by Beverly Bird
“You have no right—”
“I have every right.”
“No!”
“Damn it. do you want to be here if he comes back again with another trick up his sleeve—whoever the hell he is?”
“He knew I was out tonight,” she whispered. Oh, God, she wondered helplessly. had he been hidden out there in the darkness, watching her leave? Did he somehow have advance knowledge of her plans?
She realized only belatedly that she was having a very hard time holding on to her suspicion of Jesse. She dragged it back forcefully and glared at him. Then something else occurred to her.
“I should have told the cops,” she whispered, and was appalled when she started to cry.
Jesse found it very hard to breathe. He had the strong suspicion that if he moved to touch her now, to give comfort, she would fall apart. So he waited, watching her, his body rigid.
“I did the same thing I accused you of doing this morning,” she confessed.
Jesse frowned. “What are you talking about? You didn’t accuse me of anything this morning.”
“I asked you if you wanted me to send that hair! I wanted to know if you...if you...” She shook her head helplessly.
Jesse’s eyes narrowed. “You wanted to know if I was honest enough to make sure it was tested, regardless of the effect it could have on my career.”
She nodded woodenly, then her eyes flashed his way with a little defiance again. That was better. He went with it.
“And now you think you’re using your own position to cover up your culpability? So what are you saying, Doctor?” He was deliberately brutal, trying to snap her out of it. “That you killed Lisette and spliced that tape together and now you’re withholding evidence that could incriminate you?”
“No!” Her eyes went huge, then they got angry. “Is that what you believe?”
Only for a heartbeat, he thought. Only through that first, booming heartbeat. And that was the difference between them.
He let suspicion go easily when it didn’t seem reasonable. She seemed to be clawing for it, wanting to hold on to it.
“I believe someone is trying to discredit you,” he said carefully, quietly. “Someone left this device here. Having it in your possession makes it look as though you’re trying to frame me. Ergo, someone wants me to think that you killed Lisette.”
He waited. Her expression didn’t change. She remained on the edge of hysteria. So he went on, calmly reiterating what they both already knew.
“He—whoever he is—broke in here to leave this little present, Angela. I’d say that’s a given. You’d tell the cops nothing was missing, and they would leave. But I’d stay. The drawer was left open a little bit, wasn’t it?” he guessed.
She nodded spasmodically.
“So I’d see it if I helped you look around, check the place over. Which I would almost have to do. Not much of a gamble there.”
“But—”
“But I’d guess,” he finished for her, “that the alarm caught him off guard. I’d guess the cops weren’t in the initial plan. Which tells us something else. He’s either stupid, or he’s running on the kind of desperation that blots out common sense. Or, another scenario, he hadn’t planned to do this tonight. We went out and gave him an opportunity, so he had to act fast without being fully prepared.”
“I—” she began again. Then she nodded helplessly. “That makes sense.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I can’t even seem to think right now, Jesse.”
“That’s okay. Just listen for a minute. Hear me out. No matter how it occurred that he ended up here with the alarm blaring, we can pretty much figure what happened next. What was he going to do? Get caught standing in the living room with this machine? Of course not. He shoved it in an obvious place and took off.”
Angela managed a watery half-smile. “You’re good at this,” she said weakly.
“So are you. Normally. You’re just freaked out right now. This is what teams are for, Angela. When one guy hits a rocky spell, the other takes over.”
She shook her head again, but not really in denial this time.
“Why?” he asked, talking to himself now, thinking about the splicer again, Angela answered anyway.
“I don’t know!”
He moved closer to her, cornering her against a dresser. And he wanted badly to touch her, to draw her into his arms, to comfort her, but her eyes still said she’d never allow it.
“The question now is what anyone stands to gain by all this,” he went on. “Damn it, Angela, at some point you’re going to have to trust me. You’ve got to let me know if you’ve got anything, any suspicions. You can’t deal with this by yourself.”
Her eyes widened and she looked at him frantically. “I can’t trust you. I don’t even know you!”
He swore ripely, then his voice softened. “Then get to know me. At least give me a chance.”
Angela closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her middle.
This morning, they’d thought that someone was going after him, but they’d been looking at it from the wrong angle. She thought again of that hair caught between Lisette’s fingers, and she shuddered visibly. She knew, with a sick sensation, that anyone could—and probably would—logically say that she’d planted it there to set Jesse Hadley up for murder. She hadn’t noticed the hair at the crime scene. The fiber optic cable had picked it up during the autopsy. And she had done the autopsy alone. Unassisted. She had no proof that she hadn’t planted that hair herself once she’d gotten the body to the morgue. Someone had counted on that.
And if they knew what had happened between her and Jesse’s uncle all those years ago. then they would really believe she had a motive to destroy him, some long simmering hatred...
Her head spun.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. What was the right thing under the circumstances? She had to submit that splicing machine for prints. The killer’s own could be on it. But then she might only be incriminating herself, because it would be clear she’d had it in her possession. She groaned aloud.
“Did you touch it?” Jesse asked as though reading her mind.
She shook her head.
“All right, then. You just haven’t found it yet.”
She looked at him disbelievingly:
She needed to slow things down here. She needed to buy herself a breath of time in which to think. They—that collective. authoritative they who were made up of the Hadleys and the Glowans and the Prices of the world—could say anything they chose. Their word would always be believed over hers. She knew that she could not put any faith in the system. She did not believe that since she was innocent, everyone would rush off to look for the real killer. She knew that justice did not always prevail.
“Leave the splicer.” Jesse said bluntly. “Just for tonight. For another few hours until morning. We need to think about this. about the best way to handle it.”
Angela nodded, not so much in acquiescence, but confusion.
“Get changed now,” he said. “I’ll take you to my sister’s house. You can stay there tonight.”
“Tessa’s away,” she managed to return.
“I have a key. My housekeeper is supposed to be watering her plants, so her housekeeper could use the break to visit her family.”
It would be so easy to trust him.
“I’m staying,” she said quietly.
His face hardened. “Fine. Then I’m staying with you.”
“You’re not invited.”
“Oh, but I am. Because someone is trying to set you up, to make it look like you’re trying to frame me, and that makes this my problem, as well.”
She wanted to believe that it was as simple as that. In a way, the stand he was taking made sense. He was powerful and important, and he would certainly want to protect himself. It was an election year, she reminded herself.
She watched him stride angrily out of the room and knew again that there wasn’t a damned thing she could
do to dissuade Jesse Hadley once his mind was made up. It should have made her feel helpless and frightened and small, but she was only tired and overwhelmed.
“Now we need something to drink.” His voice drifted back from the hall. “Where do you keep the liquor around here?”
“In the dining room.”
She looked out the black window to the night pressing in. Who was out there, trying to destroy her? Goose bumps crawled over her skin.
She decided she was just as glad that Jesse wasn’t going anywhere just yet.
Chapter 8
Angela followed him downstairs and took a bottle of brandy from a cupboard in the sideboard. She poured for both of them and carried the snifters to the living room.
Jesse watched her from behind. Tension gripped her every movement. She put his glass on the coffee table then went to the far side of the sectional. She curled up there, her legs folded stiffly beneath her, and sipped, watching him.
“I don’t know,” she repeated quietly, as though he had just asked the question instead of having done it minutes ago. “There are a lot of people who might want to discredit me professionally. I just don’t know who they might be.”
He thought for a moment and nodded. “What about personally?”
The color drained from her face. But then she shook her head. “Not after all this time.”
She’d remained in the area for years after the mockery of Charlie’s almost-trial. After Gunner had gotten through with him, he’d left her alone. She’d gone to work at Quantico. She had never heard another peep from him. It made no sense for him to suddenly start up again. And certainly not like this.
Jesse scowled. Her response was an admission of something. though he wasn’t sure what. And it was clear she wasn’t going to enlighten him.
Yet. He’d get to the bottom of it eventually, he vowed silently.
“I set a few wheels in motion after you showed me that release,” he said finally. “Maybe they’ll lead us somewhere.”
Angela hesitated with her glass halfway to her lips. “What kind of wheels?”
“Regarding the Shokonnets. Regarding the employees in your building. And my own desk logs, to find out who’s been in my office the past month and when.”
Her eyes widened a tittle. “You did all this before Lisette died?”
He met her gaze evenly. “Someone forged my signature on that release form, then told the press that that release was negligence on your part. Even before bodies started dropping. I wanted to know who. Given these current circumstances, I’d like to find out what’s happened with those particular investigations before we make a decision on that thing upstairs.”
“There’s no decision to be made,” she said flatly, and he saw a shiver pass through her body, quickly controlled.
“There are always decisions,” he corrected. “When to hand it over to the lab. How. What to do with it in the meantime.”
She thought of the device upstairs, crouched in her drawer like some kind of vile presence. It was not simply going to go away.
She gave a laugh that turned into a groan. “We sound like partners in crime.”
“If you really believed that, I’d feel better.”
Once again, he watched her react. Her body flinched, recoiled.
“Partners generally trust each other,” he reminded her.
“Not always.”
“We need to, Angela.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
It was one of the more honest responses he’d gotten out of her yet, and he knew it. He wondered again what she was so afraid of. He made a sound of frustration. He finished his brandy and put his glass down with a crisp tap on the marble. There were at least four feet between them on the sofa. The distance was obvious, glaring, troubling.
“Would you please come closer, even just a little?”
Her eyes flew to his face. “What for?”
“Because I feel like a leper.”
“Then go home. No one asked you to stay here.”
He had never met anyone with defenses like hers.
But he’d seen something happen to her face at certain times before. He’d seen her soften, and he remembered what had made that happen. He wasn’t above using it. It would not be like the sparrow. He would leave his hand open this time.
“Please,” he added quietly, deliberately, and it happened again.
Everything about her wilted for a moment, then he heard her let out an unconscious sigh. And this time her chin actually trembled.
“Whether you like it or not,” he said, “we’re in this together. As long as someone’s using me to get to you, or vice versa, it’s my problem, too.”
Somehow he didn’t think she’d accept the fact that he was in this also because he cared. That he cared so much was something that startled even him.
“Angela, take comfort where it’s offered,” he suggested. “Take strength when it’s there for the tapping. Relax. You’re protected tonight. That’s all I’m saying.”
She hesitated. She thought that she had never felt so confused in her life. Except once.
I didn’t invite him. He’s lying. I didn’t want what happened.
“Angela.”
She gasped and her eyes flew open again. She wasn’t aware of having closed them.
Jesse held a hand out to her. She gave a small cry and scooted toward him. She almost spilled her brandy. He caught the snifter in time and put it on the coffee table.
It was so hard to keep fighting it, she thought, to keep being so meticulously careful with him, though she knew it was the only sane thing she could do. She knew what could happen when she wasn’t careful enough, but his arms were hard and strong around her now, maybe even strong enough to keep all the evil in the world at bay. As long as she made herself clear to him, surely it would be all right.
“I don’t want...I mean, just hold me,” she whispered deliberately. “I don’t want anything else.”
She heard him make a strangled sound. “I realize that, Angela. Trust me, you’ve made it clear.”
“That never matters.”
He scowled, but then the warmth of her reached him. She relaxed, and she seemed to melt just enough that her body conformed with his. He did what he had wanted to do from nearly the first time he had seen her, and he tangled his fingers in her hair. But he did not, after all, tilt her head back, make her yield. Some innate caution stopped him.
He lowered his mouth to the crown of her head instead, touching her so briefly that she didn’t feel it, and even he wasn’t sure he had actually done it when it was over. And he felt a new emotion sweeping through him, warm and soft.
Tenderness.
Angela would never have believed that she could have slept under the circumstances. But when she next opened her eyes, sunlight streamed through the living-room windows, making dust motes dance like fairies. And her first reaction was not one of panic or alarm at not being alone, but that she needed to give the place a good cleaning next weekend.
Jesse’s breathing was deep and even. His chest moved rhythmically beneath her left cheek. His right hand half curled on her hip. She had been more or less leaning into him at an unnatural angle, and her neck was stiff.
All in all, she thought, not the stuff passion was made of. Maybe because of that, she felt safe and warm and good. Even languorous.
She sat up slowly and looked at him. She touched a cautious, experimental finger to the trace of lines at the corner of his eye. He didn’t stir.
“Jesse?” she whispered, pulling her hand back.
He murmured something and turned his face away from her.
“Jesse,” she said more loudly.
“Go away.”
Her mouth curved into a smile. “Wake up!”
He jerked and his eyes flew open. She saw clouds of confusion in his gaze before it cleared.
“Time is it?” he managed to ask.
“I don’t know.”
“Then
go back to sleep.”
“It’s Monday. We have offices waiting for us.” They had problems waiting, as well, she knew, and her mood, so surprisingly good a moment ago, evaporated.
So many problems.
Jesse finally sat up, scrubbing his face with his hands. He still looked arrogant somehow. He woke with lazy grace, as though no one would dare deny him the time or the luxury. There was something devilishly attractive about him, and when they cleared, his green eyes were expressive enough to touch something inside her.
A day-old growth of beard shadowed his face. And she wanted to touch that, too, to run her fingers over it, to know the texture of it. That compulsion was as frightening as anything that had happened yet.
“I’ll get coffee,” she said quickly.She got up and fled down the hall to the kitchen.
It was a good five minutes before he joined her. Jesse was under no illusions regarding his morning moods. They weren’t usually pleasant, at least not before he had a cup of coffee. But some was percolating, and the smell drew him down the hall. That, and the whisper of her movements in the kitchen.
He stopped in the doorway and merely watched her for a moment.
Her hair was mussed now and thoroughly tangled. Golden curls spilled down her back as she moved. She still wore the shimmering blue dress, and in the morning light she looked like something otherworldly. Her face was too pale, her eyes too dark. He had never before had occasion to wonder what an angel might look like, but given a pair of wings, he thought, Angela Byerly would do nicely right now.
An angel under siege, he amended. Alone and frightened and for some reason determined to handle it all on her own.
She caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye and whirled to face him. She clapped a hand to her heart. “Oh, you startled me.”
“You’re not used to having anyone creep up on you while you’re making coffee.” It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t answer. But he found her reaction enlightening.