Collecting the shards of royal blue reminded her of Martine. The figurine shattered for her. No matter how many ways Claire and Michael examined the events, twisting and turning them like a prism, she couldn’t see either Newcomb or Martine as the murderer.
Grief washed over her in a wave of pain and loss. Though they were estranged, Martine was family. As children, they’d played together, and later, her cousin had trusted her to care for her children.
It should have been me, not Martine.
A sharp pain in her palm ended her preoccupation. Glancing down, she found blood welling up around a puncture from the blue fragment she clutched. Sadly, no blood sacrifice would compensate. She dug a tissue from her pocket and pressed it to her palm before returning to her task.
Once the hearth was swept, she remembered the broken glass from the curio cabinet window. Maybe she’d sell the whole damn thing, just as Paul had purchased it.
And once her nightmare ended, once whoever murdered Jonathan and Paul and Alan was brought to justice, she’d sell the house, move away. To where, she didn’t yet know.
By then no one could accuse her of running.
She gathered up her cleaning tools and gave the room a last appraising glance. All was in order. Ready for a Realtor.
Oui, she’d sell. Everything. The money would go into a charity fund with what Paul left her—his drug money. If the law didn’t confiscate it, his tainted wealth might do some good.
Grief abated by her decision, she headed for the kitchen.
The splash of water upstairs in the shower flooded her with warm memories of the night. Michael patiently helping her deal with her grief and frustration. Michael losing control in his desperate desire for her. Michael making slow, sweet love to her by candlelight. And Michael sleeping with his strong, protective arms around her.
Those memories would have to sustain her in her exile.
Gripping her plastic bucket of porcelain shards, she stowed the broom and dustpan in the kitchen pantry closet.
The phone rang.
Claire dropped the bucket. It tipped over, spilling a handful of china slivers. “No.”
The stalker wouldn’t call this early in the morning. Probably. Because of yesterday’s tragedy, her nerves were drawn as thin as a cat’s whisker.
On the fourth ring, she made herself lift the receiver. Relief at the identity of the caller washed over her.
“Oh, Fitz, it’s you! Usually you check in more often. If you hadn’t called soon,” she teased, “I was going to fire you as my financial manager.”
Her relationship with Walter Fitzhugh being of long standing, she could joke with him. She pictured the dapper little man in his bow tie and double-breasted suit sitting at his giant glass-topped desk. Stretching the phone cord, she retrieved the broom from the pantry closet. Propping the receiver with one shoulder, she swept the spilled china into the bucket.
Fitzhugh cleared his throat. “I, ah, knew you were busy, my dear. My condolences on the death of your cousin. It was in this morning’s paper.”
“Thank you, Fitz. I haven’t seen the paper yet. What did it say?” Had the reporters unearthed the mistaken-identity angle? Leaving the bucket and broom, she waited tensely.
“Let’s see…” The unfolding of newspaper rattled over the phone wire. “That it was a hit and run. Maybe the same vehicle seen a few days earlier at the site of the bombing.”
“Yes, everything that’s happened seems to be connected.”
“Thank heavens that federal agent is there to protect you. Frankly, Claire, I haven’t called because I felt rather guilty for sending him, but now, well—”
Her heart and her knees wobbled. “What do you mean, sending a federal agent?” She yanked a wooden chair from the kitchen table and sat, hard.
At first, Fitzhugh said nothing. “I, ah, thought they must have told you after the bombing. The DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, I mean. Michael Quinn is an agent, not a private investigator. Didn’t you know? Oh, dear.”
The investment counselor was probably tugging anxiously at his bow tie by now.
Claire wanted to strangle him with it. “I think you’d better tell me all about it, Fitz.”
She listened with growing horror while the man described how the DEA came to him requesting help getting one of their agents close to Claire. They were seeking more information about Paul’s drug smuggling cohorts. He insisted that he cooperated because he expected it to clear her.
After disconnecting, Claire lowered her head between her knees. Spots swam before her eyes, and she feared that the coffee she’d drunk might join the china pieces in the bucket.
How could Michael have fooled me so completely?
Battling the nausea, she pulled herself upright and reached in her pocket for a tissue, but no tears welled up.
Dry-eyed, she struggled to understand. How could she have fallen in love with him? Why had she believed he might care about her?
Payback.
All along, she knew that loving him would gain her nothing. Her aunts’ familiar words rang in her ears, this time with a more painfully discordant clamor than usual.
The curse of your beauty is to be alone.
Michael found Claire sitting quietly at the kitchen table when he came downstairs.
He kissed the top of her head in passing. He helped himself to coffee and three heaping spoons of sugar, then leaned back, sighing in satisfaction at the rich flavor and aroma, against the sink.
When he registered her rigid posture and frozen expression, his stance straightened. “Was that the stalker on the phone just now?”
“It was Fitzhugh,” she said, her voice strained as if it pained her to speak.
He saw her pause a beat as her barriers went up.
“Were you ever going to tell me the truth, Agent Quinn? Or is that even your name?”
Anxiety tripped his heart into the next gear and clenched his gut.
Fitzhugh had spilled his identity. Slowly, deliberately, Michael placed his coffee mug on the counter. He had to answer her carefully.
Folding his arms in a defensive posture, he watched her. “Michael Quinn is my real name. I’ve wanted to tell you everything for a long time, ever since I realized you had nothing to do with Paul’s activities. The DEA wouldn’t authorize it.”
“Wouldn’t authorize it,” she repeated, rising to her feet and holding his gaze. Her voice was cold, flat. “But you knew all along, before you met me, about Paul and the drug gang?”
“Of course,” he said matter-of-factly, “that’s why they sent me. Someone in this area took up Paul’s smuggling operation, and the DEA thought you might be involved.”
“I remember you suggested a new smuggler to Russ. So you came here pretending to help me clear myself of murder, while you were really investigating me.”
“Babe, it was only to begin with. I—”
“Mon Dieu, the phone threats! I suppose the DEA’s behind those, too.” Her voice adopted a note of hysteria.
“The DEA wouldn’t do that.” He hoped. One more thing to check on at headquarters. Someone would pay if they had. “The DEA approached Fitzhugh about the same time you asked him to find you a P.I. Coincidence.” And the reason he’d had so little time to prepare for the assignment.
“And all that about your sister and the kidnapped child and leaving the DEA, was it all nonsense, designed to soften me up?”
Realizing that she believed everything was a lie exploded panic in his head and squeezed his heart. He forced the knotted tendon in his throat to relax. Control. He had to maintain a calm voice, an even tone. Then she’d listen.
“No, those tragedies did cause me to leave the DEA,” he said. “But until my resignation takes effect, I have this assignment. Claire, I swore an oath as an agent of the government. We have to stop these gangs that are ruining people’s lives. It’s my job.”
He did what he had to do. That should explain his actions satisfactorily and close the matter. He grabbed
his cup and swallowed another gulp of coffee.
“Your job.” She clasped her hands together as if to prevent their shaking. “And was it also your job to make love to the Widow Spider? Or was that your own coup de vache, a dirty trick you and the other agents could laugh about?”
The rose in her cheeks paled, as ashen as frost on the windowpanes. The pain in her lusterless eyes shook him.
He started toward her, his arms open, but the icy warning in her expression halted him in midstride. “Claire, I never—no one in the agency knows. What I feel for you has nothing to do with my assignment. In fact, involvement with a subject is totally against the rules.”
“A subject, that’s what I am to you. But…you could break the damn rules to get into my bed, but not to tell me the truth.” Suppressed tears choked her voice. Emotion thickened her dialect and turned her voice shrill.
He’d hurt her, but the wound bled deep inside him, too. He lifted his hands in surrender. “I wanted you. We wanted each other. And once I was certain you weren’t involved and had murdered no one, I decided it was okay. I know it isn’t logical, but lust isn’t logical.”
He winced at his clumsy wording. That wasn’t what he meant, but he didn’t know what else to say.
“Perhaps then, neither is anger or betrayal. You may be on the opposite side from Paul, but you deceived me just as wrongly.” Seeming unable to bear his gaze, she turned away. As if she might shatter into as many fragments as the porcelain figurines, she clutched the edge of the table. “I want you out of here.”
He couldn’t prevent himself from touching her then, trying to comfort her, to reach her. He gripped her shoulders firmly.
“Claire, we have something good between us. Something special. If I had leveled with you, it might have jeopardized the operation. There’s more going on, but they haven’t told me everything. It was my job. You have to understand.”
Wrenching away from his touch, she spun on him. “Understand? Mon Dieu, I understand, but I wonder if you do.”
“Claire, please.”
Her trembling shoulders betrayed her tension and distress, but her voice was steady and her eyes blazed with determination. “If the DEA wants anything from me, they can send some other agent. With an I.D. this time. Now pack up and get out of my house.”
He saw she was nearing the breaking point. No way would she listen to reason at the moment. After he knew the whole scope of the operation, he’d return. Then they’d talk again.
He turned and walked away.
Claire remained by the table. While Michael mounted the stairs, while he moved around upstairs, she stood there, staring at nothing, unable to move. When the door clicked closed behind him, she flinched as if from a blow. He was gone.
Alley’s bark roused her enough to let the dog in before she sank to the floor in despair.
Alley pushed her cold nose under one arm and wriggled her way into her mistress’s lap. Claire hugged her pet and released bitter tears that flowed down her cheeks and soaked into the small dog’s fur.
His job, his job. It was a poor excuse. How he could keep his duty to the agency separate from his personal needs and emotions mystified her. If he truly cared for her, he would have told her the truth. It was as simple and as complicated as that.
He didn’t love her. She didn’t want him to love her. No one should ever love her. Discovering Paul’s duplicity had stung her pride, but Michael’s betrayal flayed her heart.
How long she sat there, she couldn’t say. Minutes, hours, or days later, she dragged herself upstairs.
If she cleared away every trace of him, maybe she could pretend to herself he was never here. She stripped the beds and changed all the towels, throwing everything in the washer. With robotic motions, she scrubbed every inch of the bathroom tile and polished and vacuumed every surface in the bedrooms.
And still his scent lingered. Impressed into her body, the fresh smell of his soap and his after-shave, the unique scent of his skin, tortured her senses and her heart.
Abrading her flesh with the loofah beneath the stinging needles of a long, hot shower restored feeling to her numbed body.
But the memory of him persisted.
Wrapped in a fresh bath towel, she sank to her knees beside the bed. A tight cinch of pain clogged her throat and constricted her chest. Her gaze swept the room where they had made love last night.
I can’t stay here.
She couldn’t run away and hide. The police would not allow it. And danger still stalked her. She couldn’t remain under this roof with all the memories, either.
She had to stay at least until after Martine’s funeral. Then she’d get away. Gradually in her exhausted brain a plan took form.
Under the watchful and worried gazes of Alley and Spook, she dressed. Then she picked up the telephone.
Michael slammed his fist onto the heavy metal table with enough force to fell a tree. Then he gave it another whack for good measure and spewed out expletives scorching enough to char half the trees in the White Mountain National Forest, where he damn well wished he’d remained.
“That freaking bastard!” he roared. “Why did he keep that little secret from me this whole time? Didn’t he see the difference knowing would have made?”
The new development complicated more than the DEA’s operation. A lot more.
Too worked up to sit, he prowled around the small conference room Ricardo Cruz used as an office in the Portland DEA suite.
“Said due to my foul-up last year and my decision to resign, he didn’t trust me with the whole story,” Michael continued, waving one arm in extreme agitation.
“I didn’t know, either,” Cruz said mildly. “The GS is going through a messy divorce, and the Special Agent in Charge is on his case about that earlier screwup. I heard he’s even on meds for depression. Must have skewed his judgment.” Michael’s partner lounged in a folding chair, his leather-booted ankles crossed on the metal table edge.
“Judgment, my ass. He likes to be in control, dance us around like damn puppets.” Michael swung another folding chair out and straddled it. “All this time, he knew about another player in this farce and didn’t tell us. The operation’s been a trap for him all along.”
“So you think this dude’s the stalker,” Cruz mused.
“And the one who snooped around in Claire’s house. That’s why I had to stay undercover even after the bombing. I bet you a week in your native land he’s behind that.”
“I hate to disillusion you, man, but this is my native land. I was born in Miami, remember?”
“Okay, a week in Cuba. Whatever.” Michael waved away the distraction. He struggled to contain his rage, like flames jumping in his veins. “A hell of a waste of time. I even questioned Claire’s damn hairdresser. I’ve been working a connect-the-numbers puzzle, only the GS had the most important number.”
“Second prize, two weeks in Cuba.” Cruz lowered his feet and leaned forward, grinning. His coal-dark eyes gleamed with mischief.
Michael couldn’t stop himself. His lips curved in a smile. His partner’s natural good humor never failed to ease his dark moods. “If that’s the kind of lame joke you use on the female sex, it’s a damn miracle you ever have a date.”
“My jokes, lame or otherwise, are part of my charm. Women love a man who makes them laugh. I don’t see you drowning in women.”
“Buddy, I’m just drowning.”
“Now who’s making lame jokes?” At Michael’s black glower, Cruz snapped his fingers as if in realization. “So what happened when that bow-tied banker blew your cover?”
What happened? Michael wasn’t sure.
“She threw me out. Thinks I’m lower than pond scum. Wouldn’t listen to reason. Now she has no protection.”
He rose from the chair to stalk to the coffeemaker under the window. “You want some?”
Cruz gave him a thumbs-up. “So that’s it. You and the sexy widow have made it together a few times?”
At that, Mi
chael clenched his jaw, and heat rose to his face. Made it. The expression sounded so crude for the most incredible sex of his life. For the bone-deep connection and euphoria he felt with Claire. For the tenderness and longing that filled him.
Struggling for nonchalance, he slugged down some of the steaming brew.
Cruz grinned. “Ah-ha, I was right before. The lady’s gotten under that tough hide. It’s more than sex, isn’t it? For both of you.”
“Damn! This stuff’s strong enough to fuel Air Force One around the world.” Michael set the mug down so hard, the scalding coffee sloshed out onto the table. “What crystal ball told you that?”
Ignoring the question, Cruz said, “God knows why the lady cares, with your Alien Wild Man of the Mountains face. Must be your sparkling personality. Or another portion of your anatomy.”
“Rick! Shut up.”
“It’s easy, partner—if you know something about women. Not that a guy can ever understand them completely.”
Grinding his teeth, Michael glared at the other man.
With lazy, fluid grace, Cruz lowered his feet from the table. “She wouldn’t be angry if she didn’t care for you. We’re talking emotions here, not an exercise in logic, and you were acting like what you have with her is only a part of your job.”
Stunned, Michael knew his friend was right. He jabbed his fingers through his hair and stared blankly out the dingy window. “Dammit, I tried to tell her what was between us had nothing to do with the job, but she wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“Reason’s not what she wants, Quinn. She’s listening with her heart, not her head. You got to show her how you feel.” He stood and removed the leather jacket he’d taken to wearing regularly. With tender care, he hung it on the back of his chair.
“How do you know so much about women?”
“I grew up with four sisters, remember? You learn what makes females tick or you don’t survive.” He feinted a few shadowboxing jabs and an uppercut at Michael. “And it’s paid off big time in my social life. Love ’em and leave ’em, that’s me, and they still love me. Take a lesson, mano.”
Dangerous Attraction Page 17