Intimate Strangers

by Rebecca York

  As he walked toward the building, Mark stroked the rubber surface of the mask he wore. The mask that turned him back into Mike Randall. It felt firmly attached to his face, but it didn’t feel real. It wasn’t just the thin layer of rubber. A long time ago he had been Mike Randall. He’d changed too much to ever go back to that persona. Mike Randall had been too trusting, too clueless, too soft. Mark Ramsey was just the opposite. But was he also too reckless?

  He stopped in the shadows, waiting with his heart pounding.

  He’d worked this plan out with Dan and the Light Street Detective Agency—and Randolph Security. Light Street and Randolph were joined at the hip, he’d discovered, because the head of the detective agency, Jo O’Malley, was married to Cam Randolph, who headed up the security company. And a good thing, too, because Randolph had the technical expertise to pull off this stunt that he’d conceived.

  A car drove slowly into the lot. It was Jerry Tilden, right on schedule.

  The builder got out and stalked toward the front door of the gallery, head down, his face grim as he fought the wind. Tilden was the most confusing piece of the whole puzzle. Seven years ago it had looked as if he and Veronica had been on different sides of a big zoning controversy. But according to Phil, he’d gotten in on the land scheme with the antique dealers. And now it seemed that they were screwing him.

  Why? What had he done to them? Maybe he’d tried to grab too much of the profits.

  Mark waited in silence, his pulse rate accelerating.

  It was five minutes before another car pulled into the parking lot.

  This time his stomach clenched painfully. Molly was in that car. The idea of her being here where hot lead might start flying made him almost physically ill. But all the arguing in the world hadn’t stopped her from coming.

  Maybe she had something to prove, the way he did. He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that, unfortunately, she’d given him no damn choice.

  He shot her a fierce look as she crossed to the building, sure that she couldn’t even see him. He’d thought when this was over he’d be free to ask her to marry him. Now he couldn’t even do that, because he’d suddenly found out that his wife wasn’t dead.

  Dan had told him that getting a divorce would be no problem. But it wouldn’t happen overnight.

  He hadn’t discussed any of that with Molly. He’d been too shaken, and too wound up with making sure neither one of them got killed.

  He wanted to get out of the car now and order Molly to stay out of the charade. He could take her place. But he stayed where he was because he knew that being here was important to her. He knew she held the antique dealers responsible for sucking Phil into their scheme. And he knew she wanted them to know she’d found them out.

  As he watched, she struggled toward the back door, battering her way against the damn wind.

  The night before, he’d arranged to have a key made. She used it and disappeared inside. That was his cue to follow.

  The wind tried to rip off his mask as he hurried toward the building. Shielding his face with his arm, he slipped inside, remembering the night Oliver Garrison had shot at him. But this time it was going to be different, he told himself.

  He could hear people talking loudly, excitedly. He crept through the storage room, then positioned himself where he could see into Garrison’s office. As he drew his gun and held it down beside his leg, he glanced at Molly. She was close to the door to the room, waiting in the shadows, and he fought against the impulse to pull her into the workroom and tie her up so she’d be out of this entirely.

  “What do you mean you didn’t send the message?” Garrison was saying, his voice going high and shaky as he spoke to Tilden. “You said you wanted us to stop the accidents at your construction sites and you wanted to talk about it.”

  Tilden’s tone was harsh. “I’m tired of your bullshit. I didn’t call this meeting. I got a message from you. You said you wanted to talk about Mike Randall and that other guy he sent here to find out about the smuggling and the land-deal scheme. Well, you didn’t spell it all out, but that was what you meant.”

  Doris Masters rounded on Tilden. Mark was still having trouble adjusting his thinking about her. She was Veronica. The wife who had faked her death to get him sent away to prison. He’d known she was self-centered. He’d known their marriage was all screwed up. He hadn’t dreamed how far she’d go to get him out of the picture.

  She was addressing Tilden in an angry voice. “You’re full of it. What are you trying to pull? We had this plan all worked out. Mike would get convicted of my murder, so he would be put away. You’d get the contract to build the new development when we had the money to buy the land.”

  “Except now you’re sabotaging my construction sites,” Tilden shouted. “So you can put me out of business and get another builder.”

  “It’s not us,” Mark’s former wife said.

  “Then who?”

  “Maybe that guy Ramsey.”

  “The accidents started a long time before he arrived in town.”

  “Right. Because your work was already crap. That’s why—”

  “Shut up. Just shut up,” Garrison cut in, sounding as if he was losing it. “We’re in enough trouble already. Stop spewing out incriminating information. Don’t you see we’ve been set up? Somebody wanted us all together, talking about the situation.”

  “There’s no way they can prove anything,” Doris answered, obviously trying to remain in control. “Not about Randall, and not about Bauder. The guys who took care of him are in Mexico by now. So we don’t have any loose ends.”

  As if on cue, Molly stepped into the doorway, and Mark’s heart was suddenly blocking his windpipe. Lord, what if something went wrong?

  His gaze never left her as she paused beside a large, elaborately carved highboy.

  “Actually, I’m the one who arranged this meeting,” Molly said coolly. “I want a piece of the action. I found a letter that Phil wrote me. He left me high and dry, and that’s your fault. I want you to give me the money he would have gotten,” she added, pitching her voice above the wind tearing at the outside of the building.

  For heartbeats, her demand was met with shocked silence.

  Garrison finally found his voice. “Now wait a minute. You can’t just come in here demanding a cut. You were never in the loop.”

  “Fill me in,” Molly murmured.

  “Like hell,” Tilden shouted. “You’re in bed with that guy Mike Randall sent to find out who framed him for murder.”

  Garrison laughed, but the sound was quivery. “In bed is a good way to put it, isn’t it? What did your lover do—send you to pry information out of us?”

  “He says he’s willing to tell Randall he didn’t find anything—if you give him a cut. He says he wants to back the winning horse and he thinks it’s you.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that?” Garrison asked.

  “Believe what you want,” Molly answered. She fixed him with a hard look. “My boss, Larry Iverson, sent me to inspect that building you were renovating, and a bucket of shingles almost fell on my head. Is Larry in on the conspiracy, too? Were you trying to get rid of me?”

  Garrison gave her a scornful sneer. “You have an inflated view of your own importance. Iverson sent you because he was too lazy to inspect the place himself.”

  Tilden jumped back into the conversation. “Your tangling with those shingles is just a side issue. You got caught in their scheme to ruin me. But we’re going to cut through a lot of extraneous crap right now.” From his pocket he pulled something that looked like a portable phone. “This is a transmitter set to blow this place up,” he said, his voice gritty.

  Everyone in the room froze. All eyes, including Mark’s, riveted on the builder.

  “See, I got myself an insurance policy a couple of weeks ago. I’ve wired this place with explosives. If you don’t agree to stop screwing with my business, I’m going to bring this whole gallery down on top of you. And lucky for me, th
e evidence will point to storm damage.”

  Mark blinked. Did the jerk really think that the authorities wouldn’t find the evidence of explosives?

  “I don’t believe you,” Oliver said. “You wouldn’t blow yourself up.”

  “Try me,” Tilden dared. “All I have to do is press a combination of these buttons.” He gestured toward the keypad.

  From his position in back of her, Mark could see Molly go rigid. Oh Lord, now what?

  “We’re going to get this straightened out,” Tilden was saying. “Now, whose bright idea was it to make me look bad? And why?”

  “Bauder. He started questioning your work,” the woman who called herself Doris Masters said. “He said you cut too many corners. He wanted to get a contractor whose buildings wouldn’t fall down after twenty years.”

  “Convenient. Blame it on the dead guy.”

  Mark watched the scene in horror. Yet again, things weren’t working out the way he’d intended. This time he’d thought he’d done it right, with help from the Light Street Detective Agency. But Tilden had pulled a wild card out of his pocket.

  Mark had his own transmitter in his pocket. It wasn’t going to blow anybody up. At least he hoped it wasn’t on the same damn frequency as the other one.

  With his pulse pounding in his ears, he pressed a button, then stepped out of hiding, putting himself between Molly and the angry people in the room. He needed to distract Tilden, and the words he heard coming out of his mouth were, “Actually, it was my idea to screw you up,” he said. “So don’t take it out on your buddies.”

  People gasped, staring at him in the Mike Randall mask.

  Tilden’s mouth fell open. Doris turned white. Garrison reached into his desk drawer and came up cursing. The gun he’d used wasn’t there. Mark and his friends from the Light Street Detective Agency had made sure that it wouldn’t be.

  “Up here,” four voices shouted from the second floor of the building, acting in response to the signal Mark had given. Four men stepped out onto the balcony, each of them wearing a mask with the face of Mike Randall. They were also wearing bulletproof vests under their clothing, as were Mark and Molly.

  The men were Alex Shane, Jed Prentiss, Lucas Somerville and Hunter Kelley, all of them with Randolph Security or the Light Street Detective Agency.

  Now there were five Mike Randalls in the gallery. The original and four copies. And it was impossible to know which was the real one and which were fakes. The crowd of instant clones was enough to drive anyone mad. Mark had counted on that. Counted on causing a lot of confusion with the ploy. But it looked as if Tilden had already done that, Mark thought with a strange kind of detachment.

  Tilden screamed, “No!” and pressed two of the buttons on his transmitter.

  In the front of the gallery, windows shattered.

  Mark, who had moved closer to Tilden, threw himself at the builder, knocking him to the floor. They struggled for the transmitter and another explosion rocked the loading-dock area. From the corner of his eye, Mark saw that Garrison had leaped across the room toward an antique chest, where he fumbled in the back and came out with a revolver.

  “Molly, get down,” Mark shouted.

  Doris had already pulled a small pistol from her purse. She and Garrison raised their weapons and started firing at the men above them. Tilden dropped the transmitter, clawed his way out of Mark’s grasp and wedged himself under the desk as sirens sounded nearby.

  That was Hammer and his men. The one nonnegotiable condition the sheriff had imposed was that he be able to listen in on the confrontation.

  The men on the second floor returned the fire from below.

  Doris fell to the floor. So did Garrison.

  Tilden stayed where he was under the desk, his arms over his head.

  It was all over in a matter of seconds.

  Mark took care to pocket Tilden’s transmitter, then turned and dashed to Molly.

  “Are you all right?” he gasped out.

  “Yes. Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  He held her close for several seconds, then detached himself. “I have to…”

  “Yes. Go on. Hurry.”

  Crossing the room, Mark knelt by the woman who lay on the floor. Her face was pale, and blood seeped from a hole in her chest. Her eyes were dull, but they zeroed in on him.

  “Veronica,” he chocked out, finally confronting her after all the years of pain and suffering she’d caused him.

  “Mike…” She was silent for several seconds, then whispered in a voice so low he could hardly hear, “You came…back.”

  He wanted to understand. “Why did you do it? Why did you send me to prison? I would have given you a divorce. Our marriage was over.”

  “I’m sorry…” she answered. It was the last thing she said. Her head lolled to the side, and the life went out of her.

  He stayed there for several more seconds, thinking about what she had done to him. He wanted to hate her. But he knew there was a better place to put his energy.

  He stood up and saw Molly watching him, her hand pressed to her mouth. He gave her a tight nod. Quickly he crossed to her, then pulled her out of the room and into a dark corner of the warehouse as uniformed officers burst through the door. Cradling her protectively, he stroked her back and shoulders, profoundly grateful that she was all right.

  She was shaking. So was he.

  Upstairs, the wind caught glass fragments and sent them showering into the gallery.

  “Is the building going to fall down around us?” she asked in a voice she couldn’t quite hold steady.

  “No. The building’s solid as Mount Rushmore. Tilden just got a lot of bang for the buck by busting some windows. He was faking. He wasn’t going to kill himself, just scare the others.”

  “Okay.” She took in a deep breath, as if to calm herself.

  “You trust my judgment on that?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I screwed up again.”

  “You didn’t know that Tilden had gone off the deep end.”

  “Are you making excuses for me?”

  “I’m reassuring you that your plan was good. And it was vetted by the Light Street Detective Agency.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Besides, anyone can make mistakes.”

  He dragged in a breath and let it out slowly. “I’ve made a lot of them since I came back to Perry’s Cove.”

  “You came looking for a killer. How could you know you’d uncover a conspiracy?”

  “You’re making more excuses.”

  She raised her face to his and looked him straight in the eye. “Well, if I am, it’s because I love you.”

  The breath froze in his chest.

  “So what are you going to do about that?” she challenged. “Walk away because you’re still feeling guilty about not leveling with me up front?”

  “Yeah, I still feel guilty. But I’d be a fool to walk away.” He clasped his hands over her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. “Molly, I’ve loved you for a long, long time. I was half in love with you back when we both lived here and my marriage had turned into a wasteland. Then in prison I couldn’t get you out of my mind. There were so many things I remembered about you. I’d go over and over conversations we’d had. Or I’d remember how much I loved being in your house. How much you’d made it into a warm, charming home. I clung to things like that in the nightmare world where every day was a struggle for survival. You are the single most important thing that helped me keep my sanity.”

  “Oh, Mark.”

  “Then I came back here and started off lying to you. And I threw your puzzle box against a wall.”

  A smile flickered on her lips. “Yes. Breaking that box was a nice symbolic gesture. For three years I thought it might be my hope for the future. I thought I might sell it for a lot of money. You proved that wasn’t really my future. You are. And you did me a big favor by breaking that box. You put my doubts about Phil’s death to rest. I understand what
happened to him. I can let it go, and I have you to thank for that.”

  He stared down at her, his throat too clogged to answer.

  “You’ve lost so much,” she went on. “Five years of your life. Let’s not waste any more time arguing about what you did or what you should have done.”

  He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “I am so damn lucky to have you.”

  “The feeling is mutual. If you want to know the truth, I thought about you, too. My life here hasn’t been so great. Alone in bed at night, I’d make up fantasies about you, that you’d come back for me and we’d go off into the sunset together.”

  “You did?”

  She swallowed. “Yes. So you see, we’ve been on the same wavelength for a long time.”

  “Then can we get the hell out of Perry’s Cove?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “A small city. Probably in the South, where I can start a custom building business and you can start an antique gallery.”

  She smiled. “That sounds heavenly.”

  “We won’t have to worry about money,” he added.

  “I’d live on bread crusts to be with you.”

  “Yeah, but steak is better.”

  They kissed again, then he heard Hammer calling his name and Molly’s.

  “Ramsey! Dumont! Where are you?”

  “I think we’re going to be in for some questioning,” Mark muttered.

  “Only, this time you have nothing to worry about,” Molly assured him. “The sheriff heard the whole thing.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-4085-8

  INTIMATE STRANGERS

  Copyright © 2003 by Ruth Glick

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