Flirting With Danger

by Suzanne Enoch

  The movement overbalanced her, but she managed to keep her fingertips pressed against the lever as she stumbled against the doorjamb and fell to the floor. “Oh, my God,” she rasped, not daring even to breathe. On the far side of the door another grenade wobbled, the pin hanging on by a fraction. Her leg, tangled in the wire, jerked, and the pin slipped another millimeter. “Rick!”

  Richard whistled as he strolled toward Samantha’s private rooms. A bowl of sugared strawberries in his hand, he couldn’t believe he would be in such a good mood with a thief and a murderer potentially loose on his estate. But neither situation could quell the thought that last night he’d had what was probably the best sex of his life. And come hell or high water, he was going to have more within the hour.

  “Rick!”

  The fear in the scream froze his blood. Dropping the strawberries, he sprinted to Samantha’s room. The door was half-open, and he charged in. “Samantha?”

  “Here!”

  He saw her legs across the bedroom doorway, one of them at an odd angle. “What happened?” he barked, lunging forward.

  “Stop! It’s a grenade!”

  Stopping at the doorway, he leaned into the room. She lay on the floor, half on her back, one hand pressed against a grenade secured with duct tape to the wall at about thigh level. On the other side, another grenade teetered, still with the safety pin in—but only because the wire hadn’t pulled it completely free. Her left leg was tangled in the wire.

  “Jesus. Don’t move.” Grasping the doorframe, he leaned over her toward the second grenade.

  “Don’t! Get out of here! Just call somebody!”

  “Right,” he answered, concentrating on keeping his hand steady as he touched the end of the pin. “In a minute.” Shoving with his index finger, he pushed the pin back into place. Holding it there, he stepped over her. With his free hand he untangled the wire from her leg. The first grenade’s pin dangled at the far end of it.

  “I’m going to call for help, then we’ll put the other pin back in,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. If she hadn’t been so quick with her hands…Good God.

  “Just leave the pin,” she countered. “I’m okay. Call from the sitting room, then get out.”

  Carefully shifting the wire to lessen the pull on the intact grenade, he stood, making his way to the nightstand. “I’m not going anywhere. If you want to fight about it, come over here.”

  “Shit. Don’t be stupid.”

  “Quiet. I’m on the phone.” He called Clark.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Clark, call the police. Inform them that there’s a grenade in the green suite, and that my girlfriend is holding it together with her hand.”

  “A gr…Right away, Mr. Addison. Do—”

  He hung up. “How’re you doing, Samantha?” he asked, coming to squat beside her.

  “Better than you, you idiot. Tell the rest of your people to get out. And I’m not your damned girlfriend.”

  He’d made her angry, which at least brought some color back to her face. She was still alarmingly pale, but the stark terror had faded a little from her eyes. “It says you are in the newspaper.”

  “Yes, well, I’d like to take a look at that.”

  “Later. Let me get the pin.”

  “No. It’s safer this way. It’s a pretty crude set-up, but I don’t want to risk us igniting the fuse by stuffing the pin back in. Or by pulling the thing off the wall, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Sweat beaded her forehead, but she still managed to sound like a complete professional. “By God, you’re amazing,” he murmured, rising to call Clark again and tell him to evacuate the building, but to allow no one out of the gates. As soon as he finished, he returned to her side.

  “You’re subscribing to the killer-in-residence theory, then?” she asked, shifting a little.

  Her arm must be aching by now, Richard thought. He moved behind her so she could brace her back against his side and take a little of the strain off her shoulder and arm. What he wanted to do was grab the grenade himself, but heroic though it might have been, it would also have been abysmally stupid. At the moment, she had this under control. “I subscribed to it before, but now I want to make certain we don’t let them slip out and manufacture an alibi. I am going to kill whoever tried to do this to you, Samantha.”

  Ten minutes later the bomb squad entered the room. From their expressions, this wasn’t the kind of scenario they were used to encountering. Even so, they dragged in a bomb-safe container along with their heavy padding and face and eye protectors. They outfitted Samantha as well as they could with one of her arms plastered to the wall, then went to work on securing the grenade.

  His refusal to leave probably annoyed the hell out of them, but he didn’t much care. He wasn’t leaving until she did.

  Finally, with yet another piece of duct tape, they secured the lever to the grenade and dragged Samantha backward. “All right, all civilians out of the house,” the lieutenant ordered.

  “Like I wanted to stay,” Samantha commented, letting Richard pull her to her feet.

  She was shaking, and he put an arm around her waist to help her from the room. Down two flights of stairs and out on the front steps, she pulled free.

  “All right. I’m sitting now,” she said, plunking herself down on the white granite steps.

  Richard sat beside her, putting an arm back around her because he couldn’t not do it. “You’re certain you’re all right?” he asked quietly, kissing her hair.

  “I didn’t even see it. It was so stupid,” she burst out.

  “What happened?”

  She blew out her breath, rolling her shoulders and obviously trying to calm herself down. “I carried my stuff in, then dragged the duffel bag to the bedroom so I could put some of my clothes away. My leg hit something, and I moved back, but I heard the pin pull.” Samantha shrugged. “I slammed my hand around and caught the lever before it popped, then I realized there was another grenade on the other side of the door. That one not going off was just dumb luck.”

  “Luck, and very quick reflexes.”

  “It should never have happened. I know better than to let my guard down.” To his surprise, a tear ran down her cheek.

  Richard held her tighter. “Don’t say that. Someone tried to outsmart you for the second time, and it didn’t work.”

  Samantha shrugged out from under his grip, then slammed her fist against her knee. “I have never been so damned scared in my life.”

  “This is over,” he said. It was too late to save her, but he couldn’t help his instinct to want to protect her. While her fear had subsided, she was obviously still angry as hell. As for him, his heart was still pounding. “We are leaving.”

  “No. The answers are here.” She shook her head, gazing at him. “And I really want to find them now. It seems our theory was right; it’s me somebody wants dead.”

  Castillo’s car rolled up the drive and stopped. Samantha stiffened beneath Rick’s arm, but he refused to let her go. “You have to trust me,” he murmured. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “It’s not you I’m worried about trusting, Rick. And don’t forget, that tablet is still in my knapsack, in my room, surrounded by twenty cops.”

  “You’ve had a busy morning, haven’t you?” Castillo said, climbing the shallow steps until he drew even with them. “Everybody okay?”

  “Nobody blew up,” Samantha said, reaching for her usual sardonic humor.

  “That’s a plus.” The detective continued up the stairs. “Stay here, Mr. Addison, Miss Jellicoe. I’ll go take a look.”

  Richard was glad to see him go. He needed a few minutes to decide how much information he needed to relay and how many lies he would have to spin to do it and still be able to protect Samantha—from the police, from whoever had tried to kill her again, and even from herself.

  Sixteen

  Sunday, 1:30 p.m.

  “I should call Tom,” Rick said, tho
ugh he didn’t move.

  Samantha wiped at unaccustomed tears. It was the adrenaline; she was still shaking with leftover energy. She was used to the punch, but being nearly blown up was nothing like the thrill of a well-executed burglary.

  “How much are you going to tell Castillo?” she asked, grateful that Richard pretended not to notice her stupid crying.

  “Enough so we can figure out who’s been setting bombs in my house.” With a grim look he reached for his belt and pulled free his cell phone.

  “He’s going to say it was me, you know.”

  “That’s why I’m calling Tom. Even if Castillo decides to arrest you, we’ll have you out on bail in an hour.”

  Another rush, this time of fear, hit her, and she lurched to her feet. “No. I am not—”

  “Samantha, calm down. I won’t let—”

  She backed away another step, easily evading his grasp. “It’s not up to you. I am not going to jail just so you can put on your shining armor and rescue me. No.”

  Rick got to his feet. “Wouldn’t you rather be cleared than have Castillo and the police watching you every second of your life?”

  He had no idea what it was like to live her life. “I’m used to hiding, and I can’t be cleared,” she hissed, her trembling starting all over again. She was not going to be hysterical. She didn’t get hysterical. Not even when people tried to kill her and other people she was beginning to trust then suggested it would be a good thing if she went to jail. “If I go in, I’ll never get out.”

  “Calm down.” He kept his voice quiet and even, probably anticipating that she might run. She wanted to run. Hell, she’d already scoped out an exit. “All right. Don’t worry. You’re not going anywhere. Just sit down, and let me call Donner.”

  “I’ll calm down,” she returned, “somewhere else.”

  “Someone just tried to kill you,” he said more sharply. “You’re not leaving my sight.”

  “Then follow me,” she shot back, turning on her heel. “I’m going for a walk.”

  She heard his low growl, then his feet on the drive. He was following her. Feeling a little easier despite herself, she headed toward the pond.

  Castillo looked out the veranda window. The room Miss Jellicoe used had been cleared, with no further devices found. She should have been killed; from what the bomb squad said, she had either set up the event, or had the fastest reflexes they’d ever seen. Considering the study he’d been making over the past few days of what was known about her father’s career and about some other thefts attributed to him but not proven, his hunch tended toward the fast reflexes.

  Out on the front drive she and Addison were arguing about something, and he imagined that it had to do with how much they were going to tell him. If this crap had happened anywhere but at Solano Dorado, he would have had them both taken down to the department for questioning. But after twenty years of working in the middle of the Palm Beach elite, he knew the chain of command by heart—especially when high-powered movers and shakers like Richard Addison were involved: Addison knew the governor, who knew the commissioner, who knew the captain, who knew the chief of detectives, who knew Castillo.

  At the same time, he was willing to bet his badge that Jellicoe had been the woman Addison had seen the night of the burglary, the one he also credited with saving his life. Obviously, though, she hadn’t been the only cat in the house. He had a body in the morgue, but Etienne DeVore wasn’t doing any talking other than to say that he’d been shot twice and dumped into the ocean to drift away.

  The chief had made it clear that he wanted DeVore connected to the explosion and subsequent death of young Prentiss. That would be the end of the homicide investigation and the end of his involvement with Richard Addison and company. It was a shame, then, that he hated puzzles with missing pieces. Something much larger than a stolen tablet was going on, and he badly wanted to figure out what it was.

  The head of the bomb squad gave him the technical details of the almost death of Samantha Jellicoe, and armed with that information, he decided to go for a walk by Addison’s pond.

  “Harvard’s on his way, I presume?” Samantha sat on the cool grass at the edge of the pond, her attention ostensibly on the small green frog perched on the rock beside her.

  Richard strolled back and forth along the path a few feet away, too restless, too concerned that whoever had wired the grenades remained on the grounds to relax. She’d accused him of wanting to be her knight in shining armor, and she’d hit the target spot on the bull’s-eye. “Yes. He’s bringing my list of employees with him.”

  “Good. I bet he was pissed.”

  Keeping in mind that “pissed” meant drunk in England and angry in America, Richard nodded at her back. “Quite.”

  “He thinks I’m bad luck.”

  “He thinks you’re dangerous. Of course, it doesn’t help that you intentionally antagonize him.”

  “But it helps me feel better, which is what’s important.”

  “You might at least call him ‘Yale.’ He did graduate top of his class there.” Finally deciding that the number of police currently on and around the premises would probably keep anyone from lobbing more explosives at Samantha, and mostly because he wanted to be closer to her, he sat down beside her. The frog looked at him and jumped into the pond.

  “You scared him.” Samantha leaned a little in his direction. “Why am I dangerous?”

  He had the feeling the epithet flattered her. “According to Tom, it’s because you have too many secrets and a sad excuse for a lifestyle, and you thereby put my life in jeopardy.”

  “And according to Richard Addison?”

  “Ah. According to him, he doesn’t quite know what to make of you, but concedes that you are extremely distracting, and that you tempt him to do things he probably would never have considered before making your acquaintance.”

  “Like lying to the police?”

  “Something like that.” Actually he’d committed that particular sin before, but not about something as serious as murder. As Castillo approached along the path, though, he pushed that memory out of the way. “Detective.”

  “Frank’s good enough.” Castillo sat on the rock vacated by the frog. “The room’s clear,” he said, “and they’re working the rest of the house. I’ve got a couple of my guys questioning the staff, but nothing’s popped so far. That was smart, keeping everybody bottled up on the grounds.” He leaned forward, peering into the pond. “You got fish in there?”

  “Koi,” Richard answered. “This time of day they pretty much hide beneath the rocks and lily pads.”

  “Kind of like whoever set those grenades out,” Frank commented, reaching into his pocket. “Do koi like sunflower seeds?”

  “It’ll probably kill them, but what the hell. It might draw them out.”

  Castillo tossed a few seeds into the water. “What we have here,” he said in a mild, conversational tone, “is a kind of stalemate. Oh, there they are. Wow.” He dumped another handful of seeds into the pond, watching as the large, bright-colored fish swarmed up to the food.

  “A stalemate?” Richard prompted, noting that Samantha had edged as far from the detective as she could without actually getting up. She might play friendly with Castillo, but she obviously wasn’t going to do any talking today.

  “Yeah. I have all these puzzle pieces, but no picture to go by. For instance, I would have bet that DeVore, that guy I asked you about this morning, was the one who broke in here and stole the tablet and set the explosives. But he’s dead, so he didn’t plant the grenades this morning, and he doesn’t match the description you gave that night of the female you claim saved your life.”

  Risking a glance at Samantha’s set, unyielding expression, Richard took a breath. “What if I was mistaken about that female, Frank, and she was here by my invitation?”

  “Well, that would definitely help point the finger at DeVore, except for the grenades this morning.”

  “It wasn’t the same guy,
” Samantha said brusquely, plucking at the grass and keeping her gaze on the pond.

  “The bomb squad tends to agree,” Castillo said in the same mild voice, continuing to flick seeds into the water. “Their theory is the first one was done by a pro, and the second by an amateur, trying to copy the style of the first one.”

  Samantha actually nodded. “Shape charges are a lot harder to come by than grenades. And the pins should’ve been pulled already, with the wire triggering the levers to spring off. No chance of anyone stopping the explosion. Even that, though, gives the victim four or five seconds to get out of the way.”

  Richard closed his eyes for a moment. It amazed him, that she could so calmly discuss the flaws of a bomb set-up that had nearly killed her half an hour ago. He opened his eyes again, looking at her rather than Castillo. “What if I were to tell you, Frank, that a fake version of the tablet appeared this morning, with at least one of the video cameras deactivated in just the same way they were the night of the robbery?”

  “What?” Castillo started to his feet, then changed his mind and settled back down again with visible effort. “I’d want to see the tape anyway.” He cleared his throat. “I would also need to narrow down the time during which the grenades could have been set. What time did you leave your room this morning, Miss Jellicoe?”

  “She spent the night elsewhere,” Richard answered, so she wouldn’t have to. “In fact, I suppose the grenades could have been put there anytime over the last twenty-four hours.”

  “I don’t think so,” Samantha said quietly.

  “Why not?” both men asked at the same time.

  She took a breath, so clearly reluctant to speak it was almost amusing. “I was in the newspaper this morning—as a security and art expert.” She glanced at Richard. “That was my fault.”

  “Done is done,” he said, reaching over to cover her hand with his, then pulling back from the caress before she could. He knew how to fish; the difficulty with Samantha was that she was far more sleek and deadly tiger shark than timid minnow. He wanted her, but neither did he wish to lose an arm—or any other appendage—in the process.