Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (33 page)

“Frye.”

“Frye.”

“Say it.” There was blood bubbling between his lips now. He was shaking in her arms. Faith sobbed a tearless breath at the new friend she was about to lose. “Say it.”

“Darien Frye.” Once she uttered the words, his head fell back into her lap and his eyes drifted shut, his entire body spent with the effort of speaking. He was fading. Dying. And she didn’t know what to do to save him. “Should I give his name to the police? Is he someone I should call? Will he help?” She couldn’t help but shake him, willing him to return to her. “William!”

A door slammed somewhere inside the heart of the lab. Faith glanced up, hearing the slam like an ominous portent deep inside. Then there were footsteps. Sure. Deliberate. Long strides coming ever faster. Coming closer. Coming for her.

“What should I do?”

William Rutherford, kind, fatherly figure that he was, blinked his eyes open. But he couldn’t focus. Faith’s own eyes steeped with tears and spilled over in hot trails down her cheeks. She tried to hug him, tried to comfort him, tried to shield him from the danger that was coming.

But he was nearly gone, bleeding to death in the circle of her arms. He summoned the remnants of life left in his body to speak one last word before his eyes closed for the last time.

“Run.”

Chapter One

Sixty-year-old men who couldn’t match their socks or remember the pencil tucked behind their ear didn’t get murdered. They didn’t bleed to death in her arms. They didn’t warn her to run from the heavy, stalking footsteps of a predator who tore through the lab, knocking aside equipment, shattering glass, moving relentlessly closer to seize whatever he was searching for.

Whatever he was willing to kill for.

Faith drove several miles until she felt calm enough to pull off onto the side of the road and phone the police. The officer she spoke with was surprisingly sympathetic as he listened to her halting report of William Rutherford’s murder.

No, she hadn’t seen the actual stabbing. Yes, she believed the killer was still on the premises. No, she didn’t know what the intruder was after. Yes, the inventor made her believe she, too, was in danger.

“He told me to get out of there,” she sniffed, trying her stubborn best to keep the tears of grief and panic at bay. “He told me not to trust the security there.”

“Did he suspect one of the guards?”

She shrugged, hoping she didn’t sound as useless and helpless as she felt. “I don’t know if he meant they hadn’t done their job or if he thought they were responsible.”

The officer’s brief lecture about leaving the scene of a crime had been followed by
Are you safe?
and a promise to have some detectives meet her at her house to take a formal statement.

“I understand. I’ll be there.”

She tossed her cell phone onto the seat beside her and pulled into the traffic she’d risen so early to beat an hour ago. By the time she reached the quiet residential neighborhood where she lived, she was ready to trade all the possibilities of a stellar career as an engineer for the predictable, slow-paced lifestyle of her uncle’s farm.

As she waited at a crosswalk for a pedestrian and her dog, Faith stared at her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel and the sticky crevices between her fingers. The adrenaline in her system fizzled out and her stomach knotted inside.

A man was dead.

She had his blood all over her clothes and hands. Faith glanced up into the rearview mirror. Even her face, where she must have brushed aside a loose strand of golden hair, bore traces of her hellish morning.

“A shower,” she promised the sallow reflection in the mirror. Her eyes had blanched to a dull olive color. Her next course of action would be a long, hot shower. Lots of scrubbing. Extra soap. With that much of a plan finally formulated, she drew her first normal breath since pushing open that unlocked door at work.

Faith pulled her car into the driveway of her boxy gray stone house and parked. Good. She’d beat the detectives here. She retrieved her keys and hurried toward the side door.

Letting herself in through the kitschy fifties-style kitchen, she tossed her purse and keys on the counter and headed straight for the fridge. She’d already unbuttoned her blouse before opening the door and pulling out a bottle of water. The chilly air hit the bare skin of her torso, waking her senses, reviving clear, rational thought. She tipped her head back and drained half of the icy liquid before even closing the refrigerator. The water cleansed her mouth and throat of the bitter taste of fear, and soothed the questions still churning in her stomach.

Half-dressed, with her mind and body finally relaxing their staunch guard against the gruesome events of that morning, she flicked the lid onto the counter and headed into the living room.

Into destruction.

“What…?” The bottle dropped from her hand. Its contents soaked, unheeded, into the carpet. She scanned the entire room, from the shattered Lladró figurines to the shredded cushions that had once been her couch and chairs. “How the…?”

A creeping sense of being watched, of someone knowing more about her than she herself knew, pricked wave after wave of goose bumps across her skin.

Just like Dr. Rutherford’s lab and office, her home had been invaded.

But what did she own that was worth this much devastation?

And why did running still feel like the smartest move she could make?

“W
AS ANYTHING TAKEN
?”

Faith raked her fingers through her hair and caught the wavy strands in a fist at the back of her neck. None of this made any sense. “They went through my CD collection, but didn’t touch the player. They dumped out my jewelry box, but left a diamond pendant and earrings that belonged to my mother.” She released her hair and threw up her hands in frustration. “Things might be broken, but I think it’s all still here.”

She’d barely had time to throw on her robe over her slacks and bra before Detective Jermaine Collier knocked on her front door. She’d had no time to deal with the shock of the break-in, much less sort through what was left of her things.

“You’ve only been gone a couple of hours?” The tall, mahogany-skinned detective gave the appearance of laid-back charm with his tailored suit and easy smile. But there was something sharp, almost omniscient, in his dark, nearly black eyes. And though he didn’t share his opinions with her, Faith got the idea the mind inside his shaved head was elsewhere, making observations she couldn’t see, connecting pieces to a puzzle she couldn’t even picture yet.

“That’s right. I left for work about 6:40. I came back early….” She hugged her arms around her waist and shivered inside her robe despite the warm temperature of the early September day. “Because of my boss.”

“William Rutherford?” She nodded as he checked off something in his little black notebook. “Eclipse Labs is where you found him dead?”

“I didn’t
find
him dead.” She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to stop the bombardment of horrific images. When the constriction in her throat eased enough to speak again, her eyes popped open to find the detective carefully studying her reaction. “He stumbled out of his research lab and collapsed into my arms. He died a couple minutes later.”

“That’s all his blood on you?”

The detective had already bagged her discarded blouse as evidence. Faith nodded, reliving Dr. Rutherford’s death and inexplicable warnings over and over. “I tried to help, but it was too late. He wanted to talk. So I just held him.”

Detective Collier’s forehead creased in a sympathetic frown. “What did he say?”

One of the crime scene technicians indicated that the sofa had been cleared, and it was okay to sit. Faith chose to remain in the doorway of her untouched kitchen. “He told me to get out, not to trust anyone at the lab. One of the guards tried to stop me on the way out, but I ran.” She hung her head and stared at the badge clipped to his belt. “I know I’m not supposed to.”

“You didn’t call the police until you left?”

“I tried to call for help right away. The intruder was still in the lab.” She breathed in deeply, tucked her hair behind her ears and forced herself to look the detective in the eye. “But Dr. Rutherford said there wasn’t time, that he wanted me to listen. I think he knew he couldn’t last much longer.”

Collier tapped his pad with his pen. “Listen to what?”

“A name.”

His eyes narrowed to thin slits of midnight. “And the name?”

“He… This is hard for me.” The detective’s piercing scrutiny finally short-circuited through her nerves. An uncomfortable shiver rippled through her from head to toe. “Would it be okay if I changed? And at least washed my hands?” One of the technicians had already swabbed beneath her fingernails.

“How close were you and Dr. Rutherford?”

Closer than anyone else she knew in the city besides her former college roommate. “I’ve only been in Saint Louis since I graduated in May. William was sort of an adopted grandfather. I don’t have much family. We ate lunch together every day.” She smiled at the memory. “Otherwise, he’d forget. He’d work straight through the day and night if I didn’t remind him to take a break from time to time.”

“What was he working on?”

Faith shrugged, trying to think of all the brainstorms her boss had concocted or refined in the past months. “A solar-powered toaster. An airport luggage-scanning system.”

“Any kind of weapon design?”

Something deadly from Dr. Rutherford? It’d be a stretch, but not impossible. She’d filed away reams of doodled ideas on everything from toys to communication satellites. If the mind could conceive it, chances were William Rutherford already had. Faith’s pulse picked up its pace as that sense of foreboding she had temporarily quashed tried to reassert itself.

She didn’t want to say too much before she knew the answer herself. “I’m just an assistant. I’m not privy to everything that goes on at the lab.”

“It’s my understanding Eclipse Labs has contracts with the metro police department as well as the area National Guard and Reserve units.” The detective sure knew a lot about her employer for only a couple hours’ work. Had he investigated them before?

“In the past I know he worked on a lightweight, bulletproof flak jacket.” But that equipment had already been implemented by the police department. It certainly wasn’t an invention worth killing for.

“Nothing new?” Collier kept pressing for an answer he wanted. “Nothing that an illegal element—organized crime, terrorists—might want to get their hands on? A gun? A bomb?”

“No, I—” Was something missing from the lab? Faith was growing distinctly uncomfortable with this line of questioning. “Are you interviewing me about his murder, or the break-in here?”

Detective Collier strolled over to the stone hearth and nudged aside bits of a broken clock with his pen. “There are no signs of forced entry at either location. Both places have been searched, but not robbed.” He turned and nailed her with an accusation. “I’m thinking there’s a connection. And you’re it.”

“But how could he get from there to here so soon?” Faith pulled herself up to every bit of her five feet five inches she could muster. This interview had suddenly taken a disturbingly personal turn. Even she could hear the strident edge of defensiveness that pinched her voice. “The man he called Copperhead was still at the lab when I left.”

“But you didn’t see him.”

“I heard him. He was trapped inside. I shut the steel door and scrambled the locks. He must have heard me in the office. He was coming after me. I was defending myself.”

“Really? Or were you covering up a crime?” He wasn’t bothering with the friendly facade anymore.

“No.”

“Yes, the lab was sealed. But we found no intruder inside.” He slowly paced off the length of the room, all the while keeping his gaze fixed on her. “We did find two dead bodies, though.”

“Two?”

“Dr. Rutherford and a security guard.” He skimmed through the pages of his notepad until he found the name. “Daniel Novotny.”

Danny? “But—” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. How could that be? She’d just seen him. He’d grabbed her in the hallway when she’d run out of Rutherford’s office. He’d had his gun drawn and was calling for backup. She opened her eyes and demanded her own answers. “Danny was okay when I left.”

“Was he?” Jermaine Collier’s inquisition took on a nasty innuendo. “He wasn’t stabbed and bleeding when you departed?”

Another gruesome image to add to her memory bank. “No. I told him William was dead and that we had an intruder.”

“But Dr. Rutherford told you not to trust anyone there.”

“That’s why I got out before calling the police.”

Detective Collier snapped his notebook shut and tucked it inside his suit jacket, purposefully holding open the front of his coat to give her a good look at his gun. “Miss Monroe, I’d like you to come down to the station for some further questioning.”

“I didn’t do—” His unblinking stare warned her it wasn’t a request. Had she woke up this morning in some alternate universe? What was going on? She was a witness. A victim. Not a suspect. This was all too crazy. Too far beyond her control. But a refusal would look even more incriminating. She needed a lawyer. She didn’t even know one. “Can I at least change first?”

“Of course.” He sounded almost kind, solicitous, but Faith saw the hawklike watchfulness in his eyes. “But I want those clothes as evidence.”

Assuming the conversation was finished for now, she went back into the kitchen to gather her purse. She paused at the phone hanging on the wall above the counter. She really should call a lawyer. The police thought
she
had something to do with Dr. Rutherford’s murder. That she had something to do with Danny’s death as well. Besides the killer, was she the last person to see them both alive? This was all getting way out of hand.

With a quick glance over her shoulder to see Detective Collier consulting with one of the crime scene investigators, she opened the drawer with the phone book and picked up the receiver. She flipped open the yellow pages under A. “Attorney. Attorney,” she muttered, trailing her index finger down the page.