She swallowed hard. “Where are we going?”
“Like I told the detective, a hotel. Got any preference?”
She directed him to the Guildford Inn, a mid-sized hotel she’d used once or twice when she’d needed someplace to put out-of-town scientists.
While they drove, she tried to pull herself together. It was okay. She could do this. Just think of it as time to regroup, she told herself. Don’t think about the house or the guy in the house. Just think about a shower.
But when she got to the check-in counter and reached for her purse, she stalled because it wasn’t there. Presumably, it had been destroyed in the fire, along with her credit cards. Her walking-around money. Her license.
Pretty much everything that identified her as Raine Montgomery and allowed her to function in the modern world.
“I’ve got it,” Max’s voice said behind her.
Her face heated when he slid his credit card across the counter. Feeling awkward, she wandered away and stared out a window at the night-quiet street.
Was the man out there, watching her? Or was he long gone, having gotten what he wanted?
What had he wanted? Why had he been in the house in the first place? She didn’t keep any valuables there. Hell, she didn’t have any valuables besides Thriller, and even that might be worth nothing if they didn’t work fast.
“Come on.” Max touched her arm. “We’re all set.”
They rode up to the fourth floor in silence. It felt strange to walk down a hotel corridor with a fresh key card and no luggage, and felt stranger still to have Max open the door for her. She turned to thank him, to ask what room he’d be in, but he followed close on her heels, crowding her into the room.
When she stepped back, he turned and shut the door, locked it and set the chain.
He glanced at her, eyes hard. “It won’t keep you in, but I’ll hear if you try to run.”
Awkwardness morphed to confusion. “If I what?” Then she understood and anger burned away the weaker emotions. “Why the hell would I run?”
The corner of his mouth kicked up, but there was no humor in his expression. “That’s what you do. You run.”
Her blood ran cold even as her face flamed. “Not. This. Time.”
Not ever again.
He reached into the heavy leather jacket he wore over his flannel shirt and pulled out a folded sheaf of papers. “Then what is this?”
Raine took the papers, which proved to be the e-ticket Detective Marcus had asked about, along with a boarding pass and itinerary. They were all in the name of Corraine Asherton, who was apparently traveling to Madrid that night.
There was no return flight.
“What was the plan?” Max asked, voice dangerously low. “Hire me to make it look like you were sticking it out, then fake your own death in a house fire?” He muttered a curse. “All that about not being able to afford a retainer was bull, wasn’t it? You’ve probably already stashed the money overseas. No doubt you’ve-”
“Stop it!” she said sharply, anger and denial forming a hot, messy ball in her throat. “Stop saying that! I wasn’t leaving. These aren’t my tickets. I’ve never seen them before in my life!”
His eyes darkened and he deliberately took a single step away from her, as though stopping himself from doing something he’d regret, or maybe reminding himself not to. Voice sharp, he said, “When you left Boston General, your boss tried to pay me for the time I’d spent watching out for you. I wouldn’t let him, because I figured it’d been my decision to stay, and because the danger turned out to have come from inside the hospital.” He shrugged. “Maybe I felt responsible, maybe I wanted to hold on to the resentment. I don’t know. But I do know that whether I volunteered or not, you used me. You hung on to me and begged me to tell you it would be okay. You implied there was something between us, something we should work on once you were out of the hospital. That was a lie, though, wasn’t it? As soon as you got what you wanted, you took off.”
Raine braced herself against the words, against the sting of accusation in his eyes, which seemed bigger than the situation warranted. But she’d known this was coming. She’d been prepared for it, as much as she could have prepared to deal with a mistake as big as this one. “I know this sounds bad, Max, but it wasn’t about you. It was about me. I couldn’t deal with being around people who knew I had miscarried. I felt like every time someone looked at me, they were thinking about my uterus, wondering how I’d ended up pregnant by a man I’d already divorced. It was…” She searched for the word and finally said, “It was invasive.”
“So you ran,” he said flatly.
“I escaped,” she countered. “But I’m sorry for hurting you.”
“You didn’t hurt me. You made me feel like an idiot.” He looked at her then, and there was no warmth in his eyes. “I won’t let that happen again. I’m not going to let you put me on this case and then disappear.”
A chill shimmered through her body. “What does that mean?”
He shucked off his jacket and tossed it on the bed nearest the door. “That means I’m going to stick with you for the duration, babe. Consider this an added bonus. You’ve just bought yourself a round-the-clock bodyguard.”
Chapter Four
“Are you trying to punish her or protect her?” William asked the next morning, his voice tinny with a bad cell connection and background noise.
Max leaned up against the wall outside the hotel room, partly to give Raine privacy while she showered and dressed, partly to give himself a moment of breathing air that held no hint of her scent, no warm sense of the false intimacy created by sleeping in the same room with her once again. “Would it make me a bad person if I said it was a little bit of both?”
William chuckled. “No. It’d make you an honest one.” Then his tone sobered. “Watch yourself, though, for both of our sakes. This is going to be a high-profile case-it’s going to play out in the media as much as in the FDA and the courts. If things go wrong and you’re on camera defending her…”
“I won’t be on camera,” Max said tightly. “And I won’t be defending her unless I have evidence worth defending. So far, I don’t.” Hell, he didn’t have much besides the reports of four dead women, a thin file of papers that said Thriller shouldn’t be lethal, and a house fire that was either attempted murder or attempted escape, depending on whether he believed Raine or the weak-seeming evidence.
“Just be careful, okay?”
Though Max knew William wasn’t just talking about the case anymore, he said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got it under control.”
But once he’d hung up, his optimism drained quickly. He had a bad feeling about the case. About Raine.
Was she in danger, or just dangerous?
The hotel-room door opened, framing her at the threshold. She was wearing the same clothes she’d been in when she’d knocked on his apartment door the previous day, but the expensive black pants were worn-looking, her camel-colored sweater was snagged and smeared with soot, her red wool jacket hung limply and the hat was long gone.
Without it, she looked less mysterious and more vulnerable, an impression that was only heightened by the dark smudges beneath her eyes, mute testimony to the awkward night they’d passed, together, yet not together at all.
She’d tossed and turned well past 3:00 a.m. He knew that for a fact because he’d been awake, restless in his own bed, listening to her breathe.
He gestured toward the elevators. “Are you ready to go?”
“Don’t I look ready to go?” she snapped, then pressed her unpainted lips together in a thin line. “Sorry. Not your fault. I just…” She shrugged beneath the sad-looking wool coat. “I’ve got one outfit and an SUV to my name. The FDA has taken over my office and some bastard burned down my house and put plane tickets in my car to make me look like the villain here. Worse, everyone believes it.”
By everyone, Max knew she meant him. But was it the truth or an act? Ever since she’d reappeared in hi
s life, he’d been jarred by the differences between Raine today and the one he’d walled off in the back corner of his memory.
The Raine he’d remembered-when he’d thought of her at all-was soft and a little tragic, scared about being pregnant by her ex-husband, frightened of the clotting disorder that had landed her in the hospital, clingy when it came to her boss, who’d been one of the few constants in her life.
Back then, she’d reminded him of his nieces, Deena and Diana. The girls were only a few years younger than him, but in the way of complex multigenerational Czech families, he was technically their uncle rather than their cousin. He’d been responsible for nurturing them in the rough-ish Czech-dominated neighborhood north of Boston.
He’d protected the “Double Dees” growing up, just as he’d tried to protect a hurting, vulnerable Raine. But how could he protect this new Raine? Instead of cringing from the danger, she was stepping into it, chin out-thrust, ready to defend her territory.
Or was that the act? Was she really just biding her time, looking to cut and run as she had before?
Hell, he didn’t know.
All he knew was that part of him wanted to hold her close and tell her he’d protect her, that he’d never let anything happen to her. But another, smarter part of him knew that was a bad idea. She hadn’t come to him for personal reasons. It was business this time, more so than it had been before.
He’d do best to keep it that way. He should just pursue his investigation, get the name Vasek and Caine out in the marketplace as positively as he could and draw his paycheck.
Then walk away.
ONCE THEY LEFT THE HOTEL, Raine insisted they stop at the nearest mall, so she could buy a few changes of clothes and other necessities. The look Max shot her suggested he thought she was being frivolous and feminine, but he didn’t get it. She was the boss. Her people relied on her to maintain a certain image. And besides, she could hardly hold her own against the FDA investigators wearing yesterday’s smoke-smelling clothes.
“Give me ten minutes,” she said once he’d parked near the department store entrance.
He raised one thick eyebrow. “I’m coming in.”
“You don’t need to. I’m perfectly- Oh. Right.”
He was coming in to make sure she wasn’t in danger. To make sure she didn’t take off. Both. Neither. “Fine. I’ll make it quick.”
But she paused just inside the doors of the department store, overwhelmed by the number of little things she needed to live life as she knew it.
Makeup. Underwear. Nylons. Toiletries. Everything.
Think of it as a business trip, she told herself. Pretend the airline lost your luggage and you need enough to look professional for a few days.
She couldn’t think beyond the next few days. The future was too uncertain. Too dependent on things she couldn’t control.
Like Max Vasek.
Hyperaware of his stern, watchful presence, she quickly grabbed an armload of clothes that should come close to fitting. She dumped her under things and a casual outfit-jeans, a sweater and sturdy boots-on the counter and kept hold of a pair of trim black pants, a burgundy silk shell and a fitted black blazer. She snagged a few staples from the hair and makeup counter, then ducked into the ladies’ room, where she put herself together.
The clothes and makeup were a shield, a veneer of competence slapped over a shaky core. She forced her hands to stay steady when she applied a layer of gloss over her painted lips, and fought the tears back when they wanted to mist her vision.
She could do this. She could handle this.
She could handle him and the heat that touched her skin when she was near him. When she thought of him. She was going to have to handle it because she was on her own.
No leaning this time. She didn’t want to be that passive wimp anymore.
And she didn’t want a man who was attracted to victims.
Mask firmly in place, she emerged from the restroom and nodded to Max, who had leaned against a nearby support beam with feigned casualness. “I’m all set. You getting anything?”
He shook his head. “I have a bag packed-it’s in my truck. We’ll swing by your place, pick up my stuff, move the truck off the street, and maybe have a look around now that it’s daylight.”
The last thing Raine wanted to see was the burned-out wreck of her house. “Can you drop me at the office first?”
She thought his eyes softened, but that must have been wishful thinking because his tone was brisk when he said, “For both our sakes, I’m not letting you out of my sight. Sorry.” Then he pulled out his wallet. “Here. For the clothes.”
Their fingers brushed when she took the credit card, sending a fine current of electricity dancing up her arm. She tightened her lips and forced herself not to jerk away.
Max didn’t acknowledge the flare of chemistry-if he’d even felt it. “Make it quick. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can figure out what happened to those women, and whether or not the fire was related.”
Despite her resolution not to lean on him, and the awkward intimacy of paying for her new bra and panties with his credit card, Raine drew a measure of comfort from his words.
She had a professional on her side. And if anyone could figure out what had happened to those four women, it was Max Vasek.
He was too smart, too stubborn to fail once he’d decided on a goal.
It was a short ten-minute drive from the mall to her house-or rather, where her house used to be. Now, it was a pile of wet, blackened rubble that looked faintly slimy in the cold mid-morning sun.
Max glanced at her. “Can I trust you to stay in the car?”
Irritation surged over a faint churn of nausea. “I’m coming with you.”
He scowled. “You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do. I might remember something that could help.” She opened the door and climbed out, then shivered when a sharp breeze pressed her wool coat around her and brought the smell of smoke.
She didn’t remember much about the night before, but the odor brought a slap of fear and flame.
Max stepped to her side and gestured for her to cross the line of police tape prominently strung across the driveway. “Stay close. Detective Marcus will be annoyed enough when he finds out we’ve been here. I’d rather not mess up his scene.”
“Do you think he left someone to watch the house?” Raine glanced around, but saw only empty cars parked on the streets. There didn’t appear to be any curious faces peering from the windows of neighboring houses, but Raine narrowed her eyes when she saw a red-and-white sign on a door directly across the street. “For Rent, huh?”
Attention already focused on the burned-out shell of her house, Max answered, “That’s right, you were a tenant. Hope you had renter’s insurance.”
“Not me. Over there.” She gestured across the street. “Didn’t the detective say the 911 call came from Unit A? There aren’t any curtains in the windows.”
Now she had his full attention. “It’s vacant?”
“Looks like it. What if…heck, I don’t know.” She broke off, not even sure what sort of a theory she could build. “That doesn’t make any sense. If he wanted to kill me, why call 911? And if he wanted me to live, why set the house on fire with me in it?”
As she glanced back at her ruined house, the basic unfairness of it all grabbed Raine by the throat. Only days earlier, she’d been on top of the world, anticipating Thriller’s release and planning public appearances with a blend of nerves and excitement. She’d been alone, yes, but she’d had everything under control and was moving in the right direction.
And now? Everything was a mess. Her life was spiraling out of control. She was powerless. Helpless. All the things she’d tried so hard not to be anymore.
“You coming or not?”
She looked up at the question and found Max halfway up the drive, waiting. “Sorry. I’m right behind you.” She caught up with him, trying to step where he stepped so as not to tick off the de
tective any more than necessary. “What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know exactly. I’ll know it when I see it.” He led the way around the back of the building, where the simple landscaping had taken a beating. The shrubs had been reduced to scorched stumps, and where the mulch hadn’t burned away, it had run away from the house in red-tinged rivulets, borne by the hundreds of gallons of water that had been used to kill the blaze.
What was left of the house still radiated heat. Or maybe that was her imagination, she thought as she looked at the wreckage, at the blackened spikes of charred and splintered wood and the haphazard disarray of ruined appliances, ruined everything.
She swallowed hard and tried not to think about the fact that she’d been in the house. That she could have died.
Instead, she focused on the immediate problem. Finding evidence of an intruder, something that would prove she hadn’t set the blaze herself to cover an escape. “What about those?” She gestured to a mess of footprints in the now-frozen slushy mud.
Max glanced over, then shook his head. “Probably the firefighters.” He stopped and looked around, scowling. “The heat melted off most of the snow, and the water and the foot traffic destroyed anything that was left. Besides-” he touched his toe to a half burned book “-it’s going to be damned difficult to separate out something your intruder left behind versus your stuff.”
Raine tightened her coat around her torso, chilled by the sight of the book, which had been on her night table. “Then why are we here?”
“So I could get my bag out of the truck.” But the look he sent her suggested that wasn’t all.
She stiffened and balled her fists at her sides. “And so you could see me back at the scene, right? What was this, some sort of a test?”
He shrugged. “I told you to wait in the car.”
Irritation spiked toward fury. “And if I had? Would that have meant I was guilty or not?” She lifted her fingers to the back of her head, where the raised bump had subsided, but the skin remained tender. “For the last time, I didn’t set the fire, I wasn’t flying anywhere using my foster mother’s last name and I’m not giving up on Thriller!”
Under the Microscope Page 5