Colorado Bodyguard (12 page)

She showered quickly, resisting the urge to luxuriate in the flow of hot water, then dressed and dried her hair. Only light makeup this morning—a touch of lip gloss and a sweep of mascara would have to do, since she didn't want to keep Rand waiting.

He sat at the table in the kitchen, hunched over a bowl of cereal. “The coffee's ready,” he said. “For breakfast, there's toast or cereal. Sorry, but I'm not much of a cook.”

“That's okay.” She poured coffee into the mug he'd set beside the machine, and sat at the table across from him. “Why do you have to go into the office early?” she asked.

“I'm probably not supposed to tell you.”

“Is it something to do with Lauren?” Her hand trembled as she set down her coffee mug. Had they found her sister—or only her body?

“Maybe not.”

Which meant that maybe it did. “Then what is it? Don't keep me in suspense like this,” she pleaded.

“We're bringing in Richard Prentice for questioning.”

Him again? Did a man with everything in the world going for him really have something to do with Lauren's disappearance, much less the other crimes the Rangers seemed to think him guilty of? “Do you think he knows something about Lauren?”

“We don't know, though I'm sure the captain will be asking those questions.” He stood and carried his empty cereal bowl to the sink. “I probably won't be in on the questioning.”

“What prompted this? Did the investigators find something in my hotel room that pointed to Prentice?”

“No. But the picture you found links him to Alan Milbanks. We want to question him about that, and about Milbanks's drug-dealing activities, and anything else we can link him to.”

“When will this happen?”

“Soon. I have to be at headquarters by seven. I imagine we'll pick him up after that.”

“Will he even be awake?”

“All the better if he isn't. Pulling people out of bed is a good way to catch them off guard. And we want to do this before his lawyers are in the office.”

“Why?”

“Not because we want to violate his rights, but because lawyers always throw up roadblocks. They'd make it impossible for us to question him at all, even if the answers might completely clear him from suspicion.”

“Do you think the photograph of Preston and Milbanks together is what the people who trashed my hotel room were looking for?” she asked.

“Maybe. If they didn't know you'd already turned the picture over to us. Or maybe they only wanted to frighten you.”

“They did a good job of that.” She hugged her arms across her chest and shivered.

He squeezed her shoulder. “I know it's hard, but hang in there.”

“What will I do while you're with Prentice and the other Rangers?” she asked.

“You can stay here. The place has an alarm system. You'll be safe.”

More waiting and not knowing what was happening. She didn't know if she could stand it. “What will you do while Prentice is being questioned? Will you search his house?”

“We can't do that without a warrant. We're hoping we'll get something from the questioning that will convince a judge to grant the search warrant.”

“His lawyers will try to keep that from happening.”

“Yes, they will. But we'll push back as hard as we can. They can't fight us forever.” He dropped his hand from her shoulder. “I'm going to take my shower. Don't worry about the dishes. I'll do them when I come home.”

He left the house while she was still sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. She wandered into the living room and turned on the television, then turned it off again. She wasn't going to do this. She wasn't going to sit and let others do all the work of looking for her sister. Maybe the police had to wait for a warrant in order to search Richard Prentice's house, but she didn't have to. Now, while she knew he was away, was the best time to find out if Lauren was locked away in some room of that mansion.

She grabbed her keys and hurried to the rental car, and the malaise that had dragged at her vanished. If she got caught in Prentice's house, she'd be in trouble, but she'd make sure she didn't get caught. She'd always been a quiet person, the kind other people didn't notice. She could use that to her advantage now.

Chapter Twelve

Sophie consulted the map in her car and figured out the route to Prentice's ranch. On the drive over, she debated how to deal with the guards at the gate. They'd never let her in, so her best bet was to ditch the car somewhere and hike in, avoiding the guards. She stopped at a convenience store and bought a bottle of water and some energy bars. She wished she had a weapon, then discarded the idea. Her cell phone would be her best weapon. At the first sign of trouble she'd call Rand and alert him.

She drove past the ranch and parked the car behind a telephone-relay building a quarter mile past the gate. It wasn't completely invisible from the road, but she figured someone would have to be specifically looking for her in order to notice the vehicle. With luck, she'd be back to the car before anyone became suspicious.

She hurried along the road, planning to hide behind a tree or dive into the ditch if anyone drove past, but no one did. When she came to the wood rail fence that marked Prentice's property line, she checked the area for security cameras and, seeing none, ducked between the rails and headed across the prairie in the direction she thought the house was situated.

Before long she could make out the narrow gravel drive that led to the mansion. She kept to the field to the left of it. Dressed in faded jeans and a brown-and-tan blouse, she hoped she blended in with the landscape of drying grasses, cacti and shrubby trees. She wondered what Abby Stewart had found to study in these surroundings. This wasn't exactly desert, but it was close.

The house appeared on the horizon, a gray hulk that looked out of place against the backdrop of distant mountains and turquoise sky, like a Scottish castle set down on the surface of the moon. She stopped to drink some water and study the building, wondering if she should approach from the back.

A cloud of dust rose in the distance, lifting up from the ground in a soft white fog and hovering near the horizon. Then the cloud grew larger...closer. With a start, she realized a car was approaching, barreling down the unpaved road toward her.

She dropped to the ground, flattening herself in the dirt, ignoring the bite of sharp stones into her knees and the tangle of sticks in her hair. She stared at the approaching cloud, too frightened to draw more than shallow breaths.

Then tension eased as she realized the car was headed away from the house, and the two men inside, dressed in brown camouflage fatigues, didn't appear to have noticed her. She wished she had binoculars so she could get a better look at them. Were they leaving, or merely on patrol?

She lay in the grass a long time after they left, shifting after a while to pull out her phone to check the time. If the Rangers had met with Prentice at their headquarters at, say, half past seven at the earliest, the interview had only just begun. She had plenty of time to get up to the house and away again before he was due to return home. All she had to do was find the right opportunity to get closer and seize it.

When the Jeep didn't return after fifteen minutes, she decided it was safe to proceed. She crossed the gravel drive and circled the house, keeping low and avoiding any cameras she saw. She counted two in the front of the house and one in the rear. She decided that if she stayed close to the wall of the house, she'd be out of view of the camera at the rear.

She crept along the side of the house, the rough stone catching and pulling at her clothes. After waiting and listening ten minutes and hearing and seeing nothing and no one, she hurried up the steps and tried the back door, stopping first to wrap her hand in the tail of her shirt. Why hadn't she bothered to bring gloves?

She gasped when the knob turned easily in her hand. Holding her breath, she pushed it open and waited for the blare of an alarm. But maybe that wasn't how security systems worked. Rand had showed her how to punch in the code to his system, but he hadn't told her what would happen if she failed to do so. Maybe the system sent a silent alarm to the police, or to a private security company.

But she hadn't come this far to turn back now, especially because of something she wasn't even sure would happen. Richard Prentice had so many of his own guards and cameras on this place, why would he need to pay for an alarm? Resolute, she slipped into the house, and shut the door softly behind her.

She found herself standing in a mudroom that was larger than her bedroom back in Madison. Through an open doorway she spotted the kitchen, gleaming with marble and stainless steel. A quick check showed this room to be empty, as pristine and undisturbed as a kitchen in a model home, where no one lived or ever cooked.

Walking lightly, one foot placed carefully in front of the other, she traversed the kitchen, a formal dining room and a hallway. The first door she tried in the hallway was locked. She debated trying to open it, but unlike the heroines in television crime dramas, she had no idea how to go about doing so.

She moved on to the stairs. The risers were covered with an Oriental patterned runner, but every so often one let out a creak that sounded as loud as a firecracker in her ears. She stopped at the top of the landing, listening, but the house held the silence and stillness of an unoccupied dwelling.

Staying close to the wall, she moved down the hall, peeking into the open doors that lined the passage: a game room with a pool table and a dartboard that looked as if they'd never been used, a home gym with free weights, a treadmill and a complicated-looking exercise machine with bands and bars and a digital readout. She did a cursory tour through these, then moved on to the end of the hall and an unoccupied bedroom.

This room was furnished with a massive four-poster bed and dresser that both looked antique, but she suspected were expensive reproductions. Layers of silky drapes shrouded the window, over which a black-out shade was drawn. Half a dozen pillows almost obscured the carved headboard, and a check under the brocade comforter revealed sheets heavily trimmed with cotton lace. Did that mean someone was using this room? Or that guests were expected very soon?

Under the bed she found nothing but dust bunnies, though were those smudges an indication that someone had stood at the edge of the bed, perhaps before climbing in for the night? She moved on to the adjoining bathroom, which gleamed with marble basins and pewter fixtures, the beveled mirror reflecting a tiled steam shower big enough for two. She traced the outline on the counter where a trio of bottles had recently sat. Shampoo? Perfume? Lotion? And who did these things belong to? It wasn't as if Richard Prentice would use this room himself, or any of his guards. As far as she knew, from her own visit and information she'd gleaned from listening to the Rangers talk about the billionaire, he lived in the house alone.

Still puzzling over this, she opened the door to the shower. Fragrant humidity hit her in the face, the smell of lavender and vanilla, a soft, feminine fragrance. A tickle of apprehension danced up her spine. Did Richard Prentice have a girlfriend staying with him? A female relative?

She returned to the bedroom, in time to hear the scrape of metal on wood, like a door slamming. She froze in place as heavy footsteps crossed the downstairs rooms, then started up the stairs.

When whoever it was reached the top of the stairs, Sophie looked around frantically for somewhere to hide. She started for the bed, thinking to dive under, then whirled and dove into the closet instead. She closed the door with a soft click seconds before the footsteps turned into the room.

Choking back a gasp, she pressed her ear to the door, but all she could hear was the thudding of her own frantic pulse. What was going on out there? She didn't dare open the door to look, and no old-fashioned keyhole afforded a peek into the room. The narrow gap at the bottom of the door let in a dim light, but there was no way could she stretch out enough in this small space to look through.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out clothes filling the bar across the back of the closet, with various boxes and bags sitting along the shelf above. But before she could investigate any of these, the bedsprings creaked loudly. What was he doing? She prayed he hadn't decided to take a nap. Maybe she'd been wrong about the room's occupant. Maybe it wasn't a woman at all. She thought the person out there must be male, given the heaviness of his tread.

She needed a weapon. The kind of thing someone might keep in a closet—a baseball bat? Golf club? Dropping into a crouch, she felt along the back wall, then the sides, then the floor. She came up with a shoe—a woman's dark stiletto. It didn't have the weight or heft of a club or bat, but if whoever was out there opened the door, she'd hit him as hard as she could, driving the pointed heel into his face. It would hurt like hell, and maybe give her enough time to get away.

The bed creaked again, and then the footsteps retreated—across the room, down the hall, on the stairs, all the way out the door, which closed with the solid click of the lock catching. Sophie closed her eyes and sagged against the wall, too afraid to give in much to relief. Maybe whoever had been out there had discovered something to make him suspicious and had merely gone for help. She had to get out of here while she still could.

She peered out the door, making sure the coast was clear. The only sign that she hadn't imagined the last ten minutes was the rumpled comforter and the faint impression on the mattress, as if someone heavy had lain there for a short while.

She was halfway across the room before she realized she was still holding the shoe. She couldn't leave it out here, and carrying it across the prairie would be awkward. In the full light, it didn't look like much of a weapon, the heel a thin column wrapped in leather, the upper a network of leather straps, a bow at the instep. The insole bore the name of a designer Sophie recognized as expensive. Lauren had owned several pairs of that particular brand. In fact, she would have loved this shoe. Sophie checked the label again; yes, it was just Lauren's size.

She hurried back to the closet and flicked on the light. More shoes filled boxes on the top shelf, all styles Lauren would have loved, in her favorite brands and her size. She turned her attention to the clothes—a beaded evening gown in the royal blue Lauren favored, also in her size. Sophie pressed her face against the fabric and inhaled deeply. The scent of Mitsouko permeated the silk. The desire to shout for joy warred with the urge to weep. Instead of doing either, she released her hold on the dress and turned her attention to the woman's purse on the shelf. The bag proved to be empty. Disappointed, she started to close it again, then spotted a slip of cardboard peeking out of a small pocket sewn into one side of the lining. She pinched the cardboard between thumb and forefinger and teased it out.
Lauren Starling
was printed in crisp black lettering beneath the image of a stylized bird.

* * *

R
ICHARD
P
RENTICE
 
WASN
'
T
 
happy to be at the police station and he let everyone know it. He didn't raise his voice, but his tone was scathing. His lawyers—two of them—were equally imperious. “Keep that beast away from me,” one snarled as he followed his client down the hallway, glaring at Lotte, who sat at Rand's side, attention fixed on the new arrivals, with their expensive suits and haughty airs.

“The dog doesn't intimidate me,” Prentice said. He strode past Rand and Lotte without a second glance, into the interrogation room, with its gray walls and utilitarian table and chairs. “Let's get this over with. I don't intend for you to waste any more of my time than is absolutely necessary.”

They'd chosen not to question him at Ranger headquarters, but at the Montrose police station, which had a proper interrogation room, with recording equipment and cameras. Rand and Marco watched from another room while the captain and Lieutenant Michael Dance handled the questioning.

“Earlier you told us you didn't know Lauren Starling,” Graham began, after logging the preliminary information of Prentice's name, address and the date and time. “But you told her sister the two of you were friends. Such good friends that Ms. Starling confided to you her worries about her job.”

“That's hearsay,” one of the lawyers interjected.

“We're not in court here, counselor.” Graham kept his attention focused on Prentice. “Answer the question.”

“My friends are none of the government's business.” Prentice's tone was clipped, as if he couldn't be bothered wasting breath on their concerns.

“They are when one of the friends has been missing for over a month and you may be the only person she knew here,” Michael said.

“You're merely speculating,” Prentice said, even before his lawyers could interrupt. “A woman like Lauren Starling, who works in the public arena, knows many people.”

“Then you tell us,” Graham said. “What was she doing in Montrose?”

“I have no idea.”

“She didn't stop by to say hello while she was here?” Michael asked.

“She did not.”

“When was the last time you saw her?” Michael continued the questioning, while Graham stood, arms folded, leaning against the wall, glowering at Prentice.

“I haven't seen Lauren for some time. Several months at least.”

“How many months?”

“I don't know. It was at a charity function. I can have my secretary research my calendar and get back to you.”

“You do that.” Michael's voice held a sour note. “When was the last time you talked to her?”

“I don't remember.”

“We can subpoena your phone records and find out,” Graham said.

“Then maybe you should do that.” Tone defiant, eyes hard as stones.

“Are you giving us permission to do so?” Graham asked.

“He is not!” The older of the two lawyers spoke.

“I am not,” Prentice agreed.