DANGEROUS DECEPTION

by Kylie Brant

  The first step squeaked under the weight of the tread on it. Whoever was climbing the stairs now blocked her only exit out of the attic. There was another telltale sound. Another step upward. Options limited, Tori melted back into the shadows afforded by the stacked furniture and waited, weapon in hand.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  « ^ »

  "You know some people content themselves with a simple hello." James eyed the lamp clutched in Tori's fist, deciding she looked more than capable of wielding it.

  "And most consider it rude to walk into people's homes without announcing themselves," she countered, setting the lamp on a nearby table. "How did you know I was here?"

  "I went by your place. A rather unkempt individual by the name of Joe, informed me that you might be at your father's." When she didn't respond, he continued helpfully, "Ribbed undershirt? Uncertain hygiene? Pants riding low enough to show far more than most would care to see of his choice in undergarments?"

  She made a face that was half recognition, have irritation. "My neighbor's son. He takes an annoying interest in my comings and goings. Must have heard me talking to his mother earlier today." She dusted her hands on her shorts as she approached, cocking a brow at him. "I have to say, when I heard someone moving around downstairs, I considered it might be the real estate agent or a neighbor. But I never thought of you."

  Since she was heading toward the stairs, he turned and preceded her down. "Which one were you going to smack with that lamp, the agent or the neighbor?"

  "There was an equally good chance it was a street punk looking for an easy score." The words, as much as the matter-of-fact way she uttered them, caused him to pause for just a moment. "It never hurts to be prepared."

  "No, it doesn't." He turned, once he'd reached the open door, and studied her. She snapped off the light switch before following him into the upstairs hallway. He wondered how many women in his acquaintance would have dealt with the possibility of a stranger in her house with such cool calculation. There was no evidence of alarm in her demeanor, just a certain competency that was at odds with the unmistakable femininity of those long legs and lean curves. The observation was undeniably chauvinistic, so he wisely refrained from sharing it.

  "I did telephone," he offered, surprising himself by making the explanation. "There was no answer at your house, and apparently you've had the phone here disconnected. I decided it wouldn't hurt to swing by and see if I could catch you. You didn't answer the doorbell, but I heard music from somewhere in the house and followed it."

  She brushed by him, sending him a sidelong glance before she led him toward the steps to downstairs. "I didn't expect to hear from you until tomorrow."

  "I had business in the city, so I decided to drop off the contract I had my lawyer draw up." He held up the hinged file he carried. "As well as a complete copy of the old investigative report."

  If truth be told, his business in the city could have waited or could at least been delegated. But he'd found it strangely difficult to focus once she'd left his office that afternoon. They'd decided upon a course of action, and now he was anxious to see it through. Anxious to see what answers, if any, her investigation would supply.

  "I thought if you had some time tonight, you could go over the contents of the file and decide where you want to start." He followed her into a small downstairs living room and, waiting until she'd seated herself on the sofa, sat in a nearby chair. He looked with interest around the room he'd merely glanced at his first time through. There was a battered recliner in one corner, facing a TV and stereo setup. It didn't take much imagination to figure that the chair had been well used by the man who had lived here. Above it hung a sampler, on which someone had painstakingly embroidered the words Integrity Above All Else.

  He gestured to it. "Your work?"

  "My one-and-only attempt. It was my dad's favorite saying. He had what some might consider an outdated code of honor."

  James thought of the family crest that hung above the doorway in his family home. Honor. Duty. Devotion. It was the creed that his father had lived by. He and his brothers had grown up attempting to do the same. "Not everyone," he murmured.

  When her gaze turned quizzical, he opened the file he carried, took out the contract inside. Withdrawing a gold pen from his suit jacket, he handed both to her. "I had my lawyer draw up this contract. The terms are outlined clearly in it, and they're not negotiable. We already discussed this, but you'll want to read the confidentiality clause near the bottom. If you or anyone in your employ violates it in the slightest, I'll direct my attorney to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. Am I understood?"

  "As you say, we discussed that earlier." Her voice was cool. She scanned the rest of the document, and he used the time to watch her. It was no hardship. She'd tamed that unruly tangle of hair by hauling it up in a knot and securing it somehow. The simple cotton shirt she wore was marred with dust, no doubt encountered upstairs, as were her shorts, which showed an intriguing length of slender thigh.

  Not for the first time he noted that she didn't fit his notion of a private investigator. If he was lucky, she wouldn't fit anyone else's, either. Once she'd left his office, he'd been plagued by doubts about the wisdom of his choice. The feeling was too foreign to be borne comfortably. He could put an army of more experienced investigators on the matter, but she might be able to provide the one thing that no one else could—a direct line to her father's old contacts. It was possible that one of them knew something about the case he'd worked that hadn't been contained in the man's report. That, coupled with his reluctance to spread the word of these threats, had cemented his decision. He could spare a week. And if she failed to come up with anything new— He gave a mental shrug. Then there would be time enough to select another individual.

  When she was finished, he took the contract, studying the signature with a sense of amusement. "Your full name is Victoria?"

  He noted her barely concealed wince. "Use it at your peril. And be warned that the last guy to call me by it lost his right front bicuspid."

  "I'll be sure to remember that. Do you have a cell?" When she rattled off a number, he jotted it down on the top of the contract, before setting it aside and handing her the hinged portfolio he'd brought with him. "You'll find mine on the outside of the top file folder. Don't hesitate to call, regardless of the hour."

  "Are you sure?" Her tone was light, but the expression in her eyes was speculative. "I don't want to be responsible for interrupting business. Or whatever."

  "Business will take a back seat to your reports, and 'whatever' will have to wait until we get this—" he nodded toward the portfolio she'd set on the table beside her "—taken care of." Upon reflection, a personal life of any type hadn't been a priority for much too long. Few women tolerated being set aside once he became embroiled in a particularly challenging contract. He tried, and failed, to recall the last time he'd been involved in a halfway serious relationship. If he was actually spending time wondering if his P.I.'s legs were as silky as they looked, perhaps his sister, Ana, was right, and he was becoming too focused. Not that he'd ever admit as much to her.

  "As long as you're here, I did think of a question earlier." She slid to a more comfortable position in her seat and crossed one long line of leg over the other. "Who was the third person in the car with your parents?"

  It took a moment for him to switch mental gears. "Lucy Rappaport. She was the young wife of our production manager and a good friend of my mother's. They'd been on their way to New Orleans, where my father had business. The women were going to shop and have dinner there." The subject brought him back with a crude jolt to the business at hand. "She and her husband had an eighteen-month-old son."

  The tragedy that day hadn't been limited to his family. Marcus Rappaport still worked for them, having risen high enough in the corporation to be his right-hand man. Although he was considered one of the most eligible men in the parish, he'd never remarried. Some losses, James
knew, left a void that couldn't be filled.

  "The time frame of this case will make it challenging," Tori stated. "Witnesses move away or die. Memories fade. But technology has grown more advanced, too." She gave a shrug. "Maybe that will prove to be to our advantage." She began pulling things from the file he'd brought and arranging them in piles around her on the sofa, in an order that made sense only to her. "At any rate, I intend to reinterview the people who processed the accident scene, at least those I can get hold of. Is the name of the salvage yard the car was sold to included in this file?"

  "The remains of the car were destroyed long ago." And he knew that precisely because he'd already attempted to trace it. "There's nothing left to examine with new technology." James felt a surge of impatience, which he tempered. There ought to be ways to find the truth that he hadn't thought of … ought to be avenues to explore that he hadn't considered. Not for the first time he questioned whether he'd made the right choice pursuing this thing.

  Then he thought again of the note that had arrived today. Your parents were murdered. You're next. And then it was really quite simple to recall just why he'd gone down this path. And just how badly he needed answers, one way or another.

  He shifted in his chair, tamped down frustration. There was a sense of powerlessness in putting this into someone else's hands, however close he intended to supervise. He didn't much care for the sensation. "I received another message today."

  Her gaze was sharp. "What did it say?"

  Lifting a shoulder, he said, "More of the same. But it did mention my parents again. If this was simply about extortion, I would have expected to receive the demand for cash already. Or at least some indication of what information the sender has to trade."

  "He could just be whetting your appetite until you're anticipating just that, before striking with the promise of more for a price." Her head was still bent over the file, but her voice was certain.

  "Sounds like you have a fair idea of how this guy would think."

  "Well, I have met my share of dirt bags. And we don't know the sender is a guy." She did look up now, and caught his gaze on her. "Unsigned notes give a guarantee of anonymity, and they're nonconfrontational. They could just as easily be from a woman. But I tend to agree with you. I doubt the sender is after cash. The tone of the messages are a bit too personal. Have you made any enemies lately?"

  He gave a grim laugh. "Honey, if we're going to list all my enemies, we'll be here all night." From the arrested expression on her face, he'd managed to surprise her.

  "Let me guess. Your magnetic personality or boyish charm?"

  He wondered if he should be offended. "Neither, although I can be quite charming, given the right circumstances. But Tremaine Technologies is considered to have made a pretty rapid rise in the global economy in the last twelve years. We're listed as one of the five premiere encryption/decryption software corporations in the world. All modesty aside, there's only one other in this country even in our league, and that's Security Solutions. The biggest contracts in the past four years have gone to one or the other of us."

  She cocked her head consideringly. "So if your company was out of the running, they'd all go to this Software Solutions?"

  "Probably, at least for a time. But sending anonymous notes hardly fits the profile of Simon Beal, its owner and CEO."

  "Don't be so sure." Setting aside the paperwork she was sorting, she crossed to an overflowing desk tucked in one corner of the room and pulled a pen and a legal pad from the top drawer. "Didn't you tell me yesterday that you're being considered for an important new project?"

  "Yes, and so are a handful of other companies. Beal is the only real competition, although Allen Tarkington of Creative Technology considers himself in the running." Rising, he slipped his hands into the pockets of his trousers, for once not mindful of the crease.

  "So any one of those companies, Beal's especially, would have reason to want you distracted right now." She jotted a quick note down on her pad before looking up again. "I assume that this business is competitive, right? Companies willing to do what it takes to get an edge?"

  His smile was as sharp as a blade. "That edge usually takes the form of corporate espionage. Arson. Sabotage. Even the odd bullet on occasion."

  Tori gaped at him, her eyes wide. "Wow. Guess that's where the phrase corporate warfare comes from."

  He inclined his head. It was an appropriate enough term. "If one of the other business leaders was trying to eliminate me from the competition, I think they'd engage in something more direct than anonymous notes."

  Her expression had gone shrewd. "But a direct attack would have police scrutiny turned on them. Maybe this was deliberately planned to be more subtle, and you haven't reacted the way you were supposed to. The whole publicity angle is exactly why you didn't go to the police, but most people in your shoes would have. From there it would be an easy enough task to get the information leaked to the press. Fan the flames a bit, pay off a reporter or two and you have the Tremaine family history, past and present, in headlines and on TV for days, complete with hype and speculation about this newest development. Given the global prestige of your company, the story is sure to be picked up by the Associated Press, and lo and behold, all those Pentagon types are reading about you and your current problem over their morning coffee."

  The accuracy of the picture she painted was startling. "You catch on fast. It would be a roundabout way to approach things, but it's conceivable."

  "And even better, at least from the sender's standpoint, it's unexpected. So why don't you, for sake of argument, give me the names of the companies in the running for that contract, along with their locations and CEOs?"

  James rattled off the information, only half thinking about it. The scenario she'd just described was possible. Entirely possible. And it would somehow be preferable to believe it than to discover that he'd been wrong all these years about his parents' accident. That he had failed them somehow by not suspecting the truth and bringing those responsible to justice.

  He was very much afraid that, if true, his failure to act would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  Belatedly he became aware that she was speaking again.

  "…just a theory."

  "I'm sorry, what?"

  "I said, right now, with what we have to go on, this is a theory, one among many. I just don't want to overlook anything."

  "Nor do I." He glanced at his watch, surprised to find it was nearly nine. "I've taken enough of your time this evening. I should go."

  She rose, in a fluid stream of motion that he couldn't help but appreciate. "You're going to drive all the way home tonight?"

  He shook his head. "We have a place on Lake Pontchartrain. I'll stay there and drive to work in the morning." He headed for the door, leaving her to follow him. He felt an odd reluctance to leave. It was a sort of relief, he realized, to be able to talk this through with someone. To finally have a plan of action. He'd spent long hours considering sharing it with his brothers, but his first instinct had warned against it. When this was over, when he had the answers he needed, he'd tell them. He owed them that. But until he had something to report, the uncertainty could only cause them pain. He wasn't willing to inflict that unnecessarily, especially if this was just a ploy by one of his competitors.

  As the eldest in the family, responsibility was ingrained in him. He wouldn't shirk it now.

  Her voice had him hesitating with his hand on the doorknob.

  "This thing between you and Beal … have you been keeping score?"

  He looked over his shoulder at her. She had her thumbs hooked in the pockets of her shorts, her head tilted slightly. "Running a business the size of mine is hardly a game."

  Her tone grew mocking. "So you haven't kept track of who has landed the hottest contracts. Come up with the most impressive technology."

  She saw, he thought, entirely too much. "It's not something that can be reduced to win-loss columns."

  Tori smi
led knowingly. "You're ahead?"

  "By three in this year alone." He shot her a feral grin before turning and going through the door. "And I intend to keep it that way."

  There were worse ways to spend the afternoon than lolling on a grassy bank, fishing. Tori had an innate appreciation for life's little bonuses, and she was enjoying this one to the fullest. It wasn't often that she could work a case and indulge her love of fishing at the same time.

  She cast her line and kept a watch on the man seated forty yards to her left, closer to the pond's edge. The former Tangipahoa Parish sheriff had been retired for almost six years, and from the size of his girth, his love for food at least matched what she'd heard about his fondness for his favorite pastime. It had taken surprisingly few phone calls to elicit the information she'd needed on the man. And the small group of elderly men playing cards in front of his hometown diner had been more than happy to share favorite local fishing spots and directions to them, once she'd provided some winsome smiles and small talk. Picking up their lunch tab hadn't hurt, either.

  She'd spotted him on her third stop, on a secluded shady knoll on the banks of the Atchafalaya. For a while she was content to keep her distance. She didn't want him to feel crowded and leave.

  Selecting a bright-green lure, she baited the hook and cast her line, settling into a comfortable position to wait. It wasn't for long. Within just a few minutes there was a tug on her line and she surged to her feet, reeling in slowly.

  The yellowed speckled sunfish on the other end was a good size, at least sixteen inches, and she allowed it to thrash on the line just long enough to capture ex-Sheriff Halloway's attention. When she was sure she had it, she made a show of landing her prize, holding it up before her to admire it before deftly releasing it in the fish pail she'd brought along.