Читать книгу By Request Collection April-June 2016 - Оливия Гейтс - Страница 94

“THERE’S MORE,” PIPER SAID. “And you’re not going to like it.”

That’s what she’d said the moment that she’d looked up from the note. Then she’d led him into the library. And she’d been right. He didn’t like it at all.

Duncan silently cursed himself as he stood next to her and studied the rose petals that had been strewn over the white sheet on the terrace outside the library. He’d contacted Skinner and Adrienne. Lightman had been in plain sight all afternoon—sitting on the park bench and taking in the view of the lake. Richard Starkweather and Sid Macks were both still in D.C., their movements accounted for.

As he’d relayed the news to Piper, he’d wanted more than anything to simply pull her into his arms and hold her. But he didn’t dare. Everything on the terrace had been pounded by the downpour, but even in the long shadows cast by the late afternoon sunlight, the wet rose petals looked like drops of blood.

And that could easily have been the case. It could have been Piper’s blood he was looking at. He’d left her alone because his mind had been so full of her, so obsessed with her, that he’d gone out to the stone arch to find out what her secret fantasy had been when she was nineteen.

Idiot. He cursed himself again. No woman had even come close to turning him into one before. If he was going to keep her safe, it had to stop.

About fifteen feet separated the scene he was studying from the couch where he’d left her sleeping. And she’d been there alone when the psycho had set up the little tableau for her. A mix of emotions assaulted him as he stood there, imagining what she might have been thinking, feeling. He was furious with whoever was doing this to her and angry with himself that he’d left her alone. But overriding all of that was a cold fear that he wasn’t doing enough to protect her, wouldn’t be able to do enough.

Ruthlessly, he shoved the feelings aside. None of them were helping him.

“Take me over it again,” he said, “starting with when woke you up.”

As she did, he tried to put himself into the mind of the person who’d taken the time and the opportunity to set up the scene they were both looking at. Whoever it was had been in a position to see what was going on in the library. There were several positions in the woods where an observer might have stationed himself. He might have even chosen to use the garden shed for cover.

“And when I saw the petals,” Piper said, “my first reaction was to rush out and give chase. But you’d locked the doors and keyed in the code. That slowed me down enough to think.”

Thank God, Duncan thought. If he hadn’t slowed her down. He reined his thoughts in.

“If Lightman, Richard and Sid Macks are out, that leaves Cam’s library guy or the hoodie guy that Lightman captured on his phone.”

“Right.” It irked him a bit that she was able to focus more on analyzing the evidence than he was, so he followed her lead. “When I called Daryl, he and Vi were about a half hour away. He’ll be able to download what the security cameras captured.”

“I’m betting the guy’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and we won’t get a look at his face. He had to be out here waiting and watching. He would have spotted the security cameras.”

“Yeah.” Duncan reviewed what had led up to the rose petal shower in his mind. “The woods provide plenty of cover. While you were sleeping I opened the doors for a while. I even stepped out to take a call from Cam.” He scanned the clearing again. He took his gun out of his backpack and tucked it into the waist of his jeans and continued, “There are lots of places he could have concealed himself. Even in the gardening shed. He could have heard my conversation, then watched me lock up the place and go out to the stones, and he grabbed the opportunity.”

“To scare me or to lure me out,” Piper said.

“Come with me.” He punched the code into the pad, then slid open the doors and drew her with him out to the terrace. Alba followed.

After he re-armed the security, he closed the doors and they moved toward the shed. The door was closed, the padlock secure. Any hope of footprints had been erased by the fury of the storm.

“Whoever was here is long gone,” Piper said. “Otherwise Alba would be barking.”

Duncan turned to see that the dog hadn’t ventured beyond the terrace, and she was digging at something. Pressing a hand to the small of Piper’s back, he urged her back to the library doors. Together, they squatted down to see what had caught Alba’s attention.

Duncan picked up the small round piece of plastic.

“She found a clue,” Piper said.

“Some kind of lens cover. And there’s a logo on it, something we can trace. Good girl.” He ran a hand over Alba’s head, and the dog rubbed against his side.

“She was the one who woke me. And she threw herself against the glass doors. She probably scared the wits out of whoever was out here.” When she turned back to Duncan, their knees were nearly brushing. “So you can stop feeling so damn guilty about leaving me alone for a few minutes. You left Alba with me. And I can take care of myself.” She used a finger to poke him in the chest and nearly set him toppling back on his heels.

Yes, he thought. She could. And even though she had that Diana-the-Huntress look back in her eyes, he was going to see that she had backup. And to do that, he needed to keep an objective distance. He raised both hands, palms up. “Agreed.”

For now.

TWO HOURS LATER, PIPER STOOD in the main parlor of the castle stifling the urge to pace. Once Daryl and Vi had arrived, the men had formed a separate team. While she and Vi had made sandwiches for dinner, they’d worked in Adair’s office. Through the open French doors, she watched them still huddled at the computer screen. Duncan stood looking over Daryl’s shoulder. He took his reading glasses off, set them aside and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Something pushed at the edge of her mind, but she couldn’t quite catch hold of it. Hoping to get another push, she continued to study the two men. They were still running through the pictures from the security cameras. She’d been right about the rose petal person wearing a hooded sweatshirt. The cameras hadn’t caught more than pieces of his face. Daryl was using some software program to come up with a composite picture.

What she could clearly read in the body language of the two men was that they weren’t having much luck. The lens case Alba had found belonged to a portable telescope with a powerful lens. Not something that could be easily found at a chain store. Daryl had assigned someone in his office to try to trace where it might have been purchased. It proved someone was keeping a close but distant eye on the castle and its grounds.

No big news there.

There hadn’t been any useful updates from D.C., either. The only relatively interesting piece of news had been provided by Sheriff Skinner. The vase of roses that had been delivered from Margie’s Flowers had been called in from a D.C. florist, and it had been paid for with a stolen credit card over the phone. The call could have been made from anywhere.

She stood there for a few more minutes studying the two men, but whatever was struggling to get foremost into her mind had slipped away again. And she’d found herself just staring at Duncan. He was doing exactly what she’d asked. Keeping his distance. He hadn’t touched her since they’d left the stone arch. They were in agreement that they’d chosen the right solution.

So why was she feeling so … restless? Worse, why was she second-guessing herself? Turning on her heel, she went to the kitchen where she knew she’d find her aunt.

The room was filled with the scent of freshly baked cookies, and Vi was pulling a tray out of the oven. The scent and the memories it triggered immediately eased some of her frustration. “Can I help?”

As if in answer, the teakettle began to shrill.

“You can help me load the tea cart. I think the men could use a snack.”

“They’ve formed their own little investigative team,” Piper muttered as she made the tea and then loaded cups onto the cart.

“They’re worried about you,” Vi said.

On the way to the refrigerator, Piper took a cookie off the cooling rack. “I’ll be fine. I just …”

“What?”

She turned back to face her aunt, cookie in one hand and a pitcher of cream in the other. “I just want my life to go back to normal. Is that so much to ask?”

Vi took the cream and placed it on the cart. Then she met Piper’s eyes. “And what would normal be?”

“My job. My routine. Everything was fine until … dammit.” She bit into the cookie, and barely tasted it.

Vi said nothing.

Piper took another bite of cookie, then set it on the counter. “Your cookies used to fix everything,” she complained.

Vi stepped forward then and ran a hand down her niece’s hair. “What is it you want to fix?”

“I liked my life just fine. It was exactly the way I wanted it to be. Everything was on track. Until the Lightman case. But I was going to handle that. I still can. But seeing Duncan again has mixed up everything, and I’ve just made it worse.”

Vi took her hands. “How have you made it worse?”

“I just wanted him so much. He wanted me, too. So I came up with a plan that would solve the problem. We’re adults, so why shouldn’t we have this temporary arrangement? No promises, no strings. It was working. It was great.”

“Until …?” Vi prompted.

“I kissed him in the stone arch.” There. She’d said it. Vi squeezed her hands. “And you think he’s your true love.”

“No.” But wasn’t that exactly what she was afraid of?

Don’t panic.

“He can’t be. What we feel for each other is desire.” Something that red-hot and primal couldn’t be love. “It’s chemistry. It’ll go away. In the meantime, I told Duncan we have to stop. I mean, it would be dangerous to keep indulging ourselves when there’s so much at stake.”

Vi nodded. “Yes, the biggest stakes of all. You’re afraid of losing your heart. Do you know how Duncan feels?”

“No.” Panic surged. “But he agrees with me that we need to step back. Quit while we’re ahead.”

“He said that to you?”

She lifted her chin. “Actions speak as loudly as words.”

Vi placed a hand on Piper’s cheek. “Even when you were little, you always had the best arguments. I wish I had a dollar for everything you ever talked me out of.”

Piper frowned at her. “What are you saying?”

Vi smiled at her. “That you’ll figure this all out. And when you come up with a solution that satisfies you, you’ll convince him.”

“FRESH BAKED COOKIES,” Vi announced as she and Piper entered the main parlor with the tea cart. By the time she had filled the cups, the men had joined them. Daryl sat on the love seat next to Vi. Piper sat on the sofa. And as Duncan pulled out the desk chair and placed it closer to the tea cart, something tightened around her heart. Oh, he’d heard her argument loud and clear. He was keeping his distance, and he looked perfectly happy to do so.

She tried another cookie. Chocolate chip were her favorite, but they tasted like sawdust. She’d made the right decision, she told herself. Break it off before it could get riskier.

And just as soon as they figured out how to put Lightman back in jail and how to stop the crazy person who was sending her flowers, they could both go back to D.C. and make a clean break of it.

“These are spectacular, Vi,” Duncan said as he reached for another cookie.

Obviously, they didn’t taste like sawdust to him. She picked up her cup of tea and set it right back down.

“I wish we had something more to celebrate,” Duncan said. “The good news is one of the security cameras got a couple of partials on the face of the person who tossed rose petals all over the terrace.”

“I’ve sent it to one of my top technicians,” Daryl said. “He’s working up a full face composite and he’ll run it through a facial recognition scanner. However, not everyone is in the system.”

“We’ll be able to check it against members of the Macks family and the family members of other victims of the RPK,” Duncan said. “It will take some time. Which we might not have. Daryl and I were talking about it while we worked.”

Daryl waved a hand. “And I agree with Duncan’s analysis, so I asked him to fill you in.”

Piper’s stomach sank. He was totally working with Daryl now. She’d gotten just what she’d asked for. What she’d demanded.

“Until we know for sure, I think we have to assume we’re working with three different problems here. Number one, we have Lightman in town—a man motivated by his own self-interests. Then we have the guy in the hoodie who set up the scene in Piper’s apartment and keeps sending her vases of roses and threatening notes. And third, we have Cam’s library visitor.”

“The last two could be the same person,” Piper said.

He met her eyes for the first time. “True. But I believe the person who followed us into the caves this morning is interested in the sapphires.” He paused to glance up at Eleanor’s portrait. “And his determination to have them has become obsessive. Following us into that cave was risky. He may not know for sure yet that we discovered the second sapphire earring, and he could very well see Piper as competition. Or he could believe she found it, and he’s furious with her. He may very well have showered those rose petals outside the library today, with the purpose of luring Piper out and eliminating her.”

Her stomach didn’t sink this time. It froze. “We’ve already established that I have a very large target on my back. But I’m not leaving the castle. Running away will not solve this.”

“His behavior today indicates that he’s not only willing to take risks to get what he wants, but that he has an ability to seize the moments that present themselves. That makes him much more dangerous than someone who has to plan everything out in advance.”

She met his eyes. “I’m not running.”

“Duncan doesn’t want you to run,” Daryl said. “He wants to cancel the photo shoot tomorrow.”

“No.” Vi and Piper spoke in unison.

“That’s just another kind of running away,” Piper argued. “And the castle can’t just shut down because I made the mistake of coming here.”

Vi rose and joined her on the sofa. “Adair set the shoot up months ago. And we have a wedding scheduled next week. I also have two appointments with prospective clients tomorrow. Plus, Daryl has already vetted the magazine and Russell Arbogast and Deanna Lewis.”

“I have some men digging deeper on both of them as we speak,” Daryl said.

“There’ll be strangers on the grounds,” Duncan said, speaking directly to Piper. “This person almost lured you out of the castle when there were just the two of us here. There’ll be more opportunities tomorrow.” He shifted his gaze to Vi. “And the shut-down wouldn’t be permanent. We just need more time to gather information.”

Piper gripped Vi’s hand in hers. “We’ve got top-notch agents from the FBI and the CIA here in the house and Sheriff Skinner plans to be present for the photo shoot. Aunt Vi and I are smart. We won’t do anything stupid. And we have Alba.”

Daryl gave Duncan an I-told-you-so look. “Then we’ll have to go with Plan B.”

“Not until you run it by us,” Vi said.

“No negotiations on this one,” Daryl said in a flat, no-nonsense tone. “If we’re going forward on schedule tomorrow, Piper is confined to working in the library all day, and she’s going to wear a wire just in case somebody gets past the security.”

“Fine,” Piper said. “I’ll wear a wire and work on the Lightman files.”

Duncan looked as if he was going to say something. But he didn’t. Something tightened around her heart.

“You ladies should get some sleep,” Daryl said. “Duncan and I will clear the tea cart. Then we’ll work a little longer, but tomorrow is going to be a long day.”

She’d won her case, Piper thought as Duncan followed Daryl out of the room. She wasn’t running away. But it was the argument she’d made earlier when they’d been in the stone arch that was bothering her. Once this was over, she’d make another case to Duncan. Because she wasn’t going to let him run away, either.