Hero For Hire

by Laura Kenner

  “I’m sorry you got caught up in something like this, Sara.”

  She turned in his arms. “Then you think it was in connection with another case? Not Raymond’s?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It wasn’t Raymond who attacked me.” She spoke with a sense of conviction that he couldn’t share.

  “How can you be so sure?” he prodded.

  “If Raymond had been the man who grabbed me, I’m pretty sure I would have recognized him.” Reddening slightly, she turned away but still remained within the circle of his arms where she shivered noticeably. “After all, we were…together for almost three years.”

  Will fought the instinct to ask how two people who seemed obviously mismatched could stay together for three long years. He knew the probable answer. Even worse, he knew that if he asked, Sara would then feel compelled to defend Bergeron. The last thing he wanted to do was stir up any more protective feelings she might have for the man.

  “Okay…maybe it wasn’t Bergeron. Then the pertinent question becomes, Who was it?”

  “Maybe the same person who killed Celia. Maybe he was trying to destroy any evidence you’ve found that would prove Raymond’s innocence.”

  “Or maybe they think I’m a potential threat. Who’s going to believe I’m an innocent middleman between two blackmailers?”

  “Two blackmailers?”

  When Sara stiffened, Will suddenly realized how intimate and proprietary his stance had been. He shifted, jamming his hands into his pockets as he took a sudden, self-conscious step away from Sara. “I had a disk in the pocket of my jacket, which was a copy of what I believe were incriminating files from Celia’s computer.”

  “The police let you into her house?”

  “Not exactly. But the point is, I don’t have the jacket anymore. I left it up there. I assume it was burned along with everything else.” Sara followed his glance; even in the darkness, he could see the jagged black streak of soot scarring the side of the office building. “But,” he continued, lowering his voice, “I did find out something incriminating and the data’s not gone forever. Can we go somewhere to talk?”

  “Sure.” She paused for a moment, which gave his unchecked imagination time to come up with a thousand different scenarios.

  “My place?” she offered.

  A thousand and one.

  Saturday, early evening

  THE LOGISTICS OF GETTING home took longer than Sara expected. She realized belatedly that her keys were lost somewhere in the ruins of Will’s office. Their most persuasive arguments failed to get them past the barriers erected by the fire and police investigation teams. By the time they were in Will’s car, neither of them was ready to hold an in-depth discussion while negotiating the early-Saturday-night Beltway traffic. Their conversation was strained at best as they limited themselves to innocuous topics.

  She noticed him eyeing a pet store as they passed a strip mall at the entrance to her neighborhood. She guessed his thoughts.

  “I…I’m sorry about your fish.”

  He sighed. “That’s okay. They probably wouldn’t have survived the fire anyway. At least, this way…” His voice trailed off with a wordless shrug.

  Sara mentally completed his thought. At least, they didn’t die in vain. She swallowed hard, then nodded. He’d deliberately sacrificed something important to him in order to save her life, yet he was reluctant to talk about it Why? She wasn’t used to such self-effacing behavior. She was used to Raymond, who wanted to be applauded and rewarded for each time that he negotiated or compromised some small point of contention in their relationship. Frequently, meeting Raymond halfway meant traveling nine-tenths of a mile to his one-tenth.

  But that’s over….

  As they pulled up in her driveway, Sara suddenly realized she’d never given Will any directions to her house. “You know where I live,” she stated as he opened the car door for her.

  “I know a lot of things about you.”

  “Like what?”

  He followed her to the front door. “Like you missed being valedictorian in high school by two-tenths of a point You changed majors twice before going into restaurant management. You had to work hard to talk your partner out of the sports theme he wanted for your restaurant”

  Martin had been so insistent…“Thorough, aren’t you?”

  He smiled. “I try to be.”

  Sara retrieved her spare house key from its hiding place: a hidden slot in the side of a decorative “Welcome to My Home” plaque. Her purse, like Will’s jacket, had been lost in the fire. She ignored Will’s look of disapproval. “I know…I know you’re not supposed to keep a spare key in an obvious place near the door. But you have to admit, that’s not particularly obvious.”

  He followed her inside. “It is if someone was watching you. They know where you keep the key, now.”

  She sighed. As much as she appreciated his protective instincts, this wasn’t the time to bring it up. They had more important topics to discuss.

  Like blackmail.

  “Nice kitchen.” Will eyed the room, his bleary gaze settling on her coffee maker.

  “Coffee?” she offered. “We could probably use the caffeine.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Let me go check my messages, first” She ducked into her office, leaving Will behind in the kitchen. As the whine of the rewinding tape filled her ears, she pawed through the desk drawer and found her spare keys. There were two, maybe three messages, from the sound of it She hesitated before hitting the Play button. Did she expect another rambling diatribe from Raymond?

  There was a click and a beep.

  A mechanical voice intoned, “2:47 p.m.”

  “Ms. Hardaway,” the recorded voice started. “This is Clifford Heating and Air Conditioning. It’s time to have your furnace checked and—”

  She released the breath she held as she fast-forwarded to the next one.

  “3:02 p.m.”

  “Sara, it’s Lily. Give me a call when you get in, okay?”

  Sorry, Lily, you’ll have to wait

  Another beep. “5:17 p.m.”

  “Sara? It’s—” The background noise swelled, blotting out the name, but she recognized the voice. “I tried the number you gave me, but no one’s there. I didn’t know you were working with Mr. Riggs. He’s good, I hear. Anyway, the boss asked me to call because we just got a weird delivery order about fifteen minutes ago. See if this rings a bell….Chimney-smoked lobster with saffron pasta, corn cakes with caviar—”

  Sara looked up from her rigid stance at her desk to see Will standing in the doorway, listening.

  “—fresh turbot with a sweet-potato crust, and seaweed salad. You and I both know that’s Mr. B.’s favorite meal. Unfortunately, the hostess took the order so I didn’t have a chance to try to recognize his voice. Let’s see…. It’s quarter after five now, and the delivery’s set for seven-thirty to some fleabag motel in the District.” The man recited the address and gave a room number. “I hope this helps. Good luck.”

  Both she and Will glanced at the clock on her desk. Seven thirty-five.

  Then his gaze connected with hers. “We can get there in twenty minutes if we hurry.”

  IT WASN’T UNTIL THEY hit I-395 that Sara remembered why they’d driven to her place to begin with.

  “So Celia is…was a blackmailer, too,” she stated, keeping all emotion from her voice.

  Will spared her a quick glance, then returned his attention to the road. “Looks that way. I had a friend tap into her computer system and we found files and financial records that seem to substantiate it Luckily, I left a copy of everything with him.” His face tightened. “The problem is that in order to prove my theory, I’ll have to talk to the people who’ve been blackmailed and I don’t think they’re going to be too cooperative.”

  “Because it’s a touchy subject?”

  He shifted in his seat, evidently trying to find a comfortable position. “No, because they’ll probably
think I’m shaking them down, too.” A large truck veered into their lane, cutting them off. Will responded by savagely punching the horn with the heel of his hand.

  When the horn’s echoing blast had died away, a palpable silence filled the car. After a protracted moment, he broke the stillness with a sigh. “Who’s going to believe I didn’t have anything to do with the blackmail scheme?”

  It was an implication that had never crossed Sara’s mind. “Surely no one would—”

  He smacked the steering wheel again, this time missing the horn. “Damn it, Sara. Of course, they would. People always believe the worst about others. And even if they don’t believe I’m an extortionist, they’ve got to figure I must be a piss-poor investigator if I didn’t realize it was going on under my own nose.”

  “No, they’ll think you are an honest man who’s trying to undo the damage made by a couple of unscrupulous people.”

  “Don’t bet on it”

  Another uneasy wave of silence clogged the air. Sara remained quiet for a while, out of habit more than anything else. She’d learned to keep a low profile when Raymond got angry. But, she reminded herself, this isn’t Raymond.

  “So…” She glanced out the side window, brave enough to speak, but not strong enough to watch his expression as she spoke. “Do you think they simply woke up in bed together one morning and decided to become blackmailers?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they worked to-gether. Maybe they worked independently. Until I can do a name-by-name comparison of their clientele, we won’t know for sure.”

  A second car cut close to their bumper but Will made no overt response beyond slowing down. “You probably don’t want to hear this, but it’s possible Bergeron killed Celia because she was horning in on his territory. I suspect he’d know exactly how far he could push someone financially—how much money he could squeeze out of them before they became desperate enough to act. Celia, on the other hand, always lived on the edge. She believed in extremes. Her instinct might have been to find a likely target and try to milk him dry.”

  “Which gives even more credence to the theory that someone other than Raymond killed her. Maybe one of her extortion victims killed her.”

  “Maybe.”

  It was the last word he spoke until the freeway ended, dumping them onto New York Avenue. Sara’s stomach began to churn and she gripped the door handle even though he had decelerated to negotiate the stop-and-go traffic.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What do I say to him? How do we confront him?”

  “We don’t”

  Outrage replaced fear as she straightened in her seat. “You’re crazy if you think I’m letting you go in alone.”

  He surprised her by shooting her a half grin. “You’re nuts if you think I’m going in at all. That’s a job for the police, not me.”

  “Then…” She hesitated. “Uh…what are we doing here?”

  His face relaxed and his smile loosened into something more genuine. And much more attractive. “We can’t expect the police to follow up on a lead just because someone has ordered a meal that the suspect is likely to eat. We verify that it’s Bergeron and then we call the cops and wait until they get there.”

  “No heroics?”

  Will solemnly crossed his heart. “No heroics. That’s for the guys on television.” He pointed across the street. “There it is.”

  “It” was a squatty, two-story building, which could boast of no architectural style other than “prefab.” Someone had rearranged the letters on the marquee sign in front, which now boasted, “Clean TV. Color Rooms.” Will doubted either was true; these types of motels made their profit with X-rated pay-per-view movies, and their monochromatic decorations were usually bolted to the wall. For someone who probably preferred a weekend at the Ritz Carlton, this must have been a hell of an education for Raymond S. Bergeron, Esquire.

  Sara squinted into the darkness. “I don’t see his car.”

  “If he’s bright, he didn’t park it here. A Porsche wouldn’t last long in this neighborhood. If nothing else, his tag makes him pretty conspicuous.” Will gave the lot a cursory glance, then turned his attention to the numbered doors. The one marked 132 turned out to be a ground-floor corner room, signifying the man had some sort of basic survival instinct Dousing the headlights, Will pulled into the nearest parking space, about three doors down from the room.

  He switched off the engine. “Ready?”

  She scowled. “I thought you said no heroics.”

  “I did. I still do. But I have to determine if someone’s in there. And if it’s him.”

  “How?”

  Will studied the layout. The room had one large window, muffled by a thick curtain. But there was a gap, as if Bergeron had been watching for his dinner delivery and forgotten to straighten the curtain. Will unfastened his seat belt, turned off the interior lights and opened the car door.

  Sara looked shocked. “What are you doing?”

  He leaned down, peering back into the car. “I’m just going to take a look, that’s all.” He closed the door gently and headed for Room 132. Before he took more than a couple of steps, Will heard a noise behind him and discovered Sara climbing out of the car. She caught up with him, nabbing him by his sleeve. “Not without me, you don’t,” she whispered between clenched teeth as she fell in step with him.

  They approached the door. Just as they reached the room, a car pulled into the lot, catching them in its glaring headlights. Will jerked her away from the window, folding her into a quick embrace to hide their identities and disguise their motives. A few seconds later, the car turned away, plunging them back into darkness.

  Sara looked up at him with a hooded gaze, but she made no effort to break away. A small voice in the back of Will’s head mimicked the throbbing pulse that raced through him. Too-soon, too-soon, too-soon. But whose job was it to define the term, soon? Hers? His?

  She sighed and her gaze faded into a blushing smile as she extricated herself from his arms.

  “S-sorry.”

  He surprised her. Hell, he shocked himself. Will leaned down and kissed her.

  It wasn’t whimsy or curiosity that fueled him. It wasn’t concern or compassion. It was passion—a deep longing that had sparked to life the first time he heard Raymond Bergeron describe her. For all his faults, the attorney knew this woman well; he had painted an accurate portrait of her, listing her hopes and dreams, but evidently not sharing them. Knowing her wasn’t the same as appreciating her. And certainly, appreciation wasn’t the same as love.

  But make no mistake.

  She was kissing him back.

  Will felt the rumble of her heart as she pressed against him, one hand tangled in his hair, the other wrapped around his waist. And as quickly as they were kissing, they stopped.

  She pulled back, panting slightly and wearing a look of confusion mixed with a flush of satisfaction. “Why did we do that?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “Because we had to. We had to know.”

  She pinned him with a look that made him almost shiver with desire. “And do we? Do we…know?”

  He swallowed hard. “You know, now. I knew from the very beginning.”

  “The beginning?”

  “From the first moment—”

  A loud thump erupted from Bergeron’s room. Will pushed Sara out of the way, shielding her from the door, which he expected to fly open.

  Nothing happened.

  “Was that him?” Sara whispered.

  “I’m not sure. Stay here.” Will pushed her back into the shadows and moved cautiously toward the room. As he reached the door, he heard a scratching sound coming from inside. He pressed his ear against the door and heard a muffled voice. Girding his courage, he shifted toward the window and took a quick glance at the room through the curtain gap, then pulled back.

  Certainly he didn’t see what he thought he saw….

  Will took a second look, this time longer than the first.

>   Sara abandoned her shadows and sprang forward, grabbing him by his sleeve. “He’ll see you!” she hissed under her breath.

  His brain began to process the details of what he’d seen. His stomach began to churn. Aw, hell!

  “Move back.” Will wrenched his arm out of her grip.

  “What?” She stepped back in confusion, forgetting to keep her voice low.

  Will counted to himself.

  One. If I break my foot…

  Two. I’m suing the bastard for everything he’s worth.

  Three!

  He connected right below the doorknob, hoping to concentrate the majority of the force where the bolt entered the door frame. Theory and practice met in a rare display of cooperation and the door swung open, slamming into the wall and barely missing the body of a man sprawled on the floor.

  Will rushed in and rolled the body over.

  Raymond Bergeron gave him a glassy stare.

  Chapter Twelve

  Saturday evening

  The emergency-room doctor drew a deep breath and flexed his shoulders. “It’s a good thing you found him when you did,” he said, trying to stifle a yawn.

  “Yeah…Bergeron’s a lucky son of a bitch, isn’t he?” Will watched Sara out of the corner of his eye. She looked too pale for her own good.

  She crossed her arms, displaying more nervousness than anger. “But he is going to recover, correct?”

  The doctor nodded. “He’ll have to undergo a full course of treatment, plus some cardiac monitoring, but, yes, I think he’ll be back to normal very soon.”

  A new voice rang out. “Just in time to face a charge of first-degree murder.” Steve Trainor appeared behind them, commanding their collective attention. “Trainor. Blackwater PD. Homicide.” He held his badge in one hand and stuck the other hand out in greeting, which the doctor accepted after a moment’s hesitation. “We’ve already made arrangements to have Mr. Bergeron escorted back over the Potomac as soon as he gets out of the hospital. There’s a current warrant out on him in Blackwater.” He turned his attention solely to the doctor. “Have you been able to tell what kind of poison it was?”