“No, we’re using a service to handle the majority. There were a few I wanted to handle personally, though.” She glanced away.
People she knew, Max surmised. People she’d wanted to make sure were still alive.
Tori Campbell didn’t trust her own product.
Interesting.
“Did you know any of the women who died?” Max deliberately turned his back on the receptionist and leaned against the desk, so they were both facing out into the lobby, where the FDA investigators were loading fat files into sturdy cardboard boxes.
“No,” she answered, “none of us did. It seems so…random. Those poor women and their poor families. I talked to the first husband on the phone when it all started, before the lawyers and the FDA got involved. His name is James Summerton. He sounded awful. Hurt. Confused. Angry.” She paused. “I can’t get his voice out of my head.”
Her words resonated inside Max, where something clicked. He stiffened as he realized there was yet another possibility that could explain the house fire.
Revenge.
What if Thriller really had killed the women? What if Raine really had deleted the data records? What if someone connected to the dead women had decided to take matters into his own hands?
The possibility didn’t ring as false as Max would have liked. Stifling a growl, he pushed away from the reception desk and faced Tori. “Do you think the drug killed them?”
“Raine is a good person,” she said quickly. “She wouldn’t have gone forward with the sampling and the advertising if she’d thought there was any chance of Thriller being deadly.” Then the secretary pursed her lips and looked both ways, making sure nobody could overhear her say, “There are a couple of others here that I’m not so sure about, though.”
Max leaned closer. “Meaning?”
Her voice dropped so low he almost couldn’t hear it. “Jeff Wells has been pretty chummy with the FDA people. And he’s been hanging out with the computer techs. He never used to do that.”
Max watched her eyes, trying to gauge whether this was real or a personal agenda. “You don’t like Jeff?”
“I’ve never had a problem with him before, but ever since this thing started with Thriller, he’s been…” She shrugged. “Weird, I guess. Then again, we’re all under a ton of pressure right now. If Thriller goes under, it’ll take Rainey Days with it.”
He’d heard the same fear from hundreds of employees at dozens of companies since he and William had gone into business. Now, though, it resonated on a different level.
A personal one.
Max scowled and shifted away from Raine’s secretary. How could he trust Raine so little, yet still want to help her?
“I don’t know,” Raine’s voice said unexpectedly from right behind him. “I’ve been wondering the same thing.”
Max jolted and turned toward her, halfway thinking he’d asked his question aloud. But her eyes were focused beyond him as she crossed the office lobby with her cell phone pressed to her ear and her long red coat draped over her arm, as though she were going somewhere.
He shifted to block her path, interrupting. “You’ve been wondering what?”
She focused on him and her eyes changed, so slightly that he might not have noticed if he hadn’t been watching for it. She clicked the phone shut and said, “Computer stuff. Jeff and two of the techs are in my office trying to figure out when those data ghosts were inputted. Maybe-”
A ripping, rending explosion cut off her words and a fireball erupted from the second floor, blowing away a chunk of the balcony. The heavy construction crashed to the first floor, narrowly missing a section of office cubicles.
Max shouted as an invisible concussion wall slammed him to the ground.
He instinctively grabbed Raine on the way down, tangling their bodies together so he took the brunt of the fall. Debris stung his back and shoulders.
The roar of sound and fury escalated to painful levels, seeming to go on for far too long. Cursing, Max rolled them behind Tori’s desk, where they were partway shielded by the solid wood kiosk.
An unearthly groan rose above the fading roar of explosion. Aware of Raine beneath him, of Tori and two FDA drones huddled in the lee of the reception desk, Max risked a look just in time to see the giant hanging mobile snap from its cable. The huge model crashed to the ground and splintered into brightly colored shrapnel.
The noise faded slowly.
And the screams and shouts began.
Almost as an afterthought, fire alarms shrilled to life. The fire suppression system activated with a thump and water sprayed, not from the overhead sprinklers, but from ruptured pipes along the walls and in the ceiling far above them, pouring down in haphazard sluices that added nothing but wet and noise.
“Everybody out!” Max shoved Raine toward the main office door and gestured for Tori and the FDA agents to follow. “Outside, into the parking lot. The whole building could come down around our ears!”
As he said that, the other half of the balcony let go partway, sagging directly over a handful of cubicles, where workers cowered beneath their desks.
“I’m staying!” Raine yanked away from him, face gray with shock and drywall dust. “These are my people! That was my office!”
“These are your people, too.” He gestured to the small knot huddled behind the desk. “Get them out and call 911.” He got them up and moving out the door before he turned back to the destruction.
Without the balcony, the entire second floor was inaccessible, with office doors opening onto thin air. A giant hole gaped where Raine’s office had been moments earlier.
Jeff and two of the techs are in my office trying to figure out when those data ghosts were inputted, she’d said, which gave Max four immediate suspects for the bombing-Jeff, the techs and Raine herself.
It couldn’t have been Raine, he thought instantly, sure of her innocence for the first time, though he couldn’t have said why.
Even as the possibilities snapped into his mind, he was moving-not toward the door, but deeper into the office, toward the cubicles. He could hear moans and shouts and prayers, a litany of human misery. “Come on!” he shouted, coughing against the plaster dust and acrid smoke. “Everyone out!”
As though they’d been waiting for someone to tell them it was clear, a half-dozen people bolted for the exit, skidding on the wreckage. Farther into the cube farm, where a chunk of balcony had landed, he heard voices shouting for help.
“What can I do?” Raine’s voice asked from behind him.
Max spun. Her face was bloodless, her eyes huge in her face, sending a stab of something hot and ugly through his chest. “I told you to go outside and call this in.”
She gestured behind her, where Tori and the two FDA agents stood, looking grim but determined. “They’re on their way. Until then, we’re helping.”
Max wanted to argue, but she was right, damn it.
He glanced up at the raw edge of wall where the balcony had been and saw faces peering out of three different office doors, heard more calls for help. Nothing was shifting, and it seemed like the building was structurally okay.
For now.
“Take that side-” Max’s voice broke and he coughed out a lungful of dust and grit before saying, “If they’re mobile, get them out. If they’re too wounded to move, mark their positions for the professionals. Got it?”
The others nodded and headed deeper into the office, which had gone from tasteful to rubble in the blink of an eye.
Raine brushed his shoulder in passing. “Thank you.”
He wasn’t sure if she was thanking him for pushing her to safety during the first fury of the blast or for not arguing harder against her help. Either way, her touch poked at a raw, sore spot inside. He bared his teeth. “Don’t thank me yet. You were one of the last people in that office.”
She glanced up at the gaping hole where her space had been. “I know. I could’ve been-” She broke off and looked at him, eyes narrowing. “What
are you suggesting, that I blew up my own office with Jeff and two computer techs in it?” Her voice rose as she spoke, until it cracked with airborne dust and stress, or maybe with fear. “Listen, you-” She pressed her lips together and tears made her eyes shimmer with sincerity, or maybe pure rage. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t have.” She looked down at the shattered mobile. A tear broke free and tracked through the dust on her cheek. “Never.”
It clicked in his brain then. The reason he knew she was telling the truth.
Only it wasn’t pretty.
“I believe you,” he said, damning the ache in his chest when she looked up and hope flickered in her eyes. “I believe that you didn’t set the bomb. And do you want to know why?”
Another tear joined the first. “Why?”
The ache snapped in his chest and died, and he heard himself say the words as though they’d come from someone else, someone standing far away.
“Because if you couldn’t bring yourself to have an abortion when you so clearly didn’t want your ex-husband’s child, I can’t see you killing people just to get what you want.” He straightened as he rose to tower over her. He hated that it gave him some measure of pleasure to say, “Even you aren’t that selfish, Raine.”
Then he turned and walked away, feeling like hell.
Chapter Six
Raine told herself the wetness on her cheeks was spray from a broken pipe nearby as she tugged on a pile of debris, trying to free part of a cube wall without sending the rest crashing down on a middle-aged guy wearing the dark suit of an FDA agent and the scared expression of a man who’d seen his own life nearly end.
“Careful,” he said for the tenth time. “Careful there.” He tugged at his leg, which was pinned beneath the lower edge of the wall.
“I’ve got it.” Raine sniffed against more tears. Concentrate. She had to concentrate on what needed to be done right now.
There would be time for tears later. In private.
The wall gave suddenly, sending her staggering back, where she collided with an immovable male body.
She didn’t need to turn to know instantly who it was. Her senses were attuned to Max, damn them.
Damn him.
“Leave it,” he ordered with enough bite in his tone to have her bristling in return.
“I can do it.” She turned her back on him, hoping he’d go away. Far away. The sting of his logic was too fresh for her to deal with. Too true to brush off.
She hadn’t wanted Rory’s child, hadn’t wanted the responsibility of single motherhood. She’d even considered the alternative before deciding it wasn’t the right choice for her, practicalities aside. But what Max didn’t know, or chose not to remember, was that in those last few days before her miscarriage, in the days he’d been watching over her, her growing child had gone from being “the pregnancy” in her mind to being “the baby.” Her baby.
Damn him for not remembering that, and for using what had happened against her.
Now, he gripped her upper arms and urged her toward the doors, away from the destruction. “The professionals are here. Let them deal with it.”
She saw firefighters and a group of paramedics followed by beefy men carrying power tools. Even as they descended upon the wreck of her life, the building shifted with an ominous groan.
“Out.” Max sent her toward the door with an unceremonious shove. “Now.”
She half hoped he would stay behind, giving her a few moments without his too judgmental presence. Instead he remained close as she exited the office and followed a stream of evacuees from other floors, down the winding stairwell to the parking lot.
It was daylight. Sunny. Pretty. The sky was blue and patches of snow were melting. It looked like any other day. How could things seem so normal out here when the situation was so incredibly not normal?
“Raine.” Max touched her arm, voice subdued. “I’m sorry for what I said up there. I was out of line.”
“Yes, you were.” She lifted her chin, refusing to let the hurt show.
“I apologize.”
The honest regret in his eyes eased something deep inside her. She slanted him a look. “Does that mean you’re back to thinking I planned all this on my own?”
He grimaced. “I’m not-”
“Ms. Montgomery,” Detective Marcus interrupted, appearing at her side with Agent Bryce in tow. “I’d like to have a few words with you.”
Max ranged himself at her shoulder. “Detective,” he said. “You got here quickly.”
“I was in the neighborhood,” Marcus said, no hint of humor in his expression to acknowledge that he’d left the office no more than thirty minutes before it was destroyed. “I’d like you to come to the station.”
“So I’ve graduated to being questioned at the station,” Raine said, tears and smoke turning her voice husky. “That either means you believe I’m responsible for all this, or you think I’m a target.”
“I don’t think there’s any question of that, Ms. Montgomery,” the detective said, giving no hint which side of the fence he stood on. He gestured to a plain sedan. “If you’ll come with me?”
Though it bordered on leaning, Raine glanced up at Max. He nodded slightly. “Go ahead. I’ll follow in your car.”
Swallowing tears of fear and humiliation, she climbed into the sedan and sat in the back like a criminal.
Alone.
WHEN MAX ENTERED the police station later that afternoon, he was armed with more questions than answers.
Or rather, the answers he had were ones he didn’t like. Not one bit.
He followed the desk officer’s directions up a short flight of stairs to a wide hallway. Closed doors marched in rows on either side, fake wood panels that made the off-gray paint on the walls look dingy.
At the end of the hall, Raine sat on a stiff-looking wooden bench, looking gray herself, though not dingy. Her clothes were badly wrinkled and streaked with plaster dust, and her hair had mostly sagged from its habitual twist atop her head.
Max paused mid-stride as the sight of her reached inside him and grabbed at something. His heart, maybe, or even deeper than that. Damn her for being so beautiful, he thought. Damn him for being a sucker. He forced himself to keep walking when part of him wanted to head down the stairs and never look back. But that would be running away, and that was her routine, not his.
Never his.
“Have you been waiting long?” he asked, his voice coming out deeper than he’d intended.
She shook her head. “A few minutes. I was gathering my strength to call a cab.”
He scowled and snapped, “No cabs. No going out alone. Not until we figure out who’s after you, what they want and how we can stop them. Got it?”
He halfway expected her to leap up and get in his face, reminding him she was the boss, she was in charge. Instead, a worried pinch developed at the corners of her eyes. “So you do believe I’m not the villain here. What do you know that I don’t?”
He’d thought about shielding her from the information. Instead, he went with the blunt, naked truth. “Tori and Agent Bryce helped put together a head count of who should’ve been in the office. Everyone’s been accounted for except Jeff and the two techs. But there were only two bodies in your office.”
Someone hadn’t been where he was supposed to be. Their bomber, perhaps?
She paled further, swallowed and nodded. It took a moment, but she met his eyes when she said, “I hope Jeff got out. Then again, part of me hopes he didn’t.”
“They don’t know yet.” Max thought of the charred remains and grimaced. “They’re probably going to need DNA samples for comparison.”
“Oh.” Raine looked down at her hands. “God. Those poor men. And Jeff. He was practically a kid.”
Feeling the ache of the day in his soul, Max squatted down so he was eye level with her, close enough to see the wariness in her expression. “It’ll be okay,” he said, knowing it probably wouldn’t be. “We’ll get through this.” Almost w
ithout thinking, he took her hands and squeezed them when he felt the shocky cold of her skin. “I’m here for you.”
Their eyes met on a singe of memory.
I’m here for you, he’d said back at Boston General, giving her reassurance when she’d needed it, when she’d had nobody on her side. She’d leaned on him when she’d needed him, and left when she hadn’t.
A familiar pattern.
He pulled his hands away abruptly and stood. “Come on,” he said gruffly, more mad at himself than her. “The SUV’s outside.”
“What about your truck?” She stood and the worried questions in her eyes asked about more than just the truck. What’s next? Where do we go from here?
Trouble was he didn’t know what came next, and he didn’t like the feeling one bit. He needed more information. He needed help, damn it, but William was flat out, and they were still just a two-man shop.
Lucky for him, he had an ally on speed dial.
“I won’t need the truck,” he said, answering Raine’s spoken question and ignoring the unspoken ones. “I’m sticking with you.”
“Because I’m a suspect or a victim?”
He started to brush off the question, but her expression cracked, showing him the need beneath the veneer of strength. Relenting, he said, “You’re not a suspect anymore. Not in my book, anyway. Like I said, you’re no killer.”
Instead of relief, her eyes darkened with something hotter and more complicated. “Which makes me a victim.”
“A protectee,” he countered. He jerked his head toward the exit. “Come on. We’ll find another hotel, maybe get a pizza. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
THEY AVOIDED RETURNING to the Guildford Inn on the theory that a moving target was harder to hit.
The idea of someone-anyone-watching her put a hard knot in the pit of Raine’s stomach. But in a weird way, she almost hoped there was someone working against her because that would give them a tangible goal. A target. If-no, when they found her adversary, the Thriller deaths would be explained.
Under the Microscope Page 7