Bannon Brothers

by Janet Dailey

  It dawned on him that he’d better have another set of keys made. The last thing he wanted was for her to think she wasn’t free to come and go, but she wasn’t likely to ask him straight out for the keys to his place, considering that she barely knew him. The idea of her having the keys didn’t bother Bannon at all. In fact, it made him happy.

  “Hey, you need a set of keys. Okay with you if I run out to the hardware store?”

  Erin nodded but she didn’t smile. He was sure there was something she wanted to say. Finally she said it. “How long am I going to be staying here?”

  That was a big question. All he could do was hold up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “That’s not up to me. As long as you want to.”

  She swallowed hard. “Okay. I guess neither of us knows the answer. What now?”

  “Breakfast,” he suggested. “Tea and toast again?”

  “Right. But I bet you want something more substantial.”

  “You read my mind. I can pick something up when I get the keys made. Charlie, want some sausage?”

  The dog looked up at him expectantly, too well-behaved to jump up or beg.

  “Do you have food for him?” Erin asked.

  “I can get a small bag at the market next to the hardware store. One-stop shopping, Wainsville style.”

  “It seems like a nice town.”

  He made a face. “You didn’t exactly get the scenic tour. I was going too fast for that.”

  “And looking in the rearview mirror every other second.”

  “Yeah, well—I didn’t see anybody.”

  “Me neither. I was covering the side mirror.”

  He studied her for a moment. “Seriously? Good for you.”

  “I thought”—she hesitated—“I thought if he was following us, I might recognize him. But I really didn’t see his face when he tried to break in. Just his outline.”

  “I wish I had been there,” Bannon said with blunt honesty. He and Charlie would have made hamburger out of the guy.

  She managed a tiny smile. “That’s nice to know. But I’ll be okay on my own for now.” He hadn’t left her at all the previous day.

  “Yeah?” She met his searching gaze steadily enough. “All right. Then I’ll head out.”

  “You do that.” Her voice didn’t waver. She went to the large sketchpad she’d brought and picked it up.

  Bannon looked at her curiously. “Got work to do?”

  “Always. Beats worrying.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  Erin moved to the couch and sat down with the sketchpad, smiling at Charlie when the dog padded over to her and lay down halfway, his big head up and alert.

  Talk about security. She was as safe as she could be with Charlie there when he wasn’t. Bannon smiled inwardly. The dog was living in a fool’s paradise, though. His cat still hadn’t put in an appearance.

  “Erin, did I tell you that I have a cat?”

  She looked up at him quizzically. “Maybe.”

  “He’s a big striped monster, just so you know, and he doesn’t like dogs. Even this dog. So if Babaloo does a ninja cat death-defying leap out of nowhere—”

  She stroked Charlie’s head, getting a look of dopey adoration from canine brown eyes. Bannon knew exactly how the dog felt.

  “Charlie, we have been warned,” she said.

  He grinned at both of them. “I think he can take my cat in a fair fight. Too bad the Mighty Bab doesn’t fight fair.”

  “Got it. I’ll referee.”

  “Erin . . .” He wanted to say something more. But she interrupted his thoughts.

  “Go run your errands. We can eat together when you come back.”

  “You sure? I can fix you something in a flash.”

  “Quit hovering. I can wait.”

  “Okay. Back in fifteen.” Bannon scooped up his car keys and headed out, making sure the door locked behind him.

  He came in to see her with the sketchpad open over her lap and a pencil in her hand. With that same light touch he’d noticed when she’d used him for a model, she was making changes on a drawing of a horse. Erin sighed. “I’m not happy with this.”

  “Looks good from here,” he said, shucking his jacket and slinging it over the boxes from the TV station. He set a sack of dog food on the floor beside them. “Can I see?”

  She put the pencil to one side and lifted up the pad of paper, facing it toward him. “Montgomery’s stallion. Just a preliminary sketch.”

  “Wow. Keep going,” he said.

  She flipped the pad shut. “I was thinking of getting out to the stables today. It’s a peaceful place. Not too many people. But not lonely.”

  “Could do you good.” No law said she had to stay here. Just his overprotectiveness. Bannon set down the bag with his egg-and-sausage combo. He didn’t want her to leave just yet. “But I promised you breakfast.”

  “Better feed your cat first. He finally showed up.”

  He looked around. “Where is he?”

  Erin pointed at the bottom of the armchair facing the couch and Bannon noticed two glowing eyes in the shadows underneath it.

  “He looks too mad to eat,” he chuckled.

  But Babaloo wriggled out and followed him as he headed into the kitchen. The cat jumped up on the counter to eat a few morsels of kibble.

  “You were right. He was hungry.”

  “Told you.”

  “Here he comes,” Bannon warned her as the cat sprang down to the floor and slunk along the baseboards. “Tell Charlie to watch out.”

  Bannon came back with a plate and cup holding Erin’s minimal meal.

  “He disappeared,” Erin reported. She sipped and nibbled at her toast and tea as Bannon unwrapped his breakfast and devoured it in three bites. He crumpled up the paper into a ball. “Slam dunk. Into the kitchen can. Watch this.”

  “From here?”

  “Sure.” He missed his target. “Okay. I tried.”

  She laughed a little and handed him her plate and cup when he got up to retrieve the paper ball from the kitchen floor. “Thanks for breakfast.”

  “No biggie. And I got you those keys,” he called to her when he set her dishes into the sink.

  Bannon went to his jacket and pulled out two keys on a split ring, jingling them. “Here you go.”

  “Great.” Something about them triggered an emotional reaction in her. “I’m not sure I have my own keys.” She shook her head as if she didn’t want to think about that. “Are you going to drive me h-home so I can pick up my car?” Her voice almost cracked on the word “home.” He understood why. It would be a while before the little house felt safe to her again. It might never.

  “I could.” They had left the hatchback where it was without thinking twice. He hesitated. “But are you sure you want to? We could rent a car for you here in Wainsville.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” she said slowly.

  Bannon didn’t want her to change her mind. If someone was stalking her, driving a different car was the way to go, especially since they hadn’t been followed here. There was no way of telling if the attempted break-in had been a random event or what.

  Her own car was pretty good bait. But it would be a tough trap to spring. He thought for a few seconds before he spoke again. “Look, Erin, I’d like to really go over your house inside and out, see if I can pick up any clues. I was even thinking I could hide minicams in a couple of spots—it won’t cost you anything. I had a couple here last time I looked—”

  “Why?”

  Slow down, idiot, he told himself. He didn’t want her to think he was a paranoid gear freak, just because Linc and Deke were in the habit of giving him equipment they weren’t using. “Uh, not set up. Just sitting in a box with other stuff from my brothers—you know. Gadgets are an occupational hazard for cops and military and special ops people—anyway, I end up with the extras.”

  “Oh.” She really didn’t seem thrilled with the idea. He took another tack.

 
; “It’s not permanent. If I have the right cams, I’d hook ’em up to your computer and we could pick up the feed here.”

  “And what will that accomplish?”

  Bannon’s expression sobered. “If the creep comes back, I’ll have a visual of his face, maybe more.”

  She shuddered. “I don’t want to see it.”

  “I understand. But I might be able to match him to a visual database. They can filter for a lot of things to get a positive ID. Tattoos, broken down by name, words, and gang affiliation. Broken teeth. Scars—”

  Erin’s troubled sigh stopped him in the middle of that explanation. She rose from the couch and paced the room, not looking at him for a minute. Not really looking at anything.

  “Besides that,” he added, “I want to fix the broken window.”

  “You mean replace the pane? That’s not easy.”

  “True enough. I guess I’ll just board it up. If that’s all right with you.”

  “It’ll have to do.”

  She bumped into the big boxes and glanced down at her stubbed toe. “Ouch.”

  “Sorry. I’ll get those out of your way,” he offered quickly. “Someone at the TV station sent the viewer responses—”

  “Oh. Right. I forgot about that interview you did,” she said absently. “How’s the investigation going?”

  Had she forgotten about their tour of the Montgomery mansion too? He couldn’t blame her if she had. Maybe she just needed to distract herself, but her question wasn’t something he wanted to answer.

  “Okay, I guess, for such an old case,” he said noncommittally. “But I came across a couple of interesting leads. Ask me again in a week.” His sense of responsibility for putting her in danger gnawed at him. How to tell her—he couldn’t. Not yet.

  She looked at the boxes again. “That’s a lot of stuff. I hope someone knows something about that little girl.”

  He tensed all over, thinking about the faked birth certificate he’d tracked down and the possible link between Erin’s parents—if they were her parents—and the abduction of Ann Montgomery. There was no way in hell he was going to get into that today.

  Erin was still in shock from what had happened to her. That he’d looked at her scrapbook when he’d gone to her house to check on Charlie, even though she’d showed it to him before—not good. Taking it one step further and photocopying the handmade card and what she thought was her birth certificate was totally out of line.

  He fully intended to explain everything. Just not now.

  “Erin, you have other things to worry about.”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t seem to want him to explain any more than he wanted to. Her agitation came across in her body language. Erin suddenly looked like she was ready to run away. “I hope you don’t mind, Bannon, but I have to get out of here.”

  Whoa. He hadn’t expected to hear that, but it wasn’t as if he could stop her. “Uh, where to?”

  “A nice, quiet barn. Montgomery’s will do it. Hanging around with horses is all I want to do right now. They don’t talk.”

  “I can drive you there—wait a minute. No, I can’t.”

  She started collecting her art stuff, looking around, he guessed, for something to carry it in. She went into the kitchen and came back with a plastic shopping bag, twisting it nervously through her hand. “You don’t have to,” she said. “Renting a car is fine with me.”

  “That’s probably the best plan. I don’t want to run into Montgomery at the barn. He doesn’t like me.”

  “Whatever. Let’s just go, okay? Where is the car rental place?”

  “A mile away.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Charlie got up and looked at her, then at Bannon.

  “Stay,” he said to the dog. “I’ll take you out for a run as soon as I get back.”

  The rental didn’t take long and the clerk barely looked at them as he shoved the triplicate forms across the counter for Erin to sign. She insisted on paying for it, refusing his offer to cover the cost.

  Come to think of it, he told himself, she had more money than he did at the moment. Half her advance on the painting commission, as in fifteen thousand. Whereas he was still waiting for Chief Hoebel to sign off on his continuance of claim so he could draw his pittance. But something about Erin made Bannon want to put every dime he had on the line if it would make her life easier or happier.

  Yeah. He had it bad. And her vulnerability was making it worse.

  He drove behind her as far as the discreetly marked private road to Montgomery’s stud farm and stables. Erin turned left, waving to him, and he drove onward. No sign of the man himself. Or anyone who looked like an employee. Just a blonde in a luxury sedan, who was parked near the sign and seemed to be waiting for someone. Maybe a horse buyer or a rider from the local hunt club, he thought idly. She sort of seemed like she belonged there, but not quite.

  He was miles away before it occurred to him that the blonde might be Montgomery’s girlfriend Caroline. Erin hadn’t liked her. He guessed that Caroline probably felt the same way.

  Then he wondered whom she was waiting for.

  Bannon blew out a breath and told himself to stop obsessing over every little thing that concerned Erin. As if that were possible. He already knew the way to her house well enough to drive there in the dark. The early morning rain had let up, but it was going to be another jolting trip over the rutted road to the little house. His back was aching when he finally got out of his car and looked over to hers.

  Seemed the same. Before he muddied the ground by walking around, Bannon inspected it through narrowed eyes. No new footprints on this side—the ones he could see were his own, since the stalker had come and gone around the back of the house.

  He reached into the car to get the gear he’d scrounged from the box of electronics under his bed. Two tiny vidcams and a motion sensor, plus a spaghetti-like snarl of connector cables, made the canvas bag he’d thrown it all into look lumpy. He’d sort it out inside the house. No doubt he was missing some key part, but he had time. He had a feeling Erin was going to be gone for the better part of the day.

  He’d asked her to call him when she was done so he could escort her home. She hadn’t seemed to mind.

  Bannon tried to stay on the grass as he approached the porch, just in case there was a partial imprint in the mud. Nothing. And the steps showed only his footprints and Erin’s. He went up them, taking out the key she’d given him—fortunately, she had brought it with her after all—and unlocking the door.

  Inside there was that same faint, sweet smell that he remembered. This time it came to him courtesy of the draft from the broken window. Bannon found some heavy brown paper in her studio area, noticing that it was the same type she’d used to wrap up the painting of the Chincoteague horses he’d bought on another rainy morning.

  He went into her bedroom, laying the paper down on the rug and tearing off a piece to pick up the shattered glass and put it into the center of the paper, then folding it up carefully. No telling if the dog or the intruder had touched it first. Old and fragile to begin with, the pane had shattered in both directions. But he would dust it for fingerprints when he got home.

  Bannon did a walk-through, grateful for the opportunity to really examine things closely. He forced himself to stay away from the box that held the scrapbook, though. But something else caught his eye.

  That pink stuffed bear. The one that looked like Ann Montgomery’s. Worth a closer look, too, with the digital microscope he could plug into his laptop. He would do that when she wasn’t around. And he wouldn’t have to explain to her why he’d brought it back. Women kept stuffed animals from childhood—most likely she’d figure that he was just trying to comfort her somehow.

  He hauled the vidcams and cables out of the bag he’d brought and put the pink bear in it.

  It took a lot of ingenuity to get it all connected and plugged in. The vidcams had power—a tiny light glowed inconspicuously on the back side of ea
ch one. Whether the image feed from her computer would happen and whether they would be able to pick it up from his place were two very big questions.

  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  With a sinking feeling he realized that he hadn’t asked Erin for her password. Bannon swore under his breath. He touched a key, hoping she’d left everything on, ready to go, and not password-protected.

  She had.

  He fiddled with the vidcams, then turned to her computer and prayed their icons would show up.

  They did.

  He set about hiding them in the applications folder, just in case the stalker went looking for them too.

  Caroline stared straight ahead through her windshield. Her lawyer had been kind enough to drive out to the stables and meet her by the entrance to the private road. Then he’d followed her to this secluded pull-off. She hadn’t wanted to invite him into the house, or start any rumors by visiting his offices so soon after Monty’s stroke.

  Once they’d parked side by side, she let him into her car. Jeffrey Burney was a typical middle-aged male with a midlife-crisis-sized sports car, and she wasn’t getting into it. Seats that low-slung made skirts ride up, which she supposed was the idea.

  Anyway, she doubted that the luxury sedan was bugged. It was Monty’s preferred car, and even Monty wouldn’t bug his own vehicle.

  Jeffrey Burney was looking through papers in his briefcase on his lap, not talking at the moment.

  “So did you get a chance to look at the files on the flash drive?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Jeffrey—I gave it to you two days ago,” she chided him.

  He found the papers he was looking for and handed several to her. Caroline stared at printed code that made no sense at all. Random letters were interspersed with little squares and arrows and blips. “What the hell is this?”

  “The files. What you saw wasn’t what you got.”

  “Don’t confuse me.”

  “Caroline, you were looking at what you thought were financial files on Montgomery’s computer.”

  “I didn’t think so. That’s what they were,” she insisted.

  “He or someone he hired fooled you but good. The files were programmed to self-destruct once they were saved to the flash drive you used. The information on them was probably bogus to begin with. And now, as you can see, it’s pure gibberish.”