Hush

by Karen Robards

  Having swept her, Finn’s gaze returned to her face.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked. It was a question, nothing more. Whether or not she went haring around with a concussion was of no concern to him. He was there to find the money, and that was it.

  “To Margaret’s.” She held out his coat to him. “Thanks for the loan.” Their eyes met as he took it. As he’d noted when he’d first gotten a good look at them, hers were a green-flecked hazel, wide and innocent-looking. If she felt self-conscious about the fact that he’d seen her naked for a considerable period of time, she wasn’t showing it.

  “Anytime.”

  He shrugged into his coat—it was a little damp and smelled vaguely of roses, but the object was to keep his shoulder holster out of sight, and any stray thoughts about the body it had so recently covered he immediately pushed out of his mind—and she resumed walking, moving past him toward the table with the kind of carefully calibrated, deliberate gait that told him she was having to work to keep it steady. Her jaw was set with the effort of it. Her mouth was downright grim.

  “You’re supposed to stay in bed,” Bax said. His eyes were glued to her, too. “Because of the concussion.”

  “I can’t.” Picking up her purse, she slung it over one shoulder, glanced at them both, and added, “Margaret’s expecting me back. I thought about calling her and telling her I’m going to spend the night here but then she’ll want to know why, and I can’t tell her about what’s happened over the phone. And I have to tell her.” She wet her lips, and not for the first time, Finn noticed. And deliberately glanced away.

  As far as her calling her ex-mother-in-law was concerned, it probably didn’t help that she’d disabled her cell phone: Finn welcomed the thought for the distraction it provided.

  What he said was, “You’re right. If the idea behind the attack on you was to kill you as a way of sending a message to George, then his wife and daughter are also at risk, and they should know it. In fact, I’m surprised the guy didn’t go for one of them instead of you.” He smiled at her. “To send a stronger message.”

  The slight widening of her eyes was all he needed to be convinced that she knew exactly what the motive behind the attack on her was, and it wasn’t to send a message to George.

  “They let him go,” Bax told Riley. He looked, and sounded, worried. “The guy who attacked you. Diplomatic immunity. You really should stay here tonight. One of us can—”

  “What?” Her sharp exclamation cut Bax off in midsentence. She looked at Finn, and he gave a nod of confirmation. “They couldn’t have! He tried to kill me.” Something in Finn’s expression must have convinced her that it was true, because she added on a note of horror, “What if he tries again?”

  Interesting to note how concerned she generally seemed to be about her mother and sister-in-law’s well-being, while in this particular instance, when the threat of a murderous attack on one of them should have seemed especially immediate and real, her own safety was her paramount concern. Which Finn translated as an indication that the attack on her had to do with something she, personally, was connected to. Something that the attacker didn’t associate with the others.

  Like, say, Jeffy-boy’s phone.

  “He’s not likely to,” Finn said. “If all he wanted to do was send a message, just the fact that he attacked you was enough to do that.”

  Bax frowned at him. “Don’t we deport people with diplomatic immunity who commit a crime?”

  “Usually,” Finn replied. “But this guy hasn’t been convicted. He hasn’t even been tried.”

  The whole time they were talking, Finn had been watching Riley turn a whiter shade of pale. It was clear that the news that her attacker had been freed was scaring her to death, and he couldn’t blame her: she was damned lucky to be alive. Under other circumstances he would have set her mind at rest. The truth was, he had every confidence that the perpetrator would be rushed out of the country within the next few hours, before any other interested party—like, say, himself—could catch up with him and make inquiries into who he worked for and what he was after.

  But it didn’t suit him for Riley to know that. What he was hoping was the news would scare her into making a move.

  “I’ve got to go.” For support, Riley had been leaning a hand on the back of the dining room chair that had been restored to the set around the table, presumably by Bax. Now she let go to head for the door.

  “I’ll drive you,” Finn said. It would give him time to talk to her, to get more of a feel for what might be getting ready to go down. It would be a far easier way to keep track of her this way than relying on Bax’s driving skills and the probably still useless receiver. And it would keep her from falling into the hands of someone with his same agenda and an almost certainly more violent way of finding out what he wanted to know, so it was a win-win for both of them.

  As she opened the door and stepped back for them to precede her through it, he thought she was going to refuse. Her brows—delicate wings that were the same sooty black as the thick sweep of her lashes—twitched together. The look she shot him was guarded, wary. Walking into the hall with Bax on his heels, he could almost see the wheels turning behind those carefully veiled eyes. The whiff of sweet flowery scent he got as he passed her slammed him with a vivid image of the first time he’d noticed it, when she’d been lying naked beneath him in this very hall. Annoyed with himself, he shook it off.

  Then he was in operative mode, conducting a quick scan of the hallway, automatically assessing potential threats. To his left, a police technician in the process of extracting the bullets that had hit the wall dug a thin silver instrument into plaster. To his right, a pair of uniforms talked to a bathrobe-clad woman who stood in her open doorway and cast a curious look their way.

  “Thank you,” Riley answered, surprising him. As she turned her back to lock her door, her voice was all cool composure. “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Mrs. Cowan?” one of the uniforms called while Finn was still processing the implications of Riley’s easy capitulation. The woman the cops had been talking to had disappeared back into her apartment. The cops had turned and spotted Riley. “Do you have a minute?”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Finn answered for her, taking her arm and urging her toward the elevators. She didn’t resist. In fact, he got the feeling she was glad of the support. Her flesh beneath his fingers was firm; her skin felt silky and warm. The outfit she was wearing covered most of her, but it left her slender neck bare. From his vantage point beside her, it was impossible to miss the bruises that were darkening on the porcelain skin below her left ear. It wasn’t hard to tell that they were fingerprints from a man’s hand that had been brutally wrapped around her throat.

  Looking at them, his gut tightened.

  She would have been easy to hurt. Finn found that he didn’t like the idea of it one bit.

  “We’d like to get a statement.” The cops were following them down the hall. Finn glanced significantly at Bax, who got the message and pulled out his creds.

  “FBI,” Bax said, waving his wallet at them, and the uniforms stopped.

  A moment later the three of them stepped into the elevator. Finn pressed the button for the lobby.

  — CHAPTER —

  EIGHT

  Bradley said, “I was expecting you to give me an argument about driving you home.”

  It was phrased as a statement, not a question, but Riley answered it anyway.

  “No.”

  If he could be economical with words, why, so could she. She was in the passenger seat of her Mazda, her seat belt fastened securely around her. Without it, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have slithered down into the foot well. She was exhausted, dizzy, headachey, and sore in so many places that her body felt like one giant tender spot. The pills the paramedics had given her had helped some; she’d felt them taking effect. Without them—well, she didn’t want to think about how she might be feeling.

  Actually, she didn’t
want to think about anything. But she had no choice.

  She’d been getting that cat-at-a-mousehole feeling from him again ever since she’d gotten into the car with him. It was making her nervous as all get-out. Maybe it was her imagination. Maybe not. With her brain not quite as clear as normal, it was hard to be sure.

  Bradley was behind the wheel, driving as competently as he seemed to do everything else, looking far too big for her small car. He’d had to adjust the seat all the way back to fit. They were on the freeway, and the swoosh of the tires and the faint rattle of traffic in the lanes around them formed a constant background noise. Despite how dark the night had become, the roadway lighting made it easy for her to see him. His features were as rugged in profile as they were viewed head-on.

  He was handsome, she decided, in the kind of aggressively masculine way that had never really appealed to her: she tended to go more for the fine-featured, leanly elegant type. His hands looked large and powerful wrapped around the wheel. His feet in their black shoes dwarfed the Mazda’s pedals.

  Turned a little sideways to avoid the bump at the back of her skull, her head rested against the rolled top of her seat. Her lids felt heavy—so did her arms, and legs, and head—and the fear that chilled her wasn’t nearly as sharp-edged as she knew it should be under the circumstances.

  The bastard who attacked me—what if he comes back?

  A tiny echo of residual panic caused her stomach to flutter.

  “No?” Bradley flicked a look at her. “Why not?”

  “You’re not trying to kill me,” she answered with beautiful simplicity. That, for her, had become the bottom line. The horror of having been attacked was multiplied by the knowledge that her attacker was free, and heightened still more by her conviction that there were more out there like him. Jeff’s fate loomed large in her mind. Tonight she could easily have been murdered, too. The only thing that was keeping her from descending into utter, gibbering terror at the thought was, she suspected, the calming effect of the drugs in her system.

  She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad.

  “No,” Bradley agreed, and gave her another of those sideways glances that set her teeth on edge.

  When they’d exited her building, Bax had left them. He was behind them now, presumably, in whatever car the agents had arrived in. Bradley had escorted her to the parking lot where she’d left the Mazda, then had had her wait while he’d checked her car for bombs. Yes, her life had deteriorated to the point where she had to worry about being blown to smithereens: how had that happened? Perched uncomfortably on the bumper of a nearby pickup because her knees were still unreliable, Riley had been acutely conscious of the darkness beyond the lights of the parking lot. Anyone could be out there: the knowledge was unnerving.

  What am I going to do?

  Watching Bradley check beneath her car, then under the hood and finally under the dashboard and seat, had sent her pulse into overdrive and had her stomach wrapping itself into knots. She’d only managed to keep calm by reminding herself that her attacker still didn’t have what he’d been after: Jeff’s phone.

  It wasn’t likely that he would kill her before he got his hands on it.

  On the other hand, how likely was it that he would come back for a second try?

  If he doesn’t, someone else will. The thought sent goose bumps racing over her skin. To assume that he was the only one who wanted Jeff’s phone—who’d tracked Jeff’s phone and linked it to her own—would be stupid. Possibly suicidally stupid.

  At the very least, she had to accept that the FBI—the man beside her—most likely had done the same thing.

  Luckily, the possibility had first occurred to her while she was still in her apartment, still able to take certain steps to cover her ass. Call what she’d done her contingency plan. The only question now was whether or not to go with it. The alternative was to do nothing, and wait.

  The uncertainty of it made her want to jump out of her skin.

  It didn’t help that he was making her nervous simply by sitting there.

  His mouth was unsmiling, and his thick, dark brows formed two straight lines over his eyes. Seen by the uncertain freeway lights, his face was all hard planes and angles. The rugged strength of his jaw belied the calmness of his eyes. He was looking straight ahead, out through the windshield at the busy road, and she saw that his eyelashes were short and bristly and his nose was straight except for a slight bump on the bridge. Crammed into her car, he looked to be about the size of an NFL linebacker. An NFL linebacker who was all muscle and attitude.

  Not a man anyone in her right mind would choose to mess with. Or lie to.

  Unfortunately, under the circumstances she didn’t have a whole lot of choice.

  Oh, the tangled web we weave . . .

  “So you think George still has the missing money?” Bradley asked. The question, seemingly out of the blue, was startling enough to cause a hitch in her breathing.

  Her reply was cautious. “What makes you think I think that?”

  “If you think Jeff—and the others; yes, I know about them, four close associates of George’s have died violently in the months since he was arrested—was killed to send a message to George to hand over the money, then you must think the money is still available for him to hand over.”

  His face, and voice, revealed absolutely nothing. Riley felt herself starting to frown and immediately stopped: it’s perfectly logical of him to assume that.

  Isn’t it?

  Careful, she warned herself, mindful that her brain synapses might not be firing at one hundred percent just at present.

  “It’s not so much that I believe it,” she said. “It’s that I think a lot of the people who George defrauded believe it.”

  He nodded agreeably. “They find it impossible to accept that that much money is simply gone.” Riley didn’t say anything, and he continued: “I have a working theory—and that’s what I was heading to your apartment to talk to you about—that Jeff wasn’t killed to send a message to George. I think he was killed by someone who was trying to torture information about the whereabouts of the missing money out of him.” Another unreadable glance slid her way. “What do you think?”

  An eighteen-wheeler roared past her window just then, shaking the small car, providing her with a providential reason to glance away, as well as an excuse for any change in expression she might be exhibiting as she dealt with what had just morphed from a worry into an electrifying certainty: He knows.

  For a moment she couldn’t breathe.

  Stay calm. Impossible under the circumstances. Okay, stay focused.

  What could he know? At a minimum, everything her attacker knew: that she had Jeff’s phone. That she’d taken it from Oakwood.

  Maybe a whole lot more.

  Then again, maybe not.

  In either case, her best move now was to go ahead with the plan. Done right, it should allay Bradley’s suspicions while at the same time getting rid of that damned murderer-attracting phone.

  Be cool. Then, Go for it.

  “I think you might be right.” Sitting up, ignoring the quick spin the interior of the car did around her at the sudden change in her elevation, Riley did her best to project a wide-eyed recognition of a just-revealed truth along with amazement at his keen intelligence. As that unreadable gaze slid over her face, she continued: “He wanted to know where Jeff’s phone was. Right at first, right after he attacked me. He held me underwater until I was just about to die, then pulled me up and asked me where it was. When I told him, he dragged me into the bedroom and made me give it to him. Then he dragged me back into the bathroom and threw me in the tub and started trying to drown me for real. He would have done it, too, if I hadn’t managed to get my hands on that comb.”

  For the briefest of moments, Bradley’s face wasn’t quite so unreadable. His lashes flickered; his lips compressed.

  I was right, Riley exulted. He knew. He knew I had the phone.

  “He was
after Jeff’s phone,” Bradley said. His face was once again impassive. No inflection at all in his voice. Hah! She didn’t trust that lack of expression for a minute. He was interrogating her. Subtly, thinking she wouldn’t catch on. “You had it, and gave it to him.”

  “That’s right.” Riley’s heart thudded uncomfortably. Lying didn’t come all that easily to her, but in this case it was an absolute necessity. The question was, was the fact that she’d taken possession of Jeff’s phone all he knew?

  There was no way to be sure. Stick as close to the truth as possible. Reveal no more than you have to.

  He asked, “Where’s the phone now?”

  “In the tub.” True. Up next: not: “He dropped it when I stabbed him.”

  That penetrated his impenetrable calm for a second time. He shot a narrow-eyed look at her. “He dropped it in the water?”

  Riley nodded.

  “Did he get it out? Is it still there?” His voice was sharp.

  “I don’t know,” Riley said, although she did. As soon as the paramedics had left, she’d deep-sixed Jeff’s phone, sliding it silently into the water remaining in the tub—after first removing the SIM card with all the phone’s stored information so that she could check out what was on it, which she meant to do the first chance she got. Any information that wasn’t on the SIM card she was counting on the immersion in water to kill. She wasn’t sure what that surviving information would be, exactly, but she didn’t want to take any chances, especially considering how confident she was that the FBI had formidable data recovery capabilities. And when it was discovered that the phone’s SIM card was missing—well, who was to say that her attacker hadn’t taken it?

  This way, she got to have the phone, and destroy it, too.

  All she had to do now was publicly announce that she’d given Jeff’s phone to the FBI, and she should be in the clear in the eyes of both Bradley and the scumbag who’d attacked her, as well as anyone else who might have an interest in acquiring that phone.