Baltimore 03 - Did You Miss Me?

of the window, arms crossed tight over her breasts. Pausing for a moment, he let himself watch her move. The silk she wore flowed around her legs like water and he was keenly aware that she wore nothing under those pajamas.
    He’d been keenly aware of that the entire time she’d been on his lap.
    The entire time she’d explained what she should never have had to explain to anyone. Especially to me .
    Beckett deserved to die for what he’d done to Daphne alone. Add to that her cousin Kelly, Heather Lipton, and the others . . .
    But why now? Why was all this coming together now? Doug . They’d been so fixated on Beckett that they’d lost focus on Doug.
    ‘Doug did this,’ Joseph said. ‘Set this plan in motion. He kidnapped Ford, somehow convinced Beckett to be his accomplice. He found Beckett, for God’s sake. How did he find Beckett to start with? How did he even know about him?’
    ‘Damn good questions,’ she said. ‘I’ve been wondering that myself. The only time I said Beckett’s name was to that FBI agent, Claudia Baker. I imagine she filed a report. Could Doug work for the Bureau?’
    ‘God, I hope not. What’s Doug’s game? He makes sure Ford is found here , drawing you back to the one place you probably never would have come back to in a million years. You think it’s coincidence that Beckett came here to kill your son tonight?’
    ‘No. I think Beckett was manipulated by Doug just like we were. Doug wanted us to find the connection between George Millhouse and the knife used on Isaac Zacharias. He wanted us to find those weapons in the basement of Odum’s house. He wanted us to find the connection between the pistols in Bill Millhouse’s trunk and the tasers used in the alley. Doug has manipulated us into finding exactly the evidence he wanted us to find. That he’d manipulate Beckett isn’t such a stretch for me.’
    ‘He brought Beckett back into your life.’
    She stopped pacing, her back to him. ‘I know. But why?’
    ‘To discredit you. To ruin you. To make you hurt.’
    ‘I got that much. But why ? What did I do to him?’
    ‘Once we figure out who the hell he is, then hopefully we’ll know. But it must have been major, at least in his eyes. This is . . . a lot of effort.’ He sat on the bed and patted the mattress next to him. ‘Sit.’
    ‘Actually, I need to pace.’
    ‘Actually, I need you to sit. I can’t concentrate when you move like that.’
    She turned to frown at him. ‘Like what?’
    ‘Like any way you move,’ he said dryly. ‘So please . . . sit.’ He opened his laptop and signed in to his Bureau account. The mattress depressed next to him, the whisper of silk taunting him, the scent of peaches filling his head. He adjusted the computer on his lap. Maybe I should have just let her pace . ‘I want to see that death certificate.’
    ‘I have a copy. It’s in my safety deposit box.’
    ‘I should be able to get to it online now.’ Joseph focused on the screen, not chancing a glance in her direction. ‘It was a West Virginia death cert, right?’
    ‘Yes, Ohio County.’
    ‘And you got it from Agent Baker?’
    ‘Yes. At first she just told me he was dead, but I wanted proof. It was my mother’s life we were talking about. I’d called the records office to corroborate it myself, but they wouldn’t give me any information over the phone. I had to mail in a request, which I did, and I was told it could be a month before I got the actual piece of paper, but when I told Agent Baker that I’d requested it she said she’d get it for me faster. She did and then a few weeks later I got another copy in the mail from the state. If I hadn’t used the mail or Baker’s connection, I’d have to have gone in person all the way to West Virigina. There wasn’t an Internet back then.’
    ‘Yeah, there was. Just not for civilians.’
    ‘Which both of us were at the time, therefore my statement holds, Mr Phelps.’
    His lips curved at her grumpy retort. ‘Phelps? I’m flattered. He’s one of my childhood heroes.’
    ‘Then your ears should have been burning all those times Paige described you as tall, dark, and dangerous, with a this-tape-will-self-destruct-Jim thing going on.’
    His smile faded. ‘All that “raw danger”,’ he said, hating the term he’d heard so many times over the years. Paige had not been the first to use it, not by a long shot. Probably just the first to use it with honest affection.
    ‘I imagine that drives the