"I could take it to E.C.I.P. for testing this afternoon," she offered.
"No, you can't."
"It's no trouble. I'm going to Chicago to see my brother anyway."
"It's inappropriate. The victim's daughter cannot be part of the chain of custody. Any evidence in your possession could be challenged in court."
With each new development, she felt herself diminishing, her hard won identity disappearing.
"I'm not just the victim's daughter. I'm a detective in this department."
"I'm not questioning your credentials, Detective. Don't make me question your judgment. This is a very stressful time for you."
"I need to do something." The words burst from her like shrapnel.
"You can't do anything without jeopardizing the case. If not during the investigation, then in court. What you need is time to regain your perspective and deal with your personal business."
She was shaken. "You have no idea what I need."
"I think I do," Denko said. "Consider yourself on paid personal leave effective immediately."
Laura sat in her car with the engine running and the windows rolled, like a getaway driver or a suicide. Paid personal leave.
Denko might as well have locked her in a holding cell. How was she supposed to function now? What was she supposed to do? She didn't want time to deal with her personal business. She didn't want to deal with anything personal. She was better at handling concrete evidence, even actual threats, than fears and feelings. She'd concentrated on the case because she was terrified of making a mistake on an emotional level.
And that may have been her biggest mistake of all.
Despite the blast from the car's air conditioner, her face, her throat, her whole body burned. Denko was right. She wasn't helping on this case. She couldn't. A few months as a rookie detective did not make her a better investigator than Denko himself. Or even Palmer.
The truth was, she found it easier to be a cop, to think, feel, react like a cop. She was more comfortable in the role of Simon's protector than Simon's lover. As long as she made herself responsible for his safety, she didn't have to accept responsibility for his feelings. Or her own. As long as she was necessary to the investigation, she didn't have to worry what other place she could possibly hold in his life.
I need to do something.
What you need is time to regain your perspective and deal with your personal business.
She reached for her cell phone. Fine. The first order of business was to talk to her brother. Maybe then she'd be ready to tackle the larger problem of Simon.
Yeah, and maybe pigs would fly.
When Paul didn't answer at home, she punched in the work number he'd given her yesterday. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as the line rang once. Twice.
"Executive, Corporate and Industrial Protection," the operator announced flatly. "How may I direct your call?"
Shocked, Laura disconnected.
She'd made a mistake. Her heart beat wildly. She'd misdialed. She must have.
Her fingers trembled as she checked the number in her notebook and entered it again.
"Executive, Corporate and Industrial Protection," the same voice droned. "How may I direct your call?"
Oh, God. Okay.
Laura drew a deep breath. "Is Paul Swirsky there?"
The operator was going to say no. She had to say no. Because if she said yes, that would mean… Well, Laura wasn't certain what it meant, but she was sure it would be bad.
"One moment," the operator said, and then her brother's voice came on the line.
"Swirsky."
Oh, God, Laura thought. It was a plea. A prayer. God, make my brother innocent. God, keep Simon safe. Please, God, don't let me mess this up.
"Paul, it's Laura. I'm coming to see you, okay? We need to talk."
Simon slid the platinum crucibles back into the furnace. Dissolving aluminum oxide in a molten salt with the right amounts of chromium at just the right temperatures to form ruby crystals was exacting and painstaking work. It kept his mind and his hands occupied.
And if his heart occasionally demanded what the hell he was doing sulking in his lab instead of chasing Laura to Chicago, well, when had he ever listened to his heart?
In the lab, he was in control of the reactions that would produce the desired results. If A, then B. He understood the process.
Simon frowned and adjusted the temperature of the furnace. He couldn't control Laura's reactions. She wasn't logical. She wasn't predictable. Understanding her was a damn sight harder than mastering a chemical equation.
He watched the magma glowing and blazing within the pots and thought, She isn't fake, either.
The intercom on the wall hummed and popped. Quinn's voice said, "Mr. Ford? Dwayne Cooper's here from E.C.I.P. I'm going shopping now."
Recognition buzzed and bumbled at the back of Simon's brain like a fly against a window screen, not really a memory, not quite an identification. His mind playing hide-and-seek again. He brushed it away. "Thank you, Quinn."
"Do you need anything?"
Unfortunately the thing Simon wanted most Quinn couldn't pick up for him at the store. "No, thanks," he said. "I'm fine."
Laura sat on a corner of the desk in her brother's cubicle feeling like Sibyl the multiple personality wacko. She was having enough trouble handling investigating cop, suspect's daughter and victim's pseudo girlfriend without adding you-can-tell-me-anything-I'm-your-big-sister to the mix. "So, have you talked with anybody from the police yet?"
Paul looked confused, but she wasn't sure if that was because of her question or her sister act. "Why would I talk to the police?"
"Because they're investigating Dad's disappearance." And a robbery. And attempted murder. She squashed a squiggle of guilt.
"Oh. No." Paul rubbed his face with his hands. He had their mother's thin face, their dad's big hands and a really bad haircut. "Jeez, I can't believe he's gone."
Laura swallowed the lump in her throat. "Me, either," she confessed. "Kind of like pushing against a door all your life and then it opens and you fall flat on your face."
Paul laughed and then sobered. "You always resented that he liked me better than you."
Her stomach cramped. "Let's not go there, okay? I'm glad you two got along."
Paul sulked. "I didn't say that. He wasn't exactly easy to get along with."
"Would you say he had enemies?" Laura asked carefully.
"Yeah, I guess he—" Paul's gaze narrowed. "Why? What's all this about?"
She was so not supposed to go there. She wasn't only off the case, she was temporarily off the force—on enforced leave, only a prayer and a step away from suspension. But what were her options? Go back to Denko? Hey, Chief, about that investigation you ordered me to stay away from because of my personal involvement? Funny thing, but my brother works for the same security company as my old man. Yeah, they'd bust a gut laughing over that one.
She was too inexperienced. Too emotionally involved. Too close.
Simon's voice came back to her, steadying, strengthening. Maybe you're the only one close enough to see at all.
She looked into her brother's suspicious eyes and told the truth. Part of it, anyway. "The police are investigating the possibility that dad's death wasn't an accident."
"Why?"
"I can't tell you. Some of it has to do with who had access to the Lumen Corp security system and when."
Paul frowned. "I already gave my boss that list like a week ago."
Her mouth dropped open. "You did?"
"Yeah. I'm chief assistant pencil pusher and badge boy around here."
Her heart beat quicker. "Can I see it? The list?"
Paul swiveled his chair around to his computer. "My boss would kill me if he knew I was doing this."
"Mine, too," Laura muttered.
"What?"
"Never mind." She looked over his shoulder, where neat columns of names and numbers appeared on the screen. "Tell
me what I'm looking at."
"Huh? Well, the long number on the left is the access code. You can see the first four digits are the same—that's the Lumen Corp code—and then the rest identify the department and the individual card number. Each card is different. And next to that is the date the card was issued and the person it was issued to."
Laura scanned the columns, searching for omissions, deviations, discrepancies. Each card had a card holder. The passcard belonging to her father had been deactivated, but none were missing. "What's that?"
"Where?"
She pointed to the left hand column. "There's a break in the numerical sequence."
"Oh, that." For the first time Paul looked uneasy. "That's nothing."
"Why does the list skip a number like that?"
"It doesn't really matter now."
Her eyes narrowed. "Then you can tell me about it."
Paul rubbed his face with his hand again. "Okay. I guess it's too late to get in trouble about it."
"About what?"
"Dad misplaced his passcard a couple of weeks ago. The company docks you fifty bucks for a lost card, so I made him a replacement until the old one turned up." Paul shrugged. "I figured when he found the old card, I'd hang on to the new one and assign it to the next new hire. Only Lumen Corp hired another guard, so I had to enter another number into the system."
Laura's system jolted. Not that nice little prickle like static electricity that most cops recognized as a hunch, either, but a high wattage shock. This is it.
"You gave Dad an extra card."
"Yeah."
"He asked you to?"
"Yeah. Well, he agreed."
"So it was your idea?" That made more sense. She couldn't see their by-the-book father bending the rules, even to get out of a fifty-dollar fine.
"Kind of. Dwayne gave him the card."
"Who's Dwayne?"
"Just a guy. A friend. He was doing Dad a favor."
"What's his name again?"
"Dwayne. Dwayne Cooper."
"So he talked Dad into taking the card."
"I guess. He took it to him."
Her pulse jumped. Took it to him? Or stole it? But no, that didn't make sense either. The unauthorized copy wasn't used to access Simon's lab that night. Laura studied the columns as if the numbers were going to add up and tell her something. Anyway, Cooper's name was right there on the list. He had his own master passcard.
But that whine of excitement refused to die.
Unless Cooper took their father's card to pin the blame on him? Or…
"Cooper's card was issued after you made that copy for Dad," she observed.
Paul nodded. "He's filling Dad's slot at Lumen Corp."
The whine grew to a howl. "Was he working Saturday night?"
Paul tapped the keyboard and pulled up another screen. "Yeah, he was doing event security for some big shindig north of the city."
Simon's party. She thought of the cut fuel line, and her chest felt tight. "Where is he now?"
Paul shrugged. "At work, I guess."
"At the park? Or with Simon?"
"What do you mean?"
"Is Cooper assigned to personal security?"
"I can check." Another screen appeared. "Executive protection today. He's covering Simon Ford."
She was already punching Denko's number into her cell phone. "Tell your boss you're leaving early," she ordered Paul over her shoulder. "We're going to Eden."
The telephone rang and fell silent.
Simon raised his head from his notes, hoping to hear the intercom announce Laura Baker on line one. It didn't. He didn't expect it to.
Did he? The question bobbed up, ugly and unexpected as a body in the lake.
He was waiting for her to make the first move. She was the one who'd rejected him. And he'd reacted the way he always did, withdrawing to his lab like a sulky boy to his room, burying himself in his work, hoping she would … what? Come after him?
Well, yes.
Why do women always have to do all the work? She was the one who set limits on their relationship, he thought, trying to hold on to his indignation. He'd told her he had feelings for her, hadn't he? Made love to her with everything that was in him. Offered her support through a difficult time. And when she'd brushed him off, he'd said… He'd said…
Simon frowned. He'd said, Don't let me stop you. Go do what you have to do.
He was a fathead. And a coward.
While Laura worried about his danger, he'd been protecting himself all along. He hadn't done one thing to put himself at emotional risk.
And when she'd bared herself in the sunlight and offered herself to him, he'd been so keen to have her naked and in his arms that he'd accepted her easy terms. I'm available. You're interested. So what's the deal?
He flipped shut his notebook and carried it to the safe. The deal was he wanted more, wanted her shoot-from-the-hip honesty and disarming warmth across his table in the morning and in his bed at night. He wanted her to add color to his sterile walls and solitary life.
He wanted her more than she needed him. And the realization shook his confidence and scorched his pride.
So what was he going to do about it?
He slipped the notebook in beside the other painstaking recreations of his recent work. And felt a shiver of body memory, like a shadow across the back of his neck. He almost flinched. Carefully, he closed the safe, locked it and turned.
A guard in a recognizable black uniform with a vaguely familiar face stood at the entrance to the lab.
And behind him was…
"Vince?" Simon frowned. "What are you doing here?"
"I know you're worried." Even through the distortion of Laura's cell phone, Jarek Denko's voice was reassuringly calm, inflexibly cool. "But we don't know yet that there's an immediate threat."
Laura shifted her phone to her other ear and changed lanes at eighty miles an hour. Her brother Paul grabbed the armrest. "We know I can't get through to the island by phone."
"Is the number in service?" Denko asked.
Damn it. "Yes," Laura admitted reluctantly.
"Then the line hasn't been cut," the chief said reasonably.
"But he hasn't picked up."
"The last time I checked, that wasn't a crime. Ford could be working."
"He could be dead," Laura snapped.
Or Simon could have decided not to talk to her ever again after her stilted, nightstick-up-the-butt exit this morning. But she wouldn't bet his life on it.
"You said there's a security guard there with him now?" Denko asked.
Laura's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. "A guard who may have had access to the lab the last time Simon was attacked."
She whipped around a truck on the right, missing whatever Denko said next. Paul braced his feet against the floorboards. They were still five miles outside Eden. "What?"
"I said, I'll send someone out there to take a look," the chief repeated patiently. "Make sure everything's all right."
Anxiety flared in Laura's chest. "If there is a situation, a police presence could trigger a crisis."
"Or prevent one," Denko said.
"You should send somebody who has another reason to be there," Laura said. "I could go."
Say yes, say yes, say yes, she urged silently, as if the phone could beam her message directly into his brain.
"No," Denko said. "Come in and we'll talk."
Oh, God, she wanted to do it his way. To give up responsibility and go back to playing by the rules.
"There isn't time to talk. We need to do something."
"I am not calling in a tactical operations unit because your boyfriend won't answer the phone," the chief said astringently.
Despair hollowed her chest. "If you'd just talk to my brother—"
"I want to talk to your brother. Bring him in, we'll assess the threat and take whatever action is necessary."
By then, Laura thought bleakly, it would be too late. Her hands c
lenched. Her heart clenched.
She ended the call and tried to reach Simon again, punching in the numbers one-handed as her little red GT shimmied around the off ramp. Ring, ring, ring. Damn you, Simon, pick up. No answer. They shot down Old Bay Road
at fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit.
Simon wasn't her boyfriend, Laura thought, hanging grimly on to the wheel. She wasn't his girlfriend. She was a cop, and her chief had just given her a direct order to stay away from the island and come in. She was already in trouble. She couldn't afford to screw up again.
And none of that mattered a damn now.
Simon's life was on the line. She wouldn't walk away from him again. Her role as Simon's girlfriend was an act. But her feelings were real. She loved him.
Maybe Denko was right, she thought as she swerved to the curb in front of the police station. Maybe she was overreacting. But maybe she wasn't, and Simon was alone on the island with an armed guard who'd killed once and was prepared to kill again.
She jerked to a stop in front of a fire hydrant. "I need you to talk to my boss," she told Paul. "Ask for Chief Denko."
He swallowed. "Aren't you coming in with me?"
"No time."
"But what do you want me to tell him?"
"The truth." She leaned across him to open the passenger side door. "Everything. Go."
"Are you—"
She wasn't sure how much he'd picked up from her half of the phone conversation, but there was no time for explanations. "Yeah."
Paul met her gaze. For one moment he was her little brother again, looking at her with love and trust in his eyes. "Be careful," he said, and got out of the car.
Her heart was too full for speech. She peeled away from the curb, praying she wasn't already too late.
* * *
Chapter 16
« ^ »
Wrong question, Simon thought, his stomach knotting. He knew what Vince Macon was doing here. He just didn't have a clue why.
Vince smiled, his eyes hard, looking as if he'd strolled out of a shareholders' meeting, except he was wearing a golf shirt and khakis instead of a suit and tie. "You're a remarkably difficult man to discourage," he said.
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