The Arms Of The Law Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Books by Jenna Ryan

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  They could no longer deny the

  electrifying chemistry between them…

  “We’re lucky, you and me, Vachon. We could have been killed tonight.”

  “Could have been,” he agreed, “but weren’t.” He turned to look at Nikita. “You’re a beautiful woman, Nikita. I’m sure you’ve been told that many times before. You’d distract any man.”

  “Thanks,” she murmured. “My ego needed that.”

  Without his wanting it to happen, Vachon leaned toward her. He’d intended to brush his lips across hers, but it didn’t turn out that way. She tasted of summer ices and smelled of wildflowers. Her hair was a curtain of silk, her skin as soft as rose petals, and her mouth responded to his own—hot, demanding and urgent.

  Her arms came around his neck. She kissed him back greedily, twining her fingers in his hair. It didn’t last half long enough before she steeled her body and pulled away.

  Only, Vachon intended to finish what he’d started with Nikita. But he’d have to wait until he put the killer behind bars.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jenna Ryan loves creating dark-haired heroes, heroines with strength and good murder mysteries. Ever since she was young, she has had an extremely active imagination. She considered various careers over the years and dabbled in several of them, until the day her sister Kathy suggested she put her imagination to work and write a book. She enjoys working with intriguing characters and feels she is at her best writing romantic suspense. When people ask her how she writes, she tells them by instinct. Clearly it’s worked, since she’s received numerous awards from Romantic Times. She lives in Canada and travels as much as she can when she’s not writing.

  Books by Jenna Ryan

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  88—CAST IN WAX

  99—SUSPENDED ANIMATION

  118—CLOAK AND DAGGER

  138—CARNIVAL

  145—SOUTHERN CROSS

  173—MASQUERADE

  189—ILLUSIONS

  205—PUPPETS

  221—BITTERSWEET LEGACY

  239—THE VISITOR

  251—MIDNIGHT MASQUE

  265—WHEN NIGHT FALLS

  364—BELLADONNA

  393—SWEET REVENGE

  450—THE WOMAN IN BLACK

  Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canada: P.O. Box 609, Fort Ene, Ont L2A 5X3

  The Arms of the Law

  Jenna Ryan

  To Kathy, Rod, Mom, Dad and Alice.

  And to the newest member of our family—

  our little female tabby, Merlyn.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Nikita Sorensen—Psychiatrist, recently arrived at the Beldon-Drake Hospital.

  Daniel Vachon—The relentless homicide cop on the case.

  Adeline Sorensen—Nikita’s grandmother, a colorful character.

  Martin Sorensen—Nikita’s playboy brother.

  Deana Sorensen—Martin’s wife—a psychiatrist as well as Nikita’s old friend and rival.

  Dean Hawthorne—Deana’s stern father. He pushed her up the ladder of success.

  Lally Monk—Nikita’s patient. She has a second personality named Talia.

  Verity Whyte—Psychologist, now a patient at the hospital; an old friend of Nikita and Deana.

  Manny Beldon—Vachon’s partner and great-grandson of the man whose estate became the Beldon-Drake Hospital.

  Sammy Slide—An orderly with a bad attitude.

  Donald Flynn—Psychiatrist and scientist. He likes to experiment with people’s minds.

  Prologue

  January 25

  Dear Diary,

  Do you believe in murder? Hordes of people do, and I am one of them. I’m capable of committing murder, too. Now how many people can make that unwholesome claim? Only one that I know.

  I couldn’t always have done it, but times and circumstances change. One’s hand is occasionally forced, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of passion and every once in a while out of sheer perversity.

  Poor Lally and Nikita; poor foolish Deana. Poor Martin whom Deana still might love in spite of all that has happened. Poor everyone involved, because I doubt if any of them—excuse me, any of us—came away from the nightmare unscathed.

  I keep thinking back on it, rolling it over in my mind. My own idiocy in the matter can’t be topped. Death came knocking at the door of the Beldon-Drake Hospital nine days ago. It presented itself openly at my feet, and what did I do? Did I kick it away? No, I strutted past it like a cocksure prizefighter, the master of my own private dance.

  Oh, yes, I heard the accusing whispers loud and clear—or I should have if I didn’t, but I was very busy at the time, being clever. Difficult then to pay attention to anything as insignificant as a whisper.

  So here I am, surrounded by death, with the thought of murder raging white-hot in my blood. It isn’t over; I won’t let it be over. This nightmare must end as it began.

  And this is how it began….

  Chapter One

  January 17, 10:05 p.m.

  Lally Monk covered her ears and cried, “I hate blizzards, Dr. N. The wind and snow get inside my head and I can’t think any more.”

  “You have to look past those things,” Nikita Sorensen soothed her. She went to her knees on the carpeted floor and laid a hand on Lally’s clammy neck. “Think of flowers instead. Tiger lilies and big columns of lavender.”

  “I can’t.” Lally’s voice barely rose above the storm and the pandemonium it had created within the walls of Hubert Hall, now known as the Beldon-Drake Psychiatric Hospital. “It’s too confusing.”

  It was that, all right, Nikita had to admit. Using a firm but gentle touch, she urged Lally to her feet and gestured to one of the orderlies. She’d worked at the hospital for only two weeks and couldn’t remember his name, but as long as it wasn’t that creepy Sammy Slide, she knew Lally would be well attended to.

  “It’ll be all right, Lally,” she promised, pushing loosened strands of dark brown hair into her French braid. “I’ll check on you later, okay?”

  Lally seemed mollified; however, she maintained the look of a frightened fawn as she was led away.

  “Niki!” Nikita’s sister-in-law, Deana Sorensen, in temporary charge of the hospital, beckoned to her. “Over here. Mrs. Brewster needs help.”

  So did at least two dozen other distraught patients, Nikita reflected, glancing at the storm outside the diamond-paned window.

  Beyond the bars, violent gusts of wind in excess of sixty miles per hour drove angry pellets of snow and ice into the tiny panes. The building seemed to be shuddering right down to its two-hundred-year-old foundations
. Nikita marveled that the converted mansion didn’t crumble into a pile of toothpicks, or barring that be lifted up and blown in circles to Oz.

  “In Phoenix, they say that New England is picturesque in the winter,” she remarked to Deana as they endeavored to hoist dear, terrified Mrs. Brewster to her feet. Her swollen knees and ankles wobbled. Her arthritic fingers clutched at the lapels of Nikita’s lab jacket as she tried to steady herself.

  Deana smiled faintly. “Snow is picturesque. Blizzards are hell. Can you manage?”

  At Nikita’s nod, she moved off.

  “Why is it so dark?” Mrs. Brewster whimpered, burying her wrinkled face in Nikita’s shoulder. “I don’t like the dark.”

  Nikita smoothed her hair, pulling out a loose pin curler. “Neither do I, but the power’s finicky this far from Boston, and our generator only has the capacity for half power.”

  “More like a quarter, if you ask me,” a man’s droll but familiar voice offered. Her brother Martin strode up, scowling. “What’s going on here, Niki? It’s like a carnival fun-house. Where’s Deana?”

  Nikita shot him a cutting look. She loved her brother very much, but sometimes—most times—he had the sensitivity of a baseball bat. “Give your eyes a few minutes to adjust, Mrs. Brewster,” she said, ignoring him. “You’ll be able to see then.”

  Martin sighed, yanking at his frozen scarf. “Damned loony—”

  “Deana’s over by the desk,” Nikita interrupted firmly. “Dealing with Mr. Fitch.”

  Mrs. Brewster began to whimper again. Around them, the few dim lights that burned flickered wildly, then slowly settled. “The roof’s going to blow off, Dr. N.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Nikita promised. “These old manor houses were built to withstand worse storms than this.”

  “Obviously, Dr. N. hasn’t been on the roads tonight.” Martin flicked bits of icy snow from the shoulders of his black leather coat. “This is as bad as it gets, even in Massachusetts.”

  Nikita forced a smile. Her light tone required a far greater effort. “Go away, Martin,” she told him, “or forget driving—you’ll be flying out of here headfirst.”

  “He never changes, does he?” a woman remarked softly in his wake. Verity Whyte, Nikita’s old friend and currently a patient at the hospital, touched Mrs. Brewster’s back. “I’ll take her, Niki. I can’t say the storm and all this cacophony is doing my nerves any good, but I am a psychologist, after all.”

  A psychologist who’d recently suffered a nervous breakdown. But too well thought of and too long a friend for Nikita not to trust her.

  Mrs. Brewster transferred her leechlike grip to Verity’s ivory robe. “That boy looks like a rock star,” she whispered furtively.

  Nikita gave the old woman’s shoulder a reassuring rub and whispered, “That’s what he wanted to be, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. So he married Dr. Deana and settled for becoming a lawyer.”

  Verity’s expression grew strained. “Let’s go, Mrs. Brewster. Niki, one of the orderlies said that Admissions is looking for somebody in authority. Something about a new arrival courtesy of the Boston Police.”

  “Just what we need.” Nikita’s gaze flicked again to the frost-encrusted window. “I’ll tell Deana the good news when I have a chance.”

  The winter storm worsened as the minutes ticked by. The lights refused to stabilize, which only added to the confusion. Across the hall, Deana looked harassed, her mass of red-brown ringlets breaking free of the combs that usually subdued them.

  Her sister-in-law was coping admirably, Nikita realized as she placated a young man with darting eyes and a severe muscle tremor. She deserved the temporary post of hospital director, just as she’d deserved her original position at Beldon-Drake.

  Nikita had resolutely squashed all remaining feelings of envy in that area two weeks ago. She was a good doctor, but so was Deana. It was their childhood rivalry, almost as long-standing as their friendship, that had caused her to apply for the same post as Deana three years ago. Apply and lose by a hair, she’d been informed later. If that hair had a name and if that name happened to belong to Deana’s father—but no, that wasn’t fair. She didn’t know for a fact that Dean Hawthorne had done anything to affect his daughter’s chances. Anyway, they were both here now, and Deana was still Nikita’s very close friend as well as her brother’s wife. If only, Nikita thought darkly, her playboy brother would take the trouble to remember that last thing.

  Wind howled like a shrieking banshee around the corners of the converted mansion. Nikita heard a crash then felt a blast of wind on her cheek. She sought, and quickly located, the source. Behind the bars, several panes of glass had been smashed.

  “Mr. Bedrosian,” the awed young man beside her whispered.

  Nikita, three feet away, halted. “What about him?”

  “I think he—threw something.”

  Nikita sighed. Mr. Bedrosian, destroyer of all things shiny and clear. How had he gotten out of his room? More to the point, where had he gotten to now?

  Deana ran up beside her. “What happened?”

  “David says Mr. Bedrosian threw something.”

  “Damnation. Martin! Now where did he go?” Deana searched the shadows for her husband, balled her fists and barked for assistance. “Susan, Laverne!”

  “Laverne’s not here,” someone called from the darkness.

  “Neither is Martin,” Deana muttered.

  Nikita read between the lines of that remark, but she was too busy stuffing the lining of the damask curtain into the jagged hole to respond.

  Ice and snow pummeled her as she pushed the heavy fabric through.

  “Where did he go?” Deana shouted above the storm’s increasing fury.

  “If you mean Bedrosian, I didn’t even see him do it. I can handle this, Deana. You go and, uh—” Nikita stopped the order just in time and returned to her task.

  Rubbing the frosted pane with her fingertips, she peered downward. Through the swirling snow, she made out several dark shapes along the winding drive. Cars, she presumed. God help any poor soul who wound up stranded on this miserable excuse for a night.

  “Has anyone called maintenance?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “I doubt if they’d hear a red alert with this ruckus,” a man’s placid voice remarked.

  “Probably not” Without looking, Nikita wedged the last bit of lining through the hole. “Does that help?” she wondered out loud, blowing on her frozen fingers.

  “A little,” came the amused reply. “But I’d have it boarded up before the wind and broken glass turn your curtains to rags.”

  “Well, maybe you could just run down and get—”

  She turned as she spoke, then broke off when she realized the speaker was not an orderly, but a complete stranger.

  And what a stranger he was. The shadows might be obscuring the details, but even by dubious lamplight she could see that he was six feet tall, possibly a little too lean and dressed entirely in rumpled black—a long wool coat, pants, rugby shirt, boots and belt. His hair was shoulder length and appealingly unkempt. It only missed being the same color by a fraction of a shade.

  His features were undeniably handsome, narrow and poetic. His eyes glittered black-brown. He had a two-day growth of stubble on his jaw and a sexy mouth that conveyed an expression of ironic amusement very well.

  Lucky for her, she was no sucker for a pretty face. Still blowing on her fingers and frowning as she endeavored to pigeonhole this strangely intriguing man, Nikita asked point-blank, “Who are you?”

  His easy reply, “Daniel Vachon,” told her nothing, except from it and his very slight accent, she deduced that he might have lived in the area around New Orleans once.

  “Should I know you?”

  He moved a lean shoulder. “More likely you’d know Manny.”

  “The name’s not familiar, Mr….”

  “Just Vachon. Manny’s last name is Beldon.”

  “As in Beldon-Drake?” Nikita was surprise
d, but only mildly. She’d been informed during her hazy period of introduction that old Ezekiel Beldon, the man who’d willed his estate to Haskell Drake fifty years ago on the strict condition that it be turned into a medical facility, had two great-grandchildren, both of whom resided in the New England area. One was a female, married and immersed in her husband’s horse farm; the other was a male, younger than his sister and a police officer in Boston.

  Nikita drew the logical conclusion. “You’re a cop.”

  “Detective,” Vachon replied. Humor gleamed in the dark gaze that managed to inspect her thoroughly without straying from her face. “Plainclothes. Homicide.”

  Damn, Nikita thought with a silent sigh, he would have bedroom eyes and a mouth as mobile and well-shaped as any she’d seen in her thirty-year lifetime. More disturbing than that, however, Detective Daniel Vachon also possessed what could only be called an aura, something to do with shadow and mystery and the cobwebbed alleys of New Orleans at the height of Mardi Gras.

  A compulsive studier of human behavior patterns and presence, Nikita was instantly fascinated. She was also wary enough not to let him know that.

  Deana scurried over to join them, as helter-skelter tonight as the winter wind. She had a man in tow who reminded Nikita strongly of an angel, a fine-boned reed of a man with a crown of golden blond hair, pale hazel eyes and features similar to those of a sad puppy.

  “Niki, this is Detective Manny Beldon. The Beldon. I see you’ve met Vachon.” Fingers spread, she beseeched her old friend with round brown eyes. “They’ve brought us a new patient”

  “I know.” Suspicion furrowed Nikita’s smooth brow. “Why is Boston Homicide sending us a patient?”

  She asked the question of Vachon, who was inspecting her makeshift window patch. He continued to study it while he murmured, “Wollace isn’t dangerous. The regular patrol got stranded, so Manny and I were asked to stand in.” When he straightened to face her, Vachon’s expression was enigmatic, his eyes too shadowed to read. “The most vicious thing your new arrival will do is ask you every five minutes when Johnny’s coming back, and do you know Pat and Vanna.”