To the right, the kitchen area with a wraparound counter with two waist-high stools. He gestured. “I stocked the fridge and pantry. You’re welcome to anything in the house. I tried to pick up some things that I remember you liked—”
“Did we really used to date?”
She turned to look at him, gaze unwavering, as if trying to judge the truthfulness of his statement. He nodded. “It was a long time ago, Sloane.”
“How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long did we date? Were we serious?”
His shoulders sagged only slightly as a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “We dated for almost a year. As for seriousness? We had a difference of opinion on that.”
She said nothing as he gestured toward the short hallway. “Bathroom is on the right, bedroom on the left. Like I said, you can have the bedroom. There’s fresh towels and supplies in the bathroom. If you need anything, let me know. I’ll be sleeping on the couch.”
She turned and saw the short stack of blankets, sheets, and a couple of pillows nearly hidden on the far side of the couch.
“Would you like me to fix you something to eat before I go to work?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you. If you don’t mind, I’m a little tired. I think I’ll go lie down.”
“Sure. Just let me go grab my uniform out of the closet. Sorry, I forgot to do that before I came to pick you up.”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, quickly moving past her into his bedroom. Like the living room, the furniture was nothing fancy. Queen size bed with a dark brown comforter, two bedside tables, a dresser, the closet in the corner. He went to the closet, opened the door, and pulled out his uniform, his work boots, an extra pair of jeans, and tennis shoes. He placed them on the foot of the bed and then he stepped to the dresser and opened the top drawer and pulled out two t-shirts, a button-down, white undershirt, underwear, and two pairs of socks. Gathering the clothes in his arms, he emerged from the bedroom just as Sloane entered the bathroom. Before he could say anything, the bathroom door closed and locked behind her.
“I’m going to get changed in the living room.”
“All right,” came the soft reply.
“I’ll be leaving in a few minutes. I’ll lock and deadbolt the front door from outside. You probably shouldn’t go anywhere alone, okay?”
“Okay.”
He paused, and then he continued into the living room. What did he expect? She had no idea who he was, as much as he was beginning to realize that bothered him. He quickly changed and then he left his apartment, determined to do a little snooping on his own at work this evening. Maybe he could find out what she’d been doing in town. He knew someone in the local sheriff’s department. While he would try to avoid pissing off the lieutenant, he had no preconceptions that he’d be kept within the loop by the Monroe Police Department. He was going to help Sloane any way he could.
It was a relatively slow day. By eight o’clock at night, Mason had managed to gather some preliminary information, thanks to his contact at the sheriff’s office. He had called earlier in the afternoon when he had a moment alone in the office at the station, the guys gathered in the kitchen playing cards. Ryan Atkins had been with the sheriff’s department for the past five years. He and Mason had met during a callout to an auto accident on one of the county’s rural roads and had struck up a friendship. Not that they hung out a lot, but once in a while they got together for a beer after work, especially after they ended up on the same scenes.
He quickly filled Ryan in, their past history and the mystery surrounding her presence in the abandoned auto shop. There was no way that Sloane had been involved in anything illegal—at least, not the Sloane he knew—but he needed information. He asked Ryan if he could do a quick background check to see if she popped up in any of the department’s databases. Lieutenant Bascom had mentioned that Sloane’s fingerprints were in the system thanks to the DMV, but hadn’t mentioned anything about misdemeanors, arrests, links to questionable groups, activities, or anything pertaining to the drug world in general.
So what the hell had she been doing in that building?
Ryan called him back less than fifteen minutes later. While he had a few answers, Mason now had even more questions. Apparently, Sloane did work for an import/export business by the name of Novas Antiquities Ltd., based in Charleston, South Carolina. She was the assistant manager in charge of European and Middle Eastern antiquities acquisitions and often traveled between Seattle and Charleston, as well as numerous international ventures to Italy, Germany, and France. Impressive.
“Get any information on her boss or the company?”
“I did,” Brian replied. “Boss is named Stavros Sakkas—”
“What the hell kind of name is that?”
“Greek,” Ryan replied. “I gave him a call, got an interesting reply.”
“Which was?”
“He said he had no idea what Sloane Maxwell was doing here in Georgia, let alone in an abandoned building in Monroe. He said most of the business, if any, that she does in Georgia is settled in Savannah. He suggested that she might have been doing something on her own time.”
“Anything else?”
“Just another curiosity. She has a lease on an apartment in Savannah, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then why would she have been staying in a hotel there? Her boss told me that when she was in town for a night or two, she often stayed at the Hilton, but I can’t figure out why she would do that if she had an apartment to go to.”
“I have no idea,” Mason sighed.
“Mason!”
Mason glanced up to find the battalion chief poking his head through the doorway.
“Gotta go, Buddy. Thanks,” he said, hanging up.
The battalion chief leaned against the door jamb, arms crossed over his chest. “Please tell me you’re not doing what I think you’re doing.”
Mason shrugged. He’d told his chief about Sloane, at least the nutshell version. “Okay.”
“Leave it to the cops, Mason,” he said. “She’s staying at your place, right?”
He nodded.
“I’m not going to butt into your business, but be careful. This thing with Sloane. It was a long time ago. A lot can change in ten years.”
That again. And that was just it, wasn’t it? Just how much had Sloane changed in the past decade? After the battalion chief left, Mason opened up several tabs on his laptop that ostensibly had to do with work. Then he opened up a new tab that he could easily click out of if the chief happened to return.
He Googled Stavros Sakkas and found several articles about him and his import-export business. During thirty minutes of browsing, Mason learned several things about Sloane’s boss. He was rich, he was connected, and he was possibly involved in several under the counter—read underhanded—business practices that involved undercutting competitor bids, missing shipments, claims of items being destroyed. None of those claims had ever gone as far as court. No misdemeanor or felony convictions. Still.
Did Sloane know about these incidents? He Googled her, too, and he wasn’t sure that he liked what he found. A broken engagement two years ago with some guy connected to a charity in Seattle. Not too many details, but claims of infidelity on her end and accusations that she was a gold digger who refused to sign a rather stringent pre-nup on his end.
He then Googled the ex-fiancé, an orthopedic surgeon named Jerry Nolan, a thrice-divorced so-called philanthropist who looked good on paper, at least professionally, but was not well liked by the local media. Apparently being rich could only buy you so much privilege. More than one report described him as arrogant and condescending.
Mason frowned. How could Sloane have hooked up with that kind of guy? Then again, when he and Sloane had dated they were both young, naïve, and idealistic when it came to affairs of the heart. He’d been stung a time or two in the past ten years, but he’d never proposed marriage to any of the women fr
om his relatively short-term relationships. Maybe Sloane had been right back then. Maybe he was afraid of commitment. He’d never thought about it that way. Was he waiting for some obvious sign that the woman he dated was “the one”? Was such a thing possible? He was probably just being stupid.
Mason spent another twenty minutes looking at a handful of articles that sparsely mentioned Sloane Maxwell; one that stated she had managed—details lacking—to get her hands on an ancient Roman artifact. There had been a bit of a dustup when, instead of turning the artifact over to her employer at the time, an auction house owned by a woman named Gertrude Manheim, she had instead turned the relic over to the Smithsonian Institute. Sloan had been fired on the spot and charged with grand theft, but the case had been thrown out of court.
Mason knew little about the world of antiquities and even less about the kind of people involved in such businesses. He did know that millions of dollars were often involved. Sloane had always been an honest woman, and other than her dismissal by the Manheim lady over the Smithsonian incident, she had been employed steadily over the years, early on as a curator of a museum in California, and in the most recent past, by the antiquities dealer Stavros Sakkas in South Carolina.
It was good to know she still seemed like the Sloane he knew, but the sparse information wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy his curiosity or answer one vital question. What the hell had she been doing in an abandoned auto shop?
6
Sloane
Over the last couple of days, Sloane was feeling better, at least physically. It had been three days since her discharge from hospital. Every muscle in her body still ached, but her head throbbed less with each passing day. Mason was true to his word and didn’t hover or try to ask her questions that she had no answers for. Sitting on the couch, she glanced at the clock on the opposite wall over the television. Nearly six o’clock. Mason’s last shift would be over soon. Feeling compelled to earn her keep, she had prepared dinner. Her appetite had picked up and she was looking forward to the meatloaf and baked potatoes finishing up in the oven, sending a comforting aroma through the apartment.
She hadn’t had to think twice about making the meatloaf and knew instinctively that she had made it many times before. Still, she felt so . . . so blank. During the day when Mason was gone she watched television, the news, the weather channel. How could she be familiar with recent events on the news, political discussions, and remember her favorite channels and yet not remember anything else specific or relevant about her past?
Most importantly, her nearly instinctual attraction to Mason. Sure, he was handsome; who wouldn’t be attracted to him? And a firefighter to boot. Double bonus. Something about him that made her body tingle with heat every time she looked at him. Her nipples puckered in a physical memory—or anticipation? She couldn’t tell.
She should ask him about her past. Their past. Did she even want to go there? Did she really want to know? What if the memories he dredged up were not anything she wanted to hear? How would she even know if he was telling the truth or creating fantasy? And that was the problem. Trust. Who could she trust? Who would tell her the unadulterated truth, good or bad? She sat, not really paying attention to the muted weather channel. She was utterly vulnerable to whatever anyone wanted to tell her about her past.
Sloane thought back to their brief conversation before he had left for work the night before. He’d stood in the kitchen and poured coffee into a thermos. She had stepped into the kitchen and asked a question.
“What was I like?”
“What?”
“What was I like, back then, when we were in college?”
He screwed the cup onto the thermos and grinned. “Smart, no, more than smart. You took your studies seriously, and if you didn’t ace a test, you’d get grumpy. But you weren’t always a bookworm or study fanatic. You knew when to shut that off and have some fun.”
“But what kind of person was I?”
He turned toward her and leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest, his biceps bulging. Sloane suppressed a shiver. “You were friendly with just about everybody. You weren’t in any cliques, if that’s what you mean. You weren’t snobby. You were polite and friendly with everyone, and you were well liked on campus. You made friends easily.”
She had left it at that. If she had been so well liked and if she had made friends easily, why didn’t anybody seem to know that she was here in Georgia? She was a long way from home. Wasn’t anybody missing her?
Earlier, she’d looked for a laptop, but Mason didn’t have one there. She wasn’t brave enough yet to go out and venture around the neighborhood, to find a library where she might have access to a computer. She felt relatively safe inside the apartment, but she couldn’t stay there forever. Who was she and what she was doing in Georgia? Why had she been in that part of town, in a meth lab of all places? The thought set her heart plummeting to her stomach and she swallowed back a surge of nausea. Had she just been in the wrong place at the wrong time? The sooner she got out of there and learned more about her history, the better.
Maybe Mason could help. To rebuild her life, she needed money. Sloane grimaced. Did she have any? She brushed her fingers through her hair, trying to remember, the constant uneasy feeling that never left her growing stronger. Without money, she was stuck. There hadn’t been any wallet or personal effects found with her in the warehouse, but according to the police she had a driver’s license. Surely she had a debit card, perhaps credit cards. But even if she was able to access any previous accounts online, she couldn’t remember her usernames or passwords. If she had a bank account, which bank?
Sloan groaned in frustration, dropping her head into her hands. Maybe the Monroe detectives could help her with that. Surely they had a way to trace bank accounts from suspects in cases. They could do the same for her, couldn’t they?
The detectives had told her that she leased an apartment in Savannah. Maybe Mason could take her there on his upcoming days off. She knew it was a lot to ask, but maybe—
A key turned in the front door and Sloane twisted sideways on the couch, ready to run . . . run where? Her hand tightly gripped the cushion as the door swung open.
“Sloane?”
Mason stepped into the room and turned to find her sitting on the couch. “Hello,” she said, offering a weak smile, trying to hide her near panic. What, or who, was she so afraid of?
“Smells good in here,” he said, dropping his duffel bag onto the floor beside the arm of the couch and closing the front door. “Whattcha got cookin’?”
“Meatloaf and baked potatoes. I hope that’s okay with you. I think I used to make it before.”
He nodded, smiling. “It’s one of your favorites, or at least used to be.”
She glanced at the clock. “It won’t be ready for another thirty minutes.”
“No worries.”
He just stood there. Feeling awkward? Probably no more awkward than she felt. Sloane glanced at the couch and then scooted over. “Mason, would you mind if I asked you some questions?”
He nodded. “Sure. Let me grab something first, okay?”
She watched as he strode across the living room toward the short hallway and disappeared into the bedroom. She heard him rummaging around in the closet. He emerged a minute later, carrying what looked like a notebook. He lifted it in his hand. “Photo album.” He placed it down on the coffee table. “You put it together, actually . . . you left it when you moved back to Seattle.”
She swallowed, her heart racing with trepidation. She wanted to know but didn’t, all at the same time. This connection that they had. If she had kept a photo album, they must have had a relatively solid relationship. Sloane looked at the book but didn’t move to pick it up, and Mason caught her eye.
“We don’t have to look at any pictures if you don’t want to,” he said. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or make you feel like you’re being pressured to remember something.”
; She met his gaze. God, his eyes were always so kind, his smile putting her immediately at ease. He was kicked back on the couch, relaxed. Either he wasn’t at all concerned or he was a damned good actor. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Show me.”
Over the next twenty minutes or so, Mason sat beside her on the sofa. Not touching, but close enough so that each of them could balance one half of the photo album on their thighs. The early pages of the album showed images of a younger Mason, probably in high school, and then college. He made small comments here and there. Then, about a quarter of the way through, she saw a picture of both of them standing together in front of a long, narrow edifice. She glanced at him in question.
“That’s at the college,” he explained. “It was after our first lunch date.”
She said nothing but gazed at each picture carefully as he thumbed through the pages. In the early pictures, the trees were lush and full, flowers everywhere. Gradually, they gave way to fall, the changing colors, and the falling leaves. In every photo they looked happy. Arms wrapped around each other. More than one of them kissing. She felt the heat rise in her cheeks.
“How long did we date?”
He glanced at her. “These pictures don’t jog any memories at all?”
She shook her head. “How long?”
“Almost a year.”
“Why did we break up?”
Mason gently closed the album and placed it on the coffee table and then leaned back into the couch. He crossed his legs at the ankles, one foot jiggling, one arm draped over the back, almost touching her shoulders. “Let’s just say that . . . you were ready for more of a commitment than I was. We were still pretty young. I didn’t—”
“I get it, Mason,” she interrupted. So she had pushed for something more than he was willing to give. Had she always been like that? “And I’ve been gone from Georgia for ten years? Did I grow up here?”
From the Ashes (Southern Heat Book 1) Page 5
