Page 15 of The Wolves Come at Night
So where had the notepaper come from?
Eight
Home again, home again.
Taylor pulled into the underground garage of their condo and parked, happy to see Baldwin’s BMW in the second slot. She grabbed her gear and headed upstairs. She didn’t look over her shoulder at all.
Nashville was different now than when she’d been running these streets after dark with a rather unsavory crew of miscreants from the local high schools, eluding the very police force she was now in charge of. This particular area used to be very rough, nearing dangerous, but now it was slick. Sophisticated. Packed with upscale hotels and condo buildings, elegant restaurants, art galleries, and a few blocks away from the happy chaos of the music venues handling the innumerable bachelorette parties and concert traffic that mobbed downtown. Even with the tourists, or especially because of them, Nashville was safe again, thanks to Taylor and all of Metro’s hard work.
The move downtown was a good one for her and Baldwin. Never one to enjoy a crowd, she was getting used to the constant, throbbing hubbub. The building had tight security, too, which was the main reason they’d made the move. Taylor had gotten crosswise with an assassin at a conference up in Maryland—the same conference where she’d met Thierry Florian of the Macallan Group. They’d faced off, and Taylor had shot the woman, but in the shoulder. The assassin had disappeared off a cliff before she could be apprehended. That moment haunted Taylor’s nightmares still. Why she hadn’t taken the kill shot, she didn’t know. Or maybe she did. Maybe she’d recognized a professional doing their job, or maybe she’d just lost her edge. Either way, she and Baldwin had decided it was important to have some barriers to entry just in case said assassin decided she wanted to get back in touch. Not that Baldwin hadn’t made his share of enemies along the way, too. Their home in the suburbs, while patrician and lovely, was simply impossible to secure, and their neighbors didn’t take kindly to lurking security teams camping in the bucolic tree-lined street. The condo was…easier.
The elevator purred to a stop at the forty-fourth floor, and the doors whispered open to reveal a small, tastefully decorated antechamber. Baldwin had made several upgrades to the condo’s security, including a biometric reader that allowed them into the hallway off the anteroom. If someone managed to get into the building, into the elevator, to this floor, and into this room—an unlikely set of circumstances—they’d then have to get through three more layers of completely personalized security to get the doors open to the hallway. Key. Keypad. Iris scanner.
If someone got through that, they still needed to bypass a handprint biometric at the door itself. They were secure. Overkill, but secure.
Taylor didn’t want to tell Baldwin she hated being locked away like a princess in a castle. That she’d prefer to take on Angelie Delacroix headfirst, womano e womano, instead of hiding. That if the assassin who wreaked havoc in Maryland wanted Taylor, she could get her anytime, outside of the building. She could end her in a heartbeat.
But this setup made him feel better, so she could hardly argue.
Baldwin hailed her as she entered. The sharp scents of peppers and onions wafted from the kitchen. So normal, so real, she felt all the tension leave her. She could worry about poor Georgia Wray tomorrow. For tonight, there was her home, and her man, and her life. She dropped her bag and slid her arms around his body, hugging him from behind.
“That smells delicious, hon. What’s for dinner?”
“Carnitas.”
“Oh, yum!”
He turned in her arms, spatula held high. “I kind of like the whole role reversal here. Me making dinner, you out on the beat.”
“Ahem. If I recall, I was the one who made the carnitas, and you’re simply heating them up.”
He looked wounded and gestured to the counter, where a colorful stack of peppers awaited their turn in the pan. “I will have you know I cut all these peppers into little bitty thin matchsticks, just like you do.”
“Oh, forgive me, Sir Pepper Cutter.” She gave him a little bow and accepted a glass of Tempranillo. “Now that’s the way to get to my heart.” She took a deep sip, relishing the peppery taste of the red wine. “I fear my case is solved.”
Baldwin set down the spoon and took up his own glass, clinking it into the side of hers. “Ching ching. That was quick. Confession?”
“Suicide. Her ex-boyfriend. Looks like he killed her, went home, killed himself.”
“Odd.”
She thumped the glass onto the counter. “Exactly what I said. Why wouldn’t he kill himself near her body? Why would he take her up a mountain, shoot her—granted, interrupted by a couple of co-eds who stumbled upon him—then go home? I’m overthinking it. It’s a righteous close, I’m sure.”
He nuzzled her neck, then turned the burner down and sat at the counter. “I’m sure it is. Speaking of overthinking, you won’t believe what I have to do.”
She raised a brow and licked her lips. “Your talents are wide and varied, good sir. I can believe most anything.”
Baldwin laughed. “Later, if you’re good. No, yours truly is off in the morning to speak at a writers’ conference. On a damn cruise ship.”
“Wait. You’re going on a cruise with a bunch of writers?” A laugh bubbled up inside her at the pained expression on his handsome face.
“Yeah. Garrett roped me in. Charlaine Shultz was the speaker scheduled to go, but she’s caught some sort of bug, and Garrett doesn’t want to disappoint the organizers. I told him it was a disaster in the making, that me stuck on a boat for a week with a crowd peppering me for information on cases that I can’t possibly provide information about wasn’t in anyone’s best interest, but Garrett gave me a speech. ‘You’re a rare commodity, and you owe me. Go speak, thrill their pants off that they’re in the room with a famous profiler, and relax a bit. You need a break.’”
She smoothed a hand over his jaw. “You do need a break. We both do.”
“You can come with me. Or better yet, for me.”
She picked up the spoon and gave the carnitas a stir. “Last time I went to a conference in your stead…”
