He stepped back into the hallway, torn. Some big, macho, asshole part of him wanted to protect Mori, from the cops and from her assistant director. Maybe even from himself. But the stakes were too high to play hunches and trust his gut entirely. He didn’t think he was so sex starved that he’d ignore evidence against the first woman to attract him in dog years, but then again, it had been a while.
In the end, he didn’t have the moral dilemma of whether or not to let Tay break into Mori’s desk. A few seconds after he’d stepped within sight of the parking lot, her graphite-gray hybrid pulled into the slot next to the Terminator.
“Mama’s home.” Kell grinned at Taylor’s string of curses and the sound of him running down the hall to his own office. Served the toad right if he’d left something behind to let Mori know she was being backstabbed.
He watched as she sat in the car for almost a minute, her hands resting on the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead, lost in thought. Kell hadn’t been able to spend enough time alone with her to get her to open up, but she looked like she needed to talk to someone.
Her body language as she finally exited the car screamed tension. She wore khaki shorts and a loose black tank top, so the slump of her shoulders was visible. Before she pulled the door open, she drew a deep breath and straightened her carriage, as if calling on some inner reserve of strength.
What wasn’t visible until she stepped inside the door and saw Kell perched on the corner of the front receptionist’s desk were the scrapes and scratches along her shoulders and upper arms. Scabs had formed, but the scratches were fresh enough for the skin around them to still be reddened.
“What got hold of you? And who won? You OK?” Kell rose from the chair and walked toward her, stopping when he realized she’d begun backing away. Shit, he hadn’t intended to scare her, and she’d never struck him as skittish. If anything, she’d always seemed too calm for what was going on around her.
He held up his hands. Just an innocent, nonthreatening, good old boy from Louisiana. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She regrouped, squared her shoulders again, and shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. All this stuff with the bombing has me on edge. I still can’t believe they think the Co-Op had anything to do with it. That I had anything to do with it. I’ve never even had a traffic ticket.”
He hated to tell her, but that moved her up on the terrorist list, not down. Domestic terrorists — at least the most dangerous ones — were quiet people with clean records. The ones about which, after some horrific crime had taken place, their neighbors would say he was always such a quiet man and kept to himself. Loners. Just like Mori.
“Did someone hurt you?” He watched her face. “How’d your shoulders get scraped up?”
She looked at one shoulder, then the other, and laughed. She had a good laugh. “It looks like I got in a catfight, doesn’t it?” She threw her backpack inside the door of her office. “I went running last night, out in the country near my grandfather’s ranch. Well, my parents’ ranch now. Guess I tangled with some low-hanging mesquite branches. It was really dark out.”
Plausible. She looked like an athlete, so he could imagine her running, but not scratching herself up that much without realizing it. Plus, the wounds looked older than something done less than twelve hours ago. A day older than that, maybe. Unfortunately, he’d had a lot of his own injuries for comparison.
“I’m a runner myself.” Or he had been before he’d screwed up his back, and he missed the runner’s high and the way it relaxed his mind. “Maybe we could go running together one evening — and stay away from the mesquite. Maybe out along Buffalo Bayou.”
Kell mentally kicked himself. Where the hell had that come from? He was not here to augment his social life. OK. Develop his social life.
When he saw a genuine smile light up Mori’s face, though, he was glad he’d suggested it. She was beautiful once all the tension and worry lines lifted from her features, and Kell focused on a light sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Sexy as hell.
“I haven’t had a running partner since college at Rice. I’d like that. I warn you, though. I’m fast. You’ll be eating my dust.”
Oh, seriously. Had she challenged him? “You obviously have no idea who you’re talking to, little girl. You’re on.”
Kell struggled to wipe the stupid shit-eating grin off his face. He was acting like a fucking high school boy, not a professional investigating a potential terrorist. He’d gone from looking for an opportunity to search her office to a playdate in the space of a half hour.
Mori cleared her throat. It was a nervous habit, Kell decided. Something she used when she wanted to change the subject, and it was definitely time to change the subject.
“Well, I better get to work since I was late this morning. Has Taylor given you our unlogged receipts to work on?”
No, Tay had been too busy snooping for evidence to use against her. “Nope. But I’m here to give you whatever you need.”
They caught glances in the awkward pause, and he realized how his words could be interpreted — and that she realized it, too. A rush of heat flushed his face. Maybe he needed to call the colonel tonight and have himself taken off this case. He was obviously losing his professional judgment.
“Um, well”—Mori looked around the office—”you can go through these last donations we got and log them. Maybe we can get them in the bank before the donors put a stop-payment order on them. You know how to use spreadsheet software?”
God help him, he hated computers. Gadget had pounded the basics into him, but spreadsheets were a nightmare. “Well, I can enter data.” And literally nothing more.
“That’s all it is. I told our student volunteers to stay home until all this mess is sorted out, so we’re shorthanded. I appreciate your help.” She pointed to the desk where he’d been sitting earlier, and watched as he started the computer. He was way too aware of her leaning over his shoulder as she showed him how to log donations on the spreadsheet and then write the totals on a bank-deposit form.
Yep, his professional judgment had definitely gone on vacation.
“I’ll be in my office if you have questions. If any donors call and say they want to pull their support, send them through to me.” Mori rested a hand on his shoulder for a second before turning, disappearing through her office door, and closing it behind her.
Taylor’s chair squeaked from down the hallway, and he appeared in front of Kell’s desk scant seconds after Mori’s door had snicked shut. “She doesn’t suspect anything, does she?”
Kell shook his head and raised a finger to his lips. Not because he was afraid Mori would overhear her traitorous associate, but because Kell thought he might have to kill the guy if he started yapping again. “Stay in your office and keep it low-key,” he whispered. “I’ll be your eyes and ears, and let you know if anything happens.”
With a conspiratorial nod, Taylor gave him a thumbs-up and went back down the hall.
For the next hour, Kell played secretary and thought about Taylor Stedman. He wished he could lay blame for the bombing at his Earth Shoe–clad feet. But the same instincts that told him Mori was innocent told him Taylor didn’t have the brains or the balls to pull off something like the Zemurray bombing. He was an opportunist who wanted his boss’s job and wasn’t above capitalizing on her bad luck.
Bad luck, yes, but maybe also bad judgment. The more he thought about Emory Chastaine, the more Kell was convinced that while she wasn’t involved in the bombing, something didn’t add up. She might have gotten those scratches from a low-hanging mesquite branch, but she didn’t act like a woman wrongly accused of a horrible crime. She hadn’t screamed for an attorney. She hadn’t held a press conference expressing outrage over being unjustly accused. If she’d been privately outraged by it, which she should have been if she were innocent, she sure hadn’t shown it. She’d seemed hurt, confused, and sad — but never angry.
Had it been Kell in her position,
he’d be pissing the fire and brimstone of the righteous and talking to everyone who’d listen. He’d be having fucking press conferences out the wazoo and booking time on talk shows.
He stared at her closed office door with a frown. Mori wasn’t acting like a terrorist, but she was acting like a woman with a secret.
CHAPTER 6
Mori paced her office, looking out her window at the traffic maneuvering up and down Montrose Boulevard. She knew what she needed to do, but she hadn’t been able to work up the courage.
Her mother’s words had kept her awake and prowling around her apartment all night. Celia Chastaine had always been a hard and spiteful woman; Mori knew that better than anyone, except maybe her dad. Celia knew how to phrase the offhand comment to skewer the deepest or how to settle negativity over another’s happiness like a thick blanket of soot.
So Mori’s first instinct, after she’d calmed down, was to dismiss her mother’s insinuations about the bombing as so much more Celia Chastaine drama.
And yet, deep down, it stank of horrifying possibility. Look at what the bombing had accomplished. Even if Carl Felderman’s death hadn’t left the governor’s chair vacant and the halls of power in Austin mired in chaos, any talk of industrial expansion had halted. It might take years to get back to the conference table, if the new biochemical corridor wasn’t a dead deal altogether.
If bombing the Zemurray Building could put a stopper on expansion into wildlife areas and bring his promised bride to heel, would a few hundred human lives be a worthwhile trade-off for a man like Michael Benedict?
Surely not. Michael was arrogant and stubborn, but she’d never thought of him as deliberately cruel. Yet Mori couldn’t shake the idea, which meant she had to talk to him, God help her. And the sooner the better, especially since the birthday deadline had passed. She was getting distracted and careless, not even noticing the scratches on her shoulders when she slid into the tank top this morning. It was the first thing Jack Kelly had seen.
Kell — who had also consumed more than his share of her thoughts during her long, restless night. After her mother’s accusation that she’d gotten involved with someone, Mori had indulged in a few daydreams about what it might be like if Kell were more than a volunteer. What if she were the simple woman he thought, meeting him in a casual work environment? What if, after discovering this electric chemistry between them, they could act on if they wanted? Go on a date? What if she could really get to know him and see if their obvious attraction to each other went anywhere?
What if she could be normal, in other words.
Mori stared at the phone on her desk and took a deep breath. She pulled her keys from her bag and unlocked the bottom desk drawer, frowning at a few scratches around the keyhole. Most of the hanging files contained confidential information on fundraising prospects she’d been working on to support the Co-Op. But the file in front was personal. If someone were trying to break into the drawer, it was probably her nosy assistant. Taylor did not need to see the contents of that file.
She flipped through it, stopping at the most damning thing — the agreement signed between her parents and Michael Benedict, dated twenty-five years earlier. They’d promised her as his mate, in exchange for a sizable cash “advance.” Also in the file: her passport, only used a couple of times in college. She kept it close at hand in case she decided to make a run for it. And, finally, a small case containing a few photos and a business card — the thing she was looking for. Michael’s business card. She had his home number in her cell phone contact list, but not his office number.
Mori started to return the folder to the drawer, but thought better of it. What if the authorities got a warrant to search the Co-Op offices? There was nothing here to tie her to the bombing, of course, but she shouldn’t have that marriage agreement where anyone could find it and make her explain it. Having Taylor find it would be equally disastrous. He’d probably send it to The Houston Chronicle and urge them to write an exposé.
Not that she was being paranoid or anything.
When she was fifteen, she’d found the contract in her dad’s study by mistake. Once she’d seen what it was and had a good cry over what it meant, she’d slipped it out of the house and made a copy before returning the original. She should have burned the damned thing instead of copying it, but she’d been too convinced her grandfather, if no one else, wouldn’t let it happen.
Then he’d died, and Mori kept her copy of the contract as a reminder of how hard she’d have to fight to hang on to her independence.
She slipped the folder into her bag and relocked the drawer. That contract didn’t need to be in her house, either. If she got Michael officially dragged into this investigation, an ugly scenario would grow even worse. Not that the horse’s ass didn’t deserve it.
She shouldn’t think of him as a horse’s ass. It was an insult to the horse.
Mori looked at the number on the business card, picked up the handset, and began working the keypad. Before the call had a chance to go through, she slammed the phone back onto its charger. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The police were probably monitoring every call out of this office — and her cell phone, too. God, being paranoid was exhausting.
No point in asking to borrow Kell’s phone. She didn’t want him anywhere near this nightmare. He could never be on Michael Benedict’s radar.
She’d have to see Michael in person and make sure she wasn’t followed by the cops. Or a mechanical eagle.
Kell was shooting homicidal looks at the computer when she opened her office door, and when he glanced up at her with those amazing eyes, she almost tripped. Those things should be illegal.
“I’ve gotta go out for a while. You and Tay hold down the fort.” She looked down the hallway. Speaking of her second-in-command, he’d been uncharacteristically quiet this morning. “He is here, isn’t he?”
A voice wafted down the hall. “I’m here. Just busy doing damage control.”
Mori’s eyes rolled before she could stop them, earning a grin from Kell. “You have my cell number if anything comes up?”
“Sure, Tay gave me both of your numbers yesterday. You need some company? I’m almost through with these.”
Oh no. Taking a guy with her to see Michael? Not happening.
“Thanks, but I need to tend to some personal business. I’ll be back in later.”
Kell looked like he had more to say, and as much as Mori would rather stay and talk to him, she needed to get this over with. Plus, the more time she was around Jack Kelly, the more she liked him. Which worsened the fact that nothing could ever happen between them, even a real friendship.
The hour’s drive to Galveston should have relaxed her, but instead, it gave her sixty uninterrupted minutes of second-guessing. By the time she pulled into the lot of Tex-La Shipping’s Galveston offices, her heartbeat was doing Olympic sprints. Maybe she’d luck out and Michael wouldn’t be there.
The office building was, from the front, generic and designed to look vaguely like the Alamo. The company’s main headquarters in New Orleans held all the fancy meeting rooms and high-rise views of the river port where most of their business originated. But Michael usually spent August in Galveston, where the sea breezes were cooler than the sweltering sauna of New Orleans, and Mori knew from previous visits that the back side of the three-story adobe building was mostly glass overlooking the water.
When she stepped off the elevator on the third floor where the executive offices were housed, she wasn’t surprised to see the man himself leaning over the receptionist’s desk, looking relaxed and jovial. He wore a tailored black suit and a patterned tie, and looked exactly like what he was: a filthy-rich businessman at the top of his game.
At least until he turned and saw Mori. Then he looked like a rich, triumphant businessman who’d just scored a record-breaking deal. Mori clenched her fists at her sides. She’d like to slap the lips off his face, just on principle.
“Emory.” He smiled and raked an arrogant, pos
sessive gaze across her, from her ponytail, down the length of her black tank top and shorts, and back up again. “We really must do something about your wardrobe.”
He turned to the secretary, who’d been studying Mori with naked curiosity. “Bring us some drinks, Tina, and see that we’re not disturbed, please.”
Not waiting for her, assuming Mori would trot behind him like an obedient puppy, Michael sauntered down the hall to his corner office overlooking the Gulf. She waited a few seconds before following, and squinted as she entered his office. Bright sunlight glinted off the waves below with such fierceness that Mori wished she hadn’t left her sunglasses in the car.
At least if she felt the need to drown herself, she wouldn’t have far to go. Or felt the desire to drown him, which was more likely.
“I thought I’d be seeing you yesterday.” Michael moved past the desk and sat in one of the armchairs clustered around a low coffee table on the far end of the rectangular office.
Mori took the seat opposite him and waited while Tina came in with a tray containing an assortment of sodas, bottled water, whiskey, and iced tea. Michael Benedict was a sweet-tea man during business hours, and Mori hated that she knew such things about him.
She didn’t remember a time when Michael hadn’t been involved in her life. At every Chastaine family gathering, he’d be hanging around the fringes, always lurking, always a huge presence — literally.
He was the only man who’d ever made Mori feel petite. At six-six, or maybe more, he was broad shouldered and solidly built. All muscle, too. Mori was twenty-five years his junior, but Michael didn’t look fifty. What was it the pop magazines were always saying? Fifty was the new thirty?
Of course, lack of stress would do wonders for one’s longevity, and Michael had always gotten his way. Until now.
“Now, Emory, my pet, I assume you’re here to work out the financial and practical details of our little arrangement. I assure you, as I’ve told your folks all along, I’m a generous man, and none of you will ever have to do without. Your daddy doesn’t have the intestinal fortitude to thrive in the cutthroat world of finance. He’s much more suited to life on the Quad-D, and after we’re married, he can retire. Your parents will live very comfortably.”
Omega Force 01- Storm Force Page 5
