Leaping Hearts(105)

Delightful. Utterly delightful.

Too bad he wouldn’t be seeing her again.





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#1 New York Times bestselling author

J. R. Ward’s Novel of the Fallen Angels



ENVY



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TWO HOUSES down from Detective Thomas DelVecchio’s, Internal Affairs Officer Sophia Reilly was behind the wheel of her unmarked and partially blinded.

“By all that is holy…” She rubbed her eyes. “Do you not believe in curtains?”

As she prayed for the image of a spectacularly naked colleague to fade from her retinas, she seriously rethought her decision to do the stakeout herself. She was exhausted, for one thing—or had been before she’d seen just about everything Veck had to offer.

Take out the just.

One bene was that she was really frickin’ awake now, thank you very much—she might as well have licked two fingers and shoved them into a socket: a full-frontal like that was enough to give her the perm she’d wanted back when she was thirteen.

Muttering to herself, she dropped her hands into her lap again. And gee whiz, as she stared at the dash, all she saw…was everything she’d seen.

Yeah, wow, on some men, no clothes was so much more than just naked.

And to think she’d almost missed the show. She’d parked her sedan and just called in her position when the upstairs lights had gone on and she had gotten a gander at the vista of a bedroom. Easing back into her seat, it hadn’t dawned on her exactly where the unobstructed view was going to take them both—she’d just been interested that it appeared to be nothing but a bald lightbulb on the ceiling of what had to be the master suite.

Then again, bachelor pad decorating tended to be either storage-unit crammed or Death Valley–barren.

Veck’s was obviously the Death Valley variety.

Except suddenly she hadn’t been thinking about interior decorating, because her suspect had stepped into the bathroom and flipped the switch.

Hellllllllo, big boy.

In too many ways to count.

“Stop thinking about it…stop thinking about—”

Closing her eyes again didn’t help: If she’d reluctantly noticed before how well he filled out his clothes, now she knew exactly why. He was heavily muscled, and given that he didn’t have any hair on his chest, there was nothing to obscure those hard pecs and that six-pack and the carved ridges that went over his hips.

Matter of fact, when it came to manscaping, all he had was a dark stripe that ran between his belly button and his…

You know, maybe size did matter, she thought.

“Oh, for chrissakes.”

In an attempt to get her brain focused on something, anything more appropriate, she leaned forward and looked out the opposite window. As far as she could tell, the house directly across from him had privacy shades across every available view. Good move, assuming he paraded around like that every night.

Then again, maybe the husband had strung those puppies up so that his wife didn’t get a case of the swoons.

Bracing herself, she glanced back at Veck’s place. The lights were off upstairs and she had to hope now that he was dressed and on the first floor, he stayed that way.

God, what a night.

Was it possible Veck had torn apart that suspect? She didn’t think so.

But he did—even though he couldn’t remember a thing.

Whatever, she was still waiting for any evidence that came from the scene, and there were coyotes in those woods. Bears. Cats of the non–Meow Mix variety. Chances were good that the suspect had come walking through there with the scent of dried blood on his clothes and something with four paws had viewed him as a Happy Meal. Veck could well have tried to step in and been shoved to the side. After all, he’d been rubbing his temples like he’d had pain there, and God knew head trauma had been known to cause short-term memory loss.

The lack of physical evidence on him supported the theory; that was for sure.

And yet…

God, that father of his. It was impossible not to factor him in even a little.

Like every criminal justice major, she’d studied Thomas DelVecchio Sr. as part of her courses—but she’d also spent considerable time on him in her deviant-psych classes. Veck’s dad was your classic serial killer: smart, cunning, committed to his “craft,” utterly remorseless. And yet, having watched videos of his interviews with police, he came across as handsome, compelling, and affable. Classy. Very non-monster.

But then again, like a lot of psychopaths, he’d cultivated an image and sustained it with care. He’d been very successful as a dealer of antiquities, although his establishment in that haughty, lofty world of money and privilege had been a complete self-invention. He’d come from absolutely nothing, but had had a knack for charming rich people—as well as a talent for going overseas and coming back with ancient artifacts and statues that were extremely marketable. It wasn’t until the killings had started to surface that his business practices came under scrutiny, and to this day, no one had any idea where he’d found the stuff he had—it was almost as if he’d had a treasure trove somewhere in the Middle East. He certainly hadn’t helped authorities sort things out, but what were they going to do to him? He was already on death row.