Jordan groaned. “Give me some good news.”
Michael sipped his coffee. “Don’t know if it’s good or bad, but the drive on Swinburn’s computer was wiped clean.”
“Goes to motive, doesn’t it?” For the first time since Michael’s disclosure of the evidence, Jordan felt a glimmer of hope. “Why would Angel kill her husband and erase all his records? It doesn’t make sense.”
Michael checked his gold-and-stainless-steel Rolex, downed the rest of his coffee and stood. “Making sense of all this is your job, Trouble. I have an appointment.”
Jordan walked with Michael to the edge of the terrace. When he returned, Angel had disappeared into his cabin and closed the door.
Slamming his mind against the seductive images of last night, he poured another cup of coffee. Crunch time had arrived. Not only did he have to protect Angel from James’s hired killers, he had to prove her innocence against overwhelming evidence.
For someone who hadn’t wanted the responsibility in the first place, he was drowning in it.
AN HOUR LATER, Angel reluctantly accompanied Jordan as he climbed the terraces toward Swinburn’s mansion.
“I spoke with Fiona while you were dressing,” he said. “She promised to leave the doors unlocked for us.”
The skirt of her lemon-yellow sundress billowed in the sea breeze as Angel hesitated on the lower terrace. Last night in Jordan’s arms had been almost perfect, but Michael’s news had spoiled everything. Jordan knew now that she had shot David. When he entered the house, he’d probably find even more evidence, and she didn’t want to witness the look in his eyes when he did.
Her breath caught in her throat. Would he turn his back on her when he was convinced she was a killer? How could she find Brittany without his help?
She held tight to the memories of their lovemaking, hoping they would be enough to last a lifetime that might stretch to endless years in prison—or end quickly in the state’s electric chair. Soon, when he discovered proof of her crime, her memories might be all of him she’d have left.
“Why do I have to come with you?” she asked for the third time, wanting to stall his entry into the house. “I don’t know anything about investigating.”
The determined look in his eyes gentled. “Afraid to go inside?”
She squinted in the morning sun. “Scared stiff.”
“Swinburn’s dead. He can’t hurt you.”
“It’s not David I’m afraid of.” She couldn’t tell Jordan she was afraid of losing him.
“There’s no one else there.”
“Please—”
“Your fear could be a good sign.”
She shook her head, aware he’d misunderstood but reluctant to set him straight. “Nothing good about being afraid.”
He returned to the lower level, cupped her elbow and steered her toward the entrance nearest the pool. “Let’s get this over with.”
They skirted the tiled edge of the pool, whose blue-green waters shimmered in the sunlight, and stepped into the shade of the cloistered walk that ran along the west side of the house.
“Fiona said the far left entry opens into Swinburn’s study,” he said, “where the body was found.”
He opened the door and stepped inside a luxurious bathroom. “This isn’t the study. I must have misunderstood Fiona.”
Angel glanced around the room. A sudden wave of dizziness washed over her, and she clutched clumsily at the marble vanity to keep from falling.
“Easy.” Jordan slipped his arm around her. “Don’t pass out on me.”
“Please, get me out of here.”
He led her back to a shaded lounge chair beside the pool, and she lay back and closed her eyes while Jordan rubbed her icy hands.
“You’ve gone white as a sheet.” Worry laced his usually steady voice. “I’ll get Henry to take us to Emergency.”
She grabbed his hands and opened her eyes. “You understood Fiona perfectly.”
Confusion joined the worry on his face. “What are you talking about?”
“That bathroom—” she nodded toward the door they’d just exited “—leads directly into David’s study.”
His eyes widened in surprise. “You remember?”
She nodded, shaken by a jumble of terror and relief. “I remember... everything.”
Chapter Nine
“You remember everything?” Jordan sank beside her on the lounge chair.
She trembled at remembered fear, but hope buoyed her. “Stepping into that room brought it all back.”
“David—”
“I didn’t kill him.”
His tanned face settled into grim lines. “According to the state attorney’s evidence, we’ll have a hard time proving it. You’d better tell me what happened. Don’t leave out even the smallest detail.”
She shifted upright in the chair, drew a deep breath and forced herself to recall the horror. “It all began four days ago....”
LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON on the street outside David’s estate, she had opened the glove compartment of her red Nissan and reached for the revolver hidden beneath a jumble of road maps. Her hand shook so violently, she jerked it out and pressed it against her thudding heart.
She saw her reflection before she squeezed her eyes tight—lips compressed, cheeks drained of color, hair tousled and eyes wide with fright, staring back at her from the rearview mirror like some crazed stranger.
I’ll make you tell where you’ve hidden Brittany, she had threatened David over the phone earlier, even if I have to kill you.
She’d been bluffing, of course. As hatefully as David had treated her—lying, cheating and now abducting two-year-old Brittany from her custody—she could never pull the trigger. He was her daughter’s father, after all, and Sara had once loved him. At least, she’d loved the image of the man she’d believed him to be.
But David didn’t know she wouldn’t kill him. In his ignorance, she might force him to reveal where he’d taken Brittany. Her grim determination to recover her daughter infused her with new courage. She grabbed the gun and shoved it into her purse.
Stepping onto the street, she glanced around. She had parked beneath a Chinese banyan whose high, spreading branches filtered the heat of the late afternoon sun. No one could see her. High walls surrounded every estate in the Sunset Bay waterfront neighborhood where David had brought her to live after their marriage three years ago, and, at the moment, no traffic circulated on the exclusive streets.
With an unsteady hand, she smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle from her white linen suit, one of two outfits she’d kept from the vast wardrobe David had selected for her. His insistence on choosing her clothes had been the first sign of trouble in their brief marriage.
His taste had been expensive and impeccable, but it wasn’t hers. Unaccustomed to wealth or pretension, she preferred casual blouses and skirts or jeans and sneakers, but David had pitched a fit if she wore her own choices and demanded she change into what he had bought her. Today, not wanting anything to distract him from her purpose, she had dressed to his specifications.
Slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder, she felt the weight of the gun against her hip as she walked quickly to the ironwork gate at the rear of the property. An unnatural stillness filled the air, like an unsettling calm before a storm, and the tip-tap of her low-heeled sandals on the brick walkway clicked loudly in the silence.
She stopped before the rear gate, where a touch pad, mounted on the wall beside the entry, winked red. At the sight of the armed alarm, her heart sank like a brick in a pond, and she slumped against the ivy-covered wall. She had forgotten the high-tech security system David had installed shortly before their marriage had begun to deteriorate.
How could she threaten him if she couldn’t reach him?
Oh, Brittany.
Tears blurred her vision. She ached to hold her daughter, to twine her fingers in the silky smoothness of her blond curls, to watch her hazel eyes sparkle when she giggled, to hear th
e happy babble of her voice.
Yesterday David had called and in a cold, bitter voice announced that he wouldn’t return Brittany after his weekly, court-ordered outing. With a cruel laugh, he claimed he’d sent Brittany away, where Sara would never find her.
Frantic, she had called Fiona. The housekeeper had sadly confirmed her daughter wasn’t at David’s, that he had taken the child away that morning and returned without her.
After hanging up from her conversation with Fiona, she had called the Sunset Bay police. “My daughter’s been abducted.”
“Hold on, ma’am. I’ll transfer you to a detective.”
She had paced the floor of her living room until a man on the other end of the line identified himself as Detective Rick Panowski.
“Do you know who took your daughter, Mrs. Swinburn?” was the first question he asked.
“My ex-husband.”
“And you have sole custody?”
“He has weekend visitation rights.”
“Today’s Saturday,” Panowski said, as if she were an idiot who didn’t know what day it was.
“My husband called and told me not to pick up Brittany tomorrow, that he’s hidden her where I can’t find her.” Sara bit back tears. “She’s only two. She won’t understand why her mother doesn’t come for her.”
“Is your ex the type who might hurt the child?”
“Of course not!”
Panowski sighed. “I’m afraid we can’t treat this as a priority, since it’s a parental abduction and not a violent crime.”
Sara went numb with surprise. “But he’s breaking the law. The court gave me custody of my daughter.”
“What you need to do is call your lawyer.”
“But my baby—”
“Come down to the station and fill out a report, Mrs. Swinburn, but I can’t make any promises.”
She slammed the receiver, sickened by the knowledge the police wouldn’t help her. Her only consolation was knowing David wouldn’t allow anyone to harm or frighten Brittany. He loved his daughter passionately, almost as intensely as he hated his ex-wife.
Saturday night, during the small hours of the morning when worry and outrage had kept her awake, she devised her plan. Now, choked with anger, she considered the touch pad that separated her from David—and her daughter.
How could he call himself a father when he’d stolen their child not for himself, but to hide her from her mother, just for spite?
Fury fueled her courage. As if pummeling David himself, she punched in the numbers of the old code, the only one she knew, and held her breath. An electronic signal hummed, and she tensed, anticipating piercing shrieks from sirens mounted under the eaves of the Mediterranean-style mansion.
No alarm sounded. Quietly, the gate’s lock clicked.
Weak with relief, she squared her shoulders, pushed open the gate and stepped onto the grounds. Her gaze swept the four-car garage with the Erskines’ apartment above, the greenhouse beyond where David grew his prized orchids, the spacious terrace surrounding the pool and the dock on Sunset Bay.
Not another soul in sight.
Kneeling beside a landscaped border that edged the brick path, she selected a fist-size river rock, then returned to the entry and jammed it between the gate and wall. If she needed to make a speedy retreat, she wouldn’t have to stop to activate the touch pad.
An arbor of confederate jasmine screened the path from the house, and she hurried along the cool, shadowed walk to the rear door. When she had lived here, Fiona and Henry had always taken Sundays off, and, as usual, the kitchen was deserted. She hurried past stainless steel appliances and counters backed with hand-painted tiles and pushed through a swinging door into the hall that led to the study.
A creature of habit, David always spent Sunday afternoons there bringing the household records up-to-date.
A rapid check of the spacious formal rooms on the first floor revealed no signs of any occupants, and she returned to the heavy paneled door of the study and drew the revolver from her purse.
With her heart hammering in her throat and perspiration slicking her palm, she gripped the butt tight to still her trembling hand, twisted the antique brass handle and stepped inside.
David wasn’t there.
Her knees buckled with a combination of disappointment and relief. Then she spotted the computer on the credenza behind his desk. Its lighted screen held the first page of David’s personal financial program. She rushed across the room, laid her gun beside the computer and hit the page down key. If she could find a record of David’s payment for Brittany’s care, she could locate her daughter without an ugly confrontation..
Scanning quickly, she flipped through page after page, searching for an unfamiliar name among the household’s employees and suppliers. On page twelve, the notation jumped out at her: Carleton James. Paid. Fifty thousand dollars.
Who was Carleton James? Could David have hired him to care for Brittany? She made a mental note of the name but doubted James was the baby-sitter. As much as David doted on Brittany, he loved money more. He would never have paid such a ridiculous sum for his daughter’s care.
She called up the next page, and a muffled noise reverberated in the hall. David was coming downstairs.
With lightning speed, she leapt from the chair and scrambled around the enormous mahogany desk into the adjoining bathroom. Its door clicked behind her as the study door opened.
Too late, she realized she’d forgotten her gun.
Laying her head against the door frame, she muffled a groan. David would spot the revolver and know she’d been there. The first month of their marriage, over her strident protests, he’d insisted on buying her that particular weapon to carry in her car.
Without her gun, she had no bargaining power to force him to reveal Brittany’s whereabouts.
Intending to slip away unnoticed, she tiptoed across the room to the outer door that led to the pool. At the sound of a strange voice in the study, she halted. Stealing back to the closed door, she placed her ear against the panels, hoping the stranger might be the person David had placed in charge of Brittany.
“Just keep moving, Swinburn,” the deep, menacing voice demanded, “with your hands up.”
“And don’t try nothing stupid,” another masculine voice added, “’cause unless we leave here with the money you owe, you’re a dead man.”
Terrified by the ruthlessness in their voices, she froze. If she bolted, they might hear and come after her.
“Gentlemen, be reasonable.” David’s smooth, cultivated voice, that she’d once found so appealing, held a hard edge of panic. “I intend to pay. I just can’t do it today.”
“Like you couldn’t last week, and the week before, and the week before that?” the first voice asked with a sarcastic snarl.
“I explained to C.J.—”
C.J. Carleton James?
“You’re trying my patience,” the stranger continued. “You almost blew the cover on our entire scheme last year. We had to waste those undercover cops to save your worthless hide and keep our operation afloat. But were you grateful? No, you’re not even paying your IOUs.”
“Yeah,” the second man said, “and that lady cop’s death brought down major heat. No thanks to you, we managed to keep our operation under wraps. Unfortunately, her partner survived. At first, he was too weak or too polluted to cause trouble. Now word on the street is he’s sobered up. And he’s sharp. Once he starts putting two and two together, he’ll figure out you’re involved.”
“Could be he’s already made the connection,” the first man said. “Has Jordan Trouble been snooping around?”
David laughed his superior laugh, the one that had always made her feel two inches tall. “Jordan Trouble ? The only trouble I’ve had is you two. I told you I’d pay, and I will, but when I’m damned good and ready. I don’t respond to threats. Now get the hell out of my house and leave me alone.”
“Stop right there,” the first man ordered sharply,
“and back away from that table.”
“Well, well,” the second said in a surprised tone, “what have we here? You weren’t planning to shoot us, were you, Swinburn?”
They had discovered her gun.
“Believe me, I didn’t know the gun was there.” David’s superior tone had vanished and frantic pleading replaced it. “That’s my ex-wife’s gun. She must be here in the house somewhere.”
“No matter,” the first man said with a growl that sent chills down her back. “We’ll find her. When we’re through with you.”
The second man chuckled. “Like we said, Swinburn, we’re clean out of patience. And we figure if Jordan Trouble gets his hands on you, you’ll squeal like a stuck pig to save your own miserable hide.”
“I won’t! I swear it!”
“Too late,” the first voice said coldly. “You’ve become a major liability.”
“Sayonara, Swinburn,” the other said.
“No, please!” David shrieked.
A shot rang out. Then another. And a third.
She cupped her ears and suppressed a scream. The thunder of blood in her head almost drowned out the crack of three more shots.
“Now,” a gruff voice said, “let’s find the woman.”
The words jolted her from her paralysis. She lurched to the pool door, unfastened the dead bolt with clumsy fingers and fled across the pool deck to the path beneath the arbor.
Angry shouts and the thud of running feet had followed her.
EXHAUSTED, Angel collapsed against the chair. “So you see, I didn’t kill David. Frank and Sidney did.”
She couldn’t judge from Jordan’s impassive expression whether he believed her. When she had related Frank and Sidney’s account of killing his partner, his face had darkened with a frightening rage, and he had bounded from the chair to prowl the pool deck. By the time she’d finished her story, he had resumed his seat and the familiar, amiable mask that hid his true feelings.
“If I hadn’t left the rear gate propped open,” she said, “they would have caught me when I ran.”
“How did they end up with your car?”
A Woman of Mystery Page 13
