by Brant, Kylie
Her eyebrows climbed at his insinuation. “I always read the papers,” she replied tartly. “But only once. I don’t share Greg’s enthusiasm for debating endlessly about money-market accounts and tax-deferred bonds.”
“Sounds like he has quite a bit of power.” He gave her a level look. “It’s a little naive to put all your trust in one individual. How do you know he won’t take off with your money?”
“I thought the point of hiring experts was to let them do what they’re expert at,” she responded sweetly. “Or so you’ve told me.” She walked past him and sat on the couch.
“You’re too trusting. That’s probably what’s gotten you into this mess to begin with.” She wrinkled her nose and curled her legs gracefully beneath her. The supple movement drew his unwilling gaze for a moment. She was once again dressed in jeans, which hugged her tiny curves faithfully. Her feet were bare. He tried to remember if he’d ever seen her wear shoes, and couldn’t recall that he had.
“No use trying to be diplomatic,” she said dryly. “It’s obviously a strain for you. Did you really have something you needed to discuss, or did you just want to insult me?”
“I wanted to warn you. I’ve gotten just about everything I need to get started installing the security system we talked about. There will be workers arriving within the hour to start on the job.”
He certainly didn’t believe in wasting time. Somehow, that didn’t surprise her. “You wanted to give me enough time to barricade myself in my studio?” she asked, only half-joking.
No hint of amusement showed in his ice blue gaze. “I want you to stick around until they arrive. If that’s no bother.”
He needn’t have added that last phrase, as if he was concerned with politeness. She wasn’t fooled. It had been an order, not a request. Not for the first time she wondered where he’d acquired that tone of authority, the presence that said he was used to issuing orders and having them carried out. She didn’t quite believe that it all stemmed from his current job, although that would certainly add to it.
“What do you need me for?”
His gaze narrowed. He’d just witnessed her giving Greg Winters carte blanche with her money, for chrissakes, while he was expected to debate each step he took to keep her safe. He’d had more difficult clients before, and some much more irritating, so he couldn’t quite put his finger on the reason she could so easily spark his usually banked temper. He put it down to the fact that his mood had been approaching dangerous since her father had first coerced him into this job.
The explanation he gave was terse. “I want you to meet each of the workers who’ll be around for the next few days. Get a good look at them so you’ll remember their faces.”
An unexpected chill ran down her spine. “You mean so I’ll recognize them,” she interpreted slowly.
He nodded. “After today, if you see any new faces around here, you find me, pronto. That shouldn’t be too difficult, since I won’t be far from your side for the duration of this case.”
She blinked at him, the lights in her golden eyes dimming. And then she looked away. Her voice, when it came, was quiet. “You think someone might actually come into my house and threaten me?”
He heard the nerves beneath the even tone, but he didn’t bother to sugarcoat his answer. “We won’t be taking that risk. I’ve spoken to the police.” As he’d assumed, the detective had been unforthcoming about the investigation, saying that he’d discuss it only with Miss Michaels. Mac had gotten most of his information from Winters and Klassen the day before, when he’d interviewed the people who came and went so freely here. Both men had been visibly reluctant to speak to him. “Winters said he saved a total of four letters, which were eventually handed over to the detective. How many others have there been?”
“At least that many.”
“When did they start?”
Raine pulled her knees up in front of her and clasped them with her arms. She felt the sudden need for something solid to hold on to. “The phone calls began about a month ago, but only lasted a few days. Then the letters started. At first I tried to ignore them. After all, the calls stopped by themselves, and I thought the letters would, too.” She could feel disapproval emanating from him, although he remained silent. “André pointed out that the letters started a week after articles about me had appeared in the newspapers and in a magazine,” she informed him. Grimacing, she added, “When you’re in the public eye, you draw a lot of attention. Not all of it’s positive.”
She was reciting word for the word the same line Klassen had given him yesterday. Mac hadn’t liked it any better then. He wondered if Klassen was the reason she didn’t take action on the threats sooner. He’d taken an instant dislike to the self-important agent, with his impeccable suits and carefully groomed hair. The feeling had been mutual. “I would think that would be all the more reason to take safety precautions.”
She looked away, uncomfortably aware that the first response she’d had to the letters was denial. Facing the danger had felt too much like facing a reflection of her past. She despised herself when she took the easy way out, but that was exactly what she’d done by embracing André’s assurances that the letters were the products of a crank. She’d tried to be strong, as he’d urged, until the nightmares returned, reminding her insidiously that inner strength was no match against a person intent on doing evil. “When they continued, I got more and more spooked. So did everyone else. I suppose that’s what drove Greg to save the ones I eventually turned over to the detective last week.”
Mac flipped open the notebook he’d been holding and glanced at the scrawled phrases he’d jotted when questioning Winters. “‘You’re nothing.’ ‘Why should you have it all?’ ‘You’re headed for a fall.’ ‘Your days are numbered.’” He looked up and saw that her cheeks had grown a shade paler as he’d read the messages out loud. But she met his gaze squarely. “Were all of them in this vein?”
“More or less.”
“How about the phone calls? Did you recognize the voice?”
She shook her head. “It was always a whisper, but the message was pretty much the same. My harasser apparently isn’t very creative.”
He ignored her feeble joke. “When did the last letter come?”
“A week ago.”
“Do you have any idea at all who might be sending them?”
“Detective Ramirez already asked me that, and the answer is no.” The way he was firing the questions at her made her feel she was being interrogated. Certainly he was being as thorough as the detective she had talked to. “The calls always came late at night, and the letters have all been in my mail.”
That brought up another interesting point. “When the detective talked about the letters you’d turned over to him, he didn’t mention anything about envelopes.” And no amount of questioning had garnered much else from the man, either. Mac had left the police headquarters frustrated, although he’d known what to expect. He doubted even Trey Garrison’s accomplished finesse would have been enough to pry more information from the closemouthed Detective Ramirez.
“I was upset by the first few letters,” she explained carefully. Nothing in her tone hinted at the panic she’d experienced upon receiving them. “André was concerned that I was getting too agitated, and right before my upcoming show.” She added wryly, “Very inconvenient timing, you see. Anyway, he offered to take care of them, and I let him. I wasn’t aware Greg had saved some of them until later. There was nothing remarkable about the envelopes, believe me. They were white and standard size, addressed to me.” She smiled faintly. “All the printing looked computer generated. Nothing so dramatic as messages made up of cutout letters from newspapers, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Think about those envelopes,” he urged, his turquoise gaze intent. “Where did they come from?”
Misunderstanding his meaning, Raine frowned in annoyance. “I already told you, I don’t know who—”
He shook his head and interrup
ted her. “No, I don’t mean who sent them. What city did they come from? What did the postmarks read?”
Comprehension came swiftly. And then, as she tried to remember, foreboding followed. “I think,” she said slowly, “I’m almost certain that some of them had L.A. postmarks.”
“Some of them?” he questioned sharply.
She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t recall whether I noticed the postmark on every single letter.”
Inexorably, he questioned, “Don’t recall what the postmark was stamped, or don’t recall whether every one had a postmark?”
“Well, of course they had postmarks,” she asserted. Under that unrelenting gaze, she moistened her lips. Darn it all, the man had a way of making her feel like she was a sandwich shy of a picnic. “I mean, I assume they all had one.”
At this disclosure, his eyes closed briefly, as if in pain. “Do me a favor, will you? Quit assuming things. You are in danger here, and some of it is because you assume too damn much.”
Her jeweled eyes were wide, watching him guardedly. He didn’t give a damn. This piece of information put a whole new light on the case, and he didn’t like the possibilities. He didn’t like them at all. Mac struggled to rein in his temper. “Let me get this straight. All the letters were found in your mailbox.” At her short nod, he went on. “You know this, of course, because you bring your own mail in daily.” His voice sounded slightly hopeful.
Raine opened her mouth to answer, then, at his knowing gaze, snapped it shut again.
He gave a humorless smile. “Somehow I thought not. So all the letters were found among your mail, which is brought in the house by . . .” His voice tapered off, an invitation for her to continue.
She felt like giving him a swift kick instead. She was finding she liked his sarcasm even less than that expressionless mask he adopted most of the time. His thoughts right now were all too apparent. “I usually bring in my own mail,” she informed him tartly. “But on occasion it’s brought in by André, Greg or Sarah.”
“Or one of the endless stream of art students who wander in and out of here at will?”
“No.”
“No?”
Raine glared at him. She knew what he was insinuating, and the fact that hindsight had proven there was some truth to his concerns didn’t make her feel any more kindly toward him. She defended herself. “Look, I don’t spend a great deal of time downstairs during the day. I’m usually in my studio. I have two more works to get done for my upcoming show. I’m involved in endless meetings with André and Greg and you can’t believe how many other people.”
“You’ve been careless,” he stated evenly. “And whether you like to admit it or not, the possible lack of postmarks on some of the letters changes everything.” He had a mental vision of his vacation sprouting wings and flying away. “It means that this jerk may have already been closer to you than you want to admit. Close enough to have placed a letter in your mailbox, anyway.”
She swallowed hard. “We don’t know that.”
“But it’s a possibility, and we’ll have to act on it. I’d strongly advise you to invest in a fence across the front of your property, one with motorized gates.”
She rubbed her hands over arms that were suddenly chilled. “A fence?”
He nodded, watching her reaction closely. “I’ll bring in some catalogs, and you can pick out a style you like. The doors and windows will take only a week or so to install. The fence will be a bigger project. I may have to order some of the materials, but that shouldn’t be a problem.”
She wasn’t concentrating on his words. It took all her strength to keep from screaming her opposition. Memories flooded her, reminding her of the time she’d moved with her family to Burbank as a teenager. The house had come equipped with all the latest electronic features, to keep them safe, her father had assured her. As if it had happened yesterday she remembered the first day she’d stood inside the drive. The gates had closed behind her with a gentle, irrevocable snick. It hadn’t been a feeling of safety they’d generated in her that day. Instead she’d felt like a prisoner. If her father had had his way she’d still be living behind those protective barriers, protected from harm and from life in general.
“No,” she whispered, as much to the memory as to Mac.
He leaned forward, his arms on his hard thighs, his face implacable. “Yes. That’s exactly what you’re going to do, Raine, and you know why? Because you put me in charge here, and until this thing is over, I’m calling the shots.” He lifted a hand to stem her response. “You said you’d listen to my ideas once I’d assessed the situation. Well, here they are. Lady, you’re in real trouble. You can’t brush these threats off as the work of some crank. Cranks lose interest quickly—they don’t keep harassing their targets indefinitely. And you can’t rely on the police to help you, because they don’t have a thing to go on, especially without the envelopes. I doubt this case is a real high priority with them at this point, anyway. No one has actually been hurt.” His pause was full of meaning. “Yet.”
She sprang up from the couch. “You’re deliberately trying to scare me.” And he was succeeding admirably. All the panic she’d managed to suppress from the time the threats began was all too close to the surface now. Which of course meant that she hadn’t been suppressing it at all, hadn’t been dealing with it, as André had insisted. She’d been getting through the last few weeks by denying its existence.
Until the nightmares had made even that feat impossible.
“You should be scared,” he agreed bluntly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Because all the alarms and fences in the world can’t make it impossible for someone to get to you, if that’s what he really wants.”
His words affected her like a dash of ice water. She paced away from him, giving herself time to recover. “Careful there, Macauley, or you’ll talk yourself out of a job.”
“Not quite,” he returned tersely. “Because the rest of my job is to make sure no one does get to you.” She whirled around then to face him, and her look of utter dismay was enough to tell him that she’d interpreted his meaning accurately. “As I said, you could spend a fortune securing your home and property and still not be completely safe. You’re taking the kind of precautions that would make wise choices for anyone living out here. The rest of the job will be up to me.”
She interpreted his words correctly. “How long . . . do you plan to stay?”
“As long as it takes,” he said flatly. “Until this nut is stopped, you’re in danger.” After a pause, he added, “I’ve already informed your father.”
“Great,” she muttered. She dug the tips of her fingers into the back pockets of her jeans, feeling as tautly drawn as a wire. There was definitely nothing calming about this man. But in fairness to him, she had to admit that he didn’t soft-pedal bad news, either. She grudgingly respected that. She preferred to face reality head-on than to be coddled from it. The knowledge that she hadn’t been doing a particularly good job of that recently wasn’t too comforting. “I should probably warn you to expect calls from my brothers, William and John. No doubt Dad has already filled them in, and they take their roles of big brothers extremely seriously.”
Mac didn’t bother to inform her that he’d already spoken to William. And she was right, her brother had been outraged that Raine hadn’t taken action immediately. Mac even agreed with William’s description of his sister, up to a point. There was something almost otherworldly about Raine at times, as if she was detached from the details of life. But he’d noticed that was usually when she was preoccupied with her painting. He was beginning to believe that her family tended to underestimate her. There were other times when she could be unbelievably tenacious. Especially when she was arguing with him.
He shrugged mentally. Actually, this scene had gone better than he’d had a right to expect. She’d hadn’t been thrilled with his news, but she hadn’t refused to cooperate, either. “This won’t last forever, Raine. And it shouldn’t
interfere with your painting. I’ll answer the phone and bring in the mail.” That drew an arch look from her, which he chose to ignore. “You’ll need to keep your outside engagements to an absolute minimum, but if you do have to go anywhere, I’ll go with you.”
She was silent, surveying the floor in melancholy resignation. His next words shattered that mood, however.
“Of course it will be necessary to restrict your visitors. The house will be declared off-limits to guests.”
At his words she could feel the walls from her childhood spring up and begin to close in around her. “That is out of the question!”
Mac watched her from beneath hooded lids. Her eyes were spitting golden sparks at him. “You think so?”
“I draw the line right there.” She approached him and said fiercely, “Dammit, Macauley, I’m not going to let you turn me into a hermit!”
He frowned impatiently. “Call me Mac. And it’s necessary, Raine.”
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “My friends are always welcome in my home. If André and Greg can’t come here, that means I’ll have to spend more of my time going to their offices for meetings. That will take me away from my painting and make your job more difficult.” She could tell by the way he considered her words that she’d made a valid point. She pressed on. “And I can’t just tell the students they can no longer come here to paint. The peacefulness here is inspiring. I’m not going to rescind my invitation.”
“If you won’t, I will.” His voice was impatient. He should have known she wouldn’t give in easily, “It’s not going to be all that peaceful around here, with all the work my men will be doing, so they won’t be missing much.”
“I refuse to alter my life any more than I’ve already agreed to. Don’t you understand?” She tried to reason with him. “If I let this whack job completely change the way I live, I’ve also let him win. I won’t do that, Macauley —I can’t. It’s taken me too long to take control of my life. I won’t give it up now.”
