Protecting Plain Jane

by Julie Miller

  When Charlotte hurried to follow, Trip’s hand held her back. “Wait a minute. Doc, you said there was some bad news.”

  “Well, I suppose this is more for the police and animal control, but, after analyzing the sample from his stomach, I’m pretty sure this was deliberate.” Charlotte’s heart sank and her temper raged all at once. “For whatever reason, someone tried to kill your dog.”

  “YOU’RE SURE THIS IS what you want to do?” Trip dashed inside after Charlotte and closed the Mayweather Museum’s steel back door. He swiped the rain from his face and hair, and paused to inspect the newly installed dead bolt. Once he was satisfied that the steel door was secured, he followed Charlotte into the warehouse with his toolbox from the SWAT SUV. “You don’t have to talk to anybody at the estate if you want to hide out in your rooms. I’ll make sure you’re not bothered.”

  “That’s the last place I want to be.” She scooped up a handful of the yellow crime scene tape that had been cut down and tossed it in the trash can on her way through the museum to check the locks on the doors into the public area of the museum. “Wow, when Detective Montgomery said KCPD had cleared the scene, I guess I thought that meant they’d cleaned it, too. Look at those crates left open. And all this black dust?”

  “The CSIs took a lot of fingerprints. All of them were excluded as ours or other museum employees. I’m guessing our guy wore gloves.” No surprise there. Even one hint of DNA or a fingerprint and they’d have ID’d the RGK and put him away months ago.

  Charlotte climbed over the table and the door to the storage room still leaning against it to look inside the room. She muttered a curse. “Nothing’s been put away.” She picked up one small box and set it back on a shelf. “Some of these items have lasted for centuries, but they won’t last another day unless we take care of this mess.”

  He liked seeing her determined, excited, not thinking one whit about her fears, as she was now. While she might be trying a little too hard to stay busy to keep her mind off Max’s near-death experience and their twenty-four-hour separation, Trip had a feeling he was seeing a glimpse of the woman Charlotte was meant to be. The one she would have been all along if greed and tragedy hadn’t changed her life. This was the woman who chased dogs and climbed through the mud and kissed him as if she couldn’t get enough of him when she wasn’t too worried or frightened or overanalyzing things.

  This was the woman he wanted—in every way a man could want a woman.

  The boom of thunder overhead and the slapping sheets of rain and wind against the bricks from the storm outside shook him out of that sentimental vibe. Her mantra was to “stay in the moment.” He’d be a better cop and a smarter man if he could remember to do the same.

  The flicker of lightning through the windows high above them reminded Trip to double-check the switch box and electrical connections. If Charlotte was trusting him to bring her here and keep her safe, then he was going to ensure that every possible contingency for danger or panic was taken care of. Bad guys. Blackouts. Food. Floods. He had it all covered.

  She set their sack of takeout dinner on the concrete floor beside her backpack and peeled off her black raincoat. She sprayed another layer of droplets across the front of Trip’s wet T-shirt when she shook the excess water from her hair. “Oops. Sorry.”

  “I’m learning to expect that my time with you won’t be neat and pretty, and that there’s a fifty-fifty chance I’m going to wind up getting hurt somehow.”

  “I don’t do it on purpose, you know. I’m just…” She reached out to wipe the water away, but he was already wet through to the skin. And either she was suddenly self-conscious about touching the pecs and nipples he unintentionally had on display—or she was feeling the heated intimacy of being alone here together as fiercely as he was. She stopped just shy of putting her hand on him before curling her fingers into a fist.

  “A klutz?”

  Her gaze darted up to his. “I was thinking distracted.” She smiled nervously and picked up the sack. “There are some paper towels in the bathroom next to my office. I’ll go get some.”

  A few paper towels and some Chinese takeout weren’t going to douse the hunger that had been gnawing at him since Charlotte had asked him to bring her here. For the first time since he’d met her, she’d asked to be alone with him. She’d said the only place left where she could feel safe was here at the museum…with him.

  That was a far cry from the woman who’d come at him with a sword and a rebel yell. Tonight felt almost like her version of a date—as if she wanted to be alone with him.

  “Down, boy.”

  Charlotte had told him she had next to no experience with men. Her idea of being alone with him might be very different from what his randy hormones were thinking. So, ignoring the storm simmering inside his veins, he checked the gun and ammo clip on his belt, rechecked the doors and followed Charlotte into her office.

  Trip quickly discovered that “office” was a relative term. Charlotte’s work space away from her sitting room at home involved a desk and computer, yes, but there were also bookshelves, a long table made of a sheet of plywood over two sawhorses, stacks of crates, a workbench fitted with brushes, small picks, magnifying glasses and other small tools, a cushy dog bed and a beat-up end table where she’d set up their dinner beside a distressed leather couch with a blue-and-white quilt thrown over it.

  “You sure there’s room for me in here?” he teased.

  She motioned him over to the desk chair she’d rolled up to the table and curled her legs beneath her to sit on the end of the couch. “It’s perfectly comfortable when I work here late and need to take a nap.”

  He scooted between the worktable and desk. “Yeah, but I’m twice as big as you are.”

  “So you’ll make it cozy in here.” She smiled and he was helpless to do anything but what she asked. “Sit. Eat. Because after I make a couple of phone calls, I intend to put you to work.”

  Forty minutes later, Charlotte was on the phone to someone at the bank while he called in his location to Captain Cutler. A check outside the door showed him the sky was black, some of the lights were out in the downtown district and the rain was showing no signs of stopping. The weather report concerned Trip almost as much as hearing they were no closer to tracking down the identity of the Rich Girl Killer. After hanging up, he locked the door, did a quick check of the premises and ended up leaning against the door frame of Charlotte’s office while she politely argued with someone on the phone.

  “Well, no, that doesn’t make any sense. Please do. I’ll go ahead and start the endowment paperwork with our attorneys, but I’ll tell them the check will have to wait until I hear from you. Thanks.”

  “Problem?”

  Charlotte closed her phone and jotted something on a notepad before answering. “I wanted to talk to the bank before they closed about setting up the college fund for Richard’s grandchildren. I figured endowing the fund with five hundred thousand would be enough to finance the education of all six kids, and others, if they come along.”

  “Half a million? I’m lucky if I have enough money to pay all the bills at the end of the month.”

  “Apparently, so am I.” She pushed the chair away from her desk and stood. A tiny frown between her eyebrows reflected her consternation. “When I said I wanted them to draft a check for me, they asked if I wanted to transfer funds from another account so I wouldn’t go below the minimum balance Dad set up when I inherited the trust fund.”

  Trip tucked his fingers into the back pockets of his jeans and shrugged. “Five hundred grand is a big chunk of money.”

  “I don’t mean to sound crass, but…not for me. Not for Dad.” She worked her bottom lip between her teeth as she checked the numbers she’d written on the notepad. “I’m careful about how I spend my trust fund because this museum and a few select charities are really important to me. I don’t want to make a promise to them and then leave them in the lurch.”

  He looked at the notes she showe
d him, but on first glance they were just a jumble of scratches and backward figures to his tired eyes. “And you’re sure you’ve kept accurate records?”

  “To the penny. My father didn’t make his fortune by not keeping track of the money he spends. And I learned from him.” She tossed the notepad down beside her phone. “The bank is going to look into it.”

  “Have those attorneys look, too. Maybe someone at the bank has helped themselves to a little extra cash that they think you won’t miss.” Trip dealt with guns and bombs, protection details and hostage situations, not white-collar crime. “Larceny has never been part of the RGK’s MO. He’s about power and revenge, not money. So I don’t think you need to worry that he’s making some other kind of inroad into your life.”

  The wheels behind those intelligent eyes kicked into high gear. “You know, there have been a couple of anomalies with that creep coming after me. He wants me to feel the same fears I did when I was kidnapped, so he’s recreated those events. The phone calls. The white van, the corsage. And Detective Montgomery said this guy had an obsessive-compulsive disorder—that he makes a plan and sticks to it, right?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I was never shot at during my kidnapping. No one stole any money from me. And no one poisoned a pet or hurt any animal I know of.”

  Ah, hell. Ah, double hell.

  “There’s more than one person trying to hurt you.”

  TRIP DIDN’T LIKE HIS next call to Michael Cutler any better than the first. With the possibility of not one, but two lowlifes out to hurt Charlotte, he’d agreed to put the rest of the team on standby alert. But with the spring deluge turning an overtaxed water system into the beginnings of a natural disaster, the captain had suggested that Charlotte would be safer if he kept her at the museum indefinitely, perhaps even through the night.

  Trip opened his toolbox and then went to work replacing the hinges on the door he’d broken. He had the odds and ends he needed to piece it together well enough to rehang it in the frame until he could get to a proper hardware store. It was good that he had plenty to do to keep his hands busy.

  Was he really worried about being cut off from backup? Not having the current stats on street closings if they needed to make a quick escape out of here? Or was he just antsy like a penned-up stallion at the thought of spending the night alone with Charlotte? Stretched out on that long, comfy couch. Together.

  And having to be a gentleman about it.

  He’d better start getting used to the idea of folding himself into that little office chair, instead.

  “If you check your watch one more time, I’m going to get nervous,” Charlotte observed as she held the door for him and he screwed it into place. They’d worked long enough for their clothes to dry stiff and uncomfortably, and for her to get a smudge of dust across her cheek. “Or should I be nervous?”

  “Don’t be.” He buzzed the last screw in with his power drill and let the rain and thunder outside beat down on his conscience and fill the silence for a moment. “Captain Cutler said KCPD and the city’s road crew have closed more of the streets around here.”

  She tested the door, seeming pleased with his handiwork. “We knew that. That’s why the curator decided keep the museum closed for the rest of the week. Driving around this side of downtown could be a little dicey until the weather breaks.”

  He removed the drill’s battery pack and put his tools away. “Cutler also warned me that Brush Creek and some of the area’s drainage ditches have topped their banks. The bridges will be out of commission soon. Maybe we should have rethought coming here tonight.”

  “This building is airtight to control the environment of the pieces on display. Unless we leave the doors and windows open—”

  “Which we won’t.”

  “—we’re not going to get any water in here.”

  Her arms were hugged tightly around her waist, an indicator she was picking up on some of his worries, but she kept her chin at that determined angle. She was trying so hard to keep this evening as normal as possible that it made Trip miss the barking dog and ancient broadsword just a little. With one finger, he wiped the smudge off her cheek, then lingered near the soft curls of her hair. “Just know, we may be stuck here until the rain stops.”

  “As long as you and I are the only ones stuck here.”

  He twirled his finger into a wayward curl and tucked it behind her ear. “No one else will get in. No one will take you from me, I promise.”

  Charlotte’s eyes widened behind her glasses. “Take me?”

  Trip pulled his hand away, tamping down a Neanderthal-like burst of heat inside him. She so did not mean that the way his body reacted to it. He’d just made a slip of the tongue and, ah hell. “We’d better get back to work.”

  Thank goodness there were plenty of boxes to lift and tables to set aright—plenty of work to stretch his muscles and get himself too tired to think about Charlotte in any way other than her protector.

  He was helping her put the shelves back into place inside the storage closet when she spoke again. “So I have to figure out who Donny Kemp is now?”

  Right. Keep talking about the case. “He’s Montgomery’s main suspect.”

  She stretched up on tiptoe, lifting a padded box packed with an assortment of stone knife blades and arrowheads. “I don’t think I’ve even seen him since the kidnapping. It’s not like I go to class reunions.”

  Trip took the box and set it on the top shelf over her head. “If it’s him, he’s changed his name. That probably means he’s changed his looks, too. Maybe by something as drastic as cosmetic surgery—maybe just by growing a beard or dying his hair or wearing colored contacts.”

  The scents of rain and ancient stone and Charlotte stirred in his nose as she faced him. “But all I did was turn him down for a date. And I’m guessing I paid more for that lapse in judgment than he did.”

  “Maybe something else happened to him that you’ve forgotten, or didn’t know about because you had the kidnapping and trial to contend with.” Trip moved out of the closet, unable to find another way to curb the urge to tunnel his fingers into her hair, to dip his tongue into her sweet mouth and consume her, when he should be thinking about nothing else but keeping her safe.

  “I’m calling Audrey. Maybe she can remember something about Donny. Although I still can’t imagine how a computer geek can turn into the Rich Girl Killer.”

  He jerked at the soft touch of her hand on the back of his arm. Yeah, that was the way to get past this crazy desire. Put that look on her face.

  While Charlotte hugged herself and turned toward her office, Trip waited to follow. “We don’t have to understand the how and the why right now. Let’s just see if we can find the guy. Call Audrey.”

  “AND YOU’RE SAFE?” Audrey asked.

  Charlotte peeked over her shoulder at the man sitting on her office couch reading a book. The white T-shirt and worn jeans that hugged every hill and hollow of his powerful body, along with the work boots and imposing black gun he wore on his belt, seemed so at odds with the thick paperback and sternly focused eyes.

  His big hands made the book look small, as if it was a fragile thing he was handling with great care. Trip was such a physical being, too big for her cramped, intellectual’s office, maybe too big for her untested heart and the curiously powerful need she had to be close to him. Yet she knew he would show the woman he cared about the same diligent attention and reverent care that he showed that book.

  When she felt the blush heat her cheeks, she turned back to the phone. “Yeah. There aren’t many people out in the city tonight. Dad’s the only one at home I told that I was coming here. And Trip’s with me.”

  “Then you’re safe.”

  “I know.” Although they’d talked through dozens of possibilities, nothing had brought them any closer to identifying who their former classmate Donny Kemp had become. But by putting their heads together, they’d come up with a disturbing pattern that left Ch
arlotte more and more convinced that he was the Rich Girl Killer. “You’re sure about Val not hiring him at Gallagher Security?”

  “Once you started asking questions, I remembered her saying that. He didn’t pass the company’s psych eval.”

  “Go figure.”

  “Yeah. He thought he could use their old school connection to guarantee himself a vice president’s job, but Val said he gave her the creeps. That fits your timeline of him disappearing about five years ago.”

  “And you beat him out for the summer internship at Harvard?”

  Charlotte could hear typing in the background. Her ever-efficient friend was probably transcribing this conversation with plans to show it to her boss, the district attorney. “I’m sure it was Daddy’s influence as an alum that got me the position.”

  “Another example of an influential, wealthy woman keeping him from what he wanted. No wonder he hates us.”

  “He’s disturbed, Char. There’s nothing rational about terrorizing and killing us.”

  “I wonder how Gretchen hurt him.” Unfortunately, with Gretchen’s death, that would be a much harder connection to follow up on. “I can see him being heartbroken if she rejected him. But me?”

  “Maybe Landon Turner wasn’t the first guy the kidnappers approached about getting you to the dance.” She heard some more typing, and a reminder from Alex in the background that it was late and they needed to get some sleep. “I’m going to do some more research into the men who abducted you. Maybe there’s a link to Donny we haven’t discovered yet.”

  “Don’t do anything risky.”

  “With this guy hanging over me?”

  “Huh?”

  The next voice she heard was Alex’s. “Good night, Charlotte.”

  She laughed. “Good night, Alex.”

  “Good night, shrimp,” Trip hollered from the couch.

  “I heard that.”

  There was a breathy interchange on the other end of the call that made Charlotte wonder which one of her friends had stolen a kiss. “Give me that.”