It was undisturbed—the screen door not quite latched, just as he’d left it. Switching his gun to his other hand, still aimed, he pulled the aluminum handle, held the screen with his foot and yanked his keys from the back pocket of his jeans. Key in the lock of the heavy wooden door, he turned slowly. Then he gently pushed the door with his toe, edging into the mudroom at the back of his home.
A drawer in the storage cabinet was a quarter of an inch out of place. Steaks were on the left side of the freezer instead of the right.
The kitchen faucet was turned to the right. Rick always kept it to the left.
It was the same throughout the house. A rug was slightly askew. The pull handle on a drawer in the living room was hanging down instead of facing up as he always left it. For just this purpose.
Clues to tell him that someone had invaded his space.
And there were jimmy marks on the bathroom window.
A pair of his shoes had been removed from the metal shoe tree and put back—toes straight up instead of slightly in.
But the security alarm hadn’t been triggered. Not that that meant a lot.
A professional, someone like Rick, could have dismantled the thing in any number of ways. He didn’t rely on it.
He’d had the alarm installed for much the same reason he wore his seat belt. A little extra precaution just in case.
Rick didn’t need long to check the house. Whoever had been here was gone.
There’d been nothing for them—the person or persons who’d broken in—to take.
He figured they’d accomplished exactly what they wanted—they’d told him they knew where he lived. That they could invade his space, get to him whenever they wanted. That they could run their hands over his things. Look at everything he had. He was theirs.
They’d let him know without giving him anything to report to the authorities.
He’d rather have come in to find guns pointing at him.
14
Rick was in no mood for a second visitor that day. He’d popped the top on a beer and, jigsaw puzzle in hand, was sitting down at the table in what was designed to be a formal dining room but was now just a room with a table in it. He’d almost begun to relax—as much as he ever did—when he heard tires crunching along his gravel drive.
Storing the puzzle back on the shelf of his coat closet, Rick glanced out through the living room drapes that came with the house.
He’d seen the four-door dark blue Lexus before. Parked outside Erin Morgan’s office.
And outside the sheriff’s office, too.
Lowering the hand that had been poised by the gun holstered beneath his flannel shirt, Rick debated whether or not he was going to open the door. Even while he knew he would.
He had to. The bad news was that, right now, he needed Erin Morgan far more than she needed him.
Not a position Rick Thomas ever allowed himself to be in. Not a position he could tolerate.
But there it was.
He opened the front door just as she raised her hand to knock. Quelling the butterflies in her stomach, Erin dropped her shaking hand. What was the matter with her?
She didn’t scare easily.
And after years of dealing with prisons and criminals and facing judges, she didn’t get nervous, either.
Rick Thomas was dressed almost identically to the day before, except that the red plaid shirt had been exchanged for a blue one and his jeans were newer, a little less faded. He stood there without greeting or acknowledging her.
“Can I come in?”
He hesitated and she wondered what he had to hide. What had he been doing? What was going on inside that quiet nondescript house?
The lock on the screen door clicked and she stepped back as it pushed outward. And then stepped inside.
The place smelled…sterile. No cooking odors. No coffee. No pets or room deodorizers. Looked sterile, too. White walls. No adornment. Anywhere. Not on the walls. Or tables. Hell, there wasn’t even a piece of lint on the plush beige carpet.
He led her down a small foyer to a living room that boasted a couch, a chair and a couple of matching end tables. The couches were sandy brown, microfiber. The tables solid wood stained to match. A small flat-screen television sat on a cart, made of the same wood as the tables—and that was it. No pictures or magazines. No movies on the cart. No cable or satellite box. She already knew he didn’t subscribe to a television service. And now she knew he hadn’t tapped into an existing line illegally, either.
If the television had a remote control, it was put away somewhere.
“Nice place you have here,” she said before she could stop herself. She’d die if she had to come home to this nothingness every night. It would suffocate her, deny her need for beauty. For individuality.
“Thank you.”
He hadn’t seemed to notice her sarcasm. Thank goodness. It wasn’t like her to be rude.
Whether it was the doubts that were driving her to act so out of character, or this man, she didn’t know. But she wouldn’t do it again.
He didn’t invite her to sit, so she chose the chair. Set her purse down beside her and opened the leather-bound folder that held her legal pad and the pen she’d been using since before she’d started law school.
It had been a gift from her father. Purchased online with the minimal funds he’d earned working in the prison kitchen.
“Who is Steve Miller?”
Hands in his pockets he stood over her. Erin didn’t care. She wasn’t leaving without answers.
“I cannot represent you if you’re going to keep secrets from me.” She repeated the mental conversation they’d had on her way over.
“You can rest assured that I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“Based on my assessment or yours?”
His silence wasn’t going to win this time.
“If you want me to continue representing you, it has to be based on my assessment of what I need to know.”
Still nothing.
She clipped her pen to her folder. Closed it. Picked up her purse and—
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“I’ll tell you everything you feel you need to know. Based on your assessment.”
He was staring straight at her, those dark eyes seeming to penetrate hers. His face was shadowed, like he needed to shave, but it had looked exactly the same way each time she’d seen him.
Everything about this man was dark. Shadowed.
Or was it just her? With her perceptions about her own life these days.
Was her reaction to Rick Thomas due to the fact that he was the player on the stage of her personal crisis? Or was it the man himself?
“What I need to know, first, is who is Steve Miller? And why was he willing to risk such a large amount of money to get you out of jail?”
Rick turned away. Walked over to the window. But rather than standing right in front of it, gazing out, as she would have done—as most people would have—he stood to the side, peering through the small space left between the edge of the drape and the wall behind it.
She waited. She was curious. And…more.
The man had the nicest backside. Tight. Perfectly shaped. Not too flat. Not too round.
Her eyes rose to his shoulders. She wanted to ease their burden.
Erin straightened. Where the hell had that thought come from?
For that matter, who’d put the other ones there? Erin didn’t go around looking at men’s asses. And if she happened to notice one, she glanced away. Quickly.
It was a butt. Everyone had one.
Everyone had shoulders, too.
When Rick turned, the resolute expression on his face caught her attention. Her stomach tensed. He sat on the end of the couch closest to her. Sat as though he owned the couch, which presumably he did. But not like most people sat on their own furniture. Not as though he was comfortable sitting there. More like he was the boss.
Of it.
Of hi
s space?
Of her?
“What I am about to tell you has to be held in the strictest confidence.” His words elicited a sharp jump in her heart rate. She nodded.
“I mean that. If you are not prepared to uphold client-attorney confidentiality, regardless of pressure, in all matters pertaining to me, then you know where the door is.”
Erin didn’t move. “Look, Rick, it’s clear that you have trust issues. And I don’t blame you. If, as you say, you didn’t kill Charles Cook, then you have reason to be suspicious of everyone. But it also seems clear that you need someone on your side.”
His hard stare could have unnerved her. It didn’t. It made her want to help him.
“You can trust me.”
“Steve Miller did not choose to pay my bail. I paid it. I am the trustee for that account with all rights and privileges. I am entitled to spend that money however I see fit.”
Her blood ran cold. She couldn’t do anything about what he was telling her. They’d just established that. No one could touch him based on any information given by her. Even if he was guilty of criminal activity—if he’d stolen from this account.
But…
“You spent someone else’s money without his knowledge?”
He frowned. And seemed to consider what she’d said. What was he doing? Concocting some story that would appease her now? Wasn’t that what all criminals did? Went from one lie to another to cover their tracks?
But then, he hadn’t lied to her yet, not technically. At least, not that she knew of. “You want me to trust you,” she said, “but you keep too many secrets.”
“Such as?”
“You didn’t tell me your brother died, for one.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I came across a newspaper article. It says your brother was a passenger in the truck when your father was killed.”
“That’s right. But that has nothing to do with Cook’s murder.”
“I disagree. It’s an incident that had to affect you in some elemental way. I’m representing you, Rick. I have to know all about you to do that.”
When he said nothing, Erin pushed.
“Your father had been drinking.”
“Yes.”
“A lot.”
“Yes.”
“You were the one who found them.”
“They were yards from our house.”
“That must’ve been hard. To lose your whole family at once. You were so young to be all alone in the world.”
Was that why she was defending him? Because she felt sorry for him?
Or was it because Johnson and his people had yet to come up with enough evidence to prove to her that she couldn’t win?
Her client shrugged. If she’d hoped to evoke any show of emotion, she’d failed.
“Who’s Steve Miller?”
“A…friend.”
“Why are you the trustee for his money?”
“Because he can’t manage it himself.”
“Why not?”
Rick’s chin stiffened, as though he was gritting his teeth. She didn’t think he was, though. No, a guy like Rick would just will his chin to be solid and firm and intimidating.
“Is Steve Miller alive?”
“Yes.”
“How old is he?”
“Thirty-nine.”
She could play this game all night.
“Have you known him long?” she asked.
“Most of my life. We grew up in the same neighborhood outside Chicago.” Whoa. Two pieces of information. She was making progress.
“What does he do for a living?”
“Nothing. He’s independently wealthy.”
“How did he come by his wealth?”
“It was given to him.”
“He inherited it?”
“You could say that.”
“Uh-uh, Mr. Thomas. I could say anything. But I’m asking for the facts. Did someone die and leave Mr. Thomas that money?”
“No.”
“So how’d he come by it?”
He sat forward, rubbing his hands together. Seeming almost…vulnerable. Odd. That had to be pure fantasy on her part.
When he looked at her, his head was still lowered. “In strictest confidence.”
“Of course. I give you my word. I would go to jail before I betrayed the trust of a client.” Because either way, jail or not, her life would be done. If she betrayed a client’s trust, she would lose her job. And defending people—people who deserved it—was the only life she could imagine.
That thought came out of the blue.
And it was completely true.
She’d known that about herself once.
How had she lost that piece of self-knowledge along the way?
“I gave it to him.”
She wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “What?”
Rick Thomas looked her straight in the eye.
“I said I gave it to him.”
15
Rick had felt less trapped with his hands and feet tied together and his body in between two blocks of cement with cranes pushing in on both sides. Enemies of a gunrunner he, as Tom, had befriended five years before had left him for dead. He’d thought those sixteen-foot-tall blocks were going to crush him before he managed to use their leverage—to push against them with his elbows and shimmy to the top.
The two men who’d put him, bound and gagged, between two pieces of moving concrete had been surprised, later on, when they’d found themselves on the wrong end of Rick’s gun.
“You gave a friend more than a million dollars?”
More like ten million, actually. She was obviously guessing based on the amount of his bail.
“Yes.”
“Where’d you get the money?”
“I worked damned hard.”
“Enough to make that much money?”
“I invested some of it. My portfolio is in a safety-deposit box in Ludington, if you want to check it out.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Why not? She wanted to know every other damn thing about him.
He’d want to know just as much about Erin Morgan if he was in her position.
“But…why would you give so much money to a friend?”
“He needs it more than I do.”
“Why?”
In fifteen years of undercover work, Steve had never once been put in a position of vulnerability.
And now this.
Because Rick had had to get his ass out of jail in order to save his own life. If he’d known it would come to this, he’d have stayed in jail.
At least then Steve wouldn’t even be a possible factor.
He’d gotten soft. Made a mistake.
And mistakes got people killed.
Rick assessed the woman sitting in his living room. The only woman who’d been there since he’d purchased the place the year before.
The consummate professional, she was everything he was not. Classy. Refined. Protected.
She probably ate balanced meals off real china. And had four servings of vegetables every day.
And, like him, she was smart enough to figure out more than most people did.
She was also beautiful. A problem he didn’t need.
He was going to have to take care of this himself. Find out who wanted him, what they wanted—and give it to them.
“Steve Miller is a permanent resident of Lakeside Family Care in Ludington.” The words burned Rick’s throat. But he had to have an ear in the legal system. And keep Steve out of it. “He fell when we were young. He’s mentally challenged.”
“Fell? How? From where?”
Were you involved? Was there trouble?
He could almost read her mind. After all, why would Rick hand over so much of his money to a nonfamily member if he weren’t somehow to blame?
“He fell from a roof.”
“Were you there?”
“Yes. And no, I didn’t push him.”
Her eyes widened. “I never thought you did.”
He believed her. Had misjudged her. Rick didn’t like that.
She hadn’t written anything in that notebook of hers yet.
“You said, during our first meeting, that you spend a lot of time in Ludington. Is that where you go? Lakeside?”
“Sometimes.” Enough was enough. “Mostly I fish.”
“Even in the winter?”
“Even in the winter. Ever hear of ice fishing?”
She couldn’t have lived in the area long and not known about it.
“Charles Cook purchased a nine millimeter less than a month ago,” she said.
Rick settled into the couch. The strap of his holster felt reassuring against his back. “Not a hunting pistol.”
“Nope.”
“Did he come by it legally?” He’d seen no record of a gun license, although that could be the result of less-than-pristine paperwork. Or time. “No.”
“He was afraid of something. Or someone.”
“That would seem to be the case.”
“We have to find out who. Or what.”
“My guy’s on it as we speak.” She glanced around. “How do you stand this quiet?”
Not a question he’d been expecting.
“I’d be interested to learn your assessment of that information. Is it something you need to know?”
She grinned. And Rick felt an answering twinge of desire beneath the fly of his pants. One he immediately ignored and extinguished with the mental control that served him well.
“I don’t need to know,” Erin said. “I just wondered.”
“I like quiet,” Rick told her. Noise around him camouflaged what might be going on. The approach of death was often stealthy, secretive, so the quieter his surroundings, the better.
“I have a house on the lake,” she said, although he hadn’t asked. He didn’t particularly want that personal picture of her to carry around in his head. The image could do nothing but distract him.
And Rick couldn’t afford distractions. Maybe last week. Certainly not this week.
“I can hear the waves from every room,” she was saying.
Repetitive noise camouflaged sound.
Which made her easy prey for anyone who wanted to get into her home. To sneak up on her without her ever knowing she wasn’t alone.
The Third Secret Page 11