Darkness Before Dawn

by Anne Stuart

  “Of course not! Kate wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Then why do you think someone dumped him here? Do you think she’s involved?”

  “How do you expect me to answer that, Randall?” Maggie snapped. “She’s my sister, for Christ’s sake!”

  “I want you to answer it honestly, Maggie. I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.” He still hadn’t moved. She found that her hands were shaking in her lap.

  “I don’t think she has anything to do with Francis’s activities or his murder,” she said finally. To her amazement, Randall nodded.

  “But why was he dumped here? Why wasn’t he left where he was murdered?”

  “To frame Kate.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she was there,” Maggie snapped. “Because she happened to have had a very public fight with him a few hours before he was killed, a fight in which she threatened to kill him. It was a situation tailor-made for a setup. Don’t give me that look, Randall. I know it’s farfetched, but having a dead man turn up in your bathtub is equally farfetched.”

  “I think you’re probably right.”

  “Besides, I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions. … What?”

  “I said I think you’re right. Your sister checks out completely clean. And I know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t cover for her. If she were involved in something illegal or traitorous, you’d drag her in, kicking and screaming, and stand by her all the way. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  He moved then; his arms released her from the psychological prison, and slowly her pent-up breathing returned to normal. “So the question is, what are we going to do now?”

  She looked up at him, throwing back her mane of wheat-blond hair. “I don’t know what you’re going to do, Randall, and I don’t give a damn. I’m going to find out who tried to frame my sister. If I also find out who’s been helping Francis sell information to the communists, I’ll be glad to tell you all about it.”

  “Don’t challenge me, Maggie,” he said softly. “You won’t win.”

  “This time I might. I’m a lot tougher than I used to be, and I don’t take shit from anyone. Especially not from you.”

  She could see the real effort it took him to control his temper. “It’s not going to do anyone any good, working against each other.”

  “Are you suggesting we work with each other?” she countered.

  “Heaven forbid. I work alone.”

  “So do I,” she snapped, but the calmer, saner part of her remembered his connections that could prove invaluable. “The last thing in the world I want to do is work with you again.”

  “I agree,” he said promptly.

  She stared up at him. “But I might have to make an exception this time,” she said slowly.

  “Maybe you will. Give me one good reason why I should.”

  “Because you need me as cover. You have your choice, Randall. Either cut me in, or I’ll tell everyone exactly why you’re here.”

  “You’d do it, wouldn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment,” Maggie said, lying through her teeth. When it came right down to it, she had no idea whether she’d blow his cover or not. All that mattered was that he think she would.

  “So you’re not giving me much of a choice,” Randall said in that rich, low voice of his, his face distant. “Will you keep your mouth shut and do as you’re told?”

  “Have I ever?”

  He sighed, turned away from her, and stared out the window. His back was tall and straight and slim in the perfect gray suit. “It appears I have no choice in the matter. I guess we’re partners again.”

  Maggie couldn’t resist a smug little smile. “I guess we are,” she agreed, reaching for more coffee.

  Randall watched her reflection in the window and smiled his own smugly triumphant smile.

  seven

  “Don’t you think a cocktail party is a little macabre?” Maggie muttered under her breath a few hours later, looking around the chattering, well-dressed people on the bare sound-stage at Stoneham Studios.

  “It’s not a cocktail party, it’s a wake,” Randall said in a reproving voice. “Haven’t you noticed? Everyone’s wearing black.”

  “Even me.” She looked down at her clinging silk dress with a disconsolate eye. It was Kate’s, and it was too small for Maggie’s long-limbed body. The black hem showed far too much leg, the bodice clung almost indecently, and the sleeves pinched her arms. But it was black, and at least somewhat formal, and that was all that mattered.

  “There you are.” Kate bustled up, breathless, pale, and edgy. “I was afraid you weren’t going to make it.” Her look at Randall was a combination of awe and surprise; Maggie could well understand both. As for her awe, Randall Carter in black was even more impressive than Randall Carter in dove gray, and he was easily the best-dressed man in the room, which was full of well-dressed men. But that was nothing new.

  Her surprise, Maggie knew, was for his date. Ever since Mack’s death, she’d kept herself away from men. Not out of any misplaced sense of mourning—she was too well-adjusted for that. It was simply that no man had interested her.

  Randall was a hell of a way to start dating again, she thought morosely. But then, she had had no choice in the matter. Kate had called Maggie and Randall separately, inviting them to the party, and she could think of no good reason not to go with him. She’d done her best to remove any illusion that they might actually be socializing by alternating snappishness with silence, until Randall had finally snapped back.

  “Your charm, Maggie dear, leaves a lot to be desired.”

  “I reserve my charm for those who deserve it,” she said, knowing her voice sounded sulky but unwilling to do anything about it.

  He’d paused at the entrance to Stoneham Studios. It was a huge warehouse on Chicago’s West Side, and it was just after six on a sultry summer evening. The heat lay heavy in the air, heavy along her nerves. “I thought we were going to cooperate with each other.”

  “I’m cooperating,” she said. “I’m just not friendly.”

  He’d raised that damnable eyebrow again. “Really? You could have fooled me.” His hand reached out to politely take her elbow, but she yanked herself out of his reach before he could touch her.

  This time when he took her arm, she couldn’t pull away, not in a crowd of people. Not that she didn’t try, but his long, thin fingers bit into the soft flesh above her elbow, and her choice was to make a scene or relax. She promised herself that the scene would come later. Kate was staring at them, her brown eyes wide, and Maggie quickly placed a grim smile on her mouth.

  “Maybe you’d better introduce us to our hostess,” she said sweetly, moving her high-heeled foot purposefully toward Randall’s instep.

  “And then we’ll mingle,” Randall added, side-stepping her attack neatly, his fingers tightening. “Come along, Maggie.”

  Alicia Stoneham was a great, cheerful, horsey woman with rawhide skin covered with freckles, red hair that was graying in patches, large, tobacco-stained teeth, and a fuschia-colored mouth that often gave way to a braying laugh that had the uncanny ability to make other people laugh, too. She was sitting on the strangest couch Maggie had ever seen, composed of chrome and hot pink plastic, with horns and tendrils and other strange protuberances. Alicia caught Maggie’s look of astonishment and emitted her braying laugh as she surged to her feet to look her directly in the eye. Which meant she was over six feet tall, since she was barefoot and Maggie was wearing heels, Maggie thought as she took the huge, hamlike hand that Alicia thrust at her.

  “It’s a prop,” Alicia announced in a voice that still maintained a western twang, gesturing toward the sofa, “from one of Francis’s sci-fi epics. Damn, I’ll miss that boy.” She shook her head sadly, and the diamond drop earrings, entirely real and worth a small fortune, shook with her. “You’re little Kate’s sister, aren’t you? You’ve got the look of your Ma about you.”

  S
ybil Bennett was almost a foot shorter and much more lushly built than Maggie, and she had carefully retouched raven hair, but Maggie nodded anyway. “So I’ve been told. You’ve met Randall Carter?”

  Alicia eyed him approvingly. “You sure work fast, boy,” she brayed. “Are you going to be as fast coming to a decision about the Studio?”

  Randall smiled his chilly smile. “I never talk business after hours, Mrs. Stoneham,” he said in the wintry voice that had quelled many a lesser person.

  Alicia Stoneham was made of sterner stuff. “Hell, call me Alicia,” she shouted, slapping the elegant Randall on his elegant back. “Mrs. Stoneham’s my mother-in-law, may she rest in peace. Not that she will, of course. That woman was a troublemaker from way back. I don’t doubt she’s stirring up St. Peter something fierce.”

  “What makes you think she isn’t stirring up the devil?” Maggie asked, feeling immediate fondness for Alicia Stoneham. Anyone who pounded Randall Carter deserved high marks.

  “Hell, that woman was so damned good, she’d make a nun feel guilty,” said Alicia, gesturing with her cigarette and dropping ashes all over Randall’s shoes. “Now me, I’m a hell-raiser from way back. I never let a little morality get in the way of what needs to be done. It’s a lesson you all could learn.” She gestured to the group around her. Maggie could see Caleb in the background; he had a disapproving expression on his long, dour face, and she flashed him a friendly smile.

  The fingers tightened again, and she turned to glower at her unwanted escort.

  “Who the hell is that?” Randall demanded.

  Maggie smiled sweetly at him. Her tallest heels didn’t quite bring her up to his height, but she arched her neck and looked him straight in the eye. “Alicia Stoneham.”

  “I mean the man you were grinning at.”

  Maggie’s smile widened. “Caleb McAllister.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?” That wasn’t quite the reaction she’d been hoping for. But what had she been hoping for? she demanded of herself. “Why ‘good’?”

  “Because if he’s busy here, I can go search his office.”

  “Guess again, Randall. We can go search his office. What are we searching for?”

  He stared down his long, elegant nose at her, disapproval radiating through him. “We’re looking for anything pertaining to Francis’s last project. You know, you’d be a great deal more helpful if you stayed here.”

  “Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll go search his office?” Maggie countered brightly. “And if you don’t take your goddamned hand off my arm, I’ll kick you so hard you won’t be going anywhere.”

  He didn’t even blink. “You’re welcome to try anytime, Maggie. I haven’t slowed down in the last five years.”

  “Six,” she said, and could have shot herself.

  He nodded, expressionless. “You’re right. It has been six years.” He released her. “I thought we weren’t going to waste our energy fighting each other.”

  “I’m not fighting you, Randall. I’m just going to help you search Caleb’s office.”

  He sighed, a put-upon sound that didn’t quite match the deep intensity of his stormy eyes. “What did I do to deserve you?” he murmured.

  “You want me to remind you?” Her voice was still and cold.

  Randall looked at her, suddenly wary, and she could see there was no need for reminders. He hadn’t forgotten a thing. “We only have a few minutes, Maggie. Do you want to spend it on nostalgia or on finding out who framed your sister?”

  Her smile was ice cold. “The nostalgia can wait, Randall. Show me Caleb’s office.”

  Their affair had been a mistake from the first. Maggie had known that, just as she’d also known it was inevitable. From the moment Randall had shown up at the cemetery—No, from the moment she’d walked into Mike Jackson’s office and seen him—she’d recognized the inevitability of it all.

  But that was no excuse. She should have fought, and kept on fighting, and never let him close enough to touch her. It wasn’t the physical touching that had done her in, though that was powerful enough. It was the psychic reaching, deep inside her soul, something that cried out to her from some part of Randall that was carefully locked away.

  Damn, she’d been a fool to believe such things. The only thing Randall Carter had locked away inside him was a stone-cold, flint-hard heart the size of a walnut. She’d had more than enough proof of that.

  She’d learned to forgive herself for her stupid mistakes. She had been alone and frightened and out of her element in that grimy little industrial town of Gemansk. She’d had no sleep, had spent the last day and a half desperately trying to keep a man alive—a man who’d taken his own life the moment she’d left him.

  Randall had been in control and had been unmoved by the impossible situation they found themselves in. He had been a tower of strength, and she’d succumbed to the temptation of giving in to that strength, of lying back and waiting for someone else to make everything all right.

  It reminded her of her mother. Passive and nondemanding, she’d let him do everything, from getting their provisions to meeting with Vasili to arranging their escape. She’d been content to stay in that dismal apartment and wait for his return. On her back, she taunted herself. And Randall had even taken care of that, demanding nothing of her but the shimmering, instant response he was so good at eliciting.

  He had been sitting at the table when she awoke one morning after they’d been there a little over a week. The room had been filled with the depressing blue-gray light of a grimy industrial dawn, and Maggie wanted to bury her head beneath the scratchy sheet and hide. Hide from the bleakness of the day, hide from the bleakness in Randall’s blue-gray eyes. Their lovemaking the night before had been tinged with desperation that left Maggie exhausted and frightened. They hadn’t slept more than a few hours, and she felt an unbearable sense of doom hovering over them. The remote expression on Randall’s face offered no reassurance.

  Not even the smell of freshly made coffee could warm the atmosphere. Maggie sat up in bed and pulled the covers over her breasts in a wasted protective gesture.

  He looked up from the paper he had been reading. It was as if the mutual passion of last night had never happened. He’d turned to her time and time again in the darkness, insatiable, driven, wearing them both out with his demands. Sometime during the night, their relationship had changed from one of student and teacher, master and apprentice, to something approaching a dangerous equality. Randall had given her a small part of his soul last night, and he didn’t like it one tiny bit.

  Tough, she thought, scooting down in the bed and giving him her best smile. Which was a neat trick, considering that her mouth was bruised and swollen from his kisses. It was going to work out, despite his ironclad reserve and the unmistakable existence of a wife. She was going to make him love her.

  “We’re getting out,” he said, and his eyes returned to the paper.

  She took in that news with mixed emotions. She was desperate to get away from the squalid little apartment, out into the sunshine again. But here, Randall belonged only to her; here, she had the advantage. Out in the real world things might change far too swiftly. “When?” she said.

  “Vasili came by this morning, before you woke up,” he said, not answering. “There’s a man in the visa office who can be bribed.”

  “When?” she repeated patiently.

  “He’s trustworthy,” Randall continued, still refusing to answer. “He’ll keep his end of the bargain if we keep ours. Vasili took him our new passports.”

  “And?” Maggie decided to be patient.

  “And he decided he’d help. For a price.” His eyes still hadn’t met hers.

  A part of Maggie was slowly dying. “What price?”

  “You.”

  “Are you just going to stand there looking dazed?” Randall’s deep voice broke through her abstraction.

  She’d been following him mindlessly down the maze of hallways in the ol
d warehouse. Now she managed a wry grin. “I’m glad you know where you’re going,” she said, ignoring his question.

  They were standing outside Caleb’s corner office. The smoked glass door was shut and probably locked. Maggie banished the last of her unhappy memories. “How are we going to get in?” she demanded. “And don’t look at me—I flunked B and E.”

  “We don’t resort to breaking and entering until we’re sure we have to,” Randall said. “First we see if it’s locked.”

  He reached out his tanned, narrow hand and tried the brass handle. It moved, silently and easily, and the door swung open.

  “Hell and damnation,” Maggie breathed. “Someone’s been here first.”

  eight

  The office had been systematically, thoroughly trashed. Papers were everywhere, covering the industrial green carpeting, the battered desk, the shelves, the grimy windowsills, the upended chairs. In one corner, cans of film had been opened; the winding tape was strewn around the room like a black widow spider’s party streamers. Videotapes had been smashed in another corner and thrown in a random fury around the room. One of the windows was broken, letting in a blast of early evening heat to war with the air conditioning. Randall and Maggie stood for a long moment.

  “Well,” she said finally, “at least we have a good idea what we’re looking for. And we know they didn’t find it.”

  Randall looked down at her, a quizzical expression on his face. “Explain.”

  “Videotapes. Every single videotape in the room has been examined and trashed. Some of the cans of film are still intact, so they clearly weren’t looking for film. And the papers were thrown at random—there’s no way someone could have gone through them all in the short time Caleb’s been at the party.”

  “All right, I’ll accept that they were looking for videotapes,” he said slowly. “What makes you think they didn’t find it or them?”

  “Because the remaining ones were smashed in a fury. That hole in the window looks like it’s the size of a videotape. If they’d found what they wanted, they wouldn’t have stomped all over the remaining ones.”