Eoin peered up at the rain running down the windshield, started to say something, thought better of it. He sighed and followed him out.
Liam gave himself the grim mental lecture while they unloaded. Pursuing a woman like Nancy D’Onofrio would be a waste of time. He didn’t want a citified, high-strung workaholic for a lover. He’d thought long and hard about what he needed in a woman. No, a wife. Enough dicking around. He wanted someone in line with his lifestyle. He didn’t need to look further than his own parents to see what happened when you messed with that rule.
His mother’s cherished dream had been for a big, noisy family, but his father had been driven by ambition. He’d had no time to spend with Liam, was never there for meals, was always gone for holidays.
Liam’s mother had begged, schemed, and nagged for years until she realized that he would never change. She’d made him leave at last, keeping Liam with her. He hadn’t seen his father since that day. Not that he’d seen that much of him before. He’d been eleven years old.
His mother eventually did find the kind of man she wanted, but Liam never forgot her disappointment. He’d taken the lesson to heart. When it came time, he knew what to look for. He was a settled person. Ambitious, in his own small way, but he liked living in the country, running his business, keeping his own hours. He liked playing seisìun in Irish pubs with his fiddle and flutes, downing a few pints with his friends now and then. Growing his garden, tending his orchard of walnuts and apples. Someday he’d like to buy a couple of horses, when he could afford a bigger piece of land and had kids to ride them. He’d like to build his own house on that land. A big, comfortable, rambling place. Full of kids, noise, color. Life.
He’d thought a lot about the woman who would fit into his perfect life. She didn’t have to be a raving beauty. He wasn’t hung up on that. It was more important that she be kind and good-natured. Maternal and craftsy. That she like cooking, canning. Baking her own bread.
But his balls didn’t give a damn about his long-term contentment. They wanted what they wanted, and they wanted that slim, spicy ninja girl with those big, mysterious eyes behind her trendy glasses and the ridiculous high-heeled, pointy-toed boots on her tiny feet.
No way did Nancy D’Onofrio know how to make bread. He’d be surprised if she could boil an egg. Her type lived on carrot sticks and sushi. The result was nice, though. He liked how her back was so straight, head high, chin up. He liked the jut of her shoulder blades, the smart way her short jacket fit. The delicate shape of her upper lip, the lush swell of the lower. He wanted to smooth away the anxious crease between her brows. Those shadowy hazel eyes were full of sadness. Secrets.
Problems. Sadness, shadows, secrets, those equal problems. The voice of reason shouted at him from a distance, but he was too lost in his fantasy to listen. She could use more flesh on her bones. He would love to see ten more pounds on her.
Crash. Thud. He’d knocked over flower arrangements with his boot. Bruised white lilies scattered across the floorboards. He laid his boxes on the pile that was forming in the middle of the floor, gathered the flower heads up, and threw them away. The sweet, heavy smell of lilies reminded him of Mom’s funeral.
It didn’t matter how alluring Nancy D’Onofrio was. By her own mother’s admission, she was a compulsive workaholic. Genetically engineered to make him angry and miserable. But his gonads weren’t thinking about the lecture. They were too busy thinking about her ass in that tight skirt. The tits were nice, too. Small, but with a personality all their own. Nipples that poked audaciously through the fabric of her dress. No bra. Wow.
Aw, Christ, enough. He was thirty-seven years old, and he still hadn’t found his mellow earth mother. He was looking around, in a relaxed sort of way, hoping destiny would kick in. He didn’t want to force it, but time was wasting, if he wanted a big family. And he did not have the energy for a casual affair. He hated the flat, dull feeling when one of those scratch-the-itch flings had to end. Too fucking depressing.
The morning passed, in grim, sweaty, wordless silence. Two trips, back and forth to Latham, loading and unloading. It was late afternoon by the time they were through, and when they got back to his place, they were exhausted and ravenous, having skipped lunch.
He put on a kettle to make a pot of tea for himself and Eoin, who boarded in his basement. Eoin got busy cooking some hamburgers, or so it seemed. Charred as they were, it was hard to tell, but the sliced tomatoes, ketchup, cheese, and bread on the table were all clues. Liam lunged for the gas and turned it off. “Making lunch?”
“I made one for you, too, if you fancy it,” Eoin said timidly.
“Keep the flame a bit lower,” Liam advised.
Eoin’s freckled face flushed. “Sorry.”
“Speaking of stoves, I found you a secondhand electric range. After we eat, maybe you can help me haul it down into the basement.”
“Great,” Eoin said. “Now I can make myself a cup of tea without bothering you.”
Liam grunted. “It was never any bother.”
“Thanks anyway,” Eoin said earnestly. “For the place, the work, the stove.” He laid the shriveled burgers on the table. “Are you going to the seisìun at Malloy’s on Saturday night?”
“I might. You keen to go?”
“God, yes,” Eoin said. “I’ve been working on that new tune of yours all week. I want to try it out with the lads.”
“Fine, then. Malloy’s on Saturday,” Liam promised.
Malloy’s was a good seisìun, from ten until two Saturday night in an Irish pub in Queens. A motley but talented group of regulars got together every week to mainline Irish tunes. Liam almost always went with his fiddle and flutes, unless he was too worn out from work, but young Eoin was religious in his zeal. And he was damn good on his Uilleann pipes. Liam had never heard anyone better. The kid should go pro.
But people had to work, so the tunes and the Guinness had to wait. Which reminded him that Saturday followed Friday, the day he was starting work on the D’Onofrio house. He would see her tomorrow.
Maybe he would go early and help her. He could lift boxes for her. Wrap dishes in newspapers. Eoin could come later. Excitement swelled at the idea of being alone with her.
“Are you okay? You look a bit off,” Eoin said.
Liam swallowed with difficulty. “Nah, just remembering something that I have to do. Ready to haul that stove down?”
“Sure thing,” Eoin agreed.
Liam kept himself busy, hooking up the stove in Eoin’s lair, washing up the kitchen, sweeping debris out of the bed of the truck. Cleaning rain gutters. Soaping the squeaky bottoms of his underwear drawer.
That was what clued him into the stark truth. He sat there on his bed, the drawer on his lap, his underwear scattered around himself, and contemplated it.
He was so fucked.
Beep. Beep. Beep. John Esposito rolled over on the couch and punched the button to silence the alarm. Yes, fuck you very much, it was five to midnight, and the big guy was about to check in. He’d set the alarm to be sure he was alert. He had to be razor sharp to deal with Haupt.
Truth was, he almost never slept when he was on the job. He didn’t miss it, either. Stalkings, interrogations, punishments, executions, they stoked him like petroleum fuel. He loved his work. When the gig was over and the fee was safely tucked into his offshore account, he slept two weeks straight.
He peered out the window, across the street. A glance at the monitors of the vidcams he’d installed the other day while the Countess was gasping her last on her living room floor confirmed that nothing was happening in the empty house. Eight vidcams. Living room, kitchen, bathrooms, basement, and three upstairs bedrooms.
He stood up, stretched out his shoulders. Any second, Haupt would call. John knew very little about the man. Only that he paid well, and that job failure would be very dangerous for John’s health. John could live with that. He held himself to high professional standards. That was why he charged the big bucks.
/> The terms of this job were complicated. Not a cut-and-dried hit. John preferred to have half up front, but Haupt had only given him a third, plus expenses. The rest of his fee was contingent upon a successful outcome, but the promised sum was so large, he’d decided it was worth it. He hadn’t factored in what a pain in the ass Haupt was going to be. It was worse than dealing with his own mother.
His employer had been unimpressed with John for letting the Countess slip away, but was it his fault the old bitch croaked on him before he questioned her? Was that a reflection on his professionalism? In his line of work, he’d never bothered to learn CPR. Wily old hag. He wanted to punish her. Women did not thwart him, ever.
His only consolations were the Countess’s three extremely fuck-able daughters. He couldn’t decide which one he liked the best. They might try to thwart him, too, in the course of this job, if he was lucky.
And if they did, oh, man. He was so very ready for them.
He’d video-streamed a segment of last night’s drunken henfest in the kitchen to Haupt, but the humorless had prick been unamused. All that had interested the boss last night had been the jeweled pendants.
The three identical letters that John had taken from the Contessa’s house made cryptic references to some necklaces, but had offered no clear explanation. John had studied every piece of jewelry he had taken from Lucia D’Onofrio’s bureau, to no avail. None of it relevant to the fucking letter. He’d had the stuff delivered by courier to Haupt, but the old bastard hadn’t made any more sense of the jewelry than he had.
It seemed logical that this new delivery of pendants was significant. Goddamn letter, full of cryptic clues designed to annoy the shit out of a straightforward professional. “Music will open the door.” What the fuck did that mean? “It’s up to you three to decipher the key together,” the stupid hag had written. “Consider beauty, faith, and knowledge, and above all, love—the key to all secrets worth knowing.”
Fucking drivel. Beauty, faith, knowledge, and love? Not his field of expertise. He’d faxed the thing to his employer, who had been unable to make anything of it, either. But John hadn’t exhausted all possibilities yet. Given incentive, the daughters could probably figure out their batty old mother’s letter. And he had all the incentive necessary in the black plastic box under the bed.
Crafty bitch. Fucking with him from the grave. He flexed his knuckles. He wanted to wrap them around her stringy old neck and squeeze. But her daughters’ necks were velvety soft, he reminded himself. He could punish Lucia through them and have a juicy old time doing it. He took the cell in hand. His internal stopwatch had warned him that the time had come. Five till midnight—four…three…two…one…Beeep. Right on cue. John punched “talk.” “Yes?”
“What do you have to report?” came the soft, accented voice. “Something more interesting than weeping, bingeing females, I trust?”
John meditated for half a second upon the number of zeros that would be printed on his final bank draft. “Only that there’s a carpenter crew coming tomorrow morning to start renovating the place.”
“Renovating? Now?” The usually soft, dead-calm voice on the other end of the line rose in pitch to a gratifying squeak. “Did you search again?”
“As requested. I went through the place after the carpenters—”
“What? Carpenters? You mean they have already begun?”
“They unloaded their supplies,” John said. “Tomorrow they start.”
“Did you get the paperwork on the pendants, at least?”
At least? What was this “at least” shit? As if he’d failed? Asshole.
“Of course,” John said, his voice flat. “I found the delivery slip with the jeweler’s store address. I also found his home address.”
“And?” The German waited.
“Ah…and what? It was past business hours, and the guy was probably eating dinner, or fucking his mistress, so I figured I’d wait—”
“Wait? For what? For the carpenter’s crew to rip the house apart and find what you are unable to find? What then, John? What then?”
John’s mouth worked. The asshole went on before he could reply.
“Assume that the pendants are part of the Contessa’s puzzle. The daughters know nothing. The Contessa is dead, thanks to you—”
“I did not kill her!” John protested. “I just started to—”
“The only person who could conceivably know more is the jeweler,” the German said. And? So?
John blew a breath out flared nostrils. “All right. Tomorrow I’ll—”
“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”
“You mean…now? But it’s past midnight, and I—”
“I know exactly what time it is. Past midnight is an ideal time for an interrogation. It’s an ideal time for many things. As you know, John.”
John reordered his mind around this new imperative. “You are implying an, ah…ultimate solution?”
The man sighed, as if John was being tiresome. “When you were recommended, I was told that I would not have to micromanage.”
John ground his teeth. “I will take care of it.”
“I do not want that crew in that house until we know more.”
A muscle twitched in John’s cheek. “I can’t stop it without making a mess,” he said. “I could arrange an accident for the carpenter…?”
“No. No more bodies unless it is necessary. A break-in, some vandalism. Delay the work. Search again, not that I hold up much hope after your failure so far.”
“Yes,” John said tightly after a pause.
“Very well, then. Until tomorrow.”
The connection broke. John laid the phone down. Back to work.
He dragged his black plastic box out from under the bed. It was full of curiosities that he’d acquired over the years, devices he’d made and adapted himself, even some original antiques. He selected some tried-and-true favorites and loaded his kit bag. The thought of the job ahead, his knives and picks, the jeweler screaming, begging…ah. He needed something to kick him up. But first, the bitch Contessa’s house.
He selected the lock drill. Even if the contents of the house were inanimate, smashing them would feel good.
It was a precursor of warmer, softer, juicier things to come.
Chapter
3
Nancy took a bracing gulp of her coffee, finished typing the latest edits into Peter’s CD liner notes in her laptop, and closed the program. She was already late. Moxie flung herself at Nancy’s feet and writhed. She picked the cat up and buried her face in the animal’s fur. Her kitty had been feeling neglected, and now Moxie had to spend yet another day alone while Nancy cleaned the stuff out of Lucia’s kitchen.
She had not asked her sisters to come help. Not that they could have, today. Nell was working, as always, teaching classes all morning and waitressing all afternoon, and Vivi was working a crafts show upstate. Of course, Nancy herself had a triple workday that she was canceling out to do all this. But the truth was, she preferred to see Liam Knightly alone. Nothing got past Vivi’s and Nell’s sharp eyes. Nancy didn’t want her sisters intercepting any smoldering glances, catching any stray waves of throbbing sexual heat. They would draw their shrewd conclusions, and, God forbid, tease her. Or worse, worry about her.
First order of business, to dress. The jeans and T-shirt she’d thrown on after her shower were perfect for cleaning and packing kitchenware, but they were utterly inadequate for facing Liam Knightly.
Moxie sprawled, purring, on a growing heap of rejects on the futon couch as Nancy yanked item after item out of her closet.
She finally settled on snug black pants and a white cotton blouse, nipped in at the waist, primly buttoned up. Just the last button left open, so that the beautiful sapphire N at her throat showed, a tiny glint of color. Crisp, no-nonsense, yet subtly feminine. She fixed her hair twelve different ways. In a paroxysm of disgust, she fell back on her old standby: slicked back with styling gel into
a gleaming braid. She spritzed on hairspray to underscore the no-nonsense message of the tough hair. Some cover-up under her eyes, brown mascara, a dab of sandalwood oil to infuse the look with an air of sensual mystery.
She stared into the mirror wishing she could make the anxious crinkle between her brows disappear. What was she trying to accomplish, anyway? A come-on, or a back-off?
Hell with it. It was 8:20 already, and she was wasting the guy’s time with her stupid, crushed-out primping. She perched her glasses on her nose and gave herself a hard smile. Ta-da.
She picked up Moxie and buried her nose in the cat’s soft fur again. “Time for me to scram,” she whispered. “Sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”
Her cell phone buzzed. She almost ignored it, late as she was, but ingrained professionalism prevailed. Or maybe obsessive paranoia. It depended on one’s point of view. She hit “talk.” “Hello?”
“Nancy? This is Liam Knightly.”
Moxie fell to the ground with a squawk as Nancy’s arm went boneless. “Ah. Um, hi,” she stammered. “Are you already at the house?”
“Yes, and I—”
“Oh, God. We must have crossed wires about the meeting time. I’m so sorry. I’m running a little late, because of some—”
“Nancy.” He cut her off, his voice grim. “There’s a problem.”
“A problem?” A weird, creeping, cold began to spread its tendrils out to her belly and her limbs. “What do you mean, a problem?”
“There’s been another break-in.”
Another break-in? “That’s not possible,” she whispered.
“I was driving by on my way to breakfast, to see if your car was there,” he said. “I wanted to pass a broom through the place before you saw it, since Eoin and I tracked in mud yesterday. I saw the door was open, so I thought maybe you drove a different car up. Then I looked inside.”
His eloquent pause chilled her blood. She was starting to shake. “And?”
“It’s bad,” he said shortly.
She was crumpling. On her knees, her hands holding the floor away from herself like it was trying to rise up and hit her in the face. Her cell lay next to Moxie’s bowl of kitty crunchies. Fish-shaped pellets were scattered on the black-and-white tiles. The floor was cold against her hands. Liam Knightly’s urgent, tinny voice came through the phone, from where it lay on the floor. She let her hip drop to the floor so that she could support herself on one hand, and picked up the phone.
Tasting Fear Page 4