"No." He heard her struggle for breath. "No. I vised an umbrella and I hit him. I think he ran off."
Ethan hoped the bastard was lying under her window with a broken nose. He dropped his keys into his pocket. "Abby, listen to me."
"He would have come in."
"I know, honey." He had to struggle to keep his voice calm. The last thing she needed right now was to sense how angry he was at the thought of someone trying to hurt her. "Did you reset the alarm?"
"Yes."
"Check it now while I'm on the phone."
He heard her move across the room and punch the buttons. "It's armed."
"Okay. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
"Please hurry," she said. "God, please hurry."
Ethan jammed the cell phone into his pocket and grabbed his shirt on his way out the door. The terror in her voice had his adrenaline flowing fast and furious. She wasn't the type to scare easily or cower quickly, but she'd sounded damned near hysterical on the phone.
Considering the violence of her parents' death, he could only imagine what she must have felt when she realized someone was breaking into her home. He'd noticed that Abby was extremely security-conscious the first time he'd set foot in her house. Despite the secluded residential neighborhood, there were double locks on all her doors and windows and a state-of-the-art security system on the house itself.
Any professional thief would have seen the signs and wiring from a cursory glance at the perimeter and wouldn't have attempted the break-in. So this was either some neighborhood kid playing a badly executed prank, or the break-in had been designed to terrify her. Ethan's money was on the latter. And from the sound of her phone call, it had been extremely effective.
If someone was trying to scare her, there was a reason for it. He'd stake his life that the reason lay somewhere beneath the sketchy evidence he'd obtained that afternoon from Carter Jameson. Harrison had told him on Saturday that he had no idea what he was getting himself into. Ethan was starting to believe it.
He bit off a curse as he turned into Abby's driveway. Every light in the house was on, and he could see the broken shards of glass covering the porch. "Bastard," he muttered.
He hurried up the front steps and was reaching for the bell when Abby tore open the door and flew into his arms. He had a brief glimpse of the dark blue satin nightgown and robe she wore before she buried herself against him. "Thank God," she said, clinging to him. "Thank God you're here."
Ethan wrapped his arms tightly around her. The anxiety he'd felt since that afternoon was slowly beginning to ease. He could solve whatever problems arose, and he was confident he could protect her, even from Harrison. The fact that she'd turned to him and not to his father when she'd needed help convinced him of it. Abby needed him. He could work with that. For a while, he'd worried that he'd pushed her too hard—that she'd seen the passion in him and had started to draw away. But she needed him. And for the moment, that was all that mattered.
She broke the embrace before he was ready, but he saw her reach out a trembling hand to Rachel. Rachel stood in the shadows looking confused and exhausted. "Hi, Ethan."
He eased Abby to one side. She couldn't possibly imagine the impact she was having on him. The blue nightgown skimmed her body and outlined her full breasts. It dipped low enough to tantalize him with shadows and curves. He put one arm around her waist just so he could continue touching the soft fabric and the softer woman underneath. He entered the house. "Hey, Rach. You doing okay?"
Rachel shrugged. She wore cotton pajamas and Tweety-Bird slippers. "It was kind of creepy, you know? He woke me up when he started messing with the window."
Ethan glanced at Abby. Her face was as colorless as an icicle. The dark blue satin accentuated the circles under her eyes. Her hair was unbound and untidy, another sign of her general distress. She looked considerably more shaken than her sister. "Let's sit down," he suggested.
Abby followed his lead. Rachel trailed behind them and flopped into the armchair. "We called the police. They should be here soon."
Ethan guided Abby to the sofa. He took the seat next to her and reached for her hand. "Tell me what happened."
"I was on the sofa," she said, shoving a wayward curl behind her ear. "I fell asleep reading."
His gaze flicked to the coffee table. A novel and a half-empty glass of milk sat near the edge.
"I was upstairs," Rachel added. "I went to bed right after you left."
Ethan nodded. "Around ten."
"Yeah." Rachel slung her legs over the arm of the chair. "I woke up when I heard the glass break."
Beside him, Abby shuddered. "I saw his hands. He was reaching for the lock."
"I heard Abby yell at him."
"And Rachel ran downstairs."
"I didn't know what was going on."
Abby's fingers had tightened on his hand. "I grabbed the umbrella from the coat rack and hit him across the face."
"You should have seen it," Rachel said. "She whacked him right across the nose. He started howling."
Abby gave Ethan a hollow look. "He would have come in. If I'd been upstairs—"
"You weren't," he reminded her gently. "And he didn't."
She shivered. "God. How could this happen?"
The mirror above her mantel reflected the flashing blue lights of a squad car. Rachel jumped up from the chair. "I'll get it."
Ethan took the opportunity to wrap an arm around Abby's shoulders. She leaned heavily against his side. "It's going to be all right," he told her. He dropped a kiss onto the top of her head. "I promise it's going to be all right."
"Thank you for coming," she whispered.
He brushed her hair away from her face and gently traced his fingers along her cheek. "Abby, honey, listen to me a minute."
"I don't know why I got so scared," she continued. "It's just that I always felt so safe here."
"I know."
"I didn't think something like this could happen."
"I know," he said again.
She shivered. He could hear Rachel talking to the police officers in the foyer. "I know I'm being silly."
"No, you're not. Baby, listen to me."
"I'm sorry I'm being so hysterical."
He cupped her face to get her attention. "I need to know if he said anything—anything at all."
Abby shook her head. "No." She frowned. "Not until I hit him with the umbrella. He called me a bitch because he cut his hand on the glass trying to go back out through the window. So I hit him again."
Ethan suppressed a smile and stroked her cheek with his thumb. "That's all he said?"
She was still very shaky. "Yes."
He pulled her to him again. "Okay." He didn't like the way she was shivering. "I think you should have some tea now."
"I'm all right."
"Honey, you're shaking like a leaf."
"It's just aftereffects."
Two policemen entered the living room with Rachel. Ethan glanced at them over Abby's head. "Thanks for coming. I'm Ethan Maddux."
"No problem." The taller of the two nodded. "I'm Detective Nick Krestyanov. This is my partner, Detective Garrison. We need to ask some questions."
"I told them what I know," Rachel announced.
"Ms. Lee," Detective Garrison said to Abby, "can you talk to us for a few minutes?"
She pulled away from Ethan's embrace with a slight shudder. "Yes. Yes, I'm all right."
Ethan looked at Rachel and mouthed, "Tea." She stared at him for a minute, then seemed to understand the silent question. With a nod, she padded toward the kitchen. The two detectives sat in the chairs opposite the sofa. Ethan used the opportunity to get up and walk casually toward the broken window. Shards of glass crunched beneath his feet. He picked up a cotton throw rug and tossed it over the pile of glass beneath the sill.
"Were you in the house, Mr. Maddux?" he heard Detective Krestyanov ask.
Ethan glanced back over his shoulder. "No. I came when Abby called."
Abby waved a hand in his direction. "Ethan is from out of town. He's a—friend."
That seemed to satisfy the detective. Ethan stared at the window, studying the jagged shape of the hole and fighting another surge of rage. A streak of blood smeared the glass where the intruder had cut himself. At a sudden break in the clouds, moonlight spilled onto the porch and reflected off shards that littered the weathered boards. Ethan saw a flash of white and frowned.
He glanced at Abby and saw her telling Detective Garrison her story. The other detective was watching Ethan. Ethan made a subtle gesture with his head, and the policeman excused himself to join Ethan at the window. Ethan pointed to where a small envelope lay amid the broken glass on the porch. The detective frowned and pulled a flashlight from his pocket. He shone it on the envelope, "Bill?" he called his partner.
"Yeah, Nick?"
"Come take a look at this."
Garrison and Abby hurried to the window. Abby was barefoot, so Ethan took a step toward her to halt her progress. "Glass," he explained when she frowned at him.
She looked down in consternation. Ethan wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her easily onto the cotton rug he'd placed over the mess. Detective Krestyanov indicated the envelope with a flick of the flashlight. "Looks like we have a calling card."
Garrison took a latex glove from his jacket pocket. "I'll get it."
Abby looked at Ethan. "Do you think—"
"I think it wasn't a routine break-in," he told her.
Krestyanov nodded. "That would be my guess." He pointed to the window. "This isn't the work of a pro, and amateurs usually work during the day. Whoever did this was coming to tell you something."
Garrison returned with the envelope. Abby reached for it, but the detective shook his head. "It's evidence, Ms. Lee. If it's got fingerprints, I don't want to muddy them."
"What's in it?" Abby asked.
He gingerly opened the envelope and withdrew a flat playing card from inside. He frowned. "A jack of spades." He turned it over. "No writing."
Detective Krestyanov said, "Do you have any idea what this means, Ms. Lee?"
Abby stared at the card. Her face, Ethan noted, was even whiter than when he'd arrived, but she shook her head and replied, in a voice so calm it made him shiver, "I have no idea, Detective."
Ethan studied her through narrowed eyes. Detective Garrison glanced at him. "Anything, Mr. Maddux?"
"No," he said slowly. "Not that I can think of."
"All right." The policeman shrugged and dropped the card and the envelope into a plastic bag, which he slid into the pocket of his jacket. "We'll take it to the lab and see what they come up with."
Detective Krestyanov pulled two business cards from his wallet. "We'll do what we can, Ms. Lee, but to be honest, nothing was stolen and nobody got hurt." He handed Abby a card.
She accepted it with a nod. "I know. We're not a high priority when your resources are already overextended."
"It's not a matter of priorities," he said, handing the other card to Ethan, "it's practical. If you can come up with something, anything that might help us, we can investigate this more seriously. But unless we turn up fingerprints on that card—"
"You aren't going to dust the rest of the window?" Ethan asked.
The detective shook his head. "No point." He took the flashlight out of his pocket again and directed its beam at the blood smear on the broken glass. Snagged on the sharpest edge of the glass was a piece of dark wool. He pointed to the fiber. "Gloves," he said. "And sure, if this were a murder, we'd collect that."
His partner's smile was affable. "People watch a lot of television," he explained. "They have an interesting concept of what we do."
"Mostly what we do," Krestyanov added, "is arrest the people victims help us catch. But what we have here is an attempted break-in."
"We're not making light of this, Ms. Lee," the other detective said. "But unless you can give us something more…"
"I understand." Abby was clutching the business card so tightly it had crumpled between her fingers.
"If you need anything else," Krestyanov told her, "please call us."
Ethan stepped away from the window and swung Abby free of the glass. She walked with the two detectives toward the door. Ethan used the opportunity to shut the storm window against the elements.
Garrison shook Abby's hand. "And if you can think of anything else, it would be a big help."
"I'll remember. Thank you, Detective."
"Any time, Ms. Lee."
Krestyanov gave Ethan a final glance, then nodded to Abby. "If we discover anything from that envelope, we'll let you know."
She shut the door behind them and momentarily leaned her head against it. Rachel came through the swinging door of the kitchen with a tray on which stood a pot of tea and three mugs. "Are they gone?"
"Yes," Ethan told her. "Have you been hiding in there?"
She put the tray on the coffee table with a slight shrug. "My hair looks crappy. And that tall one was really cute." She glanced at Abby. "I figure we'll be seeing a lot of them later. I can make a better impression."
Abby reset the alarm, then turned to look at Rachel. "We'll probably never see them again, Rach."
Rachel frowned. "But last time—"
Ethan's eyebrows rose. "Last time?"
Abby swept the fall of her hair behind her shoulder and padded across the living room. "The murder," she explained. "The police came and went for days." To Rachel she said, "Honey, I had no idea you remembered that."
Rachel poured tea into one of the mugs. She wouldn't meet Abby's gaze. "It went on for a really long time."
"Yes." Abby waited while Ethan took the seat across from her. "Several months."
Rachel handed her a mug. "It seemed longer."
"You were practically a baby. I can see why it would."
Ethan reached for his mug while Rachel filled the third. "It's not a big deal, Abby," she said. She picked up her mug and tumbled next to her sister on the couch. "I just don't remember any of them being really cute."
Abby tenderly brushed Rachel's hair away from her face. "They weren't," she assured her. "You didn't miss anything."
Ethan watched the exchange between the two sisters and realized that the impact of the evening had been harder on Rachel than he'd previously thought. She was curled against Abby while Abby gently untangled strands of her hair. In his association with them, he'd never seen Rachel allow, much less seek, physical comfort from her sister. For her part, Abby looked lost in a world of her own.
"Won't they have to come back," Rachel asked after several minutes, "to tell us what they found in that envelope?"
Abby tensed. "Did you hear that?"
"I was listening through the kitchen door," Rachel confessed.
"They'll probably just call," Abby said.
Rachel leaned back and regarded her curiously. "But it was the jack of spades, Abby. Why didn't you tell them it had something to do with Mama and Dad's murder?"
eleven
Abby's heart skipped a beat. She felt her breath catch as several flashbacks played through her mind. "Rachel," she said carefully, "what do you remember about that?"
Rachel's eyebrows drew together in concentration. "I told you before, I don't really remember anything. I only know about the jack of spades because you told me about it."
"When?"
"You know—that time I was doing the report for school on Dad's military service. You told me it was kind of a thing with him and his buddies. They called him a jack-of-all-trades, which got shortened to 'Jack Spades' when they started playing poker together."
Abby sagged against the couch in relief. "Oh."
She wasn't ready to get into a discussion with her sister, or with Ethan, about the night her parents were killed, or about her interpretation of the playing card's significance.
Jack Lee's nickname had been one of those silly, almost unaccountable things that came about in times of duress and togethernes
s. He'd picked it up somewhere in Vietnam during a late-night poker game that took place amid mortar fire and shelling. The stories had varied slightly regarding who had first pinned him with it, but it had stuck. The nickname had become so common, it wasn't unusual for people not to have known Jack's real last name.
Rachel hugged her knees to her chest. "So do you think the card meant anything?" she asked.
Abby could feel Ethan's eyes watching her, probing her. She had to struggle not to look at him. She shook her head. "I don't know, sweetie. But the police are handling it now. There's nothing to worry about."
That answer seemed to satisfy her sister. Abby wished she could convince herself as easily. Rachel tipped her head against the couch. "Do you think they'll find anything this time?"
"I don't know. I hope so."
"Are you worried?" her sister persisted.
"I'm just worn out," Abby said evasively. "It's been a long night."
Rachel nodded. "Can I stay home from school tomorrow?"
"You can at least go in late," Abby promised. "We'll see how it goes from there."
"Okay." Rachel looked at Ethan. "Are you staying the night?"
Abby heard the slightly wistful note in her sister's voice and moved to head off the conversation. "He can't. He's supposed to go back to California in the morning."
"Actually," Ethan said, "I was supposed to leave tonight. Those thunderstorms we had earlier changed my plans."
"Are you leaving tomorrow?" Rachel asked. "Really?"
"I was considering it," he replied.
"But you might stay?" she persisted.
Abby glared at him. "There's no need."
He gave her a knowing look. "I'm not so sure."
She bit back her frustration. What she needed was time to think about what had happened tonight and what it meant. Ethan was too shrewd and too persistent to let her off as easily as Rachel had. No way would he accept a simple explanation about the significance of the jack of spades in that envelope. Rachel might have dismissed the entire business, but Ethan would hound her until he got the truth. "The alarm is set. I'm sure he's not coming back. We're perfectly safe."
Ethan steepled his fingers beneath his chin. She saw absolute determination in his gaze. "Still," he said softly, "I'd feel better if I stayed."
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