Earth Angel (7 page)

Catherine’s eyes widened, and she made a choking noise in the back on her throat. “Dammit, Miles, nobody gave you the right to do that!”

He raised his eyebrows. “What else was I supposed to do? You can’t be alone when you’re sick. Do you think you ought to have some medicine for that cough?”

“I am not coughing!”

Clearly, she was a crabby patient, he thought. He’d heard of this. She
had
coughed, though. “I think I’d better call a doctor—”

“No!” She shouted the word at him, the tray nearly tipping off her lap.

He rubbed his ear. “I’m not deaf. I was only making a suggestion, Catherine.”

She lay back wearily on the propped up pillows. “Go run your bank, Miles.
Please
.”

He frowned. “Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

She scowled at him, her eyes blazing.

“I guess not,” he muttered, getting up off the bed. He lifted the tray off her lap and set it on the nightstand for later. As he walked to the door, she called out to him.

“Miles.”

He turned around. She smiled faintly, looking pale and lovely and vulnerable.

“Thank you.”

He smiled. “You’re welcome. Oh! I almost forgot. I’ve decided to help you find Allan’s codicil.”

She gasped. “You …”

He nodded, pleased to have surprised her. “Yes. I know some people I can call to track down that lawyer. Don’t you worry, Catherine. I’ll be in to see you tonight.”

He left her still gaping in astonishment. At least her mind was off the flu.

“More goodies from Dr. Kitteridge.”

Lettice waved a large white bag in the air as she swept into the bedroom. The name of the local pharmacy was emblazoned on the front. Catherine sighed and sank back on the bed. She hated playing invalid, but what else could she do?

Lettice opened the bag and spilled out ten different
over-the-counter remedies. She glanced at Catherine. “I think he’s trying to kill you.”

“No kidding,” Catherine muttered. He’d nearly given her heart attacks twice already that morning. The first time was when he’d showed up unexpectedly, and the second was over the codicil. What the hell did he mean, he would help her find it? Next to her uncle, he was the last person she thought would volunteer for such a thing.

He completely confused her. First, her disaster of an engagement didn’t receive a single ounce of sympathy, then the very next morning he practically broke down her door because he thought she was sick. She wondered if he was up to something with the codicil. If he was, it wasn’t to the good.

“Well, which poison do you want to take first?” Lettice asked.

Catherine didn’t even glance at them. “None. I’m not that sick, Lettice. It was only a reaction to an old allergy of mine last night, and this morning I have a touch of the flu. Miles just went … nuts.”

“Yes, I know, dear,” Lettice said, smiling in pleasure. “It’s very sweet of him.”

Catherine conceded that the woman was right. She never would have expected Miles to fuss the way he had. And that tray of food … Nearly everything on it was exactly the wrong thing to give someone with a stomach illness. One glance and it would have sent the poor soul reeling to the bathroom. She grinned.

“You look pleased.”

She sobered. “Just thinking. You don’t have to stay, Lettice. I’m perfectly fine by myself.”

“And have my grandson come down on me for going AWOL? In a pig’s eye!”

Well, Catherine thought, it had been worth a try. She wondered how her dam was doing. When Miles had been waiting downstairs for his grandmother to arrive, she had made her phone calls. Anonymously, of course. Mariana Tolliver of Channel Five news had jumped on the call from “Earth Angel.” What was happening there? Had everyone found the dam site? Were there enough pollutants already gathered? She desperately wanted to know. Her body was exhausted, but between the dam and Miles she was too keyed up to sleep. Besides, she had company that wasn’t going anywhere fast.

“How about a game of canasta?” Lettice asked, as if having read her mind. “A dollar a point.”

Catherine smiled. “You’re on.”

Miles saw Catherine much sooner than he’d expected.

He gaped at her as she strolled into the Wagner conference room for the second emergency meeting in two days. His grandmother was right behind her.

Catherine was dressed immaculately in a pale yellow suit. Her skin was healthy looking, not wan anymore, but the makeup didn’t quite cover the drawn look she had. Although it was now late afternoon and she must have rested during the day, she still shouldn’t be there.

He walked over to the women. “Catherine, go home. You’re sick.”

She merely raised her eyebrows. “I’m much better. How could I not be with all the food and medicine you gave me? Too bad you weren’t
around in the Middle Ages, Miles. You would have cured the plague single-handedly.”

“Or killed its victims outright,” Lettice added.

Catherine giggled and walked past him to speak to her relatives. Miles glared at his. “You are supposed to be taking care of her—”

“Why do you think I came with her?” his grandmother interrupted. “And if she’s sick, then I’m Pee-Wee Herman. I lost four hundred dollars to her in canasta.”

His jaw dropped. “Four hundred!”

“Don’t look so shocked. Anyway, I’m donating it to the Green Earth Society. That was our agreement.”

“Since we’re all here,” Byrne said loudly from the other end of the room, “we might as well get started. Lettice, you’ll have to leave.”

“In a pig’s eye!” she declared, and defiantly took a seat opposite him. “Catherine isn’t well, and I’m here to look after her.”

Miles knew better. His grandmother simply hated to miss out on anything.

Byrne bristled. “I’ll have security remove you if you won’t go on your own—”

“And you are a pompous, overbearing nitwit,” Lettice proclaimed. “Someone should have smacked a little common sense into you years ago.”

Byrne gasped. “Why you—”

“Uncle Byrne,” Catherine said calmly, “Lettice is hardly going to announce the proceedings to the world. I’d like her to stay, please.”

“She stays,” Miles announced, taking a seat next to Catherine. Her feminine perfume swirled around him, momentarily distracting him. These emergency meetings were becoming a nuisance, but her
presence did make them bearable. More than bearable.

“Lettice knows everything anyway,” Catherine added. “She was with me when Aunt Sylvia called about the meeting.” She smiled innocently. “I might have missed it if Sylvia hadn’t called. I take it the Earth Angel has struck again?”

Miles hid a smile at her subtle jab that she’d been left off the list of people to be called. His grandmother was right. With the way she was sitting forward in excitement, her slim body tensed with anticipation, she looked fully recovered. The angle at which she was leaning had her breasts just brushing the table top. Lucky table, he thought. He also had a feeling that she’d graduated from Corporate Strategy 101 a long time ago. She was working her uncle like a seasoned pro. He settled back to indulge his new favorite pastime, watching Catherine.

Byrne thrust out his jaw like a bulldog trying to exert its authority. It didn’t work. “The nut blocked up the creek near our paint factory, then called the world.”

“The EPA has found pollutants,” Sylvia added. “It seems we had an old drainpipe that was broken and leaking waste by-products.”

“It was an oversight,” Byrne exclaimed. “Hadn’t been inspected for years.”

“What’s the fine?” Miles asked, knowing the violation would be costly.

“They haven’t said yet.” He immediately changed the subject. “Now the media is really breathing down our necks.”

“Then it’s time to give a statement,” Catherine said.

“We should have done it the last time,” Miles added. She turned to look at him, and he grinned at her, feeling like they were a team. She was so close, all he had to do was reach out his hand and … He resisted the urge and went on, “Allan would have responded quickly. It’s what we needed to do yesterday. It’s what we need to do now.”

“But what do we say?” Byrne wailed.

“That we are responsible,” Catherine said, “and we will fix the ‘leak’ and ensure it never happens again.” She looked around the table at the others. There was a slight knowing smile on her face as she added, “I think we’d be even better off if we announce several specific measures for improving the environment—”

“No!” Byrne shouted.

“Then Earth Angel will strike again.”

Miles frowned. Something in Catherine’s quiet declaration roused his suspicions. It wasn’t a prediction, but rather more like … knowledge. A collage of images rose in his mind: Catherine wanting to find a codicil that would save land from becoming a strip mine, her push for environmental protection measures, her lack of surprise at the first meeting when everyone else was in a panic over Earth Angel. Accompanying the collage was the memory of boots with white stains and four hundred dollars to the Green Earth Society.

No, he thought, shaking the ridiculous notion out of his head. He believed the Earth Angel was someone at Wagner, but to even consider Catherine was ludicrous. She might be headstrong, but she wasn’t foolish.

She rose from her chair. Miles knew she was about to make a grand exit. He liked this part best.

She again looked around at all of them. “This company must respond and must show good faith to the public concerning this latest incident. Otherwise we’ll see Wagner Oil bankrupt. If that’s what you want, then be stubborn. But I guarantee you won’t stop the Earth Angel that way.”

She shoved back her chair and walked out of the room. Lettice slowly rose from her own chair, smoothed out her skirt, then strolled out behind her patient. The Queen of England and Princess Diana couldn’t have made a better exit, Miles thought.

If only his suspicions hadn’t come back with a vengeance.

The iron had never been so hot, Catherine thought as she crawled under the fence. Her arms were trembling from the effort of pulling her body forward. This night promised as little sleep as the previous two. But she had to keep up the pressure.

Uncle Byrne was about to get a demonstration of the Earth Angel’s power. The result should be heavenly.

Inexplicably, the idea of heaven instantly brought Miles to mind. She tried to shake off his image, but her brain refused to turn him loose. The way he had taken care of her when he’d thought she was sick had touched her more than she cared to admit. He had supported her at that meeting too. Both meetings. All of it was so unexpected … and she was so confused about him.

One thing she wasn’t confused about was the way her body reacted to him. Having him next to her at the conference table had been almost too
distracting. She had barely kept her concentration. Worse, she had found herself looking at his hands at every opportunity and remembering them on her body. Her breasts ached even now …

“Dammit!” she muttered, sitting up. She refused to think of him again, then she wondered why he hadn’t come by that evening. He’d said he would.

She swore again, realizing how quickly she had broken her vow. She had better start concentrating on her objective for the night. She raced for it, a small blockhouse on the edge of the refinery. The night shift didn’t work out this far, and the guards wouldn’t be around for another thirty minutes. She wondered if they even knew what the blockhouse contained. She doubted her uncle remembered the emergency plant-closedown systems, established in case of a fire. But her uncle had reduced safety checks and crew to a bare minimum, and this little place was now overlooked.

“Ah, well,” she murmured as she reached the little brick building. She used a key on the rusty lock and slipped inside. The door clanged shut behind her, and she whirled around. Fear shot through her at the thought that she was locked in. The key only worked from one side. She tested the knob and sighed when it turned.

Fixing her attention on the series of pipe valve shutoffs, she began the task of spinning them closed. She almost didn’t have the strength to turn the big cast-iron wheels and struggled with the screeching metal. By the time she was done, she was shaking from head to toe. At least the second part was easy. She turned the smaller knobs on the system with a quick twist of the wrist, knowing they would trigger the shutoffs for this whole
side of the plant. Instead of traveling through the piping system to the tankers on the river, the oil would stay safely in the tanks. They’d look everywhere for breakdowns before somebody remembered this.

“Ah, well,” she murmured again, and walked to the door.

She opened it … and was face to face with Miles.

“You—!”

Miles got as far as the first word in his furious tirade before Catherine burst out of the building.

“Not now, you idiot!” she whispered fiercely, shoving him out of the way as she ran past him. “The guards are coming!”

He stumbled backward, astonishment and outrage racing through him as fast as she was racing away. Somehow, he hadn’t expected her to make a break for it.

To his further shock, she suddenly whipped around, dashed back, grabbed him by the arm, and yanked him forward. “Do you want to get caught as the Earth Angel? Come on!”

Miles ran automatically, her urgency overriding everything for a few vital seconds. Then he stiffened to a halt.

“Wait a damn minute!” he exclaimed.

Still holding his arm, Catherine was spun around automatically.

“Are you crazy?” he demanded. “How the hell can
you do this to your own company? And just what the hell did you do? I want answers, and I want them—”

“Miles, not now!” She was gasping for breath. In the glare from the floodlights, her eyes were wide and filled with genuine fear. She spun back toward the fence fifty feet away and ran, calling over her shoulder, “The guards will be here any second! After we get out, I promise to explain. Now,
will you come on!
”

He took off after her, determined to get her back to undo whatever damage she had done. He could not believe she was the Earth Angel. He had sat in his car and watched her house all evening, still not believing his suspicions. He had seen her car back out of her garage at midnight, still not believing. And he had followed her to the refinery, under the fence, and to that little building, still not believing what his eyes were seeing.