Strong, Sleek and Sinful [Mass Market Paperback]

TALL, DARK, AND DEADLY  

“The best book I’ve read this year!”—New York Times bestselling author Lora Leigh

“O'Clare writes edgy suspense with tough-as-nails characters who endure more than most can imagine and they come out stronger on the other side.”—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“A gripping novel.”—A Romance Review

“Ms. O’Clare has written a gritty, dangerous and sexy story. The action starts on the first page and doesn’t let up until the last. Tall, Dark and Deadly is a page turner packed with sensuality and suspense. You won’t want to miss this one.”—Fallen Angel Reviews

Praise for Lorie O’Clare’s previous novels…

“O’Clare [writes] page-turners filled with well-developed characters, and sparkling, sharp-witted dialogue…and attraction so strong you can feel it!”—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“Intriguing [and] highly stimulating…a fantastic blend of mystery and suspense.”—All About Murder

 “The passion and steamy sensuality are great, as are the action and emotion.”—Romance Reviews Today

 

Chapter 1
“Is this a joke?” Chief Murphy Radisson wasn’t laughing.
“Hardly.” Lt. Perry Flynn couldn’t sit facing the Chief any longer.
“Tell me where you found these again.” Rad hated anyone pacing in front of his desk. Perry didn’t care. He walked over to the window and returned to loom over the Chief’s desk.
“I sure as hell wasn’t looking for a date.” Perry focused on the printed Internet pictures that Rad held in his hand.
“I’d like to think not,” Rad bellowed, his expression hardening fiercely. His immediate outrage was proof enough that he was taking this seriously. “Do you want to tell me what your sudden fascination with kiddy porn is doing on my desk?”
Flynn blew out a breath. It had been a long day, and it was far from over. He nodded to the pictures scattered across the Chief’s desk.
“I did some searching earlier. And only printed the ones that I would swear are legitimate.”
Rad glanced once again at the pictures before dropping them on his desk and then leaning back in his chair, lacing his fingers together and clasping them behind his head. He relaxed although still managed to look ready to pounce, and stared at Perry for a long moment. “There’s no such thing as a goddamn legitimate pornography Web site. Why the hell did you print these? Start making some fucking sense or get the hell out of my office.”
Flynn ignored the crass tone. “You know damn good and well what I mean. These come from Web sites—in fact, four of them from the same site—where you can buy these children off an auction block if you want.”
“And you’ve got proof?”
“No, I don’t have proof other than what is printed on the site. You need to subscribe to these sites, and register with a fair amount of personal information.”
“And you did that?”
“I’ve saved the links if you’d like to take a look. I used the same credit card I got over a year ago when I worked that casino case. Someone would have to do a fair amount of digging to link the card to me as a cop.” He couldn’t look at any of those pictures without seeing his nieces, all of whom were about the same ages as the girls in those pictures. It made him sick, pissed him off. He would kill any bastard with his bare hands who tried doing anything demented or perverted to any of his sister’s girls. “In the past year two high school girls have disappeared.” He stalked over to the window again and tugged at the collar of his uniform, more than ready to get out of it and chill in front of the TV for the night. Like that would happen at this rate. “Yesterday we bring in a sixteen-year-old, Sally Wright, who was convinced she was talking to a boy her age over in Topeka. If she didn’t have overly protective parents, as she called them, who watched out for her and followed her to the rendezvous point, we might have had three missing girls.” Perry rested his fist on the edge of Rad’s desk and stabbed at the pictures with his index finger. “And the worst part is the ISP for those goddamn sites is right here in Mission Hills.”
That grabbed Rad’s attention. “You’ve verified that?”
“I looked into it myself. But just to make you happy,” he added, offering a wry grin, although he was anything but amused by this conversation. “I’ve contacted a Web site expert and am verifying it.”
“There is nothing to pin Sally Wright’s interrupted rendezvous to anything as serious as child pornography.”
Perry dragged his fingers through his short dark hair and took his time choosing his words. Rad was a damn good Chief of Police, but he was a hard-ass, too. Present his argument right and he’d get a chance at this. Fuck it up and he’d get his wish at watching TV all evening. He wasn’t going to win either way on this one.
“The MO is wrong for runaways. You’ve agreed with me on that on more than one occasion. When Sally Wright was in here yesterday with her parents, we saw a mother and father frantic over the fact that they almost lost their daughter. If Charlie Wright hadn’t followed his daughter to the mall and spied on her, some prick would have snagged her up. Mr. Wright brought your proof to you.”
Rad didn’t move but continued resting his head against his hands while eyeballing Perry carefully. “So what’s this all about? You think snooping around on porn sites will help you nail some online predator?”
“You never know. But I think possibly creating a trap might draw our perp out from behind his Internet shield.” Perry moved the pictures around with his finger, making it easier to see all of them. “We create a fictitious teenager, start chatting online, and get ourselves lured in. Our perp is here in town, Rad. And quite possibly he’s the same man who killed Maura Reynolds last October. We documented proof on that case that she was talking to someone online who claimed to be a teenage boy. She’d arranged to meet him the night she disappeared.”
“And if you catch a sixteen-year-old boy what are you going to do?”
“It won’t happen like that. There are things you say, ways that you talk to a predator, and of course ways to behave online that attract a sexual predator.”
“So suddenly you’re an expert on online sexual predators.” Rad lunged forward in his chair aggressively enough that it almost snapped him into a stand. “You don’t have any experience tracking an online stalker. Don’t insult me and pretend that you do. Unless of course there’s something you need to tell me.” He raised one thick, shaggy brow, silently challenging Perry.
“I know how to cruise the Internet at least as well as anyone else in this department, maybe better than some of your married cops.”
“You want to bet on that?”
“I have four nieces, all teenagers.”
“Not the same as having your own,” Rad rebuked.
Perry ignored him, sick of hearing how he didn’t know kids just because he didn’t have any. “And I know the sites where the teenagers hang out online. It’s like learning which is the in mall to go to. Any teenager will tell you there are Web sites that they check out daily and others they wouldn’t be caught dead going to.”
Rad stacked the pictures and shoved them across his desk toward Perry. “In your downtime if you want to follow children around online, feel free. I’m not taking you and your partner off your beat so you can glue yourself to a computer.” Rad stood slowly, pushing his chair back and straightening his large frame. He stood well over six feet and was in pretty good shape for going on fifty. A bad knee forced him to work behind a desk, and Perry respected the man for sticking it out and working his way to chief of police instead of throwing in the towel like so many did when injured badly enough on the job that it got them yanked off the streets. He pressed his fist against the top of his desk when he came around to face Perry. “Take some advice from an old man,” Rad began. “Chill out on this for a while. You’re one hell of a good cop. But you don’t have any proof at all that the teenager who died last fall and our teenager last night almost meeting a stranger off-line are in any way connected.”
Perry reminded himself he wouldn’t snap when the Chief rejected his proposal. “When Charlie Wright brought his daughter into the station last night, I saw myself with one of my nieces. For all I know, Sally Wright might know Dani or Diane. They’re about the same age. I felt his rage, the desire burning in his blood to take out the asshole who almost snagged his daughter.”
“There’s often rage in victims,” Rad said, stacking the photos and handing them to Perry. “You aren’t going to find a connection between these Web sites and a father and daughter who had a close call. You don’t have any proof.”
Perry didn’t want the photos. It was all he could do not to let his frustration boil over to anger from Rad’s indifference that the possibility existed they had a serious problem. “The only way you gather proof is to investigate,” Perry growled, his teeth clenching together in his effort to keep his emotions under wrap. “If we’ve got a sexual predator feeding off young girls, we need to investigate and find out. I will not allow some creep to feed his fetish on innocent children. My nieces are online all the time chatting with their friends. I’m not going to have some asshole pretending to be a boy their age and luring them into a trap like this.” He stabbed his finger into the pages Rad still held in his hand.
“And the last thing I’m going to have is anyone breathing down my throat if they think your good intentions are directed more toward you and not the force.”
Perry wasn’t ready for that one. “What the fuck?” he hissed. “Who in the hell would suggest that I went to porn sites for any reason not related to work?” he growled, feeling his temper rise in spite of his efforts to keep it under wraps.
“I didn’t say that anyone would do that. Bring me proof these sites are here in Mission Hills, and who is running them, and we’ll talk.” Rad walked over to his office door and opened it. “Call it a night, Flynn. Your partner appears to have headed home. You should, too. We’ll discuss this further when you have more solid proof for me.”
Perry threw out his last offer. “Give this case to me,” he said quietly, ignoring the open door. “I’ll make sure we don’t lose any more girls....