Secretive Stranger

Chapter 7

All day, Sophie felt akin to the circus acrobat who had to balance on a high wire.

No matter what she tried to do, fate seemed to yank her off balance in an unexpected direction. Obviously, she’d had no choice to leave Cord this morning and go to work, but her interview with Inger Henriks was originally only scheduled for two hours. Instead, it had dragged on for five.

“My family,” Inger had told her, “they were always saving the American fliers. Flyboys, we called them in the war. Our house was in the harbor, Helnaes Bugt. That was the thing. You know, Denmark has a border with Germany. So the flyboys would come in the dark, run out of fuel, drop in the water like flies. We’d fish them out, feed them, hide them. Did the Swedes do this? Did the Finns? No. It was us, the Danes. Always us. I was proud of this, we all were, but still. I was just a child. We had this dangerous secret in our lives, where if anyone had overheard us whispering, we could be caught. My family were fishermen. And I was just a girl who wanted to believe in fairy tales and dreams. Instead, I was afraid every day. Secrets-this is no way to live.”

The stories had gone on and on-each of them heart-touching, compelling and powerful. If it weren’t for Cord, she’d have been thrilled to spend the extra hours. She loved her job, especially loved this project, and felt enriched by every one of the elderly women she’d had a chance to interview.

It was just…there was Cord. Also a murder and the break-in and the mess of blackmail Cord’s brother had been involved with-but that stuff was just, well, danger. Troubling and scary and all, but hardly as momentous as making love with Cord last night.

Nothing could be that momentous. Not for Sophie.

She couldn’t get home until midafternoon, and by then she was frazzled, soaked from the mean, cold rain and out of breath. Cord wouldn’t be there until later. The plan was to scour Jon’s apartment, open every ceiling tile, pat down every floorboard. But she had much to do before then-starting with changing clothes, copying her interview tapes to her home system and buckling down to some serious translating work.

Her cell phone rang before she’d even taken off her coat…and Caviar was all over her with demanding meows. The cat had something shiny in its mouth-a trophy, like a bottle cap-and clearly wanted her to value the treasure. Sophie tried yanking off her jacket, petting Cav and responding to her sister at the same time.

“I haven’t talked to you in a week, and I’ve been worried to bits about how you’re doing. I was out on the water and just couldn’t get a connection.” Cate’s voice was as forceful and vibrant as Sophie’s was soft.

Cate was thirty, and had carved out a career as an adventure chef, which meant, as far as Sophie could tell, that her sister got to travel to every exotic place on the planet. Cate had cooked her way from Madagascar to Antarctica to halfway up Everest-rough-and-tumble places that Sophie had never gone or aspired to go to. But that was Cate. “You sound different from last week,” her sister said suspiciously.

“Well, I’d hope so. I was a wreck when I talked to you last. I’d just found my neighbor’s body.”

Cate listened to the latest rundown of events, but then interrupted again. “There’s still something different in your voice. There couldn’t be something really unusual in your life-like a man-could there?”

“No. Well, yes. I mean, not exactly…” Sophie wanted to stare at the phone in exasperation. How was it her sister could smell a rose in a patch of peonies? “Yes, there’s a man in my life, but it’s not how it sounds. He’s related to my neighbor. So it’s not as if we met in the usual way.”

“Soph, if you waited to meet guys in the usual way, you’d be a virgin at ninety-five. Like your current work project. You talk to old ladies and spend the rest of the time huddled in front of a computer. Guaranteeing you won’t meet any men.”

“That’s so unfair. And untrue,” Sophie began. She tried to sit, but Caviar climbed on her lap, tried to cuddle under her neck, batted her face when she failed to give him her complete attention.

“Just tell me straight. How far has it gone?” Cate waited all of three seconds, and when Sophie didn’t respond that fast, she burst out, “Well, hell, that far? You?”

“What do you mean, me? You’ve been known to leap into bed with a guy who rings your chimes.”

“But that’s me, baby. Not you.” Cate dropped the teasing note altogether. “That’s the thing, Soph. We’re both always waiting for a fire. Waiting for our lives to blow up, in some way we can’t possibly foresee or control. So I pick men for a day, never give them a chance to stay. And you steer clear of anyone you can feel close to. It’s really the same coin, just two different sides of it. We’re both always ready to have to jump out a window at a moment’s notice. But suddenly you’re coloring way, way outside your lines.”

“I did. I admit it. It’s probably nuts.” And just when she was getting into a real heart-to-heart with Cate, the buzzer for the front door interrupted.

“I don’t know whether it’s nuts or terrific,” Cate grumbled. “I just think I should fly over there. Anyone messing with my baby sister better know there’ll be hell to pay if he hurts you.”

“Cate. Come on. People get hurt all the time. It’s life. Nobody can save anybody else that.”

“Horse hockey. I’ll strangle him if he isn’t good to you. And damn it, I have to go-but I expect a complete report before next week. And I’m calling Lily, so she knows what’s going on. What’s this guy’s name?”

Caviar tried to trip her en route to the door, and she almost dropped the phone. It would help if she weren’t galloping. She hadn’t expected Cord to get here until closer to the dinner hour, but just picturing him on the other side of the door had her pulse doing the jazz riff of a love song.

“Cord,” she said automatically as she opened the door, only to find Penelope Martin there instead. She motioned her friend in, still trying to end the call and handle Caviar at the same time.

“I heard you say Cord’s name,” Penelope said a few minutes later as she made herself tea. “That’s why I stopped by. Finished a little early on Capitol Hill, and I just kept thinking how troubling this has all been for you. I wondered if the police had any leads on the person who broke into your apartment.”

The stop by was a surprise, but Sophie told herself she might have expected it. Penelope inhaled gossip the way an alcoholic buzzed for the scent of scotch, a requirement every day, more valued than air. As always, Penelope looked groomed to the gills, doing the navy and white thing today-except for the flash of red in her ears. Sophie suspected Pen would consider rubies a justifiable expense to enable the patriotic color scheme.

“The police haven’t found a single thing?” Penelope echoed with total disappointment. By then they both had mugs of tea; Sophie had scrounged up some not-too-stale snickerdoodles and run in and out of the bedroom, shedding her flannel skirt for jeans and a black sweater. Only, then she decided to run back in and change her bra-not that she was certain something would happen with Cord tonight.

That reality suddenly drowned her upbeat mood. She really didn’t know how Cord would greet her tonight. How he’d feel about last night. How he’d feel about her. If he’d regret what happened between them.

“Sophie, you mentally wandered off again. Did you even hear me?”

Of course she’d heard Penelope. She was just too busy having a nervous breakdown to concentrate. And suddenly she was feeling particularly dumb and vulnerable because she’d changed to the yellow froth of a bra that she shouldn’t have bought to begin with, it was that frivolous and sexy and silly and…

“Sophie.”

And he’d probably take it as invitation. Which wasn’t what she meant. Or maybe it was. She scraped back her hair, feeling completely exhausted. “I don’t know what the police have found, Penelope. Except that I think Cord believes-and so do I-that his brother’s death wasn’t as simple as an accidental fall. He’s been trying to go through Jon’s apartment, but he’s working, so he has to fit it in a few hours at a time. There’s no way he can do it quickly.”

“So…he’s just getting started? Has he found anything good so far? You know what I mean. The scoop on Jon and his women and all the stuff we always talked about. Jan’s been on pins and needles, wondering whether Jon kept something from the time they slept together.”

Sophie started to respond, then hesitated. “For sure, there was nothing about Jan. Cord met Jan and you and Hillary that one time. So he knows we’re friends, so I think he’d have mentioned it if he found something related to any of us. Otherwise, I don’t know.”

Caviar pawed at her knee, showing off some treasure of a toy again, giving her the excuse to drop her eyes. She felt bad, not being totally straight with Penelope. A week ago, she’d have freely told what she knew. Now everything was different. It wasn’t a matter of not trusting Penelope or anyone else. It was about fearing what the murderer believed-about Jon, about her, about Cord. About who really had access to the blackmail evidence-or thought they did.

Penelope sighed with disappointment and stood up. “Darn it. I was hoping you’d picked up more. You’d tell me if you found out anything, wouldn’t you? You know…Jan always bragged about sleeping with Jon. But I’d feel bad if she somehow got hurt because of it. If you found out something, we could try to protect her.”

“I’d hate to think of her getting hurt, too.”

Penelope pulled on her coat. “I’ve made this sound like a selfish visit. You know I love scandal. But I was honestly worried about Jan. And much more, about you. That break-in was no small thing. Anytime you want me to stay with you, just give me a call. You still must be petrified.”

Sophie didn’t think she was suffering leftover symptoms from the break-in-until she almost jumped out of her skin when she heard the next rap on the door.

Penelope had been gone for more than a half hour by then, and Sophie had installed herself in front of her computer, saving-and double saving-the interview work she’d done that day. She was afraid to trust her hard drive or her backup. Afraid every time she heard a creak in the walls or a whistle of wind.

When she heard the second rap on the door, she thought: It has to be Cord. So it’s okay.

Only, her heart was still thundering like a wild drum. Apparently, nothing was going to be “okay.” Any sense of safety in her life, in her heart, had been frayed at the edges.

There was no “safe” anymore. She’d learned that at five years old. How could she have forgotten that?

When Cord charged up the stairs and thumped on Sophie’s door, he was wound tighter than a violin string. The meeting with Ferrell and Bassett had been unsettling and tricky.

The problems with his brother kept becoming more complex, more ugly, more dangerous. Cord was a problem solver. Give him an avalanche or a fire or an accident, and he dove right in-no fear, no hesitation. It wasn’t as if he liked trouble, but he thrived when he had something to do. This business of waiting and waiting and waiting for another axe to fall, another piece to fit in the blackmail puzzle, was grating on his nerves.

When Sophie didn’t respond, he knuckled her door again, this time harder. He shifted his feet. Rolled his shoulders. His nerves sharpened another notch.

All day, he’d wanted to see her.

All day, he’d worried about seeing her. He had no idea-none-how she’d greet him. If she’d regret last night or be happy about it. If she’d want to talk about what it meant, or want to pretend it never happened. If she’d shy from him like a wary colt, or assume last night meant…what?

Hell, he didn’t know what last night meant himself. He knew he was wary of trusting another woman since Zoe…but he’d sure as hell trusted Sophie last night, in every way a man can trust a woman. Whatever name you wanted to call it, Cord wanted her with him every night, all night, for as long as she was willing.

Still…that didn’t absolve him of responsibility for what his brother had gotten Sophie embroiled in. Cord had only put her in a more dangerous position since Jon’s murder. Bottom line was that, if he were Sophie-he’d kick him out of her life so fast, it’d make his head spin.

When she didn’t respond to the second knock, he frowned and rapped one more time-about to start getting damn worried-when Sophie suddenly yanked open the door.

Whatever he’d expected or been braced for, it wasn’t a flying blonde.

She almost knocked him over. Damn woman leaped, slapped her arms around his neck and then just hung there, holding tight. Not breathing. Not speaking. Not moving. Just holding.

He closed his eyes, inhaled her scent, the tickle of her hair, the warmth of her body. Crazy as it sounded, that’s all he needed or wanted to do for those moments. Hold her. Just like this. Eventually, though, his vocal cords functioned enough to say, “Not having the best day, huh?”

“Awful.” Finally, she lifted her head, released him from that gluelike clutch hold. “I wasn’t going to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Say hi this way. I don’t want you to think I’m a clinger. Or a chaser. But the thing is…you’ve probably had an awful day, too.”

“You’ve got that right.”

“And it’s because of Jon. Or connected to Jon.”

“Right again.”

“So, who else can we possibly hug about this except each other?”

“This is about hugs, is it?”

Her cheeks flushed like a child’s. So it wasn’t about hugs. For her or him. And maybe she wasn’t all that easy with last night, but her eyes still met his squarely, flush or no flush. She wasn’t denying what happened between them. Or trying to.

She wasn’t denying wanting him, either.

Although she did suddenly ease away. “Hey. No diversions until we get some work done. We need answers. We need information. This limbo land of waiting for the next crisis to get heaped on our heads is hugely not fun.”

“We also need food.”

“Well, yeah.”

He had Thai delivered, her choice. It was clearly a favorite of both hers and Caviar’s, since the cat hung over the edge of the computer desk, occasionally trying to bat the chopsticks from her hand. Worse yet, Sophie shared. With the cat.

How could he possibly be involved with a woman who shared Thai with a cat?

Out of the complete blue, words came out of his mouth that he never planned. “I was involved before.”

“Yeah?” She lifted her eyes to his immediately, which gave the cat the opportunity for an extra steal.

He stood up, bunched up the napkins and boxes and debris. His voice came out light, easy, like he was telling her about the weather. “Yeah. Zoe. That was her name. Closest I came to marriage. In fact, we’d have been married if both of us hadn’t had a lot of travel with our work, so we hadn’t yet pinned down a date. Anyway. It was when my mother got sick. I quit the job and moved back here. She didn’t like that, and that was that.”

Soph rose, too, and dove into the cleanup with him. “If she hurt you, she’s dead to me.”

Of all the crazy things to say, he mused. But he didn’t go on. He hadn’t known he was going to even mention Zoe. And after that, they both dove into their attack plan for the evening.

The plan, simply, was to follow the money. Couldn’t have been more trite or stereotypical, but hell, that was because it generally worked. The police believed they’d been through Jon’s records from every possible angle already-but Sophie figured she’d look at the numbers from a female perspective, and immersed herself in front of Jon’s computers.

Cord parked himself on the floor with boxes of old records. The cat, for no known reason, chose to sidle next to him. At least a half hour passed before either of them spoke.

“Cord?”

“Hmm.” God. What his brother had spent on himself and pleasure boggled the mind. And where and how Jon could afford it all made Cord even more uneasy.

“Did you check Jon’s mailbox today?”

“No. But I will right now.” He jumped up immediately. Sitting still that long was straight torture. And since he had that outstanding excuse to move, he stalked behind her and dropped a kiss on the back of her neck-that spot with the down-soft hair and the silky white skin.

“Do not seduce me now,” she complained.

He hadn’t been. At least not exactly. He just couldn’t get that “if she hurt you, she’s dead to me” out of his head. It was so like Sophie to spill out her heart in a single, bold stroke.

He hustled downstairs and scooped the junk from the mailbox, started sifting through it all on the climb back up. Catalogs. Bills. More bills. Junk mail. And then…an envelope with a Cayman Islands address. A bank. It stopped him dead.

When he came back into the apartment, the darn cat-of course-tried to trip him. He was batting around a rolled-up piece of paper as if it were the best toy a human had ever given him. “Sophie?” How long had he been gone? Three minutes, four? She was no longer sitting in the computer room, although the printer was spewing out a long sequence of sheets.

He found her in the kitchen, crawled up on the counter, looking in the back of the top cupboard-heaven knew why.

“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.

“I found something. Something not good.”

One short glance, and he could see her complexion had gone from healthy pink to chalk. “What?”

“I’ll tell you. Right away. But sit down. I’m looking for whiskey or scotch or something.”

“Another drinking night?” he murmured.

“For you, not me. I just made myself tea.”

As if to illustrate the point, the microwave pinged. He plucked out her mug. For him, she pulled out a bottle of Talisker from the top shelf, opened it, reared her head away, as if the smell alone could give her sunburn, and scrambled in the cupboards for a glass. By then, she’d leaped back down to the floor and served him the drink-raw, no ice, no water.

“That might be a little strong,” he mentioned.

“Trust me. You’ll need it all.”

“I found something, too. Something not so good, either.”

“Wait!” She held up a hand like a traffic cop. “I need my bracer of tea first. How bad’s your news?”

“Bad.”

“Well, mine’s worse. Mine is so bad that, if I were next door, I’d be cracking open the whole box of Oreos.”

Damn, but she was forcing him to smile. He didn’t doubt she’d found something troubling. He knew he had. But being with her could probably make hell almost better.

“Okay,” she said and gulped a sip of tea. “I’m ready.”

So he spilled his first. “My brother received an accounting from an offshore bank. It doesn’t mention the account amount. It wouldn’t. It just reports what he earned in interest for the last three months.”

“This is scary?”

“I’d say ten thousand bucks-over that short period of time, for one account-is on the road to damn scary.”

She took another gulp. “You don’t suppose he just had a really high-yielding CD?”

Double damn, but he had to laugh. And she knew he couldn’t help it, because she smiled right back at him. “So,” she said cheerfully, “it looks as if Jon had been thriving in his blackmail career for quite a while. It’s not everyone who has that kind of job skill, Cord.”

“Trust you to see the positive.”

“Hey, at least he was good at it. Money seems to be showing up all over the place around here.” She braced, then clunked down her tea. “Okay. My turn. I was following the money, as we talked about. Going through the list of accounts in Jon’s Quicken. I can’t imagine he’d use an open program like that if he was trying to hide anything, so it was just as unlikely the police thought anything looked suspicious. And maybe they were right. But I found a payment of fifteen hundred dollars a month for the last eighteen or nineteen months to the same place.”

“What was the name?”

“JONA.”

Cord shook his head, mystified. “Doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“I’m not through.” Her tone softened, the humor gone. “Once I pinned that down, I went back to when this all started. Around eighteen months ago, Jon paid a ton of credit card bills to various stores.”

“Nothing odd about that.”

“These stores were, like Toys ’R Us. A furniture store specializing in baby furniture. Several hundred dollars spent at another place, called Babies and Blankets.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Cord frowned.

Since he wasn’t drinking it, Sophie reached over, took his shooter of Talisker and threw back a slug. After another minute or two of violent coughing, she croaked, “I’m afraid it will. Wait a minute.”

She charged back into the computer room and came back with her booty from the printer. The four pictures were grainy, poor-quality prints, but they illustrated the same thing-a baby. The first was a newborn shot, followed by a baby who was obviously a little older, and finally, a shot of a toothless, hairless, chubby-cheeked baby in a red-and-white Valentine dress.

“A baby,” Cord said blankly. And without pause, swallowed three solid gulps of the Talisker-a drink that deserved being savored with respect. “This can’t be what it looks like. You’re telling me my brother had a baby? On top of all the crap he pulled on people.”

“I keep thinking that maybe there’s some other explanation. But I can’t think of one. He’s been paying regular support, paid for a bunch when the baby was born. The pattern’s pretty inescapable.” Sophie studied the last photo, then said, “Looks as if you have a niece, judging from the dress.”

Cord pushed away from the kitchen counter, the way a boxer might shoot off the ropes. “We’re getting out of here.”

“We are?”

“I’ve had enough. So have you. Enough of bad news and sad news. Enough of sleazy behavior and roads that lead to more sleazy behavior. Enough focusing on my brother.”

“But, Cord, we’ve finally broken through, really started making some major discoveries. For the first time, I think we have a shot at figuring out the player, or players, in this whole mess. But maybe we should even be calling the police, telling them what we found out-”

“A lot of shoulds and coulds in that scenario. And I agree with you, Soph. But not right this second. Right this second, we’re dumping this pop stand.”

“Where to?” she asked bewilderedly.