The Man She Almost Married

by Maggie Price

  “And that was?”

  “She’d worked hard and she deserved the job. If I didn’t name her, she’d make me sorry.”

  “How?”

  “She didn’t give specifics.”

  “Had she calmed down by the time you took her home?”

  Sloan paused. “I looked for her before I left the museum. She’d already gone.”

  “Who did she leave with?”

  “I assumed she called a cab.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “I see.”

  Julia’s eyes hardened. “If you know who she left with, you need to tell us.”

  “I don’t know. All I can tell you is that Vanessa had too much champagne that night. I hoped she’d feel different about things the next morning.”

  “Doesn’t appear she did,” Julia stated. “On her stop at the health store, she bought only carrot juice. Nothing for you.”

  “Hardly a surprise,” Sloan said. “Vanessa dropped a person instantly if he or she failed in any way to meet her needs or expectations. My decision not to give her one of those positions was irrevocable and she knew that.”

  “Yesterday, you said you preferred to have Vanessa working for you rather than a competitor,” Julia stated. “Surely you knew your decision not to promote her might prompt just that.”

  Sloan nodded. “Lately, I’d gotten numerous complaints on her from the staff...even clients. Vanessa’s presence in the company had become a liability. Had she not been killed, she’d have either resigned, or I’d have fired her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us the truth from the beginning?”

  “Because what happened between Vanessa and me at the museum isn’t connected to her death. I know that for sure because I didn’t kill her.”

  Julia pursed her lips. “Vanessa had all sorts of data concerning the HELD wing in her briefcase. Page after page is stamped ‘confidential.’ If she leaked that information, she could have cost you millions.”

  “Murder due to a potential loss of money,” Sloan said, locking his gaze with hers. “An interesting theory.”

  “A solid motive,” Julia shot back.

  “True. But I’ve lost money in business before and haven’t resorted to murder.” He leaned in, lowered his voice. “Do you really think I’d kill over a deal gone sour, Julia?”

  “Vanessa was cunning,” Julia said, her dark, intense eyes boring into his. “Her leaving could have done considerable damage to you and your portfolio. Maybe she pushed you over the line.”

  Sloan flicked his eyes to her left hand. “Some women,” he began softly, “are worth breaking the rules for. Vanessa wasn’t one of them.”

  He saw the snap in Julia’s expression before she turned to Halliday.

  “I’m done...for now,” she said in a flat voice, then walked out of the small room.

  Halliday remained behind to hand Sloan a receipt for the weapons. “We’ll let you know if you can claim your proparty.”

  “My lawyer,” Sloan said, cramming the receipt into the pocket of his slacks. “Let him know. And if you and Sergeant Cruze have more questions for me, go through him.”

  Halliday eyed him with grim assessment. “When someone refuses to talk to us, we usually find out later they had something to hide.”

  “When you accuse someone repeatedly of murder, you should expect a reaction, Sergeant. You just heard mine.”

  Halliday shrugged, gathered up the plastic evidence bags and walked out the door.

  Sloan followed the detective into the study, his gaze settling on Julia as she grabbed her purse off the desk. She paused for a brief moment, her eyes riveted on the closed drawer.

  “Ready?” Halliday asked.

  “Yes.” She turned and walked out the door.

  Sloan closed his eyes and sucked in a ragged breath. Damn her and damn himself for allowing her maddening scent to toss him back to a time he’d vowed to wipe from his mind.

  He muttered a vicious oath, pulled the door to the gun room closed with steel-rattling force, then stalked across the study.

  How the hell was he supposed to endure her presence when he couldn’t think of her in any other way except as his? How in God’s name could he keep seeing her and not reach for her? How did he expect to control his emotions, when just the sound of her footsteps moving away was absolute torture?

  He stood at the desk, his fingers digging into the back of the chair where she’d sat. He wasn’t used to this inner struggle, this warring between emotion and logic. Two years ago, fate had run recklessly over his life, and he’d taken the only action he could. He’d done the right thing, harbored no regret over the course he’d chosen.

  But knowing he’d done the right thing hadn’t lessened his insidious, damnable need for her. That, he knew—had always known—would be with him always.

  Sloan leaned over the desk, jerked open the lap drawer and stared at its contents.

  “Hell,” he said, then shoved the drawer closed on a groan.

  Chapter 6

  “You want to tell me what just went on in there?” Halliday asked as he placed the evidence bags holding the handguns in the trunk of his cruiser.

  Julia stabbed on her sunglasses against the rays of the afternoon sun. “I interviewed a homicide suspect,” she said, and willed her heart to stop its uneven thudding.

  The massive oaks lining the cobblestone driveway stood motionless; untouched by any breeze. The temperature hovered at blast-fumace level. Why, then, did she feel frozen on the inside?

  “Interviewed?” Halliday countered, closing the trunk lid with a decided thud. “Sounded more like a sparring match.” He pulled off his suit coat and hooked it with a finger over one shoulder.

  “I got the job done,” she said, jerking the recorder off her waistband. “Sloan’s on tape, admitting Vanessa threatened to ruin him and his company. He knew she had both the information and the ability to carry out her threats.” She jammed the recorder into her purse. “Call it an interview, an inquisition...whatever you want. I did my job.”

  “Yeah, you did,” Halliday agreed quietly. “You all right?”

  The question had her temper spiking. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because you could’ve sliced the air with all the unresolved feelings between you and Remington.”

  “I harbor an intense dislike of the man.” She dragged a less-than-steady hand through her hair. “What’s unresolved about that?”

  “Not a thing, if it’s the truth.”

  “Dammit, Halliday, I’m tired of you second-guessing me where Sloan Remington’s concerned.”

  Halliday sighed, walked the length of his cruiser and pulled open the driver’s door. He tossed his coat onto the seat, then turned to stand in the wedge between the car and open door.

  “Want to tell me what you found in that desk?”

  She met his gaze. “Nothing important.”

  “Really? So, some unimportant something turned you as pale as the corpses I saw this morning at the M.E.’s office.”

  “Drop it.”

  “If whatever it is in that drawer relates to the case—”

  “If it did, I would have bagged it.” She took an aggressive step forward. “Just because Sloan and I had a relationship doesn’t change things. He’s a suspect, so I treat him like any suspect. If he’s guilty, I’ll take him down. You don’t have to worry about me getting all sentimental and screwing up this case.”

  “I’m not worried about that.” Halliday lifted his arm, swiped the back of his hand across his damp forehead. “I’m worried about you.”

  His voice, like his eyes, was full of concern. Julia looked away, her temper diffusing. In the distance, pale-pink roses clambered up a brick fence, lacing the air with a faint, rich scent.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said at length. “I can handle it.”

  “Yeah, but what’s it going to cost you?”

  She opened her mouth, but no words came. It had cost her a great deal to sit at Sl
oan’s desk and stare down at the thick file of medical reports and cancer-clinic brochures in that drawer. She hadn’t had time to check the dates on the reports, but their sheer number suggested a lengthy time span. As she sat there, it had torn her apart to imagine that he’d suffered. Ripped her to shreds to think that perhaps he’d known he was ill when they were still together, yet he’d thought so little of her, of what they’d shared, that he hadn’t told her.

  Halliday glanced up at a blue jay shouting ownership of the oak in which it perched. “I got to thinking about all this on the way over here,” he said, squinting against the sun. “Tried to put myself in your shoes. Damn, if Pam and I split up, then two years later I had to face her across an interview table, I’m not sure how I’d handle it. I don’t know that I could handle it.”

  Julia’s lips curved. “Careful, Halliday. You say stuff like that, people might get the idea you’re a sensitive guy.”

  He gave her a sheepish grin. “Maybe the idea that I’m about to become a father is messing with my macho side.”

  “Maybe.” She expelled a slow breath and leaned back against the car. Heat from the metal seeped through her cotton blouse. “You and Pam are married. She’s carrying your child. Sloan and I didn’t have those kind of ties.” But they would have, she thought, if he had loved her. She’d wanted to share his life, have his babies.

  Halliday shrugged. “Well, as of a few minutes ago, we don’t deal directly with Remington anymore—at least not until we get more evidence against him. That ought to be a relief to you.”

  Her eyes narrowed behind the tinted lenses. “What are you talking about?”

  “While he and I were in the gun room, he told me to go through his lawyer if we have any more questions to ask him.”

  “I’m surprised he waited this long,” she said mildly.

  “Yeah, well, it sure as hell makes him look like he’s got something to hide.”

  “Sloan’s a suspect, Halliday, but don’t make the mistake of viewing him as a typical one. His erecting a legal roadblock isn’t necessarily a sign of guilt. For him, it’s the usual routine. He’s used to having control. He can change a situation to his advantage in about as long as it takes to flick a wrist.” She paused, knowing deep inside her that Sloan’s action was more than just an attempt at control. It was an indication that he no longer cared to deal with her.

  She set her jaw, hating that it wasn’t just anger curling inside her chest but hurt. This, after all, was how Sloan operated. Two years ago he’d opted to disappear from her life. Now he’d erected a barrier of lawyers to keep her away.

  Her brows slid together. What she’d found in that desk drawer had questions humming in her mind. Questions to which she wanted answers. Answers he owed her. Maybe Sloan could block her professionally—for the time being—but he wasn’t going to do that on a personal level, not this time.

  “Remington’s cool, all right,” Halliday observed, resting an arm across the top of the car door. “He gives the impression he could freeze molten lava.”

  “Steel is putty compared with him,” she said, and looked away. Beneath Sloan’s cool persona was a man whose very touch had, on uncountable occasions, sent fire coursing through her, head to toe. The memory settled a dangerous kind of heat in her belly.

  “I bet,” Halliday continued, staring at the massive stone house at the end of the curved drive, “the guy has a fleet of lawyers. And they all wear three-piece suits that cost about as much as a car.”

  “Remington Aerospace has its own legal division,” she answered evenly. “We’ll be drawing pensions before Sloan runs out of lawyers.”

  “He’s cut us off, Julia, and he has the connections to do it. If we try to contact him now, it’ll take him one, maybe two phone calls, and we’ll have grief and woe of biblical proportions down on our heads.”

  She’d had grief and woe dumped on her before, thanks to Sloan. She’d survived.

  “Speaking of grief and woe,” she said, “you heard what I said to Sloan. Vanessa didn’t take a cab home from the museum. That means she hitched a ride with one of the other guests.”

  Halliday nodded glumly. “One of those guests being the mayor. Having to question the guy who signs our paychecks—how much better can this get?”

  “Let’s hope we don’t find out,” Julia commented. “We’d better get with the lieutenant in the morning. Ryan will probably want Chief McMillan to handle the mayor.”

  Halliday tugged a patch of sweat-stained shirt from beneath the strap of his shoulder holster. “Damn this heat. Whatever we do next, let’s make sure it’s around airconditioning.”

  Julia’s eyes widened. “God, I forgot,” she said.

  “What?”

  “We’ve got to go to Vanessa’s apartment.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of something her secretary said when I interviewed her right before I came here.” Julia wrapped the ends of her hair into a twist, holding the heavy coil off her heated neck. “Eve Nelson made no secret of the fact that she detested Vanessa.”

  “Detesting Vanessa,” Halliday said dryly. “There’s a novel concept.”

  “According to Eve, her boss kept things ultrasecret, did most of her own typing on whatever projects she had going. Vanessa relegated Eve to a glorified receptionist, and Eve resented her for that.”

  “Add to that Vanessa’s looks, her body, her effect on men.”

  “Probably didn’t help,” Julia agreed. “Eve admitted to snooping in Vanessa’s briefcase a few times. More than once, she found unlabeled computer disks.”

  “She look at what was on them?”

  “She tried. Each time, the computer asked for a password.”

  Halliday lifted a brow. “We had no problem accessing everything on Vanessa’s home computer. In fact, while I was waiting for the paperwork on this search warrant, I went to the lab and picked up the printout of Everything Kelly copied off the hard drive.”

  “What’d you find?”

  “Her appointment calendar—which has almost identical listings to the one we got out of her briefcase. Financial stuff,” Halliday continued. “Vanessa invested heavily in blue-chip stocks, municipal bonds—stuff like that. From the looks of it, she had a nest egg worth six figures.” He shrugged. “We didn’t get any files that related to her job.”

  “Okay, so she didn’t load the information onto her hard drive. We need to find the disks Eve Nelson saw.”

  “Right.” Halliday checked his watch. “I’ll book Remington’s guns into the property room, then meet you there.”

  “Fine.” Although she focused her gaze on the house’s handsome stone facade, Julia’s thoughts centered on the man inside. It was as if, over the past twenty-four hours, her mind had reattached itself to him. In a dark, secret place inside her, she knew her preoccupation with Sloan was due to more than just his heading their short list of suspects.

  She pulled a deep breath of sun-scorched air into her lungs. “There’s something I need to do.” She pushed away from the car and faced Halliday. “While you’re at the station, go by Records. I ordered a run of gun registrations on all the Remington employees I interviewed yesterday. The printout ought to be ready by now.” .

  Halliday cocked his head toward the trunk of his cruiser. “You don’t think we’ve got the murder weapon, do you?”

  She glanced at the trunk. Vanessa’s threats to Sloan were solid motive for murder, yet she could not imagine him a victim of those threats. The man she knew would view them as a challenge to overcome, not the promise of ruination.

  “No, we don’t have the murder weapon,” she answered. “Sloan isn’t stupid. If he shot Vanessa, he used an untraceable gun.”

  “Yeah,” Halliday agreed as he climbed into the car. “But we’d be crazy not to check.”

  “Crazy,” Julia agreed. It didn’t seem to matter that it was crazy to even consider marching back up the driveway. Crazy to face Sloan and ask the questions she didn’t know to ask two yea
rs ago.

  Halliday twisted the ignition key, sparking the engine to life as he looked up through the open window. “You leaving?”

  “In a minute. First, I’m going to get in my car and wrestle off these tight panty hose.”

  She turned, walked to her cruiser and pulled open the door. When the taillights of Halliday’s car disappeared around a curve, she slammed the door, turned and headed up the cobblestone drive. Heels clicking like gunshots, she crossed the deep-shaded porch where neat shrubs sprouted from twin planters on either side of the massive front door.

  She didn’t question the wisdom of her decision to face Sloan. Didn’t let her mind go past this moment. All she knew was that he owed her answers.

  Without bothering to knock, she twisted the polished knob and shoved through the door.

  She found him where she’d left him, in the study. He stood with his back to her, staring out a floor-to-ceiling window through which broad shafts of afternoon sunlight slanted into the room.

  Julia paused beneath the arched doorway, her heart pounding, her breath coming as hard as if she’d chased down a suspect. Now that she was inside with Sloan in her sights, she wasn’t at all sure why she was here. Had no idea what force had brought her back. Was at a loss to explain her consuming need to find out if he knew he was ill when he’d broken their engagement.

  What did it matter? At this point, what could it possibly matter?

  It couldn’t...yet she had to know.

  Her throat so dry she couldn’t swallow, she tore her gaze from his still profile and examined her surroundings. She’d been here less than an hour ago, yet it was as a cop, and she hadn’t allowed herself to view the room as a place that held meaning for her. Now she took it in, saw the vibrant colors of the massive Oriental rug, the familiar leather volumes on the built-in shelves, the polished brasses and pewters. The study had always been her favorite room in the house. Quiet and comfortable, it was a place where she and Sloan had curled up with books on the leather couch, spent winter evenings making love while greedy amber and gold flames leaped in the fireplace.