Unleashed (8 page)

Rapper Acquitted of Double Homicide. Weller Sets Record
. Immediately beneath the headline was a quote from one of the victim’s brothers.
“This is not justice. Furious D murdered my brother, and just because his lawyer got him off doesn’t mean he can get away with it.
”

Marshall ran his finger across his lips as he studied the blond woman, smiling her dazzling toothpaste smile as she beamed at the press. “Did she tell you when she’s meeting her attorney again?”

“She’s seeing Rachael tomorrow.”

“I’m going to call Gates,” Marshall said. “I think I know a way to do it and have Caroline look like collateral damage.”

T
he heavy thud of a fist against the front door sent coffee sloshing from Caroline’s mug onto the front page of the paper. A light brown stain of creamed coffee spread across the day’s headlines. From where she was seated at the breakfast bar she could see the clock on the microwave. Who the hell was knocking on her door at eleven-thirty on a Thursday morning?

The fist pounded again, and she slid off the barstool, her ballet flats making no sound as they hit the tile floor. She struggled to contain her apprehension as she walked to the front door. It was probably a neighbor—not that any had offered more than a sheepish nod since she’d returned home. Or maybe the paper delivery.

Whoever it was, it was no cause for panic, she reminded herself in an effort to slow her pounding heart. She really needed to get over this anxiety thing. She’d never been a fearful person, but ever since James had died—been killed—Caroline had suffered from increasing panic attacks and a growing anxiety when it came to going out in public. Now an unexpected knock at the door was enough to send her over the edge.

Then again, considering the note she’d received yesterday, her reaction wasn’t completely irrational.

By the time she reached the door she was calm enough that her hand barely shook as she braced it on the door. Raising up on her tiptoes, she looked through the peephole. Her heels hit the floor with a thud when she met Danny Taggart’s steely gray stare. She peeked again, just to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.

It was Danny all right, looking all big and bad and dangerous with his almost noon stubble and the collar of his leather jacket turned up against the cold. The fishbowl effect of the peephole did little to soften the hard lines of his face, and nothing to cool the hot flutter that started in her belly at the mere sight of him.

Shock and curiosity moved her to open the door. “What are you doing here?” she asked. After the way he’d blown her off at the memorial service she’d never expected to see him again. She’d gotten the message loud and clear—he wanted nothing to do with her, even when she promised information that might contain some clue about his mother’s disappearance.

“Can I come in?” He stepped over the threshold without waiting for her reply. A niggle of irritation broke through her shock. Pushy as ever, he walked through the entry, past the stairs, and through to the kitchen as though he owned the damn place. His leather clad shoulders spanned the hallway and his boots thumped against the floorboards.

She hurried after him, and by the time she reached the kitchen he’d already shucked his jacket and tossed it across the breakfast bar. Under the jacket he wore a French blue broadcloth shirt, a black leather belt and kahki pants. He should have looked like an average office dweller, but somehow Danny managed to look tough and dangerous in Dockers and a button down.

Not to mention hotter than the fires of hell. It should be illegal for a man’s ass to look that good in everyday casual wear.

“We need to talk,” he said, pinning her again with his icy gaze. She had to clench her fingers in a fist to keep herself from running a self-conscious hand over her hair and pulling her sweater away from her chest. She had a meeting with Rachael in forty-five minutes and had dressed accordingly. Gray wool pants fitted but not tight, paired with a navy cashmere sweater set. A sleek ponytail and pearls completed her ensemble. Every inch the elegant, conservative, affluent housewife. Not the man-eating murderess the press liked to portray.

Color heated her cheeks as he looked her up and down, and felt the fresh sting of his remark about her not aging well. The day of the memorial service she’d dressed carefully to kill. Hair down, lipstick dark red, black dress tastefully hugging every curve. If that look had left Danny cold, it was an easy guess what he thought of her frumpy suburban schoolmarm look.

His gaze meandered back to her face, his expression inscrutable.

“What are you doing here?” she repeated, straightening her shoulders and pulling herself to her full height.

“I came across some interesting information and thought we could talk about it.”

“You can’t pick up a phone?”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a knowing half grin that used to make her knees watery. “You didn’t give me your number and you’re not listed.”

She put a steadying hand out on the breakfast bar and arched one perfectly waxed eyebrow. “If you can’t dig up an unlisted phone number, you’re not much of a private investigator. I guess I should count myself lucky you turned down my business.”

He raised his big hands it mock surrender. “You got me. I thought this would be a better discussion in person.” He leaned back against her breakfast bar and folded his arms across his chest and took a long look around the room. “Nice stove,” he said finally. “You finally learn to cook?”

“Nope.”

His smile stayed in place but his eyes took on a hard glint. “But you need all the trappings to impress the neighbors, right?”

She didn’t bother to explain that James was the one who’d insisted they redo the kitchen two years ago, having decided the old design looked dated. If Danny wanted to think she’d let herself become a piece of useless arm candy who cared for nothing but appearances, let him. “I’ve learned to accept nothing but the best,” she said with a brittle smile as she ran her fingers along her flawless string of pearls. “Do you mind getting on with it? I have a meeting in the city in less than an hour, and I’m sure you didn’t come here to discuss my cooking skills or lack thereof.”

“James’s first wife died, right?”

The question veered out of nowhere. “Yes, before I met him. Of cancer,” she said pointedly, in case he planned to imply James had offed his first wife.

“Do you know how her estate was distributed when she died?”

“Everything went into a trust for Kate—James and Susan’s daughter. Why do you care about any of this?”

“Why don’t you tell me what you found out about James and my mother?” he shot back.

Caroline sucked her tongue against her teeth and shot him an exasperated look. “Danny, I wish I could play your little cat and mouse headgames all day, but I have a very important meeting with my attorney.” Blood heated in her veins, urging her on. It had been so long since she’d felt anything other than dull dread or the cold bite of panic, the spark of anger felt good. “So unless you want to stop with the bullshit and tell me why you drove forty-five minutes across the bay to see me, I’m going to have to get going.” Her tell off skills were rusty, she’d spent so long reining in her smart mouth, dulling the sharp side of her tongue. But it felt good to let her rude arrows fly, especially against a target as impervious as Danny.

“I’ll go with you.”

“To see my attorney? I don’t think so.”

“If I’m going to help you out, don’t you think I should know everything there is to know about your case?”

That brought her up short. “So you’re going to help me?” For the first time in a long time a kernel of hope took root. Not just that she’d be found not guilty of murder—having Rachael on her team virtually guaranteed that—but that finally someone was going to help her find the truth. So what if he was an unfeeling ex who would undoubtedly make her pay through the nose for his services? Call her foolish, call her crazy, call her ten kinds of stupid, but deep down Caroline believed in Danny Taggart. If anyone could help her find the truth, it was him.

A little voice warned her that this kind of crazy faith in him had burned her before. But now she was older, wiser, and fully capable of keeping it all business.

“Why don’t you let me sit in on your meeting and we’ll take it from there? Deal?” He held out his hand for her to shake. Even his hands had gotten bigger and tougher looking in the twelve years since she’d seen him.

She held out her own, let his callused palm swallow it whole, and tried to ignore the flash of heat that singed the skin off her fingers. Her breasts chafed against the silk cups of her bra and her heartbeat throbbed between her thighs.

Hoping her olive complexion hid her blush, she yanked her hand from his. Professional. Businesslike. Right. She could totally do this.

Her perfume was driving him crazy. It smelled like green grass and fresh soap, and, mingled with the too familiar scent of her skin, it all combined to make him so hard it was difficult to keep her silver Mercedes between the lane lines. The perfume was just the tip of the iceberg. In her conservative slacks and sweater set, she was rocking the whole sexy librarian vibe, apparently oblivious to the way her baby soft sweater stretched over her soft, full tits and made it almost impossible for him to keep his hands on the wheel.

Caroline was quiet in the passenger seat, nervous as hell if the pulse beating in her throat was anything to go by. Danny wondered if it was him, or if she was always this anxious when she went to meet her shark of a lawyer. She kept her gaze firmly out the passenger window, staring at the San Francisco Bay, her view impeded by regularly spaced girders of the Bay Bridge. One slender hand rose to her throat to fidget with her single strand of pearls.

Jesus Christ, the pearls. As if the tight why-don’t-you-pet-me-to-see-how-soft-I-am-sweater wasn’t enough, the pearls sent him right over the edge. They made him want to peel off her clothes, piece by piece, pull her hair out of its sleek ponytail, until she wore nothing but gold kissed skin and creamy pearls.

Danny blinked hard and focused on the traffic in front of him. He’d hoped driving would keep him focused. No such luck. “So why don’t you tell me what you found,” he said, hoping if he turned his attention to more important matters, his dick might take the hint and stop trying to pop through his zipper.

“Let’s wait till after we meet with Rachael,” Caroline replied, turning from the window. “No offense, but if you’re going to help me, I don’t want your mother’s…situation to distract you. Get off at the next exit,” she directed.

He let out an exasperated grunt as he steered the car across two lanes to the exit. Truth was, he still wasn’t sure how involved he was going to get in her quest to clear her name. Ethan and Derek were foaming at the mouth to take Caroline’s case after they discovered the deed transfer history of the property where Anne had been found. What better way to get access to James Medford’s information than to help his widow? And they still didn’t know Caroline had other information.

Having found nothing on his own, Danny conceded a more direct approach was needed, so he’d agreed to at least do a preliminary evaluation of Caroline’s case, and hope she gave something up in the process. As a matter of course at Gemini Securities, with every new client there was an assessment period, a pre-investigation investigation, if you will. During that time the security specialist assigned to the case dug into the background to make sure it was an area where Gemini’s expertise could help, and performed due diligence on the client to make sure the person or the entity was someone they wanted to get into bed with, so to speak.

Caroline crossed and recrossed her legs, and the sound of her wool clad thighs brushing made his knuckles whiten against the steering wheel. No question he wanted to get into bed with Caroline.

Which was one of the main reasons for not working with her. Still, he’d agreed to at least an evaluation period and he had to make good on that. He had to admit he was intrigued, not just by her case, but by her. Why was she so secretive? Since he’d searched her house, he’d read every e-mail and not once had she told anyone about finding something linking Anne Taggart to James Medford. A second search of her house had yielded nothing.

Though some of the correspondence had been otherwise enlightening. In an e-mail to her friend Diana Vasaquez, who Danny remembered well from high school, Caroline mentioned she’d seen Danny at the memorial service. According to her, she’d tried to hire him to help her with her case, but he’d “blown her off like a gnat.”

To which Diana had replied, “Sounds like he’s still the same self-centered asshole. Nice to know you can count on some things to never change.”

He couldn’t remember Caroline’s reply verbatim, but he remembered it contained words like “dickhead” “douche-bag” and lots of other terms one expected to hear from a fourteen-year-old boy rather than a thirty-four-year-old trophy wife.

Danny shook off the insult. He’d been called a lot worse, and he could come up with a few choice terms about Caroline without breaking a sweat. But why go there?

To his frustration, other than mentioning she’d seen Danny, there was nothing about anything having to do with information or evidence linking Anne and James. Even more strange, other than whoever had called that day he was hiding in her house Caroline hadn’t said anything about the threatening note to anyone.

Even if the police were happy to believe she’d paid to have James killed, you’d think she’d at least file a police report and tell anyone who would listen about the note. Instead, the note he’d recovered from her trash can was in his laptop case in the trunk, and most of her e-mails involved trying to convince everyone in her now-limited circle that she was fine. They didn’t need to spare a single second worrying about her.

Christ, he hadn’t seen her in over a decade, and it only took one look for him to realize she was so far from fine it wasn’t even funny.

There it was again, that idiotic protective thing that always popped up around her, second only to the urge to fuck her senseless.

Talk about things that never changed.

He followed her directions through the city into the heart of San Francisco’s financial district. Rachael’s firm was in a building on the corner of Montgomery and Washington, where the glittering high-rises met the bustle and activity of Chinatown. Pedestrian traffic was thick, forcing Danny to sit through two green light cycles before he could turn into the building’s parking garage.

Caroline was silent as they rode the elevator up to the thirtieth floor. The doors opened to reveal a reception area dominated by heavy wood and leather upholstered furniture. The place smelled of money. Danny had heard rumors of what the lawyers at Weller and Bronstein charged, and now he believed it.