Mind Tricks (14 page)

Clever. He clicked Howsing onto
speakerphone, waited a few seconds in case she had to do something complicated
and technical on her end, and then said clearly, “Detective Cooperman, without
a warrant, you do not have my consent to search the premises.” He sounded like
a living legal document. He might as well toss in a few “herewith’s” and
“forinasmuch’s” while he was at it. “Please leave immediately.”

“All right, Mr. Vant. Have a good
day.” Giving him a two-fingered salute, Cooperman turned on his heel and strode
down the hall, both Millhouse and Samantha having to jog a few steps to catch
up.

Jake took Howsing off the speakerphone.
“He left. Thanks.”

“Now that you’ve denied them a
warrantless search, they may go to a judge for a warrant,” Howsing pointed out.
“We’re not out of the woods yet.”

“I can’t imagine there’s anything
in her office that could incriminate me, though.”

“The warrant could cover your
office, too.”

“Well, I’m absolutely sure there’s
nothing in my office that would incriminate me.”

“Doesn’t matter. Once the police
haul away your computers and all your files, you’re going to find your business
on shaky ground, Jake. And the police are notoriously slow about giving those
things back.”

All the boat orders, their client
lists, their direct mail database, and, most important, the boat schematics
were on the company computers and servers. If the police seized those,
Woodhaven would be paralyzed.

Wait—they had backups of
everything. That had been one of the first systems Jake had implemented after
wiring the office. All the computers were backed up on Friday night, and the
data was held on an off-site server by a guy who did backups for a score or
more of small businesses in the area.

“Good to know,” Jake said. “Thanks
for the heads up, Marilyn.”

“Call me if they show up again.
Otherwise, have a great rest of the day.”

Jake rolled his eyes. Sure.

Samantha hung around in the
doorway, her eyes huge. Woodhaven hadn’t seen so much excitement since his
parents had had to file for bankruptcy. “Anything I can do?” she asked.

“Call Carl and ask him to do a
backup immediately…and ask him to copy it onto some DVDs, too. I’ll pick them
up from him after work tonight.” The backup to the off-site server would
probably be enough to keep the data safe, but Jake wasn’t taking any chances.
He’d hand off the backup DVDs to Mickey. If—worst case scenario—Jake was
arrested and the office computers seized, Mickey might be able to keep
Woodhaven limping along.

Samantha nodded and disappeared
down the hall.

He felt like a wolf watching the
jaws of a trap closing over him in slow motion—unable to do anything but stare
with horror as everything he’d cared for, worked so hard for, was severed from
him.

He shook himself. He still had a
measure of control over his situation. He wasn’t in jail yet. His lawyer seemed
savvy and tough. His family supported him. And Emma…Emma liked him.

That had nothing to do with the
murder investigation, but her kisses were a bright warmth that he pulled close
inside.

Samantha poked her head around the
doorway. “Carl says he’s backing up the computers now. You can pick up the
copies when you’re ready.” She hesitated. “I bet they’re looking for Ginny’s
briefcase. They’ve asked me about it once or twice.”

“Really? They didn’t ask me.” Of
course they wouldn’t, though. “I can’t remember the last time she had it.”

Samantha shrugged. “Me neither.”

There was nothing for him to do
here, and it was four o’clock—the workday almost over. “I’m heading out early,
then.”

Samantha goggled at him. As well
she should—he’d never left before five, and he usually stayed in the office
until seven or eight. “O-kay.”

“Call my cell if you need me.” He
grabbed his car keys, phone, and wallet from his desk drawer and simply walked
out the door.

As he started his car, he glanced
in the rearview mirror. The low gray building that housed Woodhaven looked
empty, dead. No movement in the windows, no glow of computer screens visible
from this angle. He shivered despite the sweltering heat inside his car, seized
by the gut-rolling conviction that he wouldn’t see this building ever again.

Jesus, he needed to snap out of it.
Hypnotherapists, energy healings, pet psychics, and now ghastly premonitions?
His life had seriously jumped the tracks if he was starting to believe in all
this woo-woo stuff.

Still…

Instead of driving straight to the
tech guy’s house to pick up copies of the backup files, Jake went to Sea Pines,
the nursing home where his brother Daniel lay in a coma.

“Good evening, Mr. Vant,” the
receptionist, Mrs. Zitol, said as he walked through the front doors. Mrs.
Zitol, who always smelled like apple pie, usually smiled when he visited. There
was no smile now.

His stride hitched. Damn it, he
felt like a sideshow freak, with people staring at him openly but talking about
him behind their hands. When was this nightmare going to end?

Mrs. Zitol gave her head a chiding
shake. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen you. I’ve been wondering where you
were.”

Nearly
getting booked for murder,
he almost said, but bit it back. He was
overreacting. Mrs. Zitol wasn’t treating him like a suspect but like a family
member who’d been remiss in his visits. As he had been. He usually came to spend
some time with Daniel twice a week, but with the surge in orders the company
had received a few months ago and the cash-flow rumors he’d been trying to
stamp out, his visits had become far less regular.

Excuses. That’s all that was. He’d
sunk himself so deep into the business that he’d forgotten his family. What a
crappy way to come to this realization.

He promised Mrs. Zitol as he signed
in, “I’m going to do better.” Assuming he stayed out of jail.

Upstairs, he nearly crashed into
his brother’s physical therapist as she walked out of Daniel’s room. “Pepper,
hi.” Jake peered around her shoulder at his brother, lying motionless. “Are you
just finishing up with him?”

“No, I just popped in to say good night.
My shift ends in a few minutes.”

Jake suspected Pepper Michaels
might have a little crush on Daniel. Not surprising, given his brother was the
only man here under fifty-five. “And did he reply?”

Pepper laughed, her dark eyes sparkling
in her suntanned face. “Not today, but you never know what will happen. I
chatter constantly during our sessions, and I half expect that one day Daniel’s
going to open his eyes and say, ‘Pepper, for God’s sake, could you shut up for
one damn minute?’”

“I hope so,” Jake said, letting his
gaze drift back to his brother lying silently between unwrinkled white sheets.

“Me, too. Though then I’d lose my
favorite patient.” She gave a little wave and dodged around him. “See you
later, Jake.”

His eyes on his brother’s still
form, Jake walked to Daniel’s bedside. In the week following the car wreck,
Jake had thought every day that today would be the day that Daniel woke up.
He’d looked so vibrant, his skin and hair still healthy, his body looking only
asleep, not locked in blackness.

But Daniel wasn’t going to wake up.
His hair lay lank and dull against his skull, and his face was sunken. A tube
could pump enough nutrients into him, but Daniel didn’t move, didn’t convert
energy into muscle, and the muscles he had were wasting away despite Pepper’s
massages.

Jake pulled a chair away from the
wall, dragged it over to the bed, and then sat down, knocking his knees against
the metal bars of the hospital bed. Like Pepper, he talked to Daniel. It had
been painful at first—speaking without receiving a reply or even a grimace in
response—but he’d grown used to it over the past months. He’d heard stories of
coma patients being able to hear voices, and he figured Daniel would want to
know that he wasn’t alone.

“Sorry I haven’t been by lately.”

If only Daniel would open his eyes
and bitch him out for not visiting. But the doctors had been clear: Daniel
would never wake again.

Jake kept talking. He and Daniel
were only eighteen months apart in age, and Jake had always told things to
Daniel that he’d never told anyone else. Just because Daniel was in a coma
didn’t change that. “Life’s been crazy. Ginny was killed a few nights ago, and
the police think I did it. And the next day I met a fantastic girl. Emma
Draper. You might have met her, but I don’t think so. You weren’t at the
Christmas party last year, but she was. She’s Mickey’s neighbor. You know—the
pet psychic.”

 
Daniel, as always, didn’t reply, his
moon-white face immobile against the pillow.

“You’d like her,” Jake told his
brother. “She’s funny, smart, sarcastic sometimes, and pretty hot.” And kissed
like a wild woman. Like she didn’t want him to go.

“The timing sucks, though. The
police are watching me like a hawk, and I don’t want her to get hurt.”

What advice would Daniel give him
if he were awake? Daniel had always had an easygoing charm that drew women to
him, but he’d been less smooth in the pushing-them-away arena. He’d probably
say that Jake should stop calling her and seeing her, and things would break
off naturally.

Problem was, Jake wanted to call
her, wanted to see her. Didn’t want to break things off. He’d reached for the
phone a dozen times today only to force himself to do something else instead.

To see her again would be pure
selfishness. But life was short, and gifts like Emma shouldn’t be dismissed so
easily.

He gazed at Daniel, the barely
visible rise and fall of his chest the only sign that he lived.

Sometimes life was much too short.

Jake rubbed his hand over his face.
He wished he could wipe away his exhaustion, now soul deep instead of merely
physical, just as easily. Then he looked at Daniel, immobile in the bed that
had been his home for ten months. “Well, I guess all this is pretty puny
compared to your situation. Even if I get arrested and then convicted of
murder, I’ll eventually get out again—assuming I’m not murdered myself while in
prison. You…” He gripped Daniel’s hand. If Daniel were conscious, the two of
them would never hold hands like this. But there was nothing else he could do
to express to Daniel that he was there, waiting, if by some miracle Daniel ever
returned.

• •

As he pulled out of Carl’s
driveway, the backup disks on the seat beside him, Jake placed a call on his
cell phone. Not to Mickey’s house, to warn him that he was coming over, but to
Emma’s. Funny—he’d already memorized her number.

“Hello?” she answered.

The sound of that one word relaxed
a tension in his chest even as his pulse jumped. “Emma, it’s Jake.” And then he
didn’t know what to say.
I was hoping I could
come over and start again where we’d stopped last night
? “I’ll be in the
neighborhood in a few minutes, dropping off something at Mickey’s. Can I come
by and see you?”

“Sure—if you promise to stay for
more than five minutes.” The slight tease in her voice belied the command, but
he wasn’t an idiot. She was telling him to make a choice.

Warm wings beat against his
sternum, and a buzz filled him. “Yes. I can definitely promise that.”

• •

She was trying to work on her
business accounts in the dining room, but every time Brutus lifted his head,
her heart popped up into her throat and her thoughts scattered. Was Jake here?
Then the darn dog would drop his jaw back on his furry paws, leaving a hole of
disappointment inside her.

A reminder she’d programmed into
her calendar flashed up on the screen.
7:00
- Call Jake.

She laughed. She’d created that
reminder this morning—not that she’d needed reminding. She’d been willing to
give him the whole day to think about his situation with the police, but she
had spent much of it organizing rational reasons why he should stop worrying
about the police and simply spend time with her. Amazing, really, that he’d
called her first. She hadn’t expected it, which made it all the more sweet.

Brutus’s black head lifted again from
the floor. And stayed upright. Moments later, she heard the sound of a car
engine approaching her house.

Her fingers shaking only slightly,
she powered down the computer. Then she tried to walk at a moderate pace to the
kitchen door, but anticipation was buzzing at her pulse points, putting a
bounce in her step.

Heck, who was she trying to fool?

Not waiting for Jake to knock, she
pulled open the door just as he stepped out of the encroaching shadows of dusk
and into the sphere of light thrown by her back light.

“Hi,” she said, and then made a
grab for Brutus as he attempted to squeeze past towards freedom.
“Quick—inside.”

Herding Brutus in front of him,
Jake pushed into the kitchen and slipped the door shut, closing out the night.

Emma turned to face him. “Hi.”
Oops—she’d already said that. Between her delight that he was here and her
now-what’s-going-to-happen?
nervousness,
she was acting like a goofball.

And really, she still wasn’t
entirely certain why he
was
here. If
it was to reiterate why he couldn’t see her anymore, she was going to strangle
him. “How’s everything?”

“On average, about the same as
yesterday.” He took a step closer, and her breath got stuck in her throat.
“You?”

She swallowed. “Slow. Not too many
appointments. Tomorrow should be busier, though. People drop their pets off on
Friday before they head out for the weekend.”

“That’s good.” And then they just
stared at each other.

This was awkward. Time to speed
things up, shake things loose. “Let’s go into the living room.”