by Janet Dailey
Mindful of his injury, Bannon got up while he could do it without Erin looking. He rubbed his clenched fist against the tense muscles of his lower back, then stretched, listening to the clatter of cups and spoons. He was standing straight, looking out of one of the tall windows by the time she returned, his gaze narrowed.
He was on full alert. Someone or something had moved deep within the lengthening shadows on the slopes and caught his eye. But it was gone now. No reason to scare her over nothing.
“Like the view?” she said lightly.
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. But who owns all that land?” Bannon pointed to where he had seen the movement.
“The state. There are trails through it. You can’t really see them from here.”
“Oh. There must be hikers, then.”
Erin smiled. “And the occasional bear. It’s a wilderness area.”
Bannon scanned the forested slopes again, seeing only trees. The wayward breeze that had rattled her windows didn’t move them, since they had no leaves yet to speak of. He blinked before checking one last time, and leaned on his bent arm against the window frame to brace himself.
“Hold it right there,” Erin said.
He turned to her, startled. “What?”
“No, don’t look at me. Go back the way you were. I want to draw you for the cover.”
He darted a glance at the empty space on the pad of paper. “Are you kidding?”
“No.”
Bannon was speechless for a couple of seconds. “Uh, what kind of a book is it again?”
“Contemporary fiction. You don’t have to wear a kilt or armor or anything like that.”
“Oh, good. The guys at the station would never let me live it down.”
“It’s only a preliminary sketch,” she promised. “No one will recognize you, ever. Please?”
“Ah—okay.” What else could he say? Bannon had never had a formal portrait done in his life. Hating to have his picture taken, he had deliberately screwed up his features for every school portrait from elementary school on, and even his cop ID photo didn’t look much like him.
He told himself he had nothing to be nervous about. This was no big deal. A sketch. So what?
He stayed standing the way he was but he could feel his body tense the second she picked up her pencil and moved to the easel. Once there she paused. Silent seconds passed. Just knowing she was looking him up and down, even professionally, pretty much blew his mind.
“Relax,” she said softly.
“Got it. Anything for art.” Bannon wished he’d known she was going to ask him to do this, but her request hadn’t been planned. Of course, he could have laughed it off and refused. He hadn’t.
He took a deep breath, thinking that a shot of whiskey would help. That tall cup of coffee had his pulse banging. How long was this going to take? He had to will himself to relax.
“That’s better,” she said. “Take it easy. I guess you’ve never modeled.”
“No, I haven’t.” He suppressed a laugh and held the pose. “Not a lot of call for it around the Wainsville headquarters. Except when they need an extra guy for a lineup.”
“Um, you moved,” she said. “Hold still.”
“Sorry. Guess I should think about something else,” he joked. “Like my horse.” He almost turned to glance at the empty part of the paper where he was going to be, then stopped himself.
“Just don’t look at me. Don’t think about anything much, okay?”
As if. Her gaze made him self-conscious, but there was no way he was going to admit it. He stared out the window, finding geographical features in the landscape and putting them in an order he could remember. Standard recon drill.
“Very good. Stay like that. You’re doing great.”
“At least you work fast,” he muttered, trying not to smile. He could hear the faint sound of the pencil strokes as her hand brushed over the paper.
“Almost done,” she whispered absently.
Two words, two ordinary words, but the alluring softness of her voice as she said them was impossible to ignore. He fought a warm sensation of arousal throughout his body. She was standing at her easel and he was several feet away, but the feeling of sudden closeness between them was overwhelming.
Look outside, he told himself. Look hard.
He stiffened.
There it was again. Something moved. He caught a hard glint of light on metal. A gun? At this distance he couldn’t tell. Without thinking he dropped his arm and stood up completely straight.
Something—someone—had to be out there. Think it through, he told himself. The way the rays of afternoon sun slanted, someone could see into the windows of Erin’s house better than Bannon could see out. If they wanted to. If they were looking.
His arousal was instantly replaced by an uneasiness that raised invisible hairs on the back of his neck.
“What’s the matter?” She picked up a pencil sharpener and began making a fresh point. The thin, scraping sound put him on edge. She didn’t have to know why.
“Nothing.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw to get rid of the tension that had clenched it.
“Want to see?”
She meant the drawing. What he really wanted to do was blast out the back door and see if he could catch—what, a figment of his imagination?
He didn’t think so. A bear didn’t move that fast, not in spring. A burdened hiker didn’t either. The glint of light had lasted a microsecond, but his every instinct told him it could have reflected off the lens of a rifle scope. Or a gun. Drawn and swiftly covered.
Someone was out there.
Give chase? No way. He couldn’t leave Erin alone if he was right. Explaining what had triggered his trained sense of being watched would scare her and make him sound paranoid. Was he?
After the shooting, a well-meaning shrink had told him he might experience flashbacks. He never had. He didn’t think this was one.
He took one last look out there, spotted nothing, and turned around to answer her. “Of course I want to see it.” Bannon went over to her and studied the drawing, forcing his mind to focus.
Her addition of a male figure had been done with skill. The face was in shadow, sketched in no more than three or four lines.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s excellent,” he said honestly. “I’m impressed.” The pencil outline of him standing had been completed with assurance and speed. The arm he’d rested on the window frame was now magically resting on the sketched neck of the horse.
She hadn’t tried to capture his actual likeness. Not as far as his features, anyway. The tense muscles, the animal alertness and thousand-yard stare—he would have to agree that was probably exactly what he’d looked like to her, without her knowing why.
Bannon stepped back, aware that she was gazing at the drawing again and not at him.
Erin frowned abstractedly and began to lightly sketch clouds into the background. Then she curled her hand into a fist and smudged the lines with the side of her hand, not caring that she smudged her skin into the bargain. The clouds turned into something soft and otherworldly, floating under her touch.
What a hell of a gift, he thought suddenly, to be able to create beauty out of blank nothing. Something told him that she saw the world that way more often than not.
He noticed a sunset same as anyone else, but what he looked for was danger. Staring down the barrel of a gun two years ago had marked his mind forever. He pushed the thought away as hard as it had hit him.
“Thanks for being a good sport, by the way.” Her remark was polite, but he picked up on the hint of flirtatiousness in her tone—and then he saw something else he hadn’t expected. There was a look of admiration in her eyes. For him. He suspected that art had nothing to do with it.
“If all you want me to do is stand still—” He broke off. Bannon realized she’d liked getting a really good look at him while she drew, liked it a lot. The thought erased everything.
He had a stron
g feeling she wanted more from him than just standing still. Much more.
He wouldn’t say no to anything Erin wanted him to do for her. Acting on an impulse he was compelled to obey, he put his fingertips under her chin and tilted her face up to his. Jesus, what eyes. They were a thousand shades of blue this close. He had only a second to be dazzled by them before they closed and her lips parted. The little breath she drew stole his own.
Bannon moved his mouth over hers and kissed her, stroking her arms, her waist—stopping there unwillingly.
With an almost inaudible moan, she gave in, her hands moving around his back to hold him. Not closely. Her high breasts just brushed his chest. He wanted to pull her against him with all his strength. He didn’t.
Her lips were soft and tender, responsive to his searching mouth, demanding silently that he deepen the kiss.
That much he would do, but no more. And not for much longer. Bannon drew in his breath and lifted his head. Her eyes fluttered open, but not all the way. The dreamy look she gave him did something to his heart.
He didn’t dare kiss her again. Not now, anyway. But he couldn’t go, not if it meant leaving her alone.
“What’s the matter?” Her voice seemed far away, even though there was nothing between them now but the clothes they had on. Her body was warm and pliant against his. His protectiveness warred with his arousal.
“That’s hard to say.” He rubbed his cheek against her silky hair, looking out over her head through the window. “But I don’t think you’re safe here.”
CHAPTER 6
Spreadsheets. Fiscal-year breakdowns. Audit inquiries. Registered letters from investors and creditors, and lawyers for both, never opened. Montgomery wished he could crumple up every single piece of paper on his desk and throw it into the fireplace. The blaze had died down—his problems hadn’t. Over the last several years, he had amassed hundreds of millions in wealth for his hedge-fund clients and himself. In a few short months, it had dwindled to nearly nothing as one sure thing after another fizzled.
He barely slept. Couldn’t eat. His thoughts drifted and whirled for hours these days. His head felt hollow. And then he had been blindsided by the reopening of Ann’s case, forced to dodge the media with help from Ollie Duncan. At least his lawyer and the reporters didn’t know that his empire had effectively vanished.
Yet.
The hall leading away from his luxuriously appointed study echoed with the precise click of Caroline’s high heels, walking away after another quarrel. This one had been about the household bills. She was outraged by his questions about them.
He looked around his study, redecorated last year in grand plantation style, with an extravagant price tag to match. She’d had antiques shipped in from all over the South, snapping up what she called bargains and adding custom details that cost a fortune.
Wine red striped damask covered the walls, topped with elaborate molding. Hand-carved, of course. The immense cream-colored sofa with the walnut frame had been carried into the room by a team of movers and positioned on the expensive carpet, immovable. Two gigantic armchairs in a coordinating shade of silk flanked it and an inlaid-marble coffee table that picked up both the cream and wine shades took up the center of the seating area. Behind him, the room’s walls were divided by floor-to-ceiling windows that met at the corner, gorgeously swagged and draped to shut out the sunlight that bothered him more and more.
Even the extremely faint hum of the computer on a small table to his left bothered him. It was on, but the screen was dark. Not that it mattered.
He sat at a partner’s desk, a massive old piece placed on the diagonal so he could face the door. He’d essentially founded Montgomery Holdings from it years ago, landing his first investors on the strength of his name and reputation as a breeder of champion racehorses, using his operation as collateral at first, then expanding that. Selling million-dollar shares of winning Thoroughbreds put out to stud had been one scheme among many.
Caroline hated the Victorian ugliness and sheer size of the desk, but she had given up the struggle to get rid of it. Montgomery never would. Every man needed a last retreat, and the desk was his.
Crafted for two lawyers, country gentlemen in private practice, it could be used from either side. The antiques dealer had proudly shown off a hidden recess under the top nearly as wide as the desk itself, empty at the time, but undoubtedly intended for quick concealment of documents in the event of an unexpected visitor. And he’d shown Montgomery another ingenious feature: The corner legs on either side of the desk had been fashioned to hold small silver flasks in case the gentlemen felt the need for a restoring nip of whiskey.
The flasks were long gone, but Montgomery had improved on the hiding places. The recess now held a large-screen laptop, whose power cord ran through one hollow leg and under the carpet, connected to the Internet by a wireless router in a cabinet. He had just checked the thing, reassured by the row of tiny, unblinking lights indicating connection with an encrypted network that was his alone.
State of the art. Invisible. Anything but antique. Outside of the desk, he didn’t share Caroline’s enthusiasm for them. Besides the study, the only room where he felt at peace wasn’t really a room, but a solarium filled with plants. Other than there, she didn’t allow anything living in the house. Cut flowers and forced shrubs only. And above all, no pets. To him, the house was a lifeless showplace. It was practically new—he had bought it at her urging five years ago. For cash. Her name wasn’t on the deed, and that had allowed him to keep full control. It was mortgaged to the hilt now.
And close to foreclosure.
The mansion that had been entrusted to the historical society was not strictly his. That at least had been a home to generations of Montgomerys, the happily married and those who strayed, fortune-builders and wastrels, successes and the occasional suicide, along with children and cousins and servants by the score.
He had never returned to it once Ann’s grieving mother insisted they get out. Another failure of nerve on his part. At the time he had been inclined to wait, believing, irrationally, that whoever had taken his only child might bring her back and claim the reward.
But he had eventually resigned himself to the fact of Ann’s death and closed the door on the past. The case drifted out of the headlines, though some local people had kept talking about it. Years went by before they stopped.
And now RJ Bannon had walked over a few graves and it was news again. Montgomery didn’t know why anyone cared. Well, yes, he did—the reward money was mentioned in the broadcast.
He couldn’t figure Bannon out. Hero cop or not, he was tough, young, and an adversary to reckon with. Obviously intelligent. But what the hell did he stand to gain by reopening the case? If it was the reward he was after, he was walking into a bear trap.
Ollie Duncan had seen to that, even if his bills hadn’t been paid for months. The lawyer hadn’t gotten any information out of Bannon, though. Called on the carpet, the police chief had no explanation for the broadcast. Hoebel owed them that and hadn’t delivered.
But that score was lopsided. Montgomery owed Hoebel money, a lot of it. A year ago, their relationship had been straightforward enough: Hoebel was paid a flat monthly fee in the low thousands to keep Montgomery in the loop on things that wealthy people would rather keep hidden. It was a snap to find out who was facing foreclosure and eviction from a multimillion-dollar home, whose trophy wife had left with a black eye and a vow to get even in court, and which spoiled rich kid had run amok and stuck his parents with a hellishly expensive lawsuit. Montgomery preferred solid-gold investors with no dirty secrets and no liabilities. Hoebel had helped him filter out the undesirables.
But the tanking economy meant Montgomery had to lower his standards in more ways than one. And, unfortunately, the chief had found out that Montgomery’s business affairs had come under the scrutiny of a federal agency. Montgomery regretted explaining the creative accounting that allowed hedge funds to post returns of twenty pe
rcent or more, though he had been careful not to admit to doing any of that himself.
But he hadn’t reckoned on the chief’s resentment. Apparently Hoebel had expected to get a chance to profit from the money machine while it was going strong. However, Montgomery’s fund had an ironclad requirement of one million to buy in, and Hoebel didn’t have it, not on a civil servant’s salary. Make that a crooked civil servant.
The economy got worse and the monthly payments got smaller. A lot smaller. Last month Hoebel hadn’t been paid at all. Distracted by the need to find new investors and gain their confidence, Montgomery hadn’t been careful. Hoebel had pointed out that he’d left a paper trail of incriminating records, unshredded, that could speed up the SEC’s case against him. Trust a cop to look into trash cans.
The chief saw nothing wrong with asking for money to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t call it blackmail. But that’s what it was. And he wasn’t acting alone. Hoebel had called in a friend of his. A man named Cutt, a rogue cop who’d done time. Both men showed up on payday. Montgomery handed over what he could in cash.
Things were getting complicated.
Montgomery looked down at the papers on his desktop. The figures blurred and swam. He sank his head into his hands.
He craved sleep. The pills he had once taken had lost their effectiveness and his stash was dwindling. Nightmares woke him repeatedly once the shock of the broadcast had worn off a little.
He was plagued with dream visions of Ann as a child. Alive again. Her face seemed to be watching him from the depths of his memory, sensitive and silent. In the last few days, he’d found himself gasping for breath, his heart half stopping at unexpected times.
His reason had been affected to the point of imagining a resemblance between Ann and the young woman who’d gone with Bannon to the family mansion, imagining that she looked like Luanne too. Something subtle kept nagging at him—the way she tilted her head to look at things—it was driving him crazy.
