A Billionaire's Redemption (8 page)

On cue, the faint scream of a siren became audible in the distance, and grew quickly in volume. The police hadn’t even arrived yet! Whoever belonged to that thread of breath on the other side of her door was
not
a cop.

Fear for her life roared through her. This went so far beyond any panic she’d ever experienced before, it deserved its own word to describe it.
Death-panic,
maybe.

Her bedroom floor creaked once as if someone had stepped on a loose board, but then silence reigned. So frightened her legs would no longer bear her weight, she slid down the door to sit on the cold tile floor, huddled in a tight little ball as she squeezed her knees to her chest.

Who’d been out there? What had he wanted? Had she nearly died...or worse?

The police were noisy as they stomped around the back of the house and eventually came inside, calling back and forth to each other and clearing rooms as they went.

Finally, an eternity later, a knock on the door at her back made Willa jump a foot in the air. “Miss Merris? This is Deputy Green. You can come out now.”

Shakily, she pulled herself to her feet and opened the door. She’d never been so glad to see an armed man in her life. “Thank God you’re here. Did you find him?”

“Ma’am, we didn’t see any sign of an intruder in the garden. It’s as quiet as a sleeping baby out there. Little windy, though. Are you sure you weren’t just seeing tree branches swaying?”

“Of course I’m sure. In fact, I heard the intruder just on the other side of this door a few seconds before you got here.”

“Miss Merris, the house alarms were turned on and undisturbed when we came in. Nobody’s come inside this house tonight but us.”

“But I heard him breathing—”

The policeman cut her off politely, but firmly. “Folks’ imaginations run wild when they’re scared. We see it all the time. But you’re safe now. No one was in the house, and frankly, no one looked to have been in the garden. If there was someone back there, it was probably just some kid taking a shortcut home. Why don’t you go on to bed, miss. We’ll reset the alarm on the way out and make sure the place is all buttoned up.”

“Do you know where James Ward is right now? What if it was him? The Ward Ranch backs right up on the other side of the woods behind our property. You need to have someone check on him. See if he’s home or not.”

“It’s the middle of the night. I’m not going to disturb the Ward family at this hour just to satisfy your curiosity—”

Desperate to sound reasonable and calm, she enunciated carefully, “The man raped me. Asking where he is immediately after an intruder came into my home does not constitute idle curiosity, Officer.”

“Ma’am, the house is locked up tight and there’s no sign of anyone having been in the house who doesn’t belong here.”

The Wards and Merrises had been like family forever. Heck, she knew the code for the Ward home’s security system. James Ward undoubtedly knew the security code for this house. But she didn’t waste her breath trying to change the officer’s mind. He’d decided she was imagining things and nothing she said was going to change his opinion.

“...go on to bed, and everything will be fine in the morning,” he was saying soothingly.

God, she hated it when people patted her on the hand like this, with a metaphorical “there, there,” as if that would make everything better. She wasn’t an idiot, and she knew what she’d seen and heard.

The cop wasn’t taking no for an answer to the whole go-to-bed thing, and waited expectantly in the hall while she changed into pajamas and a robe. She called out that she was in bed, and the jerk opened the door to poke his head in and see for himself.

“Good night, miss. You just stay in bed and get some sleep. And don’t let your imagination run away with you again,” he said sternly before closing her bedroom door and heading downstairs. She mumbled a foul name at the closed panel of her door. She was a United States Senator, for goodness’ sake, not a naughty five-year-old.

Surely the intruder had nothing to do with those secret files she’d stumbled across. No way could anyone have reacted to her discovery that fast, right? It was just a coincidence.

She’d deal with those tomorrow. But tonight, she was going to try to take Deputy Green’s advice and get some sleep.

Huddled under her comforter, she listened to the sounds of the cops finishing up and leaving. Silence fell over the house. She wasn’t crazy, darn it. There had been someone in the garden, and there’d been someone right outside her bathroom door. But no matter how hard she listened for movement, all she heard were the normal sounds of the house itself and an occasional branch banging into her window on a gust of wind.

* * *

Damned police. Chased a person off just when things were getting interesting. Willa Merris thought she could hide? Hah. She’d never be safe. If she was so secure in her ivory-tower mansion, then why was her silk blouse right here, right now?

Face buried in her shirt, the intruder drew in a deep whiff of the eggplant-colored silk. That rich floral scent of Willa’s swirled up. Intoxicating. Infuriating.

Ride the rage. Ahh, God, it felt good. Down, down, into the abyss, self lost in the fury. Ohh, yes. Come to me, sweet Willa. We’ll go down in flames, together....

* * *

If she slept at all, it was in short spurts and fitful at best. She’d never been so grateful to see the sun creep through her bedroom window as she was the next morning. She finally slept, then, waking only when Louise knocked on her door to say that the phone was ringing off the hook and Mrs. Merris was worn out dealing with it all.

After saying a short prayer for nothing important to happen on her short watch in the job, Willa dressed and went downstairs to face her first full day as a United States senator.

She stepped into her father’s office and frowned. His computer had still been running last night when she’d fled the room. Who’d turned it off? Her mother rarely came in here, and surely the police wouldn’t have messed with it. Louise wouldn’t dream of touching Mr. Merris’s computer, even if the man had been dead for weeks. She was superstitious about such things.

Willa turned it on and, while it booted up, wandered into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee. Her mother was eating lunch with Louise at the kitchen table.

Willa kissed her mother’s cheek and asked the housekeeper, “Louise, would it be possible for Marcus to come spend a few days with us?” Louise’s son was recently returned from an overseas tour with the marines.

“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“I’d like to hire him as a security guard. It would be a temporary gig, but I’d feel better if we had a man in the house at night.”

Louise grinned. “You mean a big, strong, ex-marine who can chase away the boogeyman?”

Not her, too.
Willa sighed in exasperation. Would no one believe her? “I swear, Louise. I saw someone in the garden.” She didn’t bother trying to convince the woman that the intruder had made it all the way to her bathroom door.

“Honey,” her mother murmured, “you’re distraught. Maybe you should go away for a few days. Get some rest.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone, Mom.”

Minnie waved a bony hand. “I’ll be fine. No one bothers anyone around here. And the police take care of everyone.”

Had Minnie forgotten her husband had been
murdered
less than three weeks ago? Willa made eye contact with Louise across the table, and the two women shared a private eye roll. It must be nice to own so much real estate in la-la-land and never have to deal with reality.

“I’ll call Marcus,” Louise offered.

Willa smiled her thanks and retreated to the office. She set down her mug of coffee and entered the password for the classified files from last night. She moved the mouse to click on—

Where did it go? The file labeled Senate CMA wasn’t in the list. Frowning, she checked the file directory. Not there. She tried a search of the hard disk. Nothing. What the heck?

She did a computer-wide file search. Still nothing. The file was gone.

Chapter 6

O
kay, she was
not
losing her mind. She hadn’t imagined those files last night any more than she’d imagined that breathing outside the bathroom door. She tried every search parameter she could think of, but nothing turned up. All traces of the sinister committee had disappeared.

She picked up the phone and started to dial Larry Shore, but thought better of it partway through dialing. He’d been a complete jerk yesterday at the press conference, and he hadn’t been any better here at the house. Instead, she looked in her father’s address book and found the number for his Congressional office in Washington, D.C.

“Good afternoon, Senator Merris’s office. This is Amber. How may I help you?”

“Hi, Amber. This is, uhh, Senator Merris.”

The young aide spluttered, flustered.

“Amber, is there anyone in the office who can tell me about the Senate Committee on Miscellaneous Affairs?”

“Umm, one moment, ma’am.”

Willa waited. And waited. Finally, after nearly five minutes, a male voice came on the line. “Hi, Senator Merris. This is Larry Shore’s assistant. Committee on Miscellaneous Affairs, you say?”

“That’s correct.”

“I’m sorry. No such committee exists.”

“Would you do me a favor? Crank up my father’s computer in his office and go to his private file directory. I’m assuming you have access to it?” At his affirmative noise, she continued, “I’ll stay on the line.”

In about a minute, Larry’s aide said, “Okay, I’m looking at it.”

“Start reading the names at Defense Construction Oversight Committee and read down from there.” Willa read along on her own computer screen as the aide recited exactly the same list of file names she was looking at. Neither list contained the CMA file.

If a duplicate copy of the missing file had ever existed on her father’s Washington, D.C., computer, it had been erased, as well. “Thanks,” she said thoughtfully. “That was helpful.”

“If there’s anything more we can do for you, ma’am, just let us know.”

“I will. Thanks again.”

On the one hand, she was relieved. The intruder last night probably hadn’t been James Ward, after all. However, the man who’d broken into the house had apparently done so with the express purpose of erasing that file. Wow, that had been fast. It spoke of power and reach that boggled her mind.

Furthermore, the intruder probably had a partner in Washington. Which meant there was some larger conspiracy at work here. And based on what she’d read in the missing files, she hesitated to think about how dangerous the owner of that breath on the other side of her door had been.

What were the odds that an intruder had shown up within two hours of her first opening the Committee on Miscellaneous Affairs file and not been connected to the file? And then the file was mysteriously erased overnight? No coincidence was that far-fetched. She stared at the antique reproduction telephone on her father’s desk in sudden apprehension. Was it tapped? Was she being watched?

Maybe she was as paranoid as that cop last night thought she was. Maybe she
was
overwrought after James’s attack and her father’s murder. Maybe Minnie was right. Maybe she needed to get away for a while...

...or maybe she wasn’t crazy at all.

On impulse, she unscrewed the cover of the phone’s mouthpiece. She had no idea what she was looking at, but she pulled out her cell phone and took several pictures of the guts of the thing from different angles. She screwed the receiver back together and headed for the garage, grabbing her purse on the way out.

“Will you be back for supper, Willy?” Louise called after her.

“Probably not.”

“Marcus can come up to Vengeance, but he said you better pay him good if he’s gonna have to beat up ghosts.”

“I’ll pay him a fortune!” she called over her shoulder as she slipped into her little car.

She was relieved to see the mob of reporters had found other prey today, and wasn’t camped in front of the mansion. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with their aggression. Following the instructions her onboard navigation system gave her, she headed for a spy shop in a strip mall in north Dallas. It was mostly a gimmick store, but she hoped someone there could help her.

Thankfully, she was the only customer when she walked in to a dizzying display of cameras, microphones, binoculars and unrecognizable electronic gadgets.

“Can I help you?” a middle-aged man asked. He had a crew cut and appeared to be in pretty good shape. Ex-military, maybe? In that tight black T-shirt and camo pants, he certainly cultivated the image.

“I hope so.” She pulled out her cell phone and called up the pictures of her father’s telephone. “Can you tell me if this has a bug in it?”

The guy took one look at the first picture and replied immediately. “Sure does. Big as day.”

Her face felt hot and she was a little light-headed all of a sudden. Her father’s—her—phone was tapped? “Can you tell me anything about it?”

“Mind if I transfer these pictures to my computer so I can enlarge and enhance them?”

“Have at it.”

The guy hooked her cell phone to a laptop on a workbench behind the counter, and fiddled at the keyboard for several minutes. All of a sudden, he swore, startling her away from a display of stun guns and personal tasers.

“What’s wrong?” she asked quickly.

“Where’d you get this picture?” he asked tersely.

“Why?”

“That’s a military-grade device. State of the art. I’m talking brand-new. I didn’t know these acoustic bugs were out of prototype testing. They’re not available on the open market, yet.”

Military?
Why would the military bug her? “Which branch of the military does it come from?”

“Hell if I know, lady. Could be CIA, for that matter. But I can tell you one thing—unless you’re a high-ranking government official, you should not have a picture of it.”

Guilt flashed through her before it occurred to her that she actually was a high-ranking government official. Still, her rushed security clearance wouldn’t be processed for at least another week, according to the governor’s people.

“Do you sell anything for finding surveillance equipment and disabling it?” she asked.

“You’ve come to the right place for that....”

An hour later, armed with a bag of nifty electronic gadgets, she guided her car back toward Vengeance. Never in her life had she paid so much attention to the vehicles in her rearview mirror. If she was being tailed she couldn’t tell, but that didn’t mean much. She was a rank amateur at this cloak-and-dagger stuff.

She dialed her office in Washington, D.C., as she drove and got Amber again.

“Hey, it’s me. Willa Merris. I need you to do me a favor and cancel the Secret Service security detail they’re assigning to me.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Senator. There are more crazies out there than you might imagine.”

She doubted that. She could imagine a whole lot of crazy people right now. Thing was, she had no idea how deep into the government that secret committee’s reach extended. Was the Secret Service compromised? Were there sleeper agents inside that agency who were loyal first to that damned committee? Nope, she dared not take a chance on one of the crazies ending up in her own protection detail.

She hung up on Amber’s efforts to talk her out of the decision with a repeated order to cancel the security team.

The closer Willa got to home, the more jumpy she became. She couldn’t stay at her parents’ house one more night. If she was going to die of fright or worse, she wanted to do it in her own bed. She had to assume her house was bugged as well, hence the bag of goodies on the seat beside her.

Thankfully, the press wasn’t camped out at her little bungalow. There must have been some new development in the murder case that drew them away temporarily. Whatever it was, she was grateful for the break from media scrutiny.

As she parked her car in the detached garage, it dawned on her that the old Dawson house was only a few blocks away. Not that Gabe ever stayed there anymore. The way she heard it, he’d bought the place, renovated it and stopped by once or twice a year to remind himself of his roots.

Idle speculation was that he planned to make some sort of museum out of it in his old age. “The Birthplace of the Great Gabe Dawson” or something like that. Maybe he planned to charge a few bucks admission to add to his billions.

She carried the bag of electronics into her house and spent the remainder of the afternoon setting up gear that the guy at the store had promised would create static interference and thwart any camera, bug or other surveillance equipment hidden in her home. She stashed the remote control that armed the system in the coffee table in her living room, along with the collection of TV, stereo and DVR remotes she kept in a drawer there.

She didn’t turn the system on, though. The guy at the spy store had cautioned her against finding and disabling any surveillance devices. He said it would tip off the bad guys, and furthermore, they would just come back to plant more powerful gear and hide it better next time.

Or worse, they would shift to direct human surveillance, which apparently involved bad guys peering through her windows and using parabolic microphones to listen in on her life. The spy-store guy had said something about them looking through her walls, too, and she’d tuned out at that point. The thought of being that vulnerable and visible was too much for her to contemplate.

She would leave the static generator off until she needed to talk to someone in private. If the bad guys wanted to listen to her cook supper and watch television shows, more power to them.

But as the hour grew late, the prospect of going to bed alone in the dark loomed. She could do this. As long as she wasn’t poking around nonexistent files, she wasn’t a threat to anyone, right? If they’d wanted to kill her, they’d had their chance to do it last night, right?

The whisper of that light, careful breathing and the faint sound of sirens approaching played through her head over and over as she reluctantly lay down to sleep. She resorted to pulling the covers up entirely over her head when the fear became too much to stand. Then, she’d start to feel foolish and poke her head out once more. She’d emerged from the cocoon of her covers a fourth time, and her alarm clock said it was nearly
2:00 a.m. when she heard a noise.

Not a big noise. A rather innocuous little creak. Except she knew that creak. It was the spot just inside her dining room from the kitchen. A person had to step on the loose floorboard to make it squeak like that. Oh, God. Someone was out there!

She flew out of her bed in sudden terror, grabbed her cell phone from her nightstand, and tore into her bathroom. She closed the door as quietly as she could and locked it carefully. Finally daring to breathe, she eased away from the door and climbed into the bathtub.

She put a towel over her mouth and phone to muffle the sound of her call, dialed the police and whispered in panic, “This is Willa Merris. I’m at my house on Elm Street, and there’s an intruder in my home.”

“Ma’am, you thought there was an intruder last night, too. Are you sure there’s someone in your house? Is it possible your imagination is playing tricks on you?”

They didn’t believe her.
Someone was right outside, and there was no telling what the intruder had planned for her. She had no time for arguments with skeptical sheriff’s deputies.

She disconnected the line, and in panic, dialed Gabe Dawson’s cell-phone number.

After three agonizingly slow rings, a gruff, sleepy voice muttered, “’Lo.”

“Gabe, it’s Willa,” she whispered frantically. “There’s someone in my house and the police don’t believe me. They refuse to come. I didn’t know who else to call.”

“I’ll be right there.” He abruptly sounded completely alert. “Where are you right now?”

“The bathtub.”

“Stay there. I’m going to be armed and will shoot anything that moves when I get there. I’ll be there in three minutes.”

The phone went dead and she pressed herself against the cold porcelain, uncomfortably cramped in her small tub.
Please, please hurry, Gabe.

* * *

Gabe had never moved so fast as he snatched the shotgun off the mantel and tore outside. He leaped into his SUV and roared down the street and around the corner. He probably made it to the curb in front of Willa’s place in two minutes, but it felt like two hours. Making no attempt to be quiet or stealthy, he slammed his door and raced up the sidewalk toward her darkened house.

He swore as the front doorknob turned easily under his hand. No way had she left it unlocked like that. Willa was too scared of crap like this not to have double-checked it before she went to bed.

He threw the door open and surged into the front room, shotgun at the ready. He swung the barrel around the room. Clear. He burst into the dining room, which Willa had turned into an office. The place was a shambles, but no one moved in the space. He cleared the kitchen next and moved down the hall toward the back of the house. It looked like two bedrooms and a bathroom back here. He threw open the first door. Bedroom. Clear. He checked the closet fast and then backed out of the room.

Second door was locked. Probably the bathroom where Willa was hiding. She must be scared out of her mind. He moved on to the last door. It was already open and he spun inside aggressively. Nobody there. He heard a sound from the rear of the house and ran for the end of the hall and the door there. He burst onto the back porch in time to see a shadow atop the tall back fence of Willa’s yard. He yanked the gun up fast, but by the time he got it into firing position, the shadow had dropped out of sight on the other side of the fence.

Temptation to chase the intruder and blow a hole in him warred with his need to protect and comfort the terrified woman behind him.

Frustrated, Gabe turned for the house. He went through the place room by room throwing open closets and checking under beds and tables, anywhere a person could hide. Nothing seemed to be missing from the house. Television, stereo, silver and china were all in place. But the computer in the dining room was trashed. It looked like someone had smashed it open with a sledgehammer and pulled out its parts. The intruder had stolen the hard drive, if Gabe had to guess.