Out of Nowhere

by Beverly Bird

  Tara spun, her heart exploding. She was running before she even finished her turn.

  Fox reached up instinctively to catch her and she ran straight into his arms. They stumbled backward together and went down in the snow.

  Fox moved fast. He could move quickly when he had to. He caught both her wrists with one hand just as she would have sprung to her feet again. He kept with her until he was on top of her, pinning her to the cold, wet ground.

  “Now then,” he drawled. “What’s all this about?”

  The woman drew in her breath to scream.

  Fox clapped a hand over her mouth. “Stop fighting me. I’m a—” He never finished. Her teeth sank down into the soft pad of skin between his thumb and his forefinger. She’d bitten him! And while his mind grappled with that, she managed to twist out from beneath him.

  Under other circumstances, Fox would have admired her agility. As it was, she flew toward the rear of the property and he was damned if he was going to be bested by her no matter how striking her perfect face had seemed in that moment he’d gotten a good look at her. Besides, he had a strong hunch that this was the elusive Tara Cole.

  He grabbed for her and his hand came back holding air. She was halfway over a stone wall at the back of the property when he lunged again and caught her hips. He tugged backward and they sprawled again into the snow.

  “I’m a police officer!” he shouted.

  She was breathing hard, but then she went utterly still. “No, you’re not.”

  Fox actually felt his blood pressure rise. “Yes. I am.”

  “You said excuse me, when you came up behind me. You said excuse me, ma’am. What kind of cop says excuse me? A real cop would have said something like, hold it right there, you’re under arrest!”

  “You’re not under arrest.” He fought a little for his own breath after their struggle. “Yet.”

  “Show me your badge.”

  He started to do it. But if he let her go long enough to reach for it, she’d be over the wall in a heartbeat and they both knew it. “Nice try. Where’s the ruby?”

  “What ruby?”

  “The one you lifted from Carmen’s safe after you killed him.”

  “I don’t have a ruby. Where do you think I’d hide a ruby?”

  Fox angled his head to look down at her. Where indeed? Whatever she was wearing under her jacket wasn’t just leggings as he’d first thought. It was one piece. It clung to every inch of her from neck to ankles. The fabric was like a breath against her skin, no more substantial than that. It was outrageously provocative.

  Only in Philadelphia, he thought. Then he caught her scent. Something spicy. Something hot, seductive, teasing. For the space of a moment, Fox found himself reasonably glad that the North had won the war.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” he said. “Anything—”

  “Oh, swallow it. What are you arresting me for?”

  “Assault on a police officer! Grand theft! Murder one!”

  “We still haven’t even determined that you’re a cop!”

  His grip on her tightened in frustration and she gave a small cry of discomfort. In that moment, Fox realized the full effect she was having on him. She might as well have taken his manners in her teeth instead of his skin. She was crazy.

  Fox came to his feet. He pulled her with him. “You have the right—”

  “I didn’t know you were a cop when I bit you,” she interrupted. “You never identified yourself. As for the other—”

  He was going to get this out if it killed him. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything—”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  Fox stopped cold.

  The headache she’d given him was starting to pump heat behind his eyes. He was ready to drag her back to his car and take her in for questioning but he was thinking with his temper, not his good sense. Hadn’t the woman been haggling with Carmen over twenty-four walloping carats’ worth of Burmese ruby? She’d start hollering for an attorney the minute she crossed the threshold of headquarters, and the money he presumed she had would buy a lot of legal punch.

  Fox made a decision. He decided to follow his gut.

  In a relaxed atmosphere, with her guard down, he just might get something worth knowing out of her before she hid behind counsel. Something deeper than the obvious was going on here. He kept seeing the way she’d leaned her head against the door when she had closed it. She’d seemed beaten. Overwhelmed.

  Not murderous.

  If it turned out he was wrong, there was nothing saying he couldn’t bring her in later. Fox tugged on her arm. “Let’s go.”

  Fear finally ripped past Tara’s bravado and took off with her pulse, unbridled. “You’re arresting me?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. Tell you what. We’ll trade answers. Ladies always go first. What were you doing in Stephen Carmen’s home?”

  “Who said I was?”

  “I saw you leave with my own eyes!”

  “Well, I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me.”

  “You can’t pull the Fifth! This isn’t court!”

  “That’s just a technicality.” She waved a hand dismissively and hoped he didn’t notice how badly it shook.

  He wasn’t actually committing himself to arresting her on the spot, she realized. Maybe she could get out of this. She knew how to be brazen, how to baffle her opponent with the outrageous. It had almost always worked with Stephen. Remembering his body on the library floor, Tara’s heart spasmed. She put the image from her mind.

  “Let’s get back to basics,” she said. “You never showed me your badge. I want to know who I’m dealing with here.”

  This time he did it. They stopped beside the house and he reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a little leather case. He flipped it open but he moved his body as he did, edging in on her space, trapping her against the wall.

  Tara couldn’t quite get her breath. Her head filled with his scent, something sharp yet smooth. It stroked her nerve endings and made things gather alertly all through her body. She fought the urge to squirm and concentrated on the badge he held in front of her nose.

  Robbery-Homicide. That was the first thing she saw. He was one of those people who used initials—that was the second. His name was C. Fox Whittington. Tara took another quick, shallow breath. “What’s the C for?”

  “What difference does it make?” He nearly snarled it.

  “I’m curious. I like to be on a first name basis with anyone who arrests me.”

  “Maybe you ought to put your mind to the trouble you’re in instead.”

  Oh, she was in so very much trouble! Tara looked at his eyes in the thin moonlight. They were sharp, watchful eyes, totally at odds with that Southern drawl he had. Her teeth started chattering with a chill she wasn’t aware of feeling.

  “M-my lawyer is Calvin Mazzeone. Take me to a telephone and I’ll c-call him.” Mentioning an attorney had stalled him once.

  “Shut up and let me think about this.” Suddenly, she was shaking like a leaf, Fox realized. The hint of vulnerability—a shadow of how she had looked coming out of the house—touched him all over again. “We’re going to your house,” he decided. “We’ll talk there.”

  “Isn’t that a little unconventional?”

  “You want conventional? I’ve got cuffs in my car.”

  “I wouldn’t want to put you to the trouble.”

  She was right back on her game, he thought, his temper spiking again. Fox finished steering her around the house, maneuvering her toward the Shelby. He unlocked the passenger door and nudged her inside. “Here’s the way I see it. You must have left prints all over that house.”

  “Stephen’s my stepbrother. I visit him all the time.”

  He closed the door and went around to the other side of the car. “Stephen’s dead.” He slipped behind the wheel.

  “He is?”

  “Please try to control yourself. I can’t deal with all t
his grief while I’m driving.”

  “Are you always this sarcastic?”

  “No. You bring out the worst in me.” Somewhere in Savannah, Fox heard his whole family tree rolling over in their graves at his behavior.

  “Then just drop me here at the curb,” she said. “I’ll find my own way home.”

  Fox took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at her. “You came out of his house, damn it.” His gaze snapped forward again. “What’s your address, Ms. Cole?”

  Of course, he’d guess who she was. Tara felt herself beginning to rattle apart again. “1222 Poplar Drive.”

  “For real?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because you just killed your brother?”

  “Stepbrother.” She hissed it, the first real emotion he’d heard in her tone so far.

  “So why did you kill him?”

  “I refuse to answer—”

  “Where’s the ruby?”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Where’d you put it?”

  “The—” Tara snapped her mouth shut again. He was hurling questions at her too quickly. She’d almost answered him and mentioned the dog.

  She still didn’t know what that animal had been doing there in the first place and admitting that she knew it was there was as good as admitting that she’d been snooping around Stephen’s library tonight. It was probably not the best place to concede that she’d been until she managed to talk to her lawyer, Tara thought. Besides, he had the Rose, this…this cop with his gentle Southern drawl. His questions to the contrary were purely a smoke screen, intended to throw her off. The cops had to have found it. The ruby had landed right there on the library floor.

  Whittington drove into the underground garage of her building. He showed his badge to the security guard and cruised on, looking for a place to park.

  “Just pull over and let me out.” Tara crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not staying.”

  “Put coffee on. This could be a long one.”

  “I don’t have to let you in.”

  “Then I’d have something solid to charge you with. Obstruction of justice should keep you in a cell overnight.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Cal could have me out on my own recognizance.”

  “Do you want to take the chance?”

  She didn’t. Tara got out of the car when he parked it and slammed the door hard.

  He followed her into the garage elevator and they rode it silently to the seventh floor. Tara kept her lips pressed together as she strode down the hall with him at her heels. She unlocked the door and tried to shut it again before he got inside. He blocked it with his foot and pushed into the apartment behind her.

  Fox looked around. There was magnificent view of the Schuylkill River from a long line of windows at the back of the living room. The boathouses there were trimmed with lights, looking like something out of a fairy tale. He liked that. Then his gaze came back to his immediate surroundings.

  There was glass. There was cold white leather. The carpet was black. The prints on the walls were painfully, jarringly modern. The apartment was as sharp as her tongue and her cunning little mind.

  He was damned if she was going to slip through his fingers, Fox thought. Even if she hadn’t actually killed anyone—and that was a big if, with nothing but his gut to hitch it on—something was going on here. She’d been inside that house.

  He moved to the sofa and sat. “Where were we?”

  “You were just leaving.”

  “Let’s go over what I do know first.” He began ticking items off on his fingers as she stood in the center of the room, watching him. “Stephen Carmen is dead. And lo and behold, an hour or so after the dust settles, you come tiptoeing out his back door.”

  She said nothing.

  “It’ll take the lab a few hours to match your prints, but by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll have you on that, too.”

  “I told you—”

  “Ah. I forgot that part. You and the victim are related. You visited his library regularly. Your prints would logically be…well, everywhere.”

  “Yes,” she conceded cautiously.

  “Do you think a grand jury will believe you when you tell them that you habitually fondled Carmen’s fireplace poker?”

  “Fondled?” She nearly choked. And in spite of every sane thing she knew about brazening out the hard spots in life, Tara’s gaze fell to his hands.

  Her mind emptied of every plan of attack she might have had. His hands were a dichotomy, she realized. Though they were a gentleman’s hands with buffed, trimmed nails, they had a girth and a width to them that would be strong and persuasive. She could very easily imagine them…well, fondling.

  Why was she thinking this?

  “On top of all that,” he continued, “you resisted arrest.” He watched her mouth open in outrage, then snap shut again. He gave her a point for self-control. “And you committed assault upon my person.”

  Her eyes narrowed dangerously as though she was contemplating more.

  “I think even Cal Mazzeone is going to have his hands full with this one.” Fox sat back against the sofa, pleased with himself.

  “Let’s try him.” She went for the sleek, ultramodern phone on a chrome-and-glass table by one wall.

  Fox came to his feet. “Put it down.”

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Then charge me with something! Either you have cause or you don’t.”

  Neither of them was getting an upper hand here, Fox realized. He did not intend to call this night a draw.

  The silence between them drew out. Then he shrugged—a lazy gesture that brought to mind humid summer heat, Tara thought. He walked toward her. There was a lazy sense about the way he moved. He did it with more grace than a man should lay claim to. Tara eased back to give him plenty of room.

  She let him take the phone from her hand. Even as he punched in a number, he watched her in a way that made her stomach do a slow roll. Like he was the devil himself and she was something he’d wanted for a very long time.

  “Don’t worry about the stepsister,” he said suddenly to someone on the other end of the line. “I guess you could say that I have that situation…in hand.” He eyed her once more, another slow cruise of his gaze. “She doesn’t have the ruby. It’s not anywhere on her person. Trust me, I can be sure.”

  Tara’s heart chugged. He was talking to whoever it was like they had no idea where the Rose was. Was it possible?

  She opened her mouth to tell him that the stone was somewhere on the library floor, in the far corner, near the window. She caught herself just in time as he put the phone down. “Maybe Stephen…dropped it,” she offered. “You know, in the scuffle.”

  “Who said there was a scuffle?”

  “You did. You were the one who mentioned the fireplace poker. Or did he just stand there and let himself be conked with it?”

  She was quick. It went with all her sharp edges, he thought. “Trust me. That rock is nowhere in the house.”

  Then he saw her face change. Stark horror, a raw kind of distress, passed over her expression like a cloud over the sun. He felt another visceral tug of something that wanted to soften toward her, but he’d never met a woman who needed pity less or who irritated him more.

  He left her and headed for the door. “You won’t want to leave the city for the time being, you hear?” Then he opened the door and stepped into the hall, closing it quietly again behind him.

  Tara stared after him then she ran to throw the locks. She caught herself just in time and peered out through the peephole. He was still standing there, no doubt waiting for the sound of metal rolling. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  He’d quit. He’d given up. He was gone. She couldn’t believe her good fortune! But where was the Rose?

  Tara turned slowly and leaned her back against the door. After a moment, she heard him move off
outside and her breath rushed out of her. Then her gaze fell on her telephone table and her heart kicked all over again.

  She ran to the table. It was glass—there was no way to misplace anything on it or beneath it. She dropped to her knees anyway and ran a frantic hand over the carpet. She gave a cry of outrage.

  Her date book was gone.

  Chapter 3

  The lady was well and truly miffed.

  Fox allowed himself to grin as the echo of Tara’s infuriated howl rolled down the hallway on his heels. It gave him his first sense of satisfaction in hours. He stepped into the elevator and took the date book from his pocket. It was going to be interesting reading, he thought, flipping through it. Then his cell phone rang.

  “You’ve got it in hand?” Rafe demanded when Fox answered. “What does that mean? Where are you?”

  “I’m at 1222 Poplar Drive.” As the elevator began its descent, Fox glanced down to make sure his jacket showed no signs of his earlier scuffle. “Where are you?”

  “Headquarters. I—” Rafe broke off. “That’s the stepsister’s address.”

  “Yes.” Fox stepped into Tara Cole’s elegant lobby and looked around at the top-notch Persian rugs and the marble reception desk. He knew that if he laid his palm against it, he would feel a chill.

  It suited her. She was one cool customer.

  “So where was she tonight?” Rafe asked.

  “She was in the dead gentleman’s home.”

  “What?”

  There would be time enough later to explain why he didn’t have Tara Cole in custody at this very moment. In fact, Fox knew that he would have to explain—to Plattsmier if no one else. “I don’t want to pull her in yet.” He stepped outside onto Poplar Drive and crossed the street against traffic. At least one car honked its horn at his leisurely pace. “She didn’t kill him. I’ve got a hunch.”

  “A hunch,” Rafe echoed. They generally respected each other’s gut instincts. “So is she involved at all?”

  “I think so. I just don’t know how yet.”

  Snow banked prettily in the common area across from her building. The public lanterns there made it sparkle. Fox looked around appreciatively as he settled onto a park bench. He gazed up at the seventh floor windows of 1222 and counted to ascertain which belonged to her apartment. He saw her pass in front of her living room windows. It appeared to Fox that she was talking on the phone. That made sense. He’d put money on Cal Mazzeone’s line being busy at the moment.