Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (7 page)

“Ms. August?” he interrupted her inventory, questioning.

“Why would you do that to me, you bastard?” Kate asked.

That wasn’t what she’d intended to say, but it was the crux of the matter. Why would anyone, no matter what he thought about what she did for a living, do what he had done today?

“I beg your pardon,” Barrington said.

“Did you want to make me afraid? Is that what it was all about? Because if you did, I think you should know how well you succeeded,” Kate said.

She moved closer to him, almost across the width of the room, to hold out her hands. Despite the time that had passed, they were still shaking. Seeing that, she could feel the anger Elliot’s kindness had tempered beginning to rebuild. The dark eyes left hers to move downward to her trembling fingers.

“I couldn’t even hold the cup of water they gave me,” she told him, wanting him to understand what he’d done. Suddenly she clenched her hands into fists and brought them back to her sides. She regretted showing him her trembling fingers, regretted giving him that satisfaction.

Furious, more with her own fear than with what he’d done, she forced herself to look up. His dark eyes were slightly narrowed. She was close enough that she could see the small lines around them. There was a whitened scar on his temple. And she had been right about the graying. Even that looked right. Perfect.
Too good-looking for his own good,
echoed in her head.

“I didn’t deserve that,” she said aloud. “No matter what you think about what I do for a living, I didn’t deserve what you did to me today.”

“Ms. August, forgive me, but I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I thought you were here because of—”

“Don’t you
dare
pretend you don’t know. Your name was on the package. Your return address. Don’t you dare pretend. At least, admit that you—”

“The
package?
” he interrupted.

That had certainly gotten a response, Kate thought with satisfaction. Even his voice had changed, no longer polite. No longer pretending he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“The package you sent me,” she went on. “The exploding one. The red confetti. It worked just like you intended. It blew up in my face and shot that damn red crap all over the office, and I was
scared,
Judge Barrington. Real scared. I really thought for a second that I was dead. Is that how you wanted me to feel? Is that what you wanted? To make me understand what you felt?”

His face hadn’t changed. He was still watching her with those too-dark eyes. Almost black, she thought. She’d never seen eyes that dark.

“I didn’t send you a package, Ms. August. Not of any kind. Not today. Not ever.”

“I accused you of hiding, of being afraid, and maybe that bothered some image you have of yourself. So you got even. Only that’s really sick, you know. Especially for someone…” She paused, whether for breath to go on or because he was watching her so intently, she wasn’t sure. He didn’t speak into the sudden silence, so she tried to pick up the thread of her anger.

“Especially with Jack out there,
really
blowing people up. Sending death out with your return address—” She stopped abruptly. She shouldn’t have told him that she knew his address was on the last bomb. It wasn’t public knowledge, and he would wonder how she knew. “It was sick. For
anybody
it was a sick thing to do, but especially for you,” she finished lamely.

She had run out of steam, faced with his lack of response. The lines of his face revealed no emotion. He was giving nothing away. The silence grew, stretching, filling up all the dark corners of the room. Finally he moved, blinked, something. Kate wasn’t sure exactly how or why, but the stillness was broken, and then he spoke very distinctly.

“I didn’t send you a package. If you’re aware that the bomber used my return address on Friday, then you must also be aware of the implications of its use on any package you received. I suggest you discuss this with the police, Ms. August. And now if you’ll excuse me,” he said.

He was dismissing her.
Inviting
her to go to the police. Trying to make a bigger fool of her than he’d already made. Except they were both aware that Jack didn’t send red confetti. Jack sent bombs. Explosives and shrapnel. Enough to kill. This son of a bitch was denying responsibility for what had happened today, talking to her as Lew had earlier, in the same soothing adult-to-hysterical-child tone.

“You’re really something, you know. A real piece of work,” she said, suddenly as angry as she’d been in the office. “I told you the truth about yourself, and you couldn’t take it. The great Thorne Barrington couldn’t face the fact that he’s gone into hiding, so you had to have your revenge.”

“Ms. August,” he interrupted, but she went on, speaking over whatever he intended to say. Because it didn’t matter what he wanted to say. She didn’t want to hear it.

“Apparently there’s no one around to tell you the truth. I did, and you couldn’t deal with it. I let a little light into all this darkness, and you didn’t like the man who was revealed. But that’s not my fault, Judge Barrington. I didn’t make you a coward who stopped living three years ago. Jack did that. So why don’t you send
Jack
a package and leave me the hell alone.”

She saw and heard the depth of the breath he took before he answered her, but his face still revealed nothing.

“If you’re finished, Elliot will show you out, but I strongly suggest you follow my advice.”

He was angry. His features might not have changed, but his voice had. There was nothing like a blue-blooded Southern accent for expressing anger. She’d gotten to him all right. Since that had been her intent, she should be feeling a whole lot better than she was. Instead, she was disgusted with herself, ashamed of what she’d just said, and that made her mad at herself. What he’d done had been unforgivable, and so he deserved to hear everything she’d said if only because it
was
the truth.

“I’ll follow yours if you follow mine,” Kate said. “You called me a vampire, but
I’m
not the one who’s afraid of the light. As a matter of fact, I think we ought to let a little more light in on this situation. The real kind. A little daylight into your mausoleum.”

While she was talking, she walked around the velvet sofa to one of the long windows to the left of the fireplace. She jerked the bottom of the shade and released it, allowing it to fly up. She moved to the next one and sent it whirring to the top. She was a little shocked at how exhilarated she felt with the noise they made and with the flood of sunlight that invaded the room.

She moved behind Thorne Barrington, between his still figure and the fireplace, to the windows on the other side. She threw those shades upward with the same angry satisfaction. It was as bright now inside the room as it had been on the heat-parched street outside.

When she turned back to face the man who had so infuriated her, she realized that Barrington hadn’t moved. Despite the noise, he hadn’t turned around to watch what she was doing. Apparently he intended to make no response to her childishness, but the muscles in his broad shoulders and his back were rigid beneath the dark knit shirt.

Somehow she wasn’t quite satisfied with that. Not enough reaction, she supposed. She walked back to where she had stood before, back to face the man who had sent her the package this morning.

“I guess I was mistaken,” she said, her tone revealing contempt. The black eyes were slightly narrowed, but they met hers unflinchingly. “All this light, and you still didn’t melt. Maybe you’re not a vampire after all.”

Barrington said nothing, his face set and controlled. Obviously, he didn’t intend to give her the satisfaction of a reaction, and now that her tantrum was over, she realized how childish she must have appeared, throwing up the shades of his windows and shouting at him about how he should live his life.

She had already headed toward the sliding doors when they opened unexpectedly. Elliot entered, silver tray, tall glasses of tea with fresh mint leaves garnishing the tops, linen napkins, the works.
The best of the South,
she thought, cynically.
Real Southern hospitality.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to stay for the tea, but thank you anyway, Elliot,” she said, brushing by him. She just needed to be out of this room, out of Thorne Barrington’s house.

She heard the butler’s agitated exclamation behind her and the sound of breaking glass. She wondered if Barrington had thrown something, and knew that if he had, that would at least be some indication that she had gotten under his skin, threatened that iron control.

By that time she had reached the glass-paneled front door, but she turned back before she stepped through it, guilt and regret crowding her throat. What she had said had been unforgivably cruel, and in saying it, she had been both loud and rude, the only crimes a woman could be found guilty of in the South. She knew by the changes in the quality of light filtering through to the foyer that Elliot or Barrington was in the process of pulling down the shades she’d raised, returning the house to its eternal darkness.
Hiding.

Three years hadn’t changed this situation, and her cruelty certainly wouldn’t. She shook her head, ridiculing herself for thinking she could change anything here. A piece of the red confetti he’d sent her fluttered to lie on the hardwood floor. She left it there and walked outside into the sunshine.

Chapter Four

By the time Kate had driven home, whatever adrenaline rush had carried her through the confrontation with Barrington was fading. She wanted only to crawl back into the bed she had not had time to make and pull the covers over her head.

She had begun the process of extracting her keys from the bottom of her purse before she reached the door to her apartment, shuffling through the junk she had shoved into the black leather bag for safekeeping. When she found them, she looked up to insert the key into the lock and realized the door wasn’t closed. There was an inch of space between it and the frame, and despite her hurry this morning, she knew she hadn’t left it that way.

The terror that mushroomed in her stomach was almost as strong as her reaction to the fake bomb had been. Was it possible that whoever had sent the package was waiting inside?
Not
Barrington. Was it possible that the package had
not
been the sick prank she had accused him of, but something else? Someone else. Someone really dangerous.

But if someone
were
lying in wait in her apartment, she forced herself to reason, he wouldn’t have left the door open. That would be a dead giveaway of his presence, unless he was trying to do exactly what he had just accomplished—still trying to frighten her.
And if that is the purpose, then damn it, he certainly is succeeding,
she thought, pushing the door open enough to see into her small living room. At what the widening doorway revealed, relief washed over her.

Byron Kahler was sitting on her couch, thumbing through one of the magazines she’d arranged on the coffee table. He had looked up when she pushed the door inward, hazel eyes assessing, but he didn’t say anything.

“If I were Judge Barrington, I’d have you arrested for breaking and entering,” she said. She walked into the apartment and put her purse down on the table to the left of the door.

“I picked up a few tricks of the trade through the years,” Kahler said.

“And it seemed like a good idea to use them on my door?” She was relieved it was Kahler sitting on her couch, but a little surprised that he’d jimmied her lock to get in.

“I guess I owe you an apology,” he said.

“I’ll settle for an explanation.”

“When I got to your office, Garrison told me you’d gone home. He was concerned about you.”

“He sent you to check on me?”

“We have to talk about what happened anyway. Officially talk. I rang the bell, and when there was no answer…”

“You just broke in.”

“I was afraid you might have—I don’t know—gone off the deep end a little. When I couldn’t get you to the door, I decided it might be wise to investigate. I even thought that whoever had sent the package might have tried something else.”

She hesitated, weighing her feelings about the invasion of her privacy against the idea that he’d cared enough about her to come personally. “Thanks,” she said finally, almost grudgingly.

“You’re welcome,” Kahler said, “and you need a better lock. All it took was a credit card and a few seconds.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She walked across the room and sat down on the love seat facing the couch. His eyes followed her, and knowing that questions were inevitable, given it was his job to ask them, she took a deep breath, trying to gather her control. When she thought she had found enough composure to talk, she looked up. The detective’s usually penetrating gaze had softened, resting on her features with something that looked like compassion.

“You want to tell me your version of what happened?” he suggested. It took her a second to realize he meant what had happened at her office and not what she had done at Barrington’s mansion. There was no way he could know about that. Not yet.

“There’s not that much to tell. Trey brought the package in with the other mail. Plain brown paper wrappings. It was tied with string and had Barrington’s return address. I thought it was a gift, maybe even some kind of apology for Friday night.”

Kahler also couldn’t know about the judge’s appearance at the precinct house, but she decided not to get into all her reasons for opening the package, not unless he asked. “When I opened the box, it blew up in my face. It was filled with red confetti that went everywhere, all over the damn office.”

“We don’t think it was Jack, Kate, if that’ll make you feel any better. I sent the package to the lab. We won’t have the results for a couple of days, but I can tell you that in no way did it resemble what Jack sends. It worked through compressed air, just enough force to blow the lid and scatter the confetti.”