by Meryl Sawyer
Oh, great, Taylor thought. Just great.
She squeezed her mother’s hand. “Do you think Caleb’s staying here is a good idea? What will your friends think?” Taylor asked because she thought her mother might still care about impressions the way she once did.
“You saw them today. They like Caleb.”
Being totally honest, Taylor said, “With him around, this place doesn’t seem like home. It’s not the family home it once was when Dad was alive.”
“You can’t blame Caleb for being a little hostile. You two are prime suspects. That’s why they searched your homes.”
“And didn’t find a thing,” Taylor reminded her.
“Mother,” Trent spoke up. “Uncle Doyle and I were in the library this afternoon. Someone has been going through the files. We think it’s Caleb.”
“Is your jewelry safe, Mother?” Taylor asked.
“And To The Maxx’s formulas,” Trent added.
“Of course, it’s all in the safe except for a few pieces of jewelry I wear every day.”
She studied them a moment, then closed her eyes. It was a few seconds before she opened them again.
“I know what you two are thinking, but you’re wrong. Caleb is a good man. He’s Renata’s father. He’d never do anything to hurt me.”
“I wish I could agree. You know he’s out at the clubs every night.”
Taylor didn’t know this for a fact, but judging from what Maria had told her, where else would he go at night?
“Of course he goes out at night. Caleb needs to have a little fun. He’s with me all day. It must be dreadfully depressing.”
“Why don’t you give him the money for his own apartment, where he can study for his real estate license?” suggested Trent.
“I need him. I need him here with me.”
Those words confirmed the full extent of the hold Caleb Bassett had on their mother. Taylor had suspected this, but held out hope that the woman who’d raised her would be savvy enough to see this man was a con artist.
“I love you both very much,” her mother told them. “I’m so proud of each of you.”
“And we love you.” Trent stood up and walked to the head of the bed and kissed his mother’s cheek.
Taylor leaned forward and kissed her other cheek. “Love you. Love you so much.”
“Hey, what’s all this lovey-dovey stuff?” Caleb sauntered into the room and the air filled with the scent of Johnnie Walker.
“We’re family,” Taylor said, forcing a pleasant tone. After all, it was clear they would have to deal with this man. “We love each other.”
“Sweet. Right sweet.” Caleb took her mother’s hand and kissed it. “Do you need your medication?”
“No. I’ve taken it.”
Caleb looked at Taylor and Trent. “Then we’ll get outta here and let you go to sleep.”
“Love you.” Taylor kissed her mother again. “I’ll drop by tomorrow on my way home from work.”
“Good night, Mother,” Trent said.
“I love you both,” their mother said, her voice faint but charged with emotion.
Caleb followed them out of the master suite. Taylor waited until they were in the foyer adjacent to the dining room before saying to Caleb, “Don’t overmedicate my mother. Don’t give her pain pills more often than the directions indicate.”
“She’s in a lot of pain.”
“I know, but being so doped up that she’s out of it isn’t good for her. I want her to enjoy what time she has left.”
Caleb shrugged. “Think of me as family. I’m Renata’s father. We’re as good as related.”
He left them and strode out toward the pool. As soon as Caleb was out of sight, Trent whispered in her ear, “Christ! You don’t suppose he’s convinced Mother that he’s family, and she’s going to include him in the will?”
“We got nowhere,” Taylor told Shane as they left the house and headed to her car. “My mother isn’t going to tell Caleb to leave.”
“We didn’t have much luck with him, either. He’s a wily old coot. But Caleb did give me a few ideas.”
She listened to him explain about the glass and the insurance angle as they walked through the sultry night. She could hardly concentrate. She was bone-weary and more worried than ever about her mother.
Thank you, God, for sending me Shane.
Her brother’s comment about the will disturbed her. At times he appeared to be himself. Yet at other times, he seemed obsessed with money.
And Raoul.
They’d parked her Beamer under a streetlight. It shone down on an envelope tucked between the windshield wiper and the glass.
“It can’t be a parking ticket,” she said as they approached.
“Don’t touch it.”
They stared down at the envelope. In big, bold computer generated block letters, TAYLOR MAXWELL was written across the front.
Taylor pulled it out, and Shane grabbed her hand. “It’s probably just a condolence note.”
“Maybe, but let me open it. If it’s a letter bomb, I don’t want it to explode in your pretty face.”
He walked about ten feet away, turned his back to her, and she heard him rip open the envelope.
Silence.
He turned around and strode back to her, a grim expression on his face.
“I was right.” He handed her the single sheet of paper. “You are in danger.”
She scanned the words.
EVERY WAKING MOMENT YOUR KILLER IS WATCHING YOU.
PREPARE TO DIE, TAYLOR. PREPARE TO JOIN RENATA.
Chapter 26
Outside Shane’s bedroom window an alley cat yowled, a harrowing sound. Taylor jerked upright. He knew she hadn’t been asleep, and neither had he.
After finding the threatening note, they’d gone to the police station. The detectives working the case took the note seriously, especially after the pipe bomb. They didn’t come out and say they no longer considered her a suspect in Renata’s death, but Shane noticed a change in their attitude.
“It’s just a cat,” he told her as he sat up and pulled her into his arms.
“I know. I’m a bit jumpy. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill me.”
They’d been over it and hadn’t come up with an answer. He hated to ask this question. The police should have inquired, but they hadn’t yet.
They probably would soon. He needed to know now.
“Do you have a will? If you died, who would inherit your money?”
“I have very little money. My father left me a small trust fund. Trent received exactly the same amount. My father was a big believer in children making their own way. He left everything to my mother, thinking she’d live a long time, and we would have proven ourselves before she died, and we inherited his money.”
“Who would inherit what you do have?”
Two beats of silence. “My brother.”
Shane didn’t have to verbalize his thoughts. With Taylor dead and her mother’s death imminent, Trent stood to inherit everything.
“Trent wouldn’t do this. He may have changed, but he’s still my brother.” Taylor pulled out of his arms and scooted backward to rest against the headboard. “Why warn me? Why not just try to kill me?”
They’d been over this before, but Taylor still needed to talk about it.
“Whoever it is wants you to be frightened.” He moved back until he was beside her. “He’s getting a kick out of this.”
“I’m not giving him the satisfaction of letting him know I’m frightened. I’m going about my business just as I normally would. Don’t tell anyone about this. I don’t want my family worried, especially Mother.”
Shane leaned over and clicked on the small lamp beside the bed. Auggie was curled up on the floor. He lifted his head and cocked it to one side. Shane gave him a quick pat.
“Now wait a minute. How can I protect you if the people who can help watch over you don’t have a clue?”
“Then whoever is tryin
g to scare me will know I’m frightened.”
“Not necessarily. I want you to let me tell the people who can keep an eye on you at work. Doyle can be the most help.”
“And Trent. He’s there every day.”
Shane didn’t want to say what he was thinking.
“He’s not behind this,” Taylor repeated what she’d told him a few minutes ago, more emphatically this time. “I know my brother and he would never kill anyone.”
He leaned sideways and kissed her cheek.
“Money is usually the reason people kill unless it’s a crime of passion, which tend to be spur-of-the-moment killings. This killer has an agenda. If we knew what it was, we’d know who was behind this.”
Shane didn’t rule out the money angle, but it seemed less likely given the threatening note, and the pipe bomb, which had been the initial warning. The killer was getting off tormenting them.
“I’m glad I have you,” Taylor said, her voice a shade shy of a whisper. “Together we can beat this.”
“Count on it.”
“I’ve been thinking. Anyone who came to the house after the funeral could have put the note on my car.”
“Someone could have driven by and put it there.”
“True, but it seems more likely it was someone at the funeral. Right?”
“Probably. This person isn’t striking at random. He has a gripe or some vendetta.” Shane thought a moment. “People are usually killed by someone they know.”
“Someone I know wants me dead,” she replied, a quaver in her voice. Biting her lip, she looked away. “Is it possible Caleb Bassett is the one?”
“Possible but unlikely, I think. Why would he kill Renata? She was the goose that laid the golden egg. His entree to your mother and her world.”
“Maybe it’s Jim Wilson. He has a grudge against the family.”
“We’re checking him out. He may have tinkered with the Web site. But why would he kill Renata? Or want to kill you?”
“There’s something we don’t know, don’t understand.”
Shane slipped his arm around Taylor and pulled her close. “Don’t worry about this anymore tonight. With luck, the police will be able to lift fingerprints off the note or the envelope.”
He pressed his lips against hers, caressing her mouth more than kissing it. How in hell had he fallen so hard, so fast, for this woman? Being intrigued by a photograph was one thing.
Falling in love was another.
“Shane, I’ve been wondering … about you.”
Uh-oh. Here it comes.
“I know so little about you, about your past.”
“What would you like to know?” he forced himself to ask.
“Where did you grow up and what was your family like?”
“I lived in Germany until I was seventeen. My mother’s German. She’s a wonderful person. You’ll like her. She married an American serviceman who was killed in an accident on the autobahn.
“Her family lived nearby and she moved in with them, but she made certain I attended the base school. So I grew up speaking English and German. In high school I learned French.”
“Oh, my God. You speak Spanish, too. I took years of French, and I can barely make myself understood when I go there.”
“Europeans usually speak more than one language. I learned Spanish later, when I was in college at Georgetown.”
For a moment she studied him intently. “Georgetown. Interesting choice.”
“Want a laugh? I was accepted at Yale, but chose Georgetown because I took one look at New Haven and hated it. Georgetown was more like Europe.”
“Wow! We could have been at Yale at the same time.”
“See? It was fate we finally met.”
Fate and the dirtbag—Paul Ashton.
“After college I went into the service and joined Cobra Force. I told you the rest. I worked on classified projects involving drugs and their link to terrorist groups.
“I used a sophisticated military computer in the field for the last two years. That’s how I got into computer security. I can’t tell you any more about it than I already have.”
Actually, this wasn’t exactly a lie. His last assignment had been classified, but he could tell her about meeting Paul. Not all the details, of course. Those were top secret.
He should let her know the man she’d loved—maybe still loved—was very much alive.
He couldn’t risk her leaving him. Not after tonight. When she was out of danger, he’d tell her about meeting that prick and seeing her picture.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“Gisela. I have her blue eyes and my dad’s dark hair. Everyone else in my family is blond. My grandmother, Rue, is still alive, but my grandfather, Klaus, passed away almost five years ago. He was like a father to me.”
Shane corrected himself. “No. He was my father. He raised me and did all the ‘dad’ stuff.”
“Your mother never remarried?”
“Nope. I asked her about it once, and she said she couldn’t stand to lose a man she loved again.”
“I can understand.” Taylor gazed wistfully across the room.
Aw, hell. Why had he said that? What was he thinking?
After a moment’s silence, she asked, “Do you talk to your family very often?”
“I usually call on Sunday after they’ve been to church. I know Grandmother will be fixing a huge lunch. My mother and cousins will be there.”
He’d been away a long, long time, but a Sunday never came that he didn’t think about his family.
And miss them, especially his grandfather.
The life he’d led with the Cobra Force had turned him into a loner who didn’t—couldn’t afford to—trust anyone, get close to anyone. He’d sacrificed years to the fight against terrorism, a fight that had become front page news.
Part of him itched to go back. His wiser side told him that he was burned out, more likely to make a mistake than to help.
“Amazing. Our family did the same thing. Sunday dinners were special. Even after Trent and I had our own places, our own lives, we gathered at the house every Sunday evening.”
She smiled, then asked, “What about your father’s family?”
“They came to visit several times. They’re both dead now, and since my father was an only child, I just have distant cousins. I don’t know them.”
Shane leaned over and clicked off the light. He drew her into his arms, saying, “I’m crazy about you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I promise.”
This was as close as he’d come to telling her he loved her. Hell, he wanted to say it, but he knew Ashton was still on her mind. It was too soon to use those words, especially since he hadn’t yet been completely honest with her.
Taylor snuggled against him. She smelled of his soap, having showered after they’d returned from the police station. He nuzzled her neck, then kissed his favorite spot just below her earlobe.
Well, one of his favorite spots.
As usual, she sighed. That’s why it was a favorite spot. A kiss there always meant a sigh.
“Shane … I …
He told himself it was okay. She wasn’t ready to say more yet, but he could see her feelings were changing. He remembered how hard it had been on his mother when she’d faced life without his father. He understood what Taylor was going through.
It would take time.
He covered her mouth with his. Her lips were warm and moist beneath his. With a quick darting motion her tongue sought his.
Like a swift-rising tide, desire built in him, and he could feel it mounting in her as she pressed against him, unconsciously offering herself. This was an honest reaction to him, not the cerebral loyalty to another man who didn’t deserve it.
Shane couldn’t change the past, but this he could control.
He gazed down at Taylor, her face barely visible in the moonlight filtering through the window. “I should have gone to Yale. I would have met you sooner.”
/>
“No. I believe in fate. We were meant to meet now, this way.”
He slowly pulled the T-shirt over her head. It would have been easy to reach up under it, but he didn’t want anything between them when he made love to her.
His hands slid over her bare skin, so soft, so smooth. She raked his back with her long nails.
Gently.
Erotically.
He lowered his lips to her breast, not intending to kiss the breast itself. He was kissing her heart, and he could feel the steady thud-thud against his mouth.
“Suck on me,” she whispered.
He did as he was told and laved one nipple with his tongue, slowly drawing it into his mouth. He was so damn hot and hard, he thought he’d lose it like some horny teenager. He squeezed his eyes shut.
And told himself this was another mission.
Not mission impossible. He’d already accomplished half of what he wanted to do. He and Taylor had a relationship going.
So what if she didn’t love him the way he loved her? It would happen with time and luck.
So far luck had been on his side.
Her hand slid between his legs and clutched his erection. “I need you—now.”
He let her guide him into her moist heat. Then he told her with his body what he couldn’t yet say out loud.
“I don’t know what to think,” Shane told Vince the following morning in the accounting department cubicle at Maxx, where he hung out when he was there. He’d brought Vince up to speed, telling about the threatening note.
“I made Taylor let me tell her uncle and brother about it. I wanted to gauge their reactions to see if one of them might be involved.”
“How did they take the news?”
“They seemed to be shocked. I’d say Trent might have … I don’t know. He could have been a little too surprised.”
“Go with your gut instinct. The odds say money is the number one motivator for murder. With Renata gone and Taylor dead, Trent stands to inherit everything.”
“Right, but I’m beginning to wonder if money is what’s behind this.”
“If not money, then what?”
“I don’t know. What I do know is, Taylor needs more protection, but we don’t want to tip off the killer. I want to put a tracker on her.”
“Good idea but how do you expect to get one and a tracker monitor to boot?”