Flirting With Danger

by Suzanne Enoch

  Samantha flinched at the venom in his tone. “I didn’t.”

  “God dammit. I should turn you over to Castillo right bloody now!” He ran a hand through his hair, looking as though he’d prefer taking more violent action than shouting. This man, the one with the hard, icy eyes, was the one who owned a good portion of the world—and obviously Sam had just landed on his bad side. Six feet plus of angry Brit scowled at her as he paced like a wolf looking for a vulnerable place to bite.

  Time to remind him that she had teeth, too. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she snapped, refusing to back down. “I didn’t fucking put it there.”

  “I am not a stupid man, Samantha,” he snarled.

  “I am not lying. Somebody—”

  “What, somebody else put it there? Whatever the hell game you’re playing, it’s over. Now.”

  “Why don’t you check with Donner? He seems to live in your pocket. I doubt there’s anybody with more access to you and this est—”

  “Don’t change the fucking subject! This is your duffel!”

  “I didn’t do this, Rick,” she whispered, unable to keep her voice steady. She’d spent her life dancing at the edges of a vortex. When her father had been arrested she’d felt it sucking at her, trying to pull her into the depths, but she’d managed to keep her footing. Now, for the first time, she’d slipped and fallen in. She couldn’t think of any act, any lie, not even any truth, that would pull her out. “I didn’t do it. And that is the truth.”

  “You came here for it.”

  “Of course I did. I never lied about that. But I didn’t take it. If I had, I wouldn’t have come back for your help. And I damned well wouldn’t have brought it with me. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like being played for a fool, either.”

  “Then how did it get here?” he demanded, pulling the tablet free.

  “I don’t…” She stopped. As long as she was denying his accusations, staying on the defensive, she couldn’t think. “Let me see it,” she said in a calmer voice.

  He glared at her, his shoulders heaving with the deep breath he took. “Like hell. Put on some clothes. I’m calling Tom before Castillo figures out what’s going on.” He jabbed a finger at her, then clamped his jaw shut, curling his hand into a fist. “Dammit, Samantha. What do you think you’re pulling?”

  She shook her head, willing him to believe her. “Nothing. Prentiss died while somebody—Etienne—stole that tablet. And then Etienne died, I presume at the hands of whoever he was working for. It doesn’t make any sense that it would be in my duffel. Not when two people are already dead because of it. Somebody wanted it enough to kill for it. Twice.”

  For the first time since they’d entered the bedroom suite he dropped his eyes from hers to look at the old, chipped stone in his hand. “No, it doesn’t make sense,” he finally said. “None of it makes any sense.”

  “It does to someone.” Sensing the lessening of his anger, she ventured a step closer. “Someone who just gave up over a million dollars to frame me for murder. Let me see it, Rick.”

  His gaze went from her to the phone on the end table. She knew what he had to be thinking, trying to decide: If he went to Castillo downstairs, probably both of them would be arrested. If he called Donner, he’d probably get out of it, but she wouldn’t. After the longest half minute of her life, he held the tablet out to her.

  Sam let out the breath she’d been holding. “Thank you,” she said, before she took the tablet from him.

  “Why?” he grunted.

  “For not…” An unexpected tear ran down her face, and she wiped it away, surprised and worried. She never cried. Never. “For giving me another chance to figure this out,” she amended.

  Richard felt as though he’d just stepped into a chasm with his eyes closed, going on blind faith that he’d find a bridge beneath his feet. But her hand shook when he placed the stone in it. This was the first time he’d seen her truly unnerved.

  “It’s beautiful,” she murmured, running her fingers over the rough surface, carved with runes and symbols by some scribe dead more than three thousand years.

  She held it with such reverence. That, more than anything she said, convinced him that she’d never touched it before. But then he wanted to be convinced of her innocence. Even more, he didn’t want to feel that gut-wrenching…disappointment again, as he’d felt when he’d opened the door to see Patricia and Peter rolling around in his bed three years ago, and as he’d felt when he’d opened her duffel bag in the garage a few minutes ago. And so he kept his eyes and every ounce of his attention on her as she paced the room, the tablet in her hands, and her fingers delicately tracing the etchings.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make me look guilty,” she said slowly. “No one knew where my car was. Not even Stoney, or Harvard.”

  Dismissing her paranoia about Tom, he dropped onto the couch beside the duffel bag. “Could they have done it before you put the bags in your car?”

  Samantha shook her head. “The duffel was under my bed. After I left Stoney’s I stayed home for two days until the cops showed up.”

  “You realize you’re not helping yourself,” Richard noted, somewhat bolstered by the notion. If she’d been guilty, she would have thought of an excuse already. She liked answers, as he did, and she was deft at providing them.

  “Why did you open the duffel in the garage?” she asked.

  Richard lifted an eyebrow. “Are you going to accuse me, now?”

  She made a frustrated sound. “Paranoid much? What made you open the duffel bag?” she repeated, resuming her pacing.

  “Actually, the bundle was partially sticking out, and I opened the bag to stuff it back…in.” He scowled. “You wouldn’t have just thrown it in like that. You would have been careful, and reverent, like the way you’re holding it now.”

  “Well, someone wants you to think I did steal this, after they tried to keep me from it before,” she said, returning to the couch and sitting beside him.

  “That means you were the target. Not me. And not my staff.”

  Her expression faltered a little. “Boy, somebody really doesn’t like me.”

  “Or somebody really wants you out of the way. But why? Why hire you, then try to kill you, then plant evidence on you when that didn’t work?”

  “And why give up the tablet?”

  “Finding it on you would probably keep the police from looking any farther afield.”

  She nodded. “I’d buy it if I were Castillo,” she agreed, hefting the tablet in her hand. “But …Argh. Something is just wrong.”

  “What?”

  “I’m—or the mystery woman we’re pretending I’m not is—still the only other suspect, right? I’m already in trouble for this, with or without the tablet.”

  Rick glanced at the wall clock. “Which reminds me, Castillo’s going to be wondering where I am.”

  Taking the cloth back from him, she carefully placed it and the tablet on the coffee table. “Do you have any information on the tablet?”

  “I have a copy of the insurance portfolio and photos in my office. Why?”

  “May I get them while you change?”

  “The door’s locked.”

  Standing, she gave him a quick smile, though her eyes still looked as worried as he’d ever seen them. “That’s not a problem.”

  He rose as she went to the door. “Samantha, I—”

  She turned back, walking up to him. “Don’t say anything to get yourself into trouble, Rick. It seems like every time you take a step to help me, you risk getting into a hell of a lot of shit.” Drawing a deep breath, she tucked her fingers around the front of his robe. “But if—if you have to say something to Castillo, could you yell or something? So I’ll have a head start.”

  Whatever was going on, he wasn’t saying anything to Castillo. Not yet. And the reason was very simple: He wasn’t ready to let her get away from him. Richard
brushed a strand of auburn hair behind her ear. “If I turn you over to Castillo, it’ll be because I’ve satisfied myself that you did this. And in that case, I won’t be warning you first.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He kissed her, releasing her reluctantly as she slipped back into the hallway. They’d passed the point where he could distance himself from her; hell, he’d been the one to announce to the paper that they were dating. And he realized, even if she didn’t, that this was not a simple partnership. He’d been screwed in business partnerships before, and he hadn’t been nearly as furious as he’d been this morning.

  The way things were going, if she was lying to him, neither of them was getting out of this alive.

  As far as Sam was concerned, while the trail grew more complicated, part of it also became very simple. She hadn’t mentioned her new theory to Rick, and she wouldn’t until she was certain. Every instinct she possessed, though, screamed that whoever had initiated the tablet’s unexpected return had easy access to the estate—too easy to be an outsider. It didn’t explain the damn bomb, but she wasn’t turning her back on anything—or anyone.

  Sam opened the door to Rick’s office with a paper clip, making it look as though she had a key for the benefit of any patrolling security and her own peace of mind. Even with permission it was more difficult than she expected to saunter in as though she had every right to be there and go through his desk drawer—which was weird, because usually she did it without permission. Addison was obviously getting to her.

  The tablet photos and detailed ownership history were in a file marked with a number she assumed to be part of the reference system for his large art and antique collection. The idea of staying there and looking through them made it feel too much like thievery after she’d given her word to be good, so she took the file and left the office for the relative safety of Rick’s private suite.

  Safety. She hadn’t realized how foreign the concept had become to her until last night. It seemed like …never since she’d last felt completely relaxed and at ease, and safe. And safety was a powerful aphrodisiac—almost as powerful as the lure of Richard Addison, himself.

  “Danger, Will Robinson, danger, danger,” she muttered, putting the folder down beside the tablet and digging deeper into her duffel for clean clothes.

  This situation was becoming extremely dangerous, and not just because people were dying and cops were walking around the estate at will. Her first thought this morning when she’d seen Rick’s face and followed his gaze down to the tablet in his hand hadn’t been for her safety. It had been that he wouldn’t believe she hadn’t done it. She was supposed to worry about herself before anyone or anything else. That was rule number one. Take care of yourself.

  Ignoring rule number one for the second time that morning, she went to Rick’s bathroom to take a shower instead of resuming her study of the tablet. She needed to think things through, and the shower was great for that. At the same time, neither did she want to touch the tablet again without Rick in the room. She evidently needed his protection even more now, but above that, she wanted him to trust her, which was absurd under the circumstances—hell, she would have been ready to arrest herself a half hour ago.

  When she emerged from the bathroom she had a vague list of suspects, but she needed Rick to confirm who had access to the estate, and who had been there both the night of the robbery and either last night or this morning. And she wanted to look at today’s paper, just to confirm what Castillo had said, that her face had appeared on the page along with her name. Good God. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about.

  So she wouldn’t be tempted by the tablet, she went out to Rick’s private veranda and sat in the shade of an umbrella to let her hair dry. She could go back to the room he’d loaned her, but then whoever’d been able to dump the tablet in her duffel would have no trouble at all getting into Rick’s suite and taking it back.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  She nearly jumped out of her skin as Rick stepped onto the veranda from the pool deck stairs. “Jesus Christ!” she gasped, putting a hand over her heart.

  “Sorry,” he said, brief amusement touching his eyes. “I thought you had nerves of steel.”

  “That’s Superman or something.”

  “Ah. And you’re Catwoman.”

  “Cool. Where’s the cop, Batman?”

  “I just walked Castillo out to his car.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Showed me some photos of DeVore, wanted to know if I recognized him. He wanted to ask you the same questions, but I mentioned some words like harassment and attorney, and he agreed to put it off.”

  “So is Etienne officially a suspect now?”

  “Yes. He flew into Miami three days before the robbery, and they found copper wire in his hotel room, the same stuff that wired the bomb to the walls.”

  Even with the evidence and his own sort-of confession, she still couldn’t believe the witty, self-centered Frenchman had tried to kill her. “What about the woman you saw?”

  “Apparently I might have been hallucinating.”

  “Apparently.”

  “All they need is the tablet, and I think they’d be satisfied with the whole thing.” He sat opposite her. “And why were you smiling?”

  “Oh. I just thought it was funny that I tried to steal the tablet, and now I’m sitting out here protecting it.”

  His gaze sharpened. “Protecting it? What did you find out?”

  “I just didn’t want to look at it without you here,” she returned, noting that today he looked more like a billionaire than a jock, with tan slacks and a white shirt open at the neck and the cuffs rolled up. Loafers with no socks completed the image, though she had the feeling he used clothes like she used personalities. “I have a couple of theories, though.”

  As for her, she needed to decide if her image was going to be rich guy’s date or his security consultant. The way he had looked her up and down in this morning’s shorts and tank top, overlaid with a shirt to hide the shrapnel scrapes on her back, the date attire worked better on him. But she needed to find her own balance.

  “Tell me.”

  “My duffel bag. Aside from the wanting me to look guilty thing, the only time somebody could have gotten to it was between when we left your car out front and when we went into the garage this morning.”

  “Somebody got onto the property again. I figured that. We’ll go through the video in a few minutes.”

  “I’m not so sure he hasn’t been here all along,” she said slowly, watching his expression.

  “Explain.”

  He didn’t scoff, only demanded to know her reasoning. It was something of a relief, she realized. “Etienne didn’t come back and plant the tablet. Someone else did.”

  A muscle in his jaw jumped. “You think it’s one of my staff. But you’d never even met them until two days ago. Why frame you?”

  “I don’t know. But the only people who were here for both events are you and me—and maybe somebody who works here.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he stood to look over the veranda at the spread of his estate. “For a few hours I thought I could get away with just suspecting DeVore. But you’re right. The bloody tablet never left the estate. Shit.”

  “I’d like to look at it and the file more closely. Maybe we’ll find there’s a history we’re missing, or…I don’t know. Or we can sit on our asses and wait for the cops to settle for blaming me.”

  “I don’t like sitting on my ass. Especially when you’re being targeted.” Rick pulled open the veranda door and ushered her back into his suite. They sat on the couch, and she flipped open the file.

  “Were you selling the tablet to the British Museum, or donating it?” she asked, spreading the photos out around the tablet and concentrating on the detailed trail the tablet had taken since its unearthing. Several century-long blank spaces didn’t even bother with suppositions about the stone’s whereabouts between its more public appear
ances.

  “I’m donating it. Does that make a difference?”

  “I don’t know. This is all so…strange.” She flipped another page. “Yeesh. According to this, your tablet’s one of the things that persuaded Calvert and Schliemann about the location of Troy. This is why they dug in Hisarlik in 1868.”

  Rick smiled. “I know that.”

  “I didn’t. I had a short timetable. Not enough time to do as much research as I’d like.” Scowling, she turned from gazing at the tablet to pick up one of the photos. “I’d never use it to frame somebody, not when I wasn’t even a suspect. It’s way too cool for that. Too…” She trailed off, staring. Something in the photo caught her eye, and she shifted it closer to the tablet. “I’ll be damned.”

  “That’s not right,” Rick said a moment later, leaning against her shoulder to look. He gestured at the photo, then at one of the symbols on the tablet. “On the photo the engravings here are faded almost to nothing. On the tablet you can see both of them.”

  “The carvings are all deeper than they look in the photos,” she said half to herself, picking up another picture to make certain the shallow look of the original carvings wasn’t just a trick of the light or the camera. “Wow. I don’t believe it. This is a—”

  “It’s a fake,” he cut in, picking the tablet up and turning it over in his hands.

  The ramifications left her distinctly light-headed. “You have a good eye for detail,” she said slowly, her mind retracing everything they’d learned so far about the robbery.

  “You’re not surprised, are you, Samantha?” he asked, his thigh brushing hers.

  “Like I said, I’d be more surprised at somebody pitching the original at me for no good reason. But the question is, is this a good enough counterfeit to work as a donation to the British Museum?”

  He glanced at her. “For a while, probably. With only three in the world they were gobsmacked to be getting it. And before the robbery, they—and I—wouldn’t have had any reason to suspect anything. After display, though, they’d do some studies. That’s why I was donating it.” Richard straightened. “You’re not suggesting I tell the police that I temporarily misplaced the tablet, then go ahead with donating the fake.”