Haunting Rachel

by Kay Hooper

  Adam hadn’t so much as glanced this way.

  Once they’d vanished into the restaurant, Nicholas started his car and pulled away from the curb. He reached for his mobile phone and punched in a number. The phone rang a long time before anybody answered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Simon, it’s Nick. I have a job for you.”

  In her bed that night, Rachel thought about the interlude with Adam, but she still wasn’t sure what she felt about it. Adam was a charming man, no doubt about that, and all her instincts told her he had sincerely liked and respected her father. Though they hadn’t talked much about Duncan Grant, now that Rachel thought about it.

  They had, she realized, talked mostly about themselves.

  Or had she done most of the talking, with Adam asking questions and offering little except agreement now and then?

  He was not an easy man to read. There was that intensity she sensed lurking in him, a kind of force that was very much belied by his casual, almost lazy exterior. He struck her as the kind of man who would make a very good friend and a very bad enemy, and she thought he could—and would—be ruthless if the stakes were high enough.

  But what were the stakes now?

  He had said no more than that he had been “down on his luck” when Duncan Grant had made him the loan. No one else had believed in the design he had invented. So Rachel had no way of knowing what his life had been like then. But if he had built up a prosperous engineering and design company in less than five years, he had clearly worked hard and made all the right business decisions.

  He had to be tough, that was certain; he was obviously smart.

  In the course of the conversation, it had emerged that they had similar taste in books and movies, shared a love of horses and cats, preferred baseball to football, were staunch independents, loved to look at the ocean, and were vehemently opposed to AstroTurf and the designated hitter. Both liked to sleep with the windows open unless it was too hot—it was never too cold—enjoyed putting together jigsaw puzzles, and loved the sound of wind chimes.

  He seemed to smile more quickly than frown, and his voice could be serious one moment and filled with amusement the next, but his blue eyes gave nothing away, and had once or twice even appeared to be shuttered, deliberately veiled with secretiveness.

  Rachel couldn’t deny to herself that she was attracted, but she was wary. Very wary. Because he looked so like Thomas. And because she didn’t trust her own feelings— about him or anything else just then.

  A week ago she had been in limbo, feeling little, refusing even to grieve for her parents. But now, suddenly, she was feeling too much. What little Adam had said about Duncan Grant during lunch had pulled the tears so close to the surface that she’d had difficulty holding them back. Twice during the remainder of the day she had found herself crying unexpectedly, once because she’d found one of her mother’s old handkerchiefs in a drawer and once because she could have sworn she had caught the scent of the cologne Thomas had always worn, the kind she had bought him for his birthday when she was fifteen and that had become his signature scent.

  But the scent was only another ghostly reminder of fact.

  Dead. Thomas was dead. Her parents were dead. Ghosts and all?

  She had lived a long time with ghosts. One in particular. And as simple as it was to tell herself that Thomas was long dead, her heart had never been able to believe that. He had lingered in Richmond for her, his memory filling all the corners. And because she had run away rather than face those corners, his memory was still vivid.

  How could she be sure that it wasn’t his memory coloring her feelings for Adam? Could she trust her own mind and heart not to latch on to him eagerly because he was the nearest thing to Thomas she had found?

  That was a creepy thought.

  Rachel turned over in bed and told herself to stop thinking. She told herself that several times.

  By the time it finally worked and she fell asleep, it was past the witching hour, and she dreamed vivid dreams in which a man wearing a mask of Thomas’s face was Adam, and when he removed the mask of Adam there was another mask underneath that was Thomas again. “I tried to reach you,” he said urgently. “I tried over and over. But you shut me out for so long, for so many years. Don’t shut me out now, Rachel, please, it’s so important. Listen. You must listen to me….”

  And then somebody was laughing, and someone else was calling her name with Thomas’s voice, and in the distance she could hear something else, a rustling sound that made her skin crawl.

  Then she smelled something like rotten eggs, and the voice that sounded like Thomas whispered, “Run, Rachel. Get out. Hurry. Don’t trust—”

  She sat straight up in bed as the alarm buzzed insistently on her nightstand, and stared around the room with wide eyes.

  Morning sunlight slanted in, brightening the room. A slight breeze lazily moved the curtains. The alarm clock buzzed.

  She was awake.

  Rachel turned off the alarm and got up, trying to shake off the dream. She didn’t believe in signs and portents, and certainly not in the clairvoyance of dreams. What she did believe was that her uncertainty about her feelings for Adam, her confusion about two men who looked so much alike, had followed her into sleep.

  That was all.

  She showered and dressed, and her morning routine soon pushed the dream into the back of her mind. Breakfast, with Uncle Cam and Fiona sniping at each other. The arrival of Darby and her guys, all briskly determined to get as much accomplished as possible on this Friday.

  Rachel left them to it. Though she wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, she had somehow, during yesterday’s lunch, invited Adam to meet her at the real estate office that morning, where more keys awaited her. There were two more stores she wanted to check out, and he was going to keep her company while she did.

  Or something like that.

  She didn’t even bother to chide herself, especially once she reached the real estate office and saw Adam waiting for her.

  He isn’t Thomas. That isn’t why.

  “So where are we going today?” he asked when she emerged from the office with keys.

  “Two more stores. One on Evans, and the other on Claiborne. Unless you know the city better than I think you do, I’ll drive.”

  “Fine by me,” he said agreeably.

  They left his rental car parked there, where it would remain until they returned the keys later, and were quickly on their way to the first of the two addresses. As the day before, Adam was a pleasant companion, casual and humorous, keeping her mind occupied with unimportant things. He told her a funny story about the room service waiter he’d had the night before, and another about a hotel message system that had suddenly gone nuts and notified him every ten minutes for more than an hour that he had a call from someone in Cairo.

  “I gather you don’t know anybody in Cairo?”

  “Not the one in Egypt, no. The hotel finally pulled the plug on their system and sent me champagne as an apology. I decided to save it for later. In case I want to celebrate something.”

  Rachel let that pass. “Good idea. Let’s see … I think the first address is just ahead….”

  It was, and they didn’t have to get out of the car. The store was obviously tiny, and the seedy pawnshop next door argued against the sort of upscale image Rachel had in mind.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “No, I’d agree. Onward.”

  More casual conversation occupied them for another five minutes, until they reached the second address.

  “Possible.” Rachel stood beside the car and studied the storefront. It was just about the right size, and the neighborhood was a good one. The only drawback she could see was that the store, with parking on one side and a narrow street on the other, seemed isolated.

  “Which could be a good thing,” Adam suggested when she brought that up. “Make you look even more exclusive.”

  “Umm. Let’s take a look inside.�
��

  The key stuck a bit, but finally turned with a faint click, and they went into the store. It was a very plain space, virtually unfinished, with concrete floors and white block walls, and their footsteps echoed hollowly. An interior wall held a single door, which presumably led to either office or storage space in the back.

  “Not much personality,” Adam noted.

  “No, but that could be—” Rachel caught a faint whiff of an odor like rotten eggs, and a chill chased up and down her spine. It was what she had smelled in her dream. “Do you smell something?”

  Even before he spoke, Adam was grabbing her hand. “Gas. Let’s get out of here. Move, Rachel.”

  He hadn’t shouted, and didn’t seem to move hastily, yet Adam had her outside the store in seconds.

  Seconds later, the whole world seemed to blow up.

  SIX

  he storage room was bigger than it looked, and it was full of gas.” Adam’s voice was level. “That’s why the explosion was so big even though we barely smelled the stuff.” Rachel winced as the paramedic stuck a small Band-Aid on the cut on her cheek. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t quite keep her voice as steady as his. “Will there be enough of the building left for them to figure out what caused the spark?”

  Before Adam could reply to that, a plainclothes cop approached them, notebook in hand. “Miss Grant? If you’re up to it, I’d like to ask you a few questions now.”

  He had talked to Adam before, while Rachel was being checked out in the paramedics’ van.

  “I’m fine,” she said, but she was grateful for Adam’s quick hand helping her out of the van, and glad he kept an arm around her shoulders. She felt more than a little shaky, and she would undoubtedly be stiff and sore tomorrow from all the bruises, since she and Adam had been thrown to the pavement by the force of the explosion.

  Fire department personnel were still milling around, but the explosion had been so ferocious that there had actually been little fire. There was also little left of the store, except for a few yards of the side walls and a very large heap of rubble from the collapsed roof.

  “I have Mr. Delafield’s statement,” Detective James said. “It’s pretty clear. Did you see or hear anything unusual, Miss Grant? Before the explosion?”

  “No.”

  “Did you notice anyone lurking around the store, or walking away quickly?”

  “No.” She frowned, the idea occurring to her for the first time with a sharp chill. “You don’t think it was an accident?”

  The detective shrugged. “Well, Miss Grant, we’ve had some arson in this area, and several times the target was a vacant store. That’s the most likely answer. We think a valve was opened, and that doesn’t happen by accident.”

  “What about the spark?”

  “There are some fairly easy tricks to set up a delayed spark, and most arsonists know them all. We’ll find enough evidence to be sure of just how he did it.” He shook his head. “Bad luck that you two happened to be looking at the store today.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was hollow. “Very bad luck.”

  Adam’s arm tightened around her.

  “I’m going to give you one of my cards,” Detective James said, “so you can call me if you think of anything else. You might have seen something you don’t remember right now—a person or thing out of place, something like that. Give me a call if you do.”

  She accepted the card. “I will.”

  Adam asked, “May we go now?”

  “Sure. I have your numbers if I need to get in touch.”

  Rachel took one last glance at the smoldering ruin, then walked with Adam back to her car, which had narrowly escaped getting a huge dent when a chunk of concrete had fallen near it. She didn’t object when Adam took her to the passenger side, and even managed a smile when he spoke.

  “This time I’ll drive.”

  He turned the heater on when he got in, land Rachel realized only then that she was shivering.

  “I’m all right,” she said.

  “You’re in shock.” Adam’s tone was quite pleasant, but there was a note underneath that sounded almost savage.

  She glanced at him, hearing the latter and wondering at it. “Accidents happen. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Yeah—but this was no accident. Some sorry bastard took the idea of playing with matches way too far. A few more seconds …”

  “We got out,” she reminded him. “Whole and pretty much unharmed.”

  “Yeah.” But he was obviously unconvinced of that. He drove only a couple of blocks, pulling over to the curb in front of a coffee shop. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay.” Rachel watched him get out and shut the door, then turned her gaze forward and her attention to the worried questions in her mind.

  Obviously, the explosion had been no accident. But there was no reason for her to assume she had been the target. People committed arson with depressing frequency, and that cop had even said it had happened several times in the area recently.

  So it was just bad luck that she had stopped by that day to look at the store.

  Nothing more than that.

  Besides, how could she have been a target? No one had known where she would be today except the Realtor, and since that very nice lady had pulled the addresses out of her file only that morning, there had hardly been time for lethal plans—even if she had been so inclined.

  Which was, of course, ridiculous.

  Still, Rachel was uneasy. The cut brake line loomed much larger now with this second “accident” following so soon after it.

  She didn’t know what to think. Or what to believe. All she really knew was that she was very glad Adam had been with her. She doubted she would have reacted so quickly to the gas if she’d been alone. And though it had all happened too fast for her to be sure, she had the hazy idea that he had shielded her as they’d fallen, his thick leather jacket withstanding some flying debris that would have easily torn through her linen blazer.

  He had probably saved her life.

  And since he had been with her every minute from the time she’d gotten the addresses, he had certainly not been the one to rig the explosion.

  The relief of that was overwhelming.

  Adam returned to the car just then and handed her a steaming cup. “Tea. Hot and sweet. Drink it, Rachel.”

  “Good thing I like tea,” she murmured, sipping.

  He smiled suddenly. “Am I being high-handed? Sorry. I’m not usually a bully, I promise you. Just worried at the moment.”

  “I’m fine. Really.” She did her best to sound convincing despite her awareness that only her death grip on the cup was keeping her hands from shaking visibly.

  He looked at her steadily for a moment, then nodded and put the car in gear. “Okay. But I don’t want you driving today, so I’ll take you home.”

  “Your car—”

  “I’ll call a cab to take me back to the real estate office, and I’ll turn the keys in. It’s no problem, Rachel.”

  She decided not to argue with him. For one thing, she was pretty sure he’d made up his mind. For another, it was pleasant to let herself drift while someone else made the decisions for a while.

  She drank her tea.

  They were almost at her house, when Adam spoke abruptly. “I get the feeling something’s worrying you about that explosion. Am I wrong?”

  Rachel hesitated, but reminded herself that he couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the explosion. “That car accident I had last week. The mechanic thinks the brake line was cut.”

  Adam shot her a quick, hard look. “Are you saying somebody’s trying to hurt you?”

  “I don’t know. Hurt me, scare me. Maybe. I just can’t think of a reason why anybody would want to do either.”

  “Scare you? You could have been killed today, Rachel.”

  She flinched a little, and stared at her half-finished tea. “You heard that cop. There’s been arson in the area. Besides,
nobody could have known I’d be there just then. Nobody.”

  “That makes sense,” he said slowly. “Not even the Realtor could have known for sure which store we’d check out first. It took some time for the gas to build up, time to set up some gadget to cause a spark. We were inside no more than a couple of minutes before we smelled the gas.”

  “So—it couldn’t have had anything to do with me.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” he said.

  “In this case, you’ll have to. It can’t be anything else.” She was arguing with herself as well as him.

  “Maybe. Just promise me you’ll be careful from now on, Rachel. Very careful.”

  “You bet,” she said lightly, and watched the tea slosh around inside her cup.

  “I’d like to know why the hell I had to hear about this from the police, Rachel.” Graham was definitely upset, and didn’t try to hide it.

  Rachel sat on the edge of her bed with a sigh. She’d just been about to go soak in a hot tub in a hopeful attempt to ward off soreness tomorrow, having finally escaped the anxious attention of Fiona and Cam. Adam had remained just long enough for his cab to arrive.

  “I’m sorry, Graham. I would have called as soon as I had a chance to catch my breath. But why did the police call you?”

  “They always call me whenever anything happens involving the Grant family. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She was getting tired of saying it, especially since it wasn’t true. “Although, if it hadn’t been for Adam, I wouldn’t be.”

  “So he was Johnny on the spot again.”

  “He probably saved my life, Graham. I wouldn’t have moved fast enough to get out of there, not without him.”

  “I don’t trust him, Rachel. And I sure as hell don’t like this explosion coming barely a week after your car’s brake lines were cut.”

  “It was just a bizarre accident. No one could have known I’d be at that particular store at that particular moment.” She kept repeating that fact like a mantra.

  “Delafield was always with you? He didn’t excuse himself for a few minutes at any point?” “No.”