“Got a deal on the house,” he said to her, trying not to sound desperate or embarrassed. “Lot of work to be done. Haven’t had a chance to really get going on it, though.”
“Looks like a good neighborhood,” Charlotte said. “That’s the most important thing.”
“Right,” he said.
He wondered if Looks like a good neighborhood was a polite euphemism for Too bad it’s the ugliest house on the street.
She went past him into the house. Anson followed. Max closed the door. Together he and Anson watched Charlotte walk through the little foyer and stop at the end to survey the living room.
Then she disappeared around a corner into the kitchen. He thought about the ancient appliances and the old, stained flooring. He did not move. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but he figured he’d know it when it happened.
Anson frowned. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m going to stay with Charlotte for a while, just until this case gets resolved.”
Anson cocked a brow. “You think she needs a bodyguard, huh?”
“This thing is getting complicated and she’s right in the middle of it.”
Anson nodded.
Max made himself release the doorknob and walk through the foyer into the front room.
Charlotte appeared from the kitchen.
“You were right,” she said, enthusiasm warming her eyes. “You did get a good deal. This house has great bones, as they say. You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you, but when it’s finished it will be wonderful.”
Out of the corner of his eye Max noticed that Anson was smiling a small, secret, satisfied smile. He wasn’t sure what that was about, but one thing was certain—he suddenly felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“I’ll go get my stuff,” he said.
CHAPTER 35
Roxanne Briggs went into the kitchen to make a cup of herbal tea.
The news that Egan was dead should not have come as a shock, but for some reason, it had. You lived for years with a man you had never really loved because the two of you were bound by secrets, you got used to each other, she thought.
She could have told Walsh that Egan had gone to meet Trey Greenslade in an effort to exact one last blackmail payment and that Trey had no doubt been the person who had killed Egan. But who would have believed her? She had no proof to offer. This was Trey Greenslade, after all, the heir to Loring-Greenslade.
It was so much simpler to let the police assume that Egan had been murdered in a drug deal gone bad.
When the tea was ready, she sat at the table and tried to decide exactly what she was feeling. After a while it dawned on her that mostly she felt relieved.
By the time she finished the tea, she was starting to wonder if she ought to be feeling afraid. Trey Greenslade might conclude that she was aware of the secret that Egan had kept. He might decide that he should get rid of her, too.
She should run, she thought.
She set down the mug, pushed herself to her feet and walked toward the bedroom to pack. When she went past the mantel, she paused to take down the framed pictures of Nolan. They were the only things in the house that were important enough to take with her.
A short time later she put two bags into the back of the pickup. She tucked the pistol under the front seat and got behind the wheel. She drove down the long, graveled drive, across the bridge and onto the old mountain highway.
She never once looked back.
Egan had not given her a lot over the years, she thought. There had been some affection at first, when he had liked having sex with her, but that hadn’t lasted long. He had never shown her any true kindness. No true companionship. But he had provided her with something.
Thanks to Egan she had the survival skills she needed to disappear.
CHAPTER 36
Anson had time to think on the long drive to Loring. He spent some of that time thinking about Charlotte Sawyer. When he wasn’t thinking about Charlotte, he thought about Max and Cabot and Jack. And he thought about the past.
He was damn proud of the three men he had raised. One way or another each of them had followed in his footsteps: each had pursued a career in law enforcement. True, they had taken very different routes—Max had become a profiler and was now trying to set up shop on his own. Cabot was the chief of police of a small town in Oregon. Jack had taken the academic path. He taught highly specialized classes that focused on obscure and exotic forms of criminal behavior. He had even written a book on the subject—Warped Visions.
But Anson also knew that all three of his sons had been scarred by their time in Quinton Zane’s compound and by the fire that had left them orphaned. It was no accident that each of them had wound up chasing criminals for a living. The events of the past haunted them and at the same time fueled them, providing the fire that made each of them so good at what they did.
But the fallout from the past also had a way of wreaking havoc with their most intimate relationships.
He had done what he could to give Max, Cabot and Jack the tools they needed to cope with their past. But he had not been able to provide them with the answers they craved. He was well aware that each man was doomed to find his own path when it came to dealing with the ghost of Quinton Zane.
Anson went back to thinking about Charlotte. Something told him that she just might be the woman who could accept the part of Max that could not let go of the past.
CHAPTER 37
Charlotte awoke, breathless, on the jagged fragments of a dream in which she was trying desperately to reach Jocelyn, who was being swept away by a river.
Okay, not hard to figure out where that imagery came from, she thought.
She sat up quickly. Moonlight and the sparkling lights of the city spilled through the uncovered window, illuminating the bedroom.
She pushed aside the bedding, intending to go out into the living room and walk off some of the dark energy of the nightmare. She took two steps toward the closed door of her bedroom before she remembered her houseguest.
She stopped, listening intently. There was no sound from the living room. Max was most likely asleep. He needed his rest. The last thing she wanted to do was wake him.
On the other hand, the bedroom was too small for her purposes. She needed to move. She certainly wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep for a while.
She regarded the door with a deep sense of dread. In the shadows of the bedroom it seemed to have been transformed into a solid wall—the one thing that was keeping her from escaping to the freedom of the living room.
She knew it was ridiculous, but she was suddenly convinced that if she didn’t get out of the bedroom she was going to have a full-blown anxiety attack.
The hallway that connected her room to the living room and kitchen would be a reasonable compromise, she decided. She could pace up and down that narrow corridor until her nerves settled.
She opened the door and stepped, barefooted, out into the hall. She stood quietly, listening. There was still no sound emanating from the living room.
Cautiously she began to pace the short hallway, focusing on her breathing, as she had learned to do in the meditation classes she had taken. Gradually the last traces of the nightmare faded. Her pulse slowed.
She was considering a glass of water when she heard the squeak of springs. There followed a faint rustling in the living room.
She thought about rushing back to the bedroom, but she told herself there was no point. Max was awake.
He appeared silhouetted in the entrance of the living room.
“Bad dream?” he asked. “Or just couldn’t sleep?”
His low voice, a little roughened from sleep and edged with a darkly sensual vibe, made her catch her breath. A thrill of excitement swept through her.
He was wea
ring a dark T-shirt and she saw that he had taken the time to put on his trousers. That explained the rustling sounds, she thought. She was suddenly very conscious of her robe and bare feet.
“Sorry,” she said. She was surprised at the husky note in her own voice. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Not a problem. I’m a light sleeper.”
She cleared her throat. “Right.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Bad dream or insomnia?”
“A little of both.”
He folded his arms and propped one shoulder against the doorjamb. “No need to explain. I’m having the same kind of night.”
“We both need sleep,” she said. “We didn’t get much last night. Maybe we should try some brandy or hot cocoa.”
“Either one sounds good.”
“The brandy will be quicker. I’ve got some in the kitchen.”
“Okay.”
The kitchen doorway was just before the living room entrance where Max waited in the shadows. She padded down the hall toward him. He did not move, but he watched her with an intensity that stirred her senses. She could not recall ever having felt so aware of a man. There was something deeply primal about the sensation.
She told herself to calm down and remember that the attraction between them—assuming it went both ways—was based on the connection created by the harrowing experience they had gone through together. The reality was that they barely knew each other. Their relationship was not founded on stable ground.
Relationship.
That was probably not the right word to describe their association. Partnership was more accurate. And it was a short-term partnership at that. A business partnership.
And if she tried to define their situation any more clearly tonight, while they were standing only a few feet apart in the darkened apartment, she really would bring on a panic attack.
She made it to the kitchen doorway and stopped. Max was so close now that she could reach out and touch him. To keep herself from doing just that she locked her arms together beneath her breasts.
“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” she said.
“How personal?”
“I was just wondering if you ever have a problem with female clients.”
“In the six months I have been in the investigation business, I have discovered that I have problems with every client. Goes with the territory. What sort of problems did you have in mind?”
“It just occurred to me that there’s a certain intimacy factor involved in your work.”
“Intimacy.” He said the word as if he wasn’t sure what it meant.
“I mean, your clients probably share some of their most closely held secrets. They trust you to get answers to questions they’re often afraid to ask.”
“It’s not like the kind of relationship you have with a doctor or a lawyer, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But you’ve probably dealt with a lot of clients who are in a highly emotional state. You must have had some who are angry or fearful or desperate. They see you as the one person who might be able to solve their problems. They probably project some of their strong feelings onto you.”
“I’m kind of new at the PI business, remember? I told you, until I went out on my own six months ago I worked for a consulting firm. Our clients were usually members of law enforcement or government agencies—not private individuals.”
“Yes, right, sorry. Just wondered.”
“I interviewed people from time to time—suspects and victims and witnesses. And sometimes it was bad. Real bad. But it was usually someone else who had to deal with the emotional fallout of a case. My job was to identify the patterns and figure out how to predict what the bad guy was going to do next.”
“I see.”
“Mind if I ask where you’re going with this?”
She felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “I have absolutely no idea. Sorry.” Stop apologizing, you dork. “Nervous chatter. Blame the bad dream and the insomnia. I’ll get the brandy.”
She escaped into the kitchen and opened a cupboard door to take down the brandy bottle. She sensed rather than heard Max move into the doorway behind her.
“Were you wondering if I’ve ever slept with a client?” he asked.
“No, no, no. Nothing like that.” Horrified, she yanked the cork out of the bottle. “It’s none of my business. I wouldn’t dream of asking such a personal question.”
“No.”
She froze. “No?”
“No, I have never slept with a client.”
She took a deep breath. “Of course not. I never thought you had. I was speaking in more general terms about your emotional involvement. You know—how do you handle an angry client who takes his anger out on you when he gets an answer he doesn’t want—that kind of thing.”
“It happens. That’s why I always get a retainer up front. But a lot of my work is business and corporate stuff. Not much emotion involved in those cases, but they’re the kind that pay the rent.”
“I see.” Why in the world had she started this ridiculous conversation? Her hand shook a little as she tried to splash brandy into two glasses. “Forget I asked. Just idle curiosity.”
“And maybe the fact that you’ve got a strange man sleeping in your living room is giving you an anxiety attack?” he asked a little gruffly. “Sorry about that.”
“No.” She set the bottle down hard on the counter and gulped some of the brandy from one of the glasses. The stuff burned all the way to her stomach, robbing her of breath for a few seconds. She coughed and managed to gasp, “You’re not a stranger.”
“And you’re not a client.” He took a couple of steps into the kitchen and stopped. “You’re assisting me in exchange for my services as an investigator.”
She looked at him. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know about you, but as far as I’m concerned the usual rules don’t apply here.”
She handed him the other glass of brandy. He took it and swallowed some.
“So?” she prompted.
He lowered the glass. In the shadows his eyes seemed to heat.
“So we get to make up the rules as we go along,” he said.
She drank a little more brandy to fortify herself and lowered the glass slowly, proud of her control.
“Okay,” she said.
He closed the distance between them, halting less than a foot away. His eyes never left her face.
“Got any?” he asked.
“Any what?”
“Any rules I should know about.”
She was suddenly standing on the edge of a very high cliff. She really ought to think long and hard before she jumped. Screw thinking. She’d done a lot of thinking before she agreed to marry Brian Conroy. What good had it done?
“No,” she said. “No, I can’t think of any rules that apply. At least not tonight.”
He set his glass down on the counter. “I want to be very sure of what’s going on here.”
“In all honesty? I haven’t got a frickin’ clue.”
“Do you want me?”
She took a breath. “So much for the subtle approach.”
He caught her chin on the edge of his hand. “I’m not good with the subtle approach. I need to be sure. I need a yes or no.”
She was still in free fall, she realized, about to spread wings she didn’t know she possessed.
“Yes,” she whispered. “But only if you want me, too.”
He smiled a slow, intimate smile that left her breathless. She could have sworn his eyes got a little hotter.
“That’s important to you?” he asked.
“It would be a disaster otherwise.”
“Good to know.” He took her glass from her unresisting hand and set it down on th
e counter. Then he cupped her face between his palms. “Just to be clear, I want you, too.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
He leaned in close, pinning her slowly, relentlessly against the kitchen counter with the weight of his body. The kiss started out as a slow burn. His mouth moved deliberately on hers, as though he was issuing an invitation. Or making an exploratory foray. Or trying to seduce her.
But she didn’t need to be seduced. She was shivering with anticipation, intoxicated by an incendiary brew composed of equal parts reckless abandon and absolute certainty. She acknowledged the risks and simultaneously concluded that she could handle them. Hell, someone had tried to murder her. She could have died trapped in a car that had plunged into the cold waters of a raging river. She could have perished of hypothermia on a merciless mountain. On top of all that, she was helping a professional PI—a former profiler, no less—look for her missing stepsister.
Compared to all that, the potential drawbacks of having sex with the man who was sharing the danger with her just didn’t seem very worrisome. Tonight she was going to do what she wanted to do and let tomorrow take care of itself.
The decision set her free—gloriously free—in ways she could not possibly have imagined. For once she was not trying to think through to the logical conclusion; not trying to play it safe. For once she simply did not give a damn about the risks involved.
She reached up to grasp Max’s shoulders. Everything about him was hard, honed and heated. She knew then that in setting herself free, she had freed him, as well.
Lightning struck. The slow-burn kiss flashed into a firestorm. Max gripped her around the waist and lifted her up onto the counter. Her robe fell away. He pushed her knees apart. She wrapped her legs around his waist and wound her arms around his neck.
He groaned, swept her off the counter and started toward the bedroom. She clung to him, her thighs snugged tight as though he were a wild stallion she could ride.