Partners in Crime (Anne Stuart's Bad Boys Book 4)

by Anne Stuart

  “Yes, dear.”

  The night had grown colder when the three of them stepped back out on the porch. The twin demons of the night had disappeared, and from deep within the house Sandy could hear the echo of a violent television show. A light snow had begun to fall again, and Jane shivered.

  “Lovely climate,” he said, taking her arm and heading down the sagging steps.

  She looked up at him. He could read everything in her eyes, her irritation, relief, and concern for her brother, her fear of the unknown. Her love for him. “Lovely,” she said, huddling up against his body for warmth and maybe something else. “I think I prefer Baraboo.”

  “What about that cesspool of danger, toxic wastes and perversion?” he countered softly, wrapping his arms around her slender body.

  She held herself very still. “What about it?”

  “It’s where I live.”

  “I know that, Jimmy.”

  He winced at the deliberate taunt. “I like living there. The Upper East Side is beautiful, I inherited the apartment, and I like the energy in New York.”

  “So do I.”

  “It’s not a good place for children, I suppose,” he continued in a musing voice. “Maybe we should move out to some sort of yuppie suburb in a few years. Buy a place with lots of land and maybe some apple trees. Would you like that?”

  She didn’t move, she didn’t say a word. He could no longer read the expression on her face, it was one of blank incomprehension. “I’m not doing this very well,” he said. “But then I haven’t had a whole lot of practice. I’m asking if you could find happiness with a sneaking, lying sleaze of a lawyer?” He threw her own words back at her, gently.

  “No,” she said. “But I could find happiness with you.”

  He smiled, a wide, mouth-splitting grin of sheer joy and relief. ‘‘You’ll marry me? I don’t know if that gun-toting brother of yours will let us sleep together unless we’re at least engaged.”

  “Sandy, great sex is not a good enough reason for marriage,” she warned, putting her hands against his shoulders to keep him from kissing her.

  “No, it’s not,” he agreed. “And maybe being desperately in love with you isn’t enough, and maybe sharing the same ridiculous interests isn’t enough, and maybe just having a good time together isn’t enough. But if you put them all together they make a pretty good case.”

  “Yes, counselor.” She wasn’t pushing quite as hard. “But aren’t you taking something for granted? What if I’m not in love with you?”

  He laughed softly. “Jane, my precious, do you have any idea how transparent you are? Of course you’re in love with me.”

  The hands started pushing again. “In that case,” she said sweetly, “there’s no need for me to say it, is there? Let’s catch up with Richard.”

  Sandy suddenly knew he’d made a very grave error. He was so happy, so sure of her and him, that he’d been a little too hasty. “Jane...”

  “Let’s go.” She gave him a shove, sharp enough so that he stumbled backward, landing in a pile of snow. “I’ll meet you at the lab.”

  She was moving after her brother’s ungainly figure at a swift pace, and Sandy sat in the wet snow for a moment, watching her with mingled admiration and dismay. “Does this mean you won’t marry me?” he called after her.

  “Not at all,” she answered from a distance. “I’ll marry you. But I’ll make your life holy hell for a while.”

  He watched her go, then pulled himself out of the wet slush, brushing at the soaked seat of his jeans. “I just bet you will,” he muttered. And he started after her.

  Jane caught up with her brother when he reached the edge of the woods. The huddled shape of the old icehouse was partially obscured by darkness and the lightly falling snow.

  “Lover’s quarrel?” Richard asked in a cheerful tone of voice.

  “Don’t get your hopes up. We just got engaged,” Jane snapped.

  “You don’t look like a woman who just got engaged.”

  “How would you know? Maybe engagements don’t agree with me.” Sandy was catching up with them, his long legs eating the distance between them. Jane watched his approach with absent longing. Sooner or later the man was going to have to learn tact in his declarations of love.

  They could smell the kerosene from halfway across the field, and Richard wrinkled his aristocratic nose. “I really wish I’d come across you two arsonists before you had a chance to make such a mess. It’ll be weeks before I can get rid of the smell, not to mention...” His words trailed off in sudden horror, and some distinctly un-Richard-like cursing tumbled from his mouth.

  Jane felt her stomach cramp in sudden dread. “What is it?”

  “Someone’s broken into the lab.” Richard’s voice was bitter as he took off in a dead run across the stubbled field. “Damn, damn, damn.”

  The heavy metal door was hanging open. Without hesitation Richard dashed into the darkened interior, with Jane and Sandy close at his heel.

  Even in the inky darkness Jane could tell that the place had been trashed. She stumbled over piles of paper on the floor, peering through the blackness, Sandy close behind her, as Richard fumbled for the light switch.

  “Do you think he found it?” she questioned anxiously.

  The room was flooded with light, illuminating the three of them, illuminating Stephen Tremaine blocking the doorway, impeccably dressed in Abercrombie and Fitch country wear, a nasty-looking black gun in his hand.

  “Oh, most definitely,” he said in a smooth voice. “Most definitely, indeed.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I do regret doing this,” Stephen continued, backing toward the door. “Normally I like to keep things a bit more civilized. But my dear Richard, you have always been the consummate pain in the rear. You even had the lack of consideration to die when I only meant for you to be injured, and then the audacity not to be dead after all. I doubt I would have gone so far down this particular road of illegality if I hadn’t thought I was already guilty of murder.”

  “But you’re not,” Jane pointed out, staring at the gun as if mesmerized.

  “Not yet,” said Tremaine. “But there’s really no turning back at this point. The Sultan of Salambia has ready cash, and I am in dire need of that cash. And the three of you are quite expendable. Even you...I’m sorry, I don’t know your name,” he said to Sandy.

  “Alexander Caldicott,” Jane supplied politely. “You wouldn’t want to shoot a stranger.”

  “My dear Jane, you’re almost as big a pain as your brother,” Stephen announced with mild distaste. “As a matter of fact, I’m not going to shoot anyone. The police can trace bullets, you know. I’m afraid the three of you are going to burn to death in this old firetrap. I imagine they’ll remember who bought the kerosene this morning, if anyone bothers to investigate. They might think it a bizarre ménage a trois. Or they might blame the two little monsters, who kept throwing rocks at me every time I tried spying, for the fire. I really don’t care.”

  “They’ll blame Derek and Erik, all right,” Richard announced gloomily. “They already set fire to the old Grange hall last April.”

  “Richard!” Jane warned.

  Tremaine merely smiled. “You see how tidy everything will be? And trust an old veteran of the divorce wars, Jane. You wouldn’t want to marry the man. This way you’ll never have to be disillusioned.” He stepped out into the darkness.

  “You can’t do this,” Jane cried.

  “Yes, my dear, I can.” The door shut in their faces, and without hesitation Sandy flung himself at it. It was already tightly locked, and the smell of kerosene was thick in the air.

  With great aplomb Jane began screaming and beating on the door. They could smell smoke, and the first evil tendrils of it began snaking under the doorway.

  “We stand a pretty good chance,” Richard announced calmly. He’d taken a seat on a stool by his workbench and was sorting through his papers at a leisurely rate. “Kerosene isn’t that e
fficient for burning places—gasoline would have done a faster job. And it’s been a very wet autumn. The wood in this place is old, but snow’s been sitting on it for several days. Someone may see the smoke before it really catches.” He picked up a pencil, made a little note, and then continued reading.

  Jane looked at Sandy as the first wave of smoke hit her lungs. She started coughing, tears coming to her eyes, and she took the handkerchief he offered with gratitude, covering her mouth with it.

  “Normally we should get down on the floor to get away from the smoke,” Sandy said, his own voice similarly muffled, “but that’s where the smoke is coming from, and this place isn’t big enough to get away from it.” He was coughing now, too, tears pouring down his face from the smoke.

  Jane began pounding again, not bothering to cover her mouth. “Uncle Stephen, you get the hell back here,” she shrieked through her spasms of coughing. “You can’t leave us to die in here, damn it. Unlock the door! Unlock the damned door!”

  Her furious voice faded in a paroxysm of coughing, and she sank against the door in defeat.

  “Maybe I can break it down,” Sandy muttered. “Move out of the way.”

  “For God’s sake, Richard, help him!” Jane pleaded.

  Richard looked up from the abstract he was perusing. “Let your fiancé be a hero,” he said. “Stephen will relent eventually. If he doesn’t, there’s nothing we can do about it. I had the door installed to keep everything out. Your young man won’t be able to do a thing about this.” He coughed a bit, then lifted his glasses from his streaming eyes. “And I must say, Jane,” he added sternly, “I blame you for all this. If you hadn’t doused the place with kerosene I doubt Stephen would ever have thought of burning us. He never was the creative sort—he worked best in a managerial capacity.”

  “I’m not interested in Stephen’s talents!” Jane shrieked between fits of coughing. “I’m interested in getting out of here.”

  “Just wait,” Richard said, replacing his glasses as Sandy kept hurling himself at the door.

  “Just wait?” Jane echoed in a furious croak. “Wait for

  what? For hell to freeze over? That’s where you’re going to

  be in a few minutes, brother dear, and I can’t think of any

  one who deserves it more.”

  “Wait a minute.” Sandy stopped his useless assault. “Someone’s unlocking the door.”

  A moment later the door opened, filling the tiny room with acrid, blinding smoke. Someone took her hand, it had to be Sandy, and together they stumbled out into the snowy night. She landed in the snow, on top of his large, warm body, and she just lay there, taking deep, wonderful lungfuls of cold night air.

  It took a moment for her eyes to clear. Stephen Tremaine was standing over them, an expression of extreme self-disgust on his face. “I couldn’t do it,” he said, his voice rich with regret. “I’m afraid I couldn’t kill you. Just don’t have what it takes after all.”

  “I hate to interrupt this soul searching,” croaked Jane, looking around her, “but Richard’s still trapped inside.”

  “He would be,” Tremaine said gloomily. Without hesitation he dashed through the sheet of flames obscuring the doorway, and moments later came back out with Richard’s semiconscious body slung around his shoulder. He dumped him in the snow, rubbing his hands together in the age old gesture of one getting rid of a nasty project.

  Richard lay in the snow coughing for a moment, then managed to pull himself to a sitting position. “I didn’t finish the article,” he said accusingly. “Now it’s in cinders. You’re going to have to get me another copy, Stephen.”

  “Richard,” said Stephen Tremaine, “you always were a pain in the rear, and you always will be.”

  Richard only waved an airy hand at him. Tremaine turned his back to look at Jane. She still hadn’t moved. Sandy felt too good, too strong and solid and comforting beneath her, for her to be noble. “I suppose you want to call the police,” he said in a resigned voice. “I won’t fight it. There’s not much I can do—this was a last-ditch effort and it failed. It appears,” he said wearily, “that I am simply too damned civilized for murder.”

  “It’s quite a failing,” Sandy agreed from beneath Jane.

  Reluctantly she got to her feet, her knees still a bit wobbly in the aftermath. “Are we going to call the police?” she asked Sandy, giving him a hand to help him up and wincing in sympathy as she realized his back was soaked with melted snow.

  “We might be open to other possibilities,” Sandy agreed, correctly reading her tone of voice.

  “Police?” Richard roused himself from his perusal of the burning lab. “I don’t want the police involved. Come back to the house, Stephen. Hazel has plenty for dinner, and you deserve to spend some time with my stepchildren. I’m sure we can come up with something mutually agreeable. Something not involving Salambia.”

  “Your stepchildren?” Stephen echoed. “The twins? I think I might prefer jail.”

  “Your preferences are not the issue right now,” Sandy said. “I’m feeling cold and wet and quite angry, and I would love to take out that anger on someone who richly deserves it. Get back to the house. Now.”

  Richard pulled himself upright, strolled over to Stephen Tremaine and took the gun that was resting loosely in the older man’s hand. “Nasty business,” he said, tossing the weapon toward Sandy. He missed, it landed in the snow, and Sandy left it there, stepping over it and taking Jane’s arm in his. “You know, Stephen,” Richard said in a musing voice, “I can think of two things responsible for your aberrant behavior. First, you must have been given war toys when you were a child to encourage this hostile streak of yours. And you eat too much red meat. It messes up the bowels and makes people quite savage. Less animal flesh, Stephen, that’s the ticket. Do you like carrots?” They wandered off, Richard chattering a mile a minute in his inanely cheerful voice.

  Sandy and Jane watched them go. “I don’t suppose we can just go home?” she questioned hopefully.

  He shook his head. “Tremaine might murder them all in their sleep.” He reached down and picked up the gun, tucking it in his pocket.

  “With someone like Richard, who could blame him? Is he really going to stay for dinner with us?” Her voice was still raw from the inhaled smoke, and Sandy’s beautiful gray eyes were puffy and red.

  “Probably the night, too, if I read Hazel’s hospitable tendencies properly,” Sandy said.

  “Let’s go to bed early.”

  “Sounds like an excellent idea. I love you, you know. Even with your demented brother, I still want to marry you.”

  She cocked her head to one side, looking up at him. “I won’t bother telling you anything you already know,” she murmured. “Besides, you’re no prize yourself. You may not have a loony brother but you’re a pathological liar...”

  “Jane...”

  “You’re going to have to earn it,” she said fiercely. “You took my declaration of love before I offered it, so you’re just going to have to wait until I’m ready.”

  “Jane, I’m freezing. Couldn’t you... ?”

  “No. But I can take you back and strip off your clothes and warm you up.”

  He smiled down at her, and there was nothing but heat between them. “I’ll settle for that. For now.”

  It was late when they finally got to bed. Hazel put them in an old Victorian sleigh bed up under the eaves. The mattress sagged, but the sheets were ironed, the blankets wool, and the quilts were made by hand. Jane was wearing an old flannel nightie of Hazel’s, the sleeves drooped over her wrists, the hem hit the floor and the neckline floundered around her shoulders, but it was soft and warm and much more welcome than a negligee.

  Sandy had to make do with long winter underwear. When Richard had first presented him with it he’d refused, but five minutes in the icy confines of the upstairs bedroom and he changed his mind.

  “This isn’t what I had in mind for tonight,” he said, climbing into the high bed,
his teeth chattering. “I don’t think I’ll ever get warm again.”

  “You should have stayed up with Richard and Stephen. When I left they were taking off their sweaters.”

  “There are two reasons for that,” Sandy said, pulling her into his arms and wrapping his shivering body around her. “One, they’re sitting by the wood stove hogging all the heat that doesn’t seem to get much farther than the kitchen. Number two, they’ve polished off one bottle of Scotch and they’re well into their second.”

  “They were very drunk, weren’t they?” Jane said, rubbing her face against the soft thermal cotton covering his shoulder. He still smelled faintly of smoke, despite the icy shower he’d insisted on suffering, and she felt a momentary apprehension. “They’re safe down there, aren’t they? Uncle Stephen isn’t going to murder us all in our beds?”

  “Dear old Uncle Stephen has given up. He managed to agree to our terms in writing, and there’s not much he can do about it without the whole mess coming out in the open. Whether he likes it or not he’s going to have to sell the process to a peaceful, emerging nation of Richard’s choice. He won’t make much money on it, neither will your brother, but at least it’ll be used for the good of mankind.”

  “What I particularly like,” Jane admitted, sliding her hand up under the thermal shirt, “is the mess Uncle Stephen made of his future. Here he thought he was safeguarding the company by putting it in Elinor Peabody’s hands, and she goes behind his back to the board of trustees and stages a palace coup. Uncle Stephen gets kicked up-stairs and Elinor takes over. It serves him right—he always thought the trustees were just a formality.”

  “He shouldn’t have underestimated Elinor,” Sandy said, emitting a small groan of pleasure as her hand moved across his chest underneath the shirt. “I could have told him she was a man-eater.”

  “Humph,” said Jane. “Why don’t we lie here and not talk about Elinor Peabody?”

  “Sounds good to me,” he said, moving a thick strand of her hair away from her neck and nuzzling her ear. She shivered, and he knew for a fact she wasn’t cold. “What do you want to talk about? Your godfather’s future travel plans? Around the world with his long-suffering wife?”