Zach raised an eyebrow. “I can see you’ve got this all planned.”
“Well, I gave it some thought, yes.”
“And?”
“And, she’s a Realtor.”
A Realtor. A lady Realtor. Hadn’t he had enough of those lately?
“She’s a Realtor,” Caleb repeated. “You’ve got a condo in a building somebody’s always talking about.” He spread his hands wide. “Tell her you’re thinking of selling.”
“Caleb, look. I don’t see how this can work. I mean, she’ll see right through me. “
“Are you telling me one of my sisters is up to outsmarting the great Zacharias Castelianos?”
“That’s it. Play dirty.”
“I can’t make light of it, man. This guy who’s obsessed with her, who knows what he’s capable of? This Steven Young—“
Zach sat up straight. “Who?”
“Young. Steven Young.”
A chill danced along Zach’s spine. He knew that name. Knew it? He’d never forget it, but maybe it was a common name. Maybe the world was full of Steven Youngs and full of beautiful women who were Realtors.
“Where does your sister live?” he said, trying to sound as if he were asking the question casually.
“Yeah, well, that’s the one hard part. Jaimie—“
Jaimie. Jesus, her name was Jaimie…
“Jaimie lives in D.C., but I figure you probably still spend a lot of time there… Zach? Something wrong?”
“Jaimie Wilde,” Zach said slowly. “And she works for a real estate company in D.C.”
“Right.”
“I don’t suppose you have a photo of her…”
Caleb dug out his cellphone, turned it on, called up a screen of pictures.
“Here she is. My sister, Jaimie.”
Zach took the phone.
His pulse did an erratic little swing. It was her. The beautiful face. The blue eyes. A smile that would win an answering smile from any man who breathed.
J.W. The blonde who haunted his dreams. Who’d spent the night in his bed and disappeared before he’d had enough of her. Who’d played innocent even though it turned out she’d been cheating on her boyfriend.
On Steven Young.
“Zach?”
Caleb’s questioning voice called him back. He looked up, tried for a non-committal expression as he handed the phone over.
“Yeah. You know…” He tried for another smile even though he was pretty certain the first hadn’t worked. “You know, things aren’t always what they seem.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, I just, ah, I just wonder…is there—is there any chance you have the facts wrong? Is your sister, is she, maybe, involved with Young? Could this be, like, a lovers’ quarrel?”
Caleb Wilde’s mouth became a hard, determined line.
“This is not, like, a lovers’ quarrel. This has nothing to do with lovers, Castelianos. My sister is in trouble. She’s got a stalker. She needs help. And if you aren’t up for this—“
Zach reached across the table, grabbed Caleb’s arm as he started to get to his feet.
“I need her home address. The location of her office. Her phone numbers. Give me everything you’ve got.” His eyes narrowed to flinty slits. “I am absolutely up for this. More than you could possibly know.”
CHAPTER NINE
Zach prepared to leave for D. C.
He was accustomed to making last-minute travel plans: a note for his housekeeper, a voice mail for his driver, clothes and toiletries neatly arranged in his duffel bag. He slid his Heckler & Koch 9mm into a holster.
Just another day at the office.
When he was done, he checked his watch. It was still early. Barely 10 a.m. There were shuttle flights to D.C. virtually the entire day, but maybe he’d drive down instead.
With luck, he could do it in a little over three hours. Between cabbing to La Guardia and going through airport security, he might even save some time. Plus, being behind the wheel for a few hours would give him time to lay out a strategy.
Of course, when he got to D.C., he’d need to rent a less obvious car than the Porsche for surveillance.
Surveillance.
A world of complexity in one word, he thought as he walked briskly to the garage where he stored the Porsche.
There were no specific rules about surveillance aside from the obvious one.
The watcher didn’t want the watchee to know he was there.
Aside from that, everything was up for grabs.
Where was the subject located? An isolated farmhouse required a very different technique than an apartment in a city high-rise.
What was the goal of the surveillance? Was it to establish the pattern of the subject’s daily existence? Was it to keep track of those who came and went? Was it to protect the subject, either with or without the subject’s knowledge?
A garage jockey brought out the Porsche. Zach handed him a tip, tossed his duffel in the back and slipped behind the wheel.
Caleb had made it sound as if there was only one way to handle the situation. He wanted Zach to insinuate himself into Jaimie Wilde’s life.
Zach eased the car into traffic and headed for the Lincoln Tunnel.
Only one problem, starting with Caleb getting coldly furious at the suggestion that she was, or had been, romantically involved with Steven Young. And he didn’t even know the rest, that Young had telephoned with a story about Jaimie being his fiancée, or that he’d claimed she was sexually promiscuous.
And he sure as hell didn’t know that Zach had slept with her.
Zach certainly wasn’t about to enlighten him. There wasn’t any need. But there was a need for him to find out who was lying to whom about what. Young, to him? Or Jaimie, to her sister?
Women were complex creatures capable of more Machiavellian schemes than most men could imagine. That was a simple fact of life he’d learned personally as well as professionally.
If what Young had said was true, if he’d been Jaimie Wilde’s lover, her fiancé, one scenario could be that the relationship had gone south and accusing him of terrorizing her was a lie she’d invented to get even.
Don’t tell our brothers, she’d warned her sister, but maybe she’d hoped the sister would do exactly that and the brothers would beat Young to within an inch of his life.
Maybe she was the kind of female who’d get off on that kind of thing.
Tunnel traffic was heavy. No surprise there. Zach eased off on the gas and reached for the Americano Venti he’d bought en route to the tunnel.
Or maybe the relationship had gone south and Young was desperate to win her back. It could be that he wasn’t following her, that he was simply tagging after her like a lovesick schoolboy.
As for him having been in her place… Why not? If he’d been her lover, he’d probably have a key to her apartment. He could have let himself in, hoping for a reconciliation when she came home, but changed his mind and left before she got there.
All bets were off, however, if Young had lied about being Jaimie’s lover. About her appetite for casual sex.
If the guy was a crackpot spouting lies, and everything Jaimie had told her sister was true, that would make for a dangerous situation. It would require a different approach. Normally, that would mean an upfront disclosure to the subject that he’d been assigned as her bodyguard, but this wasn’t a normal situation. Caleb didn’t want the subject to know she was being guarded. Assuming the subject needed guarding in the first place.
The subject.
It was safer to think of her that way.
No matter who was lying, who was telling the truth, the basic facts would not change. He had slept with Jaimie Wilde and she had walked out on him.
Zach’s lips compressed.
Why the hell that should still be bothering him was beyond comprehension, but it did. And that note she’d left. That goddamn note…
A horn blared behind him. Once. Twice. Three times.
�
��Idiot,” Zach muttered.
Hitting the horn wasn’t going to make the jam of trucks and cars go any faster. At least he could see daylight ahead. Once he exited the tunnel, traffic might ease a little.
He had to keep his mind on business. On checking things out.
On ignoring Caleb’s directive.
He would not work his way into Jaimie Wilde’s life until and unless he was sure that she needed protection. Once he established that he’d call her, tell her that he’d decided to put his condo on the market after all.
The tone of her note made it clear that she’d be willing to deal with him in a relationship that was strictly business.
No sex.
He lived by simple rules and one was that he never got involved with women who were clients or women with whom he worked. She would not know she was a subject, but he’d know and that was what counted.
Besides, there were endless reasons he had no desire to have sex with her again. If Young had told the truth and she fell in and out of bed with faceless men… He had no wish to be one of them. If Young had lied and she wasn’t into having indiscriminate sex, she was still a woman who treated sex with a casual attitude.
Zach winced.
Even he could see the gender bias in that kind of thinking.
It just rankled that she’d done one hell of a job of convincing him that she’d wanted sex with him because she had wanted him as badly as he had wanted her. As badly as he still wanted her, dammit, even now, with a witch’s brew of questions churning in his head.
The tunnel ended. And there was a break in traffic half a dozen cars up and one lane over.
Zach stood on the gas and the Porsche flew.
* * * *
He took a break at a Burger King someplace in Maryland, hit the john, grabbed a burger and a coffee, found a table and downloaded his email while he ate.
Caleb had sent the information he’d requested. Addresses and phone numbers for Jaimie. He’d also sent the photo of her that Zach had seen on his cell phone.
“So you can ID my sister more easily,” he’d written.
Zach didn’t need a photo to ID her, but Caleb wouldn’t know that.
He certainly wouldn’t know that he could ID more than her face.
A dozen images of her were sealed in his memory.
Her breasts, small and perfect, the skin like satin, the nipples the color of pink summer roses.
Her hips, curved as if designed just for his hands.
Her legs, long and lovely as she wrapped them around his hips,
Jesus.
It was a good thing he was sitting at a table. Humiliating himself at a fast food joint was definitely not on his to-do list.
Zach dumped the rest of his hamburger in its wrapper, picked up a napkin, wiped his hands and mouth.
A photo was an excellent idea. A couple of taps, and he transferred it from the email to a page of its own.
Forget all the other crap. She had a great body. So what? Lots of women had great bodies and for all he knew, he’d spent more time concentrating on how she looked from the neck down than from the neck up.
She’d been a diversion when he’d needed one. Period. End of story. Bluntly put, his memory of her tits and ass might be all he actually had. Without a picture, who knew if he could pick her out of a crowd?
Liar.
The word flashed through his head. Zach ignored it, got into the Porsche and got back on the highway.
An hour and a half later, driving the last miles of his journey, he plucked his phone from where it lay on the console next to him and brought the photo up on the screen.
Liar, indeed. Who was he kidding? He’d be able to recognize Jaimie’s face anywhere.
She was more than beautiful. There was an honesty in her smile. In her eyes. She looked as she’d looked after she’d showered. No makeup. No artifice. Nothing but a lovely woman, hair loose and streaming over her shoulders, lips parted.
His gut knotted the way it had the very first time he’d looked at her.
What was wrong with him? He had never dreamed about a woman in his life, but, dammit, he dreamed about her. Every night. The feel of her. The taste—
Braaap! Braaap! Braaap!
An eighteen-wheeler roared past, the sides of the Porsche and the trailer damn near within kissing distance.
Zach cursed, tossed the phone on the seat, and concentrated on the road.
He should never have taken this case, or whatever you wanted to call it. There was a reason surgeons didn’t operate on family. When you were doing something that could prove risky, you wanted a cool head.
You didn’t want emotion. And what was sex if not emotion?
Yes, but how would he have turned Caleb away? He certainly couldn’t have said he was too busy. That wasn’t an excuse an old pal would accept. The other choice wasn’t a choice at all. He couldn’t have said, See, the thing is, I’d love to help you, but I slept with your sister the first night I met her.
And, dammit, OK, if it turned out there was something here, if Jaimie Wilde really was in danger, he wanted to be the man who would protect her.
Lights flashed. A siren sounded behind him. Zach looked in the mirror, saw the police car. He groaned, put on his blinker, pulled onto the shoulder of the highway.
He had his license and registration out and ready by the time the cop reached the Porsche.
“Nice wheels,” the cop said, deadpan.
Zach nodded. “How fast was I going?”
“Ninety.”
Zach nodded again, handed over his documents. Why fight the inevitable?
The cop glanced at the papers.
“How fast will it go?”
“It’s OK, officer. I’ve no intention of—”
“One fifty?”
Zach looked at the cop. “It’s a GT.”
“A Gran Turismo. Right. I know. So, better than 150?”
Zach grinned. “I’ve done 185.”
The cop let out a long breath and handed over the registration and license.
“Rein it in, OK? This isn’t the place for that kind of stuff.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Hey, I’ve got a souped-up ’Vette. Nothing like this baby, but…” He smiled. “My wife says it’s weird, how men are attracted to fast cars and fast women.”
“But cars are like women,” Zach said, smiling back. “Beautiful. Unpredictable. Dangerous.”
“You got that right.” The cop slapped the door of the Porsche and stepped back. “Stay safe.”
“You, too.”
Zach turned on the engine. Checked for traffic. Pulled out into the lane.
Beautiful. Unpredictable. Dangerous. His Porsche… Or Jaimie Wilde?
He was going to find out.
* * * *
She lived in a converted townhouse on a street just this side of the Georgetown boundary, an address that would suggest upscale without costing the arm and the leg really upscale would cost.
Her apartment was on the first floor, in the rear. A small kitchen, small dining alcove, small living room, small bedroom. She was a Realtor; he suspected she’d call the place cozy, not small, but small was what it was.
Still, it had charm. He’d already been inside: the locks were pitifully simple to open. She’d furnished it in what he thought of as English country style: light colors, a profusion of small potted plants, flowered wallpaper in the kitchen and bathroom, white wrought iron furniture huddled against the fast-approaching winter on a patio that overlooked a minuscule, thickly overgrown garden.
After five days and nights, he knew a lot about her.
She drove a black Subaru Outback wagon. It was spotless.
So was she.
She emerged from the little house each morning, impeccably dressed. She favored suits, as she had that day back in October. Mid-height heels, not the sexy stilettos he knew he’d never forget. Her hair was always neatly drawn back: he remembered how it had come undone that night, how it had
fallen over her shoulders like pale gold.
The sight of her stirred memories he didn’t want. Her sea-and-flower scent. Her slightly husky voice. Her arms open to draw him down to her.
The images were there, every morning. And, every morning, he blanked his mind to them and fell in behind her, on foot on those days she walked to work, from behind the wheel of the black Prius he’d rented on those days she drove.
The Prius fit right into the neighborhood.
The Porsche was garaged in the hotel where he’d taken a suite, though he was hardly ever there except to shower, change clothes, and grab a nap for a couple of hours while she was at her office.
Maintaining a one-man surveillance was difficult, but he had no desire to involve anybody else. He trusted the people who worked for him, but something about this was too personal to involve anybody else.
She left for work promptly at eight, returned home promptly at six unless she had a showing or a meeting. She’d had two since he’d begun watching her. Whether she came home early or not, he never saw her with a man.
If there was one thing in her behavior that seemed unusual, it was the number of times during the night that lights went on and off in her bedroom and kitchen.
What was she doing?
He went in again, planted a video camera the size of a penny in the center of a basket of silk flowers on her dresser, tucked another on a shelf of cookbooks in the kitchen.
He forced himself to look away any time she began to undress although even the sight of her hands going to a zipper, a button made him think of things that had nothing to do with a surveillance.
He cursed himself for it, told himself that he’d been too long without a woman, but it was worth the self-inflicted embarrassment when the camera showed him that when the light came on in the small hours of the night, she reached for a book that she held in her hands but never read, or padded into the tiny kitchen for a glass of water that she never drank.
You didn’t have to be a trained spook or a Special Ops agent to figure out that she had insomnia.
They had that much in common.
His sleep had been shot to hell since that October night.
Jaimie: Fire and Ice Page 13
