by Julie Miller
He pulled off his reading glasses and rubbed at his temple when the clerk in Kansas City’s FBI office reported that the information on Anthony Fierro in their database was just as sketchy as KCPD’s. Her helpful suggestion only fueled his suspicions about the ex-con having erased at least parts of his past—or having someone with powerful connections do it for him.
The patrol car Atticus had requested to swing by Brooke’s house for an hourly check while Fierro was there wouldn’t be much of a deterrent for a man with connections like that. There was something bigger, deeper, going on here. Was he some kind of mob or government informant with a new identity created through witness relocation? Was he a deeply embedded terrorist plant? Or was he just a run-of-the-mill criminal who’d paid big bucks to make parts of his life disappear? None of those scenarios would be good news for Brooke. And none of them explained any kind of link Fierro might have had with his father.
“No. The Department of Corrections directed me to you.” The D.A.’s search had been a bust as well. Maybe he needed to expand this to an international search—but that would mean a lot of red tape and a lot of man-hours based on little more than coincidence and his gut. “Yes. Flag it,” he agreed when the offer was made. “This guy’s flying under the radar. No one who served ten years in Jeff City can be that squeaky clean before going in. Yeah. Keep me posted if you turn up anything.” He wasn’t holding his breath. “Thanks.”
Almost the instant he hung up, his cell phone vibrated, indicating an incoming text message. “Look up” it said.
He did.
Ah, yes. The icing on the cake of a truly crappy day.
The platinum blonde closed her phone, smiling a little too perfectly for Atticus’s taste as she pulled away from the cubicle wall where she’d been lounging and crossed to his desk. “Long time, no see, stranger.”
“Hayley.” Atticus stood, not out of polite habit, he told himself, but because it was time to leave. He rolled down the sleeves of his shirt and buttoned the cuffs. “I’m on my way out.”
The excuse was as genuine as it was improvised. He needed to see Brooke—see for himself that her decision to bring Fierro into her life wasn’t one she regretted already. And if she’d forgiven him for overstepping the bounds of big brotherhood yesterday, then he wanted to look at her journal. Besides, a little of that peace and calm his dad had found so appealing about Brooke sounded pretty enticing right about now.
Hayley perched on the chair beside his desk. “Saying hi like civilized people doesn’t take that long, does it?”
It did when the person saying hi made his skin crawl with mistrust. “I’m a busy man.”
She brushed her bangs aside with the tip of her pinkie. “Then I’ll approach this as a professional rather than an old friend.”
To his way of thinking, Hayley Resnick didn’t qualify as either. Atticus pulled his jacket from the back of his chair and slipped into it. Man, he needed a good dose of something to curb his sarcastic thoughts. “I’m just a working cop. Talk to the press liaison.”
“About your father’s murder?”
“What about it?” He buttoned his collar and straightened the knot of his tie, pretending every nerve in his body hadn’t just gone on full alert.
“I understand you brought in a potential witness for questioning this afternoon.”
“I didn’t do anything. It’s not my case.”
“You’re telling me that after three months, KCPD doesn’t have any new leads? No suspect? No motive?”
He pointed across several groupings of desks to where Kevin Grove was still working. “The big, blond guy. Detective Grove. He’s running the investigation. Talk to him.”
She stepped into his path when he headed to the sign-out board. “No tit for tat anymore?” He didn’t even flinch when she stroked her fingers along his lapel. “Our relationship wasn’t completely about our jobs, Atticus. It doesn’t have to be this way between us.”
She wasn’t getting the name of the witness, or even confirmation that Liza Parrish existed. She wasn’t getting any mention about a microscopic tattoo. And she sure as hell wasn’t finding out about Brooke or the journal. Not from him.
He plucked her hand away. “That story you used to scoop your way onto the number-one news show in KC? It led to the compromise of a safe house I was guarding. I was drugged when the house was attacked, the witness nearly killed. And, by the way, where were you while I was in the hospital recovering? Typing up your notes?”
“Don’t be mean, sweetheart. I didn’t know you were hurt. Of course, I would have left the station to visit you if I had known.” Her rose-tinted lips trembled right on cue, as if she thought that apologetic pout would soften him up.
Wrong. “The partner I was working with sold out because your story told the mob where to put their money. That falls on my head, sweetheart.”
“The witness survived because you warned her before passing out. The bad guys are dead or in prison. You’re still a cop. No harm, no foul.”
Talk about missing the point. “You’re not getting diddly squat from me.” He thumbed over his shoulder, as he pushed his way past her toward Brooke’s office. “Talk to Grove.”
Leaving Hayley to work her dubious charms on the other detective, Atticus strode down the hallway toward Brooke’s office. He supposed he could have asked Hayley to use her connections to see if she could find out anything about Tony Fierro’s neat and tidy past. But that was a source of information he’d never trust again. His own search had yielded nothing more than a recently issued driver’s license and a birth certificate so poorly copied that Fierro’s father could have been Ivan or Luanne or Unknown.
But he wasn’t about to give up until he knew for certain there was no threat. Atticus Kincaid didn’t say “uncle.”
He slowed his steps as he neared Brooke’s office. “Damn. Missed her.”
Lights off. Nobody home.
He almost turned around except… A soft, shuffling sound drew him back against the wall to listen. He held his breath and paused a moment, quickly determining that that was no cleaning lady rummaging around inside. Reaching through the open doorway, Atticus flipped on the lights.
A man with curly black hair jumped in Brooke’s chair.
Atticus stepped over the threshold. “Who are you?”
A drawer slammed shut and the man shot to his feet, sending the chair spinning back into the bookshelf, toppling notebooks. He stopped the spinning, then straightened and held up the visitor’s pass around his neck. “Mirza Patel. I have permission to be here. Don’t shoot.”
Atticus didn’t waste his time pointing out that his gun was still holstered, and moved into the center of the room. “That pass gives you permission to enter the building, not this office.”
As he approached, he analyzed the intruder’s average height, average build and—as an unusual side effect in an air-conditioned building—the beads of sweat dotting his upper lip.
“What are you doing here?” Going through Brooke’s things went unspoken. The man reached down beside him. “Keep your hands where I can see them.” Or he would pull the damn gun.
Patel came back up with both hands high in the air. “I’m a computer technician from Caldwell Enterprises. I have been training Brooke on CT Software. We are friends, she and I. I left a cord when I packed up earlier today. I need it for my computer.”
“Does she know you’re here?”
“I didn’t want her to know how forgetful I am.” His face creased with a smile. “She gave me flowers when I left, which made me forget things. They were for my mother, she said, but I know…”
Glancing at the shelves behind the man, Atticus noted that the red roses were missing. He could tell that something about those flowers had bugged Brooke from the moment he’d brought them in yesterday. And now she’d passed them on to this guy? There was something wrong here, something Brooke wasn’t telling him.
“…when we took the class together, I felt she was someone�
�”
Atticus interrupted his tale of his geek-love crush on Brooke. “Did you find your cord?”
Patel’s smile vanished. “She must have put it away. I suppose I could get it when I come back tomorrow for the second day of her training.”
“Good plan.”
Understanding that that also meant goodbye and get out, Patel shuffled around the desk, doubling his pace as Atticus put his hand on the butt of his gun and followed him out the door.
Once the uninvited guest cleared the hallway, Atticus returned to Brooke’s office. He righted the notebooks and pushed her chair back up to the desk, then opened his phone to call her. “How’d I overlook that?”
She wasn’t on his call list. It had never seemed important enough to carry her number with him, but now he wished he had her on speed dial.
It was a mistake he intended to rectify. Until then, “We’ll do this the old-fashioned way.” Plucking a sheet from her cube of notepaper, he pulled out a pen and wrote her a message.
We need to talk ASAP. If I don’t catch you tonight, please make time for me first thing tomorrow morning.
Atticus.
He set the note at the center of her calendar blotter. His search for a coffee mug or paperweight to anchor it there took his eye to the bottom left drawer of Brooke’s desk, which hadn’t closed completely because someone had jammed it in at an angle—as if that someone had been caught going through Brooke’s things.
His gaze and thoughts drifted to the door. Was Mirza Patel really such a bumbling idiot? Or was that absentminded professor act a sly cover?
Leaving nothing to speculation, Atticus unjammed the drawer and opened it. There were two boxes of computer disks inside, one with the cover not completely pulled back into place. The disks themselves were tilted in opposite directions, as though whoever had sorted through them had been interrupted part way through—or had found what he was looking for and stopped.
Had Patel been searching through these disks?
Had he found what he was looking for?
Atticus’s gaze slid to the trash can beside her desk. Or was he looking for that? He fished out a half-crumpled letter. Typed. Plain paper. Simple message. Unsigned. Unremarkable in and of itself, except he’d seen Brooke’s reaction to the flowers. They hadn’t been a welcome gift.
See you soon.
A promise. Or a threat.
“What the hell’s going on, Brooke? What aren’t you telling me?”
Atticus folded the note and tucked it inside his jacket, turned off the lights and headed for the exit.
When had the quiet secretary who’d always blended into the background become such a complex woman of mystery? And why did this growing concern for all things Brooke keep nagging at him like a time bomb about to blow up in his face?
BROOKE HUGGED her purse to her chest, drawing into herself as she rode the elevator down to the main floor of the precinct building. She’d smiled a general acknowledgment to her companions in the elevator, but retreated to the back corner of the car while they carried on their conversations about their workday and evening plans.
She didn’t want to talk to anyone right now—didn’t want to have to worry about saying the right thing or dredging up the nerve to speak at all and pretend she wasn’t as mentally and emotionally exhausted as she was feeling right now. She needed to be alone and find that quiet center of strength inside her again. She needed time to think and deal.
For a woman who had no love life to speak of—and who had learned to get along well enough without one, thank you very much—all this anonymous attention she’d been receiving felt more disturbing than flattering.
Was this someone’s really bad idea of a joke? Torment the spinster chick until she breaks down into tears or finally blows her stack? That was a nasty flashback to middle school she didn’t intend to relive.
Could there be a man out there—the secret admirer Atticus had teased her about—even more unskilled in the romance department than she? Too shy to sign his name or too nervous to remember the courtesy?
Or had she become the target of something much more sinister?
She wasn’t sure if she was clinging to the leather bag because it was the only solid thing to hold on to for comfort, or if she was using it like a shield of armor. Not that it really mattered. Her bag might allow her to carry her daily survival kit around with her, but it provided neither the comfort nor the security she craved. A strong set of arms wrapped around her would be far better….
No. Don’t go there, Hansford. There was no hero riding in on his white charger—or driving up in his silver SUV—to help her. She’d inherited strong independent genes from her aunts. She just needed a few quiet moments to regroup—to get past the watching and gifts and personal notes that no one would claim.
The elevator dinged and the doors parted before she was ready to face the world again. After checking out at the security desk and having her bag examined at the front gate, it was easy enough to revert to the habit of gluing her gaze to the sidewalk and avoiding eye contact with anyone. She made her way down the block and waited at the corner light with a small group of city workers to cross the street to the parking garage.
The sun was just beginning to set, but was still high enough on the horizon to warm her skin. She lifted her face to its sultry caress and breathed in deeply. She’d be all right. She’d get through this. There had to be some logical explanation that, once she figured it out, she’d be laughing about tomorrow.
By the time the light changed, she was holding her chin high and thanking the gentleman who invited her to precede him. When the group reached the parking garage, they fanned out, some heading to the elevator, others around the gate to their ground-level vehicles. Feeling fit if not completely fine after her internal down time, Brooke turned to the open stairs that ran up the southwest corner of the garage, keeping the sun on her shoulders and her positive thinking in place.
Perhaps it was the lingering heat of the day that made the sudden chill of the shadows when she entered the third-floor level so noticeable a shock that it raised goose bumps beneath the sleeves of her blouse. Shaking off the unexpected cold snap, Brooke lengthened her stride. She’d parked on the opposite end of the garage that morning, knowing that on busy days like this one, her walk to and from the car might be the only aerobic exercise she got.
A sudden breeze lifted her hair and tickled the back of her neck. She glanced quickly over her shoulder. The leaves on the trees outside the garage weren’t moving.
Must be some trick of her imagination, or more likely, a mini-cyclone created by the variance between the hot and cool temps.
Brooke wrapped both fists around the shoulder strap of her bag and kept walking. She heard the chatter of men’s voices from somewhere below her and found herself eavesdropping on their conversation. It made her feel a little less alone up here as she pulled out her keys and wondered why she’d thought parking so far away had sounded like a good idea this morning. She made out “Royals” and “Yankees” and pieces of a debate as to whether one’s pitching could beat the other’s hitting.
Catching a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye, Brooke stuttered to a halt. What was that wisp of color she’d seen between those two trucks? There was nothing there now. Could a purplish bird have darted by?
Nervous energy tightened her throat to a whisper. “Name one purple bird.”
Purple martin. Purple finch. Neither one was really purple in color. Maybe she wasn’t so alone on the third level as she’d thought.
“Go.” Her calf-length skirt swirled between her knees as she picked up the pace.
Gravel crunched beneath a footstep on the concrete behind her and Brooke jumped in her skin. That was one big damn purple bird. Before her heart thumped right out of her chest, she stopped. Swung around. Saw no one.
“Hello? Is someone there?” It would be a hell of a lot easier to confront her fear if she could actually see what was te
rrifying her. Her chest rose and fell as she took deep, steady breaths. Her knuckles whitened around her keys and purse. The only sounds now were the baseball fans on the level below her and her pulse pounding in her ears. “This isn’t funny, you know. I’m not laughing.”
The elevator pinged, announcing it had arrived on this floor and the doors were about to open. In her mind she tried to be sensible, tried to relax. Wait for company. Wait until you’re not alone. Wait…
A man’s laughter, low-pitched and mocking, echoed in the air around her.
“Oh, God.” Brooke backed up, hit the center railing and spun around. Fear turned her legs to jelly and she stumbled, slipping out of one shoe, squashing it beneath her foot as the instinct to survive kicked in and gave her the strength to run. The laughter grew louder, zoomed up behind her.
“—until they can get a closer, I don’t think any pitcher is going to save—”
The baseball fans.
“Help! Help me!” Brooke glanced desperately around, spotting two uniformed officers walking up the center ramp.
“Brooke!”
Don’t listen! Don’t look!
The concrete was ice-cold beneath her stockinged foot, the fear charging through her veins even more chilling. She changed direction and ran straight toward the two cops. “Someone’s following me. There’s a man back there.”
“Ma’am?”
“Whoa.”
One officer’s hand went to his nightstick. He braced and stepped back. Crazy lady approaching. The other officer had a quicker sense of her distress. “I don’t see any—”
Brooke gestured wildly behind her. “He’s been after me for two days now. I’ve had flowers and notes and there’s laughing. He’s always watching. I heard footsteps and saw… there were two trucks—”
“Okay, ma’am. Slow down.” The taller of the two officers patted the air, urging her to calm down and make sense. The one with the nightstick searched the garage behind her.