by Claire Kent
“I’m going with you,” Julia said, as soon as Mike walked in through the front door.
He frowned and headed for his bedroom. “Do we have to have this argument again?”
“No. You can just accept the inevitable.” She’d pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt as soon as Drayton had gone, although she’d rather still be in her pajamas. “I’m part of this too. I’m not going to let it happen without me.”
There was an argument on Mike’s lips when he turned toward her impatiently, but after scrutinizing her face he never voiced it. Perhaps he recognized the stubbornness of her expression, or perhaps he realized she was telling the truth. But he shook his head and muttered, “If I let you come, you have to agree to listen to me and do what I tell you to do.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Are you serious? Who gave you the authority to make those demands? I’m every bit as capable as you. You aren’t a detective or a spy any more than I am. I might as well tell you to listen to me instead of going off half-cocked in a blaze of macho stupidity.”
Incongruously, his mouth twitched at her turn of phrase, but he sobered quickly. “I’m really not trying to be macho or patronizing. But this is not a safe situation, and I’m not convinced it’s even very smart.” Before she could object, he went on, “I know it was my idea, but I’m telling you it’s motivated more by instinct than by reason. And I’ll never forgive myself if you get hurt because of my flawed instincts.”
“I’m not going to get hurt. We’ll both be careful. It’s basically the only thing left we can do to find out more information. Drayton will never tell us the truth, and I can’t live in this limbo anymore. Plus, it feels like we’re getting sucked into something dangerous.”
“We are.” Mike let out an audible breath. “Fine. You come too. Just promise you won’t do anything stupid.”
“Only if you make the same promise to me.”
“I’ll only do something stupid if it’s the only way to keep you safe.”
“That’s not very comforting to me.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
Despite her annoyance and her rising nervousness, she was touched by his indirect claim. “It shouldn’t be dangerous, anyway,” she said, trying to pull herself back into practical efficiency and bolster her slackening resolve. “We’ve been as careful in planning things as we could.”
“Right.”
They’d been talking in the doorway of Mike’s bedroom, and now he went in and headed toward his closet. He took a lock box off the top shelf and then unlocked the box.
He pulled out a gun—Julia didn’t know enough about guns to recognize the make, but it was small enough to fit in the inner pocket of his jacket and big enough to scare her.
“Why do you have that?” she asked, “I’ve never seen that before.”
“I just got it recently. If Drayton has a gun, then I’m going to have one too.”
He looked intent, determined, dangerous. Nothing at all like the sweet, comfortable Mike she’d always known.
She stared at him wordlessly until he cleared his throat. “I’m not taking any unnecessary risks.”
“Carrying around a gun might qualify as an unnecessary risk,” she muttered, not quite under her breath.
He ignored her—as she’d assumed he would—and they got ready to leave.
Before they walked out the door, however, they both stopped in unison and looked at the other. Their expressions held a matching mingling of questions, excitement, irony, and disbelief.
“Do we even know what we want to find?” Julia asked at last.
“I want to find answers. And a way to get out of this…tangle.”
Julia understood the sentiment, but she didn’t know—and was terrified to ask—exactly what tangle Mike wanted to escape from.
She was so afraid that she was part of what had entangled him and that what he would finally pull away from was her.
***
Mike’s P.I. hadn’t found any more helpful information, except that the antique-shop guy was named Alexander Darrington and he was from England, but he must have mostly lived off the grid because there wasn’t much of a record of him for the last thirty years.
The only avenue they had left for finding out information on what was going on was to look in Drayton’s house.
They didn’t know if there was even anything in the house for them to find, but the only other option was dwelling on crazy theories—without any clear way to prove or disprove them since Drayton refused to open up.
They’d discussed following Drayton—as Julia and Helen had done before—and then catching him in the act (of something) and confronting him. But Julia was reluctant to follow that course because she was still scared of a direct confrontation between Drayton and Mike. And Mike seemed to think that plan and the house investigation were about equal in terms of hope of success. So they’d decided on what Julia considered the lesser of two evils.
She only knew they had to do something, and there wasn’t anything else for them to do.
They didn’t talk much as Mike drove them over to the house in question. Drayton was out of town this weekend, so this was their best chance for getting in safely.
Julia hadn’t known what to expect, and she was a little surprised that breaking-and-entering wasn’t a particularly complex procedure. They parked out of sight and walked the distance to the house. The road was empty, and there were no cars parked in the long drive. Mike had used his engineering connections to get his hands on a mechanized lockpick, and the P.I. had ascertained that the house wasn’t alarmed, so the back door opened easily once the device was used.
They’d looked through some windows to ensure that the house was empty before they went in, and the emptiness was obvious when they walked in through a porch and into the kitchen.
The house was an old Victorian, and the kitchen hadn’t been redone for at least two decades. The ugly tile countertops and dated appliances didn’t speak to affluence or good taste.
She was very surprised. Everything about Drayton exuded taste and polish. Except this house. The kitchen was clean, but didn’t look like it had been used in a really long time.
Mike met her eyes with a rueful look of half-amused questioning. Obviously, like her, he couldn’t believe they were actually doing this.
They glanced around the kitchen. Julia even opened the refrigerator to discover it was empty.
When they silently decided there was nothing more to see in the kitchen, they walked through to the dining room—which was much more pleasantly furnished with a solid cherry table and buffet. There still were no expensive antiques. The furniture was old but normal, and a startling oil painting of a fiery slash through a midnight sky on the wall was the only striking feature.
The house was immaculate. No random piles of papers, mail, or clutter on the surfaces or in the drawers to the buffet. Just an arrangement of six black candles on the table and some china, silverware and cloth napkins in the drawers.
While she’d searched the drawers, Mike had gone into the adjacent living room and looked around in there. It was the largest room, but it was sparsely furnished and offered nothing in the way of clues or helpful details.
“He definitely doesn’t spend much time here,” Julia murmured, keeping her voice down despite the fact that they were obviously alone in the house.
Mike shook his head and stared glumly down at the drawer he’d opened, which revealed nothing more than a lighter and a couple of boxes of those black candles. “I’m getting the feeling that our daring expedition is going to be a big waste of time.”
“Well, we’ve only just started. Let’s keep looking.” She tried to sound hopeful, but she felt a lowering sense of futility that matched Mike’s. She wasn’t even nervous anymore. No one was here but them. At this rate, they’d get through the whole house in twenty minutes. And leave safely—with absolutely nothing to show for it.
They went through the whole house, much as she’d expected. It was
all the same. Solid furniture, a few good pieces of art that stood out among the rest of the furnishings, precise organization, and absolutely no personal items.
They were upstairs when they reached one of the bedrooms that was set up like a home office. But there was no computer. No paperwork. Nothing revealing at all.
“Well, this is a bust,” she said, closing the last desk drawer.
“Yeah,” Mike replied, halfheartedly opening the one drawer in the console table across the room. “We might as well get out of—” He broke off when his eyes landed on something in the drawer.
Julia hurried over when he pulled out a large, old-fashioned photo album and started to open it.
The pictures were old—some going back forty or fifty years. They were mostly of a young couple—and the man was obviously the same man who was in the photo of the guy who might have been Six.
“Must be Drayton’s parents,” Julia said, staring down in fascination at the photos. “They look happy. I wonder what happened to his mom.”
Mike didn’t say anything as he kept turning pages. About halfway through, there were pictures with a baby. Then pictures only of father and son. Drayton as a boy was very cute and full of personality.
Julia had never imagined him as a boy before.
“She must have died,” Julia murmured.
“Yeah.” They got to the end, and the pictures stopped when Drayton was a young teenager. They told them nothing but that he’d cared enough about his family to keep the old album. “I guess that’s all there is here to see.”
“Look,” Julia said on an intake of breath. “In this picture here. That’s the outside of this house, isn’t it?”
Mike leaned over to look more closely. “Yeah. I think so. And, look here, this is the living room.” He pointed at the photo on the opposite page.
“This must have been Drayton’s family home. That’s why he’s kept it.”
“I’m surprised he’d bother,” Mike muttered, “since he’s never been very sentimental.”
“Maybe he loves his parents. Is that so hard to believe?”
Mike paused for a moment. Then admitted, “No. It’s not.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Julia said, suddenly freaked out by the situation. The house wasn’t scary in the daylight, but they really shouldn’t be here. It was private. It was Drayton’s.
Mike was about to respond when they heard a noise from below. Unmistakably the sound of a closing door.
“Shit,” Mike breathed, getting to his feet and glancing out the window.
When Julia looked too, she saw a car was parked out front now.
Someone was here, and it wasn’t Drayton’s car. Maybe he had a cleaning service or something.
Quickly and quietly, Mike closed the drawer in the console table. She tried to tiptoe as they entered the hallway, but it was an old house and the hardwood floors creaked.
She cringed at every sound from the floor as they made their way back to the front stairs.
Then she heard a female voice. It was muffled, so she couldn’t make out any words. But—since there was only one voice—she assumed the woman it belonged to was talking on the phone.
Maybe that would work in their favor, since it would distract the person from any noise they might make. Mike gestured her toward the back of the upstairs hallway, where there was a back stairway—smaller than the main stairs and cramped, probably originally to be used for servants.
They hurried down it and made a lot more noise on the creaking stairs than Julia was at all comfortable with. But the voice was still audible, talking on the phone, and no alarm was raised, despite what she was expecting at every moment.
They got out of the house without further incident, through the same back door they’d entered by. Then Mike grabbed her hand and started to run for the trees that lined the yard.
Julia ran with him, anxious to get out of sight as quickly as possible.
When they were masked by the shelter of the trees, Mike stopped to let her catch her breath. She clung to him for a minute, taking comfort in the solid heat of his body, before she urged them into motion again.
They had a ways to walk to get to the car, which they’d fortunately parked out of the way.
Whoever had come to the house wouldn’t have seen their car on their arrival. No one would know they had even been there, since they’d taken care not to rearrange anything or leave signs of their presence.
She and Mike were still holding hands as they approached their car.
So she felt the spasm of his muscles when his eyes focused on what was waiting for them there.
A second later, she saw what he saw, and her heart dropped into her gut.
Drayton. Leaning against Mike’s black SUV. His arms crossed in casual indifference. As they got closer, she could see a half-smile on his handsome face.
There was nothing remotely threatening about his demeanor or his presence, but Julia went cold and started to shake anyway. Her hand dropped away from Mike’s and she couldn’t process the icy chaos of her thoughts.
Mike’s reaction was different, although he must have felt the same threat at Drayton’s presence that she had.
His hand went into the inner pocket of his jacket and he pulled out the gun.
“Mike, no,” Julia choked, a vision of horror rising in her mind as she realized the confrontation that might result from this encounter.
Mike stopped, but he didn’t put the gun away.
Drayton lifted his eyebrows—as cool and urbane as always. “Go ahead and aim it at me, if you want,” he drawled. “But I’ve been at gunpoint before, too many times to count, and I haven’t been killed yet.”
Nine
“Mike,” Julia murmured, closing her hand around his hard bicep. “Put the gun away.”
Mike’s eyes moved assessingly from Drayton’s passive expression to Julia’s obvious urgency, and he silently returned the gun to his pocket.
Julia let out her breath in a whoosh, and Drayton arched his eyebrows again as he said, “Turning into something of commando on us, aren’t you?”
Mike’s annoyance was visible in the tightening of his jaw. “Given the circumstances, I thought it best to take some precautions.”
“And what circumstances are those? I believe you two are the ones who violated my trust and my privacy, obviously followed me, and evidently just now broke into a house that belongs to me. And you’re acting like I am a threat?”
Before Mike could answer and this encounter break down into even more aggression, Julia jumped in. “You’ve been lying to us, Drayton. You’ve violated our trust too. We might be in danger because of you. There are things we need to know, and you refuse to tell us.”
Drayton had always been remarkable in his cool control over his emotions and his consistently ironic perspective. It didn’t fail him now, as his mouth tilted up at the corners and he extended his hands in an elaborate gesture of surrender. “What is it you want to know?”
“Are you a hit man or something?” she blurted out, landing on the worst of her speculations first.
Drayton gave a huff of dry amusement. “Uh, no.”
“But you’re a criminal.” The timbre of Mike’s voice made the words a statement, rather than a question.
“I am,” Drayton said, his green eyes swinging from Julia to Mike.
As simple as that. As life-changing.
“So it’s true?” Julia whispered, Drayton’s perfectly sculpted features blurring slightly in front of her eyes.
“And all this time, as far back as college, you’ve been lying about who you are and what you do?” Mike asked, his voice thick with an emotion she wasn’t prepared to name.
The only response from Drayton was a half-shrug.
“So what do you do?” Julia asked, trying to find the solid ground of reason and failing completely. “Are you a thief? Like your father?”
“A thief, yes. Not exactly like my father. I assume you’ve been doing some inves
tigating, since you ended up here. How much did you uncover?”
“Enough to believe what you just said,” Mike said, the roughness still evident in his voice. “And enough not to trust you.”
“Julia?” Drayton prompted after a moment.
She realized he wanted her response as well, and she wondered if he thought she’d be more on his side than Mike was.
At this point, she had no idea whose side she was on. She didn’t have nearly enough information, and she didn’t feel capable of processing information, even if it was forthcoming.
“I don’t know what to think,” she admitted, edging closer to Mike’s big form and reassuring strength. “None of this makes any sense.”
“I’ll be happy to explain, if you let me.” Drayton’s gaze was mostly fixed on Julia, but it occasionally flickered over to Mike—as if he couldn’t stop himself from checking for Mike’s reactions every few seconds.
“Drayton? Where have you run off to?”
The voice came from down the road, toward the house they’d just left. And Julia recognized it after just a moment. Female, cultured, faintly teasing.
So she knew who she would see approaching them even before the gorgeous brunette from the party appeared from behind the trees.
“What is this?” the woman asked as she neared them. “Do we have guests?”
“I do, yes,” Drayton replied.
Julia felt a pang of fear at the implications of his words, as if he were setting a boundary between them and the woman. Mike must have heard the same thing because he moved even closer, putting a protective hand on her back and moving his other hand nearer to his jacket pocket.
“No need for the archaic protective act,” Drayton told him, taking in Mike’s stance with a lofty expression. “This is Gia. She’s not going to hurt you.” Again, the tone of the words sounded like they were intended as much for Gia as for the two of them.
“Not at the moment, anyway,” Gia said, moving until she was standing next to Drayton.
“Forgive me if I don’t trust the man who just admitted to being a criminal,” Mike replied in a clipped voice. “Or a woman I know absolutely nothing about.”