Chapter Six
Monday, April 10 six p.m.
A growling in his belly woke Tom. He laid on his side, his body cradling the warm, sweet-smelling woman. A fire in his groin grew as she arched her back. The thick rope of hair had dried to a wild mane that covered both of them. He lifted it, revealing the soft spot under her ear. “Are you awake?”
She inhaled deeply and released it with a long, slow sound of satisfaction. “Hmmm. I don’t need to ask if you are.” She rubbed her bikini-clad bottom against his erection. “What time is it?”
He rolled over to see the digital display. “Almost six.” His stomach made its needs known again, causing her to laugh.
“I think somebody missed lunch.”
He remembered the fast-food breakfast and the pictures he found. “I’m hungry all right.” He nibbled her ear, feasting as he moved down her neck. Then his stomach made a noise that sounded like a threat, and she laughed again. “Giggles. Not what I was going for. Let’s order room service. We need more chocolate sauce.”
She looked at him over her shoulder, her smile fading into sadness. “Staying would be so easy, but I have things to take care of still.” She shoved at his arm. “I need to get up.”
He relaxed his grip but ran his hands over the length of her body as she left the bed. She looked sexy, all rumpled as if they’d spent the afternoon playing. He clasped his hands behind his head, lingering on the image of her naked body under him while he waited for her to return. A single knuckle rap came from the door.
He’d put out the “Do Not Disturb” sign this morning. Whoever it was could take a hint.
The knock came a second time. “Clyde, I left my bride in an empty bed for you. The least you can do is answer the damn door.”
Relief swept through Tom. He hopped out of bed and dug through his bag for his sleep pants. Finally, his head cleared enough to wonder why Jebediah McCormick was knocking on his door. “Jeb? What are you doing here?”
“You call saying someone’s trying to kill you, it tends to get some attention. Whole family’s worried. You didn’t answer texts or calls. Took me too damn long to find you.”
“I called you?” He hadn’t been in the state of mind to consider the details. Now that he was, there were a few blank spots. “You came? Yesterday was your wedding day.” He threw the door open.
“I know it, but you’re family, and you needed us. You sounded…” Jeb paused, rubbing his hand across his mouth while his gaze verified Tom was still among the living. “You were in bad shape.”
“I was. Wait, us?” He shoved his head into the hallway, looking for an entourage.
“It’s just me. Carolina wanted to come, but I convinced her it was more important for her to focus on that little assignment you gave her. Butch knows, but we’re keeping it from Katie. Lord knows what she would do if she thought you were in trouble.”
“She’d move hell and high water,” he said, knowing because he’d done the same for her. Vaguely, a dull memory surfaced of wanting Jeb’s help. He didn’t remember calling. If he’d been in his right mind, he wouldn’t have done it, which showed how out of his mind he’d been.
“You gonna let me in?” Jeb stepped into the room as Tom retreated, then whistled long and low. “And to think I was worried about you being up here with someone beating on you. You out-did yourself.” He picked up the discarded champagne bottle and set it next to the door. He wandered the room, toeing the empty whipped cream can and picking a ripe strawberry from a white bowl. “Many of your ladies live in Cleveland?”
Tom scrambled around the room, putting it more or less back together. Hiding what he couldn’t fix. “No. Why?”
“I figured if somebody was trying to kill you, it was one of those ladies you’re always appreciating. Or her father.”
“This isn’t like that.” But it sure looked like that. “I was working when it happened.”
The toilet flushed. Jeb’s grin grew as wide as a Cheshire Cat. “She still here?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“The hell it’s not.”
The bathroom door opened, and Tom put his body between Peach and Jeb. She walked out with the wet suit pulled to the curve of her hips and wearing the bikini top. He reached for her hand, realizing how disturbing it would be to walk out to a stranger, but she shook him off.
“Ma’am.” Jeb tipped the hat that wasn’t on his head. Tom gave him credit for not trying to intimidate the crap out of her.
Peach pulled on the sweatshirt that he had worn back after his swim. It hung to mid-thigh, sagged around her belly, and the sleeves had to be folded twice to show her hands. “I didn’t know you had company.” She spoke in Catalina’s dialect, putting her mask back in place.
A nasty taste filled Tom’s mouth. He didn’t want the act, he wanted the woman, but he played it cool. “This is my brother-in-law, Jeb. Jeb, this is Peach.”
She nodded and knelt to pull on the water shoes. “Could I borrow forty dollars?”
Jeb snorted, rolled his eyes, and crossed his arms. “I’ll give you a hundred if you forget his room number.” Tom glared, but Jeb didn’t back down. “And you wonder why you have problems.”
“She saved my life today,” he snapped at Jeb, then focused on his Peach. “What do you need the money for?”
“A cab. I need to get back to my truck. It is not far, but I am not exactly dressed for a nighttime stroll through downtown. I’ll pay you back, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not looking for a hand out.”
“You’re not leaving.” His tone was at once a plea, an order, and a denial.
She shrugged before continuing to speak in the lilting accent. “You are well enough, and you have your family now.”
“You saw Tom’s accident?” Jeb moved in front of the door. “What happened?”
Peach lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes, spiking the tension in the room. This was not what he wanted. He felt immensely relieved that Jeb came. He had the skills and experience to deal with attempted murder. While Tom couldn’t say he was new to the idea, he was new to being the target. He was equally grateful to Peach and didn’t want her to go. Not like this.
“Peach? Will you tell Jeb what you saw? He owns a security firm and deals with that sort of thing all the time.”
She searched his face for a moment and then turned her attention to Jeb. “It was not an accident. A man in a black hoodie hit Tomas in the back and knocked him into the lake. He picked something up off the building, long and thin.”
Jeb narrowed his eyes at Tom. “Turn around.” He whistled low at the color blooming across the broad shoulders.
“Probably a steel rod. My entire body is sore. I have bruises on my arms and legs.”
“From the rocks.” She circled to stand in the larger space of the bedroom. “I had a hard time getting you out of the water. You fell against the sharp rocks.”
“How long was he in the water?”
“I didn’t time it. He fell, and I had to wait until his assailant left. It took me a few minutes to get there, and then we stayed low until I saw the guy leave.”
“He just left?” Jeb asked.
She stood feet apart, hands behind her back, eyes directly meeting Jeb’s turbulent glare. “He carried an armful of equipment out of that trailer and put it in a black SUV. He might have made other trips. I only saw the one. When we went in the trailer, Tomas’s computer was gone.”
“Could you see the passenger side?” Tom asked. “Was it dented?”
She turned toward him, a frown on her face. “How did you know? He put the stuff in the rear driver side.”
He swallowed hard, choking on coincidence. “I was nearly run off the highway this morning by a black SUV. I thought it was a drunk driver.”
Jeb took a deep, considering breath. “There was only one person?” he asked Peach.
“That I saw.”
“No recognizable features? Short, tall? Black, white? A logo on the truck?”
“I was too far away and had a poor angle. At times, all I could see were legs. The SUV was black. Other than the smashed side, there was nothing unique.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I’m done answering your questions. I’ve told you what happened. Now open the door.”
Jeb opened the door with a bow. Peach and Jeb were like two trains on the same track, and Tom wasn’t anxious to see the collision. Jeb would win, and then Peach would be gone.
He leaped into the doorway, not ready to let her go. “Wait. Let me take you.”
She lifted her chin. “I don’t need anything from you.”
With two fingers, he brought her chin toward him. She was wearing her mask again. He looked beyond it, to the woman he wanted. “You saved my life today. I’m not returning the favor by letting you walk into the night penniless, wearing only a wet suit and a sweatshirt.”
“Where are your keys?” Jeb asked from behind them.
She closed her eyes and swore, picturing the small compartment that kept her keys and driver’s license dry. “With the Jet Ski.” Stubborn determination kicked in. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll figure something out.”
Jeb sighed heavily. “Get some clothes on, Prince Charming, and we’ll get Cinderella here back to her pumpkin.”
…
Monday, April 10 seven-thirty p.m.
Same bar. Same hostess in a micro-skirt. Turquoise. “Where’s your friend?” the hostess asked with a selfish grin.
“Home where she belongs.” Tom still smarted from the “discussion” he had lost. “I’ll see her in the morning.”
As they followed the micro-skirt into the bar, Jeb laughed derisively. “I have no idea why you are under the delusion that she is going to show up at breakfast.”
“She said she would.”
“You backed her into a corner. She was going to say whatever she needed to say to get out of there.”
Had he done that? Peach had leaned against the big, white truck. Right there in the corner where the mirror connected to the door. But he hadn’t backed her in there. Had he? Okay, so maybe he had gotten a little desperate when she wouldn’t agree to come back to the hotel room. But he hadn’t forced her into meeting them for breakfast. He’d just asked. Politely.
Ten times.
Jeb ordered for the both of them when the waiter came. He took a handful of nuts from the small dish on the table and popped two in his mouth. “She must have been a tornado in the sack.”
He glared at Jeb. What happened between him and Peach had been…extraordinary. He wasn’t going to make it out to be a fast one-timer. He recoiled at his own thought. He didn’t think of women in longer terms. He made a mission of appreciating the ladies…and then letting them go.
“Look at what you did to the room. I’m impressed you had the energy for all of that after the trauma of nearly getting killed. Then again, that had to be some life-affirming sex.”
Tom looked away, schooling his expression to hide his thoughts. He prided himself on being a generous lover, on taking care of his partner’s wants. It was the first time he had felt on the receiving end of such attention.
“That’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Every Hail Mary should end with a good amen.”
Tom cleared his throat, mumbled the truth, then ate a nut.
Jeb tossed a nut into the air and caught it in his mouth. “Say that again?”
“We, uh, did that last night.”
“Pardon me?”
“I met this gorgeous blonde in the hotel.”
Jeb had tossed another nut. It bounced off his face. “Peach isn’t a blonde.”
“Not a natural blonde.” He confessed it all.
Jeb scowled, the dark, hard look that meant he didn’t like the sound of something. “Since I don’t believe in coincidences, we aren’t going to bother drawing it out. I’m going to jump straight to the part where she set you up.”
Denial. It was the immediate response. Coincidence wasn’t that ridiculous. There could have been a legitimate reason for her to be in the hotel in a wig…with a fake name. Hooker came to mind, fast, harsh, and unbidden. He threw it out on principal and punctuated it with the fact she’d only asked him for forty dollars long after they were done. He hated that the thought of her prostituting herself entered his mind.
“Did she take anything?”
Tom snapped back to reality at Jeb’s voice. “No. Nothing was missing from my wallet. All of my equipment was there. The only thing I couldn’t find was my shirt.”
“Was the hotel lobby the first time you met her?”
“Yes. Yes.” And then the lightbulb went on. “No. She was here, on your wedding night, when I met with Fabrini. She was getting tossed out by the manager.”
“A man with good taste and sense, unlike your dumb ass.”
Tom fell back heavily against the chair. The unfamiliar feelings of disappointment and embarrassment squeezed the air from his lungs. “Why? What does she want?”
“What did y’all talk about?”
He sighed heavily, remembering vividly every moment of their date. “At dinner, we talked about frivolous things. She told me stories of her travels around Europe and the U.S. She said she lived with gypsies.”
“Is that even a real thing? She tell you she was military?”
“What? No. How do you know that?”
“She stood at ease while she reported out. What did you talk about? The project?”
Damn, he didn’t like being interrogated. With each question Jeb asked, he felt like he was being stripped of the best night of his life. He didn’t care if she lied. He wanted to keep the night with Catalina.
“No, Jeb. I told her I had a shitty day and didn’t want to talk about work. So we didn’t. Period.”
“You liked her.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
Jeb patted Tom’s arm. “It’s okay. This can’t be the first time your cock has gotten you into trouble. We’ll get you out. Tell me about your project.”
Two glasses of scotch were delivered. Tom did his like a shot and consolidated the last twenty-four hours of his life into twenty minutes. Jeb pulled out his smart phone and worked the screen with his thumbs as he listened. His glass was empty when the story wound to an end.
“I lost everything. I’m going to have to start over.”
“Are you sure the collapse was the result of sabotage?”
“I’ve been on the job one day—I’m not sure of anything. If I had to put money on it today, yeah, I would say it was tampered with. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was willful. Mistakes happen. Honest ones. The computer model I built was bare bones—I was going to build a more detailed model back home with actual data—but it did show that under the conditions at the time, the crane should have fallen onto the land. I’ve identified an area of the crane where I believe the failure started.”
“Did you tell anyone your conclusions?”
“Hypothesis, but yeah. I met Fabrini, his kid and his business manager this morning.”
“And it was after that someone tried to run you off the road.”
Tom nodded.
“You didn’t call the police after you went into the lake? An ambulance?”
“I didn’t know what I was doing. Maybe I did. I called you.” He tried to run his hand through his hair, but pain shot through his right shoulder. The sharp reminder put reality in front of his face. “Jeb, I couldn’t have gotten myself out of there. Even if I had gotten out of the lake, I would have laid there like a beached whale. Probably died of hypothermia or some shit.”
“This girlfriend of yours didn’t take long to get where she was going.”
“You bugged her truck?” Tom sat dumbfounded as Jeb stared at the small screen in his hand. Curiosity got the better of him. It always did. “You win. Where did she go?”
Jeb turned the screen around. “You tell me.”
Peach parked the Beast in the same spot where she watched her uncle fall and stared down at the construction site. As soon as she was alone, it had been a quick decision to come back and get a look at the computers inside the trailer. She didn’t expect to find much—logic said if there was anything worth finding, Black Hoodie would have taken it, wiped it, or destroyed it. Still, odder things had happened. She would be remiss if she didn’t at least do a cursory sweep.
She raised her binoculars, surveying the site. The security lights showed the front gate remained wide open. Black Hoodie hadn’t played his hand yet. Maybe he didn’t want to be too close when the call came in. Maybe he wanted to make sure there was a good long time to let nature do its thing on Dr. Riley.
Setting the binoculars down, she thought about Tom. She didn’t have anything to feel guilty about, she told herself. The spectacular sex had been between two consenting adults. No guilt there. Sure, she copied his work, but it wasn’t like she was going to use it to blackmail him. Well, not unless he tried to pin things on her uncle. And seeing as he got the whole lot stolen, he should be grateful that she’d made a copy. And she pulled him from the lake at great personal risk to herself. Who knew what the man with the steel rod was capable of?
She wrinkled her nose. The whole thing smelled worse than sour cabbage.
Her stomach felt the same way.
“Fine,” she snapped at her conscience. “I’ll make a copy of his precious work and drop it at the hotel front desk. Satisfied? Now let me work!”
She slid out of the truck and disconnected the ignition wires the way Jeb showed her. The man didn’t trust her, and that didn’t bother her. Winning his trust was not on her to-do list. If it didn’t find her uncle or give her grandfather peace of mind, she didn’t give a damn about it. From behind the seat, she pulled her nylon bag. In the small space, she fought off the wet suit and changed into black yoga pants, a black fitted sweatshirt, and black socks. Her feet were warm and happy in socks and Nikes. She quickly braided her hair, securing it with a band. Finally, she pulled out her “work” kit, slung the cords across her body, and set out into the night.
The triple-wide trailer sat on blocks near the front entrance. Darkness covered most of the site, requiring slow, careful movement to avoid running into equipment and tripping over debris. She had infinite impatience when she worked. Time was invested in memorizing the space she crossed, knowing she would need it to make her escape.
Odds were the doors were unlocked and security off. She hadn’t locked things up when they left, and if the front gate was still open, then… The door swung open without protest. Her small LED flashlight lit the room, shining directly on the chair on which Tom had sat.
Tom. Her mind kept coming back to him, and that was dangerous. When you were someplace you weren’t supposed to be, the last thing you needed was your mind to be somewhere else altogether.
“Focus. Get in. Get out.” The beam of light led the way to the offices. There were more, she guessed, but only one was locked. A few seconds later, the door swung open for her. The desk had a docking station but no computer. Not a shock that the laptop went with the guy. But what was worth locking the door?
She started with an old-school file cabinet, searching it one drawer at a time, one file at a time. The bottom three drawers were empty. The top held less than ten manila folders. Peach went through the papers quickly. They were financial folders. Subcontracts. Invoices. Materials supply lists. “No one locks up the ordinary,” she reasoned and pulled a portable scanner from her bag.
While the scanner worked on the first folder, she went to the desk outside the office. Locked Door’s assistant had a desktop. Using her magic password program, she started on the computer. She cringed, hating the sound and the light of the computer. Light of day? You don’t even register hearing it. Dark of night? It might as well have been a car alarm blaring two feet from your head.
Back into Locked Door’s office. She re-filed the first folder and set the second folder to scan. She searched the desk quickly for a name. An email printed and sitting on top of the desk had the name “Jack Hawthorne” across the top. The lengthy email contained several exchanges about overpayment on an invoice. It included the reference to the invoice and the check number. Under it, three other emails needed attention. A concrete supplier with questions on a mix. Corporate accounts payable requesting authorization to pay an invoice. Next week’s weather forecast. She stacked them together and fed them through the scanner.
A noise came of tires on gravel. She had just watched the transfer finish from the desktop to her hard drive and hastily shut down the computer. A quick press of a button killed the screen light. The speakers were unplugged. She jumped into Hawthorne’s office, locked the door, and shut down her operation. In the time it took for her to replace the files and put her gear away, two car doors had slammed, and footsteps came her way.
She opened the window in Hawthorne’s office and cut the screen.
“The door’s open,” a stern voice said. “Get behind me.”
“Don’t shoot her, Jeb.”
She cringed at the sound of his voice. Tom Riley knew where she was and came after her. Why and how? The how was easy; the SOBs tracked her. The why? He must be trying to stop her from stopping Fabrini from scapegoating Rico. It hurt that Tom would get in her way…then it pissed her off. To think she nearly froze to death saving him. Last time she’s stupid enough to do that.
Rubber raced across gravel and then slid to a halt. A voice yelled into the night. “Who the hell is on my site?” The voice was a righteous, pissed-off male.
“You recognize him?” Jeb asked.
Peach stayed very still, wondering the same thing. Of course, the night she decided to break in, there’s a party.
Tom answered the question. “Yeah. Fabrini’s kid.”
“Let’s go meet him,” Jeb said.
She slid out Hawthorne’s window and dropped silently to her feet. The unlit back side of the trailer gave her the cover she needed to run behind a large shed.
One voice carried over the others. “Riley. What the hell are you doing here at this time of night?” Peach couldn’t hear the response, but it was answered emphatically. “What the fuck are you talking about? Jon Jon, get me a flashlight.”
Jon Jon opened the rear door of the SUV…and left it that way. Wide open.
Decision: stir the pot or get out of Dodge.