Last Man Standing

by Julie Miller

  His gaze dropped down to her hands between them. She still held tight to his sleeve and worried the napkin between her thumb and fingers. She forced herself to let go when she realized the nervous movement had betrayed her fears.

  But before she could pull away, Cole reached in and swallowed up both her hands, napkin and all, between his. The warmth and strength of his calloused grip radiated through her skin, sparking alternating tendrils of soothing comfort and sensual need along her wrists and arms and deeper inside.

  “Easy, sweetheart— Tori,” he corrected himself before she got her mouth around a protest. He altered his stance, angling his full back to the limousine, holding her with both hands now. The tenor of his voice deepened. “Call A.J. as soon as you can. Ask how Ma and Dad are.”

  “They’re your parents?” Deeply buried emotions haunted the depths of his midnight-blue eyes, giving her her answer. A kindred sympathy at his fear for his parents’ safety awakened inside her. “I’m sorry. I hope they’re okay.”

  “So do I. Someone’s trying to distract me from my purpose, and my family’s paying the price.”

  Tori’s eyes widened. “You think someone here is responsible for that break-in?” She tried to switch grips and offer him the solace he’d given her.

  But feminine comfort wasn’t what he wanted from her. Cole released her entirely. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small plastic bag with her welcome note from “Daniel” sealed inside. “Give this to A.J.” He bypassed her hands and tucked the card directly into the pocket of her black slacks, pulling the hem of her lilac blouse over it to keep the exchange well-hidden from view. “Have him run prints on it. It’ll probably come up clean, but—”

  “Taylor.” Aaron’s call from the far side of the limousine stopped the conversation with the precision of a Swiss Army knife. “Say goodbye to your woman. Mr. Meade is waiting.”

  Cole’s terse sigh indicated he might have shared more if they’d had real privacy. Almost as if he’d needed the reminder from their audience that this was supposed to be a personal relationship, he pressed a light, perfunctory kiss to her lips. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “I’ll take care of this,” she promised, subtly indicating her pocket, reassured that they were still working partners.

  “Watch your back,” he warned unnecessarily.

  “Watch yours.”

  Cole took a step toward the car, then hesitated. His shoulders swelled—girding himself for some effort? resigning himself to some fate? making a decision? He whirled around, startling her with his unknown intent. His hand snaked out and he palmed the back of her head. He bent down as he lifted her onto her toes. He stopped up the nonplussed what? of her lips with his. Tori braced her hands against his chest for balance and held on as her world spun into a slam-bam overload of sensory images.

  He kissed her hard, swirling his tongue inside her mouth and claiming her uncensored response. She caught fire as she tasted rich coffee, breathed in the freshly pressed scent of his clothes, absorbed his masculine strength and surrendered a tiny piece of her heart. But with a reluctant moan low in his throat, he tore his mouth away, ending the kiss as suddenly as he had begun it. Tori swayed on her feet, stunned by her instant and powerful reaction to his touch.

  “God, Tori.”

  Not babe. Not sweetheart. He leaned his forehead against hers, his hand roughly massaging the nape of her neck, his heated breath caressing the tingling swell of her lips. Stars of emotion danced in his dark eyes, glittering with the same pulsing intensity of her thudding heart.

  “What was that for?” she asked, embarrassed by what her breathy voice might reveal.

  He swallowed hard, gathering his composure in a way she couldn’t yet. “I needed to.”

  He needed the solace of physical contact? He needed to put on a convincing show? He needed her?

  She wasn’t buying that last theory. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Aaron believed it that time.”

  Cole frowned. “Screw Aaron. That’s not what I meant.”

  “Taylor!” Aaron’s impatient prompt prevented further discussion.

  With another pithy damnation of the audience in question, Cole brushed his lips beside her ear. “There’s no camera in Jericho’s office. Stay clear of the computer and the safe and you shouldn’t trip any sensors. We won’t be back until dinner this evening.” He squeezed the back of her neck, demanding she hear everything he was saying. “And then we’ll talk in private.”

  “Sure.” About her meeting with A.J. “We’ll talk.”

  “Tori?” He meant something else, something more. But she just wasn’t going to go there.

  “You’d better go.” She was never going to be comfortable playing this sexual game. Feeling things, wanting answers. Never sure what was real or pretend. Afraid to trust instincts that had been so wrong before. She released her grip on his jacket and smoothed the lapels across the strong beat of his heart. There was no confusion when it came to doing her job, however, and the information Cole had just given her was priceless. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll check out the office this afternoon.”

  “Call A.J.”

  She nodded.

  “Be careful—”

  “Taylor!”

  “Go,” she said.

  “I’m coming,” he shouted over his shoulder. Cupping the side of her cheek and jaw, he spared Tori once last questioning look before turning and sauntering down the steps. He took his good, sweet time crossing the drive and climbing into the back of the limo.

  Amused by Cole’s refusal to be ordered about by the bristly butler-turned-chauffeur, Tori watched him every step of the way—until the prickle of goose bumps crawling across her skin made her realize that she, too, was being watched.

  Aaron stood at the driver’s door, staring with dead-eyed intensity at her over the roof of the car. She’d been the object of displeasure and resentment before. She’d even looked into the eyes of hate. But there was something so cold, so omniscient in those unblinking eyes that Tori shivered in the spring air.

  Did he know something about her and her mission? Even suspect she had an ulterior motive for working here? Did he think she’d detained Cole just to inconvenience him? Or was that accusatory stare a by-product of his surly personality?

  Refusing to confirm any suspicion or grant him the satisfaction of intimidating her, Tori tipped her chin and defiantly met the enemy’s glare head-on. He muttered something under his breath at her show of independence, dismissed her presence and climbed in behind the wheel.

  As she watched the black limo drive away, the chill of Aaron’s stare stayed with her, canceling out the heat stirred by Cole’s passion. She was wrong to make too much of that kiss, anyway. He’d been worried for his parents and her safety, and her mother had told her that men often expressed their emotions with physical actions.

  She’d made too much of Ian Davies’s kisses, too. He’d managed to fool her as well as their audience.

  Imagining herself in love with the fellow agent assigned to portray her husband in an undercover sting had been a rookie mistake. She’d fallen for Ian’s smooth moves and pretty words. He’d convinced her that everything her mother had said about her shortcomings wasn’t true.

  But Ian had been more interested in selling information to the drug dealer they were trying to bring in. The morning after she’d finally given in to his seduction, she’d overheard him on the phone wrapping up the deal. She’d kept her head enough to play along until she could report the situation to her superior and set up an entrapment. But her idealistic view of love had been forever altered from the fairy tales her father had once filled her head with.

  She’d unknowingly provided the means for Ian to achieve his traitorous goal. She’d provided a few laughs, too, she realized, once he informed her his taste in women ran to busty brunettes who knew how to please a man—hinting that she’d failed on all counts.

  Heart bruised, pride battered, self-esteem beaten back to square
one, Tori had received a commendation for uncovering the double agent, and Ian wound up dead in the crossfire between the Dominguez cartel and the Feds.

  No Horseman—divine or otherwise—had ridden in to save her from pain and humiliation back then. No hero was going to save her now.

  So she wouldn’t get hurt. She was a smarter woman now, a smarter agent. Nobody could use her or hurt her if she didn’t give them the means to do so. On or off the job. It was a safer, saner way to live her life.

  Still, it was hard not to care when a man’s family was under attack. It was hard to stay detached when a man volunteered to go to jail rather than see her risk her life. It was hard to remember this was all a very dangerous game…when Cole Taylor kissed her like that.

  And she had foolishly held on and kissed him back.

  Shaking off the annoying second-guessing when she had a job to do, Tori turned to go inside. But she paused with her hand on the doorknob and let common sense finally be heard over her confused emotions. In a house littered with listening devices, the best place to make a private phone call would be outside.

  Not that the atmosphere felt any more welcoming out here. A stagnant, gray canopy of clouds chilled the air with the promise of more rain. Despite the lack of sunshine, she strolled down the steps as if it was a treat to sample the dreary day. Walking around to the side yard, toward the jungle-thick wall of deciduous trees surrounding the manor, Tori pulled her cell phone from her belt and Rodriguez’s number from her pocket.

  She punched in the number, tugged her sleeves down to her wrists and crossed her arms against the clammy dampness that clung to her skin. The phone rang—long enough for her to stand there and note the fingers of sunlight streaming into the northern part of the city and farther west.

  “Why doesn’t the sun ever shine here?” she muttered to herself, listening to the third ring. She could hear an elephant’s trumpet and a cacophony of chirps and barks and growls from the zoo on the other side of the trees. Breakfast was being served, cages were being cleaned. Their world was coming to life. But the air within the gates of the Meade estate was spookily still.

  Still enough that she could hear the whisper of a window sash sliding open. Curious more than alarmed, she turned and studied the sprawling two-story brick facade for any sign of movement.

  By the fourth ring, the phone clicked. A whooshing sound in the background made her think she’d reached someone driving in his car. The person answering waited for her to speak first.

  “A. J. Rodriguez, please.”

  “Yes?”

  There. Her room. The curtain stirred at her window. But there was no breeze. Her pulse quickened with wary anticipation. Had someone been spying on her? Going through her things? Watching her make this call?

  She kept her eye on the window, looking for signs of movement that would indicate the intruder was still inside. “My name’s Victoria Westin. I’m calling for…a friend.” She wasn’t quite sure how to define her ever-changing alliance with the enigmatic bodyguard. But she suddenly felt very much alone without him on the premises. “Cole Taylor. I have a message.”

  Mr. Rodriguez had little to say, but he was willing to listen. “Not on the phone. When and where do you want to meet?”

  The gauzy sheers that hung at her window parted and a dark, distinct shape pressed itself to the glass. “What the hell…?”

  “Ms. Westin?”

  “Sorry.” She quickly made the arrangements and hung up. She reached for the gun at her hip. But it wasn’t there.

  Tori hooked the phone to her belt and ran for the front door.

  She’d seen a black-gloved hand in the window.

  A hand with only four fingers.

  BY THE TIME TORI REACHED her bedroom, everything was closed up tight and neat as a pin. Fresh towels hung in the bathroom, another foil-wrapped mint had been left on her pillow, and a handwritten note—signed J.D.M.—was lying beside it.

  Tori picked up her shoulder bag and sat on the edge of the bed. I’ll see you at midnight was hardly the stuff of which cases were built, but she’d bag it and hand it over to Detective Rodriguez with the card from yesterday. This was no ghostly invitation as Jericho had claimed, unless the laws of physics had changed. Her visitor had been the flesh-and-blood kind. The musty smell of dust and rot, like an old, dark attic—or the hidden corridor—hung in the air and tickled her nose.

  The same cobwebby scent greeted her when she opened her purse to find a plastic bag. Tori pinched her nose and sneezed. Her “ghost” had gone through her things. Why? Jumping to her feet, she turned and dumped the contents out onto the bed and sorted through them, checking that nothing had been taken, nothing new had been left behind, and nothing in that bag could give her away.

  Except… “Dad?” She flipped through the plastic sheaves in her wallet one more time. “It’s gone.” The picture of her father and herself that she carried in her wallet.

  A sinking feeling that was part grief, part anger, carried Tori back in time. She’d been taking pottery lessons at the Nelson-Atkins art museum and was holding her own crude version of the Horseman in the photo. Her creation looked more like a dragon with a hump on its back, but her father had known it was the knight from his stories and hugged her for it.

  Had the intruder seen the blob of clay and plastic jewels and recognized it for what it was?

  “Idiot.”

  Tori snapped the wallet shut. She needed that photo back, for survival as much as sentiment.

  Planting her thoughts firmly in the moment, Tori grabbed the penlight and tossed everything else back into her bag. She was going to find out where that corridor led and who was using it.

  But she’d barely gotten turned around when someone knocked at her door. For a split second she considered simply not answering it. But the concealed camera left her no place to hide.

  Putting away the penlight and the J.D.M. cards, she straightened her clothes, opened the door, and strained her muscles to maintain a smile. “Chad.”

  He posed in her doorway like a catalog model. “Remember my offer to help with your research? Today’s your lucky day. My morning’s free.”

  Oh, yeah, touchy-feely boy had impeccable timing. Tori ducked her chin to hide her frustration. She’d have to postpone her search for the intruder. Her best bet now was to ask Cole if his camera had caught the trespasser on tape. But he’d indicated she wouldn’t see him again until dinner. That left an entire day to rally her patience and try to guess which member of the household had been spying on her. Might as well start with Chad.

  “That’d be great.” Carefully counting the five fingers on his right hand, she tolerated the brush of them against her back as he escorted her downstairs to the office across from Jericho’s.

  Chad Meade’s home office had a place for everything. And everything had been in its place until Tori set up shop at his desk to peruse the art inventories he kept on his computer.

  Tedious as paperwork could be, though, after nearly three hours of wading through the mess of records, she’d actually made some interesting progress. She’d thumbed through pictures, bookmarked catalog numbers and made pages of notes as she verified each work of art on the database.

  The system was a bookkeeper’s nightmare. Someone—Chad, probably, with his penchant for order—had transferred files of handwritten notes to the computer. Each entry listed the item, its date of purchase and purchase price, its current value, and its location at the estate or downtown offices.

  But the data was incomplete. There were more items in the scrapbooks than on the computer. And some of the listings were missing information—a red flag that suggested money was being secreted away by altering the values of a work or hiding its existence altogether. Of course, it could be just shoddy accounting. But Tori was certain the Meades wouldn’t tolerate incompetent record-keeping when she was looking at numbers totaling well into the millions of dollars.

  “Thomas Hart Benton’s Western Highway. Seventy-five-thousan
d dollars.” Adjusting her glasses, she traced the listing with her finger on the computer screen. “Purchased in 1984.” Blank. She picked up a book and thumbed through it to find the photograph of the painting and its New York auction house receipt. Pulling her glasses down her nose, she looked over the top of them at Chad. “Neither entry says where the painting’s located.”

  Willing to approach her mess if it meant an opportunity to shine, Chad came over and perched on the arm of her chair to look at the computer screen. His hip butted against her shoulder and stayed. When Cole touched her, her skin tingled. When Chad touched her, it crawled. And while Cole baffled her limited feminine intuition, there was no misinterpreting Chad’s harassing intentions. Tori rolled her eyes and leaned toward the opposite arm of the chair.

  “Ah, yes, that one. Jericho owns several Benton pieces, since he was a local artist.”

  She was familiar with the murals Benton had painted at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence.

  “He rotates them out of his office downtown when he purchases a new one. He hasn’t displayed this particular painting for several years.”

  “What does he do with the items he doesn’t display?”

  “Loans them to area museums. Gives them away as gifts.”

  “He gives away seventy-five-thousand dollar paintings?”

  “If he likes you.” Double entendre dripped from Chad’s voice as he slid his arm along the back of her chair, letting his thumb catch in the strands of her hair.

  Tori’s mental groan quickly gave way to imagining at least three ways she could incapacitate him from this position, rendering him incapable of touching her in any way, shape or form for ten solid minutes. But since she needed the information he seemed inclined to share, she’d skip the martial arts and opt for a more subtle escape.

  She set down her glasses and stood, putting several steps between them before stopping to stretch and roll the kinks from her neck. “There are hundreds of items there. Someone hasn’t kept very good track of them all.” She risked adding insult to rejection. “Have you always overseen his collection?”