward a doorway near the fireplace.
“Let’s go into my office.”
With long strides he was across the room and entering the attached office. Carmen scurried to keep up, her eyes widening as she stepped over the threshold.
Once again Griff managed to catch her off guard.
He was a computer genius. The golden boy of every government agency, including Interpol, who she’d discovered had offered him a very large fortune to head up their cybercrime division.
His office should be the latest in high tech, right?
Instead, the room looked like it belonged to an English country squire.
There were no metal shelves filled with servers and blinking modems. No rolled-up cords that connected twenty computers into one seamless machine. No sleek chrome-and-glass furnishings. In fact, the only computer was a laptop that was set on a heavy walnut desk situated near the French doors.
“Give me the pictures,” Griff commanded, waiting for her to hand him the envelope before taking a seat in the leather swivel chair.
She was vaguely aware of him opening a drawer of the desk to pull out a small scanner, but her gaze was traveling over the built-in bookshelves and collection of baseball cards that were framed and displayed in a glass case. The floors were covered by vintage rugs that looked like they’d come from a Turkish market, and the walls were paneled with glossy wood.
It was a manly sort of office, but with the same shabby comfort as the living room.
Her feet were carrying her toward the framed plaque on the wall. It had two small medals hung on ribbons mounted next to it and a folded American flag. Was it some sort of military award? Before she could get close enough to read what was stamped on the silver medal, Griff made a small sound of satisfaction.
Pivoting on her heel, she hurried to stand beside his chair.
“Did you find something?”
He turned the laptop so she could see the screen. She flinched. He’d scanned the Polaroids into his computer, enlarging them so that they could make out every detail.
It only made it all the more gruesome.
The white faces frozen in horror. The weird hint of blue around the lips. The blond hair splayed outward like a tarnished halo. And the bloody wound that provided the only splash of color.
Griff used the mouse to click on one of the images, allowing it to fill the screen. Then he zoomed in on the stacked boxes visible in the background.
“A label,” he murmured, continuing to zoom in.
Carmen felt a stirring of hope as she leaned forward. If the women were killed in the back of a freezer trailer as she suspected, the contents of the boxes might give them a real clue.
The image went fuzzy, then cleared as he did something else with the mouse. Carmen grimaced, releasing a disappointed sigh.
“There’s nothing that says what’s inside or where they came from.”
“Actually, there is.”
He used the tip of his finger to touch the screen. She leaned even closer, tiny shocks of pleasure racing through her as the side of her breast brushed against his shoulder.
She shifted an inch away, hoping he didn’t notice the sudden heat that stained her cheeks.
“A bar code,” she said, her eyes at last focused on the black smudge he was pointing at. “You can use that?”
“We’ll soon find out,” he told her, his slender fingers flying over the keyboard.
She blinked as the screen was suddenly filled with files that flickered by so fast she could barely see them before they were gone. Like a strobe light going full speed.
Did he always work like this? It was a wonder he didn’t have a seizure.
At last he slowed and then stopped the files, enlarging what looked to be an order form.
“Did you get a hit?” she asked.
He sent her an amused gaze. “A hit?”
She rolled her eyes. Okay. She wasn’t a tech guru. She could turn her phone off and on. What more did she need?
“Whatever you call it,” she said.
He returned his attention to the file on the computer screen.
“The box is packed with containers of frozen pasta,” he told her. “It left a warehouse in Denver, Colorado, on December sixth and arrived in St. Louis on the eighth.”
“Of this year?”