Kiss of death

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

WHITNEY GAZED AT Adam from the armchair where she was sitting. He was walking Romberg to the door of his uncle’s home. The detective had interviewed Whitney, asking her questions about Miranda. Since Whitney had lived in the cottage less than a week, the investigation was focused on Miranda. Whitney had not brought up Saffron Blue. She felt a little guilty about not disclosing this information, but Adam had helped her so much already and she trusted him.

She leaned down to give Lexi’s head a quick pat. The cloying smell of smoke and the commotion of firefighters had spooked the dogs, especially Da Vinci. The Chihuahua was huddled against Jasper on the sofa with Maddie nearby. At least they were all safe.

Lexi’s disappearance had prompted Whitney to keep all the dogs at her side. If she hadn’t, they would have been in the cottage and died in the fire. She couldn’t imagine a worse fate for a helpless animal than to be trapped in an inferno.

What about Miranda? she asked herself. Whoever had thrown the pipe bomb hadn’t cared what kind of horrible death she suffered. How could Miranda have gotten herself involved in something that would result in this?

Adam closed the front door behind the detective and walked back into the living room.

“I’m sorry about the fire,” she told him.

“Don’t blame yourself. It’s your cousin’s fault-not yours.” He dropped down onto the sofa where he’d been sitting when Detective Romberg had questioned her. The motion caused Da Vinci to leap up on his short legs and look around anxiously. Seeing nothing troubling, he lay down again and snuggled up against Jasper.

“I would never have guessed Miranda was in this much trouble.” Whitney twisted the hem of her shorts between her fingers. She’d been doing it since she’d sat down. She told herself to stop.

“I want you to be very careful,” he told her. “You look a lot like your cousin, right? They could come after you by mistake.”

She nodded. “When do you plan to visit Saffron Blue? I’ll need to reschedule some of my walks to go with you.”

Adam shook his head. “I’m going alone. Cabral isn’t the easiest man to talk to. Cops make him antsy because he’s sure they’re looking for an excuse to bust him, which is true. He won’t open up in front of a woman.”

Whitney started to protest then the reality of her situation hit her. “I don’t have anything but the clothes I’m wearing. I guess I’ll have to go shopping first thing in the morning. Luckily all my client info was in my BlackBerry, and I always keep it in my purse.” Another wave of reality crashed over her. “My Jeep-”

“The fire started in the bedroom where the pipe bomb was thrown, then leaped backward toward the carport and garage before the wind kicked up and sent it toward the front of the house. If the fire didn’t destroy your SUV, then it suffered a lot of smoke and water damage. We’ll know more in the morning when it’s light enough to see.”

She stared at him and blinked, her mind suddenly becoming focused. She’d been thinking about Miranda and who might want to kill her. She hadn’t given much thought to her own plight. She had no place to live. No car.

Nothing.

Suddenly, the spacious living room seemed too tiny. The walls were closing in on her. She tried to breathe but her lungs refused to take in air. Throbbing started in her temples, then exploded through her head.

Her anxiety must have been reflected on her face. Adam rose to his feet and came up to her. Without a word, he pulled her into his arms. She tried to draw back but his arms tightened around her. After a moment, he took her face in one hand. One finger gently brushed her cheek. His other hand skimmed soothingly over her back.

“Don’t worry about anything.” He rested his cheek against the top of her head. “We’ll work it out. I’ll help you.”

Adam seemed so strong, so supportive, and she felt so lost. She permitted herself to savor the moment, the comfort he offered.

But as tempting as it was to nestle in his arms and let him take over, Whitney asked, “Why? You hardly know me.”

“I know all I need to know. When you saw your place was on fire, you weren’t concerned about yourself. You cared more about the dogs.”

Whitney didn’t know what to say. She had always loved animals. When she’d seen the flames, her first thought had been relief. The dogs were safe. She didn’t know how she could have faced their owners and told them their pets had been burned alive.

“You can stay here as long as you want,” he told her. “The maid’s quarters are off the kitchen. You’ll have room for the dogs there and a lot of privacy.”

She almost told him she couldn’t stay here, then asked herself where she could possibly go. Who could she turn to? Not Ryan. Trish Bowrather was a possibility, but their friendship-if she could call it that-was new, untried. She wouldn’t feel comfortable asking Trish for help.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice choked.

He brought her over to the sofa and pulled her down beside him. “Escaping death does something to you,” he told her. “It alters the way you see the world.”

He was right, of course, but until he said it Whitney hadn’t quite come to grips with her own close call. The bombing had been a devastating shock. All she could concentrate on was Miranda and the dogs. It was just now sinking in. She’d narrowly missed being killed by whoever was determined to murder her cousin.

If she hadn’t come here for a barbecue, she would have been in the cottage, asleep in the bedroom where the pipe bomb had been thrown. She would have died. In a delayed reaction, her composure started to crack.

“Why didn’t Miranda warn me?”

“She probably didn’t realize what she was involved in would have such deadly consequences.” His arm was around her, his tone comforting. A minute passed while she tried to calm herself. In the aftermath of her divorce, Whitney’s emotions were unstable. Knowing her only relative had betrayed her made something inside Whitney shatter into a million jagged pieces.

There was no way to sugarcoat this, she decided. “Miranda must have known. No matter how happy she seemed, she vanished without a trace for a reason. She should have warned me.”

Mind-numbing disbelief brought the sting of hot tears to her eyes. The tight rein she’d kept on her emotions collapsed. She refused to cry, but her body began to tremble so hard that she had to clutch her bare knees with both hands to keep the shaking under control.

“Try not to be upset,” Adam said. “Things will get better. Time will help. I know.” He squeezed her shoulders, but she didn’t feel any better. “I know what you’re going through.”

“How could you? I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but I just lost everything I have on this earth. Not that things matter, but I almost died.”

Adam didn’t reply. She fought back the tears, then took a minute to let her painful breathing return to something near normal. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

He studied her a moment. His expression darkened with an unreadable emotion that revealed something she couldn’t decipher. He’d shared almost nothing about himself and had shown little emotion. She had no idea what was going on in his mind.

“We have a lot more in common than you might think. My uncle was the last of my family. At least you have your cousin.”

At this point Whitney couldn’t honestly say that was a good thing. Family protected each other, didn’t they? Miranda should have said something, done something so Whitney could protect herself.

“I had a brush with death that was even closer than yours.”

His tone brought her up short. She’d never seen him this intense…this serious. She waited for him to continue but he didn’t.

“You did?” she prompted. “When?”

She gazed into his eyes, but he didn’t respond. His shuttered expression warned her that he might not want to talk about this.

Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke. “I was in Iraq with my National Guard unit. I’d known the guys for years. We were weekend warriors who never expected we’d find ourselves in a battle zone.”

There was so much emotion in his words that she understood the Adam Hunter she’d known up to this point had been little more than an impression. From the moment he’d attacked her, Whitney had assumed things based solely upon her own conclusions-not facts. Adam had a power and depth to him that she hadn’t realized existed.

“Our unit was in charge of the security checkpoints between Baghdad and the airport. It’s five miles of hell. Every terrorist and every political faction wants to control the road or shut it down. I worked with Ed and Mike most of the time. We searched vehicles and checked identification at the first security post beyond the airport. After having our tours extended because we had special expertise, we were just ten days from coming home when we drove up to the Green Zone that morning.”

“That’s the safe area around U.S. headquarters, right?”

“Supposedly. We were in an armored vehicle, just the three of us, at the entry checkpoint. A woman came up with a baby in her arms. You could see the kid was sick. Its face was red and it was bawling. She held out the baby to us-”

Whitney waited for him to continue. She was almost afraid to hear what he was going to say.

He averted his eyes and directed his gaze across the living room to the landscape painting on the wall. “It happened all the time,” he finally began, his voice pitched low. “Innocent civilians-kids and even babies-were injured in terrorist attacks. Their medical facilities sucked so they often came to us for help. Mike waved her off and just as he did I had this…feeling.”

She waited in stricken silence, half knowing what he was going to tell her.

He turned back to her. “I knew. I don’t know how, but in that instant I realized she was going to kill us.”

Whitney tried to imagine how horrible that must have been, but couldn’t. Until tonight her only experience with death had been her mother’s battle with cancer. She had been warned. Death had been expected.

“I knew we were as good as dead. There was no way to get out of the vehicle in time. Hell, I didn’t even have the chance to open my mouth and warn my buddies.”

Anguish colored every syllable he uttered. She suddenly felt ashamed of herself. Her brush with death had been nothing compared to his.

“I still can’t believe it. That mother had a bomb concealed under her clothes. She knew it was going to kill her and her baby.”

Whitney couldn’t imagine it either. How could any mother take the life of her own child?

“She detonated the bomb just as I yelled, ‘Duck.’ An explosion of light, a bang like nothing I’d ever heard, then the world went as black as hell itself.”

Whitney didn’t know what to say. Obviously, he’d survived. Had either of his friends?

“I woke up a week later in a field hospital. I had a massive concussion. I wasn’t allowed to lift my head for another week. It hurt like a sonofabitch. There was a helluva ringing in my ears. The nurses had to shout for me to hear them.” He shrugged dismissively. “My friends weren’t so lucky. They were blown to bits.”

The naked emotion in his voice told her how deeply he felt the loss. Nothing she could say would bring his friends back or make this situation easier. After a few seconds, she managed to whisper, “That must have been horrible.”

“Not as horrible for me as it was for their families. You see, Mike had a pregnant wife. Ed had a wife and three kids.”

She tried to imagine what their families must be going through but couldn’t. True, she’d lost her mother, but there hadn’t been young children involved. Her mother’s cancer had slowly eaten her alive over the course of two miserable years. There’d been enough time to brace herself for the inevitable.

“I’m sorry I whined. My experience wasn’t anything-not nearly-”

“Death is death. Like I said, knowing you almost died is a mind-altering experience.”

“Yes, but you were wounded. You physically felt it.”

“Small difference.”

She waited a moment before telling him, “When Mom died I learned something very important. There are things in life that money can replace. Then there are the things in life that no amount of money can replace. I would have given all I had or ever hope to have to save my mother. But it didn’t matter. She died anyway.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” He reached over and took her hand.

“I’m sure you learned the same lesson. Money isn’t everything. When I saw the fire, my first thought was the dogs hadn’t died. It wasn’t until a bit later that I realized someone wanted Miranda dead.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Talking had calmed Whitney a little and made her realize others had been through much worse. Not just Adam, she decided, but thousands upon thousands of people she didn’t know. Around the world others had faced death and had survived. She knew Adam was suffering from survivor’s guilt, but she couldn’t think of anything to say or do to ease his pain.

Adam rose to his feet and she let him help her up. “Let’s find some bed linens and get you settled in the maid’s quarters.”

She followed him up the stairs to the linen closet in the hall. She noticed how neatly stacked the sheets and towels were. Military training, she decided, and wondered what his uncle had been like.

“How about one of my T-shirts to sleep in?” he asked.

It seemed a little personal but she had no choice. She was going to have to wear these clothes until she could buy new things. “Thanks.”

She waited in the hall while he went into a bedroom. A cold nose on the back of her leg told her Lexi had followed her upstairs. The others were right behind her and Whitney couldn’t help smiling.

Adam returned and handed her a blue T-shirt. “Get some sleep.”

“Thanks, I’ll…” Her voice trailed off as their fingers touched. She took a reflexive half step back.

What was wrong with her? She’d kissed this man-really kissed him. Why did this feel so much more intimate? Because she was alone with him in a big isolated house, she decided. Not only were they alone, she was going to be sleeping in a shirt he’d worn dozens of times. The fabric felt soft in her hand and she imagined it against his skin. Unexpectedly, her heart was racing.

His eyes gleamed at her, the pupils dilating as he spoke. “I wish I had something better, but-”

“No, no. It’s fine, really.” An anticipatory shiver tiptoed up her spine. She could feel the air between them almost sizzle. Heat unfurled deep inside her body, her heart now thudding against her rib cage.

He reached out with one hand and touched her cheek. It was a simple gesture, but his fingertips were warm and slightly callused-and unbelievably erotic. It was all she could do not to throw the T-shirt to the floor and fling herself into his powerful arms.

“Adam.” His name came from between her lips in a whisper filled with longing.

He gazed down at her, his eyes dark, restless with the same desire she felt. Their bodies were just inches apart. She could feel the warmth seeping from his rock-hard body to hers. It wouldn’t take much, she realized. All she would have to do was make a forward move.

She took a deep breath, intending to part her lips for a kiss. A trace of smoke lingered in the air and its smell reminded her of what had happened tonight. She awkwardly took a side step.

Adam got the message, saying, “The keys to the Rava are on the kitchen counter. You take it-”

“I couldn’t. I-”

“It’s okay. I’ll drive my uncle’s car. You have to work, don’t you?”

She nodded. Right now she needed money and taking care of the dogs was her best way of making it. “Thanks.”

“You can help me out by taking Jasper to the breeder. He’s supposed to be there tomorrow morning. I’ll put the address and phone number by the keys.”

She turned to go. “Call me as soon as you talk to Jared Cabral. I want to know what he has to say about Miranda.”