He got through to Davy Logan. The cop was having a bad run of luck as far as his niece was concerned.
“Sergeant Logan here.”
“Sorcha was attacked by Duncan Mackenzie in a graveyard.” Goddamned creepy graveyard. He glanced around. What the hell was she doing here?
“Dear God, no.” Her uncle’s voice quavered.
“She’s all right. Mackenzie’s unconscious.” Ben kicked him just to make sure. This place gave him the heebie-jeebies.
“Where are you?” Logan asked.
“Where the hell is this place?” Ben asked Sorcha.
She avoided looking at him. “St. Adrian’s graveyard.”
“Iain’s grave.” Davy Logan said, overhearing her. On the line, Ben heard the shuffling of papers and scraping back of a chair. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes?” Ben glanced at Sorcha. Her cheeks were chalk-white, her teeth chattering as shock set in. “She can’t wait that long. I’ll take her back to her place. We’ll wait for you there.” He turned off the phone and slipped it into his pocket.
Mackenzie was out cold. Not that it mattered. The police knew who he was and where he lived. And if they lost him, Ben would find the creep and make sure he never attacked another woman as long as he lived. By the time he was finished with the sonofabitch, he’d be pissing like a girl.
Ben moved to put an arm around Sorcha’s shoulders for support, but she jerked away.
“I don’t need your help.”
Damn. Sleeping with her this morning had destroyed his advantage and his objectivity. “At least let me give you a ride home.”
“I’m fine.” She turned to walk away but stumbled.
He caught her arm. “No, you’re not.”
She stiffened but relented and let him help her to his car. Shivers reverberated through her slim frame and into his body, telling him exactly how terrified she’d been.
It had been a fluke he’d found her. In Whitekirk he’d let the locals take over the investigation, phoned in a request to his Lothian and Borders contacts, who had turned a car bomb into a routine stolen vehicle inquiry. He didn’t want Sorcha spooked and running. He didn’t want anyone figuring out he’d been following her. Her ignorance worked in his favor as long as she didn’t wind up dead. He’d raced back to Anstruther, terrified Sorcha would get herself killed and he’d lose his best chance at uncovering the drug smugglers. He’d spotted her jumping off the bus on the main road, followed her from a safe distance and lost her again when she’d dipped into the churchyard. He’d doubled back, seen the open gate of the cemetery and found her just before Mackenzie did any serious damage.
Tree branches clacked like desiccated bones. His heartbeat jumped. Sorcha stumbled and he tightened his grip, supporting most of her weight.
The softness of her hair brushed the back of his hand, reminding him of what had happened in his bed that morning. He forced the thought from his mind. It wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t.
Their footsteps echoed loudly, neither saying a word. He helped Sorcha into the car, but the look in her eyes delayed the questions that sat on his tongue. Like who wanted her dead? And why?
He started the engine and pulled out, cutting through the town, weaving in and out of the old cobbled streets. According to his source, Sorcha had been agitated when she’d reported the theft of the van, not pissed the way you’d expect a drug dealer to be if they’d been double-crossed.
Would a dealer even report a car theft? The price of an old van was pocket change when you dealt cocaine with a market value of millions.
Sorcha stared silently at her lap. Her vacant expression was beginning to scare him.
Someone wanted her dead.
If he hadn’t followed her today, she’d have been blown to pieces. Or assaulted. Bad options. What was it about this woman that stirred such extreme reactions from men? Himself included?
Who would go to the excess of a car bomb when a blunt instrument or bullet worked just as well? Terrorists? Organized crime? Car bombs were stock-in-trade for those factions. Stopping the car, he pulled on the parking brake and helped Sorcha inside her cottage. She was silent, moving with old lady stiffness. Collapsing on the sofa, she sat unmoving, staring down at her hands as he lit the fire.
Her skin was deathly white, except for a vivid scratch along one cheek. He couldn’t see her eyes. She was looking at her palms intently as if she read the future there.
Maybe she did.
In which case he was fucked.
Ben squatted in front of her. Ran a finger lightly across the graze on her cheek, then settled his hands on either side of her legs on the couch.
She slipped her hands between her clenched knees and raised her gaze to meet his. Expecting tears, his heart kicked into reverse when he was nailed with suspicion.
“What were you doing there?”
Oh, shit. Ben’s jaw locked. He had no cover story worked out. Hadn’t thought he’d need one. “I took a walk, heard a noise.”
“No. No, you didn’t.” The blue of her eyes glowed. “I barely made a sound. I—I couldn’t…”
Silence grew thick and tasted like deceit. He couldn’t stand it any longer. Scrubbing his hands over his face he stood and moved away. Jesus. So much for coming to the rescue. Now he was the one being interrogated. Verbal gymnastics had saved his ass on a couple of occasions, but his pals in Colombia hadn’t exactly been rocket scientists.
Leaning a shoulder against the wooden mantle, he picked up a framed black-and-white photograph of a man cuddling a little girl. Behind that another photo in a broken frame, of a woman in a caftan in a colorful marketplace. He fingered the pictures, searching for a story.
“I was in the bar. I heard Mackenzie bad-mouthing you.” He watched her in the mirror above the fireplace.
Lips pursed, she avoided his gaze and rubbed her thumbs rhythmically one over the other. She didn’t look like any other criminal he’d ever seen.
His voice dropped to the level of confession, and he wished to God he had enough faith left for absolution. “So I followed the guy to teach him a lesson.”
Her eyes rose to meet his. “You wanted to fight with Duncan? Why?” Her voice sounded fragile. “Because you felt guilty about how you acted after we had sex?”
“I was a prick.” Jesus. Even though she was a suspect, he’d been a jerk.
Lifting her head, she met his gaze in the mirror. “Yes, you were.” Her voice firmed up. Cement hard. “And believe me, you are not alone in the male population.”
Ouch. She held up her hand as he opened his mouth to protest, the expression on her face emotionless and remote.
“You were right about this morning. I was needy and you were there.” The catch in her voice drove another nail home. “It won’t happen again.”
Rejection slammed into him, and he fixed a blank mask over his features to hide the unexpected jolt. Sorcha Logan was a criminal. He needed to remember that.
“Since I met you I’ve stumbled across a dead man, my equipment has been sabotaged, my uncle’s van stolen, my house broken into, and my best friend and I have both been attacked.”
He closed his mouth with the audible snap of teeth. They weren’t his crimes. He’d saved her life, for Christ’s sake. “None of that has got anything do with me.” His voice shook. Maybe because he’d played her from the start? Maybe because he’d slept with his chief suspect and, God help him, he wanted to do it again?
“Well, you definitely added to the joy by making me feel like a cheap whore.”
A whore? “I didn’t mean for you to feel that way.” He just had a weakness for hot blondes with incredible legs—and if he kept telling himself that, maybe eventually he’d believe it. Even now his body craved more, intensifying the self-disgust that filled him.
He fisted his hands and kept his mouth shut. He had to stay away from her, emotionally and physically. He had a job to do.
Sorcha’s eyes were swollen and red f
rom weeping. Not pretty, but it didn’t diminish her beauty, or her strength. She leaned forward and rested her chin on her hands, long hair spilling nearly to the floor, shining like moonlight by the light of the fire. Half circles shadowed her eyes and she looked more than physically exhausted. She looked emotionally shattered.
Ben was at a loss as to what to say. He’d made more mistakes during this operation than during five years in South America.
“I don’t need this…” She rotated her hands in the air. “You blowing hot and cold all the time. I don’t need a man. And I certainly don’t need you watching out for me.”
“Without me you’d be—”
“I know what I’d be!” She leaped to her feet, then staggered, clasping her head in her hands.
Panic made his heart race as he grabbed her and lowered her to the couch.
“What is it?” He ran his hands over her skull, delved deep into her hair and she yelped as he discovered a large bump. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”
She flinched. “It’s none of your bloody business.” The fight went out of her and she sagged back onto the couch, closing her eyes. She suddenly looked like the woman who’d lain in his bed that morning, soft and pliant as honey on a summer’s day. But when she opened her eyes, they were as forbidding as the deep.
He moved away from her, tried to put some distance between his job and his emotions. She was a drug trafficker, with more money in an offshore bank account than he’d ever see in his lifetime, and she’d lied about it. But the cracks were starting to show. The strain was beginning to etch itself into the blue of her eyes.
“I want you to go.” Her voice crackled and tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. “Now, Ben.”
The tears reminded him of his mother after a very bad day.
If he pushed harder she might break, but he just couldn’t do it. Call him a fool, but after everything that happened today, he could not watch her shatter.
He turned on his heel and closed the door behind him with a quiet snick. Failure made his limbs leaden. He raised his face to the hoary moon that watched from the skies above. “Sorry, Jacob. Soon, buddy. Just not today, okay?”
Chapter Twelve
The ringing of the phone woke him.
He stuck his hand out and swept it across the bedside table only to remember there wasn’t a landline in here. He shot out of bed, raced into the living room and grabbed the receiver. “Foley.” It sounded as though someone had taken a hacksaw to his vocal cords.
“I got hits on those guys you took photos of yesterday.” Ewan McKnight’s soft accent flowed over the secure line.
Ben moved to the window on the street, peered through the netting but couldn’t see a damned thing. It was 7 a.m. and full dark outside. There was supposed to be a plainclothes officer watching Sorcha’s cottage from a parked car and someone else on the beach. Both officers would need to be gone before dawn broke. This town was too small not to notice a stakeout, and they didn’t want to spook their prey.
Ben slumped to the sofa. “Who are they?”
“Richard Levy and Gary Parker. Both former British army. Both dishonorably discharged a couple of years ago. Looks like they’ve gone freelance.” Ewan sounded worried. Ben had no idea when the men had picked up Sorcha’s tail yesterday. He hadn’t been paying attention to anything except his own anger. Sloppy. They could have planted some sort of transmitter on the van that they removed when they planted the explosive.
Ben had no clue.
“You check their finances?” Ben asked.
“I’ve got someone looking into it, but if they’re pros—and they are—they’ll have an offshore account that will take time to trace.”
Time Sorcha didn’t have.
“What about this account of Sorcha Logan’s?” There were questions that bugged Ben since he’d found out about it yesterday. That’s what the meeting in Paisley had been about.
“The Swiss account?”
“Yeah. You got details?” Ben heard the tapping of keys.
“Set up for Sorcha Logan twenty-four years ago. No recent activity.” Ewan sounded as if he was reading the information off the screen. More tapping. “Transactions ended abruptly fifteen years ago with a biggie.” Excitement loaded Ewan’s voice. “Two hundred thousand pounds, a short time after we know a major drug deal went down. Dates fit.”
Ben shook his head. “Fit what? A child laundering money?”
“No.” Ewan’s tone was chiding. “Fit the possibility that Sorcha’s father was the original drug smuggler. The trafficking stopped for a few years after he died. Or the smugglers found another route into the country.”
Ben snorted. It wouldn’t be hard, surrounded by this much water. Which was why the smugglers had gone undetected for so long—and why this lead was so important, he reminded himself. “So you think what? Sorcha restarted the family business?”
“I don’t think anything, Agent Foley.” Ewan’s usually mild tone took on a battle edge. “You’re the one who linked a Colombian drug lord to Anstruther. You’re the one who found forty kilos of hard evidence in the old lighthouse on the May Isle.” Ewan took an audible breath. “We’ve been aware of possible drug running in this area for years. Now I’m looking at the evidence and the evidence leads back to Sorcha Logan.”
“She’s only been back a few months,” Ben pointed out. That bugged him. Santayana had been supplying drugs for at least a decade. Didn’t mean she hadn’t been trafficking elsewhere though. She always lived near the coast. “And she’s never touched the money.”
“She’s the only lead we have into the circumstances leading up to the death of your partner,” Ewan reminded him gently.
Ben lowered his face into his hands. The fact he’d had sex with Sorcha, and enjoyed it, made him too full of revulsion to speak.
The silence was deafening.
“Let’s follow the evidence, Ben. See where it leads.”
Hell. Ewan was right. Ben propped his feet on the battered coffee table, swallowed the ball of guilt trapped in his gullet. “I need you to check out a Duncan Mackenzie for me.”
“You think he might be involved?”
Ben stared at the dead ashes of the fire. “He’s the guy who attacked Sorcha in the graveyard last night. Maybe he was the one who attacked her friend the night before and rolled her place.” He stretched out his shoulders. “He’s involved in something, I just don’t know what the hell it is.”
“She’s not exactly popular, is she?”
Wasn’t she? Maybe that was the problem.
Rubbing his hand over his jaw, Ben realized he needed a shave. “Did you pick up Levy and Parker?”
“Not yet. I’ll let you know when we have any more information. You just keep as close as you can to Sorcha Logan.”
Great.
He wasn’t about to admit he couldn’t do his job, but she was more likely to mainline venom than let him near her again. “Sure.”
The other man’s voice cooled on the end of the line. “Watch your back, Foley. Those guys are professionals and someone is trying to get rid of that girl. Don’t get caught in the crossfire.” McKnight rang off with a click.
Sonofabitch.
Ben dropped the receiver in the cradle, his brain racing. This didn’t make any sense though Sorcha was definitely part of the puzzle. But what about fifteen years ago when that big payment had gone into her bank account and she’d been only ten years old? Who was the key figure then?
Sorcha’s father.
Everything was tied to that long-ago night on the lifeboat and the death of Sorcha’s father.
***
Deep in the maze that was St. Andrews University’s Bute Medical Building, Sorcha put birdseed away in a plastic container, picked up a logbook and started filling it out. Carolyn’s orange-billed zebra finches screeched as they darted around their cages.
She’d had enough of being a victim. She heard voices—so what? She saw ghosts—so did a lot of othe
r people who no one believed. She intended to do what she was trained to do—research the problem. See if she couldn’t come up with some sort of reasonable explanation.
She’d for certain had enough of men.
She pressed harder with the pen, but it didn’t work. The marker was dead. Irritated, she squatted down and began searching for another one in the cupboard. Her vision blurred from lack of sleep.
What did Ben Foley want from her?
He was like a knight in shining armor crossed with the one night stand from hell. Everything she felt when she was with him—the desire, the awareness, the freefall of excitement—mixed with the hurt and confusion of what they’d already been through together.
She closed her eyes. She hadn’t even thanked him for saving her from Duncan last night.
Or maybe she had. Getting laid did it for most guys.
Her mouth went dry. Every time she closed her eyes, she felt the sting as Duncan backhanded her across the face. She ran her fingers over the bump on her skull and winced. The swelling had gone down, even so it was still a little tender. With the help of acetaminophen and codeine she felt almost human again.
Was this how Carolyn felt? Or had her experience been even worse? Carolyn was recovering. Sorcha had spoken to her on her cell earlier and she was being released today.
Bright sunlight shone through the tall windows and bathed her skin with warmth. The birds chattered excitedly. They were part of an ongoing study to measure how a female bird’s food intake biased the gender of their chicks. Fat birds produced girl eggs, skinny birds produced boy eggs.
There. She pulled another pen from the back of the cupboard, shoving aside paper bags filled with God knew what. The noise of the birds was deafening. That’s why she liked it in here. She couldn’t hear herself think.
The door burst open and she jumped, dropping the marker to the floor.
“Oh, you’ve done it already.” Kevin slumped against the doorframe, shoulders sagging, eyes red-rimmed and narrowed against the glare of the sun. Probably a hangover. The guy liked to party.
“Yes. All fed and watered.” She placed the logbook next to the cages and in thick blue ink on a loose sheet of A4 paper wrote Fed birds Thursday morning. She taped the sign to the bars, not wanting some well-meaning soul to replicate the job and compromise the experiment.
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