His Wicked Ways. Joanne Rock

sleuthing, the kind of tedious paper trail following most detectives hated. She’d done her part by finding Alec in the first place, hadn’t she?

      Not.

      It definitely would suck to admit defeat, especially to the man who saved her bacon by reassigning her when her first partner on the force had gotten too friendly.

      Reaching for the double doors that emptied onto the street, Vanessa paused when Alec shouted to her.

      “How’d you find me?” His words echoed slightly against the high ceiling.

      Should she stay and hope that she could wrest answers from him without dragging him back to the precinct? To question him here posed more of a risk and kept her tied to the old neighborhood that much longer.

      Then again, if she left, she’d have to tell Lieutenant Durant she’d failed. An alternative that held little appeal for a woman who prided herself on success.

      “Tell you what, Al.” Pivoting silently on the heel of her sneaker, she faced him across the polished wooden floor. “I’ll answer one of your questions if you answer one of mine.”

      IN BLATANT DEFIANCE of the heat surging through him at just the sight of Vanessa Torres silhouetted in the light from the high windows, Alec assured himself he could never be interested in a cop.

      His complicated friendship with his uncle’s mistress had reminded him of all the reasons sex needed to stay far, far away from all relationships outside of a committed one. Something Alec couldn’t afford with his personal life consigned to a low level of Dante’s Purgatory. The added knowledge that Vanessa possessed the power to haul him off to jail made his sex thoughts about her all the more unwelcome.

      And blasted uncomfortable.

      “You’re not cutting me any slack here, are you?” He didn’t want to answer her questions, but he really needed to know how she’d tracked him down. If she could do it, maybe his uncle had already found him, too.

      The thought had urged him to call her back just now, when she’d been ready to walk away. If she was legit— an honest city detective trying to do her job—then he couldn’t just let her venture back onto the street unaware of the danger of having identified him. She could have been followed here. Even worse, she could be dispatched now that she’d served her purpose. A chance he wouldn’t take.

      “You forget, I’m not here to pay you a social call.” Her perfect posture looked so rigidly ladylike. He wouldn’t have believed she could dribble a basketball with as much finesse as a WNBA star unless he’d seen it with his own eyes. “If you want answers, you’ll have to give up a few of your own.”

      “Fair enough.” He’d gladly dance his way around her questions in order to extract whatever information he could. Besides, Vanessa counted as the most intriguing company he’d entertained in a long time. Even if she hid a connection to his uncle bent on revenge, at least Alec would enjoy the view until she made her move against him. “I’ll answer a question if you tell me how you found me.”

      Venturing closer, she walked back into the gym with that silent, subtle way she had of moving. He realized she wasn’t quite as tall as he’d originally thought. Her monochromatic clothing and uncommonly straight shoulders gave the illusion of height, but she didn’t top five foot six. Smooth skin and unlined features probably put her in her mid to late twenties.

      “I figured your work in real estate gave you plenty of places to hide, so I obtained a list of properties with your name attached.”

      “That amounts to hundreds of holdings.” No way could she have tracked him here on that kind of information.

      “I paid special attention to land with active building permits under the assumption you’d need to keep busy, or at least keep an income flowing.” She lowered herself to the front tier of pull-out bleachers on one side of the gym. “And it helped that I have contacts in this neighborhood who checked out the property next door to a deserted sports complex.”

      “Damn.” Alec had been discreet in his efforts to renovate the building owned by one of his dead grandfather’s cronies, slowly incorporating another decaying edifice into a revamped community center. But still, Vanessa had traced him here even though he’d been using cash to live on for months. “You’ve got friends in the South Bronx?”

      “Contacts,” she corrected, smoothing her palms over the knees of her dark jeans. “And it’s my turn to ask a question now.”

      “By all means.” He dropped down to the bench a few feet away from her, settling the basketball between them for good measure. He didn’t have any intention of following a dangerous attraction without knowing more about the woman, even if his eyes were glued to her hand resting on the denim-encased thigh. “Fire away.”

      “Why do you think your partners have pointed the finger at you now that there is money missing from the company you own together?”

      Maybe Uncle Sergio put them up to it. He hadn’t seriously considered that angle until Vanessa showed up— possibly leading anyone looking for him right to his door.

      “I guess because I disappeared around the same time.” He twirled the ball on the metal bench, hoping to keep her involvement more marginal. “And I happen to have a blood relationship with a gangster.”

      “But you’ve always been related. Why would your partners suddenly decide now that it makes you a bad guy?”

      “It’s complicated.” Major understatement.

      Vanessa messed up a perfectly good spin by palming the ball. “Hey, I explained my answer. If you’re going to half-ass your end of the deal—”

      “I’m not.” He studied her hand on the ball beside his. No fingernail polish. No rings. Just a surprising amount of strength. She was nothing like Donata Casale, who’d been sheltered and pampered her whole life. “It’s tough to explain my relationship with my partners. All along, they’ve provided most of the money while I’ve provided the vision and actual labor required to move the company ahead.”

      “From all accounts, you’ve been incredibly successful.” She didn’t say where she came by her information, but Alec knew his company’s projects were in business trade publications more often than not, although he made it a point to keep himself out of the spotlight. A low business profile suited him just fine and his partners were content to be the face of McPherson Real Estate.

      Her hands retreated from the ball as she straightened.

      “It’s been a good gig.” Until he’d found out half the reason his partners had joined forces with him was to leverage a criminal connection. “We were all getting along just fine until I had a recent falling out with a family member who’s got some powerful friends.”

      Uncle Sergio hadn’t taken kindly to his girlfriend’s claim that she’d slept with his nephew. Thanks, Donata. She’d chosen a hell of a way to pay him back for offering to help her escape his uncle’s control.

      “They’re upset you fought with your family?” Brow furrowed, Vanessa tucked her hands into her pockets.

      “None of their business, right? I didn’t realize until then how much they liked the tie to my well-connected clan.” And damn, but that had turned his whole life inside out. All those years he’d thought he’d been putting distance between himself and the family, his partners had been discreetly using his uncle’s name as a way to cinch business deals. They were all in a shitload of trouble now, and Alec didn’t have a clue how to dig them out of the mess. Yet.

      “So you went into hiding to regroup and—” raising an eyebrow, she glanced around the recently refurbished gym “—create an inner-city haven for delinquents to hone their fighting skills?”

      That pissed him off. As a cop, she ought to know better. “Just because they live in the middle of a war zone doesn’t make them responsible for the violence.”

      For a moment, he thought