Cold & Deadly (Cold Justice: Crossfire #1)(38)

She nodded wearily. She felt more chastened by his calm understanding than by Ray Aldrich chewing out her ass. “You’re okay? Aside from the obvious.” She indicated his face and arm.

He nodded.

“I’m sorry you were hurt. Sorry they destroyed your ride.”

He shrugged. “I got off lucky. I’m glad you weren’t targeted.”

If she’d finished her beer it could easily have been her looking like a bit actor from a Rocky movie.

Sheridan’s expression remained impassive, but his gaze slipped briefly to her lips, and a shiver of arousal ran over her flesh.

He took a step back, and the moment passed. “You’re getting wet. Let’s go inside.”

The rain intensified, and they started jogging toward the house. From his pained expression moving fast hurt, but he kept up the pace before pushing open the extra-wide front door. Ranger greeted them with a tennis ball in his mouth and a tail that never stopped sawing the air.

“Nice place,” she muttered, after greeting the dog.

Sheridan placed her belongings on a long, thin table in the hallway and ducked into a small room down the corridor. He came out with two fluffy towels, one of which he tossed to her. She wiped it over her hair, face and neck, grateful she hadn’t bothered with makeup after the lousy couple of hours’ sleep she’d managed to steal.

She wasn’t trying to impress this man with anything except her abilities as an agent.

Sure.

She looked around. The structure hinted at possibly being an old converted barn that had been added to. She shrugged out of her wet blazer and slipped off her shoes and left them beside the door. The air conditioning caused gooseflesh to rise up on her arms.

Before she could ask exactly why she was here, he said, “Come on through to the back. It’s where I’m set up.”

He moved inside, and she grabbed her stuff and followed along with Ranger, admiring the dark hardwood floors and artwork on the walls—abstract and vivid, and probably original. She passed an office, a living room with two big, oatmeal-colored couches, and beyond that a dining room, which had an enormous, dark wood dining table with eight fancy wooden chairs set around it.

Even though the timber was dark, the overall effect with the large, pale floor rug and light blue-green walls was bright and welcoming. There was a wine rack in one corner along with what was probably a fridge, although it looked like a custom piece of furniture.

“Do you live here alone?” She didn’t know much about the guy, which meant those little tendrils of attraction she was feeling might be completely inappropriate if she was suddenly introduced to Mrs. Dominic Sheridan.

“Yeah.” He looked self-conscious and stuffed his good hand in his pocket. “I know it’s a little big but I wanted somewhere in the countryside but close to work. This place came on the market…” He shrugged as if that explained everything.

She saw a pool through the window, complete with a pool house and pagoda.

Holy crap, he must be loaded.

She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t intimidated. She’d grown up over a restaurant and had waited tables through college. The concept of having money, of not scraping by from paycheck to paycheck and wondering if she’d ever have enough in her bank account for the deposit on a house of her own was mind boggling.

She followed Sheridan through to a spacious kitchen with a tall granite island that had four stools lined up alongside it. It wasn’t the pretty, off-white cabinets or the top of the range appliances that caught her attention. Instead it was the laptop sitting next to a half-eaten sandwich. Sheridan moved the cursor, and an image of a man smiling at the camera filled the screen.

“Who is that?” Her teeth chattered.

Sheridan didn’t answer immediately. He went over and boosted the thermostat and then took her towel and tossed it with his into a room off the kitchen.

He walked back to where she stood beside the laptop, the tightness around his eyes indicating every step hurt.

“That,” he said slowly, “is a guy named Brian Andrews. He was my supervisor when I worked the violent crimes squad in New York. Great guy.” Sheridan’s tone was grim. “He died in a car wreck in Ohio last September.”

Ava held his stare, afraid she knew where this was going.

“While lying in my hospital bed, I started thinking about how many funerals I’d attended in the last year and decided to check out who else might have died that I didn’t know about.”

He flicked the cursor, and another image appeared. “This is Preston Daniels. He and his wife died the previous Christmas in Utah. Carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty heater.”

“Let me guess, he also worked with you in the New York Field Office.”

Sheridan nodded.

Crap.

Another click. Another face.

“Arnold Biro died of cancer early last year—linked to his work at Ground Zero. He was living in California at the time of his death.” Another photograph. “Ira Mallic suffered a fatal heart attack on Long Island. Jamal Fidan drowned following a boating accident. They all died in the last couple of years.”

Ava’s knees started to buckle, and she sat on the nearest stool. She and Sheridan stared numbly at one another.

“You think someone is targeting FBI agents who worked at the New York Field Office same time you did?”