I curled gratefully into his arm, letting him make our farewells. Winston put his own arm around Hamilton, as though protecting her or comforting her, or maybe both. I wondered again about her secret, though a part of me was glad not to know it.
Cody preceded us to the truck, his shoulders hunched and his limp even more pronounced. I felt a fleeting guilt at having dragged him from his bed with my problems.
Paige waved the other officers to their car. “Go ahead and start processing. Get whoever else is available to help. I’ll be in bright and early.” Under her breath, she added, “Guess I’ll have to cancel waterskiing with Matthew tomorrow afternoon.” She didn’t sound all that upset, and I knew it was because she thrived on the job.
I perked up. “You’re letting him see you in a swim suit? Now I know it’s serious.” She had a smashing figure, so it wasn’t actually the suit but the fact that her hair would be wet that was significant. I’d never seen her without her thick blond hair ironed perfectly straight.
“Matthew’s seen me in a suit before.” She rolled her eyes. “So are we going to see the owners of In Loving Memory in the morning? Or are we going to pass the case on to someone else?”
“Oh, we’re going.” Shannon’s voice was grim, and I knew he was thinking of me rolled up in that rug.
“Good.” Paige motioned to me and Cody. “Come on, guys. You’re with me. I’ll drive you home.”
I looked at Shannon. “You’re not coming back with us?”
“I promised JoAnna Hamilton I’d meet her at the precinct to start the paperwork on her brother. With the break-in, we can’t assume he got away. They could have found him later. But I’ll swing by your place after I’m finished. Paige can stay with you until then.”
“No one needs to stay,” Cody growled. “I can take care of Autumn. Heck, she could probably whip anybody who tried anything—and do it with one hand tied behind her back.”
That made me laugh. He looked like someone might blow him over with a slightest breath, and my head was once again pounding so hard I felt I might explode. I was glad Paige was coming back to my apartment. She was great with a gun, and around her I didn’t have to pretend to be tough like I did with Shannon. I hated showing weakness around him. Though I’d never really stopped to examine why, I thought it might be related to how Jake had begun protesting every time I wanted to use my ability. Shannon hadn’t been that way so far, but given his reaction at my earlier visit with Hamilton, how would he feel about me being in danger if things progressed between us? It was a conversation I’d make sure we’d have later.
He’d put anyone who’d been abducted on official watch, I thought, and it was true, but I knew my treatment was special.
Maybe that was okay.
Shannon gave me a too-brief kiss on my lips, ending before I had the chance to enjoy his touch. It was just as well. I was dead on my feet and my dizziness wasn’t from his closeness.
I fell asleep on the way back to my apartment, and Paige had to wake me to go inside. Most of the apartments in my building and those around it were dark, and though the moon was shining, the middle-of-the-night stillness felt sinister. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I looked around carefully, but nothing was out of place. No lurking figures, no strangers walking by.
This time my apartment door was securely shut. Even so, Paige entered first, hand on her holstered weapon, and a part of me thought she was disappointed when she didn’t have to draw her gun.
As we waited for Paige to check the rest of the apartment, the music box caught my eye, reminding me of the smashed one at the lab, the copy. Or at least what JoAnna Hamilton told me was the copy. I picked up the small box, the smoothness feeling cold against my skin. I wished the music assembly worked, so I could wind it up and see what song it played.
“Well, goodnight,” Cody nodded in my direction before heading to Winter’s room.
I clutched the music box more tightly and watched him go, my world turning around me, oddly distorted as though I was peering into the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. I’d long ago packed or given away Winter’s things, and my sister often slept there when her husband was out of town, but it was different having my biological father sleep there.
Stop obsessing, I told myself. The man had come to help and he needed a bed. I owed it to him. The bed, not my heart.
“I’ll take the couch,” Paige said, after checking my bedroom.
I nodded, wondering how much she’d sleep.
Leaving my bedroom dark, I set the music box on one of my shelves. I had two other antique music boxes with in-laid pearl designs—a heart and a kissing couple—and a half dozen others with various designs. Maybe I’d keep this one, too. It held the last pleasant imprint I’d experienced.
I sloughed off my jeans, not bothering to find my sweats, and slipped between the sheets. Before I drifted off to sleep, I thought of the man walking away from my apartment earlier. My apartment was filled with antiques, some worthless and some more expensive than I should keep here without an alarm, but nothing had been touched.
If someone had broken into my apartment earlier and left the door open, what had they been looking for?
Chapter 12
Sweat ran down my temples, the back of my neck, and down my sides. Everywhere. My muscles strained, and I felt invigorated.
“Harder!” Steve shouted, tossing his brown hair from his eyes.
I kicked at the red rectangular pad in his hands, snapping my foot at the last second to increase the power. Today I wasn’t wearing the rubber-soled socks I’d begun wearing to practice to blot out any stray imprints. While in the normal world there weren’t usually many important imprints at foot level, at a place where kicks were vital, that didn’t always hold true. I’d gotten tired of feeling frustration or anger left on the pads by others. Today I couldn’t feel them.
“Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! Again!”
I lashed out once more, sending his lean frame backward, fueled by his rare praise.
He nodded and lowered the pad. “You’re ready.”
Ready, he meant, to test for the rank of second dan, or second-degree black belt. I felt ready. Though most of my earlier ranks had been earned as a teen, if you counted the time put into practice, not to mention real life experience, I’d crammed double the learning into this past year than I’d put in through all my years as a youth. Unfortunately, black belt testing was still months away. But my instructor, a fourth dan, had begun to include increasingly difficult sparring matches and move combinations, mostly, I thought, to keep me from getting killed.
I bowed. “Yes, sir! I’m ready.” Which was good because during the night, my question had changed from what had they been looking for at my apartment to who had they been looking for, and since I was the only one living there, I needed to be ready to defend myself. So I’d dragged myself out of bed in the wee hours of Saturday morning to endure the two hours of intense workout at my weekly semi-private taekwondo lessons.
Steve returned my bow, and we both laughed, walking off the mat together. Near the edge, I stumbled, falling hard on my knee. “You okay?” Steve asked.
I nodded, jumping to my feet before he could offer me a hand. “I don’t know what happened.” Except I did. It was the dizziness again, though I’d felt strong and surprisingly rested when Shannon and Paige had dropped me off here this morning.
As we left the mat, we were joined by Andrea Mathews, a fellow student who shared my private lesson with me. We’d once had a third member, a greasy-haired man with a vindictive streak, but he’d begun teaching at another studio, and we’d all been glad to see him go.
Andrea pulled out the elastic that held her thick golden hair, shaking her head and running her fingers through her hair to cool off. Her face was beautiful and feminine, an asset that masked her strength and ability to crush her opponents.
She waited until Steve took his leave and then said, “I loved how you pushed him back like that. For a minute I th
ought you’d knock him on his butt.”
“I wish.” I led the way to the showers. I still couldn’t best Steven in a fair bout, but with surprise in my favor, and maybe a handful of keys, a real life battle with someone on his level wouldn’t be as hopeless as it might have once been.
As we passed the window where observers could watch our training, I couldn’t help glancing at Cody, who wore the paint-splattered jeans and blue shirt of the night before. Both looked a decade old. He watched me with an expression I’d never seen before, but as soon as he caught my gaze, he dipped his white head in acknowledgment and turned away.
“Who’s that old guy anyway?” Andrea asked. “Do you know him? He was staring at you the entire time.”
“Just a friend helping out with a case I’m consulting on.” She knew about me meeting my biological father, but I didn’t want to talk about it today.
She laughed. “I like that—the consultant using a consultant.” She held the locker room door open for me. “You heading to your shop?” She knew I opened at nine and that usually I was in a huge hurry to shower so I could help Thera or Jake or whoever opened for me.
“Not today. My sister and my employees are covering for me. I have an interview I’m going to with the police. We’re working two cases that might be related.”
“I wish I could consult for that detective.” She gave a longing sigh. “You’re so lucky to be dating him.”
“Don’t you mean he’s lucky to be dating me?”
She slammed open her locker, the door bouncing off the neighboring one. “Isn’t that what I said? Anyway, you’re amazing together, don’t you think?”
I did think that, or wanted to, but all at once there was a part of me that felt, well, dead inside—despite how well I’d slept after leaving Hamilton’s. It wasn’t about Shannon, though, but the thought that without my ability, I could be changing into someone different from the person he might be falling in love with.
I was still thinking about this as I left the studio dressed in a gray, floor-length knit skirt that was snug at the waist and hips, angling wider toward my feet, and a dressy red blouse with buttons, my handbag slung over one shoulder. Cody followed me a half pace behind. Shannon and Paige waited for us outside, having already replaced the officer they’d left to protect me when they dropped us off. At some point during my two-hour workout, Shannon and Paige had changed to their usual detective attire—dark slacks and a dress shirt for him, a navy skirt and dress shirt for her.
Shannon’s eyes, tracing over my freshly washed hair, were a caress. “Good workout?”
“Yeah.” The electricity arcing between us was so strong, it was a wonder no one else could see it. The heat shoved my worry to the back of my mind. Ability or no ability, we’d work things out.
“We have news,” Paige said as soon as we were inside Shannon’s unmarked police Mustang, with Cody and me in the back. “That little trouble JoAnna Hamilton mentioned her company had a few years ago was none other than the death of two prominent scientists who worked for her.”
I blinked, leaning forward. “That sounds serious. Why wouldn’t she give us more details for something like that?”
“Perhaps because the deaths were presumed an accident,” Paige shifted slightly in her seat as though to gauge Cody’s reaction as well. “The two men were boating and apparently hit a reef or something. Broke up the boat pretty bad. They drowned, and most of their belongings were never found. Left behind wives and a couple kids each.”
“How sad,” I said.
“The interesting part,” Shannon added as he deftly passed the car ahead of us, “is that three days later there was a breach at their facility. The police came to investigate the alarm and arrested a couple teens. The teens swore they were paid to break in, but there wasn’t any proof, and since nothing was taken, the investigation was dropped.”
I sat back in my seat, exchanging a look with Cody. “That must have been when the company started employing live guards. But how does that relate to what’s going on now?”
“No apparent connection,” Shannon said, “but it shows a pattern. It’s remotely possible the incident was a first attempt from a competitor and last night was a second.”
“We have a call out to the investigating officer,” Paige added. “Sometimes they remember things that aren’t in the written report. That might give us a lead.”
Shannon’s eyes met mine briefly in the mirror. “There’s more. Get this, the main lab back then was located in New York, and Hamilton had an apartment there for ten years. But they moved their entire company here two years ago, presumably to build on some family land they have just over the Oregon border in Washington, right in the backyard of both her two main competitors.”
“Why’s that important?” Cody asked. “Things cost less here—real estate, employees, and such, which is why the other companies were here in the first place, I’ll bet.”
“Well,” Shannon said, “it seems a little unusual to me that Hamilton was so vague about that mobster Frank O’Donald she claims Russo is at odds with. I mean, if she lived in New York long enough to meet Russo in neighboring New Jersey, she would have at least heard of Frank O’Donald and known that he operated in New York.”
I snorted. “Not everyone keeps an eye out for organized crime bosses. Aren’t you grasping at straws? We don’t even know where Hamilton met Russo. He has enough businesses here and in Washington that they could have met here.”
“It’s a coincidence I don’t like,” Shannon insisted.
He had a point. I made a mental note to ask Hamilton where she’d met Russo, or maybe I’d ask Winston since I liked him better. “I’m not sure why it matters if she knows this O’Donald guy, but if she does and she’s hiding it, there’s probably a reason, which I doubt we’ll like.”
Shannon signaled and pulled over. “Here we are.”
The sign on the bottom floor of an office building read In Loving Memory.
“They agreed to meet us this morning,” Paige said, opening her door. “But just so you know, they weren’t very happy about it, especially when Shannon and I blew our cover yesterday and scared away some of their customers.”
“Tough,” Cody growled.
My feelings exactly.
In an outer reception area, we were met by the brown-haired woman who’d been running the auction we’d attended yesterday morning. She was older than I was, I thought, though her face looked younger than her hands and other exposed skin. I wondered if that meant plastic surgery. She wore a short black skirt and a blue shirt, both of which would have been appealing on her nice figure if they hadn’t been so tight.
“Detective,” she greeted Shannon with a smile. “I hope there wasn’t a problem finding our place.” She held on to Shannon’s hand a little too long for my comfort, and her smile was excessively bright.
“Not at all, Ms. Frampion. You know my companion, Detective Reed, and these are Autumn Rain and Cory Beckett. They are consulting on the case. Everyone, this is Keeley Frampion, part owner of In Loving Memory.”
Ms. Frampion nodded at us, her eyes running over me without expression, and then over Cody, her face showing a slight distaste that made me angry. I knew Cody didn’t look like much, but he was a talented artist who donated more to charity every year than most generous people did in a lifetime. “Come right this way. The other two owners are waiting in our boardroom.”
We followed her tight black skirt down the hall to a medium-sized room that felt crowded to me with the rectangular table filling up most of the space in the middle. Like the outer reception area, it didn’t look poor or dingy, but neither did it look upper class—exactly what you’d expect from a company running estate sales. More wealthy accommodations would hint at taking advantage of clients, while dire need might indicate that they didn’t make enough money to survive, much less help their clients. It felt practiced, faked, and I would have loved to place my hands over everything to verify this assumption through impr
ints.
“These are my co-owners, Vernon Waite and Boyd Nye,” Frampion said. “Well, Vernon is also my brother-in-law. Gentlemen, here are Detective Martin and his colleagues.” She left it to Shannon to finish the introductions, obviously not remembering our names.
Waite, a rounded, brown-haired man of average height, offered his hand first, his smile ready and insincere. His hand was so clammy, I wished I hadn’t taken it. Cody didn’t, and I knew that was because Waite wasn’t wearing a ring on his right hand. Cody wasn’t a people-lover, and he wouldn’t extend himself with these strangers if there wasn’t something to learn through an imprint.
The other man, Nye, was dark and hairy, and too lean for his tall frame, causing his large nose, eyes, and other features to jut unbecomingly. His expression was suspicious, and he wasted no time on a smile. He wore a ring, and Cody took his hand, though his expression showed no hint of what he might have discovered. I, of course, felt nothing but dizziness, which caused me to grip the top of a chair.
“Please have a seat,” Waite invited.
I sat next to Cody, who reached out and fingered a remote on the table. I set my hand briefly on his, wondering if I could repeat what had happened in the lab, but I experienced nothing except more dizziness. Waite stared at me, one brow arched, and I casually withdrew my hand. Let him think what he would.
“As you know, we’ve had several complaints about missing items,” Shannon said. “You have assured us cooperation by agreeing to send over lists of full inventories, but we need to ask a few more questions.” He started with their clients, wanting to verify how many they’d known previously and if the company helped them liquidate belongings before death.
“We do help some people ease their retirement in that manner,” Waite said. “Many of the older generation were hit hard by the economic downturn. But we keep full records for anything we sell, and those are provided to the heirs upon request. We can’t be responsible, of course, for any sales their relatives may have made to other companies.”
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