And Able (9 page)

“And you believed her.”

“Why wouldn’t I? She was weak. Just like my dad. Neither of them could deal with reality. She hid from it in a bottle. He hid from it in death.”

“And they both left you to pick up the pieces.”

“Yes.”

“You said your mom died.”

“After a protracted bout of liver cancer. Yes. I took care of her.”

“That’s why you’re twenty-eight and just finishing your degree?”

“Bingo. I couldn’t leave her alone to attend classes. I finished my senior year as a homeschooled student.”

“Let me guess…you taught yourself.”

“Of course.” She sighed, pushing the old memories away. “So now you know why I can’t be the target of whoever broke in here.”

He stopped, pulling her around to face him. “How do you figure that?”

She let their eyes make contact and a craven relief she wished she didn’t feel surged through her. He didn’t look condemning or disbelieving any longer.

“I may have made a new life for myself, but I don’t have anything anyone would want to steal. And I don’t have a criminal record.” It still rankled that he’d accused her of having a larcenous past. “There is no one in my past or present that could have any reason for doing the break-in.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Yes, I can. I don’t make friends easily. The people closest to me are Josette and the residents at Belmont Manor. Tell me, how could my connection to a bunch of elderly people make me the target for what’s been happening?”

“I don’t know, but it all points to you, Claire.”

“I don’t see how. The whole house was torn up, not just my bedroom. The guy who attacked me could have thought I was Josette.”

“That scenario doesn’t feel right. It never did, but nothing else made sense.”

“It still doesn’t.”

“Are you sure you’re telling me everything?” He was no longer so cold, but neither was he looking at her with the combination of sexy desire and warm concern she’d grown addicted to so pitifully fast. “I want to help you, Claire, but I can’t do that if you hide stuff from me.”

Betrayal sliced through her. “I just told you things I’ve never shared with another person and you still think I’m holding back? Do you think I like admitting that my dad killed himself rather than stick it out with my mom and me, or that my mom killed herself, too—just more slowly—with her drinking?”

“I’m sorry about that, sugar, I really am—”

“I don’t want your pity,” she said fiercely, cutting him off. “I just want you to see that there is nothing in my life that could make me the target of all of this. All right?”

“I understand your doubts, but you could be forgetting something, or not thinking in terms that would make a threat a threat. I know this sounds confusing, but this isn’t about me not believing you. It’s about my gut, and it’s telling me you are dead center in the middle of this mess.”

“Well, your gut is wrong.” She spun on her heel and started back to the house.

His hand landed on her shoulder, big and warm and impeding her progress.

She slowed down, but didn’t stop. “Take your hand off of me.” She couldn’t stand him touching her right then.

“Where do you think you are going?”

“Where I go and what I do is none of your darn business.” She didn’t care if she was being irrational. She was mad and she wanted to get away from him. The fact that his instincts told him that she was in the middle felt like he was judging her somehow, like he had to see something wrong in her to feel that way.

“I made it my business when I promised Josie I would keep an eye out for you.”

The blatant reminder that Josette was the only reason he was there did nothing to improve her mood. “I release you from your promise.” Knowing the words were stupid made her even madder, and she tried to tug away from him so she could walk faster, but he wouldn’t let go.

He pulled and she found herself wrapped up next to him, his scent and heat taunting her. They stopped again and he tilted her chin up with his hand so her gaze had nowhere to go but his face. “It doesn’t work that way. I didn’t make the commitment to you, and I keep my promises.”

“You made it
 
about
 
me and I don’t want you held to it anymore,” she insisted, her voice sharp, her heart beating too fast.

“That’s too bad, sugar, because I’m not going anywhere.”

Unable to stand the contact, she shoved with desperate strength, breaking his hold, and stepped back. “I don’t need you watching over me and I don’t want you around me.”

“You need me, all right,” he retorted harshly. “Someone is after you.”

“So you say.”

He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a bear growling. “Whether it’s you or Josie they are after, you can’t stay in the house by yourself.”

“I’m not staying in the house at all.”

Whatever was going on, Josette’s house wasn’t safe. Claire didn’t know what she was going to do, except that she had to leave. She needed to go someplace that got her away from the danger of staying around Brett as well as far away from the man who had tried to smother her.

“Where do you plan to go?” The question was innocuous, but his body language said she wasn’t going
 
anywhere
 
if he had anything to say about it.

“That’s not your problem. As long as I’m out of Josette’s house, I’m out of your hair. Your responsibility to me ends.”

“Like hell.”

“Leave it alone, Brett. We’re done here.”

Suddenly the air shimmering between them changed, and the sense of antagonism coming off of him disappeared, leaving her disoriented. So when he moved into her personal space and cupped her shoulders, she just stood there, incapable of objecting, though she didn’t know why.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” He sounded contrite, like he really cared.

But she shook her head. Other people rarely
 
meant
 
to hurt you, but they did it all the same, and she’d let herself feel too much for this man. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter, sugar. You’re wanting to go off half-cocked because of me. I can’t let you do that. You’d end up hurt and it would be my fault.”

“You are not responsible for my safety—or my feelings, for that matter. I wouldn’t give you that much power over me.”

Hotwire wasn’t sure why Claire was so pissed off, but he knew he had to fix it. He was not letting her walk away from him, not when her life was so obviously in danger.

Maybe she was offended because she thought he didn’t believe her. “You said you don’t know why these things are happening, and I trust you. I really do.” He looked into her doe-brown eyes and willed
 
her
to believe
 
him
. “It’s just that my gut is saying you are at the center of whatever is going on, and I’ve learned to trust my instincts.”

“But I don’t know how I could be,” she said vehemently, looking not in the least appeased.

“I learned a long time ago, the bad guys don’t always make sense.”

“I don’t understand why your instincts latched on to me, Brett. I really don’t.”

The sound of his name on her lips gave him a twinge like it always did. Like it or not, this woman was under his skin and she wasn’t going anywhere for a while. “I don’t either, sugar, but they have. You’re my friend and I don’t want you hurt.”

She dropped her head so all he could see was the top of her wild mop of red curls. “Do friends distrust each other?”

She was still bothered that he’d accused her of having a criminal record. Talk about getting the wrong end of the stick. “Sometimes. People aren’t perfect, Claire, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care.”

“But why should you care? I’m nothing to you.”

Did she really believe that?

“You are my
 
friend
,” he repeated, emphasizing the word. “That means something to me.”

He’d slept with a lot of women, but few had been called
 
friend
 
in his life.

“To me, too,” she whispered.

“Does that mean you forgive me?”

She nodded, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

He tipped her head up so she had no choice. “Really?”

She closed her eyes, blocking him out.

He leaned down until their lips almost touched, knowing he was taking unfair advantage of her physical attraction to him, but willing to use anything to re-establish rapport with her. He was done trying to make the words work for him.

“Claire?” he whispered against her lips, his mouth brushing oh so lightly against hers.

She sighed into his mouth. “What?”

“Open your eyes and tell me you forgive me.”

Her eyes fluttered open, their brown depths hazy with the passion that flared instantly between them. “I forgive you.”

He groaned, forgetting what they were talking about, and closed the minuscule distance between their mouths. He kissed her until she melted against him and his body shook with the need to take her.

A dog barked, breaking into his concentration, and he remembered where they were. Exposed to danger in a public park. He was acting with less competence than a rookie. What if Claire was hurt because he was so busy kissing her, he let someone sneak up on them?

He pulled away reluctantly, despite the strict self-criticism. “The cops should be here soon.”

“Yes.”

“We should get back to the house.”

“Uh-huh,” she said vaguely.

He smiled, pleased by his effect on her, and led her back across the park.

Since there was nothing else to do while waiting for the police to arrive, they settled onto the couch and flipped on the television. Hotwire put his arm over Claire’s shoulder and didn’t realize he’d done it until she snuggled into his side.

It felt good, so he didn’t let himself worry about the strange compulsion he had to touch her all the time.

He was skimming through the channels when Claire stopped him. “Wait, I know her.”

“Who?”

“Go back to the public access cable channel.”

He clicked back to the image of an elderly woman talking to a young man.

“They don’t spring for much in the way of sets, do they?”

The two people were sitting on folding chairs in the middle of a bare room.

Claire shook her head impatiently, as if his small joke annoyed her. “That’s Queenie! What in the world is she doing on television?”

“Who’s Queenie?”

“She’s one of the residents at Belmont Manor. One of my friends.”

The woman with fluffy white hair and pale green eyes had to be seventy if she was a day. Claire really did have a bunch of geriatrics for friends. He wasn’t surprised. She was a kind person and the elderly people she worked with would no doubt enjoy her undemanding company.

“What’s she talking about?” he asked Claire. “What government conspiracy?”

“I don’t know. Shh…listen.” She grabbed the remote and turned up the TV.

Queenie hardly looked like the proverbial sweet old lady. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glittering with anger. “I’m absolutely convinced it is a government conspiracy. Lester had information that could make the powers that be look very bad in the eyes of the public.”

“O
 
nce again, we are talking with local resident Queenie Gunther, close friend to the recently deceased Lester Wilson,” the reporter said, his face toward the camera. Then he turned back to Queenie. “You suspect foul play in the death of your friend?”

“News must be slow today,” Hotwire said as Queenie answered an affirmative to her interviewer.

“It’s one of those pay-by-the-hour public access channels. Queenie used to host a local talk show on one of them. She’s still got contacts in the industry.”

“My poor Lester. It’s my fault he’s dead,” Queenie said, sounding genuinely distressed. “I wrote the exposé, and two weeks later, poof…he’s gone.”

“Do you mind sharing the gist of that exposé with our viewing public?”

Hotwire couldn’t help wondering just how big that audience was. He didn’t imagine many viewers tuned in to watch this kind of programming. Reality TV it was not.

“I discovered that my dear friend had been an assassin in his younger days,” she said, even now, in the face of her grief, her eyes glowing with excitement. “He worked for the government mostly, but did a few private jobs.”

“And you believe the government iced him to keep him quiet?”

“Iced him?” Hotwire snorted. “Who writes this guy’s dialogue?”

Claire hushed him again with a small frown.

Queenie was nodding vehemently. “Yes.”

“It’s been a long time since he was a young man—surely no one cares enough about something that happened forty years ago to act on it now.”

Queenie glared at the young man. Clearly his comment hadn’t been part of the planned program. “I
 
saw
 
his kill book. The last job he took on was in the early eighties.”

Hotwire tensed as the interviewer shifted nervously in his seat. “Still, that was two decades ago.”

“Young man, my Lester had connections with the government, connections that would be embarrassing if revealed.”

“Where is the kill book now?”

“It’s missing.” She said it like the fact proved her theory the old man had been murdered.

“Are you sure about that? Maybe it was moved after his death?”

“It disappeared the night before he died. He told me. He was worried about it. I searched his room with him and then again after his heart attack. It’s definitely gone.”

The interview ended soon after that, and an infomercial on weight loss came on. Hotwire flipped off the television.

“Poor Queenie—she’s blaming herself,” Claire said sadly.

He looked down at her, his mind whirling with possibilities. “Why?”

“She wrote an article for the
 
Senior Gazette
 
lambasting the government for ever having a paid assassin on their payroll.”

“The exposé she mentioned at the beginning of the interview? It was published in the
 
Senior Gazette
?”

“Yes.”

“How many people could have seen it?”

“Actually, the circulation is bigger than you would expect. It’s delivered to all the residents at Belmont Manor as well as three other facilities associated with it, a group of politicians with an agenda on care for the elderly, and several individuals who have requested copies. If their bills are being paid by a family member, the resident’s family will be mailed a copy as well.”

More people had probably read that article than had watched the interview. “Did she mention seeing the kill book in the article as well?”

“She hinted strongly at it.”

Hotwire’s gut was going nuts. “The assassin, Lester…was he another resident of Belmont Manor?”

“Yes.”

“Was he your friend, too?”

“Yes, we were very close.” Her eyes filled with tears and this time she didn’t try to blink them away. “He died the night before my attack. I miss him,” she said forlornly.

The urge to comfort battled with his need to gather more information. The need for info won. Her safety was paramount, and they were finally getting somewhere in terms of discovering a motive for Claire’s attack. He could deal with her hurt later.

“Did you spend a lot of time with him?”

“More than I did with anyone else, even Queenie. He would call for me at night when I worked. We would talk.”

“Did he tell you about his days as an assassin?”

“Yes, but at first I thought he was fantasizing. It was just recently I decided he was recounting real events from his past.”

“He told you who he killed?”

“Some of them, but the names didn’t mean anything to me. Like the interviewer said, most of that stuff happened forty years ago.”

“What was his name?”

“I told you, Lester Wilson.”

“I mean his professional name.”

“How did you know he had one?”

“He lived long enough to move into a retirement community…he had to have worked under the anonymity of a pseudonym.”

“It was Arwan.”

“Celtic god of the dead.”

“Exactly,” she said, sounding surprised he knew.

He raised his brow mockingly. “You’re not the only one who reads.”

She smiled at him, her eyes glinting mischievously and making it hard for him to keep his focus on the conversation at hand. “Touché.”

“How many people besides you and Queenie did he share his secrets with?”

“None that I know of. Senility was setting in and he may have told others without me knowing about it, but he acted like it was still a big secret. And the rest of the residents and staff reacted with disbelief when Queenie published her article.”

“Who did he work for?”

“He never told me, but he let Queenie see his kill book.”

That’s what the woman had said in the interview, and if Hotwire’s suspicions were justified, she’d put herself in danger admitting it so publicly. “Shit.”

Claire gasped.

“Pardon my language,” he said automatically and let out a long breath. “I hate to say it, but she might have something.”

“But Lester was an old man. He wasn’t hurting anyone.”

“He was a freelancer—that means he worked for civs. They tend to go nuts about being exposed.”

“Civs?”

“Civilians.”

“I see…is that mercenary speak?”

“Soldier speak, but my point is that Lester’s clients aren’t all necessarily dead or too old to care that their secrets may be exposed.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re serious.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Wow.”

“How did he die?”

“Heart attack.”

“He had a weak heart?”

Claire bit her lip, her gaze filling with horror. “Actually, no. Do you think the government had him killed?”

“No.”

“Thank goodness.”

“I think it’s very possible a civ is involved and that Queenie could be in danger as well.”

Claire jumped up and grabbed Hotwire’s arm. “We’ve got to go to her. We’ve got to make sure she’s okay.”

“We’re waiting for the police, remember?”

“Unlock the door and leave a note. They don’t need us here to dust for prints.”

“They do to file a report. We can’t just leave.”

“Yes, we can. Queenie’s life is more important than filing a police report.”

Hotwire gave in to Claire’s urgency. He called the police station on their way to Belmont Manor and told the dispatcher that he and Claire were going out and would call when they returned.