by Addison Fox
Distance from the Frederickson case was essential to solving it.
With that, he laid a hand on top of Landry’s and squeezed. He pressed his lips to the shell of her ear, pleased when a light quiver hitched her breath. “I am fine.”
She nodded. Her mouth opened, then closed again on whatever it was she wanted to say. His gaze searched hers, but she’d shuttered her emotions along with her lips.
Serves you right, Winchester.
Kathleen bustled out of the kitchen, a large cake held up as she navigated the pathway from the back door through the patio. The men leaped up at once but Noah was closest and took the cake from her hands.
Derek used the moment to once again observe Noah.
The man was comfortable here, that was obvious. His quick grin and wink for Kathleen—and her corresponding blush—as he transferred her masterpiece was easy and comfortable. His conversation earlier around the grill was relaxed and carefree.
The man belonged here.
Whether he really was a cousin to the Adairs or their lost half brother remained to be seen, but he was family. Derek could only hope that bond was strong enough to withstand whatever he and Landry discovered.
Noah whispered something in Kathleen’s ear that caused a giggle before she swatted at his shoulder. “You’re a tease, young man.”
Noah sneaked a finger-full of cream cheese frosting from the base of the cake and popped it into his mouth. “And proud of it.”
With the cake cut and distributed, everyone returned to their chairs. Whit had insisted Kathleen join them, but she’d made several excuses and vanished back to the kitchen.
Patsy Adair’s lingering influence, no doubt.
Derek let the other impressions come as they would, the relaxed, semifugue state a good way to see if anything new popped. Sometimes the most important things came into clarity when you stopped looking so hard.
Before they sat down to dinner, Landry had whispered her thoughts about Noah and Rachel. Using her observations as a guide, he focused on the two of them. They’d naturally paired off on their side of the table after everyone else took their seats.
Seating arrangements didn’t necessarily mean attraction or a relationship, but it did reinforce how natural the two of them looked together.
Could they use that to their advantage?
Rachel knew why Derek was at Adair Acres and the suspicions about Noah’s parentage. She could add her observations to the whole and maybe get additional details from Noah about his background and his formative years with his mother in Europe.
“I thought about something earlier.” Landry pushed aside her now-empty dessert plate with a pointed stare before she shot him a wink. “How long was our old stable manager gone before Noah took over?”
“A good year at least. I was spending a lot of time in San Diego but I seem to remember Mom mentioning something about how hard it was to find good help.” At the realization of what he said, Whit winced and turned toward Noah. “Sorry.”
“No offense.” Noah’s smile was congenial enough. “Not when considering the source.”
“You know—” Carson let the thought hang there as he swirled his snifter glass. “Mom’s ignorance might have had another implication. How many people did flow through the stable after Warren retired?”
Whit shrugged. “At least four or five different people. Probably twice that if you add in the usual turnover in support team.”
“That many people with access, codes and keys?” Derek picked up on the conversation and filed away a note to himself to check employment records later on his FBI log-in. “That leaves a lot of people with information on how to get on the property. Do you change security codes every time you have turnover here at the ranch?”
“No.” Whit shook his head. “We never had a reason to in the past.”
“Clearly we have a reason now.” Carson muttered the words before he laid his hand over Georgia’s.
Derek knew the Adair children were grown adults, but something in Whit’s comment stuck with him. Reginald and Patsy had created a cocoon here at the ranch. An environment ruled by wealth and privilege. Despite its obvious dysfunction, the ranch concealed another problem: isolation.
The pristine paradise had kept everyone who lived there separate. And in its seclusion, it had made them all sitting ducks.
* * *
Mark scanned his email, surprised when he saw nothing from Derek. He supposed he should be grateful for a few days’ breathing room but the sudden lack of communication was as unsettling as it was welcome.
The ball game blared from the TV behind him as he popped open another beer. He knew Derek cared about the Frederickson case. Hell, the bastard had lived and breathed the case like it was oxygen. And now he just abandons it?
Mark took another large swallow of beer and willed the nausea in his stomach to recede.
Derek had been bothering him for months now, and when things finally get moving the jerk goes radio silent.
He reread the fake letter he’d run through the lab. Just his luck, the inconclusive missive caught the attention of a lab assistant who laddered it up to the big boss. What he’d intended to use to simply keep Derek off balance and engaged in the case had turned on him. Their section chief was even questioning if Derek should be taken off leave and brought back in to finish things up.
He needed to get Derek involved again, and then he needed to end this.
Maybe it was just the natural course of things. He had Rena and her supposed kidnapper. Keeping them both holed up was growing tedious, but he’d come this far. There was no way he was letting it all fall apart now.
It was funny, Mark reflected, how the case of Derek’s life would be his ultimate demise.
The bastard’s interest in Rena Frederickson had been evident from the jump, his attention fully focused on her photo the moment it hit their desks. The poor little kid who looked like one of those sickly orphans you saw in those commercials that begged for a few cents a day to save them.
Derek had taken one look at the kid and had practically fallen on his sword to help her. Late nights. Weekends. Extra lab work and reports as he dug into her disappearance.
He’d gone along at first. The lost kid had become something of a pet project for the office, and his star could only rise by working on it. The mayor of Los Angeles had held her up as what was wrong with criminals and what needed to be stopped in his fair city.
And the big muckety-mucks at the Bureau had seen saving Rena Frederickson as their chance to cozy up to the mayor so he’d buy into their latest terrorism task force requests.
Politics. Life was all about it. And getting what you wanted, which was really what politics was when you stripped away the supposed layers of do-gooding and rhetoric, was his end game.
Derek never understood that. All he wanted was to save the kid. And it was his desire to be a freaking hero that had finally given Mark the in he needed to make Sarah his own.
Sarah.
He thought about her sweet body and lush mouth. She’d be his at the end of it all. She’d already let him know she was interested. Once he proved to the world that Derek was hiding behind a do-gooder attitude and had killed Rena’s supposed kidnapper in cold blood, Sarah would be fully his.
No more questions that maybe she’d been too hasty. Or hadn’t given Derek enough leeway. Nope. She’d see him for the monster he was.
Or, more to the point, the monster Mark was crafting him to be.
Sarah’s sweet face faded from his mind’s eye as Landry Adair’s sexy lips and high cheekbones took its place. Damn, but she was a looker.
It was a real shame she was likely to get caught in the cross fire, but it couldn’t be helped. The little present inside the Adair stables clearly hadn’t done its job, but he’d thought of a few
other diversions, the first of which was set to go off tonight.
With one last swallow of his beer, he got up to go to the fridge and snag another cool one. It was going to be a late night as he worked through the logistics for his next trip down to Adair Acres.
* * *
“You need to play this one straight with me.” Carson Adair closed the door to the security room with a light click.
Derek pressed Pause on the computer terminal where he’d toggled back and forth between imagery for the past hour and turned to face Landry’s brother. The mild-mannered, jovial dinner companion of earlier was gone. In his place was the former marine lieutenant, straight as an arrow and at full attention.
“I promised you from the start I wouldn’t keep you in the dark.”
“What happened this morning down in the stables? Landry can gloss over it like it was no big deal, but do me a solid and tell me the truth.”
“Someone left your sister a rather nasty message. A rattler inside Pete’s feed bin along with the bag he was smuggled inside in.”
“What if it was left for you?”
“Me?” Derek bobbled the bottled water he’d lifted to his lips. “No one knows I’m here.”
“Don’t fool yourself. There are eyes and ears everywhere at this place. People know.”
“So take me through it. Who would use the off chance that I might be visiting the stables as a way to harm me? And further, that I’d suddenly engage in managing the animal’s feeding schedule?”
Carson took a deep breath before dragging his hand over his military-short hair. His bravado noticeably faded before he crossed to a chair behind one of the room’s four computer terminals. “She’s my sister. I’m supposed to protect her.”
“So am I.”
The urge to continue—to define what Landry meant to him—was strong but Derek held back. If he couldn’t explain it to himself, he’d be damned if he was going to try to define it to her brother.
“You see anything on the recordings?”
“Shadows, but nothing more concrete. You appear to have a ghost.”
Carson leaned forward, the bright blue eyes so like his sister’s backlit with curiosity. “Take me through it.”
Derek spent the next half hour walking Carson through all he’d found. The various images from around the grounds. The perimeter cameras on the front gates. Even the cameras they had throughout the stables. All appeared undisturbed, yet there were swaths of time he couldn’t account for on the time stamps.
“Here and here.” Derek hit Pause, then toggled backward frame by frame. “You have a quick jump in time, then that small shadow on the screen like something’s been covered over or blacked out.”
“Hell.” Carson leaned closer, his finger sweeping over the screen. “Right there.”
“Yep. Looks like it was around three this morning, best as I can tell.”
“Nothing matches on the front cameras?”
“Not at all. I’ve been through the footage several times and can’t see anything that looks unusual or has been tampered with.”
“Do you think we’re dealing with someone already here on the grounds?”
Derek had wondered the same and had kept a mental list since arriving at the ranch. Despite questions, he’d yet to see anyone who seemed suspicious or even overtly strange. “Everyone appears to love the family. And please don’t take this the wrong way, but the staff seems positively giddy with your mother out of sight.”
Carson grinned at that—his first since walking into the room. “My mother is a tyrant on the best of days.”
“Do you think she killed your father?”
Derek let the question roll, curious to see Carson’s reaction. The man had walked in loaded for bear—Derek figured he might as well use the cruddy mood to his advantage. When he got a short laugh and an exaggerated eye roll instead he had to reconsider his tactics.
“You’d get a different answer if you asked Whit. Especially since it’s his wife my mother did actually go after. But no, I don’t think she killed my father.” Carson held up a hand. “Don’t get me wrong, she’s got the chops for attempted murder as Elizabeth can well tell you, but she didn’t have it in her for my father.”
“That’s an awfully big leap. From a possible scenario of playing the scorned wife, ready to take down the mistress and not the husband, too?”
Carson shrugged. “The best I can tell you, it’s not my mother. She and my father had a loveless existence, but it was founded on great love. Hers far more so than his.”
“Sounds like you, Landry and Whit have spent your lives paying for it.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” The congenial light fled Carson’s eyes, replaced with something more somber and solemn. “I’d like to think we’ve learned from their mistakes and are bound and determined not to repeat them.”
Cycles were tough to break—Derek had seen that proven true in the course of his job more often than not—but he had to admit that if anyone was capable of breaking out, it was the Adair children. Both Whit and Carson had found strong women to share their lives with. And Landry—
He stopped short, his thoughts drifting to the memory of her hand in his, their fingers linked.
She would definitely break the cycle, of that he had no doubt. She was a bright, vibrant woman, beautiful inside and out. Any man would be lucky to have her. To make a life and build a family with her.
“Why don’t I let you get back to it, then.” Carson stood and extended his hand. Derek appreciated the gesture and took the proverbial olive branch, satisfied he and Carson Adair had crossed some sort of unspoken chasm.
After Carson left, Derek allowed his gaze to drift back to the computer screen. A dark shadow still smudged the center of the image, proof someone had been in the stables and then erased the evidence. A nameless, faceless threat, determined to bring irreparable harm to Landry and all she held dear.
He’d protect her. He knew that with a bone-deep conviction that he didn’t question. But recognizing that he’d need to walk away from her when this was all over?
His phone buzzed in his pocket, shattering the morass of thoughts. With a glance at the readout, his responsibilities came crashing back. Responsibilities he’d taken on before Landry Adair came into his life and responsibilities that would be there long after he left her.
He slid his finger along the glass. “Mark? What’s going on?”
* * *
Landry paced her bedroom, the roller coaster of the day weighing heavy on her mind. Although the danger that started the day was vastly different from the danger that ended it, she had no illusions of just how much trouble she was in.
Death threats were one thing, but a man who managed to get under a woman’s defenses and strip her bare was something else entirely.
Damn it, how had he managed to do it?
Derek Winchester was hell on a woman’s good sense.
He’d said he was going to spend another couple of hours in the security center before heading to bed. It had been a couple of hours and she hadn’t stopped thinking of him since.
Should she go?
Should she stay?
She glanced at the clock, the readout ensuring it was too late to suddenly arrive in the security room as a curious observer. No, a woman who went hunting for a man this late at night had one thing on her mind.
When her body responded in a wave of tingles that centered at her core, she knew the late-night jaunt through the ranch had better be something she was prepared to see all the way through. Not because Derek would expect it, but because she did.
No, she mused. He wouldn’t expect anything at all. Derek Winchester was 100 percent gentleman.
The light knock on her door broke into her thoughts, but it was the whispered “Landry” that had her h
eart beating double time.
“Derek.” She opened the door, delight quickly turning to concern as she ushered him in. “What’s wrong?”
Lines carved hard grooves into his lean cheeks and she wrapped an arm around his as she walked him toward her small sitting room. “What happened?”
“Rena.”
A hard chill gripped her at that single word. A woman’s name. How could she have been so stupid?
They hadn’t discussed their pasts or their relationships. He’d mentioned someone named Sarah at the Farmers Market and spoke of her as though she was a part of his past, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone else.
Someone who even now waited for him to come home to her.
A hard metallic taste swam in her mouth, nausea threatening the contents of her stomach. She’d allowed her imagination to make something out of nothing.
Forcing a calm she didn’t feel, she gestured him toward her sitting area. “What’s happened?”
“Rena’s—” He scrubbed at his face, his dark eyes going even darker with the tinted circles beneath them. “She’s my case. Or was my case. My last one before I had to take a leave of absence.”
Unease whipped through her like a summer storm. Here he was, genuinely in pain, and she was too busy working up a good old-fashioned date with the green-eyed monster. Settling them both on the couch, she worked on coaxing the story out of him. “Tell me about her.”
“She’s young. Just fourteen.”
Derek’s words struck like freezing rain, and her guilt only grew deeper. Fourteen years old? And part of an FBI case?
She still remembered fourteen. The carefree days, even with an often-unsettled home life. Time split between the mansion in San Diego and Adair Acres, pulled back and forth like a pawn in the demise of a marriage. Despite the frustration of living under the rule of Reginald and Patsy Adair, she’d been safe. Protected. She’d known it then and understood it now.
“After I left the Secret Service, your aunt helped me find my way into the Bureau. Missing persons.”
“That must be difficult work.” They had spoken briefly about his job on their ride to the fund-raiser in San Diego, but he’d limited his comments and she hadn’t probed. “Rewarding, but difficult.”