Читать книгу Standing In The Shadows - Shannon McKenna - Страница 7

The silver cell phone that lay on the passenger seat of the beige Cadillac buzzed and vibrated, like a dying fly on a dusty windowsill.

Connor slouched lower in the driver’s seat and contemplated it. Normal people were wired to grab the thing, check the number, and respond. In him, those wires were cut, that programming deleted. He stared at it, amazed at his own indifference. Or maybe amazed was too strong a word. Stupefied would be closer. Let it die. Five rings. Six. Seven. Eight. The cell phone persisted, buzzing angrily.

It got up to fourteen, and gave up in disgust.

He went back to staring at Tiff’s current love nest through the rain that trickled over the windshield. It was a big, ugly town house that squatted across the street. The world outside the car was a blurry wash of grays and greens. Lights still on in the second-floor bedroom. Tiff was taking her time. He checked his watch. She was usually a slam-bam, twenty-minutes-at-the-most sort of girl, but she’d gone up those stairs almost forty minutes ago. A record, for her.

Maybe it was true love.

Connor snorted to himself, hefting the heavy camera into place and training the telephoto lens on the doorway. He wished she’d hurry. Once he’d snapped the photos her husband had paid McCloud Investigative Services to get, his duty would be done, and he could crawl back under his rock. A dark bar and a shot of single malt, someplace where the pale gray daylight could not sting his eyes. Where he could concentrate on not thinking about Erin.

He let the camera drop with a sigh, and pulled out his tobacco and rolling papers. After he’d woken up from the coma, during the agonizing tedium of rehab, he’d gotten the bright idea of switching to hand-rolled, reasoning that if he let himself roll them only with his fucked-up hand, he’d slow down and consequently smoke less. Problem was, he got good at it real fast. By now he could roll a tight cigarette in seconds flat with either hand, without looking. So much for that pathetic attempt at self-mastery.

He rolled the cigarette on autopilot, eyes trained on the town house, and wondered idly who had called. Only three people had the number: his friend Seth, and his two brothers, Sean and Davy. Seth for sure had better things to do on a Saturday afternoon than call him. The guy was neck-deep in honeymoon bliss with Raine. Probably writhing in bed right now, engaged in sex acts that were still against the law somewhere in the southern states. Lucky bastard.

Connor’s mouth twisted in self-disgust. Seth had suffered, too, from all the shit that had come down in the past few months. He was a good guy, and a true friend, if a difficult one. He deserved the happiness he’d found with Raine. It was unworthy of Connor to be envious, but Jesus. Watching those two, glowing like neon, joined at the hip, sucking on each other’s faces, well…it didn’t help.

Connor wrenched his mind away from that dead-end track and stared at the cell phone. Couldn’t be Seth. He checked his watch. His younger brother Sean was at the dojo at this hour, teaching an afternoon kickboxing class. That left his older brother, Davy.

Boredom tricked him into picking up the cell phone to check the number, and as if the goddamn thing had been lying in wait for him, it buzzed right in his hand, making him jump and curse. Telepathic bastard. Davy’s instincts and timing were legendary.

He gave in and pushed the talk button with a grunt of disgust. “What?”

“Nick called.” Davy’s deep voice was brusque and businesslike.

“So?”

“What do you mean, so? The guy’s your friend. You need your friends, Con. You worked with him for years, and he—”

“I’m not working with him,” Connor said flatly. “I’m not working with any of them now.”

Davy made an inarticulate, frustrated sound. “I know I promised not to give out this number, but it was a mistake. Call him, or I’ll—”

“Don’t do it,” Connor warned.

“Don’t make me,” Davy said.

“So I’ll throw the phone into the nearest Dumpster,” Connor said, his voice casual. “I don’t give a flying fuck.”

He could almost hear his older brother’s teeth grinding. “You know, your attitude sucks,” Davy said.

“Stop trying to shove me around, and it won’t bother you so much,” Connor suggested.

Davy treated him to a long pause, calculated to make Connor feel guilty and flustered. It didn’t work. He just waited right back.

“He wants to talk to you,” Davy finally said. His voice was carefully neutral. “Says it’s important.”

The light in the town house bedroom went off. Connor lifted the camera to the ready. “Don’t even want to know,” he said.

Davy grunted in disgust. “Got Tiff’s latest adventure on film yet?”

“Any minute now. She’s just finishing up.”

“Got plans after?”

Connor hesitated. “Uh…”

“I’ve got steaks in the fridge,” Davy wheedled. “And a case of Anchor Steam.”

“I’m not really hungry.”

“I know. You haven’t been hungry for the past year and a half. That’s why you’ve lost twenty-five goddamn pounds. Get the pictures, and then get your ass over here. You need to eat.”

Connor sighed. His brother knew how useless his blustering orders were, but he refused to get a clue. His stubborn skull was harder than concrete. “Hey, Davy. It’s not that I don’t like your cooking—”

“Nick’s got some news that might interest you about Novak.”

Connor shot bolt upright in his seat, the heavy camera bouncing painfully off his scarred leg. “Novak? What about Novak?”

“That’s it. That’s all he said.”

“That filthy fuck is rotting in a maximum security prison cell. What news could there possibly be about him?”

“Guess you better call and find out, huh? Then hightail it over here. I’ll mix up the marinade. Later, bro.”

Connor stared at the phone in his hand, too rattled to be annoyed at Davy’s casual bullying. His hand was shaking. Whoa. He wouldn’t have thought there was still that much adrenaline left in the tank.

Kurt Novak, who had set in motion a chain of events that effectively ruined Connor’s life. Or so he saw it on his self-pitying days, which were happening way too often lately. Kurt Novak, who had murdered Connor’s partner, Jesse. Who was responsible for the coma, the scars, the limp. Who had blackmailed and corrupted Connor’s colleague Ed Riggs.

Novak, who had almost gotten his vicious, filthy claws into Erin, Ed’s daughter. Her incredibly narrow escape had given him nightmares for months. Oh, yeah. If there was one magic word on earth that could jolt him awake and make him give a shit, it was Novak.

Erin. He rubbed his face and tried not to think of the last time he’d seen Erin’s beautiful face, but the image was burned indelibly into his mind. She’d been wrapped in a blanket in the back of the patrol car. Dazed with shock. Her eyes had been huge with horror and betrayal.

He had put that look in her eyes.

He gritted his teeth against the twisting ache of helpless anger that went along with that memory, and the explosion of sensual images. They made him feel guilty and sick, but they wouldn’t leave him alone. Every detail his brain had recorded about Erin was erotically charged, right down to the way her dark hair swirled into an elfin, downward-pointing whorl at the nape of her neck when she pulled it up. The way she had of looking at the world with those big, thoughtful eyes. Self-possessed and quiet, drawing her own mysterious conclusions. Making him ache and burn to know what she was thinking.

And then bam, her shy, sweet smile flashing out unexpectedly. Like a bolt of lightning that melted down his brain.

A flash of movement caught his eye, and he yanked the camera up to the ready. Tiff had already scuttled halfway down the steps before he got in a series of rapid-fire shots. She shot a furtive glance to the right, then to the left, dark hair swishing over her beige raincoat. The guy followed her down the steps. Tall, fortyish, balding. Neither of them looked particularly relaxed or fulfilled. The guy tried to kiss her. Tiff turned away so the kiss landed on her ear. He got it all on film.

Tiff got into her car. It roared to life, and she pulled away, faster than she needed to on the rainy, deserted street. The guy stared after her, bewildered. Clueless bastard. He had no idea what a snake pit he was sliding into. Nobody ever did, until it was too late.

Connor let the camera drop. The guy climbed his steps and went back inside, shoulders slumped. Those pictures ought to be enough for Phil Kurtz, Tiff’s scheming dickhead of a husband. Ironically, Phil was cheating on Tiff, too. He just wanted to make sure that Tiff wouldn’t be able to screw him over in the inevitable acrimonious divorce.

It made him nauseous. Not that he cared who Tiff Kurtz was sleeping with. She could boff a whole platoon of balding suits if she wanted. Phil was such a whiny, vindictive prick, he almost didn’t blame her, and yet, he did. He couldn’t help it. She should leave Phil. Make it clean, honest. Start a new life. A real life.

Hah. Like he had any right to judge. He tried to laugh at himself, but the laugh petered out with no breath to bear it up. He couldn’t stomach the betrayal. Lying and sneaking, slinking around in the shadows like a bad dog trying to get away with something. It pressed down on his chest, suffocating him. Or maybe that was just the effect of all the unfiltered cigarettes he was sucking on.

It was his own fault for letting Davy talk him into helping out with the detective agency. He hadn’t been able to face going back to his old job after what happened last fall, but he should’ve known better. After putting a colleague behind bars for setting you up to die, well, following cheating spouses around wasn’t exactly therapeutic. Davy must figure that Tiff was just the kind of stultifying no-brainer that even his washed-up little brother would have a hard time fucking up.

Oh, man. The pity party was getting ugly. He clenched his teeth and tried to adjust his attitude by sheer brute force. Davy unloaded Tiff and her ilk onto him because he was bored with them, and who could blame him. And if Connor couldn’t take it, he should shut up and get another job. Security guard, maybe. Night shift, so he wouldn’t have to interact with anybody. Maybe he could be a janitor in some huge industrial facility. Shove a push broom down miles of deserted corridors night after night. Oh, yeah. That ought to cheer him right up.

It wasn’t like he was hurting for money. His house was paid for. The investments Davy had forced him to make had done fine. His car was a vintage ’67 Caddy that would not die. He didn’t care about expensive clothes. He didn’t date. Once he’d acquired the stereo and video system that he liked, he hardly knew what to spend the interest dividends on. With what he had socked away, he could probably scrape by even if he never worked again.

God, what a bleak prospect. Forty-odd years more of scraping along, doing nothing, meaning nothing to anyone. It made him shudder.

Connor fished the unsmoked cigarette out of his coat pocket. Everything got dirty and stained, everything broke down, everything had a price. It was time to accept reality and stop sulking. He had to get his life back. Some kind of life.

He’d liked his life once. He’d spent nine years as an agent in the undercover FBI task force that his partner Jesse had dubbed “The Cave,” and he’d been good at feeling his way into the parts he played. He’d seen his share of ugly stuff, and yeah, he’d been haunted by some of it, but he’d also known the bone-deep satisfaction that came from doing what he was born to do. He’d loved being in the middle of everything, wired to a taut web of interconnected threads; touch one, and the whole fabric rippled and hummed. Senses buzzing, brain working overtime, churning out connections, deductions, conclusions. He’d loved it. And he’d loved trying to make a difference.

But now the threads were ripped. He was numb and isolated, in free fall. What good would it do to hear about Novak? He couldn’t help. His web was cut. He had nothing to offer. What would be the point?

He lit the cigarette and groped around in his mind for Nick’s number. It popped up instantly, blinking on the screen inside his mind. Photographic memory was a McCloud family trait. Sometimes it was useful, sometimes it was just a dumb parlor trick. Sometimes it was a curse. It kept things eternally fresh in his brain that he would prefer to forget. Like that white linen halter top that Erin had worn at the Riggs family Fourth of July picnic, for instance. Six goddamn years ago, and the memory was as sharp as broken glass. She’d been braless that day, so it was by far the best view he’d ever gotten of her beautiful tits. High and soft and tenderly pointed, bouncing every time she moved. Dark, taut nipples pressed hard against the thin fabric. He’d been amazed that Barbara, her mother, had allowed it. Particularly after Barbara had caught him staring. Her eyes had turned to ice.

Barbara was no fool. She hadn’t wanted her innocent young daughter hooking up with a cop. Look how it had turned out for her.

He knew better than to try to shove memories away. It just made them stronger, until they were huge and muscular, taking over his whole mind. Like the image of Erin’s dark, haunted eyes behind the patrol car window. Full of the terrible knowledge of betrayal.

He sucked smoke into his lungs and stared at the cell phone with unfriendly eyes. He’d thrown away the old one after what happened last fall. If he used this one to call Nick, then Nick would have the new number. Not good. He liked being unreachable. It suited his mood.

He closed his eyes, recalling last Christmas, when Davy and Sean had given him the damn thing. It was from Seth’s hoard of gizmos, which meant that it had a bunch of high-tech bells and whistles, some useful, some not. He’d leafed through Seth’s sheaf of explanatory paperwork, putting on a show of interest so as not to hurt everybody’s feelings. He vaguely remembered a function that blocked the incoming number from the display. He flipped through the pages in his mind, found the sequence. Keyed it in, dialed.

His stomach knotted painfully as it rang.

“Nick Ward,” his ex-colleague answered.

“It’s Connor.”

“No shit.” Nick’s voice was stone cold. “Had a good sulk, Con?”

He’d known this was going to be bad. “Can we skip this part, Nick? I’m not in the mood.”

“I don’t care about your goddamn mood. I’m not the one who sold you out. I don’t appreciate being punished for what Riggs did to you.”

“I’m not punishing you,” Connor said defensively.

“No? So what have you been doing for the last six months, asshole?”

Connor slumped lower in his seat. “I’ve been kind of out of it lately. You’d be stupid if you took it personally.”

Nick let out an unsatisfied grunt.

Connor waited. “So?”

“So what?”

Nick’s tone set his teeth on edge. “Davy said you had some news for me,” he said. “About Novak.”

“Oh. That.” Nick was enjoying himself now, the snotty bastard. “I thought that might get your attention. Novak’s broken out of prison.”

Adrenaline blasted through him. “What the fuck? When? How?”

“Three nights ago. Him, and two of his goons, Georg Luksch and Martin Olivier. Very slick, well planned, well financed. Help from the outside, probably the inside, too. Nobody got killed, amazingly enough. Daddy Novak must’ve been behind it. You can do a lot with billions of dollars. They’re already back in Europe. Novak and Luksch have been spotted in France.”

Nick paused, waiting for a reaction, but Connor was speechless. The muscles in his bum leg cramped up, sending fiery bolts of pain through his thigh. He gripped it with his fingers and tried to breathe.

“I just thought you should know. Considering that Georg Luksch has a personal bone to pick with you,” Nick said. “Ever since last November when you smashed all the bones in his face.”

“He was under orders to hurt Erin.” Connor’s voice vibrated with tension. “It was less than he deserved.”

Nick paused. “He never touched her. We have only Ed’s word that he was planning to, and Ed’s credibility is worth shit. Ed was trying to save his own skin, but did you think of that before you charged off to the rescue? Oh no. You had to be the big hero. For the love of Christ. It’s lucky you weren’t on active duty. You would have been crucified.”

“Georg Luksch is a convicted assassin,” Connor said, through clenched teeth. “He was ready to hurt her. He’s lucky he’s not dead.”

“Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say. Anyhow, your hero complex aside, I just wanted you to watch your back. Not that you give a shit, or need anybody’s help. And you’ve got better things to do than talk to me, so I won’t waste any more of your valuable time—”

“Hey, Nick. Don’t.”

Something in Connor’s voice made Nick pause. “Oh, what the hell,” he said wearily. “If things get weird, call me, OK?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Connor said. “But, uh…what about Erin?”

“What about her?”

“Novak hasn’t forgotten about her,” Connor said. “No way has he forgotten. Somebody should be assigned to guard her. Immediately.”

Nick’s long silence felt ominous. “You are seriously hung up on that chick, aren’t you, Con?”

He clenched his teeth and counted until he had his temper under control. “No,” he said, in a low, careful voice. “It’s just obvious to anybody with half a brain that she’s going to be on his hit list.”

Nick sighed. “You haven’t been listening, have you? You’re lost in your own fantasy world. Wake up. Novak is in France. He was spotted in Marseilles. He’s a monster, but he’s not an idiot. He’s not thinking about Erin. And don’t make me regret keeping you in the loop, because you don’t deserve to be there.”

Connor shook his head. “Nick, I know this guy. Novak would never—”

“Let it go, Con. Move on with your life. And watch your back.”

Nick hung up abruptly. Connor stared down at the phone in his shaking hand, ashamed of having blocked the number. He disabled the function and hit redial. Quick, before he could change his mind.

“Nick Ward,” his friend said tersely.

“Memorize this number,” Connor said.

Nick let out a startled laugh. “Whoa. I’m so honored.”

“Yeah, right. See you, Nick.”

“I hope so,” Nick said.

Connor broke the connection and let the phone drop onto the seat, his mind racing. Novak was filthy rich. He had the resources and the cunning to do the smart thing, to buy a new identity, a whole new life. But Connor had been studying him for years. Novak wouldn’t do the smart thing. He would do whatever the fuck he pleased. He thought he was a god. That delusion had flushed him out before. And that same delusion was what made him so deadly when his pride was stung.

Particularly to Erin. Christ, why was he the only one who could see it? His partner Jesse would have understood, but Jesse was long gone. Novak had tortured him to death sixteen months ago.

Erin had slipped through Novak’s fingers. He would consider that a personal insult. He would never let it go for the sake of expediency.

His leg was cramping again. He dug his fingers into the muscles and tried to breathe into it. He and his brothers had each other for protection, but Erin was wide open, laid out on the sacrificial altar. And Connor was the one who had put her there. His testimony had sent her dad to jail. She had to hate his guts for it, and who could blame her?

He covered his face with his hands and groaned. Erin would be at the very center of Novak’s twisted thoughts.

Just like she was always at the center of his own.

He tried to think it through logically, but logic had nothing to do with these impulses. He had to feel his way through it. If the Feds wouldn’t protect her, then he had to step into that empty space and protect her himself. He was so goddamn predictable. Erin was so innocent and luscious, calculated to push all his lamebrain, would-be hero buttons. And all those years of hot, explicit sexual fantasies about her didn’t help either, when it came to thinking clearly.

Still, the thought of having a real job to do, a job that might actually mean something to somebody, jerked his mind into focus so laser-sharp it was painful. It rolled back the fog that had shrouded him for months. His whole body was buzzing with wild, jittery energy.

He had to do this, no matter how much she hated him. And the thought of seeing her again made his face get hot, and his dick get hard, and his heart thud heavily against his ribs.

Christ, she scared him worse than Novak did.

Subject: Re: New Acquisitions

Date: Sat, May 18, 14:54

From: “Claude Mueller”

To: “Erin Riggs”

Dear Ms. Riggs:

Thank you for forwarding me a copy of your master’s thesis. I was intrigued with your theories on the religious significance of bird imagery in La Tene period Celtic artifacts. I just acquired a third century B.C.E. La Tene battle helmet with a bronze mechanical raven perched on top (see attached JPG). I look forward to discussing it with you.

In addition to the helmet, I have several other new items to show you. I will be passing through Oregon en route to Hong Kong, staying at the Silver Fork Bay Resort tomorrow. I am arriving late in the evening and leaving the following day. This is short notice, and I understand if you cannot make it, but I went ahead and arranged an e-ticket for the SeaTac-Portland shuttle for you tomorrow. A limo will be waiting in Portland to take you to the coast. We can examine the pieces together Monday morning, and then have lunch, if time permits.

I hope you do not find me presumptuous. Please come. I look forward to meeting you in person, since I continue to have the strangest feeling that I know you already.

I trust the same economic arrangement as before will be acceptable. JPGs of the items that I want you to examine are attached.

Sincerely yours,

Claude Mueller

Quicksilver Foundation

Erin leaped out of her chair and hopped for joy. The walls of the studio apartments in the Kinsdale Arms were too thin to permit herself howls of triumph, so she pressed her hand to her mouth to muffle the howls into ecstatic squeaking noises. She reread the e-mail on the screen again and again, just to make sure it still said the same thing.

This job was going to save her sorry butt, and in the nick of time, too. She was probably knocking the rotten ceiling plaster onto the head of her cantankerous downstairs neighbor with her jumping, but she didn’t care. Maybe the great Whoever had decided she’d had enough piss-poor luck lately, and it was time to give her a breather.

Edna demanded an explanation for this unseemly excitement with a disapproving meow. Erin picked her up, but she cuddled the finicky cat too tightly. Edna leaped out of her arms with a disgusted prrrt.

Erin spun around in a goofy dance step. Her luck was finally turning. Her eyes fell on the cross-stitch that hung over her computer, which read: “You Shape Your Own Reality Every Day.” For the first time in months, it didn’t make her feel as if someone were asking her, in the snootiest of tones, “And is this the best you can do?”

She’d stitched the damned thing four months ago, right after getting fired from her job. She had been so angry, she could barely see straight, and the project had been an effort to channel all that negative, destructive energy into a positive direction. She’d written it off as a failed experiment, though. Especially since every time she looked at the thing she wanted to rip it off the wall and hurl it across the room.

Oh, well. It was the effort that counted. And she had to at least try to think positively. With Dad in jail, Mom crumbling in on herself, and Cindy acting out, she couldn’t afford one instant of self-pity.

She printed out Mueller’s e-mail and the e-ticket itinerary attached to it. First class. How lovely. Not that she would’ve minded economy. A Greyhound bus would’ve been fine. Hell, she’d have cheerfully agreed to hitchhike down to Silver Fork, but being pampered was such a balm to her bruised ego. She glanced around the water-stained walls of the dismal studio apartment, the single window that looked out at a sooty, blank brick wall, and sighed.

First things first. She grabbed her organizer, riffled through it until she found today’s To Do list, and added: Call temp agency. Call Tonia to feed Edna. Call Mom. Pack. She dialed the temp agency.

“Hello, this is Erin Riggs, leaving a message for Kelly. I won’t be able to make it in to Winger, Drexler & Lowe on Monday. I have a last-minute business trip tomorrow. I’m caught up on all the current case transcriptions, so all they’ll need is someone to cover their phones. Of course, I’ll be back in on Tuesday. Thanks, and have a nice weekend.”

She forcibly suppressed her guilt about missing a day’s work with no notice as she hung up the phone. Her fee for one of these consulting jobs equaled almost two weeks’ pay from the temp agency at thirteen bucks an hour. And wasn’t that what temping was all about? Less commitment from both parties, right? Right. Like one of those relationships where you were free to see other people. Not that she was an expert on those. Or any other kind of relationship, for that matter.

The easy-come, easy-go temp concept was hard to get used to. She liked to fling herself into her work and give two hundred percent. Which was why it had hurt so badly when they had fired her from the job she’d gotten out of grad school. She’d been the assistant curator for the growing Celtic antiquities collection at the Huppert Institute.

She had worked her butt off for them, and she’d done an excellent job, but Lydia, her boss, had trumped up an excuse to get rid of her during the media furor surrounding Dad’s trial. She claimed that Erin was too distracted by her personal problems to do her job, but it was clear that she considered Erin a liability for the museum’s image. Bad for future funding. “Unappetizing” had been the word Lydia had used, the day she’d fired her. Which, coincidentally, had been the same day that a pack of bloodthirsty journalists had followed Erin to work, demanding to know how she felt about the videos.

Those celebrated X-rated videos of her father and his mistress, which had been used to blackmail him into corruption and murder. The videos which, God alone knew how or why, were now available on the Internet for all to enjoy.

Erin tried to shove the memory away, using her shopworn sanity-saving mantras: I have nothing to be ashamed of; Let it go; This too shall pass…None of them worked worth a damn anymore, not that they ever had. Lydia had all but blamed Erin personally for the whole thing.

To hell with Lydia, and with Dad, too, for getting them into this sordid, public mess. Her anger felt like poison running through her body, making her guilty and sick. Dad was paying the highest price he could for what he’d done. Being sour and pissy wouldn’t change things, and she had no time to mope. Busy was better.

That phrase was another sanity saver. The best of the lot. It was dorky and uncool, but she was already a lost cause when it came to cool. Look up uncool in the dictionary, and you’d find a photo of Erin Riggs. Busy, busy, busy Erin Riggs.

She sharpened a pencil and crossed off Call temp agency. Sure, it was stupid to put items on her list just to immediately cross them off. Grasping for a cheap, fleeting sense of accomplishment. She didn’t care. Every little bit of accomplishment helped. Even the cheap kind.

Mom’s bills still headed the list. The scariest, most depressing item. She decided to stall for a couple more minutes, and dialed her friend Tonia’s number. Tonia’s machine clicked on. “Hi, Tonia? I got a last-minute job from Mueller, and I have to go to the coast tomorrow. Just wondering if you could pass by to feed Edna. Let me know. Don’t worry if you can’t, I’ll find another solution. Talk to you later.”

She hung up, her belly fluttering with anxiety as she gathered together Mom’s checkbook, bank statements, her calculator, and the stack of unopened mail that she’d collected from beneath the mail slot on her last visit home. Throwing away junk mail cut the pile down to half, but many of the remaining envelopes had FINAL NOTICE stenciled across them in scary red block print. Brrr. Special pile for those.

She arranged them neatly in piles. Unpaid property taxes, due months ago. Threatening letters from collection agencies. Past due mortgage payments. Past due phone bills. Medical bills. Credit card bills, big ones. A letter from the bursar’s office of Endicott Falls College, “regretting the necessity of withdrawing Cynthia Riggs’s scholarship, based on poor academic performance.” That one made Erin close her eyes and press her hand against her mouth.

Moving right along. No point in dwelling on it. Organization was calming. It put things in perspective. She piled collection agency letters in one pile, past due notices in another, and made three columns in her notebook: Urgently Overdue, Overdue, and Due. She totaled the sums, and compared it to what was left in Mom’s account. Her heart sank.

She couldn’t cover the shortfall in the Urgently Overdue column, not even if she drained her meager checking account dry. Mom had to get a job; it was the only solution, but Erin hadn’t had much luck even getting Mom out of bed lately, let alone out into the workforce.

But it was that, or lose the house she had moved into as a bride. That would push Mom over the edge for sure.

Erin let her face drop down against the neat piles of bills and fought the urge to cry. Sniveling was not constructive. She’d done enough of it in these past few months, so she should know. She needed fresh ideas, new solutions. It was just so hard to think outside the box, all by herself. Her tired, lonesome brain felt like it was padlocked inside a box. With chains wrapped around it.

This job from Claude Mueller was a godsend. He was a mysterious figure, a reclusive, art-loving multimillionaire, the administrator of the enormous Quicksilver Fund. He had found her in a random Internet search on Celtic artifacts, which had landed him on one of her articles, posted on the website she’d designed when she started her own consulting business. He’d begun to e-mail her, complimenting her on her articles, asking questions, even requesting a copy of her doctoral thesis. Oh, boy. The ultimate ego rush for an antiquities nerd like her.

But then he had asked her to come to Chicago to authenticate some new acquisitions, and he hadn’t blinked an eye at her fee. Or rather, his staff hadn’t. He had been in Paris at the time. She hadn’t met him on that or any of the three subsequent jobs, the fees for which had been providential. The first had paid for her move from the apartment on Queen Anne to this far cheaper room in the run-down Kinsdale Arms. The second and third, in San Diego, had covered the insurance deductibles of Mom’s recent medical bills. The Santa Fe job had paid two of her mother’s past due mortgage payments. And this one, hopefully, would almost cover the Urgently Overdue column.

Working for Mueller had been so dignified. First class, all expenses paid. It had been lovely to be treated with deference and respect. Such a pleasant break from the squalid grind of her daily life; arguing with the bank over missed mortgage payments, begging her landlord to call the exterminator, spending all of January with no hot water. And the sordid details of Dad’s trial, surfacing one after the other, until nothing could shock her anymore. Well, almost nothing. Those videos had been quite a jolt.

Enough. Moving right along. So Claude Mueller wanted to meet her in person, did he? How gratifying. She was curious about him, too. She paper-clipped the bills together, put them into the Mom’s Bills folder in her file cabinet, and turned her attention to the Mueller e-mail.

She had to hit the perfect tone for her reply. Warm, enthusiastic, but not puppyish or, God forbid, desperate. Reserved, but with just a flash of extra personal interest showing through at the end. Looking forward to it…pleased to have the opportunity to meet you at last, etc. Referrals from Mueller could set her highly specialized consulting business on its way. And she was finished in Seattle with museum work, since the Huppert had fired her. She would have to change cities to get away from the dark cloud that hung over her, and she couldn’t possibly leave her mother and Cindy when they were both so unstable.

She had gleaned all the info she could on Mueller from the Internet. He was publicity-shy, though he’d been cited in museum journals for his generous donations to the arts. Her grant-writing and development colleagues were forever swooning over the largesse of the Quicksilver Fund. He was in his early forties, and lived on a private island off the coast of southern France. That was all she knew.

She read over her response and hit SEND. Who knew? Maybe Mueller would prove to be attractive and charming. His e-mails were faintly flirtatious. He was intellectual, erudite. Wealthy, too, not that she cared, but it was an interesting fact to file away. He appreciated the sensual, enigmatic beauty of Celtic artifacts, which were her passion. He was a collector of beautiful objects.

Nothing at all like Connor McCloud.

Ouch. Damn. And here she’d been quietly patting herself on the back for not thinking of Connor for hours. She tried to wrestle her mind away from him, but it was too late. His hair had grown out, as shaggy and wild as a Celtic warrior the last time she’d seen him, at the Crystal Mountain nightmare last fall. He’d leaned on his blood-spattered cane while Georg was loaded onto a stretcher behind him, staring at her. His face had been so hard and fierce, his eyes boring into hers. Blazing with barely controlled fury. The image was indelibly marked on her memory.

That was the day that her life had begun to unravel. And Connor had been the one to haul Dad into custody. Her father, the traitor and murderer. God, when was this going to hurt a little less?

She’d had a knee-trembling crush on Connor McCloud for ten years, ever since Dad had brought the recruits he was training for the new undercover unit home to dinner when she was sixteen. One look at him, and something had gone hot and soft and stupid inside of her. His tilted eyes, the translucent green of a glacial lake. His lean, foxy face, all planes and angles. The sexy grooves in his cheeks when he grinned. His beard stubble, glinting gold. He’d always been quiet and shy when he ate at their house, his mile-a-minute partner Jesse doing most of the talking, but his laid-back, sexy baritone voice sent shivers through her body whenever he spoke. His hair was a shaggy mane, a crazy mix of every possible color of blonde. She wanted to touch its thick, springy texture. To bury her face in it and breathe him in.

And his body had been the focus of her most feverish erotic dreams in the privacy of her bed for years. He was so tall and lean and muscular. Whipcord tough, every muscle defined, but as graceful and agile as a dancer. She’d loved it when he pushed up his sleeves so she could sneak peeks at his thick, ropy forearms. His broad shoulders and long, graceful hands, those powerful legs, that excellent butt that looked so fine in his faded jeans. He was so gorgeous, it made her head spin.

She’d been tongue-tied and fluff-brained in his presence for years, but any romantic dreams she might have had about finally catching his interest when she grew a bosom, or got up the nerve to talk to him, had evaporated forever that day at Crystal Mountain. When she discovered that Dad was collaborating with a vicious criminal. That Georg, the guy who’d been coming on to her at the ski lodge, was an assassin who was hovering over her in order to control Dad.

That it had been Dad’s betrayal that had gotten Jesse killed, and almost cost Connor his life.

She covered her face, trying to breathe through the burning ache in her chest. Boy, had that ever put a damper on her secret fantasy life.

Her own stupidity made her sigh. She had bigger problems than unrequited lust. Beginning with her mother’s finances. Busy was better, she repeated as she dialed Mom’s number. Busy was much better.

We’re sorry, but the number you have dialed has been disconnected…Oh, God. It seemed like just last week that she’d had Mom’s phone turned back on. She couldn’t leave town without checking on Mom.

She reached for her keys before she could stop herself. Her car had been repossessed months ago. She still hadn’t broken the habit. She ran down the stairs, shoved open the door, and raised her face to the sky. The clouds were clearing. A star glowed low on the horizon.

“Hi, Erin.”

That low voice sent a shock of intense awareness through her body. She stumbled back against the door.

Connor McCloud was standing right there, staring at her.