Finding Laura (31 page)

She wanted to believe him, desperately wanted to. But she felt certain that among his seemingly honest and straightforward words lurked, somehow, somewhere, a deception. He knew more about the mirror than he claimed to. So why did he continue to lie about it?

Unwilling to call him a liar to his face, Laura said, “All right.”

His hand slipped under her thick hair to the nape of her neck, and he pulled gently until she was closer. “No, it
isn’t all right.” His voice roughened. “You’ve gone away from me.”

Only after you went away from me
. But she didn’t say it out loud, unwilling to admit to him that his withdrawal had hurt. Instead, in a voice she tried hard to keep steady, she said, “I don’t know what you want from me. What do you want, Daniel? If it’s just this, sex now and then with no strings and no questions on either side, then tell me. I can’t play your game until I know the rules.”

His fingers tightened on her neck, and his face hardened. It was a brief reaction, lasting only an instant, but in that instant Laura felt an odd little shock that wasn’t exactly fear but a tangle of respect and apprehension and a strange understanding. She couldn’t explain how she knew, but she was certain that this man was capable of great violence, that it was an innate thing buried deeply in his nature and checked only by the rules and laws he chose to obey. And that it would never be directed against her.

“It’s no game,” he said very quietly, the momentary hint of intensity gone now. “Not this, not what’s between us. You know that, Laura. You have to know it.”

She did know that, or felt it at least. But she couldn’t help saying, “I guess you have another name for it, then. Daniel … I don’t expect or ask for bedroom promises. But I expect honesty. So if there’s a question you don’t want to answer, say so. Something you don’t want to talk to me about, say so. Just don’t lie to me.”

He looked at her for a long moment, expression unreadable, his fingers moving gently against her neck. Then he sighed. “And if there are things I don’t want to talk about to you at present? Areas of my life I’d rather not get into right now? Will knowing that make you hold yourself at a distance from me? Will it cause you to believe you can’t trust me? Answer that with the truth, Laura.”

She hesitated, then said, “I don’t know. But I know I’d
rather hear the truth than a lie—even if that truth is only that there are things you don’t want me to know.”

It was his turn to hesitate, a moment longer than she had, and when he spoke, it was with deliberation. “Would it make any difference to you if that truth is that there are things I don’t want you to know
at present?
When the tensions of today are past, when Peter’s killer is found and my … current battle with Amelia is concluded, there’ll be no more questions between us, no lies or evasions. Nothing left unanswered. I promise you that.”

Laura found that response as tantalizing as anything yet said between them, and couldn’t help thinking it might have been better for her to have gone on wondering if he was being truthful rather than to be bluntly told there were things he didn’t want her to know. Because that knowledge was virtually guaranteed to madden her.

“Laura, I realize that isn’t the answer you wanted. But it is the truth you wanted. And it’s all I can offer you right now.”

After a moment she pulled gently away from him and sat up, linking her arms around her upraised knees and gazing somewhat blindly across the room at the fire. “I wish I knew what that meant,” she murmured. The bed moved under her as he sat up as well, and she felt his hand lightly stroking her bare back, his lips press briefly to her shoulder.

“It isn’t a question of trust,” he said.

“That’s what it sounds like.”

“No. I trust you. But I need … to be in control right now. And I can only do that in my own way. Something you have to trust in. I’m asking you to do that, Laura. To trust me. To be patient awhile longer.”

“You ask a lot.”

“I know. But do I ask too much?”

“That depends.” She turned her head to look at him. “There’s something I—I have to know. Something that’s
been bothering me since the first day I walked into this house. Are you … have you been using me somehow in this fight with Amelia?”

“No,” he said instantly.

She searched his features uncertainly. “I felt—that day and since—that you were. That both of you were somehow using me like a pawn.”

“Amelia was. Is. Maybe only trying to distract me—I’m not sure. But I never did, I swear. All I tried to do was … keep you here. I allowed Amelia to maneuver you when I might have been able to stop her, but it was only for that reason. Because I wanted you to be here.”

“And when you followed me up to the attic? It wasn’t part of a—a cold-blooded plan?”

Daniel released an odd little sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. “A plan? I wanted you so badly I couldn’t think straight, much less plan anything. As for being cold-blooded, no. Never about you. Where you’re concerned, my blood is a long way from cold, and any detachment far out of my reach. About you I can only feel.”

Laura returned her gaze to the fire, trying not to let the seduction of his words sway her against her own reason, trying to think it through. He was asking her to trust him even while saying there were secrets he was keeping from her, and she just didn’t know if she could do that. She
felt
that she could trust him, but her mind was filled with so many questions.…

“Laura?”

She felt herself nodding even before she was consciously aware of what her answer would be. “All right. Like you said, it’s the truth I wanted. What I asked for. So I guess you aren’t asking too much in return. I—have to get back to my room.” Before he could move or say anything, she slipped quickly from the bed. She had to go
around it to reach the chair where her things lay, but the steady gaze she could feel didn’t make her self-conscious or disturb her at all. She got her nightgown and slipped into it and the sheer robe, then put one hand on the side of the bed as she bent to locate and put on her slippers.

As she straightened, Daniel leaned across the bed suddenly and caught her wrist. “Look at me,” he ordered softly.

Laura knew that he would see she was still disturbed by all this, but there was nothing she could do about it. She looked at him.

His mouth looked a little hard and more than a little grim, but when he pulled her down far enough for him to kiss her, he didn’t feel hard at all. His lips were soft and warm as they moved on hers, and seduced her so quickly that she felt her knees go weak and had to sit on the edge of the bed or she would have fallen. By the time he finally allowed her to draw away a bit, it required an effort for her to do so.

There was heat now in his gaze and his mouth had a softened, sensual curve. “Whatever else you doubt,” he said in a rough voice, “never doubt that what we have is real and honest. And nothing’s going to change that, Laura. Nothing.”

Laura nodded slowly. “I know.”
But just what is it we have, Daniel? What would you call it?

He seemed about to say something else, but finally released her wrist and fell back on the bed, looking up at her with restless eyes. “Go on. If I don’t let you go now, we’ll still be here at noon.”

She would have liked nothing better than to crawl back into bed with him, but Laura forced herself to get off the bed and go to the door. She hesitated there for an instant, looking back at him, then silently left his bedroom.

With no storm outside now, the house was deathly
quiet, and she found herself tiptoeing as she went swiftly down the long hallway. She had an eerie sense of being pursued, and so strong was it that when she finally reached her room and closed the door behind her, she could feel her heart thudding in a fast, frightened rhythm.

Do I have a guilty conscience, or what?
It was a rueful question, and Laura didn’t bother answering it. She knew the answer.

It seemed hardly worth the effort to go to bed now when she needed to be up in just a few short hours, but she was tired and knew those few hours of sleep would be better than none. She was halfway across the sitting room when something tugged abruptly at her attention, and she turned back to frowningly survey the room.

Lamplit, as she’d left it. Undisturbed. But as she started to turn away once more, she caught the flash of light, and this time she moved slowly to the coffee table. Her sketchpad was lying there, just as she’d left it. And the mirror.

Faceup.

Someone had been in this room.

T
he law offices of Kennard, Montgomery, and Kilbourne occupied two floors of a downtown office building in Atlanta and were virtually silent on this Saturday morning. Daniel encountered no one as he made his way along thickly carpeted corridors to Alex’s tenth-floor corner office, something that hardly surprised him. Though the firm was certainly busy enough during the week, the demands of their one client did not generally require working overtime, weekends, or holidays.

When he strolled into Alex’s office, Daniel also wasn’t surprised to find him dressed casually in jeans and a sport shirt; though he bowed cheerfully enough to custom and wore reasonably sober suits during the week, his tendency toward comical and sometimes downright garish ties spoke volumes for his less than staid personality. Even his office, certainly elegant enough at first glance, boasted a few odd items in ludicrous contrast, such as a full-color and possibly full-sized figurine of a Tasmanian devil wedged between law books on a shelf, and a gaudy silver trophy on his desk
which proclaimed him the Best Kisser of the high school class of 1987.

He was working at a computer on his desk, fingers flying over the keys, and muttered, “Just a second,” after glancing up to see his visitor.

“Not my business?” Daniel asked.

Alex grunted. “Yeah, but not what we need to talk about today. Just that nuisance suit. We go to court in a couple of weeks now, and I wanted to get this done.… Be with you in a minute.”

Daniel accepted that and wandered over to a window that looked out on downtown Atlanta. Not that he cared for the scenery. In fact, he didn’t even notice it. He just looked out, focused on nothing. He tended to be able to function on little sleep when necessary, but with an unusually active night behind him and growing anxiety over Laura, he was feeling more than a little edgy. Certainly too tense to sit calmly and wait for Alex, and too tense to be at all interested in scenery he knew well.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his casual black leather jacket and settled his shoulders, wishing this whole damned thing was finished one way or the other. His patience was wearing thin. And he had the uneasy suspicion that time was getting short as well, though he couldn’t pinpoint why. Perhaps because Peter’s murderer was still at large, an unknown and possibly threatening factor, or perhaps it was simply that Amelia had been too quiet lately, too sedate. That was not like her, and it rang warning bells in his mind.

And right now she was back at the house, with Laura and saying God knew what to her. Dripping sweet poison, probably. Not something he liked to think about, especially given Laura’s doubts about him.

“You know, there’s a gym with a punching bag two floors up,” Alex said. “In case you need one.”

“What I need to punch is dead,” Daniel said flatly,
turning to face the younger man but remaining by the window. “The worst thing I know of Peter is that he got himself murdered before I could beat the hell out of him.”

“No, I don’t think that’s going to be the worst we know about him.”

That dry statement did nothing to ease Daniel’s mind. Nothing at all. “Oh, Christ. What have you found?”

Alex leaned back and opened the center drawer of his desk. “Well, I finally tracked down that lockbox of Peter’s.”

“What the hell took so long?”

“Hey, I think I did pretty damned good, considering the thing was in a bank outside Atlanta. In Macon, to be precise. I spent all of yesterday driving there and back. And I don’t recommend the trip.”

Daniel couldn’t help smiling a little at Alex’s indignation. “Sorry. My temper’s a bit frayed these days.”

“No, really?”

“Alex.”

“Okay, okay. The bank VP wasn’t thrilled about the situation and didn’t want to let me at the box, but since I’d had the intelligent forethought to bring along letters of authorization from you and the firm as well as a copy of Peter’s will naming me executor—By the way, how the hell did that happen? Been meaning to ask you.”

“That Peter named you his executor? The first I knew of it was when Preston told us the will existed just before Peter’s funeral. I imagine he chose you because he didn’t want to choose me.”

Alex grunted. “I think he did it just to piss me off. Must have known the last thing I’d want to spend my time doing would be wading through the garbage he left behind.”

“Knowing Peter, I doubt very much that he expected to die at all—far less before he saw his thirtieth birthday.

Are you going to tell me what you found in the box, or what?”

Alex pulled a large, bulky manila envelope from his desk drawer and placed it on the blotter. “Take a look at this.” He opened the envelope and upended it, spilling the contents onto his blotter.

Daniel stepped to the desk and looked down with a frown. In front of Alex were two bundles of cash, each bound with a rubber band, a tagged key that looked as though it would fit a safe deposit box, and a gun.

After a long moment, Daniel picked up the automatic, made sure the safety was on, and ejected the clip long enough to note that it was full. Then he replaced the clip and set the gun gently back on the blotter, and picked up a bundle of cash. “How much?”

“A hundred grand total,” Alex reported. “Any idea how Peter could have laid his hands on that much cash when he always seemed to be the next best thing to broke?”

Daniel glanced at the gun once again as he put the bundle back on the desk. “No.”

Expressionlessly, Alex said, “I would have said he was too nervous to steal. By using a gun, I mean.”