by Alice Sharpe
Her gut reaction to the sight of him sleeping stunned her with its intensity. She tried to drag her gaze away but she couldn’t. She’d never reacted like this to a near stranger, and it annoyed her at the same time fascinating her. Her heart fluttered. Her fingertips tingled with the desire to trace the line of his jaw and maybe kiss his throat, where she could see the healthy throb of his pulse.
She bet he’d had his share of love affairs.
Had he had one with Katie?
It didn’t seem likely. But if he didn’t find Katie attractive, how could he find her attractive?
Get a grip on yourself, she mumbled, and resisted the urge to smooth a lock of dark hair away from his eyes, knowing it was nothing more than an excuse to touch him and to start something she couldn’t, wouldn’t, finish. She turned to tiptoe back to the bedroom and the shoebox.
But first she examined the sheet music.
She, too, played piano. A smile lifted the corners of her lips as she noted she played some of these very pieces. There were many faded handwritten notes on the pages and even a scribbled date or two going back ten or more years.
My father’s music. She bit her lip as tears stung behind her nose.
Setting it aside, she sank to her knees and opened the shoe box again, carefully lifting out the false bottom.
The first item she encountered was a small bound notebook. She flipped it open, heart in her throat, thinking perhaps she had just come across a record of her sister’s findings.
But it wasn’t anything quite as handy as that. A notation in the front declared the small book belonged to Matthew Fields. Flipping through the pages, Tess saw a record of musical engagements, dating back many years, with names and addresses, presumably of the other musicians and contacts, along with comments about each performance. She flipped to a date two months before. The appointments continued on for several weeks, but the comments ended.
Her dad hadn’t been alive to perform, to comment, to plan ahead.
But three weeks after his death, the comments began again in a different handwriting along with records of coming engagements. And a name at the top of the page made Tess catch her breath.
Caroline Mays.
Her mother?
Caroline Mays was now the pianist taking the place of Matt Fields. Caroline Mays had to be the name Katie was currently using and she hadn’t known the name existed until she read the letter after their father died.
Tess stared at the name for a long time before closing the book and looking to see what else she would find. Along with a bank book made out to Caroline Mays and a few other important papers that had been missing from the apartment, there was an Oregon driver’s license made out to Katie Fields and another for Caroline Mays, a twenty-seven-year-old woman with bright-red hair and black frame glasses. Tess recalled the reddish hair at Katie’s hairline, just visible under the bandages, hair that Tess had assumed was stained with blood from her injury. Not blood, hair dye.
What form had Katie’s investigation taken? Who had she talked to, who had she worried to the point they tried to kill her? What was someone looking for when they tore her apartment apart? Had they found it? Why had Katie hidden her new ID along with her old one?
Tess picked up the little book again, turning to the date of Katie’s hit-and-run and found a note about a birthday party for someone named Tabitha. Was she the young woman in the party hat? Seemed a reasonable possibility. A few days before that Katie had played Mozart at a place called Bluebird House. The very next day, she’d been scheduled to play there again. Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” this time.
Tess put everything back in the box and went in to talk to Ryan, but he was still asleep. She sat down on a kitchen chair and watched him for a while.
What was it about him that kept her staring? She knew lots of attractive men in San Francisco, men who weren’t bossy and didn’t carry guns. Men who laughed more, men who worried less, men whose past didn’t seem to eat away at them.
She’d found none of those men interesting. This one she found fascinating and sexy and troublesome and didn’t have the slightest insight into why.
Unless it was because he was so different from her.
In the middle of all this speculation, she suddenly recalled the items she’d put back in the cabinet under the bathroom sink. Jumping to her feet, she went to look, and sure enough, found the small box whose importance she’d overlooked before.
Mountain Sunrise the label said, showing a woman with brilliant red hair climbing a snow-covered peak at the break of dawn.
Tess stared at the box for a long time as a plan flitted and floated like a windblown leaf through her head, taking form and substance until it seemed the most reasonable, the most obvious plan she’d ever come up with.
And the most dangerous.
Chapter Four
Peter called Ryan’s name.
Heart thumping wildly, Ryan ran through empty streets until he came to an old house, all the windows boarded up. Only the door stood open, a deep, black rectangle, gaping like a wound against the whitewashed planks.
Peter’s voice came again…fainter…coming from inside…a hopeless pleading tone that set Ryan on fire.
Ignoring the door, Ryan attacked the windows one after the other. As his brother’s voice receded, Ryan tore at the boards, fingers gouged by rusty nails, palms pierced by ragged splinters, blood dripping down his arms, splattering his chest. The last board from the last window came off, and he stood there panting. Every single window ended in solid wood—there were no openings. He turned back to the door—it was gone.
“Peter!” he yelled, and awoke with a start.
For a moment he lay there, unsure if he’d actually screamed, unsure where he was except that he felt stiff and out of sorts and there was a gun poking him in the rib cage. Full consciousness came back in a flash.
His gun. He’d fallen asleep in the chair without even taking off his gun.
The light peeking through Katie Fields’s living room window confirmed it was likely to be another drizzly Oregon winter day. His eyes felt gritty, his back sore, his mood as dank and oppressive as the weather. Sometime during the night, someone had tossed a pink bedspread across his legs. His keen police instincts deduced he had Tess to thank for that.
Speaking of Tess… Disentangling himself from the pink quilt, he sat up and ran his hands through his hair. It was a small apartment and he could see the whole thing from his vantage point by the front door. Except for the bedroom, that was. He stared at the closed door, remembering the open door in his dream, the one he’d ignored until it was too late and it disappeared.
Getting to his feet and folding the unwieldy quilt, he fought a mounting desire to make sure Tess was still here. Tucking the quilt under one arm, he walked to the bedroom door and rapped loudly, calling her name. “Tess? May I come in?”
She didn’t answer. He pushed open the door.
She’d finished cleaning up the room, rehung the curtains, remade the bed, put away clothes and shoes and books, had even found the cell-phone cord and plugged the small unit in on the nightstand to recharge its battery. The bed looked a little rumpled, the white blanket slightly mussed, a small depression in the plump pillow. He recalled Tess’s theory that Katie had packed light and hadn’t planned on living here long. As he surveyed the room with a practiced police eye, he had to agree. The Katie he recalled wouldn’t live so austerely. There was an obvious lack of the usual feminine doodads one usually found cluttering every horizontal surface in a woman’s bedroom.
A quick peek into the bathroom sent adrenaline pulsating through his body because it, too, was empty.
Tess was gone.
Once he’d dumped the quilt on the bed, he paced back into the living room, unsure where to start his search, scanning the apartment for signs of a struggle, chiding himself for sleeping through whatever had happened to get Tess out of this apartment without his knowledge. He pulled out his cell phone.
&n
bsp; A noise in the hall drew his attention and he pocketed the phone and drew his gun in a series of fluid motions he barely thought about. He was at the door as it began a slow creep inward. Grabbing the knob, he pulled it fast. Tess came flying into his arms.
For a second she stared up at him, her blue eyes wide in surprise. One of his arms had looped around her back; he ignored his impulse to pull her into a full embrace.
She wore a black sweatshirt with the hood securely tied around her face. The hood and shoulders of the sweatshirt sparkled with raindrops. Her cheeks were rosy, giving her a fresh, country look.
“Do you have to point a gun at me every time we meet?” she said.
He dropped his arm and she moved away as he murmured, “Sorry,” followed by an irate “Where have you been? What were you doing out there alone? How can I impress on you the fact that you might be in mortal danger? For an intelligent woman, you are the most stubborn—”
“Are you about finished?” Tess interrupted.
Actually, he was. He suspected the fact that he’d slept through Tess’s departure was getting the better of him. That and the way she looked. And felt. A moment ago she’d been pressed against his chest, her body solid yet lithe, covered in cool, damp clothing beneath his heated hand, and he’d—
“Yeah, I’m finished,” he said, taking a deep breath and tucking his gun away against the small of his back.
“I went to see Katie,” she said calmly, unzipping her jacket. “There’s been no change, by the way. Don’t look so alarmed. I was careful. I covered my head and left through the door at the back of the apartment house, running along the beach for a while so no one could follow me, then doubling back. It’s only a couple of miles over there. This is probably the last morning I’ll be able to go outside the apartment without certain adjustments, so I took a chance and went.”
“The last morning? Adjustments? I don’t understand.”
Carefully, staring right into his eyes, she pulled the hood back from her face, allowing her hair to tumble to her shoulders.
For a second he just stared at her, trying to figure out why in the world she would choose to dye her beautiful silky blond hair fire-engine red. And now? Why now? Had she gone nuts?
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, slipping out of the sweatshirt. Beneath she wore a form-fitting white T-shirt with a deeply scooped neck. For the first time he was aware not only of her face and curvy waist and hips, but also of the gentle, soft slopes of her breasts. All the unsuitable feelings he’d had since waking collided in his gut and he looked away.
“I’m not crazy,” she said.
He wasn’t sure how to answer her. Not crazy for running around with a would-be killer on the prowl for her look-alike? Not crazy for changing her appearance? That must be it. Making a point of studying her red hair, he said, “I have to admit I like you as a blonde better, but this is different, this might confuse the issue. Still…”
His voice trailed off as she turned to walk into the bedroom and returned a moment later carrying a large paper shopping bag. She pulled from it a pair of black frame glasses that she perched on her nose, dwarfing her delicate features. “There’s an all-night drugstore a couple of blocks over,” she informed him as she handed him a small card.
“An all night—Tess, just how many times did you go in and out that blasted door?”
“I couldn’t sleep and you seemed…restless. Anyway, look at what I handed you.”
Lowering his gaze, he found himself staring at a driver’s license that matched perfectly the seemingly nearsighted redhead standing in front of him.
Caroline Mays, it read.
“You didn’t buy this at an all-night drugstore,” he said sternly.
“No,” she agreed. “I bought the glasses and a few supplies at the drugstore. The license I found hidden in a shoe box in Katie’s bedroom.”
“It looks like the kind issued by the state,” he said uneasily as he turned it over.
“Doesn’t it just scream possibilities?” she said.
He was beginning to get a bad feeling as he looked from it to Tess’s face, all but masked by the glasses. She rustled in the sack for something else and emerged with a white object. Pulling her left pants leg up to her knee, she slipped what he realized was a cast over her foot and pulled it halfway up her shapely calf. “I made myself a walking cast,” she said. “I know Katie’s leg isn’t broken, but the cast adds a degree of credibility to my costume, don’t you think?”
The bad feeling intensified.
“Listen, Ryan,” she said earnestly, “I think you’re right, I think Katie was conducting her own investigation. She got herself a fake license, probably from someone she met while tending bar, quit her job, dyed her hair, moved into a strange part of town and put on a big old pair of glasses. The bad guys caught on to what she was up to and tried to kill her, so the Katie…I mean, Caroline…of today would need proof of an injury. Like a cast on the leg someone might have mentioned was injured in the ‘accident.’ I’ll wrap my head in a bandage, too, and apply makeup to look like bruising—”
“Wait a second,” he said, struggling to keep his voice down. She seemed surprised at the interruption.
“Yes?”
“You’ve bought yourself some big glasses, dyed your hair and made yourself a cast for what exact reason?”
She smiled. “Can’t you guess, Ryan?”
“I’m afraid to guess,” he told her truthfully.
“It’s simple,” she said, glancing away as though fearing censure. “To become my sister’s alter ego, Caroline Mays. To find out what she found out, to discover who hurt her, to clear our father’s name.”
He was speechless.
She slipped off the cast and met his gaze again. “Come over here and sit down. Let me explain what I found last night. Let me tell you exactly what I plan to do.”
She took his hand and led him to the kitchen. He wanted to believe he was too numb to register the feel of her cool hand on his, but her touch resounded up his arm despite his irritation with her naiveté. Thrusting yet another untimely reaction aside, he settled on anger. This woman was going to get in the middle of his investigation, she was sure to mess things up. She needed to back off and leave him to do what he needed to do and not play private investigator.
The rational part of him said he should try to reason with her in a sane, calm way.
The other nine-tenths wanted to throw her over his shoulder and deliver her to the airport where he would personally make sure she got on the first flight out of New Harbor.
Couldn’t she see that pretending to be someone else had gotten her sister run over? Didn’t she know that pretending to be someone pretending to be someone else was a recipe for disaster?
Where was that nice, quiet, sensible woman of the night before, the one who had agreed to go home, who had agreed to let him take charge of this mess?
He had the horrible feeling that if he didn’t figure out a way to nip this recklessness in the bud, Tess Mays, aka Katie Fields, aka Caroline Mays, was going to get herself killed.
SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED to Tess during the night, and as she sat across from Ryan, she considered the best way to explain it to him.
As she regarded his unyielding expression and the smoldering intensity of his eyes, she knew she needed to make it concise, convincing and logical.
She asked him to stay where he was and went back into the bedroom to retrieve the shoe box. Returning to the kitchen, she set it on the table in front of him and took off the lid. Her sister’s private treasure trove lay within. There was nothing terribly personal in the box, and she knew she needed help. She might have the power of her convictions, but she had no practical experience.
“What’s this?” he asked, looking up at her as she moved to stand behind him. For a second she was distracted by the way a few dark, glossy hairs brushed the top of his shirt.
This was the first time she’d seen him without the leather jacket. Th
e first time she’d seen the flat stomach, the biceps, the breadth of his shoulders covered with thin cotton. There wasn’t an extra ounce of fat on the man; he obviously spent some time at a gym.
“Tess?”
“Huh? Oh, this is what I found in Katie’s closet last night. Look in that little notebook on top.”
“This?” He opened it and thumbed through the pages.
“It’s a record of my father’s musical engagements,” she said. “Those handwritten notes are his at first, and then after his death, Katie’s.”
She pointed out what she meant, resting one hand on his solid shoulder and leaning forward, her hair sweeping his cheek.
“So what?” he said, turning his head to look at her as she leaned over his shoulder. This put them nose to nose, his eyes so close she could count his lashes, his mouth almost touching her chin.
She warned herself to stay businesslike. “Remember, Katie didn’t know our mother’s name until after our father died,” she said. “The fact that she chose an alias for her work with the musical group must mean she suspected someone from Dad’s music circle or the establishments he frequented was involved and she shouldn’t use her own name. He played all over town, from the civic center to nursing homes and a place called Bluebird House. She must have figured someone in one of those places had information. Otherwise, Katie would have used her own name, right?”
“Maybe,” Ryan agreed as Tess stood up, out of temptation’s way. He turned around in the chair and pinned her with his gaze. “Or maybe her reasons for joining were purely sentimental. Maybe she just wanted to follow in his footsteps. Maybe she didn’t want to be linked directly to him in case the people in the group or at one of the places they entertained had followed the news blitz following the fire. Or maybe they’d been questioned by the police concerning Matt Fields’s whereabouts or connections. Perhaps they even felt a little threatened, as though they’d done something wrong or someone would think they had, the old guilt-by-association thing. Or maybe they were just disappointed that someone they knew and trusted violated his oath to serve and protect and instead plotted arson and murder.”
