Against the Storm1 (27 page)

A few feet away, Alex shook his guy like a rat. Trace had learned long ago that the jet jockey was a lot tougher than his sophisticated appearance made him seem. “You heard the man. Who paid you to follow the lady?”

When the guy clamped his lips shut, Alex slid a hand around his throat and hoisted him up against the side of the van. “I asked you a question.”

“Nobody paid us, man,” he managed to choke out.

“Keep your mouth shut, Reggie,” the driver warned. Ben whacked him again and dragged him around to the other side of the van, leaving his buddy at Alex’s mercy.

Alex kept his hand around Reggie’s throat, the threat more than clear, and his tough-guy facade began to crumble.

“You’re going to jail for assault,” Trace said to him. “Do yourself a favor and cooperate.”

“Nobody paid us,” he said again. Alex released him. “We just came down to drink some beer and have some fun.” Reggie rubbed his throat. “Then we seen her. She
was on TV so we knew she was some rich bitch photographer. We figured that fancy camera of hers had to be worth at least a grand, so we went for it.”

“I’m not rich,” Maggie said fiercely. “I saved for a long time to buy that camera. I didn’t steal it from someone the way you tried to do. And I didn’t hurt anyone trying to get it.”

Under his dark skin, Reggie’s homely face went red. “Oh, yeah? Well, if you woulda just handed it over, you wouldna got hurt.”

Trace’s jaw went tight. “Since you and your buddies are going to jail, I guess your plan didn’t work out too well.”

A siren sounded a couple of times before a pair of car doors swinging open ended the conversation. Two deputy sheriffs rushed up from the patrol car that had stopped in front of the van. Another car rolled up behind the vehicle and a second pair of deputies shot out.

“The sheriff’ll handle it from here,” Trace said to Maggie. He walked over, picked up her purse and gave it back to her.

Her hand trembled as she clutched it against her. “But we didn’t get the stalker.”

Trace slid an arm around her, eased her against his side. “Maybe we’ll get something off the text message he sent.” Not likely, but possible. He glanced over at the men and deputies next to the van. “I want you to promise me something.”

“What is it?”

“Next time some guy tries to steal your camera or your purse, you give it to him, okay?” He thought of the knife Reggie had been wielding and how much worse it could have been. “I don’t care what you paid for it, nothing is worth your life.”

She gazed up at him, her big green eyes searching his face. Damn, she was pretty.

“I knew you were out there. All I had to do was hold them off long enough for you to reach me.”

Trace looked at her hard. “Promise me.”

Maggie sighed. “Okay, I promise. I suppose you’re right.”

He walked her back to her car to wait for one of the uniforms to come over and take a statement.

“At least he called,” she said, referring to the stalker. “He made contact. That could be good. Maybe we could try this again.”

Trace forced himself to smile. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

But no amount of convincing was going to get him to risk Maggie’s life again.

“W
hat are you doing?” Maggie walked into the living room to find Trace adjusting his big-screen TV.

“Getting ready to look at some of your photographs. The ones you stored in Photodrive.”

“All my pictures are stored there.”

“I’m just interested in the ones you showed at the gallery. The fire was set after the opening—before you had time to get the sold ones reprinted. I’m thinking someone who was there that night might have seen something in one of your pictures that he didn’t like.”

Trace had suggested the theory before. It seemed improbable. But the world was an improbable place and she had come to trust Trace’s judgment. “I suppose it could happen.”

“Since the gallery wasn’t torched, we have to assume if there is something in one of the photos, it’s in one of those purchased that night.”

Going with the theory, she started nodding. “If someone had something to hide, he would have bought the picture to get it out of sight. He would have needed to destroy the picture and the memory card and—”

“And hire someone to burn down your studio. That way the photograph couldn’t turn up again.”

“It makes sense—if I actually did take some kind of incriminating picture.”

“We need to know which pieces were purchased and who bought them.”

“The information’s on your laptop.” The one he had loaned her after the fire. “I had Faye email it to me again. I’ll print us a copy.” She smiled. “You’ll be happy to know I’m almost finished with my client list. I need to integrate the stuff Faye sent, but once it’s done, the list will be complete.”

“That’s great. The more information we have, the more likely we are to figure out what the hell is going on.” He tipped his head toward the kitchen table, where his laptop sat open. “I want you to go online and download your latest photos onto a card. We’ll bring the pictures up in high-def on the TV screen. That’ll make them big enough for us to see in close detail.”

“Great idea.” Maggie walked over to the table and sat down. Trace had already plugged a photo card into the machine, so she was ready to go. Using his wireless connection, she accessed the internet, went to www.photodrive.com, put in her username and password and brought up her account.

The photos were listed by collection, her latest effort entitled simply
The Sea.
It was the same name she was using for her coffee-table book—if she ever got it finished.

She downloaded the photos, which took a bit of time. While she was waiting, she sent the file Faye had emailed of the buyers’ names and the pictures purchased at the opening off to Trace’s printer, which was down the hall in his office.

They were working a two-pronged approach, searching for her stalker, but also examining the possibility that the fire was set for an entirely different reason.

Maggie looked at the screen, saw the download of the photos was complete. Trace took the photo card out of the computer and she jumped up and headed down the hall. The printer was humming, spitting out pages of names when she walked in. She picked them up and returned to the living room.

“Let me take a look.” Trace walked up behind her, his hard chest pressing against her back as he read the list over her shoulder. She smiled, feeling a little curl of heat.

“Looks like half the bigwigs in the city bought one of your photos. The mayor. The chief of police. Mrs. Robert Daily—she’s chairman of the university board.”

“I sold fourteen that night.”

“Richard Meyers’s name is here—Senator Logan’s aide. Logan’s daughter, Cassidy, too. I remember you mentioned Matthew Bergman, the guy in the Ferrari that night. I see his name here. I don’t recognize any of the others.”

Maggie looked down at the list. “Mr. and Mrs. Silverman have bought from me before. Mrs. Weyman’s name is here, the founder of the children’s shelter. I don’t know the others, though I may have met them that night.” She handed Trace the pages.

“Let’s match the photos with the people who bought them, see if anything comes up.”

But the idea that she could have taken a photo and not noticed something important enough to drive a person to burn down her house seemed pretty far-fetched.

With a sigh, she followed Trace into the living room.

Trace stuck the photo card into the slot on the side of the TV. An instant later, the first picture popped up on the screen. This one he remembered from the gallery show, a photo of a deserted shore with palm trees blowing in unison as if dancing a ballet. He accessed the metadata, which told the time and date the photo was taken. He remembered the title:
Taste the Wind.
There were no people in it, nothing out of the ordinary. It was the print Mrs. Daily had purchased.

The next photo came up.
“Sands of Time,”
Maggie said. It wasn’t on the purchased list. The next two pictures were beautiful, but when she and Trace cross-checked, neither were among the fourteen sold at the opening.

He smiled as the fourth picture came up, the tiny sailboat racing to escape the tentacles of a rapidly descending storm.

“Ferocity,”
Maggie announced.

He remembered her saying she had waited for the little boat to reach safety before she’d left the area, remembered how it had touched him that she had been so worried about the people on board.

“Looks like that’s the one Mrs. Weyman bought.” The woman was a heavyweight in high society, someone who would be concerned about her reputation.

“I don’t see anything,” Maggie said, carefully examining the photo.

“You said the boat reached the harbor. So nothing untoward happened to it.”

“That’s right.”

He went to the next digital image, of surfers slicing through a curl, the sun illuminating the wave from behind, making it look like glass.

“Color of Water,”
Maggie said.

He looked down at the list. “Cassidy Logan bought it.”

Maggie smiled. “I took it when I was out in California. Down at Laguna Beach.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Visiting good ol’ Roger?”

Maggie didn’t take the bait. “I stopped to see him. We’re friends, remember?”

And nothing more, he knew with a smug sense of satisfaction. Since Roger was gay, he was one man Trace didn’t have to worry about.

The next photo came up, a wide swatch of ocean stretching out from a sandy cove. An elaborate sand castle was slowly being washed away by the surf, the kids who had built it watching with solemn expressions. Clearly, they were proud and sad at the same time.

“I call it
Life and Death,
” Maggie said, and he got it. Like building a sand castle, life was bright and fun, and yet it was fleeting.

She looked down at the list. “Someone named John Andrews bought it.”

Trace studied the photo. “Just a couple of kids. I don’t see anything that might be a problem for Mr. Andrews.”

Maggie’s gaze followed. “Neither do I.”

“Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have Sol do a little digging, see if there’s anything we should know about him.”

“Sol’s the computer whiz in your office, right?”

“That’d be him. I’ll have him take a look at the buyers we don’t know anything about.”

They ran through the first half of the photos. Not wanting to miss anything, they spent longer than they had expected, and found nothing in the pictures that looked suspicious.

“My concentration is going,” Trace said with a sigh.
“We could both use a break, and I need to get down to the office for a while. How about we look through the next batch when I get home?”

Maggie glanced away from the last photo on the screen. “All right.” He could read her disappointment. She was hoping that something in the pictures might help them find her stalker.

Trace caught her face between his hands and gave her a soft, reassuring kiss. “Maybe this whole idea will turn out to be a wild-goose chase. But we won’t know for sure until we’re finished. And we’ve still got your client list to work. Soon as you’ve got it done, we’ll get started.”

Maggie just nodded.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but we’re making progress, darlin’. Something will break sooner or later. It always does.”

She sighed. “I hope you’re right. I just can’t…”

“You just can’t what?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

Trace kissed her again. “Get that list done for me.”

Maggie’s smile looked forced. “I will, I promise.”

He turned, let out a soft whistle, and Rowdy shot out of the kitchen. A single bark said he was ready to go. Trace ruffled his coat. Rowdy loved to ride in the car. It didn’t matter where. As long as it wasn’t too hot, Trace usually took him along.

“Let’s go, boy.” He waved at Maggie as he headed out the back door, only a little concerned by the look he had seen in her eyes.

She’d be all right, he told himself. He would take her out to dinner tonight, get her out of the house for a while.

Trace thought of the evening ahead and how they would make love when they got home, and he smiled.

True to her word, Maggie finished her client list. There were dozens of people over the years who had bought one or two of her photos. There were twenty people who had purchased three pictures, ten who had purchased four and two who had purchased five. Two different art brokers had acted on behalf of clients. She had gotten in touch with them, but neither had clients who had purchased more than two pieces.

Her work was finished.

She glanced around Trace’s warm, cozy house and ignored a sharp little pang at the thought of leaving. It was past time to go. Whatever was going on in her life, she couldn’t live in limbo any longer. Trace didn’t believe her stalker had set the fire. She had received a text from him that said the same thing.

Oddly enough, she believed him.

It didn’t mean he wasn’t a danger.

It didn’t change what she had to do.

Grabbing her purse off the table, she headed for the back door. She set the alarm as Trace had shown her, and made her way out to the garage. Her Escape was parked next to where Trace kept his Jeep. She backed into the alley and headed for the real estate office she had phoned yesterday morning after reading an ad in the paper.

Gallagher Realty handled apartment rentals in the area near where her town house was being rebuilt. Trace was going to have a fit, but it couldn’t be helped.

Maggie glanced in the mirror, but didn’t see anyone. She hadn’t heard from the stalker since the text she had received from him at the shore. Even if he continued to
harass her, she had no choice but to move on. It was time to get back to reality, and that meant finding a place of her own.

She thought of the days and nights she had spent with Trace, and a soft ache throbbed in the middle of her chest. Both of them had known it would come to this, she told herself, known their little housekeeping interlude would have to end. She had hoped by now they would have found the stalker, but unfortunately, that hadn’t happened.

It didn’t matter. She had put her life on hold for as long as she could stand. It was time to take the necessary steps and move toward the future.

She swallowed past a sudden tightness in her throat. Living with Trace had been surprisingly wonderful. She could have guessed the sex would be spectacular, but hadn’t expected the day-to-day living to go so smoothly, or expected how happy just being with Trace made her feel.

The trouble was, Trace wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship. He’d had one failed marriage. He was gun-shy for certain.

And so was she.

She wasn’t good at relationships. Sooner or later, things would go downhill, and the longer she stayed the more it would hurt.

She spotted the real estate sign, drove into the parking lot and turned off the engine. Fifteen minutes later, an agent named Mary Darwin was showing her a single-story unit on the third floor of a complex that looked out onto wide landscaped lawns dotted with huge, leafy trees. There was a single-car garage for each unit, a communal pool, and the entire complex was gated, which offered at least some sense of security.

An hour later, she walked out of the real estate office with a month-to-month lease in hand. She had rented a three-bedroom, two-bath unit so that once it was safe, there would be room for Ashley and little Robbie.

Maggie hadn’t realized she would miss them the way she had. It was nice being part of a family. She hadn’t foreseen how much that would mean to her.

She sighed as she leaned back in the seat and started the engine. It felt good to be out of the house and once more on her own. Instead of heading back to Trace’s, she drove to the Galleria to do a little shopping.

She could easily imagine how angry Trace would be when he found out what she had done.

Maggie grinned. She definitely needed something sexy to wear when she told him.

Ashley sat hunched over the dining room table. Made of rosewood, it was elegant and gorgeous. Everything in the apartment was done in exquisite taste. French antiques were mixed with contemporary pieces; marble and glass and expensive oil paintings were everywhere.

She loved it here. Which was the reason she had to leave.

She was living on borrowed time, in a borrowed apartment, enjoying a borrowed life. She needed a life of her own and she would never have it as long as she was dependent on someone else.

So when Betty Sparks had approached her last night at the end of her shift, she had grabbed onto the opportunity the older woman had posed.

“We all know about the fire,” Betty said. “I know you’re okay for now, but sooner or later you’re gonna need a place of your own. Me and Bill…we talked about it some.” Her husband, Bill, sometimes cooked at the
café. But he had a heart condition and Betty worried that he worked too hard.

“We got this place upstairs,” the gray-haired woman continued. “Our daughter lived there when she went to college. Been empty since she graduated and moved off to Dallas. You been doing a real fine job here, honey. Me and Bill…we worked hard all our lives. Kinda come to us that maybe you could stay on after Eddie gets back to work. You could keep workin’ nights, so we could take a little time off, and you’d have your days to go to that cooking school you’ve had your eye on. You and your baby could live right upstairs, you know. Just be part of the deal.”