by Cindi Myers
“He’s hiding something, but a lot of people are,” Rogers said. “Maybe the money he gave Elgin really was for Gini’s funeral. Right now we can’t prove it wasn’t.”
“Laura thinks Elgin might have built more than the two bombs. There was enough material in that root cellar for that.”
“Maybe. We’re working on tracking all his movements for the last month. You know this isn’t a fast process.”
Right. But sometimes the Bureau was too methodical for Jace’s taste. While they dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s, someone else could get hurt—or killed.
He ended the call and thought about going into the house to find Laura. But that would mean leaving the burgers to possibly burn. Instead, he took his phone out again and texted her. Heard from D. Come out here for update and dinner.
Five long minutes passed before the back door opened and Laura stepped out, balancing a stack of plates and silverware and a tray of condiments. She wore shorts that showed off smooth, toned legs and he had to force himself not to stare. Fortunately, she was too focused on her task to notice his reaction. “What did Rogers say?” she asked and set her burden on the picnic table near the grill.
“They’re not getting anything out of Elgin.”
She settled at the picnic table. “If a suspect won’t talk to us, it’s usually because they’re more afraid of someone else than they are of us,” she said.
They had changed out of their work clothes into shorts and T-shirts, and it was surprisingly pleasant in the shaded backyard, almost relaxing, except for the case that nagged at them. Jace topped the burgers with cheese and waited for it to melt. “Who’s he afraid of? His partner?”
“That would be my guess,” she said.
He slid the burgers onto a plate and joined her at the table. Guesses were fine for steering the investigation in a likely direction, but what they needed now was proof. He didn’t have to point that out to Laura. She had been with the Bureau longer than he had, and she seemed much more comfortable with the way they worked. He admired her smarts and dedication, if not her play-by-the-rules attitude.
“I’ve found something worth looking into,” she said.
The way she delivered this news—oh so casual—had him on high alert. “What did you find?”
“I’ve been digging through Parker Stroud’s financial records.” She spread mustard on her burger and arranged lettuce and tomato.
Jace sat across from her and focused on his own burger. “What did you find?”
“I found a secret bank account, under the name Steven Parker. With a balance of $10 million.”
Jace whistled. “Where did Parker get $10 million to stash away?”
“I wondered that, too,” she said. “The money began showing up about two years ago—a few thousand here, ten thousand there. But the pace of deposits has really accelerated in the past six months.”
“That doesn’t sound like an inheritance or a lucky investment,” Jace said.
“No. And here’s something else even more interesting.” She picked up her burger. “The money isn’t just going in. It’s going out, to the tune of two payments of $50,000 each over the past two weeks.”
“Is he buying up property or other investments?” Jace asked.
“Let me give you another clue. The first payment was made three days after the first victim was poisoned by Stomach Soothers. Two days after Gini Elgin died.”
Their eyes met, a look of triumph lighting hers. “You think someone is blackmailing Parker because he poisoned the Stomach Soothers,” Jace said.
“I think it would be a good idea to ask him, don’t you?”
Jace glanced at his plate. “Can I finish my burger first? I mean, he’s not likely to run, is he?”
“He’s at a Rotary Club meeting, of all things, tonight. And he’s supposed to be at work in the morning. I haven’t seen any sign of him wanting to run. So I think we’re good. I’ll pass this info on to Ramirez and Rogers and let them handle it.”
“That’s great work,” Jace said.
Her cheeks went a shade pinker, until she took a big bite and chewed, looking thoughtful. With her hair down around her shoulders and no makeup, she looked young and soft. Not weak, but...touchable.
She took a long sip from a bottle of a local microbrew and sighed. “It would fit so neatly if we found out Parker had planted the poison in those tablets and was setting off these bombs,” she said. “But he’s given every indication that he’s desperate to keep the business going—so why do something like planting poison in the company’s top product? It’s going to take years to recover from the bad press. And from what I can tell from looking at the company financials, there’s a very real risk they won’t pull out.”
“See anything alarming in the company books?” Jace asked.
“Only that they’re a mess. Gini Elgin may have been a wonderful person, but she kept terrible records. It would require months of close work to straighten out completely. I’ve only been able to look at them in my spare time.”
“I agree that Parker doesn’t have a good motive for the poisoning,” Jace said. “So where does that leave us?”
“I don’t think Angela or Lydia did it,” she said. “There’s no motive and even less opportunity. They both worked in the offices, not on the factory floor. And I don’t think Leo did it.”
“Maybe he didn’t do it intending to kill his mother,” Jace said. “Her death was an accident.”
Laura shook her head. “Leo was in Nashville when the poisonings began. He hadn’t been back to Mayville in four months.”
“That we know of. It’s only a six-hour drive, and only a couple hours on a plane. He could be here and back in well under a day.”
“I still don’t think he did it.”
“Then who did?”
She set aside her partially eaten burger. “Maybe we’ve been looking at this all wrong,” she said. “Maybe the poisoning didn’t have anything to do with Stroud. Maybe some nutso contaminated the pills after they were placed on store shelves—like the Tylenol case.”
In Chicago in 1982, someone had removed bottles of Tylenol from store shelves and contaminated the pills with potassium cyanide. Seven people had died, and requirements for tamper-resistant packaging had been instituted as a result.
“We haven’t found any evidence of tampering with the safety seals on the bottles of Stomach Soothers or the boxes containing the bottles,” Jace said. “The forensic people examined every container they could get their hands on with X-rays. And how do we account for the missing bottles? They never made it from the factory to a store.”
“Which brings us back to the idea that someone working in the factory slipped the ricin into the bottles during the packaging process?” She picked up her burger and took another bite.
“That person might be Elgin’s partner,” Jace said. “The one who planted the bomb. But what’s the motive?”
“To destroy the company? Or maybe the Stroud family?”
“It seems like if you had an enemy who hated you that much, you’d know about it,” Jace said. “And the Strouds insist they have no idea who is doing this.”
“People lie,” Laura said.
“They do, but we ought to be able to spot the lies.”
They fell into silence, finishing their burgers and beer, letting the late afternoon stillness wash over them, a hot breeze fluttering their paper napkins and stirring the ends of Laura’s hair. They were seated across from each other, not touching, yet the moment felt intimate. She pushed her empty plate away and sat back. “I like it here a lot more than I thought I would,” she said, glancing around the weedy backyard, with its scraggly line of bright yellow daylilies along the fence and the arching branches of oak and catalpa providing shade.
“It has a way of getting to you,” he said. “Life here moves
at a slower pace, the people are a little less guarded, the landscape is so lush.” He felt the pull of settling into old routines, and he couldn’t say he liked it.
“How is your family?”
The question caught him off guard. He shrugged. “They’re my family.” He kept in touch by phone, but he hadn’t let anyone know he was working so nearby. “Like all families, they do things that I love and things that drive me crazy.”
She leaned toward him, elbows on the picnic table. “Like what?”
He shook his head. “They don’t understand why I ever left home. Ambition isn’t something they admire. It’s just another word for ‘getting above yourself.’ They judge me for my choices, but if I do the same to them I must think I’m better than them.” He shrugged. “I can’t change them. I don’t try anymore, and maybe that’s a good thing. What about your family?”
“There’s just my dad. My mom died when I was ten.”
“That’s rough. Do you have any brothers and sisters?”
She shook her head. “And no close family. We moved a lot, so my dad and I relied on each other.”
“Still, it must have been hard, always being the new kid.”
She sat up straighter. “It taught me to adapt, to learn how to fit in.”
He studied her a moment. Maybe it was that second beer loosening his tongue—or maybe he just wanted to risk being honest with her. “I think it taught you to keep your distance, to not get too involved.”
She frowned. He held up a hand and said, “Don’t look at me that way. I didn’t say there was necessarily anything wrong with that.”
“You think I’m cold.” Pain clouded her blue eyes. “It’s all right. You wouldn’t be the first to say so.”
“Oh, you ought to know by now that I don’t think you’re cold.” He moved around the table and slid onto the bench beside her. She watched him, wary, but didn’t resist when he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
* * *
YOU SHOULDN’T BE kissing him. It isn’t professional. It isn’t part of your mission.
Shut up. I’m not a robot. I have a life outside the mission. Laura shut her eyes, shutting out the nagging voice inside of herself—a voice that too often sounded like her father—and surrendered to the pure pleasure of kissing Jace. The pressure of his lips on hers sent sparks of awareness dancing along her nerves, awakening desires that had lain dormant too long. She leaned into his embrace, done with fighting her attraction to him.
When she finally pulled away, the heated longing in his eyes made her toes curl. “What are you thinking?” he asked.
“That we should take this inside.” She stood and tugged him to his feet. Grinning now, he let her lead him into the house. When the door was closed behind them, she kissed him again, his back against the wall, his hunger matching her own.
His skin smelled of pine and soap, and the faint whiff of the barbecue smoke. He tasted of salt and cinnamon as she traced her tongue along his jaw. He groaned when she nipped at his throat, and slid his hands around to cup her bottom and snug her more firmly against him. Oh, yes—those shorts of his didn’t leave any doubt how he felt about her. She smiled up at him. “Want to try out my new bed?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
She hurried through the awkwardness of shedding her clothes, sneaking looks as he took off his shorts, shirt and underwear, her heart speeding up in appreciation for his naked body. She had seen him a few times in the gym at headquarters, but she’d never admired him with the same interest before. He had plenty of sexy muscles to go with the brains and bravery that had attracted her in the first place.
They crawled into bed and moved into each other’s arms, a sigh escaping her as she pressed her body to his. His hands slid up her thighs, calluses dragging on her smooth skin. The heat of his fingers pressed into her soft flesh and delved into the wetness between her legs.
She moaned, the sound muffled by the liquid heat of his tongue tangling with her own. He dipped his head to kiss her naked breasts—butterfly touches of his lips over and around the swelling flesh, then latching on to her sensitive, distended nipple, sucking hard, the pulling sensation reaching all the way to her groin, where she tightened around his plunging finger.
He stretched out beside her, kissing her deeply while his hands caressed, stroking her breasts and tracing the curve of her hips and stomach, never lingering too long at any one place. She arched toward him, anxious with need. “Shh,” he soothed. “We don’t have to hurry.” He patted her stomach. “I’ll be right back,” he said, then rose and padded out of the room.
Curious, she propped herself on her elbow and enjoyed the view of him leaving the room. When he returned holding a condom packet aloft, she laughed and opened her arms to welcome him back.
The sight of him sheathing himself left her breathless. He levered himself over her, and she raised her knees and spread her legs to allow him access, but he only smiled and slid down her body, his tongue tracing the curve of her breasts, the ridges of her ribs and the hollow of her navel. By the time he plunged his tongue into her wet channel, she was quivering with need, half-mad with lust. She buried her fingers in his hair as he stroked her clit with his tongue.
“What do you want?” he whispered, his voice rough, as if he was fighting for control.
“I want you.” Her voice rose at the last word, as he levered himself over her and entered her, his fingers digging into her bottom. The sensation of him filling her, stretching her, moving inside her, made her dizzy. “Don’t stop,” she gasped. “Please don’t stop.”
“I won’t stop. I promise I won’t stop.”
He drove hard, but held her so gently, his fingers stroking, caressing, even as his hips pumped. She slid her hands around to cup his ass, marveling at the feel of his muscles contracting and relaxing with each powerful thrust.
He slipped his hand between them and began to fondle her clit, each deft move sending the tension within her coiling tighter. He kissed the soft flesh at the base of her throat. “I want to make it good for you,” he murmured. “So good.”
She sensed him holding back, waiting for her. When her climax overtook her, he swallowed her cries, then mingled them with his own as his release shuddered through them both.
* * *
MUCH LATER, THE dull buzz of Jace’s phone vibrating across the bedside table pulled him from sleep. Eyes half-open, he groped for the device and swiped to answer it. “Hello?”
“Jace, it’s Ramirez.” The tension in Ramirez’s voice snapped him awake. He swung his legs up to sit on the side of the bed as Laura propped herself up beside him.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“There’s been another explosion at Stroud Pharmaceuticals,” she said. “It’s bad. That’s all I know. Just...bad.”
Chapter Thirteen
The chaos at Stroud Pharmaceuticals overflowed into the streets, so that blocks away, Jace maneuvered the truck through crowds of people, some openly weeping, others agitated or merely excited to know what was happening. The strobe of the light bars atop police cruisers looked garish against the soft pink and orange of sunrise.
He parked three blocks from the Stroud compound, unable to go farther, and he and Laura walked the rest of the way, joining a parade of Stroud employees headed in that direction. “I swear I heard the bomb go off,” said a woman named Janice, who worked in packaging. “I had just let the dog out and I heard it. I thought it was someone hunting.”
Police and county sheriff’s vehicles formed a barricade at the entrance to the factory and offices. Media trucks ringed the area, satellite dishes pointed to the sky. Jace thought he spotted Rogers talking to one of the cops, and then he was swallowed up in the confusion. “I heard Mr. Stroud—Mr. Steve—is dead,” Barb Falk said.
“Mr. Parker is in the hospital,” Phyllis Neighbors added, blotting tears fr
om her eyes with her index fingers.
“This is so awful,” a woman Jace didn’t know said. “It just keeps happening. I’m too afraid to go back in there again. Not with some nut job trying to blow up everybody.”
“There’s Donna.” Laura tugged at Jace’s sleeve and he followed her gaze to where Donna Stroud, dressed in a navy pantsuit, stood surrounded by reporters, microphones and recorders all but obscuring her face.
Jace and Laura shoved forward, ignoring the grumbling of those they displaced, until they reached the ring of reporters.
Donna Stroud’s face looked drained of blood, and her voice was strained. “We will stop production for the next few days out of respect for my husband, and to protect the safety of our employees,” she said.
“Do you have any idea who did this?”
“What about the suspect the police have in custody? Do they have the wrong man?”
“Why hasn’t the FBI stopped this?” The reporters fired questions at the dazed woman.
“Why haven’t we stopped this?” Laura muttered. Anguish haunted her gaze and anger weighted her words. “I knew there were more bombs out there. We should have insisted they close the factory.”
She kept her voice low, barely audible even to Jace, but still he put his arm around her and turned her away from the reporters. “We could have insisted the Strouds close the plant, but everyone from the state legislator to local officials to the Strouds themselves would have refused,” he said.
“They don’t have any choice now,” she said. She scanned the crowd. “Most of the employees are probably too frightened to return to work.”
“Let me through. I have to talk to Donna. I have to find out about Parker.”
The crowd parted and Merry, wet hair straggling around her shoulders, eyes swollen from crying, staggered forward. She clutched at Laura’s shoulder. “I was in the shower when a friend called to tell me what had happened,” she half sobbed. “Parker’s in the hospital, but when I went down there, they wouldn’t let me see him!” Her voice rose in a wail that attracted the attention of the reporters and Donna.