His Wicked Ways by Joanne Rock

calves. “But not here, and for now, it’s too risky to retrieve them until we have a better handle on who might be trying to find me and why.”
    Sinking into the dark brocade of the long footrest, Vanessa cracked open the folder to find copies of e-mails dating back nearly a year ago. Conversations between Alec and someone with a computer-screen name of…
    “Kittykat?” She didn’t want to contemplate the tight ache of jealousy that stabbed through her at notes that went beyond friendly to outright flirtatious. Especially on Kittykat’s side, since she liked to sign off with the endearment “Your Pussy.”
    “She saw something between us that wasn’t there.” Alec lowered himself into a chair beside Vanessa and flipped through the messages to one dated just before last Christmas. “The woman is Sergio’s mistress and the only reason I talked to her at first was because she feared for her life. Later, she implied she had access to information about my business partners.”
    Vanessa’s first instinct told her to slam the folder shut and throw all discussion of this woman back in his face, but she refused to allow petty emotions to affect her job. She would find out who wanted Alec dead, even at the expense of newly raw emotions.
    “She says here that McPherson and Vercelli have been in contact with Sergio about your business?” Vanessa scanned the note, trying to follow the conversation without dwelling on all the extraneous endearments and suggestions they have dinner. She hated Kittykat without ever laying eyes on the woman.
    “My partners in the real-estate development company—William McPherson and Mark Vercelli.” Alec planted his elbows on his knees, his open shirttails dangling between his sprawled legs. “Donata swore to me they’d approached my uncle about tying the business to Sergio’s criminal contacts, something I’d refused to do from the moment we incorporated.”
    “Let me get this straight.” Vanessa turned to Alec, surprised by how close he sat. She could kiss him. Touch him. Lure him back to bed instead of untangling the mess of complications in his world. “Your partners want to work with the mob? I thought no one in his right mind willingly got involved with that kind of stuff.”
    Then again, maybe Alec’s partners had questionable ties to crime, too. Vanessa hadn’t even done a rudimentary check into their backgrounds, trusting her senior officer to have completed his homework on the guys. Actually, now that she thought about it, maybe her lieutenant hadn’t delved into the legitimacy of these partners since he’d mentioned having investments with the real-estate company himself.
    “Depends how greedy you are.” Alec stared blankly at the TV, frustration evident in his clipped words. “There’s a lot of money to be made off illegally obtained contracts and prices inflated by crime. Maybe my partners were swayed by the bottom line.”
    “But you’ve worked with them for a long time, right?” Vanessa peered inside the folder again, suspicious of anything written by the uncle’s mistress who obviously had the hots for Alec. Had she ever swayed him into her bed? “Do you believe they could have been persuaded to the other side?”
    “I’ve known Vercelli since college and find it hard to believe he’d be able to pull this off. But I caught McPherson signing out some of my archived expense reports. I made copies of all the accounting records I could before I disappeared this winter, figuring that way I couldn’t be framed for any of their dirty deals. The backup copies are at my apartment on the Upper East Side, but I don’t know if it’s safe to go back there yet.”
    “So you weren’t sure who to trust.” Finally, Vanessa began to understand Alec’s need to slip into hiding. “You had reason to suspect your partners were making an alliance with your uncle behind your back.”
    “And if I find out they’ve been cooking the books, I’m going to blow the