Sullivan's Last Stand. Harper Allen

quickly in after him and closed the door quietly behind her.

      The minuscule front hall opened immediately onto a cramped, untidy kitchen. On the counter an empty bottle lay on its side, and the broken shards of a smashed glass were strewn nearby on the linoleum floor.

      “Hell.” In front of her, Sullivan slowly holstered his gun. He turned to her, his mouth tight. “Looks like you were right, doesn’t it? I’ll check the bedroom in case he’s sleeping it off in there.”

      Shrugging in resignation, he started to step across the broken glass, but then he stopped, his glance sharpening on the fallen bottle on the counter. He set it upright, turning it so that the label faced them. She looked at him, confused, and saw the broad shoulders stiffen under the impeccably cut jacket.

      “Hank’s not a rye drinker. Somebody didn’t do their homework,” he said grimly.

      His hand went to his holster again, and all of a sudden the Armani suit might just as well have been fatigues, and the small, untidy kitchen an ominously silent jungle. He hadn’t put his former profession behind him at all, Bailey thought with quick insight. He reacted like a soldier. Just below the casually lazy surface of the man was a tense alertness, and at the first sign of trouble his military instincts took over.

      Except she couldn’t see what had aroused his suspicions.

      “He’s an alcoholic,” she said dismissively. “If he wanted a drink badly enough he’d break into the cooking sherry.”

      “Maybe he would, at that. But he still wouldn’t choose a grain-based alcohol, and if he had, he’d be lying on the floor with that glass, his throat swollen closed,” Sullivan snapped. “He’s even allergic to bread, for God’s sake. This is some kind of setup.”

      “A setup for what? To make it look like the man fell off the wagon?” She stared at him in frustration. “For crying out loud, Sully, it doesn’t make sense. For one thing, who knew we were coming here today? Who would have expected you to barge in illegally the way you just did?” A strand of hair had escaped from her clip, and she blew it away from her eyes with an impatient breath. “Let’s check out the rest of the house before we jump to any conclusions. Maybe he’s in the bedroom with an empty bottle of vodka, sleeping it off. Maybe the rye was for a friend.”

      Without waiting for him to respond, she pushed past him with more annoyance than the situation warranted. With a muttered oath, he grabbed her arm and stopped her.

      “I’m armed. You’re not. I’ll take point position and you bring up the rear,” he said tightly. “In fact, I’d prefer it if you stayed right here.”

      “Forget it. I’m a real woman, not one of your bimbos,” she retorted. “If you’re going to lead, lead, but I’m coming with you.”

      He wasn’t happy about it, she knew. Too bad, she thought as she shadowed him from room to room, hanging back a little as he cautiously entered each one. She wasn’t happy with the situation, either, but her reasons were harder to figure out. Why did his loyalty to the man who worked for him, however misguided she might see it as, irritate her so? They entered the bathroom, and she was jolted out of her thoughts.

      “Wait a minute,” she said as Sullivan turned to leave. “There’s something odd here.”

      “What?” He shrugged and looked around. “There’s nothing out of place.”

      “That’s just it,” Bailey said slowly. “Hank’s a single guy, and the rest of the house is as untidy as you’d expect it to be. But this bathroom’s immaculate. The taps actually sparkle, for heaven’s sake.”

      “And the floor’s been washed.” He looked down, and then over at the towel rack. She followed his glance.

      “Not even a facecloth,” she said, frowning. “What does he use to dry himself with?”

      “A towel, like everyone else does.” His eyes darkened. “But towels can be used to mop up blood, too.”

      She felt an icy chill settle over her as his words sank in, and it was all she could do to stop herself from backing instinctively out of the small room. Had a man been killed here? Had he been killed so violently that his murderer had had to get down on his hands and knees after the deed and scrub every square inch of the floor to remove all traces of his blood? The bath was a combination shower, she noted. There were plastic rings on the rod, but no curtain. Had it been pressed into grisly service as a makeshift shroud by someone desperate to dispose of a body?

      She was letting her imagination run away with her, Bailey told herself sharply. What they had here was an empty house, an empty bottle and an empty bathroom. Combined with Jackson’s absence from work and the little she knew about him, her first guess had to be the right one.

      But Sullivan wouldn’t accept that. He seemed willing to stand by the missing Jackson no matter what.

      And that was what stung, she realized. His loyalty to a man who worked for him was unshakable. His loyalty to her had been limited to three days, at most.

      “I’m checking out that last room,” she said shortly, turning from him back into the small hallway. “What is it, some kind of den?”

      He was right behind her, but the door was only a few feet away, and before he could stop her she’d opened it and stepped into the room impatiently. That was as far as she got.

      Her eyes widened in shock as she surveyed her surroundings, and behind her she heard Sullivan swear under his breath as his arm went around her and he pulled her closer to him.

      It had once been an office, but now it was a disaster area. A computer lay smashed on the floor, and a filing cabinet was tipped over on its side, its drawers removed and upside down nearby. Drifts of paper covered every available surface, obviously ripped from the empty file folders that were scattered about. Whoever had done this had been in a murderous rage, Bailey thought shakily. He’d been looking for something, and either he hadn’t found it or the fact that he’d had to search for it in the first place had prompted him to trash everything in sight. She took a hesitant step forward, and then looked down.

      She was standing on one of the few file folders that still seemed to contain something. Moving her foot, she bent down and picked it up.

      “Plowright,” Sullivan said tersely, reading the typed label out loud. “Angelica’s case. Is his report all there?”

      Bailey flipped open the folder and leafed through the neatly numbered pages. “It seems to be,” she said slowly. “Whoever did this, he couldn’t have been searching for Angel’s file. We’d better call the police.”

      “Not yet.” He hunkered down, sifting through papers, scanning them quickly and then letting them fall to the floor again. He straightened and looked at her. “They’re what I thought,” he said briefly. “Hank normally wouldn’t keep confidential files here—this is his research for a book he’s writing on famous crimes of the last century. The Plowright file is the only one here that anyone could have been looking for, so why the hell didn’t they take it?”

      “Because they didn’t want the report itself,” she said slowly, her mind racing. “They wanted the photos that went with it—the photos of the woman that Aaron was with last weekend. That’s what this is all about, Sullivan. Someone’s trying to conceal her identity, and it looks like they’ll go to any lengths to do so.”

      She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Maybe even murder,” she added shakily, her eyes meeting his.

      Chapter Three

      “Let’s take it from the top again. Why the hell did you and your lady here break into the house anyway?”

      They were back at Sullivan Investigations, where Sullivan had told the police they would be when he’d contacted them from the trashed bungalow on his cell phone. Bailey could guess why he hadn’t wanted to hang around waiting for the authorities to