Secretive Stranger

Chapter 12

When Sophie woke up, she was certain she had a fever of one hundred and ten. A few yawns later, she realized that she was at Cord’s, that Cord was gone, that his couch was wonderfully comfortable, and that the source of the heat was the four blankets he’d heaped on top of her.

Sometime in the night he must have worried that she’d be cold.

Truthfully, the only time Sophie figured she’d ever be warm again-warm where it counted-would be in his bed. And that wasn’t likely to happen.

Around 3:00 a.m., when she’d been staring at the dust motes on the ceiling, unable to sleep, the obvious occurred to her regarding Jan Howell. If Jan hadn’t killed Cord’s brother, then someone else must have.

She was relieved to have a place to hide out. It just felt…off…to be taking advantage of Cord’s protection when the two of them were barely speaking.

An oomph leaped on her stomach. The purr machine.

Caviar hadn’t stopped purring since he’d been let loose in Cord’s place. Maybe one tomcat appreciated another tomcat’s lair. Caviar obviously didn’t care where he was, as long as the food was good, he was free to prowl around, and on demand, he could get his share of love.

She loved him hugely…then made up the couch bed and started her day. Concentration might be tough, but she still had a living to earn, and God knew, piles of work to do. Her laptop set up readily enough in a corner of his living room.

She was translating Danish to English-always harder than translating English to Danish-when Cord’s landline rang. He would have used her cell if he needed to contact her, so she ignored it. After several rings, though, the voice mail kicked in, and she heard a familiar voice.

“Pruitt. This is George Bassett. I know you returned our call, set a meeting time around one. Need to make it closer to three. And listen. I know you were pissed off about how we handled the Campbell woman last Thursday, but she’s disappeared now, if you didn’t know. Jan Howell, now, she didn’t show up for her job today, either. Got more than that to discuss with you, but it’s time you quit dicking around. Bring all the stuff you know on the Campbell woman. Let’s get it all on the table.”

That was it. The whole message. In the total silence after Bassett hung up, Sophie’s heart was suddenly pounding, pounding. It had been such a slap, when Cord let it slip how she’d been on the suspect list for the police.

This was a whole new slap, though. The detective had clearly been implying that Cord was spying on her. Collecting information on her, that he was supposed to report to the cops.

Cord? Spying on her? The one man she’d allowed to let down her guard to, for the first time in eons? The one man where she’d let her inner, wild, impulsive, emotional self out of hiding, the Sophie she thought was long dead and buried? The one man who’d invoked the utter panic and joy of falling in love completely?

She tried to grasp it. That nothing she’d believed about their time together was true…that nothing she’d felt was real.

Caviar pawed at her leg, clearly bored with not being the center of the universe. Sophie bent down, picked him up. “You’re going to get cat hair all over his house,” she told the feline. “I don’t suppose you have any more flash drives you’ve been hiding? Treasures? Money? I can’t take much more of not knowing the truth, Cav. This has got to get over with.”

The cat stood vigil while she showered, washed her hair, brewed a pot of coffee, and then hunkered back down in front of her computer in old jeans and a Smithsonian T-shirt and big old, warm socks. She tried working again. A couple of times, she gave up, curled up in a ball and just tried to wrap her mind around the whole situation, make some sense of it. It just made her more miserable. She went back to work.

When the landline rang a second time, she closed the door so she couldn’t hear any more voice messages. One step at a time. That’s how she figured she was going to survive this day. But when a car pulled up in Cord’s driveway in midafternoon, she was stuck with the interruption.

The striking woman who stepped out of the lipstick-red Mazda had an upswept hairstyle, kick-ass boots and a suede skirt to die for. Sophie saw her, took a breath and acted astonished as she pulled open the door.

“How on earth did you know I was here? Or did you come to see Cord?”

“I came to see you! I picked up so much gossip about Jon and Jan Howell since yesterday that I couldn’t wait to share it. I just ducked out of the office and decided to play hooky.” Penelope Martin rushed up the steps and gave her a big hug. “You’ve been through hell, haven’t you?”

“Hell times three,” Sophie agreed.

“I brought fancy coffee. And chocolate.” Penelope lifted the gilt-wrapped bag.

“Good, come on in,” Sophie said.

The interview room was enticingly decorated with dirty gray walls, gray floor and a gray conference table. It smelled of stale coffee and old doughnuts. Various signs claimed it was a smoke-free building, but a plastic ashtray took center stage on the table. In fact, it was the only decoration-beyond heaps of files and CDs and drives being run through the laptop that Bassett carted in.

Cord had been stuck here since…well, he wasn’t sure how long, but it was surely in the ballpark of when hell froze over. Bassett, Ferrell, two other men in old suits and one quiet woman in uniform had been crammed in together for the same interminable length of time.

Bassett was so excited his jowls were bouncing. They’d been eliminating name after name. Bringing it all down, as he put it.

They’d tracked down his brother’s illegitimate daughter. Now-or soon-Cord would be free to see his baby niece privately. Payments going to her, however, were established as child support. The mother of Jon’s child was nowhere near D.C. when Jon was killed, so she was readily eliminated as a potential suspect.

“Lover” CDs had been viewed, dating as far back as seven years before. All but five women had been identified. The others had all been investigated, resulting in either the women and/or their spouses being alibied on the day of Jon’s death.

“That’s what the investigative end of the job is,” Bassett said exuberantly. “Just plain hard work. Tracking down every person. The when, the where, the how, the why-”

“We’ve been here for hours,” Ferrell pieced in. “You think you could orgasm over your job some other time?”

“I’m just saying.”

“We know you’re ‘just saying.’ But it’s time to sum up. Everyone we originally believed to be prime suspects has been eliminated. Peter Bickmarr. Tiffany. The two senators we were looking at. The newscaster…”

“I just want to know where that guy got his Viagra,” said one of the side detectives, who’d clearly come to admire Jon’s prowess.

“Well, this is the crunch. We have no videos of Sophie Campbell. No videos, no letters, no e-mails, no pictures. But when push comes all the way down to shove, pretty much the most we have left are the names of three women who’ve shown they knew Jon, they had the opportunity, and who for different reasons could well have had the motivation to kill him. Jan Howell. Penelope Martin. And Sophie Campbell. Jan and Sophie haven’t been locatable all day-”

“Hold it.” Cord had heard Penelope’s name before, but not as a bottom-line possibility. “You said there were five-”

“Two are mighty iffy. Those three are the best suspects we have. Of course, there are still CDs you haven’t given us.”

“Yet,” Bassett said meaningfully.

“We’re not totally through tracking the money. Unfortunately, your brother had a highly active career, Cord. You have to admit, he was a self-made man. One who carved out a lifestyle, a sizable annual income, from doing nothing but-”

“Hurting women?” He punched his number, the landline at home, said to the group, “It’s Penelope Martin.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain-but I’m going home immediately. I always told you it wasn’t Sophie. I’m equally certain it wasn’t Jan, since yesterday-”

“You didn’t tell us-”

“You’ve been talking the whole time. We all have. Name by name. I didn’t realize it was down to the serious short list. But now, damn it, I do. I have to get home.” His landline rang and rang. And rang. Of course, Sophie wouldn’t automatically pick up his phone. When voice mail kicked in, he gave up, and started punching in her cell at the same time he barreled out the door.

She didn’t answer her cell, either.

He told himself he was stupid to worry. She was likely just working, not wanting to be bothered with calls. God knew, her sister had left enough food for days, and Cord had no reason to believe Penelope knew where Sophie was.

He had no reason to be scared that she was in danger. But he was. It was so crazy-discovering that all the big money, the big players had not proven to be the guilty ones. Instead, it was the vulnerable women who’d been pushed to the wall by his brother-the ones who had no way to pay up. The ones whose hearts had been bruised a hell of a lot more than their bank accounts could ever be.

It was damn hard to speed on the freeways escaping D.C. He did it anyway. He kept thinking how he’d bruised Sophie’s vulnerable heart. In that sense, he was no less guilty than his brother for hurting an innocent person.

She’d severed their relationship yesterday faster than a scissor could cut paper. Said logical things. Said them calmly, coldly, kindly.

She didn’t mean any of it.

He just hadn’t known what to say. What to do. How to make it right. He just had to maintain his priorities-which were, first, to keep Sophie safe, and second, to get the damn business of his brother finished. Then, he wanted to believe, he’d have a lifetime to woo Sophie the way he wanted to woo her. The way she needed to be wooed.

A black Mustang cut him off. Cord heeled the accelerator. A local radio station had already been playing, the announcer reporting on wars, earthquakes, volcanoes and disasters. He turned it off.

He knew what disaster was-the risk of losing the woman he loved, the only woman he’d ever really loved. The only woman he knew damn well would be there for him through thick and thin.

If she could just be coaxed to trust him again.

He spun wheels turning the last corner at the birch trees, barreled down the road. He saw, with a punch to his heart, that a car was already parked in his driveway.

It was a girl car. Not because it was Mazda, but because it was a fancy red. Had a ton of bumper stickers, all political.

It had to belong to Penelope Martin.

He slammed on the brakes, parked right there, hurled out of the car and started running.

“Come on, Sophie, you haven’t even touched your coffee-and I know how much you love Irish crème. Shoo,” Penelope said, irritably, to Caviar, who seemed determined to climb on the couch between them. “Jan told me what you did.”

“Told you?”

“She and I were friends for ages. We never kept secrets from each other. I gave her a key to my parents’ place on Nantucket, so she could take off for a few days, lick her wounds. That was a kind thing you did, giving her that drive.”

Finally, Sophie thought. She’d been waiting for trouble-the trouble that mattered-from the minute Penelope showed up. “I guess I’m relieved you know,” she said.

“Jon was such a jerk. Jan always claimed she only slept with him to collect another notch on her belt. But the truth is, she never slept around as much as she put on. And the blackmail thing was a huge shock.” Penelope nudged the bag of chocolates closer to her. “They’re nougats. Thought you told me they were your favorite. Honey, you look exhausted.”

“I am.”

“You must have discovered more than Jan’s pictures. Didn’t you find a bunch of wild stuff? Did you give it all to the police, or find a way to give the evidence back to the women, the way you did Jan? Come on, you know you can trust me. How many did that son of a sea dog take for a ride, anyway?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. There were just too many to-”

“I know what’ll make you feel better.” Penelope snapped her fingers, then dug in her lizard bag until she found a small vial of ibuprofen. She shook one in her hand, than handed Sophie the pill with her coffee. “Come on. I know you’ve got a headache. I can see the strain in your eyes. One ibuprofen isn’t going to hurt you.”

“You’re right,” Sophie said, and obediently accepted the pill. She’d avoided the coffee and chocolate. It wasn’t as if she were stupid. Once Penelope arrived, it seemed obvious that her best shot at survival was appearing warm and welcoming-rather than scared out of her mind.

The way Pen kept pushing the coffee and nougats, Sophie figured they both must have been doctored. And because Penelope hadn’t left her alone, even for two shakes, she’d had no way to call Cord or the police or anyone else.

Truthfully, she didn’t expect the police to help her. Cord was a different story, but Cord wasn’t due home until past six.

Sophie couldn’t imagine stalling would work that long, so she figured she’d have to find a way to work with the pill. She popped it in her mouth, then faked a cough. Smiling, half laughing, she gestured to Penelope that she was choking, and ran into the kitchen with the coffee.

As soon as Penelope could no longer see her, she dropped the pill in the disposal, poured a little coffee down the drain and spun around…

Only to find Penelope standing there, tapping her five-hundred-dollar lambskin boots. “Hell,” she said wearily, “I wasn’t fooling you at all, was I? You were never as naive as we all thought you were, Sophie.”

“I don’t know why you’re here.”

“Oh, yeah, you do.”

“Actually…I don’t.” Cripes, when all else failed, she might as well try some honesty. “Jan didn’t say it directly, but I’m positive she was the one who broke into my place, looking for videos and files.”

“She was,” Penelope affirmed.

“And I never saw anything, CDs, pictures, letters, nothing-that had anything to do with you. You always said you never slept with him. There wouldn’t seem to be anything he was blackmailing you for-”

“He wasn’t.” Penelope sighed. “You know what?”

“What?”

“I loved the creep. I had no idea he was blackmailing anyone. Sure I knew he was a player, but when we were together…I thought neither of us were playing. It was all back pocket. No one knew we were lovers. No one. I thought that was a good sign. I thought…I was different for him. That he was ready to grow up, quit messing around, settle into a real relationship. I thought we were such a natural pair. We knew so many of the same people, had the same values and politics and all.”

Penelope dove in her lizard bag for a second time and emerged with a gun. It was actually a tiny thing, Sophie noted. Silver and black. Very shiny. There was just this little eye, aimed straight at her.

Since honesty had failed, Sophie was happy to try begging. “Come on. Why would you do this? I thought you were my friend.”

“You were. I thought. But damn it, Sophie. You can’t let anything go. You kept finding out more and more things. And sooner or later, I was afraid you’d find out about me. Jan knew.”

“Jan knew you killed him?”

“No. Jan knew I loved him.”

“Then why…?” It was hard to talk when a girl was hyperventilating. Sophie couldn’t see many more options. Her back was to the sink. At the end of the kitchen counter, before the nook table, was the back door. She was in stocking feet, and it was cold out there, and she didn’t know if the door was locked…but it was the closest exit there was. The only exit there was.

“You asked me why? It’s all…because of the day that Jan came crying to me. She was beside herself, telling me about the blackmail, about how much trouble she was in. She only told me at all because she was desperate for money. She thought she could trust me for it.”

“And I’ll bet she could,” Sophie said. “You were good friends. And you weren’t the kind of friend who’d judge her.”

“Don’t play me, Soph.”

“I’m not playing you. I’m trying to understand. I never thought for a moment it was you.”

“That makes two of us. I never thought for a minute that I could kill anyone. God knows, I never planned to. I came over, middle of the day, sure Jon would be able to explain it all. There had to have been some huge misunderstanding. I knew he slept with other women. But when I got there, he had all this…stuff around. CDs. Letters. It was his at-home afternoon.” The gun wavered like a sick butterfly when Pen tried to laugh. “He was doing his blackmail accounting. When I got there, he just…smiled at me. Invited me in.”

“And then…?” One more step. Sophie leaned back, as if she were shifting to a more comfortable position.

“I hadn’t been to his place. He always slept at mine. He seemed to think that my being upset was silly. He put all that stuff away, locked it up, taking his time. I was just amazed. He had all these different hidey-holes and secret places, in the floorboards, inside drawers-he was like a boy in an electronics shop. And then…” Again the gun wavered. “Then he said come on, let’s go to dinner. As if I shouldn’t be upset. As if he thought I should have known…that I was just another lay for him. Special, he told me, because he wouldn’t blackmail me. We were the real thing. ‘Real thing.’ That’s what he called it. The real thing. So I hit him.”

“I would have, too!”

“And then I hit him again. And again. And he fell down the stairs-”

Sophie bolted. She fumbled with the doorknob; her hands were so slick, and she was petrified it was locked, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t. She yanked it open, heard Penelope scream at her. She started to run, but stumbled-she’d never been out his back door, didn’t realize there were a set of steps.

But then she was past it-the three steps-then she was in the damp, spongy grass, running, hell bent for leather. A long slope of grass led to a fence in one direction, woods in the other. She didn’t think, couldn’t think. Just barreled toward those woods…

She heard a pop.

She ran harder. So hard, she was gasping, and her side had a sharp burn, and because she couldn’t help it, her eyes were stinging tears. And still she ran.

She heard another pop. Heard Penelope scream at her again. Screaming, more pops, then suddenly…nothing.

Confused, panting, she turned her head-and immediately stumbled over her own feet and crashed on a knee-but not before she saw a shaggy head and a set of broad shoulders, tackling Penelope. A nearby siren screamed from the street-not soon enough, as far as Sophie was concerned. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if she needed the police.

Cord was here.

Frustrating Cord no end, he hadn’t gotten his hands on her yet. Couldn’t. Damn, but what a hullabaloo. Penelope Martin had started uncontrollably crying, babbling a full confession even before the police arrived and cuffed her; then Sophie suddenly shrieked because the back door had been left open and Caviar could get loose. Bassett tried to talk to Sophie, to calm her, because the cops figured he had the best shot at getting her to spill the whole picture of how it had come down. None of the authorities seemed to realize that the parts of the story they cared about, and the parts Sophie cared about, were miles apart.

Practical issues made it even harder to get his hands on her. He’d seen her feet when she first came in…and pretty immediately, hit the bathroom to run the tub. It was no surprise her feet were bloody, with running over rough ground in the woods in stocking feet. She also had the mother of all slivers. She wasn’t ready to have it taken out yet. She said she needed something tall and powerful before anyone-including him-came anywhere near that splinter.

He figured, when she asked for something “tall and powerful,” that she was asking for a shot of whiskey. Instead, it seemed she wanted a glass of wine.

So she had her wine and was now soaking her feet, sitting on the tub rim. Unfortunately, George Bassett had chosen that moment to try to speak to her. Cord could have warned him. But didn’t.

“You owe me an apology,” she told George Bassett. “In fact, you owe me a million apologies.”

“I know. We’re sorry.”

“You should be sorry. Not the royal we. You. Specifically, you. Thinking I was guilty of something, without even asking me! Asking Cord to spy on me! What’s the matter with you? How could you be in that job without having any judgment about people? Obviously, Cord didn’t know anything. He wasn’t living here, had no possible way to know what his brother was doing-”

“We…I…know that, ma’am. Listen, I just need a statement from you, and then I can leave you alone. We’ll all leave-”

“I haven’t heard my apology. And you almost let my cat out!”

“I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about the cat, too.”

“You think that’s enough? I’ve been scared out of my mind.”

“I’m sorry. Very, very sorry.”

She sniffed, but then seemed to relent. “Okay. I guess I’m sorry, too.”

“For what?” Bassett’s jaw dropped, as if disbelieving he’d opened his mouth. “Never mind. I don’t care what you’re sorry for. It doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t think it does, either. Because I wasn’t really tampering with anything important. I just-”

“Sophie.” Cord figured he’d better interrupt before she spilled the story of her altering the pictures of Jan. He still didn’t know how she’d done that, and wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “If you’ll just give Bassett three minutes, that’s all he needs. Then he’s gone. Then everybody’ll clear out of here and be gone. If more comes up later, we can deal with it some other day.”

Sophie was a lot more worried about the splinter. “What happens if soaking it doesn’t loosen up this sliver?”

“Then we give you another glass of wine.”

“Okay. Where’s Caviar?”

“Snoozing on top of the refrigerator.”

Still, it took forever. Bassett was a pencil pusher, wanted to fill in every detail right that minute, and spare people were still traipsing in and out from having to accumulate evidence. When the door was finally closed for the last time, Cord headed back for the bathroom with a sterilized needle behind his back.

“I’m too tired to do it now,” Sophie said.

“Okay. Let’s just have a look,” he said.

She sighed. “I’m not good with stuff like this. I don’t do needles. I don’t do pain. And I’ve had it with stress of any kind. I’m not kidding, Cord.”

“I understand. I know. I won’t touch it. I’ll just look, okay?”

“You won’t touch?”

“Right. I’ll just look.” What a baby. Although he understood why she was freaked, when he finally got a close look at the sliver. The spear of wood stabbed into the tender side of her foot was almost an inch long. Three inches at least, according to her. It wasn’t the splinter that was the real problem, he suspected.

He suspected the splinter was just the temporary, unwitting scapegoat for all her pent-up emotions that day.

He hooked her bare wet foot in his lap, an operation conducted with her sitting on the kitchen nook table, and him on the chair-with the cat now sitting on the table with her, to supervise. He saw the sliver. Saw it was going to come out just fine. If she just sat still.

She let out a howl worthy of a five-year-old child.

And that, of course, was when he could finally reach for her.

The instant he held out his arms, she vaulted into them. And that was it. She never said another word. She just held on and held on and held on.

Or maybe that was him-holding on so tight he could barely breathe, because that’s how it seemed. He really doubted that he could breathe without her ever again. All the details that made up Sophie Campbell, from the scent of her hair, to the texture of her skin, to the weight of her, to his terror of almost losing her-there was nothing else in his life but her. Not then. Not, he suspected, for the next hundred years.

“I love you,” he said fiercely. “Love you, Sophie. Like I never loved anyone. Like I never dreamed I could feel love.”

She reared back, framed his face in her hands. “You’re honest to the core, Cord. I knew you weren’t spying on me. That you didn’t suspect me. I was just…scared.”

“You had reason to be scared. We had a lot of people trying to play us off each other. A lot of people trying to protect themselves in ways that interfered with the two of us.”

She whispered, “I lied.”

“Yeah?”

“About walking away when it was all over. The mess with Jon is over, Cord. But you’re not leaving me.”

“I know.” He took a kiss…then gave one.

She inhaled that first kiss, then took one back.

She closed her eyes on a long, soft sigh and settled into his arms. She’d had everything good in her life ripped from her. He was just beginning to understand how that built both her vulnerability and her strength. She’d fight with everything she had, past right or wrong, past danger or rules, to guard those she loved. Like him.

“Sophie?” Eyes closed, he rubbed his cheek against hers, sought her sweet mouth again. “I’ll be there for you. Through bad times and good. I’ll keep you safe.”

She smiled against his lips. “Just love me, Cord. That’s the only kind of safe that matters to me.”

That, he thought, was easy.