Flirting With Danger

by Suzanne Enoch

  “You’re taking this well, actually,” Dr. Klemm said, taping off his ribs. “I brought an elephant tranquilizer. Shame I won’t have to use it.”

  “Keep it close, just in case. I’m mad as hell,” Richard said shortly, trying to take shallow breaths and not collapse back onto the bed. The painkiller the paramedics had given him in the ambulance was beginning to wear off, but it made him groggy, and he refused to request more. Someone had tried to kill him, and he wasn’t going to doze off while someone else figured out who. “Where’s Donner?”

  “I’m here.” Tall and lanky, Texas in his soft voice, the lead attorney in the law firm of Donner, Rhodes and Chritchenson strode into the room. “Jesus, you look like hell, Rick.”

  “Who is she, Tom? And where are my clothes?”

  “We don’t know yet, and right here.” Light blue eyes narrowed. “But we’ll find out. Count on it.” Dumping a sports bag onto a chair, he yanked out a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and a long-sleeved cotton shirt.

  Richard lifted an eyebrow. “From the Tom Donner Outdoor Living selection, I presume?”

  “They wouldn’t let me onto the estate to get your things. They’ll fit.” Scowling as Klemm finished wrapping Richard’s ribs, Donner handed over a pair of brand-name athletic shoes. “What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked. “You’re supposed to be in Stuttgart.”

  “Harry tried to talk me into staying another day. I should have listened to him.” Richard rolled his shoulder, wincing again at the pull against his stitches. “I want Myerson-Schmidt on the phone.”

  “It’s four o’clock in the morning. I’ll fire ’em for you tomorrow.”

  “Not until I have a chance to chat with them.” And not until he’d made certain that they hadn’t sent a very clever—and lucky—female to test his security.

  “Hell, the cops found one of the cameras batted into the treetops, mirrors blocking the gate signal, and a big hole in one patio window. Not to mention most of the pieces of a security guard and Rick Addison with his hair on fire.”

  “My hair was not on fire, but thanks for the imagery. And I’m not going to sit back and twiddle my fingers. I want to be there when they question her.” Of course they would have to find her first. He assumed the police would, but at the same time he had the distinct feeling that it wouldn’t be easy. Whoever she was, she still had him wondering about the security test, and that was after his third floor had blown up.

  “Forget it, Rick. She’s just someone who wanted a piece of you and messed up. She’s not the first to try. And there are already five news crews by the elevator who want a few more slices.”

  “I think she saved my life.” Stifling a groan, Richard pulled the borrowed T-shirt over his head. “And that is a first for someone who allegedly wanted me dead.”

  Tom Donner opened and closed his mouth. “Tell me what happened.”

  Rick told him, starting with the screeching fax machine that some idiot had programmed to call his private number every two minutes starting at 2:00 A.M., to the security call he’d overheard informing Clark that Prentiss had discovered an intruder, to the way Miss Smith had tried to stop Prentiss’s advance, then threw herself on him just as the hallway exploded.

  “‘Smith?’” Donner repeated.

  “I would guess she was lying,” Rick said with a faint smile.

  “Ya think? She knew about the bomb.”

  Richard shook his head. “She knew something. I saw the look in her eyes when she hit me. She was terrified.”

  “I’d be, too, if some idiot security guard set off my explosives before I was clear.”

  “She could have made it past me before it went off. She didn’t. She took me down. And I didn’t drag myself downstairs, whatever the police think.”

  Of course she’d been at the estate to rob him. And, the cynical, suspicious core of him admitted that she might have been there to kill him. Something, though, had happened to change all that. And he wanted to know what, and why.

  The detective he’d met at the estate leaned into the doorway. “Castillo,” he said, flashing his badge as Donner started forward. “You sure her plowing into you wasn’t just an accident, Mr. Addison?”

  “I’m sure,” Rick grunted. He didn’t want to deal with the detective right now. With the explosion, this had become very personal. He wanted to be the one asking the questions, and he wanted the answers for himself. This was too much like working for someone else—and that wasn’t how he ran his business, or his life.

  The detective cleared his throat. “I’m more suspicious, myself. We’ve got out an APB, and like I said, she’s bound to turn up somewhere for medical attention. I suggest you find a place to stay, and I’ll set up an around-the-clock watch on you.”

  Richard frowned. “I don’t want people following me around.”

  “It’s procedure. You can either use the Palm Beach PD or the sheriff’s department.”

  “No. I don’t get kicked out of my own house, and I have my own estate security.”

  “With all respect, I’m not exactly impressed by your estate security, Mr. Addison.”

  “I’m not either, at the moment.” Groaning aloud, he gingerly stood to pull on the faded jeans.

  “Christ, Rick. I’ll get a wheelchair.” The tall attorney strode for the door.

  “I’m walking,” Richard said, clenching his jaw as he straightened. He should probably be grateful his blood wasn’t pooling somewhere on the floor, but damnation, he hurt. And Miss Smith had been right there with him. “Tom, get Myerson-Schmidt on the phone now. And not some drone. Somebody who can answer some questions.”

  “I’m working on it.” Donner came back into the room, a cell phone to his ear and a wheelchair in front of him.

  Trying not to double over, Richard faced Castillo. “If—when—you find this Miss Smith, I want to know. And I want to be there.”

  “That’s not exactly procedure, Mr. Addison.”

  Giving up on being stoic, Rick dropped into the wheelchair. “Fuck procedure. My taxes pay half your department’s annual budget. If you’re going to talk to her, I’m going to be there.”

  Donner glanced at him, but Richard pretended not to notice. The fiasco, and therefore the answers, belonged to him.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “He what?”

  Samantha flinched. “God dammit, Stoney, be careful. I need that arm.”

  Fat fingers surprisingly gentle, Stoney sent her shoulder an intense scowl and pinched together the long, jagged cut. “You need a hospital, honey.” With his free hand he squeezed a tube of super glue along the wound.

  “What I need is a heavy, blunt object so I can beat you across the head,” she returned, more to cover her gasp of pain than because she was still angry. “You said Addison would be in Stuttgart for another day.”

  “That’s what the Wall Street Journal thought, too. Some bank deal with Harold Meridien. Blame the Journal for having bad information, or blame him for lying to them. And hey, you might at least have grabbed one of the Picassos on the way out. The alarm was already triggered.”

  “Like you want to fence a Picasso without a buyer. And I had my hands full, thank you very much.” She had had her hands full, with a very heavy, very unconscious Richard Addison. She’d seen a few shots of him, in the Inquirer during his messy divorce year before last and on one of the nightly Hollywood entertainment shows a couple of months ago, when he’d donated an obscene amount of money to some cause at some event hosted by whoever’d won the Oscar last year. Rich, divorced, and private. And annoyingly unpredictable.

  “That should do it,” Stoney decided, slowly releasing the hold he had on her shoulder. The glue held. “I’ll bandage it, just in case.”

  “How’s my back?” She craned her neck, trying to see.

  “Good thing you were wearing Kevlar, honey. You can see the vest outline.” He traced a scooped line high up between her shoulder blades. “No tank tops for a while. But I’m m
ore worried about the gash on the back of your leg. You do much walking, and the glue won’t hold.”

  She looked at his face. “You’re worried? About me? How sweet.” Placing a kiss on the end of his crooked, flat nose, she gingerly scooted off the end of his kitchen table.

  “I’m serious. You must’ve left some blood behind. What about DNA mapping and that shit?”

  She’d thought of that and had already rationalized her way out of letting it bother her. “They have to have me to match it with something,” she returned, taking a slow, experimental step and feeling the glue pull at her torn skin. “And they don’t have me.” She glanced at his sliding-eyes cat clock above the refrigerator. “It’s after five. Turn on the news, will you?”

  While he shuffled in his bathrobe and slippers to the small counter television, Sam carefully shrugged into the spare pair of jeans she kept at Stoney’s. This must be why mothers always told their kids to wear clean underwear, she reflected, wincing as the material slid across the bandaged gash. In case of explosions.

  “You said the security guard died, Sam,” Stoney grunted, flipping on the local morning news. “What’re you looking for, video of the body bag?”

  “I left fast,” she returned, easing on a T-shirt and leaning into the refrigerator for a can of Diet Coke. “I think I avoided all the cameras on the grounds, but I’d like to know for sure.”

  He cocked a heavy eyebrow at her. “That all?”

  “Well, I’m kind of curious about who strung that wire across the hallway, and it might be helpful to know whether Addison survived or not.”

  Cool as she kept her tone, Stoney would know she was worried. The explosion had shoved her into the floor and obviously rattled her brain. She’d dragged Addison downstairs almost by reflex, then realized he could probably identify her to the cops. The guard, Prentiss, was definitely dead, and if she had been the one to discover an intruder in the hallway when a bomb went off, she knew whom she would blame. This was bad. Very bad.

  “Sam.”

  She jerked her head toward the television.

  “—quiet of the night was interrupted by a fire at Solano Dorado, the Palm Beach County estate of billionaire businessman and philanthropist Richard Addison. One fatality has been reported, and the cause is under investigation and has been declared ‘suspicious.’ Addison was taken to the hospital for treatment of minor cuts and bruises, and has been released.” The video changed to show Addison, accompanied by a tall, blond man, diving into the back of a black Mercedes limousine. Disheveled dark hair half hid the bandage that crossed his forehead, but otherwise he looked intact. And for a moment she was relieved.

  “Great.” Stoney sighed. “You should have left him up there.”

  “I don’t think letting Richard Addison burn to death would have helped me any,” she retorted, hiding a shiver at the thought.

  “Did he get a look at you?”

  Sam shrugged. “A brief one.”

  “They’re going to be after you.”

  “I know. I’m good at not being found.”

  “This is different, honey.”

  She knew that, too. Someone had died. And a very rich man had nearly died. And she hadn’t even managed to nab the stone she’d been after. “I was stupid. I should have noticed that someone else had already broken in and wired the place with explosives. Dammit.” She took a long swallow of soda. “Who would want to blow up the stuff in that house, anyway? What’s the point?”

  Stoney gazed at her. “Murder?”

  “But why? And why so messy?”

  “Ya know, Sam,” the burly black mountain in terry cloth rumbled, “if I was you, I’d be more concerned about being blamed for killing that guard than with being Mrs. Murder, She Wrote.”

  “Jessica Fletcher,” she corrected absently, watching as the television, muted now, played some taped footage of Addison at yet another charity function with that model Julia Poole on his arm.

  “And if I had a memory like yours, I’d be going on game shows, not stealing shit.”

  She couldn’t blame the news for going overboard in their coverage of Addison; with that face and his money he had to be good for ratings. Of course a political scandal or a corporate bankruptcy would have been nice, but no, she’d had to break into his house on a slow news day. She watched him answer a question about some bit of nonsense or other. Bored, she thought, and a little amused at the swirl of sycophantry around him.

  “I’ve never stolen shit, thank you very much, and I prefer to think of it as the involuntary relocation of objects, anyway.” Taking a last swallow of soda, she dumped the can into Stoney’s recycling box and grabbed up her torn and singed shirt and pants. She’d toss them in a dumpster on her way home. The vest was heavier, but at least it was salvageable, and she slung it over her good shoulder. “I’m going out for a while. I’ll call you this evening.”

  “Where, Sam?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him and forced a smile. “Like I’d tell you.”

  “Just be careful, baby,” he cautioned, following her to the door.

  “You, too. Your buyer knew you had somebody going after the tablet last night. You might get some pressure.”

  He smiled, lips pulling back to reveal white teeth. “I like pressure.”

  So did she, usually, but not in this amount. Hard as the police might look for a missing ring or a painting or a vase, they looked harder when someone died over it. And they would look even harder when someone died in the house of a man featured last year on the cover of Time magazine.

  She had some thinking to do. Like why someone would string explosives across a hallway in the middle of a multimillion-dollar art and antique gallery. And she wanted to know whether a particular stone tablet would be listed among the destroyed items—or if she’d be blamed for taking it, on top of everything else.

  Three

  Tuesday, 6:15 a.m.

  Tom Donner flipped his cell phone closed. “Myerson-Schmidt confirms they didn’t send anyone to test security. But they are very anxious to continue their relationship with you.”

  Beside him in the back seat of the Mercedes, Richard blew out his breath. Damn. He’d been hoping the elusive Miss Smith had been telling the truth. “And Prentiss? Any family?”

  “Parents and an older sister, all in Dade County. Myerson-Schmidt has a counselor there with them.”

  “I won’t intrude,” he decided. “I’ll have my office send them my condolences and see if there’s anything else they need.”

  “Sir, press and police barricades,” the driver said over his shoulder, slowing the stretched black SL500.

  “Go through them, Ben. They’re not keeping me out of my own bloody house.”

  “I thought you British guys were all stoic in the face of disaster.”

  Richard slid his gaze from the attorney as cameras and reporters rushed the car. “This is me being stoic. I want them gone, Tom.”

  “The reporters, or the cops?”

  “Both.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll work on the press. But considering that somebody tried to kill you this morning, I’m gonna suggest you let the police do their jobs.”

  “Not from my front drive. I’m not going to change the way I live my life. In my line of work, if I look weak, then I am weak. I won’t have the police barricading my house, like I’m some freakish recluse afraid to step outside. Aside from everything else, I refuse to live in an armed encampment.”

  “Okay. I’ll do what I can. But face it, Rick—you’re a valuable commodity.”

  They drove through the gates, which were manned by a pair of officers. Richard set aside his annoyance at having to get clearance to enter his own property, and instead kept his eyes on the house as they crossed the lush green palm grove and reached the curving drive at the front. Ruined furniture and curtains and carpets lay strewn at the edge of the cobblestones, heaped alongside more carefully placed statuettes and paintings. Already the insurance people were there, countin
g and examining objets d’art and wrapping the more delicate ones in felt blankets and lined crates for storage and protection—all under the watchful eyes of more police.

  “A couple of broken-out windows,” Donner commented, leaning across Rick to take a look, “and black roof tiles. Other than that, it doesn’t look too bad from the outside.”

  Yet another uniformed officer pulled open the car door as they came to a stop. Richard’s joints had stiffened on the drive from the hospital, and he winced as he straightened. “You should see the inside,” he muttered, starting up the wide front steps. The granite blocks were still covered with tarps and equipment and groups of emergency personnel drinking coffee from his china cups.

  “Sir? Mister Addison?” The officer behind them caught up at a brisk trot. “Sir, the building hasn’t been cleared yet.”

  “It looks fairly empty to me,” Richard replied, eyeing the piles of his belongings strewn across the lawn. They must have gutted the entire third-floor gallery.

  “Cleared by the bomb squad, I mean. They’ve done the basement and the first two floors, but not the third floor or the attic.”

  “Then have them notify me if it looks like something’s going to blow up.”

  “Rick,” Donner cautioned, “they’re on our side.”

  Richard frowned. He’d set up the damned estate for privacy, a place where he could escape from the cameras and reporters who always seemed to hound him. And he had to admit that without the police presence, half the tabloids would probably be jumping the walls right now. He turned around, eyeing the officer still dogging their heels. “What’s your name?”

  “Kennedy. James.”

  “You may accompany us, James Kennedy. As long as you stay out of the way.”

  “Sir? I’m supposed to—”

  “In or out, Kennedy.” Between the pain in his head and the soreness of his ribs, he wasn’t in the mood to be diplomatic.

  “What Mr. Addison meant to say,” Tom amended, “is that he intends to cooperate fully with the police department. But he still has multiple business concerns that require his immediate attention. Your presence will ensure that we don’t go anywhere or touch anything that might compromise the investigation.”