She looked more fragile than a rose petal. Fragile, crushable and damned scared. She got out her cell phone, obviously intending to call her sisters and friends, but for a few moments she just sat silently, locked in her seat belt and folded up inside her jacket as if hoping she could disappear.
Cord weaved in and out of traffic, turning right on Pennsylvania, his veins pumping adrenaline. He wished she could do exactly that-disappear. The woman was in danger. And because the cops thought Sophie was guilty of something, they weren’t going to protect her. They wanted to use her.
It was Ferrell who’d called him, and that message was still ringing in his mind. Ferrell told him about the break-in, told him if there was ever a good shot at getting information out of Sophie Campbell, it was now. She could have staged the break-in herself, to divert suspicion. If she hadn’t, then whoever Cord’s brother had been blackmailing believed that Sophie either had the evidence-or knew where it was.
Jon’s autopsy had come back. There’d been two critical blows-one to the back of the head, one to the forehead. The latter had propelled him down the stairs, and was how he’d ended up lying on his back, but it had been the first blow that had really been the killer. There was no hard evidence to pin down the culprit, but according to Bassett, it was either a woman or a short man.
The cops had figured the killer as a woman from the start. More than ever, they wanted Cord to grill Sophie. Or as Ferrell put it, grill her or seduce her. Whatever worked to get information from her.
Cord’s grip tightened on the wheel while he listened to her calling friends on her cell phone. She left messages for her sisters, didn’t reach Hillary, but connected to Jan Howell…who questioned her on every detail, what happened, what the cops said, what she’d said, making promises to tell everyone else so she didn’t have to repeat the call, offering to immediately come over-on and on. When Sophie hung up, she leaned back against the seat as if too wiped out to hold her head up.
“Hillary…she’s the one with the extraordinary, um…?” Cord had a hard time keeping the brunettes straight.
“Boobs. Yes.” Sophie didn’t open her eyes. “That figure of hers is so ironic. She’s soft-spoken, very shy, and a doctor-smarter than any ten people I know. Yet all people notice are her looks.”
“Hard not to.”
“I know. Women prejudge her, too. I’m just saying…she’s a true-blue kind of person.”
In Sophie’s judgment, Cord mused. “And Jan, the friend you did manage to reach. She’s the real tall glass of water, looks like she dresses at an art museum? The one who starts shooting the bull before she’s even said hello?”
Sophie opened one eye then. “She was great to me when I first moved here and knew nobody.”
Which meant, Cord figured, that she didn’t think a whole lot of Jan, either, but wasn’t about to knock someone who’d been good to her. “She was a friend of my brother’s?”
“Cord, every woman in the neighborhood knew your brother, and more than ninety percent, I’d guess, made a play for him. I never kept track of who he slept with. I didn’t care. Still don’t.”
She changed subjects. “I don’t want to be gone for too long.”
“We’ll be back in a couple hours, no more. Are you hungry for anything special?”
“I couldn’t possibly eat a thing,” she assured him.
Uh-huh. He used his cell to order takeout. In less than an hour, he’d picked up the brown bag, spread out a stadium blanket from the trunk and had Sophie installed on the grass with a view of the Washington Monument. She plowed through the War Sui Gui, then the Shrimp Fried Rice, then two egg rolls and a little Steak Kow.
Cord started to worry if he’d bought enough. The blanket wasn’t much protection against the cold ground, but her jacket was warm enough for the Arctic, and overall, she just seemed to calm down. “I love the Washington Monument,” she said-or tried to say. Her mouth was pretty full.
“Yeah, me, too. Hate politics. Hate a lot about Washington. But when I look at the monument lit up at night…”
“It gives me shivers. Good shivers.”
It didn’t give him shivers, but something was right about this place, this time, this country. Her. Him. Although, once she’d inhaled all that food, she lost some of that lost look and started talking.
“Both those policemen knew you,” she said in an accusing tone.
“Yeah, of course they did.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
“Because they’re the ones who told me about Jon’s death. I’ve spent more hours with them than I’d care to count.” When she tucked up her legs and didn’t respond further, he pushed with a “What?”
“There’s something you’re not telling me. Something everybody’s not telling me. Something’s…wrong.”
“Of course there is. Two serious crimes took place in your apartment building in less than two weeks.”
“That part, I get. What I don’t understand is why I keep getting the feeling the police are hiding information from me. As if they know something about who might have vandalized my place, but for some reason they don’t want to tell me the whole story.”
There were others out, enjoying the night. People always loved seeing the monuments at night, and lovers traditionally used the strolls around the mall to snuggle together. Yards away, Cord heard the hum of conversation, a woman’s whispers.
The only whispers he wanted to hear, though, were Sophie’s. Her hair looked like a spill of silver in the starlight, her eyes liquid dark. Magical. He wasn’t the kind to believe in magic or spells…yet, there was something he couldn’t explain when he was with Sophie. For one thing, he knew perfectly well the cops didn’t want him telling her the truth.
Yet, how could he possibly protect her if she didn’t understand more of the bigger picture?
“Sophie…I think the police don’t totally trust you.”
Her response was an immediate chuckle. “Of course they do. Everyone trusts me!” She pointed to her face, as if it would be obvious to anyone looking at her that she couldn’t fib without broadcasting it to the universe.
But when he looked at her face, all he could think of was wanting to kiss it. To see her eyes widen with vulnerability. To see those soft red lips part, to let him in. Just him. Only him.
Hell. Where had that come from?
He tried to get back on track. “The police think you might have some idea what the thief wanted from your apartment.”
“How am I possibly supposed to know what that could be?”
He said patiently, “From what Bassett said…you had a stash of money in your cookie jar. A hundred bucks. No one took it. You had some jewelry, but no one took that, either. Computer, TV, electronics-all the stuff thieves go for was still there. So the thief had to want something else. And maybe that ‘something’ is related to my brother’s death-because why else would the two traumatic incidents take place in the same building, within two weeks of each other?”
She cocked her head, looked at him with such empathy. “Cord, I understand why you want there to be a reason for your brother’s death. The fire that killed my parents…it haunted my sisters and me for years. We just wanted there to be a reason, some way to make sense of what happened, something we could blame. But there was never a reason, not that anyone could find. I know it’s hard. I know. Even if you weren’t close to your brother, I totally understand why you feel pushed to find a reason for his death, something that mattered. Something that could help you put closure on the loss…”
Guilt felt like a coffin nail. He hated not being able to totally fill her in. Sophie still didn’t know Jon’s death was a murder. The authorities had honest reasons for keeping the cause of death quiet, but that failed to appease his conscience. Her warm compassion bit. He knew he hadn’t earned her sympathy.
“Sophie…” He’d brought a bottle of wine with the take-out dinner. Maybe wine wasn’t precisely legal out there in the open, but she stopped looking so whit
e and anxious after a couple of paper cups. He poured her a little more. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. About any reasons you can imagine why someone might have broken into your place. Think.”
She took another sip. “Well…my foster parents left me a nest egg. At the time they took me in, they were considered too old to adopt, by the rules then. But they created a trust for me, because they knew…” She gulped again. “They knew I had nightmares for years, about losing my home, my parents, my family, everything. They didn’t want me to be afraid that could ever happen again. So they wanted me to have something to fall back on. But, Cord, I can’t imagine anyone knows about that but my sisters. I’ve traveled too much with my job to have accumulated much, and I’m pretty sure no one would say I run around looking wealthy.”
He definitely wouldn’t say that. She ran around in clothes and colors that made her look nondescript-and he was beginning to understand why. She didn’t want trouble. She did everything but stand on her head to not attract trouble, any kind of trouble…so this whole mess had to be her worst nightmare.
Her revealing the business about her nest egg showed that she trusted him-was risking her trust on him.
That alone revealed her innocence to him, in both senses of the word. The more he knew her, the more time he spent with her, the more beautiful he could see she was. The wrong kind of beauty. The dangerous kind of beauty. The true-blue vulnerability in her eyes was the kind that could attract the worst predators. And Cord sure as hell couldn’t be the only man who saw beneath the silly clothes and glasses to the Sophie underneath.
Impatiently, he said, “Come on, Soph. There has to be something else.”
This conversation was getting nowhere-at least not in the direction it was supposed to go. The more Cord believed in Sophie’s innocence, the more he realized that the guilty party, the one who murdered his brother, was still out there free. And Sophie was a stop sign in the way.
Sophie shrugged her shoulders. “You keep saying there has to be something else. But I’ve told you all the something elses I can think of, Cord.”
He tugged at the collar of her jacket when he caught her shivering. “When the police looked into Jon’s death, they were uneasy about some loose ends. They had the impression Jon was hiding something.”
“You mean drugs?”
“Not drugs. But something that explains all the trap doors and hidey-holes and locked gadgets in his apartment. I don’t have the whole picture,” he said, with complete honesty. “But I’m getting enough to be…worried. And now someone’s ransacked your place.”
She shook her head in bewilderment. “You’re making it sound as if you believe there’s a connection.”
Cord had had it with juggling what he could tell her and what he couldn’t. Maybe he couldn’t tell her the authorities’ “truth.” But he could sure as hell choose to share his own. “I believe my brother was involved in something unsavory. Even as a kid, he was always looking for ways to make a buck without having to do anything as annoying as real work. The way this appears, I think Jon had information about certain important people. Affairs, mistakes-that kind of thing. I don’t know who or what. But I believe his ‘victims’ want that information back, and are particularly worried what happened to it since Jon died.”
Sophie gulped down more wine and held out her paper cup. “No matter what the police said, you don’t think your brother’s death was an accident, do you?”
“Nope. I don’t.”
She waggled her cup. “More wine.”
“Don’t you think you’ve had quite a bit?”
“Not if we’re going to talk about murder.”
He filled her cup again and quit arguing.
Chapter 5
Amazing what a little wine and food could do. Granted, she was seeing streetlights in triplicate and her head felt a little woozy…but she wasn’t scared anymore.
She was mad.
“I never get mad,” she told Cord.
“So you’ve mentioned, several times.”
“It’s an amazing relief. Instead of feeling scared, to just let go and feel mad. I mean, what is this?” She waved her arms to illustrate. “I’ve had enough rotten stuff to deal with. Getting broken into is just ridiculously unfair. Finding your dead brother was even worse. I mean, maybe your brother wasn’t the most ethical knife in the drawer, but…” She frowned, not certain if she was making sense. Although that didn’t seem to stop her from talking. “I’m going to get regularly mad from now on. Loud mad. Mean mad. It’s so much better than being scared. When I was a little girl, I used to stand on the porch and sing at the top of my lungs, did you know that? I was a brat. A ham. An attention grabber. It took years, years, to turn me into the pissy, button-down fuddy-duddy I am today…Oh God, did I say pissy? I meant prissy. I would never say prissy…I mean pissy…oh, shoot, which one did I mean?”
“Sophie, let’s wait until the car stops before you get out, cookie.”
“And then there’s you,” she muttered. Fresh air slapped her in the face when she climbed out of the car. Good thing, since the whole street was revolving like a carousel. Suddenly, she wondered why she didn’t drink more often. This was so wonderful. The whole night looked magically sprinkled with stardust.
“Sophie?”
“No,” she said firmly, and abruptly danced down the street. Cord did that to her. Made her feel like dancing. Made her think about moonlight and stardust. It was…unsettling. Somewhere beneath the taste of all that wine was the taste of temptation. Not the temptation of stardust, but the temptation of plain old lust. No man had tempted her in years-not really tempted-the kind of temptation that made her want to strip off more than clothes. The kind of temptation to throw all her fears to the wind and just grab hold of him for the lust of it.
“Oh, no,” she muttered. “I learned a long time ago that monsters don’t hide under the bed. They’re everywhere. At least my monsters are. You can’t feel safe if you think someone’s going to disappear on you. And they all do. Everyone does. So, for darn sure, you don’t open the door to someone you’re not sure of. And for damn sure, I’m not sure of you.”
Abruptly, she found Cord standing directly in front of her. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Soph, but your apartment is that way.” He motioned behind her.
“Well, hell. Who moved my building?” she demanded.
If he answered her, she couldn’t hear him-possibly because her right ear was abruptly crushed against his chest. His long arm tucked her against his side as he turned her around, steering her toward the brownstone. She’d have protested, but the truth was that she’d have stumbled if he hadn’t helped hold her up.
Still, she felt the situation needed clarifying. “Look,” she said, “I don’t do this. Ever.”
“Don’t do what?”
“I don’t fall in love with men who aren’t honest with me. Cripes, it’s hard enough for me to loosen up with men who are honest with me. You’re too far off my radar, Cord. There’s no reason you’d normally be looking at me. So something isn’t kosher. I feel it. I know it. So that’s it. I’m not falling in love with you. It’d be like getting a love note from a pistachio.”
“Huh?”
“You don’t know the pistachio song? You want me to sing it?”
“No. Please God, no. Sophie, just concentrate on walking, okay?”
“Or I could sing the other song, about walking on the safe side of the sidewalk. About how she’s afraid to trust anyone, even herself. That’s me. The untruster. The safe sidewalk walker.” She repeated that phrase, charmed with herself. All those S’s and W’s. And she said them brilliantly. Several times.
Out of the complete blue, Cord suddenly lifted her in his arms.
“What-”
“Shh. No more talking for you.”
Well, the truth was, she was pretty darned exhausted. So she closed her eyes for just a second, thinking she just needed a moment to catch her breat
h.
Just before opening her eyes, Sophie felt the snuggly security of a warm, breathing body next to her. A male body. And so typical of a male who’d gotten exactly what he wanted, he was purring loud enough to wake the neighborhood. “Caviar, you know you’re not allowed under the covers…” Her groggy voice trailed off abruptly. Caviar didn’t seem to be the only male in her bedroom.
Cord looked downright silly, sprawled in her white wicker rocker with the flowery cushion. He’d taken off his shoes. His right sock had a hole. His hair looked raked by a tornado and his chin had sprouted a weed patch of whiskers.
He was also awake. Glaring at her with those sexy dark eyes…although the shadows under his eyes were bigger than boats.
“What on earth are you doing here?” she said groggily.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
“I scared you?”
“You had a ton of food, you know. A ton. I thought the wine would help you calm down. When we first left, I could see how shaken up you were by the break-in. And you only had half the bottle. It was just wine. After all that food. I take it you don’t normally drink?”
“Is this your way of apologizing for getting me drunk?” She peeked under the covers. Caviar looked up at her with sleepy eyes. Nothing else under there but her in all her clothes-except for her shoes-and the cat.
“I didn’t get you drunk. I was trying to be helpful, for God’s sake.”
She leaned up on an elbow. He’d stayed there all night, just because he was worried about her?
But then the rest of life came back into focus. Daylight filtered through the north window, illuminating part of the devastation from the night before. Her tall, antique-white bookcase with the glass doors-hers, not part of the rental furniture that came with the place-was in shambles, glass panes broken, books spilled all over the polished plank floors. Her shoes and purses looked strewn from her closet by a drunk ogre on a binge. Drawers were askew, revealing bra straps and socks and an upended box of old letters. “You were helpful,” she said to Cord. “I don’t care if I had too much wine. I needed to get away from this for a little bit. But now…”
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