by Judy Duarte
Frustration ate at him.
He refused to be toppled because of some sniveling, gutless man who had run like a frightened jackrabbit more than twenty-five years ago.
That was the rumor. That Derek Ross was still alive, that he had surfaced after all this time, and that somehow the younger brother of Jeremy’s wife, Marla, the woman he’d had an affair with a quarter of a century ago, posed a threat to him.
Damn Marla.
He’d thought that with her death he’d finally be free of the specter of fear that had whispered along the outer fringes of his mind all these years. Instead her funeral must have brought her brother out of the woodwork. It was then that the rumor had taken hold.
Flowering.
Growing.
The rumor that Derek Ross knew something, had seen something. That was the reason the man he’d just finished speaking to had told him that Tyler Carlton had hired a private investigator to find the man.
But what could Ross have seen? There’d been no one on board the yacht when he’d topped off Jeremy’s cognac with something that had more of a kick to it. A fatal kick. He’d set out straight to sea the moment the man had dropped dead and dumped his body into the dark waters. There hadn’t even been a full moon out.
What the hell could Ross have seen?
Parks cursed loudly. He didn’t know what Ross knew, and it could very well be nothing, but it was far too late in the game to take any chances. He was sixty years old, still in his prime with years ahead of him. And he meant to enjoy those years to the fullest. Without the threat of exposure.
His mind racing, he rubbed a hand over his face, over skin that had grown leathery before its time, a testimony to his love of sailing and the sun. There was nothing confining about the ocean. A man could be free there, free to be alone with his thoughts, not a prisoner of the endless details which always required him to be alert, to be forever on his guard.
Because if he let down his guard, even for a little while, it could prove to be the end of him.
Well, he wasn’t about to think about that, because it wouldn’t happen. He was Walter-God-Damn-Parks and he was damn well going to stay that way. He intended to remain a force to be reckoned with. A power. And if that meant having to snuff out yet another useless life, well, so be it.
Jeremy Carlton had been worth two of Derek Ross, maybe even three, and he’d had no trouble killing him. Killed him because Jeremy was the competition, because Jeremy had proof that he was involved in gem smuggling and because Jeremy was the better man. Eventually, if they persisted enough, good men triumphed.
But only if they were alive.
So he’d taken matters into his own hands and become the sole czar of the diamond world.
And he was going to remain that way.
Parks found himself back at his desk. He knew what he had to do.
Sitting down, he drew his telephone closer to him. It was safe to use—for the time being. Because industrial espionage was something he had had to live with on a daily basis, he had his rooms, both here and at home, as well as the telephone lines all checked for bugs first thing every morning. They’d been pronounced clear so he was free to make the call without worrying that someone was listening in. For now.
His mouth curved as he contemplated his solution. There were men who would do anything for a price. Men who lived in the shadows of life and did what they did not only for the money, but for the sheer love of it. For the thrill. For the challenge of the kill. He knew several such men and chose the best to do what needed to be done. Eliminate the source of his concern.
With an annoyed sigh, Parks upbraided himself for not having thought of doing this years earlier. Ross had always been a concern, no matter how minor. He was a loose end that hadn’t been tied or destroyed.
It was time to see to that. To destroy it. Maybe then, when Ross was dead, he would finally be able to get a decent night’s sleep.
Parks didn’t bother looking the number up in the electronic file that resided in his personal Palm Pilot. He knew the number by heart.
This wasn’t the first time he’d used the man’s services.
And it probably wouldn’t be the last.
“So, how are you doing?”
As Nick Banning walked into his brother’s small, austere apartment, he instantly made himself at home. And why not? They’d once shared this place together. He’d moved on to get one of his own, a bigger place, thinking that eventually Mark would do the same.
But his brother remained where he had first planted his roots, despite the fact that he knew Mark was doing very well in his P.I. business these days. Mark Banning’s name was well known among the police officers he worked with and mentioned with the kind of respect that wasn’t often given to private eyes. It was a tribute to Mark’s integrity and his ability, and Nick was more than a little proud of his older brother.
And more than a little concerned. Which was what had brought him here rather than going home after putting in a full day patrolling the streets with some of San Francisco’s finest.
Nick stopped by the refrigerator and took out a beer, then walked into the living room. Mark wasn’t there. Nick kept walking, reaching the main bedroom. It was the larger of two by about six inches.
Mark was in the closet, shifting hangers around, obviously looking for something.
At least he looked fairly all right, Nick thought, taking a drag from the amber bottle he held. Maybe things were getting better.
Last month had marked five years since it had happened. Five years since his brother had found his wife’s lifeless body in their small apartment. He’d come as soon as Mark had called him. When Mark had opened the door, he’d never seen anyone looking so shattered.
Even now Nick doubted if all the pieces had been glued together.
“It’s going,” Mark finally replied noncommittally. “I’m fine,” he added, knowing that was probably what his brother wanted to hear. He wasn’t fine, but that was beside the point.
Shoving another hanger aside, he frowned. All his shirts looked as if they could stand to be ironed. But he didn’t have time for that now. He was going to be running late if he spent any more time in his closet, and he still needed to get some wine to take to dinner.
With a half shrug, he made his selection. A long-sleeved light-blue shirt that looked less wrinkled than the others. Pulling it off the hanger, he shoved his arms through it as he came out of the closet.
Curious, watching Mark put on the new shirt, Nick sat down on the corner of the double bed.
“I tried calling you a couple of times today, but you weren’t answering.”
Mark finished buttoning his shirt, then tucked it into his pants. “I wasn’t home.”
“I tried your cell, too.”
“I shut it off.” He felt a wave of impatience. He’d only been here about five minutes before Nick had knocked on his door. He looked down at his shirt. Maybe he should start sending his shirts out. God knew he wasn’t any good at ironing them. Rather than get wrinkles out, he tended to get scorch marks in. “I was in a bookstore, seemed like the thing to do,” he explained about the cell.
His fingers about the bottle’s neck, Nick rolled the bottle back and forth as he looked at his brother thoughtfully. “The whole day?”
“Most of it.”
Looking into the mirror that hung over his bureau, Mark spread his hands over the front of the shirt, trying to press the wrinkles out of existence. After a few passes, it looked marginally better.
“Research?” Nick asked.
Mark thought of the lie he’d fed Ross and his daughter. “In a manner of speaking.”
Nick laughed, shaking his head. Nothing had changed. It was like trying to get information out of an echo chamber.
“You know, conversations with you were never marked with an overabundance of words flowing around.” Nick paused to take a drag of the bottle of beer he’d purloined from the refrigerator. “You on a case?”
�
��Yeah.” That was it, a case, a simple by-the-numbers case. Except that something in his gut told him that it wasn’t by the numbers at all. Something had told him that the moment he’d met Brooke Ross/Moss up close and personal.
Nick frowned, trying to pull the pieces together. “In a bookstore.”
“In a bookstore.” He yanked open the top drawer, looking for a tie. He vaguely remembered shoving in a few when he first came here. Which drawer was it? He let out an impatient breath. “It’s the one Tyler wanted me to take.” That was safe enough to say, considering it was Nick who had brought Tyler to him. “You know I can’t say anything more about it than that.”
“Not asking you to,” Nick reminded him. “Asking you how you are.”
He shoved one drawer closed and pulled open another. He knew he had ties somewhere, the question was where. “I already said fine.”
Nick moved a little closer to the edge of the bed. “Yeah, and that’s a preprogrammed response. People say ‘fine’ automatically, even if they’ve just been shot five times.”
Mark gave him an annoyed look over his shoulder. “I promise, if I’m ever shot five times, I won’t say fine if you ask me how I am.”
Nick knew what Mark was doing, he was throwing up a smoke screen, the way he always did. Mark never talked about how he’d felt about that day, not once. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” And he did. He knew Nick was worried about him and that he was thinking of the recent anniversary of Dana’s suicide, of the anniversary of his neglect.
He and Nick had always had a way of communicating that transcended words, a way of honing in on each other’s thoughts. Whether it was something that could be termed inherently genetic or something that had developed perforce because of all the separations they’d had to endure as children, he didn’t know. What he did know was that he and Nick had a very special, very real bond, and he’d been able to feel what Nick was feeling more than once. He figured the same was true in reverse.
Nick studied him as his brother moved from one drawer to the next, searching for something. He tried again, feeding his brother a line to build on. “It’s been five years.”
Mark’s tone was guarded. He didn’t want to talk about this and he was doing his very best to try to hold on to his temper. “Bound to happen. One month piles on top of another, eventually, five years has to come. Six should be next.”
Nick lost his temper first. “Damn it, Mark, you need to talk about it.”
Finally finding the nest of ties he’d tossed years ago into the bottom drawer, Mark pulled out the first one on the heap. Holding it aloft, its end moved in the air like a newly freed snake as he swung around to face Nick. Why couldn’t he take a hint?
“Talk about what? That I was blind? That I didn’t see it coming? That I was so into being the best damn cop I could be, so into going after that gold shield that I didn’t realize my own wife was going down for the third time?” Each sentence was punctuated with an abrupt movement as he went through the motions he only vaguely remembered of tying a tie, or a noose, around his neck.
Glaring at Nick, he turned back to the mirror and saw that he’d gotten it wrong. With a huff, he began the process again.
Nick talked to the back of his head. “She had problems, Mark, problems that had nothing to do with you,” he insisted.
His eyes met Nick’s in the mirror. “I was her husband, damn it, they had everything to do with me. Look, talking about it isn’t going to change a damn thing, so why don’t you just drop it? I don’t get to see you enough to waste time like this.”
Nick blew out a breath. “Okay.” He paused and then his eyes widened as the image he was looking at in the mirror sank in. “Is that a tie?”
Finished, Mark dowerly examined his handiwork. This time he’d gotten it right. He glanced toward Nick. “You the sharpest they got on the force? Because if so, I’d say the city was in big trouble.”
“Very funny, I know it’s a tie, what I mean is what’s it doing on you?”
Mark looked into the small mirror hanging over his equally small bureau one last time to make sure the ends of the odious appendage were where they were supposed to be. “Hanging.”
More teeth pulling, Nick thought with a shake of his head. “You hate ties.”
Yes, he did. Ties were the most useless articles of clothing in the world as far as he was concerned. Even worse than vests. “Part of the uniform.”
And then it hit him. Nick was off the bed and beside Mark as if someone had just set the comforter on fire. “You got a date?”
His brother looked so happy, so hopeful, as he blurted out the question that Mark was sorely tempted to say yes, he did. But that would have been a lie, and he had never lied to Nick, not when it mattered. The white lies of their childhood didn’t count.
He knew that Nick worried about him, that his brother wanted to see him socializing again, but dating had never been a really big priority for him, not even in high school. Maybe that was why, when Dana came along, he’d fallen for her like a ton of bricks. And that was why, since her death, he hadn’t gone out, not once. He’d staunchly resisted all the attempts of the other men on the NYPD force to set him up with someone. Resisted, too, all of Nick’s efforts to the same end.
He didn’t need to date. He was fine just the way he was. Unattached. A loner. At least he’d finally managed to find a kind of purpose for his life again. Which was a great deal better than looking for an end with every breath he took, the way he had when he’d come to the end of his police detective career back in NewYork City.
Nick was still looking at him hopefully, the half-empty bottle all but dangling from his fingertips.
No, Mark thought, no lies. “No, this is work related.”
Nick looked at him doubtfully. “They asked you to wear a tie?”
Mark tightened the knot. “Seemed like the occasion called for it.” He glanced at his watch. Now he was late. Time to hustle. “Look, I gotta go pick up a bottle of wine.” He grabbed a sports jacket. Outside the humidity was doing terrible things to the city at large, but he didn’t think he could very well turn up in shirtsleeves. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like.”
Nick followed him to the door, surprise building on surprise. He knew about the case Mark was on. Tyler had filled him in as much as possible. But this didn’t sound like any case Mark had ever worked before. Mark was hiding something.
“Wine? You getting clients drunk these days?”
Mark checked his pockets for his keys. “Loosening their tongues,” Mark corrected. With that, he walked out, feeling his brother’s eyes boring into the back of his head.
There was a liquor store on the next block that seemed a little classier than the norm. Maybe he could find something there, he thought as he hurried away.
Half an hour later he was standing before a quaint, Tudor-styled two-story house in the center of Mill Valley, a bottle of some fancy-named red wine tucked under his arm. It occurred to him, as he reached for the doorbell, that he hadn’t asked if she was serving meat or fish. Somehow, he had a feeling she wasn’t the type to be strict about things like that. The door flew open before his fingers had a chance to make contact with the bell.
The next instant Brooke was standing in the doorway, her eyes warmly greeting him even before her lips did. Her hair, dark as midnight, was brushed away from her face and held in place by two tiny clips with white daisies on them. She looked younger than springtime and as sensual as a temptress all at the same time.
He’d spent the entire day in her company, or at least with her being somewhere in the immediate vicinity. There was a table and chairs in the back of the bookstore for people who wanted to browse through the books they were deciding whether or not to purchase. It was there that she had planted him—him and the more than a dozen books she thought he might find helpful.
When he’d made a comment that she was going to have him buying up half the store, she’d
looked stunned. Brooke had been quick to tell him that he was welcome to glean everything he needed from the books and then return them to the shelves.
He’d almost laughed at her expression. She’d appeared so clearly distressed that he would take offense. “Then, how are you and your father ever going to make any money?”
“Oh, it’s not about making money,” she’d told him with no small amount of sincerity. “It’s about making friends. Money’s only a distant second.”
He’d thought that she really was very, very innocent and idealistic. “Try telling that to the electric company when it calls about an overdue bill.”
It was then that he had seen compassion enter her eyes. She’d sat down beside him, lowering her voice to a level he found unnervingly sensual even though he knew she meant nothing by it.
“Mark,” she began hesitantly, taking his hand, “if you need a loan—”
His mouth had dropped open then, astounded by the generosity she was displaying to someone who was a virtual stranger to her. Someone who, if he was right about her father, might very well be responsible for ultimately turning her world on its ear.
Someone who, at the very least, was lying to her.
Her offer, her generosity of spirit, made him feel guilty, and he didn’t like it.
“No,” he’d assured her very firmly. “I was just talking figuratively. Thinking about you and your father,” he emphasized.
It was then that she’d surprised the hell out of him. She’d leaned over and brushed a quick butterfly kiss against his cheek. The entire episode was so fleeting that it might have not happened at all.
Except that it had.
And the imprint was still there now, softly throbbing against his skin, as he stood on the doorstep, looking at her.
If her smile was any wider, it would take over her entire face. “You came.”
She looked so happy to see him that someone might have thought he was a long-lost lover. It seemed ridiculous, and yet he knew she was being genuine. She didn’t belong in this century, he thought. She belonged back with knights and poets, in an era where a man’s word was his bond.
