Tessa turned at her bedroom door, expecting to say good night, but Smith pressed in. “I’m staying with you.”
“No, Smith.”
“I’m not suggesting anything untoward.” He arched his brows. “I’d like to, but what I want right now is to keep you safe.”
“Then you won’t be.” She drew herself up. “You’re an architect, not a bodyguard.”
“I’d like to think I’m not wholly ineffective.”
“You’re already injured.”
“Donny caught me by surprise. This time I’ll be watching.”
She shook her head. “I saw you die once.”
“As you see, I didn’t quite.”
A flicker of desperation caught her. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
“We’ll be ready just in case.” He went over and drew the wooden blinds, tipping the slats so he could see out, but all except the glow of the stove and two candles was blocked from outside. He went into the bathroom, checked the window lock, and closed those blinds completely.
Tessa leaned in the doorway. “No one could fit through that.”
“Donny could.”
“Well, he’s already inside.”
“Another reason I’m staying in here.”
She didn’t need reminding of Donny’s frightening penchant for invading her room, but she doubted she’d close her eyes for one moment with Smith beside her. “The thing is, I’m—”
“Attracted?” The corner of his mouth pulled.
She paced. “Suddenly you’re … all … manly and irresistible.”
“Irresistible, hmm?” He snagged her, pulled her up by the elbows and kissed her.
“That’s not helping.”
“Believe me, it is.” He brought a hunger to the next kiss that all but left her gasping.
“Smith.” She pressed her palm to his sternum. “I’m telling you my arrested development is accelerating like Bair on a straight road.”
“And I’m telling you, it’s all right.” He was laughing. “I promise.” He grabbed her up again. “More than all right. I’m ecstatic.”
“Ecstatic? This is a terrible time. I should be thinking of—”
“What, Tess? The fact that you feel this is fantastic. After years overshadowed by fear and guilt, don’t you think it’s time to live and love as the woman you are?”
She hadn’t thought of it that way. She didn’t want that monster to have one more day of her life, but as long as he was out there … “I have to finish this.”
“I know.” He sobered. “Which is why I’m in here. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
She released a slow breath. “You can’t. It gets frigid and you’re barely over pneumonia.” Now that her mind had cleared, she wanted him close. Dr. Brenner had betrayed her to the very real flesh-and-blood man who had murdered her dad and now knew that she’d spoken.
Smith pulled her close. Still sentiently aware of his masculinity, she felt like Eve with her eyes suddenly opened. Exactly how had Eve offered that fruit?
“I’ll wash up upstairs.” His gaze sharpened. “Let me back in when I knock.”
She changed into her mother’s flannel pajamas, brushed her hair, her teeth, washed her face, and stared into the mirror. Why had this happened? What had her daddy done?
Smith came back dressed in navy lounge pants and a white T-shirt. Even in college she’d never seen him so informal. He smelled of shaving cream and toothpaste, his hair stood up around his cowlick, and he slow-blinked at her through his glasses. She wanted to slip them off and feel his freshly shaved skin. His mouth had never looked so expressive, so sensual. Her heart thumped.
“Come here.”
She went to him.
“I will guard your body with my own. You’re safe with me.”
“I can’t really say the same.”
He lowered his mouth and kissed her, burying his hands in her hair. She felt the rush and pull of his heart beneath her palm and yearned for him with an aching intensity.
“Get into bed.”
She pulled aside the covers and got in. He tucked them around her, then went to the closet and pulled out a spare blanket that he wrapped around himself like a cape, blew out one candle, then the next. Her eyes were riveted as he pulled out the drafting table chair and sat down.
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry. I mastered desk sleeping at Cornell.”
“You’ll be miserable. There’s room here.”
“I’d intended that, but it’s … better this way.”
“Smith.”
“Go to sleep. Believe me, I will. I’m bushed.”
She stared at him in the glow from the stove that glinted off his teeth and the glasses he laid on the table. Then he turned the chair around, folded his arms, and rested his head. He was right. The only way she’d sleep was if he stayed there. She rolled to her side and murmured, “Good night.”
“Night, Tess.”
She said “I love you” into her pillow and closed her eyes. Physical and emotional fatigue slipped in like goblins and dragged her down. Tomorrow they’d have to dig out, decide what to do about Donny and go to the marshal, then find someplace to hide until this was over. She couldn’t think of that now. The breath seeped through her lips. Tomorrow.
“Open your eyes.” The voice was low, but she knew it. “Don’t make a sound.”
A chill spread down her spine. She looked up over her shoulder at the face she dreaded—aged but unchanged in menace. He stared back from across the room. By Smith. She shot up, gripping the covers against her, though they’d be no protection from the gun he held.
Smith’s head was down. He hadn’t moved. “What did you do to him?”
“I injected him with thiopental. I’d intended it for you, but now you’ll have to come willingly.”
“How did you get in?”
“I lifted the key from Ryan years ago. You remember when.”
Her throat constricted. Her hands felt like damp clay. All these years he’d had a key. That was almost more frightening than his being there now. “Who are you?”
“Don’t you know Uncle Ev?”
Evan Bly. The name came like a gunshot.
“Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“I have. All this time, Tessa. All you had to do was keep your mouth shut.” The glint of his eyes narrowed in the glow of the coals. “Now get up.”
She trembled, unable to leave the bed, as though he were still a nightmare that she had only to resist.
“Here’s how this looks in the morning.” His voice grew shockingly cold. “A house full of bloody corpses, or one troubled girl dead on the mountain. Your choice.”
Tears stung. Though he’d obviously rather not leave carnage for the investigators, she had no doubt he would kill them all to silence her. She pushed aside the covers and got up.
He motioned her out of the bedroom to the side door into the mudroom. “Put on the coat.”
It was her dad’s old parka. She pulled it on, choking back the sobs in her throat.
“Boots.”
She prayed no one would hear him and surprise a bullet that would start the massacre. She slipped into her rubber-soled boots, her hands shaking with the ties she tugged over the leather upper. She reached automatically for gloves.
“Good,” he murmured.
She straightened.
“After you.” He nodded toward the door.
It was unlocked still from his ingress. He had not entered through the front past Donny, and she was glad for that. She had to believe they’d be safe. He had no reason to kill anyone who hadn’t seen him.
She sank knee-deep into the drifted snow. How had she thought it would keep him out? Being an October storm, the temperature was not cruel, but it was cold enough to make her shiver. Or was that fear?
She tramped past the workshop, up the slope where she’d taken Smith the night before. A troubling thought entered. Smith had heard everything she told Dr. Brenner
, and Dr. Brenner knew it. But this one might not.
“Why did you kill my dad?”
“I didn’t.”
“You ordered it.” The fact that his hands had not drawn her dad’s blood did not mean they would not draw hers.
“Ryan made a very bad choice.” Evan ducked under a branch, casting the powdery snow into the night air, still and windless. “He betrayed me.”
The gibbous moon shone with intensity in the bitter, clear sky, reflecting off the newly fallen snow like daylight. Wending between the gangly pines, she kicked her way up the powdered slope. She reached the granite boulders heaped up like a pile of giant skulls with shadowy indentations forming sockets and mouths.
She started past, but he said, “No. Climb.”
She turned, confused.
“Up the rocks.”
So he didn’t mean to shoot her. He’d called her a troubled girl. Her breath caught jaggedly. He would make her fall. What should she do? He might not want to shoot her, but he’d pull the trigger if she forced him. She started up the crevice between the lowest boulders, gripping the snowy stone with her gloved hands, and suddenly remembered holding his. He had reached for her hand and she’d taken it, letting him walk her down the mountain after what he’d done to her dad. It sickened her.
She reached for a handhold and jolted at the cry behind her.
Donny had sprung out of the craggy shadows and knocked Evan Bly to the ground. He must have lost the gun in the snow, because he flailed with Donny’s hands around his neck. In only moments, he flung Donny aside, but Bair rushed up from behind and used his fists like iron demolition balls. Uncle Ev lay limp and bloody in the virgin snow.
“Have you something to tie him?” Bair gasped, rubbing his knuckles.
She scrambled to the ground, knelt, and all but ripped the laces from her boots. Bair rolled Evan over, oblivious to the face pressed into the snow, and bound his hands with both laces. They all three stood over him, breathing hard; then Donny dropped to his knees, thrust his hands into the drifts, and brought out the gun.
Tessa looked from one to the other, eyes shining with tears. “How—”
“Donny heard voices and saw you go out the door and up the mountain.” Bair rolled Evan to his back. “He tried to wake Smith, but—”
“The monster doped him.”
Bair nodded. “So he came to get me and we took a parallel route. Good thing the snow muted our steps. That one’s silent as a wolf.” He nodded toward Donny, who flashed his mouthful of teeth. “But I’m, well, you know.”
She rushed at him, hugged his broad chest, and clung while he patted her back with the mitts that had driven consciousness far from Evan Bly’s brain. “All right, Tessa. All right.”
She let go and hugged Donny after Bair relieved him of the gun. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t hurt him.”
She laughed. “You were perfect.”
Bair studied the gun’s mechanism and set the safety. “I’ll wait here while you call the authorities.”
Tessa nodded, elation rising as she and Donny hurried down the slope.
Smith groaned. His head spun; his stomach roiled. Lead infused his limbs. Had he relapsed?
“Smith.”
He dragged his eyelids up his blurry eyeballs. “Wha …”
“Can you hear me?” Tessa’s hand was icy on the back of his neck.
He dragged his head up from his arms, groping for his glasses.
“Here.” She put them in his hand. “Don’t fight it. You’ve been drugged. I just wanted you to know Bair’s on the mountain with Dad’s killer.”
He jolted up in the chair.
She gripped his shoulder. “It’s all right. He’s bound and Bair has his gun. We called the marshal.”
“We?”
“I called. But Donny’s the one we need to thank. He heard the monster taking me up the mountain.”
Smith groaned again. “Coffee.”
“Do you mean tea?”
“I mean wretched, black, inky coffee. My head’s a carnival ride.”
“Don’t try to get up. I’ll be right back.”
He pressed both palms to the drafting table and hung his head like a bowling ball from his aching neck. Tessa. On the mountain. With the monster and his gun. His breath came in shallow bursts. He warped in and out of consciousness until Tessa came back with a mug of coffee. He blew the steam and slurped it hot into his mouth, little by little getting it into his reluctant stomach, though he’d have preferred to infuse it directly into his veins and avoid the tastebuds.
He reached over and gripped her wrist. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I wouldn’t be if you hadn’t been here.”
He must be fuzzier than he realized. “I did nothing.”
“If he hadn’t drugged you, it would have been me. He’d have carried me out and Donny wouldn’t have heard our voices.”
Smith swallowed. “So he meant to kill you.”
She nodded. “And make it look like suicide.”
“A drug screen …”
“Maybe he’d have left the needle next to me so it looked like I put myself to sleep in the place I’d watched my dad die. Or maybe so I’d freeze to death before I woke. I don’t know.”
“He really is a monster.”
She nodded. “But we have him.”
“Bair …”
“Will need some ice for his knuckles.”
Smith’s mouth pulled up. “Thank God he was here.”
“And Donny. And you.”
He drained the last of the coffee. “Tessa—”
Donny pressed through the door. “He’s here.”
“The marshal?”
He shook his malformed head. “Dr. Brenner.”
“Where?” Tessa’s gaze shot to the window, where dawn brightened the spaces between the wooden slats.
“He’s coming to the door.”
Smith gripped her arm. “You can’t trust him.” He blinked the bleariness from his eyes.
“I know.” She turned. “Donny. Go very quietly upstairs and tell Genie what’s happening. Stay there with her.”
As Donny retreated, Smith said, “What are you doing? We might need him.” Especially if he couldn’t shake the dopey effects of the drug.
“I don’t want Genie taken by surprise.”
“We can slip out the side.”
She shook her head. “I’m facing him, Smith. The marshal’s on his way, but right now I want answers.”
The knock came on the door. Smith groaned. “Help me up.” He gripped her shoulders and pulled himself to a wobbly stance. Together they went out to the great room. He leaned against the wall beside the window as she pulled the door open only as wide as she.
“What are you doing here?” Tessa’s tone was as cold as he’d ever heard it.
Dr. Brenner squared his shoulders. “We need to talk.”
“You said I wasn’t ready.”
“That was yesterday.”
“And it’s barely today.” She squinted out at the blushing sky.
“Let us in, Tessa. Now.”
A man in a suit stepped away from the wall. “Ms. Young. Special Agent Tyson. FBI.”
CHAPTER
40
Staring at the badge he offered, Tessa felt Smith move in behind her as she pulled the door open. Dr. Brenner looked up, then back to her as he crossed the threshold. She closed the door behind them and folded her arms. “What is this?”
Agent Tyson took a quick survey of the room. “You could be in danger.”
She expelled a short laugh. “Oh, really?”
“Please sit down, Ms. Young, Mr. …”
“Chandler. Smith Chandler.” He managed not to slur, but looked as though he needed to sit.
They dropped down together on the couch. Across from them, the gray-haired agent’s stomach formed a bowl beneath his jacket when he took a seat, though the rest of him was lanky. Dr. Brenner took the other red chair, cr
ossed his leg, and folded his hands over his knee in a position she’d seen so many times.
“Dr. Brenner told me you remembered what you witnessed.” The agent spoke with a pushed-air kind of voice that sounded as though he’d lost half his vocal cords.
She didn’t understand. Dr. Brenner had blackmailed the FBI?
“I’d like to hear it from you.”
She looked from one to the other. “I saw my dad killed.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Young. But I’ve waited a long time for you to remember that.”
Almost the same words Dr. Brenner had used. She frowned. “What do you mean?”
The agent took a photo from his jacket pocket and laid it on the table. “Evan Bly. We believe he sold technological secrets sensitive to the Federal Government.”
She looked at the picture, a somewhat younger version of the man who wanted her dead. “What does that have to do with my dad?”
“Ryan Young transported the prototypes. He claimed ignorance of the contents, said he was doing a favor for a friend. Nonetheless, he would have been implicated if he had not agreed to assist us in exposing Mr. Bly.”
The betrayal that cost him his life.
“We fitted the last delivery with a tracking device to lead us to Bly’s contact. The device must have been discovered, because the package could not be traced past the point of your father’s delivery. Dr. Brenner said you were also an eyewitness to that delivery.”
“I was five years old.”
He dipped his head. “It’s not much by itself. But if we locate your father’s remains and you can describe what happened that night, that’s a solid case.”
“I don’t understand. You knew he killed my dad?”
“Your father disappeared after assisting a sting. There were suspicions.”
“Didn’t you assume it was Bly?”
“He was interrogated as a person of interest. He gave nothing up. I wanted you to identify him in a lineup, but your mother refused. Dr. Brenner concurred. They said you were too deeply traumatized.” The agent glanced at Dr. Brenner. “I know now that your mother received a threat. She believed you were in mortal danger.”
Dr. Brenner nodded. “She showed me a photograph—”
“I have it.” Tessa repressed a shudder.
Dr. Brenner’s tone softened. “When your mother passed, I brought you to Cedar Grove. I hoped to help you access the memory in a safe environment and put all this to rest. But you had encased it in an entire mythology and denied there had been a trauma.”
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