by Jenna Ryan
Aidan interrupted with a brief epithet. “They’re stopping. Get a time for tomorrow,” he told Sam and shot through the door before she could protest.
“Eleven in the morning,” Anthea obliged. “What’s going on? Is there trouble?”
“As usual,” Sam muttered under her breath. Louder, she replied, “Ai…uh, Robert can handle it.” She peered through the vertical blind. “Make that, he did handle it. Whoever they are, they just made a U-turn, hit the gas and fishtailed out of here.”
“Good.” Relief weakened Anthea’s voice. “Take care, then, my dear,” she said softly. “I’ll explain all tomorrow.”
She hung up with a muffled click. Sam’s hand hovered above the Phone Off button as Aidan returned, sopping wet and breathing hard from his exertions.
“Alistair?” she guessed.
He shook his head. “These guys had short hair.” The phone clicked and he motioned for her to hit the button. “Hang up.”
“What? Oh, yes.” She tore her gaze away from his rain slick body only long enough to comply. “You, uh, should probably change.”
His hooded eyes never left hers. His uneven breathing might have been the result of the long descent and climb, but Sam sensed it stemmed from another source entirely. And if it did…
No, absolutely not, she admonished herself. No entanglements. He’d had a wife once; she was dead now. And even if Sam didn’t believe for a minute that Aidan had poisoned her, she did know he was a man with the potential for danger, not physical perhaps, but the kind that could cause her a great deal of pain.
His dark green eyes impaled her from the doorway. Her tan leather boots had glued themselves to the carpet Heat and the unfulfilled promise of sex vibrated in the air between them. Sam wanted his mouth on hers, his sleek body molded against hers, his hands undressing her with exquisite slowness in the steamy, shadow-laden warmth of his apartment.
“Sam…” he said, and she recognized the half question, half denial in his tone.
Tension, palpable enough to cut, flowed between them. Sam felt a cramping surge of desire between her legs and a throbbing born entirely of sexual longing in her limbs. With a boldness she hadn’t realized she possessed, she stepped out from behind the table and started toward him.
“Did you get the license number?” she asked, not really caring at that moment.
His eyes tracked her approach. “It was too dark. Sam…” he warned again, his chest still rising and falling unevenly. He sighed and closed his eyes. “Maybe bringing you here wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe we’d be smarter to let things between us be.”
“I’ve been doing that for days, Aidan. I’m not afraid of you.”
He made no move to avoid her, but countered with a steady, “I didn’t poison Domina with arsenic, but you’ve only my word on that.”
Sam halted directly in front of him. Tipping her head back, she regarded him calmly. “Were you charged?”
“I was investigated.”
“It isn’t the same thing. Was anyone charged?”
Aidan’s tone grew vaguely bitter. “It was decided that she’d done it purposely to herself in the hopes that I’d be blamed. Her doctor assured the police that she had strong suicidal tendencies.”
Something in his tone cautioned Sam against any further brash questions. Instead she ventured quietly, “And did she?”
Grim was the only way to describe his handsome features. “Not to my knowledge. But she wanted me gone, and that’s a fact”
Sam refrained from brushing the damp hair from his face with her fingers. “Gone?” she repeated, her dark brows rising. “As in…”
“Dead. It was Domina who tried to poison me.”
ALISTAIR’S CAR SLOWED to a crawl and finally halted on the road below Aidan Brodie’s apartment. No headlights, no light-colored clothing, no conversation between himself and the person beside him who sat there with headphones on, holding a piece of machinery that was in turn hooked up to a laptop computer.
Alistair put the car in park, opened his mouth to yawn, then gave a sudden start and yanked his passenger down below the level of the windshield.
“What are you doing!” his companion demanded.
“Stay down,” Alistair snapped’. “He’ll see us.”
“Who?”
“Brodie.”
The older head inched up. “I don’t…Oh, yes, there he is. He’s after that black car, Alistair. He doesn’t see us.”
“He will if you don’t stay down.”
The person beside him gave his arm a smack. “You’re leaning on my equipment. I’m trying to trace a ca-all.”
The word fragmented as Alistair yanked them both to a low crouch. “The car’s making a one-eighty turn,” he said through his teeth. “It’s heading straight for us.”
Again, the stubborn head popped up. Eyes strained for a clear view through the streaming glass. “Why, that’s one of Dorian’s men, I’m sure of it! His grandson and soon-to-be successor. You know Dorian Hart, Alistair. I’ve told you about him many times.”
The gangster Dorian Hart? Alistair’s stomach twisted into icy knots. A picture of Bugsy Malone planted itself in his head and refused to leave. He hauled his companion forward until their noses almost. touched. “What does Dorian Hart have to do with this? What’s his grandson doing at Brodie’s place? You said—”
A hand swatted at him. “Shut up. I need to hear this.”
“Not until you tell me what’s what here.”
Even by feeble streetlight dappled with patches of rain, Alistair saw his companion’s eyes glow in anticipation. The name “Anthea” fell from the aging lips. “So you really are alive—and living in Southern California.” The headphones were removed completely. “We’ve done it, Alistair. Or rather, I have.”
Alistair jammed balled fists into his jacket pockets. It was either that or wrap them around his passenger’s throat. “I did look,” he mumbled sullenly.
“Not hard enough.” A glance at the receding taillights of the black Jaguar, then, “I hate to think what Dorian’s intentions are. Once on the scent he’ll no doubt find a way to leap ahead of all of us. Damn Anthea for holding back her address. We’d be blundering around like a pair of idiots if we went out searching for her in the dark.”
“So what then?”
“We’ll have to wait”. White-knuckled fingers gripped the headphones, threatening to break them. “And hope that we can get to Anthea Pennant first.”
Chapter Ten
He’d done it again, Aidan thought, wincing as a shaft of sunlight broke through the overcast shrouding the hills north of the city. Did Nick Charles feel like this on mornings after? Or did movie magic extend to blowing off hangovers like so much loose dust?
The thought of Dashiell Hammett’s famous Thin Man detective brought a weary smile to his lips. Another hazy ray of sunshine turned it to a grimace.
He headed for the kitchen and a cup of yesterday’s coffee, reheated and strong enough to strip paint The first sip stripped the residue of whiskey from his stomach but had no effect on the pounding in his head.
Two more cups helped. Sam’s determinedly cheerful arrival on his doorstep at quarter to ten did not.
He’d made dinner for them last night, burned steaks, red wine—and conversation. He hadn’t expected the last part In fact he wasn’t sure why he’d brought Sam to his home. Or if he was, his intentions had altered after Anthea’s phone call.
They’d gone to a local bar after that, he recalled with a grunt, for stand-up comedy and far too much whiskey on his part. And later, alone in his bed, he’d dreamed of her.…
They’d been hot, lusty dreams, of Sam and silk sheets and “The Shadow” playing on the radio. It must have been a period dream, he reflected now. Sometime after the war but before “I Love Lucy.”
The obvious analogy sprang to mind. Aidan loved…No, he didn’t. He shoved the thought away. The scent of her perfume, something exotic and knock-down potent, had li
ngered long after he’d put her in that cab and sent her home. Now here it was again, it and her, standing right in front of him at the door, looking beautiful and alert and sexy as hell in a slim-fitting moss green dress made of sinfully soft cashmere. Professional yet sensual, it hugged her slender curves and drove him straight to bloody distraction.
“You look like hell,” she told him, and while her candor stung, at least she had the decency to keep her voice down. He saw her fight back a smile. “There are advantages to drinking only cola, Brodie. I’ll drive. Jeep or car?”
He chose her recently repaired Miata. It had better shock absorbers, and coffee or no, his head still felt suspiciously like a live mind field.
He stared half-lidded at her hands as she drove north. Long-fingered, and delicate like her. God, he wished he would stop noticing things like that.
“It’s almost eleven o’clock,” she remarked as they bumped their way cautiously along a muddy back road. “Do you see an umber barn?”
Aidan forced his eyelids open all the way. What he saw was a California mist thick enough to have done Nick and Nora proud on New Year’s Eve. He massaged his aching temples. He must be in bad shape to be stuck on “The Thin Man” series for so long.
“There,” he said, squinting through the cedars. “That looks like a barn.”
Sam turned into the first opening wide enough to be a drive-way. “I hope you’re right, otherwise we’ll be late.”
Not entirely to Aidan’s surprise, the overgrown drive broadened into a Spartan yard. Sam stuck to the traveled path, braking only when a brown pickup materialized out of the mist. “It’s a ‘49 Ford,” Aidan noted, impressed. “In good condition, too.”
Sam switched off the lights and slid out. She was in the process of smoothing down her dress when she stopped abruptly. Her eyes fastened on the foggy outline of the house before them. “Aidan, the front door’s open.”
He brought his head around. Dammit, it was, wide open. And there was music spilling out.
The door hit the outer wall, swung inward, then banged again.
“‘Bless Your Beautiful Hide,’” Sam whispered, still watching.
Aidan skirted the car to join her. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a dance, from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. Howard Keel and Jane Powell, nineteen fifty-four. The barn dance is a classic…never mind. She might be watching the movie.”
“With the door swinging back and forth on its hinges?”
“No, but I don’t like the alternatives.” She edged forward as she spoke. Aidan moved to stop her, then decided against it. She’d only shake him off and do exactly what she wanted to anyway.
“Anthea?” Sam called the woman’s name at a level loud enough to be heard above the music. “Anthea, it’s Sam and Robert. Are you there?”
Nothing but an eerie gust of wind swirling around the corner of the clapboard house answered her.
They mounted the four outer stairs like a pair of prowlers. The door banged twice, then almost blew closed. Only Aidan’s quick reflexes allowed him to catch it.
“Anthea?” Sam tried again. “This isn’t right, Aidan. She has to be here. She…” Her voice trailed off. “My God!” she exclaimed. “It’s Alistair Blue. Again!”
Aidan spied the man inside the door. He was crouched on the checkerboard floor, staring openmouthed at—something. Sam’s voice seemed to rouse him from his trance. Using the wall for support, he stumbled awkwardly to his feet.
“I didn’t do it,” he declared, making a flat gesture of denial. “I only just got here. I had no part in—” he waved an agitated hand “—this.”
Beneath her light tan, Sam’s cheeks paled. But she was across the threshold before Aidan could stop her and staring at the floor where Alistair had indicated.
“You bastard!” she raged as her eyes located the unmoving body. “You slimy little bastard.”
Alistair backed away, palms raised in surrender. “Wait a minute, lady, this was none of my doing. I had to follow you to find this place. I just got inside faster than you, is all. Ten seconds faster, I swear that’s all it was. I didn’t kill her. I don’t even have a gun.”
No, they had that, and it was still half loaded with blanks.
Aidan regarded the person who lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the kitchen staircase. She looked to have been a very slim and attractive elderly woman.
On her knees, Sam bent over her body, swallowed hard and sat back on her heels. “I can’t find a pulse.”
“Of course you can’t find a pulse,” Alistair shouted, badly rattled. “She’s got a bullet through her heart.”
They heard it at the same time, the powerful roar of a car engine near the umber-colored barn. Aidan made it around the front porch in time to see a black Jaguar take off in a spray of mud and water.
No plates this time, he thought grimly, but he sensed it was the same Jaguar that had been skulking around his street last night.
He didn’t realize Alistair was behind him until he heard a sound like a mournful moan emerge from his throat. “It’s him, I know it is. They’ll think I saw the murder, and I didn’t. My name’ll be in his computer. By tomorrow morning, I’ll be toast.”
Sam arrived, holding her high-heeled shoes like hammers. “Whose computer?” she demanded of a quaking Alistair. “Do you know that Jaguar?”
Wild-eyed, he spun to face her. “Don’t you? My God, didn’t you bother to run those plates last night?”
“The car’s registered to a Dinah Cobbett from Santa Monica,” Aidan said coldly. “And what do you know about last night?”
Alistair scuttled away as Aidan advanced. “Surveillance. I was only watching. It’s the people in the Jaguar you need to worry about.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Dinah Cobbett, you said? She must be his grandson’s latest bed partner, be-cause it was his grandson who was in that car last night.”
“Give us a name,” Sam demanded again. Her temper, Aidan noticed, sounded as frayed as his.
“Jimmy Visey.”
Aidan’s brain made the connection with amazing swiftness. He’d seen that name in one of Guido’s magazines, as well as on Dinah Cobbett’s file.
“Who is Jimmy Visey—” Sam began, but Aidan interrupted.
“He’s Dorian Hart’s grandson.”
Her brow furrowed. “Dorian Hart? The same Dorian Hart that Mar—Guido mentioned?”
Good cover. Alistair stared at her as if she’d sprouted a second head. “How can you stand there and be so calm? Don’t you know what kind of bodily damage Dorian Hart can inflict? He’s done it more times than any of us can probably count. And don’t expect his grandson to be a pushover even if he did go to Harvard.” He took a vicious swipe at the railing, then stiffened and swung around. “What am I doing? I’ve got to get out of here.”
Angry, Sam retorted, “You can’t leave, Alistair. You’re a witness to a murder.”
Alistair uttered a short, explicit curse, glanced at Aidan who really didn’t care if he stayed, went or jumped in the nearest lake, and darted around the side of the house.
Sam flung an exasperated arm. “That’s it? You’re letting, him go?”
“I don’t think he did it, Sam. He was too shaken.”
“Maybe he saw something then.”
A loud crash from inside the house had her jumping into the side of his body. She didn’t scream, merely sent him a frightened look and tugged him away from the window.
A ream of possibilities shot through Aidan’s bleary mind. The Jaguar and its occupants had roared out of the yard as if chased by the devil. Had they left one of their own behind? If so, why? Because he couldn’t see the logic in that, he searched for an alternative. A cat, possibly. Or a small dog.
“I’ll look,” he told Sam, and held a hand out to keep her, if not motionless, at least behind him.
It took an eternity to circle the large house. No other sound emerged from inside. Only a squirrel chattering as it ran up a tree
broke the silence in the yard. That and presumably Alis-tair’s car as he floored the gas pedal and made for the nearest highway.
A board creaked beneath Aidan’s weight before he reached the back door. Sam, who’d wrapped her fingers around his waistband, tightened her grip but didn’t tug. Cautiously, because he didn’t relish the idea of getting his head blown off by a trigger-happy gangster, Aidan glanced around the frame.
A low curse, similar to the one Alistair had used, came from deep in his throat. With a single, agile movement he entered and crossed to Anthea’s crumpled form. “She isn’t dead, Sam. She grabbed the cookie jar and broke it.”
“What?” Shocked, Sam ran in after him. “I thought…” Her eyes widened in horror. “I’ll call an ambulance,” she whirled and raced to the phone.
“Use a handkerchief,” Aidan warned, then saw she’d already grabbed a potholder and returned his attention to An-thea. Behind him, Sam turned off the movie.
Anthea’s face was deathly white. Her lips made a soundless fluttering movement. “Got part of it…” she croaked. “She tried to take it, but I tore…”
Aidan cradled her head in his hand. It surprised him how small she was—and how pretty she must have been. “What did you tear, Anthea? Who did this?”
He didn’t expect an answer and so was surprised when she gasped in a spiteful tone, “Mary. She’s…” A sharp pain seized her and she went rigid in his arms. “Crazy. Don’t be deceived…She was good, damned good…Wants revenge…Always has. Just…like…Three…Fates…”
She emitted a soft sound like a groan, nothing remotely like the dreadful death rattle Aidan had been anticipating, and released a deep breath. Her head rocked sideways; her taut little body went limp.
Aidan closed her sightless blue eyes with his hand, then closed his own eyes and let his head fall forward, ordering himself not to draw comparisons. He refused to relive that godawful moment in his life when Domina had died. An unsuccessful actress, she’d forced him to witness a death scene of her own creation. She’d drawn it out, of course, exaggerating the process in order to punish him. But in the end, death was death, and it was a sight he’d prayed like hell he would never see again.
