So, the disarray in her office was not the work of a common burglar. Had whoever it was found what he had been looking for? It was a question he couldn’t answer. Would Brandi be able to?
Reece pulled a small digital camera from his pocket and thoroughly documented the condition of her work areas. Maybe the pictures would trigger something for her that could help them figure out what was going on. As an afterthought, he also took pictures of the other rooms in case there was something missing that was not obvious to him. He worked quickly, dimming the flash so it wouldn’t be visible to curious eyes outside.
He glanced at his watch. He had stayed there longer than he had intended to on top of the long wait before he could enter the house. He would be very late getting back to the cabin, and he had no way of contacting her to let her know what was happening.
He made one last survey of her office and darkroom. A strange thought began to form in the back of his mind, something so obscure that it seemed almost ridiculous. But not so ridiculous that he could completely dismiss it. A thought about why someone had rummaged through her picture files.
Before leaving, he grabbed the business appointment book from her desktop, the PDA from the drawer, then turned on her computer and checked her security software to make sure he could access her hard drive from his laptop computer.
He returned to the cabin as quickly as the road conditions allowed. Would she still be there, or would she have taken advantage of his absence and left his cabin? Surely she wouldn’t be so foolish as to wander around in the woods on foot in a rainstorm at night. Or would she? Would his impulsive kiss have frightened her, made her afraid of what might happen if she stayed in his cabin overnight? Was she still wary about him having been physical with her to get her back inside the cabin? She should know that if he were the type of man who would attack her he would already have done it, but that didn’t mean she was thinking with her logic rather than her emotions. He again touched his fingers to the scratches on his cheek.
Stupid…stupid…stupid. Why did I kiss her? Why couldn’t I have left the cabin as I’d planned, without indulging the temptation?
By the time he pulled off the fire road and parked in his carport, over three and a half hours had passed, much longer than he had told her. He was tired, but the excitement of being involved in a case again had kept his adrenaline pumping.
And the chance to get at Frank James had made his spirits soar.
Reece unlocked the door and stepped inside. The cabin was quiet and the room empty. His muscles tensed and an adrenaline surge put his senses on high alert. He called to her, forcing a casualness to his voice that did not exist. “Brandi…it’s me. I’m a little late, but I’m back.”
He maintained his position by the front door as his gaze raked the room, searching for anything that was out of place. He spotted the papers on the dining table—his release papers from prison. A quick jolt of panic hit him. He hadn’t been prepared for this. He called her name again.
“Brandi…”
A moment later she emerged from the bathroom. Her strained voice told him she had forced a calm to her words. “I was starting to worry. I thought you might have had problems because of the rain and the mountain roads…or something.”
He saw the wariness in her eyes and the way she seemed to be using the furniture as a barrier between them. He knew he could not sidestep this one by telling her it was none of her business. He had forcibly carried her back inside the cabin when she’d tried to leave. That sort of made it her business. She had the right to know who he was…within reason. But exactly how much should he tell her? He also knew it would be better if he brought up the subject rather than waiting for her to do it. That way, he could control the direction of the conversation.
He gestured toward the papers on the table. As the old adage said, the best defense was a good offense. He carefully chose his words in an attempt to throw her off balance and keep control.
“I see you’ve been snooping in my desk and going through my personal papers.”
Her eyes widened in surprise at his accusation. She nervously shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She didn’t like what he’d said, but she couldn’t deny it. “Well, uh…no, I…well, I did happen to see—”
He picked up the papers from the table top and glanced through them. “Yes, I can see what you happened to come across in your innocent perusal of my belongings—something that was inside an envelope under my laptop computer in the bottom drawer of my desk. They were practically on public display, just waiting for someone to come along and see them.”
He turned his back on her as he took off his rain jacket and hung it on the coat hook by the door. Then he pulled off his muddy boots. He turned and faced her again.
“And now I suppose you’d like to have an explanation?”
“Well, I was sort of wondering…” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t know what to say or how to respond to his attack. What in the world had possessed her to leave the papers on the table rather than putting them back where she had found them? Her initial thought had seemed like a good idea at the time. She had intended to use it as a means of forcing him to tell her about himself—an exchange of information for what he had managed to wheedle out of her. She had hoped seeing the papers on the table would throw him off guard, leave him unnerved and a little rattled so she could have the upper hand. But whatever the reason, it now seemed very foolish.
She looked up at him. His face held an impassive expression. His eyes weren’t angry, but they were intense. A new wave of anxiety washed through her body, one that put her on edge. She tried to analyze the situation. Was she in trouble? Had she stepped over some invisible line from safety into danger? Was this the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back? She swallowed in an attempt to lessen the lump in her throat.
Reece fixed her with a steady gaze. “I was released from prison three months ago, after serving the full two-year term of my sentence. I’m not on parole. My arrest and subsequent conviction was a travesty of justice. I did not do what I was convicted of. I was set up and framed.”
She glanced down at the floor. “Of course.” That really wasn’t an explanation. Didn’t everyone in prison claim to be innocent? At least that’s the way it seemed. She regained eye contact with him. “Exactly what were you convicted of doing?”
A snort of disgust escaped his throat. “What was I convicted of? I guess you could say I was convicted of trying to help a lady in distress who had retained my services as a private investigator.”
She swallowed the apprehension trying to work its way up her throat. “What does that mean?”
“It means I was not convicted of a violent crime or anything having to do with drugs, if that’s your concern. You’re not in danger from me.” He folded his arms across his chest and stared at her. “All I can do is tell you that what I’m saying is the truth. Whether you choose to believe me or not is up to you. Now, do you want to dwell on this, or do you want to know what I found at your house?” He picked up the small suitcase he had placed on the floor and held it out toward her. “Other than the items on your list.”
She took a couple of tentative steps forward and accepted the suitcase from him. “Thank you.” Now what? He admitted to having been in prison yet made no attempt to explain what had happened beyond saying he was innocent. And two years wasn’t a very long sentence. She knew that much was true because she had seen the dates on the papers. It wasn’t like having been convicted of murder or armed robbery or some other sort of violent crime.
She clenched her jaw. She was rationalizing again. He had made it very clear that he had no intention of discussing it any further. Should she push him for more information or let it drop? An uneasiness welled inside her. She knew her position was tenuous. As he had said, he was bigger and stronger than her. He had physical control of the situation. So, she had to concentrate on being more clever—at least until she had her concerns about him settled in her mind. But for now
there were more immediate matters to consider.
His comment about finding something at her house had grabbed her attention and continued to circulate through her mind. Perhaps that would be a more prudent path to follow for right now. But she had to admit that she couldn’t shake the notion that there was an indefinable quality about him that went deeper than what he had shown on the outside. It said he was an honorable man despite having been in prison.
She knew exactly how vulnerable she was. She had given it a lot of thought while he was gone. Isolated in a mountain cabin with a man she had never seen before. A man who had just been released from prison. A man who could have taken advantage of her if he’d wanted to. And she had not objected when he’d kissed her—only a brief kiss, not much more than a brushing of the lips, but still a kiss. He could certainly have taken that as encouragement. There was no way she could have physically stopped him. But, she hadn’t needed to. His behavior had been above board.
Could she really trust this stranger who had served time in prison? She tried to regain her composure. Did she have any other options at the moment? She would take it one step at a time.
“You said you found something at my house?” She looked at him questioningly. “What did you find?”
He didn’t answer her. Instead, he took the digital camera from his pocket and removed the card. Next, he took the laptop computer from the desk, plugged it in and turned it on.
Curiosity got the best of her. She edged her way over to the desk to see what he was up to. “What are you doing? Why won’t you answer my question about what you found?”
“I’m about to show you. I took lots of pictures. Give me a few minutes and I’ll have them downloaded into the computer, then you can see them large size on the screen.” As the photographs were transferred from the card to the computer hard drive, he took her appointment book and PDA from his jacket and set them on the desk.
Before he brought the pictures up on the screen, he edged into the conversation he really wanted. “Tell me, do you know someone named Frank James?”
A little frown wrinkled across her forehead. “Frank James? The only Frank James I know of is the outlaw—the one who was Jesse James’s brother.”
“No, not that Frank James—” a bittersweet chuckle escaped his throat “—although there’s more similarity than one would suspect.” He turned to face her. “The Frank James I’m referring to is a detective lieutenant with the Rocky Shores Police Department. Do you know him? Could you have met him when you tried to report your stalker?”
Brandi slowly shook her head as she turned the name over in her mind. “No…it doesn’t ring any bells. Is there some reason why I should know him?”
“I just thought you might.” He paused a moment, wanting to observe her reaction to what he was about to say. “He was watching your house tonight. He didn’t see me, but I sure saw him. He was staked out across the street in his car.”
Her eyes widened in shock. A cold tremor rippled through her body followed by a wave of apprehension. Had she heard him correctly? “A police detective was watching my house? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Her surprise seemed genuine to him.
“And you think it was this Frank James you mentioned?”
“I know it was.” He turned back to his computer. “That’s one of the reasons I was late. I had to wait half an hour before I went inside. I didn’t want to enter your house while he was still there, even though he wouldn’t have been able to see me. It wouldn’t have been wise for me to take a chance on him entering your house while I was in there.”
She tried to temper the sudden wave of apprehension that swept through her body with some logic. “Perhaps the police decided to take my stalking report seriously. Maybe he was assigned to watch my house…as some sort of protection for me?”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
Brandi sank into the corner of the sofa. She felt as if all the life had been kicked out of her and there was no fight left. She had been battling with her unknown stalker for so long that she didn’t know what to do or think anymore. A police detective watching her house. A policeman abducting her. She tried to calm her rattled nerves. Her gaze became riveted to the floor, and she was unable to meet Reece’s pointed stare.
“This detective watching my house…Frank James…” She looked up, making tentative eye contact with him. His eyes were so intense. Whatever was going on inside him was something he felt very deeply. “Do you think he could be the policeman who abducted me? I know it was a very general description, but does he look like he could be the person I described?”
He held her eye contact without answering her question. He again wondered just how much information he should share with her. How much of his personal pain he should let out into the open. Once again her vulnerability pulled at his senses. And once again he felt himself being drawn further and further inside her turmoil—a place he didn’t want to be. A place that could interfere with his need to even the score with Frank James.
He tempered his words with caution. He didn’t want to give her the impression that her nightmare was all but over simply because he had identified Frank James.
“Yes, your description does fit him. But it could fit lots of other people, too.”
“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU THINK you were doing, Frank? You just took it upon yourself to grab her?” The fifty-year-old man shook his head in disgust, then leveled a stern look at his cohort. “What did you think you were going to accomplish with that stupid bit of business?”
Frank’s angry words showed his resentment at being summoned in the middle of the night and treated like an underling, but he was not angry enough to become engaged in a physical confrontation with someone who could have him blown away with one phone call. “Your way wasn’t working. We weren’t getting anywhere with her. I went through her files and took everything even remotely relevant.”
“Brilliant! So then you grabbed her and compounded that stupidity by letting her get away. And now she knows that she’s actually in physical danger. She’ll discover what you took, and she might even be able to put two and two together. All she has to do is stroll into the Rocky Shores police station and see you there. That will certainly blow everything wide open.”
Frank leaned forward, his hands on the desk as he confronted his business partner with an intimidating stare. “I blindfolded her. And even if she did get a quick glimpse of me it will be her word against mine. She has no proof of anything. When she tried to report her stalker, the desk sergeant almost laughed her out of the station because her story was so preposterous.”
“You’d better be right, Frank.” There was no mistaking the thinly veiled threat contained in his voice.
“You should have let me take care of her from the beginning just like I wanted to.”
“You know that would have been a stupid move. We have to know if there are any other copies anywhere and whether she’s told anyone. Until we know, we need to proceed carefully. Our friends aren’t going to be pleased.”
“I could have done it without them knowing.”
He stared pointedly at Frank James. “You already screwed up when you grabbed her, then you screwed up a second time when you let her get away. One more screwup like that and I’m sure they will graphically demonstrate just how displeased they are. Three strikes can be fatal.”
He rose to his feet and came out from behind the mahogany desk. Even though he was an inch or two shorter than Frank, his presence dominated the room. He leveled one final hard look at Frank, then walked down the hallway to his living room, opened the front door and stood aside. Frank had clearly and decisively been dismissed.
He watched as Frank got into his car and drove away. Then he poured himself a scotch as he vented what had been his carefully controlled anger. The words were mumbled out loud even though there was no one to hear them.
“Frank has been an invaluable aide in the past, but he’s handled this little mess like some stupi
d amateur. Perhaps he’s outlived his usefulness.”
He took a deep drink from his glass, then set it down and reached for the phone. “Our friends aren’t going to like this…not one bit.”
Chapter Four
For the next two hours Reece and Brandi went through all the pictures he had taken at her house. He added his impressions of what he had found as it related to each picture. She confirmed that the pictures he took didn’t reveal anything missing, but her photograph files in the office were another story. However, just because someone had gone through them didn’t automatically mean something was missing.
She glanced at him. “I’ll need to go through those files personally to determine if anything was taken.”
“You know as well as I do that it’s not a good idea for you to go to your house, especially now that we know it’s being watched.” A frown wrinkled across his forehead for a moment as he turned a thought over in his mind. “I can bring your files here. That way you will have enough time to give them a thorough search, and you can do it in the light rather than by flashlight.”
She shook her head as she spoke. “That won’t work. I wouldn’t even know what to tell you to bring. Besides, you can’t pick up all my file cabinets by yourself and carry them to your car, even if they would fit inside.”
A sigh of exasperation escaped his throat. “Yeah, I suppose that’s right.”
“I can’t imagine what there would be in my files that would be of interest to anyone or of any value. There’s nothing but negatives and prints, and none of it is anything secret or classified. I have photos of the same scenery that anyone could take a picture of, and as far as the photographs of people are concerned…well, wedding pictures and posed portraits are hardly classified top secret, and none of my clients were celebrities.”
Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? Page 5