Against the Storm1 (4 page)

“You aren’t my wife anymore, Carly. I can ignore you whenever I want.”

She sniffed, tilted her head back to look up at him. “What if something had happened? What if I’d been in a car wreck or something?”

“Were you in a car wreck?”

“No, but I could have been. Did you see that newspaper article in the
Chronicle
this morning? That woman who drove down to the shore and never came back? Her parents are frantic. She was my age, Trace—twenty-nine years old and she just disappeared.”

“I saw it. The police think maybe she took off with her boyfriend or something.”

“Or maybe she was
murdered.
” Carly shuddered with feigned revulsion. “A woman needs a man to look out for her.” She smiled, her tears long forgotten, looped her arms around his neck and went up on her toes to look into his face. “You know I still love you, Trace. Sometimes I just need to know you’re still there for me.”

He took hold of her wrists and eased her back down
on her feet. “Look, Carly. You aren’t in any sort of danger and you need to get on with your life. That’s what people do when they get divorced.”

“I never wanted a divorce and you know it.”

“No, but you wanted other men in your bed. That didn’t work for me.”

Her chin angled up. “You weren’t there, Trace. You were working all the time.”

“I was trying to build the business, trying to make a life for us. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you properly entertained.”

“It was all your fault and you know it.”

Maybe some of it was, but mostly he had just picked the wrong woman, as his friends had tried to warn him. Carly was wild and self-centered. She hadn’t been ready to settle down when he’d married her. She wasn’t ready now.

Still, he felt sorry for her. She wasn’t happy. He wasn’t sure she ever would be.

He turned her around and urged her gently toward the door. “We’ve been through all this before.”
A thousand times,
he added silently. “Things just didn’t work out, that’s all. Go home, Carly. Entertain yourself with someone else.”

She jerked to a halt at the door. “You’re cruel, Trace. Cruel and heartless.”

If anything, he was too soft when it came to women. Years ago, he had learned to control his temper. He had come to value his self-control. He’d been raised to treat a woman like a lady. He did his best to do just that.

“Good night, Carly,” he said gently, then waited as she stormed out the door. Trace watched her drive her little silver BMW sports car down the alley out of sight,
and wondered which of her many admirers had bought it for her.

He lifted his hat, raked back his hair, then settled the hat a little lower across his forehead. He had no idea why his ex-wife continued to plague him. They were never right for each other, never should have married. They might have been in lust at one time, but they were never in love.

That same kind of attraction to a good-looking redhead had hit him several other times in his life. None of those times had ended well.

Trace thought of Maggie O’Connell and warned himself not to go down that road again.

I
t was pitch-black in her upstairs bedroom. Only the night sounds of crickets and cicadas intruded into the darkness of the high-ceilinged room. Maggie tossed and turned beneath the lightweight down comforter, unable to sleep with so much on her mind. She needed to get the photos completed for her coffee-table book. And she had a show coming up. She had most of the pictures ready, but could use a few more for the exhibit.

She sighed into the darkness. She had so much to do. Aside from her work, she needed to unpack, try to make the town house more of a home. There wasn’t much furniture downstairs, and only a bed, two nightstands and a dresser in her bedroom, stuff she’d had for years.

She still had a few pieces to bring over from the apartment before the end of the month, when her lease was up, and some things she needed to buy, and of course her photos and some prized Ansel Adams pieces that needed to be hung on the walls. She wasn’t much of a decorator but she could do better than the way it looked now.

She punched her pillow, turned onto her back and
stared at the ceiling. Tomorrow was Saturday. She planned to drive down to Galveston, take some shots around the harbor. She needed to get up early. Which meant she had to get some sleep.

She closed her eyes, tried to clear her head.

That was when she heard it. The faint scraping of a chair against the ceramic tile floor in the kitchen. She listened, straining her ears. Was that the patio door sliding open? Was that a footstep she heard on the stairs? Her heart was pounding, thumping against her ribs. Her palms felt slick where she clenched the sheet. She thought of the notes she had received, wondered if the man who had written them was crazy enough to break into her home.

She listened again, trying to decide if she should call 911. The police would show up, she figured, even if they knew she was the caller. But as the seconds stretched into minutes, she realized the only sound she was hearing was the fear pumping through her veins.

When the noise didn’t come again, she began to relax. She had imagined the intruder. There was no one in the house. As Trace had insisted, she had carefully locked the doors.

She glanced at the digital clock beside the bed: 2:15. She lay there in silence, her ears focused to catch any noise out of the ordinary, but she didn’t hear anything more. The little button in the center of the bedroom doorknob was pushed. It wasn’t much of a lock, but it gave her some sense of security. At least she would know if someone was trying to get in.

She watched the clock, the numbers slipping past. At two thirty-five, she rolled out of bed. No other sounds had reached her. Maybe she had fallen asleep for an in
stant and dreamed the entire incident. Things like that had happened to her before.

Still, she had to know.

Reaching for the blue fleece robe tossed over the foot of the bed, she slipped her arms inside and tied the sash around her waist. After years of living in the Texas heat, she slept in the nude, but she always kept the robe handy in case there was some sort of emergency, like a fire, or just someone arriving unexpectedly at her door.

She listened again for a moment, heard nothing and quietly turned the knob. Easing the door open, she waited. Just the ticking of the antique clock that she planned to hang on the wall in the living room but hadn’t done yet. Sticking her head out in the hallway, she glanced both ways, but no lights were burning; nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

After tiptoeing down the hall, she slipped into her photo studio and grabbed a makeshift weapon—a unipod, the one-legged stand she sometimes used to steady her camera. She quietly retraced her steps with it clutched in both hands, and descended the stairs.

No movement. No sound. Maggie flipped on the light switch, illuminating the glass lamp hanging in the foyer, casting a bright glow partway into the living room. Nothing.

The tension eased from her shoulders. She turned on the light in the kitchen, turned on a lamp in the living room, took a look around. She had imagined the entire episode—thank God.

It was the note. The notes were making her edgy and restless, sending her into a tailspin. She hoped Trace Rawlins would find the man who had been harassing her.

She moved through the house, making a brief inspec
tion of the locks, finding them all secured. She turned off the brass lamp in the living room, then padded back to the kitchen. Her hand paused midway to the light switch as her eyes caught something sitting on the breakfast bar.

A cold chill swept through her. The only things there when she had gone to bed were the telephone, the old-fashioned answering machine she still used and the address book she kept beside them.

Her mouth went dry. She forced her feet to carry her to the counter. Her hand shook as she reached toward the small porcelain statuette sitting on top. It was no more than five inches high, a man in a black tuxedo dancing with a woman with upswept red hair wearing a long, flowing, pale green evening gown.

Maggie swallowed. Her gaze shot around the kitchen, but she had checked the rooms and the closets and found no one there. Picking up her address book with a shaking hand, she flicked it open. Trace Rawlins’s business card rested just inside.

Frantically, she dialed the cell number printed on the card, terrified that the man who had left the statue might be hiding in the house and she just hadn’t found him. With the phone pressed against her ear, she listened to the ringing on the other end of the line and prayed Trace Rawlins would answer.

The boat was running with the wind,
Ranger’s Lady
skimming over the surface of the frothy blue ocean. The early-spring air felt fresh and cool against his skin. Gulls screeched and turned over the top of the mast, circling the boat in search of food.

Trace was smiling, enjoying the perfect day, when Faith Hill’s sweet voice began to sing to him through
his cell phone. In an instant, he was jolted awake, a habit from his days in the Rangers. His hand shot out and grabbed the phone off the bedside table, and he pressed it against his ear.

“Rawlins,” he rasped in a sleepy voice.

“Trace, it’s Maggie O’Connell.”

“Maggie?” Worry slid through him. He rolled to the side of the bed, swung his long legs over the side. “Maggie, what is it?”

“Someone…someone was in my house tonight. He left…left something for me on the counter.”

A chill ran down Trace’s spine. “Have you called the police?”

“I—I called you instead.”

His fingers tightened around the phone. “Are you sure he isn’t still there?”

“I—I don’t think so.”

“Not good enough. Hang up and call 911. I’m on my way.”

Trace hung up the phone, grabbed his jeans off the back of a chair and pulled them on without bothering with his briefs. After dragging a T-shirt over his head, he pulled on his boots and headed for the door. Sensing his urgency, Rowdy followed, but the dog was used to his master’s odd hours and didn’t make a fuss.

Trace’s shoulder holster hung on the hat rack beside the back door. He used a Beretta 9 mm semiauto when he carried, which he hadn’t needed to do lately. He slipped on the holster, snapped out the weapon and checked the load as he hurried outside toward his car.

It didn’t take long to reach Maggie’s town house. He was glad he had been there before. It was almost three in the morning, but the lights were on. As he strode up the walkway, he could see her through a small window
over the sink in the kitchen, standing there in her bathrobe, her arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold.

No patrol car was in sight. Trace silently cursed the time it was taking them to get there. He knocked on the door. “Maggie? It’s Trace.”

She opened the door an instant later, her shoulders sagging with relief as he walked past her into the entry.

“Thank you for coming.”

He glanced around. “I thought the cops would be here by now.”

Her gaze strayed from his. “I, um, didn’t call them.”

Frustration tightened Trace’s jaw. “Why the hell not?”

“You were on your way. I took another look around. I’m sure he’s not here.”

Trace shook his head. “Dammit, Maggie.” Pulling the Beretta from its holster, he made a check of the rooms downstairs, the coat closet, the bedroom and bath. He made the same search upstairs, the master bedroom and bath, and the photo studio. Returning downstairs, he opened the door from the entry into the garage, flipped on the light and took the single step down.

Maggie’s Ford Escape sat in the garage. The door leading outside was locked. There was no sign of whoever had come into the house.

“I checked the doors and windows,” he told her as he returned to the kitchen. “They’re all locked. No broken latches, nothing. Any idea how he got in?”

“I don’t know.”

“Show me what he left you.”

She led him to the breakfast bar. “That.” She pointed
toward the item on the counter. “It’s pretty innocuous, just a little porcelain statuette, but…”

“But it means something. At least to him.”

Trace examined the dancing couple, carefully painted by hand. Using a paper towel, he lifted the piece to examine it more closely, noting that the bottom was uneven, as if it had been attached to something, and broken off.

He set the statuette back on the breakfast bar. “Does it mean anything to you?”

Maggie shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks a little like one of those things you put on top of a wedding cake.”

“Yeah, but it isn’t. Check the bottom.” He showed her the uneven edges. “At one time, this was attached to something. Glued on, it looks like.”

“I have no idea why anyone would leave that here,” she said, her gaze still on the figurine. Her eyes were the same pale green as the woman’s dress, her hair the same fiery red. The porcelain figure meant something, all right, and whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

Trace glanced around the town house. “Your locks are a joke. Tomorrow I’ll have my guys come over and install some decent ones, along with a security system.”

“They’re, uh, kind of expensive, aren’t they?”

For the first time, he smiled. “You’re a client. You get a special price. We’ll just do the basics—the windows and doors, a couple motion detectors.”

“I guess I don’t have much choice.”

He gently caught her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. “We need to call the police, Maggie. Someone broke into your home. This isn’t the first problem you’ve had. You need to file a report, keep the cops in the loop.”

She looked away, studied her slender feet, showing beneath the hem of the robe, the pale peach polish on her toenails. Trace’s gaze followed hers and he found himself wondering how smooth her skin would feel, how responsive she would be if his hand moved up her thigh. He wondered what she was wearing beneath the robe, and felt himself harden inside his jeans.

Son of a bitch.
He forced his attention back to her face, amazed that he had allowed his attraction to sidetrack his thoughts.

“What is it with you and the cops?” he asked. “You don’t have a record, do you?”

Her eyes widened. “No, I… No, of course not.”

But he thought that her face went a little pale. He pulled out his cell and dialed 911, and a few minutes later a white-and-blue patrol car rolled up. A Hispanic officer whose name tag read Gonzalez, and his slightly chubby, blond-haired partner, walked into the town house in response to the call.

The blond cop, Sandowski, searched the unit, while Gonzalez took Maggie’s statement, which briefly re-capped the events of the night.

“So that’s it?” Gonzalez said, making a final note on his pad as she finished. “You heard a noise and found the statue on the counter?”

“That’s what happened, yes.”

“Was anything stolen?”

“I don’t think so. I haven’t noticed anything missing.”

He looked at Trace. “What about you? You got anything to add?”

Trace explained that he had come over after receiving Maggie’s call. “She was clearly upset. She’s been
getting threatening messages left on her car, hang-up calls, that kind of thing.”

Sandowski returned from his search just then. “I checked the doors and windows. No sign of forced entry. Are you sure your cleaning lady or a friend didn’t leave the statue there? Maybe you just didn’t notice it before you went to bed.”

Maggie’s pretty lips thinned. “It wasn’t there.”

Gonzalez wrote something on his notepad. “We’ll take a look around outside before we leave. I suggest you check with friends, see if maybe one of them was playing a joke or something.”

“It wasn’t a joke,” Maggie said tightly.

The officers headed for the door. It was obvious they believed she had just overlooked the presence of the porcelain figurine.

Maggie had said the cops weren’t able to help her. Clearly, they weren’t convinced the threat against her was real. First thing in the morning, Trace would take the figurine down to his office, do a check for prints on it and the notes she’d received.

“Will you be able to sleep?” he asked once the police were gone.

“Probably not.” She raked soft red curls back from her face. Sleep-tousled, they teased her cheeks and shoulders. His fingers itched to touch them.

“You need to get some rest,” he said a little gruffly, thinking that under different circumstances he might have exactly the sleeping pill she needed. As it was, Maggie was his client, his responsibility. He had no intention of trying to seduce her.

He almost smiled. And he was pretty sure if he tried, his chances of success would be slim to none.

“I was planning to drive down to the shore tomor
row,” she said, “take some shots for my book. Now…I don’t know….”

“That might not be a bad idea,” Trace said before he could stop himself. “Until you walked into my office, I was thinking of heading to Kemah for the weekend. I’ve got a boat docked there.”

One of her burnished eyebrows went up. “A cowboy who rides a boat instead of a horse?”

He smiled. “That’s me.”

“Kemah’s a charming little town. I’ve gotten some great pictures on the boardwalk.”