by Alice Sharpe
In a heartbeat, Ryan’s gaze took in the murky details of the rest of the room. An unmade bed in one corner topped with a navy-blue duffel bag, stuffed with clothes. Clean jeans and a sweater on the bed, loafers nearby on a rug. A jacket draped the closet doorknob. Drawers open and empty, closet likewise.
It looked as though Jim Kinsey had been packing for a trip.
Then what? A knock on the door? Entry of someone he trusted? A shared drink, a sudden strangling?
There were no signs of forced entry, no signs of a struggle. What healthy, burly thirty-year-old man allowed himself to be strangled without putting up a fuss?
Ryan turned to face Tess, gun reholstered, his hands gripping her shoulders. Her cheeks were stained with tears, her expression horrified.
“It’s him,” she said, her voice shaking as her gaze met Ryan’s. “It’s the man from yesterday. I recognize his boots. One of them has a brown shoelace. I noticed that yesterday when he stepped on my handbag.”
Ryan glanced over his shoulder at the dead man’s feet. He saw a brown lace on the right boot, a black one on the left.
“I wanted him dead,” she said, voice quivering, eyes averted. “He terrified me and I wanted him dead—”
He squeezed her shoulders. “Don’t do this to yourself. You’re not responsible. Let’s get out of here. Don’t touch anything.”
Neither of them had advanced far into the room, so it was a short walk back outside. Ryan took care not to touch the knob or anything else.
“We’ll call this in from the car,” he said, already dreading the hours to come. They assumed the dead man was Kinsey, but a positive identification would come later. If it was indeed Kinsey, then his relation to the Lingfords was public knowledge. He was the fired driver of Madeline Lingford’s van. His boots connected him to the violent threats made against Tess posing as Katie. The money he demanded tied him to the fire and also to Tess’s dad, killed in the fire.
So, who killed him? The obvious culprit? Nelson Lingford, but it was hard to picture Nelson driving over here, drinking cheap booze and doing his own dirty work. It was hard to picture Nelson overpowering Kinsey, though he was probably in tip top shape. Tess had mentioned windsurfing. It took muscles in the upper arms to windsurf.
Of course, there was always the shadowy third party, but he’d put his money on Nelson.
Tess was visibly shaking and he ran his hands up and down her arms. “It’s time to bring in the troops,” he said.
TESS SAT IN RYAN’S CAR as darkness stole over the alley. The scene became a maze of police cars, men and women in uniforms, flashing lights and yellow crime scene tape. At one point she accepted a cup of coffee and a blanket from someone. An hour later she was visited by a swarthy man with a dark mustache who told her his name was Detective Sanchez and would she please tell him exactly what happened.
She lost track of Ryan until he knocked on her window. She opened her door.
“I’m going to be awhile,” he said.
Bathed by the car’s interior light, Ryan’s face looked tired, his eyes weary. Would he be standing here at the home of a murder victim if it wasn’t for Katie, if it wasn’t for her?
Doubtful.
“Is the dead man…was he Kinsey?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “One of the officers remembered him from the investigation after your father died.”
She nodded woodenly.
“Sanchez said he talked to you already,” Ryan continued. “He’ll probably want to talk to you again tomorrow, but I got permission for you to leave tonight. Take my car.” He handed her a scrap of paper and added, “This is my home address. It’s four blocks east of the hospital. There’s an all-night gas station on the south corner. They can give you directions if you get lost. Look for a gray building with black trim. I’m on the second floor, Apartment 6. The keys are on the ring with the car key. Go to my place. My pal fixed Katie’s door again but, please, don’t go back there.”
“There’s no way in hell I’d go back there,” she said with a visible shudder.
“Good.”
“What are you going to tell Sanchez about me taking over Katie’s investigation?”
He slid into the car next to her and closed the door, his face lost in shadows. “I already gave Sanchez a rundown. He’ll divulge the information when and if it becomes necessary. What did you tell him?”
“That I was Matt Fields’s other daughter, the one no one knew about. I told him Katie couldn’t accept the verdict that our father had been responsible for the fire so she launched her own investigation using our mother’s name as a cover. I told him when the police declined to investigate Katie’s accident as a premeditated crime, you agreed to help me.”
“Good. Right now he’s focused on finding who killed Jim Kinsey. All this information is pivotal because it may supply motive for the murder. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe it’ll turn out the guy put the move on someone else’s kid sister who then decided to put an end to Kinsey’s philandering. Kinsey’s murder is Sanchez’s priority.”
“What’s your priority?” she asked.
“Keeping you alive. Period.”
She slipped her hand into his and admired his profile as he looked down at their linked hands. But once again there was that little tug-of-war between her physical need of him and her head telling her to back away. He turned to face her, and before she knew it, he was kissing her. The touch of his tongue against hers sent shivers racing up and down her spine.
He moved away again. “I probably won’t be home until daybreak.”
She was relieved in a way. She needed time.
“I doubt Clive will actually allow you to see him, but will you sprinkle some kibble in his bowl and check his water?”
“Your cat? Sure.”
“And keep my bed warm?”
She smiled at the sudden husky tone of his voice and her own leaping libido. And inside she frowned at the intimacy, the developing need she could feel to be there with him, for him.
He kissed her again before stepping outside the car. Her last glimpse of him was in the rearview mirror, a tall man standing in an alley, backlit by police lights, raindrops shining off the shoulders of his black leather jacket, sparkling in his hair, hands on hips, staring after her.
TESS STOPPED by the hospital first, drawn there by something she couldn’t name. She parked the car in the underground garage and raced down the halls to Katie’s room, parting the curtain with a feeling she would find her sister sitting up in bed, staring back at her.
But Katie remained supine with eyes closed.
For a while, Tess held her sister’s limp hand. She closed her eyes and tried to establish a psychic link. She figuratively roamed the back labyrinth of her own mind, keeping herself open to the spark of another consciousness.
But in the end, there was nothing in the back of Tess’s mind except the wearying details of the day and the shocking memory of Jim Kinsey’s ugly death. She laid her sister’s hand back by her side, leaned forward and kissed her brow.
“Wake up soon,” she whispered against her cool, dry skin.
A glance at the clock stunned her. It was only a little past eight. Tess used the phone book at the hospital to look up Nelson Lingford and found a business address located only a few blocks away.
They had a dinner date.
Ryan would kill her if he knew she tried to keep it.
But would Nelson be in his office if he’d just murdered Jim Kinsey? Of course not. So, if he was there, wouldn’t that prove—
It would prove nothing. It wasn’t hard to imagine Nelson killing someone and then taking a woman to dinner. Caution said lock herself away, play it safe, but caution didn’t have her curiosity. The photograph of the trophy bugged Tess. Katie had taken it for a purpose. Tess dug in her purse, retrieved the phone and scrolled through the menu. The entire photo gallery was empty!
Who had emptied it? Who’d had an opportunity that day to handle her phone? The obvious choice was
Ryan…he’d had the phone for hours the day before. Might he have purposely fooled around with the photos? Why? Who else, then? Irene? Nelson? The only one she could be certain hadn’t emptied it was Muffy.
She drove Ryan’s car to Nelson’s office building, parking on the street, shaking with a combination of aftershock, cold and fear. Wind swept down the wet sidewalk as she walked to the glass doors. She shook the metal handles in frustration.
And as she stood there peering inside at the gloomy lobby, she heard a pinging sound, a whiz, and a small explosion next to her ear.
She stared at the round hole in the glass beside her head. It took a stunned second before it finally dawned on her she was being shot at. Her first instinct was to turn around. A man stood across the street, gun raised. She flew across the sidewalk and ducked behind Ryan’s car as another bullet hit the building behind her.
Bullets!
She reached up and grasped the passenger door handle, easing the door open. Would she have the nerve to get inside the car, exposing her head to the gunman?
Who in the world would shoot at her?
She heard a sound and looked down the street in time to see a car approaching. If she timed it right…
The car drove by too quickly. She wasn’t ready to make a move, in fact, it seemed she was glued to the concrete. Another noise, another car. This time she waited until the passing vehicle was almost abreast, then thrust herself into the seat and slammed the door. The keys were already in her hand and she jammed them into the ignition, crouching down on the seat. She knew she was the only car parked on the block so she gunned the engine and took off without merging from the parking lane. She heard more pinging against the back of the car and finally looked over the wheel in time to plow into a row of garbage cans set out at the curb.
She was shaking so hard it was hard to hold on to the steering wheel. She checked the rearview mirror a million times, looking for headlights, not seeing any. The gunman must have been on foot. She made a few detours to make sure she wasn’t being followed before finding Ryan’s apartment building.
It was relatively small, built on a hillside and surrounded by an amazing amount of trees considering its midtown location. In light of what had just happened, too many trees. The wind heightened the sensation that a horde of bad guys—or one lone gunman—awaited her next move, hidden by the shadows of waving branches.
She parked on the street and tried to calm down, finally darting from the car to the apartment as fast as she could, climbing the stairs in a flash, crutches forgotten in the car. All she wanted to do was get inside.
She found the right number and opened the door quickly, slipping inside the dark, empty apartment, fumbling with the lock, reaching for the light switch, heart leaping to her throat when something twined around her leg.
The cat.
She finally found the light switch and looked down to find a trim black cat gazing up at her with eyes the color of amber.
“Oh, Clive, you scared me,” she said, picking him up and holding him close under her chin. She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. Eight or nine pounds of muscle and fur, Clive rubbed her jaw and produced a raspy purr.
“And Ryan said you were standoffish,” she scoffed, liking the feel of him. Holding animals was a daily occurrence in what she’d begun thinking of as her “real” life. Clive’s healthy, vibrating, warm body was like a balm to her edgy nerves. He meowed as he kneaded claws in midair.
She put him back on the floor and slipped off her shoes and the fake cast. The coat came next, draped over the back of a black leather chair. Then she wandered away from the bright light of the entry toward a dark rectangular window that took up most of the north wall.
The view from the window was amazing. New Harbor wasn’t a huge town but what there was of it glowed and glittered with lights. There was a dark stretch farther away—the ocean, no doubt.
But she made a dandy target standing in that big, open window, so she closed the drapes and looked at the dimly lit apartment around her.
A pair of weights sat in one corner and helped explain Ryan’s muscles. Small television, nice stereo and a rack of CDs. A computer desk tucked against one wall, a book case against another. A framed photo caught her eye and she walked over to it, smiling as she recognized a young Ryan standing next to his car. The smile faded as she realized it wasn’t Ryan she was looking at. Too short. Hair too light.
Peter.
Clive meowed again, this time from a dark doorway. Tess entered the kitchen, switching on the light over the stove to find Clive’s supplies and feed him. Suddenly hungry herself, she opened Ryan’s refrigerator. Two small tubs of fruit-flavored yogurt, some cheese, a few vegetables, condiments and a six-pack of beer. Freezer empty. She took one of the yogurts, rooted around in the drawers for a spoon and ate it standing up, leaning against the counter, wishing it was ice cream. After she washed her spoon, she went searching for Ryan’s bedroom, using as little light as possible. The feeling of someone outside looking in wouldn’t go away.
A dark-red bedspread was the one strong note of color in his bedroom. Two fishing poles leaned together in a corner, a gun safe glinted from the open closet. She stood at the doorway while Clive rubbed her shin. What was she doing hiding here in this man’s home?
Should she call the police and report the shooting? She’d been arguing this since getting inside Ryan’s place. Logic said call. But fear stilled her hand every time she came close to picking up the phone.
Who would shoot her? Why? Were they shooting at Katie or Caroline or had someone discovered her true identity? It was like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces and she finally decided to wait for Ryan and tell him about the shooting.
Ryan. He’d be home soon. He’d be hers.
The truth was that Tess hadn’t had many love affairs in her twenty-seven years. She’d dated little during college and not that much since graduating and starting her career. There never seemed to be time.
This thing with Ryan had come on so strong and fast that it was almost as frightening as being shot at. She was aware that she’d instigated some of it, she’d never discouraged him. She couldn’t deny the strength of their physical attraction. It was there. It was real.
Or was it?
She took a shower in Ryan’s bathroom, wrapped herself in one of his towels, dug through a drawer to find a T-shirt to wear to bed, all the time feeling like an intruder. All so cozy and intimate and terrifying.
Clive joined her in the big bed, making a nuisance of himself.
“You’re lonely,” she told the cat who purred louder than ever and put a paw on her hand. He loved having his ears scratched and rubbed her finger with one of his fangs.
The phone rang as she was almost asleep and for a second she wondered if she should answer it. What if it was Ryan’s mother or one of his sisters? What would she say to them?
How likely they would call in the middle of the night? More likely it was Ryan himself. Shifting the cat aside, she answered the phone.
“I wanted to make sure you got there okay,” he said, and his voice sounded so tired that she decided to wait to tell him about the shooting. Maybe it was unrelated. Cities had crime. People got shot. The gunman was sure to be gone, what could Ryan do now that he couldn’t do in a few hours?
“I’m fine,” she said. Clive repositioned himself and she added, “I like your cat.”
“He let you see him?”
“See him? I can’t get rid of him. He’s currently lying on my chest staring into my eyes. He weighs a ton when he lies like this.”
“There’s nothing for it, I’m going to have to marry you,” he said.
The comment was made flippantly, but it hung for a second too long before he added, “I don’t know when I can get back. Make yourself at home.”
“Do you know anything yet?
“Not that I can tell you, especially not on a phone. We’ll talk later today. Stay safe, Tess.”
Safe. As
in away from bullets.
She hung up the phone and stared at the cat for a second before switching off the light. And then she lay awake in the dark, unable to sleep, worried about Ryan.
Once or twice now he’d said the word love, and just as many times, he’d mentioned marriage. All jokingly, but she’d known him just a short while, and in her world, things like love and marriage didn’t happen overnight.
Except to her mother, of course.
Ryan and she were two adults with two lives living in two cities. More to the point, they’d met under strained, difficult circumstances and been thrown together in an unrealistic, crazy manner that would sooner or later resolve itself leaving them what—lovers? Boyfriend, girlfriend? Ships that passed in the night?
And yet she craved him, more of him than he had the time to give, more with each passing moment.
And she couldn’t escape the feeling that the reason she craved him was that she was scared. There was a murderer on the prowl and Ryan knew what to do about murderers. She didn’t.
And how about him? He was obviously heavily burdened by guilt. Guilt over his brother’s death, guilt over his partner’s role in an arson, guilt over putting Katie off until she was hurt, and now guilt over Tess being attacked.
Guilt.
Great motivator, lousy building block.
Where in the world was her flaky mother when Tess needed her? Off on a honeymoon with a man she’d only known three weeks before marrying him. Fallen off the face of the earth.
Tess squeezed her eyes shut. Since when had she gone running home to her mother for advice? Since when hadn’t she had the brains to make her own decisions? Since when had she lost her identity?
Since meeting Ryan Hill. Since taking on this insane challenge. Since turning her back on who and what she was, acting all clingy and needy, being frightened and weepy, trying to be brave like Katie without even knowing if Katie was brave.