In His Sights

by Justine Davis

  With an effort he dragged his attention back to the job at hand. He shifted in the driver’s seat of the rental. He waited as Kate walked to the garage that sat apart from the little cottage-style house she lived in. A few moments later her car emerged and headed down the driveway. At the street, where he was parked, she turned left, heading toward the highway.

  And Redstone?

  He stifled a sigh as he followed her. He hadn’t wanted to believe it. Knowing about the shipment, he’d staked out her house, praying it would be for nothing. How much he had hoped, he didn’t realize until that hope was shattered.

  He was feeling so grim about Kate’s actions that it worried him. Worried him because he didn’t like what it said about how far he was down a path he’d sworn he would never travel. He was so deep in pondering his own uncharacteristic actions that when she turned right instead of left on the highway, he was caught off guard.

  She wasn’t headed for Redstone.

  He told himself the thing that spiked through him then was curiosity, not a rekindling of hope. It was a challenge to follow her. It was so dark out here, in this place of no streetlights and towering trees that blocked even what moonlight there was. Still, it wasn’t so bad here on the highway, where whatever traffic was on the roads at this time of night seemed to be. But if she turned onto one of the smaller side streets or narrow gravel driveways, it was going to be tricky to follow her without her realizing it.

  When she did turn right again, he hung back as far as he thought he could without risking losing her altogether. The road she turned on was paved and had two full lanes, so he guessed it was well traveled enough to have two cars on it even this late without rousing suspicion.

  But then she turned down a narrow, one-lane road, and he knew he had to be careful. He slowed and flipped off his headlights, and stopped just enough into the intersection to watch her taillights. He saw her car proceed about a quarter mile down the narrow road and then pull to the right and stop, in the black shadow of a big evergreen.

  The street was so narrow, and so quiet, he knew a second car would draw attention. He didn’t dare get too close. Finally he settled on parking in a wide area at the end of the street, far enough back that she couldn’t see him, and not in front of any of the houses where residents might be stirred to curiosity.

  He dug into his utility bag and brought out a pair of night vision binoculars. He turned them on and raised them to his eyes. And immediately lowered them again when the familiar green glow failed to appear. He checked the switch to make sure it was on. It was. He turned it off, then back on. Still nothing.

  Rand swore under his breath. He didn’t have time to try to figure out what was wrong now. Not that he could have; he could operate the things with the best of them, but repairing them wasn’t in his repertoire. He’d send for another pair, but for now he was going to have to wing it.

  He waited. And watched. And waited.

  Because of the dark shadow of that tree, he couldn’t see what, if anything, she was doing. But he could see that she wasn’t getting out of her car. He tried to fix their geographic position in his head. She had turned right each time.

  Three times.

  Which put them right back in the vicinity of Redstone, albeit, judging by the distance they’d traveled, the back side. Which was perhaps the perfect place. There were no tall, razor wire fences around Redstone. Any Redstone. That wasn’t Josh’s style. Here a simple wood fence that blended with the landscape was the only demarcation between Redstone and the open land beyond. It wouldn’t be hard to get over it. If it were him, he’d simply remove a panel and refasten it loosely, so that it looked solid but could be taken out in seconds.

  He’d talked to Josh about it, on another case at another Redstone facility. The multibillionaire had acknowledged that it wasn’t the best security, but added in his quiet drawl, “That’s why I’ve got the best security team in the world. I won’t live in a fortress, Rand, and I don’t want my people to have to work in one.”

  And yet Josh was quite capable of adopting a fortress mentality when motivated. Let something happen to or threaten one of his own, and he could circle the wagons and fight back with the best of them. And it didn’t have to be one of the higher-ups at Redstone to garner this kind of protection, either. He’d sent out the troops just as strongly for inventor Ian Gamble as he had for point man Noah Rider. In Josh’s view, if you worked for Redstone, you were his responsibility. And he took care of his own.

  He leaned forward slightly, peering through the darkness at Kate’s vehicle. All he could see was a shadow he knew was her sitting inside the car, not moving, her head turned slightly to the left as if she were watching as intently as he was.

  Maybe she was, he thought with a grimace. Maybe this was the escape route for the thieves and she was playing lookout. With a repeat of his lecture to himself not to get emotionally involved, he settled in to watch with a critical eye. If necessary, he would come back tomorrow in daylight to find out exactly what could be seen from where she was. He would walk the street and see where it was in relation to Redstone—and if there was a back way to get from one to the other.

  Time passed. A car did leave from the end of the block, and while Kate watched, she didn’t follow. So neither did Rand. He opened and sipped at the caffeinated soda he’d brought with him. Next would be the cookies left over from the lunch Dorothy had packed for him. He felt a twinge of guilt at eating her baking while spying on her granddaughter, but if Kate were guilty, that would be the least of his sins before this was over.

  At nearly five in the morning her taillights came on again and he jerked straight upright. She drove down to the end of the street where it appeared to dead-end, turned and headed back toward the cross street. And him. He glanced quickly, saw that his car was covered with dew, and would likely look like a local car that had been parked here all night. It shouldn’t even draw her attention. And even if it did, in the dark, where colors weren’t clear, she’d have no way of knowing it was his rental. There were many of this model on the streets, even in tiny Summer Harbor.

  He ducked down as she came up to the corner. He could hear her car clearly, and knew from the sound she’d turned back the way she’d come. He waited until she was far enough away before sitting up again and adjusting his mirror to watch her retrace her earlier route.

  He started the engine, quickly whipped a U-turn and sped after her. And in a few moments he was watching from across the street as she pulled back into her own driveway and into the garage. The big door descended. He saw her shadowy figure as she came out through the small side garage door and walked back to the house.

  She went in quickly, so quickly he wondered with some irritation whether she’d even locked the front door. A light came on inside, then went out. Another light toward the back of the house did the same.

  Darkness settled down once again.

  And Rand was left knowing little more than he had before.

  Chapter 10

  “Damn!”

  The oath burst from Kate’s lips before she could stop it. They’d been hit again. She nearly slammed down the phone receiver, the only thing stopping her being the fact that it wasn’t the fault of the poor messenger. Jim Saltzman, the driver of the delivery truck, was already upset enough. This was the second time for him, and he knew perfectly well that the most likely time for the thefts to occur was while the shipment was in his custody.

  But he swore on his children’s lives he didn’t know anything about them, and Kate believed him. Jim had been with Redstone a long time, had in fact transferred here after working fifteen years at Redstone Technologies in Los Angeles. He practically worshipped Josh Redstone, and Kate simply couldn’t picture him ever doing anything against the man or the company. Maybe she was naive, but she had him near the bottom of her possible suspect list, despite his having the best opportunity to pull off the crimes.

  She yawned widely as she sat up in bed. She’d been trying to catch a
t least a little sleep when Jim’s distressed call had awakened her. She felt exhausted. How much of it was purely physical she didn’t know; she’d been tired ever since the first theft had occurred.

  As she got up and quickly showered and dressed, she felt as if she’d been beaten. Gramps often used the phrase “dragged through a knothole, backwards” to describe how he felt after a hard day. She’d always thought it merely a quaint, colorful old saying. Now she knew exactly what it meant.

  She felt a hollowness inside as she drove to work. She loved working at Redstone, but if she didn’t get this problem solved—and stopped—she doubted she’d have her job much longer. Joshua Redstone might be the greatest guy in the world to work for, as most of his people said, but even he wasn’t going to take this for long.

  The hollow feeling grew as she entered the building and caught people watching her go by, much as they watched a funeral procession, the gratefulness that they weren’t in her position clear on their faces. She plastered a smile on her face, as if nothing was wrong. Someone on the inside was involved in this, and she’d be darned if she’d let them see her in a panic. But when she got into her office, she closed the door behind her.

  She paced from the door to her desk and back again, as she had so often in the past two months, her mind darting desperately into any corner where a solution might be hiding. She and security guard Brian Fisher had spent hours trying to brainstorm answers. At this point, the only answer she could come up with was to drive the darn truck herself, and she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t do it at this rate.

  Gradually her pace slowed. There was nothing she could do about the thefts at this moment, so she might as well start the day’s work. There was certainly enough of it. The pumps weren’t the only thing that were made and shipped out of Redstone Northwest, and she had a lot of other responsibilities.

  At least, she did for now.

  Maybe I should just resign, she thought. Save Mr. Redstone the trouble of firing me.

  It was then she knew how tired she was. She’d never been a quitter. And while she hated the idea of hanging around to be fired, she hated more the idea of giving up on a problem that was hers to solve.

  And to her surprise, she found she hated the idea of letting down the quiet, gray-eyed man who’d hired her. She hadn’t seen him in person since that day two years ago, but he was as fresh in her mind as if it had been yesterday. She’d sensed the muted pain about him, and she would do a great deal to avoid adding to it.

  The storm descended upon her quickly then. Another police report, with all the questions she couldn’t answer. A call from the detective assigned to the case, who made it clear she thought Redstone had an internal problem—and given the circumstances, Kate couldn’t really disagree. A visit from the plant manager, who in typical Redstone fashion was more worried than angry, although she doubted it would take much more to push him over that line.

  When her office was finally cleared, she wondered how long it would be before she herself was pushed over that line. She’d gone through a stage of shock and disbelief, which had turned to hurt when she realized the perpetrator was likely on the inside. Now an edge of panic was creeping in as she felt more and more helpless to do anything.

  She tried lecturing herself; she was competent, efficient and smart. She’d handled a high-level job at a frenetic investment company for years. She could handle this.

  Her pep talk sounded good, she even believed it. Except for that last part. How was she going to handle this when she couldn’t even figure out how the crimes were being committed?

  “Have dinner with me.”

  Kate looked at him so blankly he had to assume she either found the suggestion ridiculous, or had completely forgotten he was in the room. Neither possibility was particularly flattering. Or in the least encouraging. Quickly he re-thought his approach.

  “I thought I’d take your grandparents out,” he said quickly, nodding toward the kitchen of her grandparents house, where her grandmother was audibly pondering tonight’s dinner. “Dorothy’s been cooking for me for days now, it seems the least I can do.”

  He had thought the inclusion of her grandparents would make it easier for her, but it didn’t seem to. She was now looking at him with what appeared to be suspicion.

  And then, even as he watched, she gave a sigh and the expression faded. As if she’d consciously fought it down, he thought. And he’d learned to go with those gut reactions. All the Redstone security team had received extensive training in the psychological aspects of their work, body language and other telltale signs. As Draven always said, if you can’t read your quarry, you could soon find yourself the quarry. Rand didn’t like applying that maxim to Kate, but there it was.

  “They’ll want you to go,” he said. “In fact, if you don’t, they probably won’t.”

  A flicker of a grimace flashed across her face, but vanished so quickly he couldn’t be sure what it was in reaction to.

  “All right,” she finally said, but her tone told him her assent was only because he was likely right about her grandparents refusing the rare night out if she didn’t accompany them.

  So, he thought, despite her apology, suspicion was still her first reaction to him. Apparently this time he’d come up against somebody who didn’t buy into the baby-faced innocence that he had so often used to his advantage. Obviously he was going to have to work harder at gaining her trust.

  It wasn’t like he hadn’t had to earn trust before. Not everyone trusted him on sight. But people did more often than not, he admitted ruefully, only now realizing how much he had grown to depend on that to get his job done.

  As he was up in his rented room getting ready, he pondered how to go about earning this particular woman’s trust. If she still truly suspected he was up to something that would somehow hurt her grandparents, then he wasn’t sure how to change her mind. Time might do it, but that was a commodity he didn’t have in great supply.

  He pulled on a sweater and straightened it, still thinking. And not liking what he was coming up with.

  He could leave. Simply say his work was done, he’d gotten his photos, and move out, leaving Dorothy and Walt unscathed, proving he’d not been after anything at all from them. Of course, if he did that, whether she trusted him or not was a moot point. Not to mention that it would make completing the investigation much more difficult—especially if he was seen after supposedly leaving. And if he was spotted in this town, he was certain that his presence would be reported directly to one of the Crawfords. It seemed to be the way things worked around here.

  If she didn’t trust him because she was involved in the thefts, then nothing he could do would change that. And in the end he’d be the one responsible for bringing her down. He didn’t like the feel of that at all. But it was his job, and he wouldn’t be the first Redstone security agent who’d had to do something he didn’t relish. Redstone was truly like a huge family, and when the rare black sheep sneaked through, no one was happy about it.

  The fact that he couldn’t easily dismiss Kate’s possible involvement set off warning bells in his head, but he didn’t know what to do about it.

  He could call for help, he thought as he ran a comb through his hair, a useless exercise since he knew it would flop forward again the moment he took a single step. It always had, and he’d resigned himself to the probability it always would; the men in his family had a history of keeping their hair into their eighties.

  Yes, he could call for help, have somebody else on the team step in. It would be awkward to explain, and delay the investigation.

  But they wouldn’t care about who was involved, only solving the case.

  The realization hit him suddenly and hard. A new investigator would see Kate only as a suspect, and the most likely one at that. Might zero in on her and see guilt in her edginess and some of her actions, and wouldn’t know her well enough to cast doubt on those suspicions.

  And do you?

  “Shut up,” he muttered und
er his breath to the voice in his head that picked the worst times to speak and worse things to say. He did know she was kind, generous and very, very smart.

  And sexy. Don’t forget that, he added to himself wryly.

  As he left his rented haven and went down the stairs, he discarded his idea of calling in someone else. He was in this investigation, it was his job to handle, and handle it he would.

  He just had to figure out how to handle Kate Crawford, and that decision wasn’t coming as easily.

  Kate couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard her grandparents laugh so much. She hadn’t completely realized how solemn they’d become until tonight. It made her feel guilty for not noticing before this, and grateful to hear their laughter now. And, she had to admit, grateful to Rand, since he was the one who had managed it. His stories of his travels around the world, especially the one about the cab driver in Madrid, were a wonderful diversion.

  “It’s good to hear you laugh, honey,” her grandmother said, startling Kate with the similarity to her own thoughts.

  “You don’t laugh enough,” her grandfather intoned with a nod.

  She had been laughing too, she realized then. She’d been so focused on her grandparents’ elevated mood that she hadn’t thought about herself. And her grandparents were right, it had been a long time since she had laughed. Since the day of the first theft, she thought. Yet he’d managed to distract her from that, and from this latest theft.

  “She has a wonderful laugh,” Rand said softly. He was, thankfully, looking at her grandparents, so he didn’t see the color that rose in her cheeks.