A wave of emotion swept over him, something he didn’t want to acknowledge. He abruptly turned away. “I’ll see you this evening.” He peeked out from behind the closed drapes. Then, when he was satisfied that everything outside was okay, he opened the door and left before the temptation to stay became overwhelming.
TARA HAD NEVER FELT so restless or uncomfortable in her life. She had been confined inside the small motel room since about eight o’clock last night, over twenty-one hours, and apparently she would have to stay there yet another night. She had managed to put off the maid and hadn’t used the motel phone. There was that one call she’d made on Brad’s cell phone, but that had been a necessity. She had to call Judy to let her employer know she wouldn’t be at work. Surely Brad couldn’t object to that. She felt a frown wrinkle her forehead as she tried to shove down a twinge of anxiety. So why was she trying so hard to convince herself that making the phone call was okay?
She peeked out from the edge of the drawn drapes for what seemed like the fiftieth time since Brad left following lunch. Even something as simple as being able to take a walk around the block would help. She slumped into the large chair, leaned back and closed her eyes. Her fingertips went to her lips. She could still feel the heated excitement of his kiss. It did far more than singe her desires on a primal level. It touched her emotions in a most profound way. It didn’t make any sense. She barely knew this man, yet he ignited the very depths of her soul beyond her ability to clearly comprehend.
Her eyes snapped open. She didn’t like the direction her thoughts had wandered. She needed to keep a clear head, to keep her emotions tucked safely away. He was not the right man for her regardless of how his kisses swept her common sense out the door.
She glanced at her watch, then peeked out the window again. A wave of relief settled over her when she saw Brad pull into the parking space. She noted that he parked a couple of doors down from her room even though there was a spot right in front of her door, another simple precaution that hadn’t occurred to her.
Brad quickly entered the room, closing the door behind him and turning the bolt lock. “How are you doing?”
“Okay, I guess.” She tried to keep her nervousness out of her voice without much success.
He set the food on the table, then tossed his jacket across the foot of the bed before turning to face her. He shot her a teasing grin that could not erase an undertone of seriousness. “Have you gone bonkers from the stress of being confined to a small room or are you managing to hang on to your sanity?”
“I’m not sure.” She tried to fall in with his teasing manner, what was apparently his attempt to lighten the mood. “I think it could go either way. I was tempted to take a walk around the block just to rid myself of these four walls for a little while.”
A quick flash of alarm covered his face. “You didn’t, did you?”
“No.” His sudden change and the implications it conveyed were hard to ignore, reinforcing her anxiety. “You said not to leave, so I didn’t. It was just that I wanted to.” She paused as she turned the thought over in her mind. “There was one thing, though…this morning…I did make a phone call.”
His gaze flew to the telephone sitting on the nightstand. An uneasiness welled inside him. He didn’t like what he heard. “You used the motel phone?”
“I remembered what you’d said about using the phone here, so I used your cell phone.” She looked up at him, hoping he was not too angry with her or, worse yet, that she had done something that would backfire on them. “I needed to let my employer know I wouldn’t be at work for a few days. They had to be notified. If I just didn’t show up they would have come to my house looking for me. I could have lost my job. When this is all over, I’ll need my…” Her words trailed off. Perhaps a more accurate phrase would have been if this is ever over.
“You should have mentioned this to me at lunch. Who did you call and what did you say?” Brad turned on his professional business mode, his expression giving no evidence of what was going on inside his head.
“I called Judy Lameroux. She’s the office manager. You met her sort of. She’s the woman I was having lunch with the day you bumped into me.” It had been yesterday, but it seemed like such a long time ago and a world away. Her entire life was in turmoil and she didn’t seem to have any control over it.
“The woman with the long blond hair? Yes, I remember her. What did you tell her?”
“I said I had a family emergency, that my mother was in the hospital and I needed to leave right away…that I wouldn’t be at work for a few days.”
“What did she say?”
“Well…” It had been an odd conversation, but she was sure it was only because Judy had been surprised by the call and upset that Tara had not called her after the car bombing, nothing more. “She did mention that she had seen the news story about my car and that she had tried to call me, that she left a message on my machine. I told her I’d been having trouble with it and hadn’t gotten the message.”
He pulled out his notepad, his face an impassive mask. “How does Judy spell her last name?”
“Surely you can’t suspect her of anything. She’s my friend. I didn’t even know her when all this began.” She quickly explained her coincidental meeting with Judy in her favorite bookstore and how Judy had gotten her a job at the same company where she worked just before the start of John Vincent’s trial. She studied the skeptical expression that covered his features. What was he leading up to? She suddenly felt as if she were being interrogated rather than simply answering a few innocent questions.
He stood with his notepad and pen still in his hands. It was almost as though he hadn’t heard a word she said. “How do you spell her last name?”
He wrote down the name as Tara spelled it, then changed the topic so quickly that it caught her off guard, making her wonder what was really going through his mind. “Let’s get to the food while it’s still hot. We can talk while we’re eating.”
Chapter Six
Brad unpacked two complete meals from the plastic bag consisting of salad, baked chicken, vegetables and dinner rolls. Tara stared at the dinners, then looked up at him. “It looks good, but it’s a lot of food.”
Brad ripped open a packet of dressing and put it on his salad. “Have you thought about any unusual incidents that have happened to you since the trial ended? Any near misses or accidents that could have been fatal?”
Tara wrinkled her brow in concentration as she took a bite of her chicken. “Well, there isn’t anything that leaps to mind as some sort of horrendous happening, but there were a couple of bizarre things. I was walking down the street and a large urn—a flowerpot type of thing—fell from the roof of an apartment building. It missed me by only a few feet. There were several urns along the edge of the roof. I assumed one had simply come loose and had fallen over.”
“Is that a block where you often walk? A route that was normal for you?”
“Yes. It’s between my house and the little neighborhood market a couple of blocks away. It gave me quite a start. I didn’t think my heart would ever stop pounding. I considered myself lucky that it missed me, but didn’t attach anything sinister to the occurrence.” She hesitated as she recalled the moment the urn crashed behind her. A little shiver of trepidation made its way across her skin. It was an incident that now carried a far more sinister implication. “At least not at the time.”
Brad watched her as she took another bite of food. What were the odds of an urn on the top of a building, something that had apparently been there for a quite a while, suddenly coming loose and falling just as she walked by? Probably about the same as five out of six witnesses from the same trial dying of accidents during a six-month period of time.
He buttered his dinner roll. “When did that happen?”
“I’m not sure. I think it was about a month ago, maybe five weeks or so.”
“You said there were a couple of incidents. What about the other one?”
�
��I was crossing the street—”
“Were you in a crosswalk?”
“No, I was leaving my dentist’s and had parked across the street, so I checked for oncoming traffic and started to cross where I was rather than going down to the corner. I had just stepped off the curb when a car came screeching out of the alley and nearly ran me down. I jumped back just in time. The car kept on going.”
Brad reached for his notepad and pen. “What kind of car was it? Do you remember? Was there anything special about it? Did you notice the license tags?”
Tara placed her fork on the plate. “Things like that happen all the time…” She looked up at him as if she was seeking validation for her assumption. “Don’t they? And I was in the wrong since I was jaywalking. I just chalked it up to being lucky that the driver didn’t hit me and I went on about my business. I think the car was brown—” She suddenly sat upright, her intense expression boring into him.
Brad jerked to attention, his senses alert for anything amiss. “What’s wrong?” He glanced toward the window then the door. “Did you hear something?” He started to reach for the lamp to turn it off.
“No…nothing like that. It just occurred to me. It wasn’t a brown car.” She stared at him, the light of recognition shining in her eyes. “It was dirty…mud spattered all over it, even the side windows. I couldn’t see the driver because of the dirty windows. Even the license plate was covered with mud so that I couldn’t read it. I think the car was green, a medium green rather than a dark color. It was a four-door model, but I don’t know what kind it was. It seemed pretty new.”
“That would certainly be a means of disguising the car to keep anyone from being able to identify it or the driver. He could run it through a car wash a block away then drive right back to the scene and no one would spot it as being the same car.”
“Do you mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life?” She nervously bit at her lower lip, then regained eye contact with him. “It was shortly after the car incident that I began to have the feeling that someone was watching me.” A shiver of fear darted through her body. “Are the two things connected?”
“It’s hard to say, but I think it’s a distinct possibility.” He watched as she toyed with her food. Where her manner had been cautious when he arrived, it had suddenly turned fearful. He wanted to tell her there was nothing to worry about, but he knew it wasn’t true. He took another bite of chicken followed by some vegetables as he formulated his next comments.
“I want to know everything about John Vincent that you can think of, in particular any personal information that wasn’t brought out during the trial. I haven’t read the trial transcript. I’ve only been able to go through the files we have in our office and what’s accessible on the computer. I haven’t had time to dig into John’s background in great detail, so anything you can tell me will be a help, especially since you worked for him for several years. You saw him every day and must have acquired a great deal of personal insight into the man beyond his business dealings.”
Tara took a bite of salad before answering him. Her voice held a resignation that hadn’t been there before. “I obviously didn’t acquire enough personal insight since I had no idea he was a crook and, worse yet, was connected to organized crime.”
“That’s not what I want to know about. I want information about his background, his friends and family, his personal likes and dislikes, his temperament—personal information.”
Tara looked up at him, a hint of confusion darting across her features. “You mean things like his hobbies? He played golf.”
“His hobbies…his family.” Brad watched her for a moment as she ate her dinner. “Tell me about John’s nephew, Danny Vincent. He worked for his uncle. What exactly was his job with the company?”
She hesitated, as if trying to get her thoughts together. “Danny used to hang around the offices quite a bit. He eventually went to work for the company a little over three years ago. He carried the title of sales manager and he received a very healthy weekly paycheck. He wasn’t in the office very often after he went on the payroll and I never really saw any results of his sales efforts.”
“How well did you know Danny?”
Her expression said it all, and if that hadn’t been enough, there was the guilt that showed in her eyes and finally the crimson flush of embarrassment that spread across her cheeks. He had hit a nerve. She had been holding something back from him. A tremor of wariness rippled through Brad. He hadn’t expected that. It left him strangely unnerved—and very disappointed. He kept telling himself that she couldn’t be involved, regardless of the circumstantial evidence he’d been struggling with. Had he just been kidding himself? A tickle of anxiety told him how unsettling he found the notion.
He maintained a strictly professional outer calm as he looked at her questioningly. “Yes? There’s something?”
Tara squirmed awkwardly in her chair trying to find a more comfortable position. She didn’t know what to say, or more accurately, how to say it. She should have told him, but it had been a long time ago. It hadn’t seemed relevant—until now. “Uh…well, I guess I know Danny pretty well. I was, well, I was engaged to him for a while.”
She saw the shock dart through his eyes. She hastened to offer an explanation before he had an opportunity to say something. “But it’s been over for a long time. I broke off the engagement about three years ago, shortly after he went on the company payroll, and haven’t had any personal connection with him since that time…just the strictly business situations when he was in the office.” She scrunched up her mouth, not sure how much she should say. The words came out softly, almost as a whisper. “Until a few days ago.”
“A few days ago?” He tried not to show any personal reaction to this startling piece of new information, but hadn’t been able to keep the edge out of his voice. “What happened a few days ago?” He now had something he didn’t have before and that something was a motive for considering Tara a suspect. A sick feeling swept through him as he considered the reality. Once she knew there was a deputy marshal interested in what was happening, she could have easily worked with Danny to stage the bombing of her car in an attempt to throw him off the track. He didn’t like where his thoughts were going, but he had to reluctantly admit that her involvement was now a real possibility.
“I hadn’t seen Danny or heard from him since the day I quit Green Valley Construction, the same day I agreed to testify against John. Then a few days ago I got a phone call from him.”
“Did he say why, after all that time, he had suddenly decided to give you a call?”
“He said it had taken him all that time to track me down and get my unlisted phone number. I asked him if he was the one who had been following me and making anonymous phone calls—”
Brad’s words spilled out along with his surprise, irritation and even a hint of anger. “What anonymous phone calls?” He fixed her with a hard stare. “Why didn’t you mention any of this when I asked you about strange occurrences?” He fought to keep the skepticism out of his voice, but knew he was not very successful. “You didn’t consider anonymous phone calls as being anything unusual?”
“I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t realize…” She heard the suspicion in his voice. How could she have dismissed such an important thing? What must he be thinking? A stupid question—she could see what he was thinking, the accusation in his eyes as if he was somehow blaming her for what had happened.
He took a deep breath, held it a moment, then exhaled. “Okay, the most recent call—what did Danny say he wanted?”
She heard the exasperation in his voice, a reality that left her torn between embarrassment about her oversight in not mentioning it and her annoyance at his sudden change of attitude. “He asked me to go to dinner with him. He said he just wanted to talk. I told him we had nothing to talk about and that I didn’t want him calling me anymore, then I hung up. That was all there was to it.”
Brad’s manner was all business. “The
se anonymous calls, when did they start and what did the caller say? Did you recognize the voice? Was the caller a man or a woman?”
“Whoever it was never said anything. There was just silence and breathing…not heavy breathing like an obscene phone call, just the sound of someone breathing.”
“Was there any background noise? Anything that might give a clue as to where the caller was?”
“Nothing that I can remember.”
“Is that all of it or is there something else you’ve forgotten to mention or didn’t think was important?”
She bristled at his thinly veiled accusation. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know what’s important for you and what isn’t. Do you need to know about every minute of my life? Are you trying to pry into my most private moments?” Her nerves had stretched almost to the snapping point. She knew she had gotten louder, but couldn’t seem to get any control over her tone.
She jumped to her feet and leaned forward with her hands against the table. “I’ve already had too many people trying to control my life. I don’t need it from you, too!”
He rose to his feet, his aggressive manner matching her anger. He didn’t say anything, but the intensity in his blue eyes bored into her consciousness along with the heat of heightened emotions.
A second later a wave of regret swept through her. She hadn’t meant to say those words and certainly not in that manner. They had just sort of slipped out before she could stop them. What started as polite dinner conversation had gone from innocent to loud and accusing without any stops in between.
What would happen if she just walked out the door? Could he legally stop her? How much danger was she really in? No…that was a dumb question. She was there when her car exploded. The danger was very real. One thing was for sure, though—no matter how much the heat of his kisses still lingered in her consciousness, she could never allow anyone else to control her life the way her mother had and the way Danny had tried to. And no matter how desirable she found him, that applied to Brad Harrison, too.
In His Safekeeping Page 9
