“I dropped my purse. Without car keys, I couldn’t use the Nissan to escape, so I ducked through an open gate next door, cut across the lawn to the bay and waded through the water back here. I climbed the stairs outside the garage and hid on the Erskines’ porch until after dark.”
“You didn’t hear Frank and Sidney leave?”
“For all I knew, they were still on the grounds looking for me. I didn’t dare go back into the house.”
“Not even to call an ambulance?”
His neutral voice held no accusation, but she squirmed with guilt just the same, wondering if she might have saved David. “I counted six shots and doubted he had survived. And I had Brittany to consider. Who would raise my child if we’d both been killed?”
“And once it turned dark?”
“Between worry over Brittany and terror at the attack on David, I wasn’t thinking straight. All I wanted was my daughter. I started walking, a two-hour hike from here to my ex-in-laws on Turtle Key. While they slept, I forced my way into their house, hoping I’d find Brittany.”
“But she wasn’t there.”
She shook her head, unable to face him.
“Why didn’t you call the police first?”
“Hindsight says I should have, but that night I was paranoid and almost in shock. The day before, Panowski had refused to search for Brittany, and I couldn’t imagine him believing my story of David’s shooting. Frank and Sidney had framed me, using my gun to murder David. I was afraid I’d never find my daughter if I went to jail.”
“So you came looking for me.”
She lifted her eyes and met his gaze. His expression was unreadable, but he had tensed like a tightly coiled spring. She expected him to resume pacing any moment.
“Frank and Sidney mentioned you,” she explained. “I hoped you would help me find Brittany.”
“You heard Frank and Sidney say where to find me?”
She shook her head. “I called the Sunset Bay police station from the extension in George Swinburn’s study, pretending to be your cousin from up north, and asked how to locate you. The desk sergeant suggested Mary Tiger’s bar. But I can’t figure out how Frank and Sidney followed me there.”
A cold, deadly calm settled over Jordan. “You were just an added bonus.”
She frowned, puzzled as much by his demeanor as his words. “I don’t understand.”
“They came to Mary Tiger’s looking for me. When they discovered you there, too, they must have figured you a more immediate threat and tried to take you with them.”
“You never saw them before Sunday night?”
He shook his head.
“Not even the night they shot you?”
He didn’t answer, but stared across the terrace to the gulf, his face devoid of emotion, his eyes cold and empty. His body radiated heat, but his wounded soul seemed miles away.
She placed her hand on his arm, longing to restore the warmth she’d seen in his eyes last night when they’d made love. “So Frank and Sidney went to Mary Tiger’s, intending to kill you, and found me instead?”
He turned to face her with the glazed look of someone awakening suddenly from deep sleep. “It all makes sense now. David was handling monies from the real estate scam Carleton James had masterminded. Your ex was murdered for not turning over the profits—and so he wouldn’t reveal James’s part in the fraud.”
Despite the warm morning sun, she shivered. David had tried to control his partner in crime with the same ruthlessness he’d used to hide Brittany from her, but he’d underestimated James and paid the ultimate price. Now she was a threat to the man who ordered others’ deaths so casually. “Frank and Sidney want me dead so I can’t identify them as David’s killers.”
“They won’t kill you until you’ve told them what they want to know.”
The implications made her hands shake. “They want the money David took. But I have no idea where it is.”
He closed his hand over hers still gripping his arm. “Frank and Sidney wiped the hard drive after searching for the money’s location in David’s computer. If they had found where the profits were stashed, they wouldn’t be looking for Brittany now to force you to talk.”
“Brittany...” Her throat closed with panic.
“Finding her won’t be easy without David’s financial files to point us in the right direction.”
Another memory, clear and crisp, shot into her consciousness. Breaking from his grasp, she jumped from the lounge chair. “Follow me.”
She darted into the bathroom off the pool, rushed through David’s study and took the wide, curving stairs two at a time. Jordan sprinted behind her. At the end of the long upstairs hall, she flung open the door to David’s dressing room. With a protectiveness that brought a lump to her throat, Jordan pulled her aside and entered first.
“You don’t expect Frank and Sidney to show up here?” she said as he checked closets and the adjoining bathroom. “Not with police crawling all over the place?”
“The cops are gone now, and Frank and Sidney may come back looking for what they couldn’t find before.”
“I hope they didn’t find it.”
She edged past him into the room, dropped to her hands and knees and crawled into the kneehole beneath the vanity. She pried the beige carpeting away from the wall.
Jordan squeezed into the opening, his face inches from hers, his broad shoulders filling the remaining space. “Mind if I ask what you’re doing?”
“Floor safe.” She spun the numbered dial in the gray steel door embedded in the floorboards. His breath warmed her cheek, scattering her thoughts as she struggled to remember the combination.
“Swinburn didn’t switch the combination when you moved out?”
“I doubt it. David didn’t like changes. He had a terrible memory, so keeping the same numbers made things easier for him.” That fact triggered the information she needed. “The alarm system, his voice mail, his computer password and safe combination—he used the same code for all of them, 2-8-59, his birth date.”
Jordan’s lips quirked in an ironic grin. “Made things easier for burglars and computer hackers, too.”
“We’ll know in a minute if he was true to his habits.” She twisted the dial to the right.
Exhaling a sigh of relief when the tumblers finally aligned, she swung open the safe’s door and spotted a large manila envelope.
“This is it!” She grabbed the package and scooted from beneath the vanity, forcing Jordan out with her. Scrambling to her feet, she displayed her find.
“James’s money?”
“Better.”
She wheeled, raced downstairs to David’s study and dropped into his leather-covered desk chair. With nervous fingers, she unwound the red string that secured the flap of the envelope and reached inside. Her hand closed around the object she hoped would lead her to her baby.
Kneeling beside her, Jordan frowned at the disc she waved beneath his nose. “A disc? Of what?”
With a push of her toes, she rolled the chair to the computer table behind the desk and slid the disc into the backup drive. “David was a fanatic about backing up his files, ever since a couple years ago when he lost everything to a power surge. If I can restore his financial program, maybe I can figure out where he took Brittany.”
A dangerous stillness settled over Jordan. He stood and dipped his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, but the casual movement didn’t hide his tension. “I need proof to nail Carleton James’s hide to the wall. I hope it’s there.”
The rancor in his voice frightened her, and the sharp, craggy angles of his face were as rigid as quarried stone.
“Convicting James is that important to you?”
“As important as finding Brittany is to you.”
She was struck again by how little she knew about Jordan. He had never mentioned his female partner, the one who had died in the undercover operation when he’d been shot and left for dead. She wondered if his resolve to see James pa
y for his crimes sprang from Jordan’s innate sense of justice or from the deeper wounds of anger and pain he tried to hide beneath his cavalier manner.
Had he loved the woman Carleton James had ordered killed?
Last night, Jordan had held her, comforted her and made love to her with a passion and intensity she’d never known. But he hadn’t said he loved her. Did his heart belong to the partner he’d buried a year ago?
Sadness washed over her. She no longer worried that he wouldn’t love her because she was a murderer. The return of her memories had erased that fear. Instead, she faced a daunting rival, his dead partner.
How can I compete with a ghost?
“It won’t load itself,” Jordan said.
Roused from her musings, she blinked. “Sorry?”
“The computer won’t load itself.”
“Right.” Embarrassed that he’d caught her woolgathering, she turned back to the backup drive and began to reinstall David’s personal finance program.
While the program loaded, she pondered her daughter’s disappearance. “Why hasn’t whoever has Brittany come forward with her? With all the media coverage, the sitter must know she’s the child the police are looking for.”
Jordan pulled his hands from his pockets and propped his hips on the edge of the desk. “If you wanted to hide Brittany from someone, what would you do?”
. “I’d take her as far away as possible, so that person could never find her.” She shuddered. Frank and Sidney, as well as the police, were searching for her daughter.
“What if you wanted to spend time with her while she’s in hiding?”
“If I took her somewhere close enough that I could visit her, I’d run the risk of others finding her.” Puzzled, she plumbed the depths of his blue-black eyes. “But David took her within a hundred miles of here.” Her blood ran suddenly cold. “Unless he put her on a plane last Saturday.”
He shook his head. “The authorities checked all the airports when they were searching for you. Airline personnel would have remembered a cute kid like Brittany.”
“Maybe the sitter is afraid to come forward.”
“Could be. But I think her not knowing the child in her care is Brittany Swinburn is a better possibility.” He lifted his eyebrow, the one with several tiny stitches, reminders that she owed him her life for fighting off Frank and Sidney that night at Mary Tiger’s.
“You think David gave the sitter a false name?”
Jordan nodded. “And paid her in cash or by cashier’s check in order to hide his identity.”
“That would explain why the sitter hasn’t made a connection between Brittany and the missing child on the news.”
“Let’s hope David had time to record that payment before he was killed.”
The hum of the backup drive ended, and she swiveled toward the computer with her heart in her throat. “We’re about to find out.”
Scrolling to the latest entry, dated the day of David’s murder, she worked her way backward through the program. Jordan read over her shoulder, scribbling furiously on a pad he’d removed from the desk each time Carleton James’s name appeared.
She flipped through four weeks’ entries without a single unidentifiable name. Her hope was slipping, edged aside by anxiety, as she paged to the next entry.
“That’s it!” Jordan smacked the monitor with the palm of his hand. “Helen Murtaugh, Fort Myers. Paid five thousand dollars for the month of April.”
She stared at the name, afraid to get her hopes up again.
“Remember what Henry said?” Jordan asked. “Fort Myers is within a hundred-mile radius, and it’s where the Department of Agriculture was spraying for medflies last Saturday when David took Brittany in the car.”
She shut down the computer and pushed to her feet. “Let’s go.”
Waving the pad he’d filled with figures, Jordan didn’t accompany her. “Maggie Henderson should have these notes on Carleton James.”
“I’m going to Fort Myers.”
“You can’t go alone.”
“I have to find my baby.”
“And what about Frank and Sidney?”.
“I’m in disguise. Besides, they won’t be looking for me in Fort Myers.”
“Not unless they made copies of these financial programs before they erased the hard drive and contact Murtaugh themselves. They stumbled across your trail once before, remember?”
“I can’t leave Brittany.” She pivoted and rushed through the study bathroom to the pool deck.
He caught up with her, grabbed her arm and swung her to face him. “I have to contact the police first. James has to be stopped. Both Jenny and Swinburn are dead because of him.”
“Jenny?”
“My partner.” His expression couldn’t have been more anguished if she’d twisted a knife in his heart. “I owe it to her to bring James down.”
She jerked free. “I have an obligation to my daughter.”
She hurried along the path to the Erskines’ apartment in search of Henry. She’d ask him to lend her his car.
Jordan called after her. “Jenny—”
“Jenny’s dead,” she whirled and shouted, tormented by anxiety for Brittany. “Brittany’s alive. I have to find her.”
She turned her back on him again, darted across the cobbled courtyard and ran head-on into Fiona at the foot of the stairs.
The housekeeper grabbed her to keep her from falling. “Miz Sara! You look like the devil himself’s nipping at your heels.”
“Where’s Henry?”
Fiona jerked her chin upward. “Finishing his tea. Is something wrong?”
“I need a car.”
Fiona folded her hands at her waist and assumed her mother-hen look, a familiar expression now that Angel’s memory had returned. “Have you had breakfast?”
“No time. I—”
“Without proper nourishment, you willna have the strength to help your wee lass.” Fiona tucked Angel’s arm beneath her elbow and led her upstairs.
Drinking from a mammoth teacup and reading the paper, Henry sat in his shirtsleeves and suspenders on the open porch. “Morning, Miz Sara.”
“I need your car, Henry.”
“Not before she’s had a proper breakfast,” Fiona ordered. “Now sit you down, and I’ll bring you a bite.”
The housekeeper pointed to a chair. Angel looked to Henry for help, but he merely shrugged. Recognizing the futility of arguing with a Scottish brick wall, she sat. Fiona gave a satisfied nod and went inside.
Henry drained the last of his tea and smiled. “Might as well do as she says. Takes less time in the long run.”
“Brittany’s in Fort Myers. May I use your car to bring her back?”
He stood, unrolled his sleeves and buttoned the cuffs. “It’ll need petrol if you’re going that far, but filling it won’t take long. I’ll be back before you’ve finished breakfast.”
His footsteps rattled down the stairs, and she-was about to rise and follow, when Fiona shoved open the screen door from the apartment.
“This’ll fill the hollows in those cheeks, lass.” The housekeeper placed a tray on the table beside Angel’s chair and poured two cups of tea. “Wouldna mind another cup myself. I can keep you company while you eat. Where’s your nice young man?”
“He had other business to take care of.”
Fiona handed her a cup of steaming tea, took one for herself and settled on the opposite chair. The white wicker creaked beneath her weight, and she studied Angel with periwinkle-blue eyes. “He’s smitten with you, you know.”
Angel shook her head.
Fiona bobbed her head, bouncing her white curls. “I know what I saw. Even my Henry, who’s usually blind to such things, noticed. Jordan Trouble looks at you like a starving man contemplates a banquet. And he calls you Angel.”
With a start, she realized, even with her memories restored, she no longer thought of herself as Sara. She had closed the door on that chapter of her life.
Fiona leaned toward her and patted her hand. “Drink your tea, Miz Sara. Henry’s bringing the car, and things will work out.”
Her throat tight with worry over Brittany, Angel doubted she could swallow, but she sipped the hot beverage and nibbled at Fiona’s hot scones.
Angel set down her cup when the crunch of tires in the courtyard signaled Henry’s return.
“More tea?” Fiona asked.
She shook her head and stood. “The car’s here. Thanks for breakfast.”
Before Fiona could snare her again, she escaped down the stairs, skidded around the back of the car and pulled up short in surprise.
Jordan waited, leaning against the passenger door of the Lincoln. She hadn’t thought it possible, but he looked more attractive than ever with sunlight bathing the rugged lines of his face through the dappled shade of the banyans. His polo shirt accented the muscular contours of his shoulders and chest, and his blue-black eyes impaled her with an intensity that made her squirm.
“Your car, madam,” he said in an imitation of Henry’s English accent.
Stunned, she managed to draw enough breath to ask, “Where’s Henry?”
“Inventorying the silver for the estate.” Jordan opened the door. “We’re wasting time.”
Eager to find Brittany and elated at Jordan’s return, she didn’t argue. She scooted onto the seat, and he circled the car and climbed behind the wheel.
“You were going to the police station,” she said.
He nodded, turned the ignition and started the limousine down the drive toward the tall gates, that swung open at their approach.
“If the station’s where you’re headed, you can let me out now.”
“I used David’s fax to send my notes on Carleton James to Maggie.” He dug into his shirt pocket and handed her a folded sheet of paper.
After the disastrous events of the past few days, she expected unpleasant news when she opened it. Instead, she found Helen Murtaugh’s address scrawled in Jordan’s bold handwriting.
“Where did you find this?”
“Library. Handy things. You should try one sometime.” His cavalier mask fit seamlessly, concealing all other emotions.
“You didn’t have time to visit a library.”
A Woman of Mystery Page 14
