Out of Nowhere

by Beverly Bird

  Fox felt another swish of admiration for her. Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was shock, but she’d capsulized the whole incident in as few sentences as possible. She’d given him and Rafe just what they needed to roll. He and his partner exchanged a glance then Rafe left to organize a search of the building.

  “He was probably on his way to my apartment,” Tara realized, rubbing her throat. The nick there stung. “He wanted to know where the Rose is.”

  Fox saw the red mark and helpless anger throbbed at his temples. He should have been here, he thought again. “What the hell were you doing in the elevator anyway? You said you were going to work at home! I put surveillance all over the building then you decide to go out? Why didn’t you tell someone you were leaving?”

  “Well, pardon me all to hell!” Some of her color came back, but it was too hectic, too bright. “No one was in the hall! There was no one to tell!”

  Phil Currey chose that moment to come back into the lobby, his hands laden with steaming Styrofoam. “What happened? Where’s Migliaccio?”

  As if on cue, the other cop burst in from the stair entrance. “She’s gone! Her apartment’s empty—” Then he saw Tara and he broke off.

  Fox watched them and knew what had happened with a dull, sinking sensation in his gut. The guy had moved on Tara during the changing of the guard.

  “I was getting rid of the dog,” Tara explained. Belle, still in her arms, shot her ears straight up as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  Fox shook his head as though to clear it. “Getting rid of the dog? Where? How?”

  “I hadn’t thought that part out yet. She attacked my coat.”

  Something punched his chest in the area of his heart. “She saved your life. If this guy had trapped you in your apartment, he would have had a lot more time and privacy to hurt you.”

  “Or kill me.” Tara felt her breath shorten all over again.

  “Yes. Or that.” But Fox found he couldn’t go there, not even in theory. And he damned well wasn’t going to risk it happening again. He headed across the lobby. “We tried this your way. Now we’ll do it mine.”

  Tara stared after him for a moment before she got her legs to move. She didn’t like the sound of this at all. As she passed the still-gaping Currey, she took one of the coffees from his cardboard tray. Then she stopped and sipped. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t you stay here and look for this guy?”

  “Rafe will take care of it. And we’ve got plenty of manpower on the scene.” He didn’t wait for her but kept moving.

  “Well, regardless, I’m not leaving.” Tara turned her back on him.

  He caught her elbow so suddenly her heart jumped. He pulled her around again. A few minutes ago, when he’d jogged into the building, she’d actually thought she’d never been so glad to see anyone in her life. In spite of everything that had just happened to her, she’d never felt so safe in her life. But now, unless she badly missed her guess, he was going to try to make her leave her apartment again.

  “I want the address of a friend or relative,” he growled. “You can give it to me on the way. Let’s go.”

  “I can’t. I don’t have a coat.”

  “I’ll get you one.” His jaw clapped down on his words. Fox caught Migliaccio’s attention and sent him upstairs to her apartment.

  Tara felt fresh panic coming on. This was a fight she might not win.

  She could go to Uncle Charlie’s but she was damned if she was going to lead trouble straight to the old man’s door. Besides, she hadn’t heard from him since the night she’d canceled their dinner. That generally meant that he had taken off again. That left…no one.

  Think, she ordered herself. There had to be a way out of this. Then it hit her. “Shouldn’t I go to one of those safe houses or something?”

  Fox’s eyes narrowed. “You stumbled across a body. You didn’t rat out the mob.”

  “Will that make me any less dead if this guy comes after me again?”

  He opened his mouth and closed it again. Damn it, she had a point. “Maybe I can find a place to tuck you. We’ll stop at headquarters and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Migliaccio came back with her leather jacket. Tara wondered if this meant her faux fur was unwearable. Fox opened the lobby door and made a motion to usher her through it. It was the best she was going to do, Tara realized. She followed him outside.

  “You’ve still got the dog,” he mentioned as they strode toward his car.

  Tara looked down at Belle in her arms. Her little black eyes met hers and held. She had saved her life by jumping up on the elevator buttons, Tara thought, though she wasn’t going to credit her with deliberately causing mayhem to get her out of the apartment before the man was able to corner her there. But either way, she figured she might owe the beast more than a cold street corner in December.

  “Maybe I’ll rethink this,” Tara muttered.

  They ended up at his condo.

  Fox watched Tara stride purposefully up his drive, the dog still dangling beneath her left arm. He reached into the back seat for her overnight bag. An hour on the phone with Plattsmier hadn’t convinced the captain to authorize the expense of a secure place for her to stay. She’d been adamant that she wasn’t going to put anyone else in danger by moving in with them but she had finally agreed to come here. Either she didn’t mind the idea of trouble finding him, Fox thought, or she thought he could take care of himself if it did. He finally got out of the Shelby and followed her.

  Tara watched him unlock the door. There was an interior flight of stairs inside and she climbed after him to another door at the top.

  “Look at the bright side of this,” she quipped. “We can use all those fine linens you were bragging about.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt something hot sweep her skin. “Let me rephrase that. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

  He glanced back at her. “More’s the pity.”

  Her heart slammed. What was he saying?

  Tara stared after him as he stepped into his apartment. She followed him and set the dog carefully on the floor, then she hugged herself and looked around.

  It was a beautiful place, she admitted, open and airy enough to almost relax her. The main room was large and tiled—a kitchen took up one half, the living room the other. The ceiling was vaulted. The sofa, a loveseat and a big deep chair were all muted ivory. Beneath the living room furniture there was a Persian rug of a deep, warm blue.

  The kitchen side of the room was made for cooking and had deep countertops. Tara spotted a coffeemaker and she sighed. Then she wondered if she ought to be thanking Mrs. Whittington or Cornelius for the prospect of caffeine in the morning.

  Two photos adorned the wall to one side of the fireplace in the living room. One was of four women; the other showed an older couple. There were none of Fox with his arm draped companionably around the shoulders of a significant other. There were no his-and-his coffee mugs on the counter. For that matter, there were no his-and-hers mugs, either.

  Tara left the door and wandered to the living side of the room. “Do you live alone?” she asked.

  Fox took his jacket off and hung it in the closet, then he held a hand out for hers. “Yes. You can have the bedroom.”

  Tara peeled out of her jacket quickly and gave it to him. “I don’t intend to put you out. I just…I don’t want to put anyone else out either.”

  He frowned. “Like who?”

  “Like your…Cornelius.”

  “Cornelius.”

  “Your brother.”

  His expression cleared as though he had just remembered something. “He doesn’t live here.”

  Relief stole her air. She had to remind herself to breathe. “That’s good. That’s great. It’s terrific.”

  Fox looked at her oddly then he moved into the kitchen and stood against one of the counters, his arms crossed over his chest.

  Tara wandered that way as well but she stopped at the kitchen tabl
e. She pulled a chair out and sat. She wished suddenly that she had just taken a hotel room for the night. It would have been the sensible thing to do. But then she’d have to tell him why she was doing it, that she really had nowhere else to go. And what would he think of that? She didn’t want to find out. Everybody had somebody.

  “Would you like something to drink?” he asked, watching her.

  “Sure. That would be good.” It would give her something to do with her hands.

  “But not great or terrific?”

  Tara flushed. “It would depend on what you’re offering.”

  His eyes narrowed a little in contemplation and her heart skittered. Then he moved to his refrigerator. “Guinness?”

  Tara shook her head. “No thanks.”

  “Milk?”

  “My bones are strong enough.”

  “You do walk over people rather nicely.”

  That jolted her. “I do not!”

  “I’ve got four distinct, separate bruises from your living room floor and it wasn’t my idea to sleep there.”

  “You didn’t have to stay,” she reminded him.

  He shot her a look. “Neither did you.”

  It was true enough that Tara stood and joined him at the refrigerator. She pointed to a bottle of Australian wine. “I’d like that.”

  “Will it earn another good, great, terrific?”

  “Pour it and we’ll find out.”

  “That sounds like a challenge.”

  It sounded like flirtation.

  Something had definitely changed here, Tara thought, and something shivered deep inside her again. She wasn’t imagining it. There was a kind of smokey and smoldering attention in his gaze now that seemed to have little to do with people getting killed or with rubies. And it had been there more or less since she’d had that crazy fantasy about his mouth this morning, Tara realized. She’d seen the look often enough before from other men. Normally, it froze her. Usually, it terrified her. Now it had something twisting together in her belly and it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant sensation.

  “Tara?”

  She jumped, startled. He was holding a glass of the wine out to her. She snagged it and brought it quickly to her lips. “Thanks.”

  What exactly was going on here? Fox wondered.

  Part of it he could analyze. The status quo between them had shifted this morning. Now introducing his own private turf into the equation had altered things even more. It had been different at her place because she was the victim and he was the public’s protector. But bringing her here tilted everything on its axis.

  What he couldn’t understand was why it made her nervous.

  He watched her sip the wine, her hair framing the really spectacular angles of her face. She was a stunning woman and he found himself reluctant to consider how many men’s kitchens she’d probably sipped wine in. But she had the jitters of a sixteen-year-old visiting her first boyfriend’s bedroom. It was just one more thing about her that didn’t add up, another dichotomy that intrigued him.

  He brought the conversation back to business to ease her discomfort. “So where do you think the ruby is? Any new thoughts?”

  A million things happened to her face all at once—panic, pain, then finally narrow-eyed determination. “I don’t know, but I can tell you where it isn’t. I called every auction house in Philadelphia this morning and a few in New York and Washington besides. No one has seen it.”

  “What did you do that for?”

  “Because if I don’t have it and you don’t have it, if the killer doesn’t have it and it’s not in Stephen’s house anymore, then the only way we’re ever going to find it is if whoever has it tries to sell it.”

  “If they did it through legitimate channels we would have heard by now. Someone would have reported it. That rock is too notorious.”

  “I thought maybe they had and you weren’t telling me.”

  The feeling in his chest was only half angry. “Of course, I’d tell you. I know how important that stone is to you,” he said shortly.

  He was hurt, Tara realized, stupefied. She opened her mouth and closed it again. There was no law against doing a little digging on her own, was there? She’d always taken care of herself. She had to take care of herself. But he was a man who kept insisting on doing it for her.

  Fox finally rubbed his forehead. “You know, when I combed the library the first time, I didn’t know you’d lost the Rose against the far wall.”

  Tara stood straighter. “You’re thinking that maybe you did miss it?”

  He hated to take the hope out of her eyes again. “It’s a longshot of such proportions, I can’t even begin to tell you.”

  “But you thought of it so there must be an iota of a chance.”

  “An iota,” he agreed. “No more than that.” He drained his wine and poured them both more. “But I’ll go back there in the morning and take a second look around anyway.”

  Tara put her glass down on the counter. “Let’s go now.”

  Two of those three words bothered him tremendously—let’s and go. He didn’t answer.

  “Fox, I have to know.”

  Uncertainty put a storm in her eyes. It made him think again of her strength and her toughness. If the ruby really wasn’t there, that would be bad, he realized. But it wouldn’t be as hard on her as not knowing for sure.

  Still he hedged. “I don’t want to leave you here alone and Plattsmier has made it pretty clear that there’s no more overtime in the budget to bring in anyone else to watch over you.”

  “Then the safest place I can be is with you.”

  She’d done it again. She’d turned the whole conversation back around on him. “Not if I’m walking right back into the lion’s den.”

  “If I’m not with you, you won’t know what you’re looking for.”

  “Of course I’ll know. It’s a big, red piece of glass.”

  There it was in her eyes again. The passion. The magic. “Not glass. When you touch it, you can feel its fire.”

  “How many big red gems can there be in that house, cold, warm or otherwise?”

  She drew herself up. “What happened to the questions, answers and information you wanted me available for?”

  Trapped. He’d said only yesterday that that was why he wanted her to remain a part of this investigation. Fox didn’t know whether to laugh or to swear. He swallowed the last drop of blood-red wine in his glass.

  “All right,” he said, moving to the coat closest again. “Let’s go see what we can find.”

  Chapter 10

  They reached Chestnut Hill by five-thirty but night had already fallen hard. Fox coasted the car to a stop in front of Stephen’s home and Tara suddenly had doubts about what they were doing. Yellow crime scene tape was still stretched from tree to tree across the front yard, making an obstacle course of the walkway. She felt a little queasy. She had not been here since the night Stephen had died.

  Fox watched her grab the dog as she got out of the car and ducked under the tape. She looked pale, he thought, but the moon was full and round, a virginal white, and maybe it was a trick of the light.

  “Are you going to be okay with this?” he asked when he joined her at the door.

  Tara deliberately arched both brows. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because—” Then his cell phone rang.

  Tara gasped at the sound, nearly stumbling off the porch as she jerked back. Belle, still in her arms, gave a yelp of alarm. Fox caught her elbow.

  “Sure. You’re right as rain.” He found his phone in his pocket and put it to his ear. “Hello?”

  Tara watched as he listened to whoever was on the line. Her heart settled again slowly. He spoke in monosyllables and she watched his face.

  The opaque light from the moon chiseled his features, making him even more starkly attractive. Then he caught her watching him and he flashed her a smile. She felt unsteady all over again.

  He dropped the phone back into one pocket and found
the house key in his other. “That was Rafe. They turned up empty-handed at your apartment building.”

  That stilled something in her heart but Tara realized she wasn’t surprised. “He was covered in black from head to toe.”

  Fox nodded and opened the door. “There were no prints in the elevator, just like there was nothing at your place last night. I thought if Belle had bitten him—”

  “She did,” Tara interrupted.

  “Then she got a mouthful of cloth for her effort. There was no blood trace anywhere. There’s nothing but your word that he was ever in the building.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Not when you’re dealing with a professional.”

  He answered automatically. At her silence, he glanced her way and swore. The color had bleached from her skin. Guilt hit him like a sucker punch.

  Last Monday she’d found her stepbrother’s body. Then he’d put her through a week of hell, tailing her. Yesterday she’d made a statement—a quelling experience for even the most jaded of witnesses or criminals. Her apartment had been torn up and someone had tried to kill her. Now he was taking her back to the scene of the crime.

  He turned to the steps again.

  “Where are you going?” she asked suspiciously.

  “This was a bad idea.”

  “It was a great idea!”

  “You’d think so because it was yours. I’m leaving.”

  Tara planted herself on the porch. “Fine. Go ahead. I’m going to look for the Rose.”

  He stopped and eyed her. He could call her bluff, he thought, could get in the car and start the engine. He knew it would be akin to trying to move a horse by leaning into its rear. The best he could do was what he had threatened and honestly leave her here.

  That wouldn’t serve his purposes at all.

  He wanted her back at his place. He wanted her comfortable and safe on his sofa, sipping the rest of that wine. He wanted to take care of her, wanted to push away all the ugliness of this week instead of dragging her back into the heart of it.