by Nancy Warren
She shook her head. They were two people having an affair, pretending not to have an affair, except at work where they were going to pretend they were having an affair. The whole thing sounded like a bad farce.
BY FRIDAY, BLAKE KNEW that Ruby was a lot nicer to her clients than she was to her drones. She had some nice, fat accounts, but, in spite of all his digging, every one of them still appeared legit. The only intriguing information he’d uncovered was some e-mails that made him suspect Ruby and Ellsworth had a thing going, or maybe she simply had a crush.
He pulled up across from Sophie’s apartment, having followed her home once again without her knowledge. He was frustrated things weren’t moving quicker on the money laundering investigation. As he sat waiting for her seventh-floor window to light up, he knew he was equally frustrated that pretending to have a love affair for the benefit of the office was giving him lots of kisses and cuddles at the office and no post-work follow-through.
While he sat there, gazing at her dark window, he imagined her entering her apartment, maybe going to the bedroom, shucking her clothes, stepping into the shower.
He was trying his damnedest to respect her wishes and stay away, but he couldn’t stop himself wanting her.
He couldn’t have said what it was that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Premonition? A sixth cop sense? Or had he seen something that hadn’t registered at the time?
All he knew was that something wasn’t right. That this night, of all the nights he’d surreptitiously followed her home, was different. She’d been inside her building almost four minutes. Normally her lights would flip on about now.
He’d been a cop too long to ignore his instincts. He was out of the car, leaving the crutches in the back seat, and hobble-sprinting for Sophie’s building before he even realized he meant to do it. He heard a sound, like a low moan building in intensity and then the explosion. Glass shattered and flames billowed from a window above. He didn’t have to look up. He knew which window it was.
No time to waste. He was hammering on the doors of her apartment building to get the attention of a startled-looking older woman gazing at the ceiling with her mouth at half cock. His banging on the door seemed to rouse her from her rapt contemplation and slowly she shuffled toward him.
“Come on, come on! Fire!” he yelled at her through the glass door.
After she opened it, he barely stopped to tell her to evacuate before bolting for the stairwell.
The fire alarm was already blaring and, as he raced up, cursing his cast, he dodged stunned residents streaming down—mothers with children, people still chewing their dinners, an old woman clutching a yapping poodle.
As he ran his head was clear and calm. For now, he was a cop doing a job. But that didn’t stop the sickening sense of dread in his belly or the sweat that popped out all over his body.
12
AS HE POUNDED UP THE stairs, he kept asking, “Sophie Morton? Has anyone seen Sophie Morton? Blond woman lives on the seventh floor?”
The residents who streamed past shook their heads, or stared at him blankly.
The fire alarm echoed shrilly in the staircase. The more distant, but equally shrill fire engine siren added another note of urgency to the silent wail in his head. Sophie!
His lungs burned by the time he reached seven. He smelled smoke even before he yanked open the metal door.
He didn’t want to go through the fire door, afraid to face what might await him in the devastation of her apartment. He discovered, to his surprise, that his hands were cold and trembling. Maybe he’d wait here for the emergency crews.
But what if she needed him?
What if she was alive and trapped in there? It was that thought that had propelled him upward on his weak leg and it pushed him on in spite of the dread pitching in his gut.
He grit his teeth, shoved the door open and stepped through. The smoke wasn’t too bad by the fire door but it billowed from her apartment doorway as though pumped out by a carnival smoke machine.
He was a cop. He’d seen death and destruction. He had a protective barrier he slid into place—knowing if he let emotion take over he was useless. But still, his mind couldn’t stop silently yelling that one word. Sophie.
Where he’d pounded up the stairs, flight after flight as though a pit pull was snapping at his heels, now that he was on her floor everything seemed to slow.
All he could think about was how full of life Sophie was. He saw her in a fast series of photographic images. Her lying on top of him that first day when she broke his leg. Even stunned and in pain, he couldn’t resist her sexy beauty. He saw her prim and proper in a business suit, then naked on her own kitchen counter—glorious and spread out for his delight, the sun highlighting her milky flesh, glowing off her pink-tipped breasts.
“Sophie!” He yelled aloud the name he’d been silently screaming all the way up the stairs.
He saw a shadowy movement from inside the cloud of smoke.
He squinted and made out a shape, a female shape. He felt goose bumps rise on his arms as he identified legs, arms, blond hair, and then the mist seemed to swirl around her so she disappeared.
“Sophie!” he yelled hoarsely, hope and fear warring in his chest.
The apparition turned and, with a stumbling step toward him, took solid form. There were tears on her cheeks. He didn’t know much about spooky stuff, but he didn’t think ghosts cried.
He ran down the hall toward her, once more cursing the cumbersome cast that slowed him.
She didn’t move toward him, but stood rooted outside her apartment—or what was left of it. The door had blown out and the inside was a mess of flames, dust, debris. Her leather bag was hanging from the crook of one arm and in the other hand she held a newspaper.
“My apartment,” she said.
He’d reached her by this time and all he could do was grab her to him, needing to feel her warmth and soft flesh, feel her heart beat and her breath move in and out of her body.
She hugged him back automatically, but it was clear she was in shock. “My apartment blew up,” she said in the same stunned, blank voice.
“Let’s get out of here. It’s dangerous,” he said as gently as he could.
She hadn’t even started trembling yet. All the trembling was coming from him.
She was alive. And he had one thought and one thought only. He had to keep her alive.
“Come on,” he said gently, turning her toward the fire escape. The smell of smoke and dust was making his eyes water and his throat close up.
“We’ve got to go.” He squeezed her shoulders. “It’s dangerous to stay.” He dragged her down the hall as fast as he could, but they were both coughing when they got to the stairwell.
“I’m so glad I don’t have a pet,” she said, her voice hoarse. “We’re allowed to, you know. Have pets in our building. I thought I might get an abandoned cat from the pound and give it a home.”
“That’s nice,” he said, holding her hand as they walked down the stairs.
“If I’d saved a cat it would have been killed in there.” She sniffed. “Blown up.”
She looked so lost and stunned that he gave in to the impulse to kiss her. A quick, hard kiss that tasted of smoke and tears.
Where it had been crowded on his way up, the stairway was now empty. The fire alarm was starting to sound like it was tiring, but he assumed that was his ears growing accustomed to the din.
Down they went, slower than he would have liked because of his damn cast, but he didn’t urge Sophie to go ahead, knowing she needed to hang on to him.
By the time they got to the ground-floor lobby, fully suited firefighters were entering the building. Through the door he glimpsed the milling residents, looking like confused bees forced out of their hive. They were being ushered across the street while emergency crews cordoned off the immediate zone around the apartment building.
He headed for the door, Sophie tucked under his shoulder, then stopped and
cursed under his breath. Like rats sniffing out food scraps, he saw the media had arrived. The last thing he needed was to blunder into a scrum, maybe get his picture in the paper.
Blake ushered her not toward the front entrance, but to an inconspicuous exit that led to where garbage Dumpsters were stored.
She followed him, never questioning their movements. He opened the door a few inches and scanned the area. As he’d hoped, it was empty. All the excitement was at the front of the building.
Pulling her outside, he slipped his arm round her once more and headed down the paved alley, hoping to look like a couple strolling out for dinner or a movie.
How he wished that were true.
His vehicle was parked too near the front entrance to risk getting away unseen by cops he knew, firefighters he knew or journalists he knew. He shuddered at the thought and kept going. He hauled out his cell phone and called a cab to pick them up, naming an intersection a few blocks away. Then he called John to tell him what happened, asking him to alert the firefighters that there was no one inside Sophie’s apartment.
The yellow cab was waiting when they got there and they were pulling up at his place within a few minutes. But it was a world away from the noise and confusion, the smoke and destruction of her apartment.
He helped her from the cab, paid the fare and they entered his own Yaletown apartment building.
She remained silent until he’d ushered her into his place. After their conversation about cat adoption, she’d fallen silent and stayed that way. He’d never known Sophie to be quiet for so long before and he was starting to worry.
He flicked on the lights and she shuddered.
“Cold? I’ll put on a fire.”
“No!” Panic lit her eyes. “No fire.”
Stupid! Why don’t you suggest some fireworks while you’re at it?
He led her in and sat her on one of the leather couches, tossing yesterday’s newspaper onto the antique pine blanket box his sister had bought him for a coffee table.
Sophie turned to stare out the window. He didn’t think she was seeing the view of the harbor, though.
He left her alone with thoughts that had to be grim and went to find a bottle of wine. Maybe hot, sweet tea was the textbook remedy for shock, but in his experience a decent red wine did the job nicely.
He eased the cork out of a Bordeaux with a quiet sigh, then flipped through his CDs until he came to one of those reedy female soloists he kept around for times when he needed to impress a woman. It wasn’t that he wanted to impress Sophie, he realized, he simply thought the music would relax her.
Turning the volume slightly lower, he poured the wine and brought it over to where she was still sitting, staring out the window. “Here,” he said gently.
She turned back to him and he was pleased to see a bit of color in her face. She even smiled. She started to reach for the wine, then glanced at the newspaper she was still clutching as though wondering how it got into her hand.
Carefully, she placed it on the blanket box, putting her leather bag on the floor beside her feet. Then she took the glass and as she sipped her hands weren’t shaking too badly.
“Do you have a paper bag?” she asked him. Her color was fluctuating and she sounded breathless.
“A paper bag? I think so.”
She was zipping open her leather satchel and starting to wheeze. “Never mind,” she gasped and pulled out a crumpled paper bag. “Panic attack,” she whispered, then stuck the bag over her nose and mouth and stared at the glass of wine as though it were the most important object in the universe.
He didn’t know what to do. Should he go over to her and pat her back or would that make things worse? He decided to give her a few minutes and see what transpired.
He took the chair across from her and sipped his wine, which he’d opened mainly for her, wishing it were a scotch. He wanted to take somebody apart for what they’d done to Sophie and instead he had to pretend to be Assistant Account Manager Blake Brannigan, who’d so far uncovered absolutely nothing to help put the drug-dealing murderers away before they got Sophie.
She pulled the bag away from her face and slumped back. “Sorry,” she said, glancing at the bag still clutched in her hand. “I feel like an idiot. In my head I know a paper bag doesn’t stop the attacks, but, as my therapist said, whatever works.” She was still breathless and he could see her chest continued to jerk with her unsteady breath, but, it seemed, the worst of the attack was over.
“Is there any chance that was an accident?” she asked.
“Sure, there’s a chance. Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?”
She sipped deeply, then tilted her head back, resting it against the couch. “I opened my door, flipped on the light switch, then turned back to get the newspaper. I’d forgotten to pick it up. Sometimes the kid who delivers them is careless and the paper’s nowhere near the door.” She took a deep breath. “I remember thinking I was going to complain about it one of these days. I left my key in the door, took about two steps and…and next thing I knew there was a bang and the door flew open. Then flames came out.” Her voice wavered as she hit the last sentence, then stopped, pressing her lips together.
“Thank God you weren’t inside.” It was a stupid, inane thing to say, and he hadn’t planned to interrupt her, but right now he wanted to find that paper carrier and give him the biggest tip of his career. His carelessness had saved Sophie’s life.
She seemed not to have heard him, anyway. “I was on the floor, my shoulder jammed against the wall.” She massaged her left shoulder vaguely, as though she’d only now realized it was sore. “I guess the explosion threw me and I didn’t notice. I got up. The fire alarm went off—I remember that—and then people started coming out of their apartments. We’ve had false alarms, but it was pretty obvious to anyone on my floor that this was for real. A couple of people asked if I was okay and then went for the stairs.”
“Did you see anybody you didn’t recognize? Before or after the blast?”
Her blue eyes sharpened. “You think it was deliberate, don’t you?”
When she turned those transparent blue eyes his way, he wanted to soothe her. But he couldn’t lie. “Yes.”
She nodded. Not surprised.
“I’m sorry, Sophie.”
She started to set her wineglass down then paused. “Do you have a coaster?”
“I don’t usually bother.”
“This is an antique. You should treat it with respect.” She shivered and all at once he knew she was imagining her own possessions. He didn’t imagine you could treat anything with less respect than to blow it up. If it made her feel better to fuss over his possessions he supposed he could let her.
“I’ve got some somewhere. Hang on.” He got up and rummaged in the drawer where he kept his corkscrews and odds and ends. There was a set of London pub coasters his dad had bought him from a trip to England.
He brought over a couple and she set her wineglass down at last. Then she looked at him and he was surprised to see the old Sophie was coming back. Maybe not completely; she was still pale and there was a definite tremor in her hands, but the blank expression was gone. Her warm vitality was returning. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted to see that again.
“We’ve got to get more aggressive in our investigation at the bank,” she informed him in the kind of tone she’d use to up morale in the office.
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Sophie, you’ve got to see that your life is in serious danger. You’ll e-mail your resignation and then disappear. We’ll help you. Nobody, and I mean nobody, will know where you are until this thing is over.”
The color he’d wished to see in her face was back now with a vengeance as an angry flush mounted her cheeks. “I’m not a coward, Blake. Those bastards won’t get away with this.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“What if you don’t find them? Huh? Then what do I do? Hide from my shadow for the rest of my li
fe? There are women in policing and the armed forces who risk their lives every day, fighting monsters like these thugs, and you want me to run and hide?” She thumped the pine with her fist, making the glasses tremble. “I will not run away from these scum.”
He admired her, even as her courage made him fear for her. The truth was that he was involved and that made it difficult to be objective. “I don’t want to lose you,” he said, giving her the truth.
Her anger softened and her smile was full of sexy sweetness. “You won’t lose me. We’ll do a better job of working together so we can clear the vermin out of my bank.”
“This is not open for discussion.”
She sipped more wine and seemed to think things over, while he waited for her to see reason. “All right,” she said and rose to her feet.
He couldn’t believe she’d caved in so fast. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Where are you going?”
“To a hotel for tonight.”
His mind raced through possibilities. He nodded slowly. “If we get you in without anyone seeing you, using an alias, you’ll be safe enough for a night. Tomorrow we’ll figure out a safe place for you to stay.”
“You said this wasn’t open for discussion, so I’m not discussing it. I’ll see you at work Monday.”
“No.”
“You can’t stop me, Blake.”
Fury welled within him along with the fear that he might fail to keep her safe. “You’re not going to work if I have to tie you to that bed in there until it’s safe.”
Her chest rose and fell in a quick, jerky breath, and he wished he’d come up with some other threat. Now the image of her, lush and naked, staked out for his pleasure, was interfering with his intellect. “That’s not what I—”
“It’s a tempting offer.” Her voice had a taunting, seductive quality that spoke right to his inner caveman. He couldn’t blame his ancestors for clubbing women over the heads and dragging them to their caves, not if they were as infernally stubborn as this one.