And Able (8 page)

She came into the living room half an hour later. Her hair was still wet and hung around her head in dark red ringlets. She’d dressed, but the additional clothes did little to hide her feminine beauty. Which was probably his fault. When he’d packed for her, he had rebelled at bringing the oversized t-shirts she wore so often. He found a few tank tops in a drawer and grabbed the pairs of jeans in her dresser and a handful of underwear.

She’d chosen a pale yellow tank top that fit like a glove, and hugged her generous breasts lovingly. He could even see the shadow of her nipples. His sex came to life with a vengeance, going hard and aching in three seconds flat. He spent so much of his time around Claire like that that he was almost used to it. Almost…

“You look edible,” he growled, bluntly declaring the first thought that popped into his head.

And holy Hannah, she did.

“Thanks. I usually wear this particular top under another shirt, but you didn’t bring it. I um…noticed there weren’t any bras, either.”

“I packed quickly.” It was a lame excuse, but the truth was that leaving her bra behind had
 
not
 
been on purpose. “I’m sorry I forgot.”

She smiled and shrugged lightly. “It’s okay. I don’t mind dressing this way around you…I mean, as long as I’m just hanging around a hotel room, it doesn’t really matter.”

Need exploded inside him, hot and urgent, at her slip of the tongue. She hadn’t meant her words as an invitation, but that didn’t stop his libido from taking them that way. It took every ounce of his formidable self-control to keep him in his chair.

“But I’d really appreciate it if you would take me to the house.”

His brain was still grappling with the near-debilitating desire she sparked in him, and it took a couple of seconds to make sense of what she said. “So you can get a bra?”

“Definitely. There’s a reason women my size wear a bra, and it isn’t all about looking perky on top.”

“It’s uncomfortable to go without, huh?”

“Yes, but I also want to get my other books. The one I need to study for my first final is on the dining table along with the printout of the notes I have to turn in with my final Unix project.”

“No problem. Let’s get some breakfast and then we’ll go.”

“Room service?”

“It isn’t serving yet. I thought we could stop at a pancake house on the way.”

She looked down at herself, her lips tipped down in a frown. She definitely wasn’t one of those women who ran around showing lots of skin and who was comfortable in clothes that showcased jiggling breasts when she walked.

More’s the pity.

“You can borrow one of my shirts to wear over that one. It’ll be too big, but you’ll be covered.”

Her brown eyes glowed. “Great. Thanks.”

Even with the stop at the restaurant, it was still early when they arrived at the house.

Claire unlocked the door. “I don’t suppose you left off setting the alarm when you came to get my clothes?”

Brett pushed the door open and herded her inside. “I had no choice. The police had to cut the wire because no one knew the deactivation code and you were out cold. I didn’t want to leave you alone any longer than I had to, so I didn’t take time to fix it.”

She heard what he was saying, but she was incapable of responding. Her mind was too busy trying to grapple with what she was seeing. The living room and dining room beyond were a mess. Every drawer had been opened, stuff was all over the place, and even the cushions on the couch had been thrown on the floor.

“Did the police do this?” she asked in disbelief. And if they had, why would they?

Hotwire said a word she’d never heard him use. “No. Someone searched the place after I came to get your clothes.”

She rushed for her bedroom, her heart in her throat. What if her locket was gone again?

“Claire, where do you think you’re going?”

She ignored Brett’s demand and ran into her bedroom. It looked even worse than the living room. Her bedding was everywhere, her clothes ripped out of drawers and strewn across the floor in messy piles. Even her mattress and box springs had been shoved off the bed frame and leaned drunkenly against the far side.

She took it all in with a quick glance before diving for the drawer in her nightstand where she’d taken to keeping the precious necklace.

She fumbled around inside, but it wasn’t long before she discovered the necklace was gone. “No,” she moaned.

Brett’s hands settled on her shoulders. “It’s not gone. I put it in the outside pocket of your suitcase when I got your clothes. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

She spun to face Brett, dislodging his hold on her. “How did you know?”

“I
 
didn’t
 
know that your place was going to get broken into.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “I didn’t mean that. How did you know to take my necklace?”

“Claire, it’s no secret how important it is to you. I just figured you’d want it with you while you were at the hotel.”

“Because you didn’t intend to bring me back here to stay?”

“Well, no. Not right away, anyway, but that’s not important right now.”

“It’s not?”

“No. You can’t go running off half-cocked like you did, coming in here in a situation like this. What if the perp were still in the house?”

She never even considered the possibility. “It’s daylight. I guess I just thought he’d be long gone…that this kind of stuff happens at night. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, but I’m going to finish securing the premises. I want you to lock yourself in here until I tell you to open the door—don’t touch anything.”

“I’d rather go with you.”

He just looked at her, and as stubborn as she could sometimes be, even she could see that this was his sort of thing, not hers.

“All right. I’ll wait like a good girl.”

He gave her a wicked smile. “Don’t be too good, sugar. That’s no fun at all.”

Her heart beat so fast she could feel it from the message in his glittering blue eyes as she locked the door behind him. The man was darn good at the flirting thing. He’d said not to touch anything, so she stood in the middle of the room, hugging herself, realizing that flirting aside…she was so cold from shock, she was shivering.

When he returned a few minutes later, she unlocked the door with trembling fingers she felt were a betrayal of the strength she knew inhabited her insides. She hid her hands behind her back. “Did you find anything?”

“Whoever it was broke in the same way they did the night your assailant tried to smother you with the pillow, but there’s no sign of him now.”

“Him?”

“Foot imprints outside the side door in the garage are those of a man.”

“Oh. So my assailant was a guy, too?” She’d been almost sure he had been.

“Yes, and from the shape of the footprints, both break-ins were by the same person.”

“Well, that’s good to know.”

He looked quizzically at her.

“One enemy is preferable over two,” she explained. She looked around her. “Why did he do this?”

“It’s clear he was looking for something, but this is definitely the job of an amateur.”

They were back to that again. “Care to tell me why?” she asked, curious in spite of herself.

“He used way too much energy, there’s no pattern to the search, and he left the place in total disarray. Professionals don’t leave evidence they’ve been somewhere unless they have no choice, they want to leave an unspoken message behind, or they are confident they won’t be caught.”

“Maybe he was in a hurry.”

Brett shook his head. “Whoever did this does not realize how much easier it is to track a disorganized criminal rather than an organized one. He left clues to his intentions all over the place.”

What kind of clues could Brett see in this mess? “Like what?”

“Like the size of the object he was looking for. It’s bigger than a CD because he left all hiding places that small alone.”

“You figured that out in the short time you were gone securing the premises?”

“What can I say? I’m good.”

S
 
he rolled her eyes at this new bout of his
 
justified confidence,
 
as he called it. “And so modest.”

“Modesty is for wimps.”

She shook her head and smiled.

“Knowing that it is bigger than a CD, unfortunately, does not tell us what exactly it is the perp was looking for. He doesn’t appear to have looked in the toilet tanks because your little froufrou decorations are still on them. So, either he’s looking for something he didn’t expect to be hidden in water, or he didn’t think of it.”

“So, that really doesn’t tell us anything, does it?”

“No. Sometimes, amateurs can be blasted annoying.”

She laughed at that.

He scowled. “If you can leave off your hilarity for a moment, maybe you can tell me what you think he was looking for.”

“I have no idea.” She stared around at the disaster that was her bedroom. “This all seems so unreal. I don’t have anything that anyone would want.”

“Just like there is no reason anyone would want to attack you?”

“Right.”

Brett looked at her, his expression unreadable. “I asked Josie about you and she knows almost nothing about your background.”

“She never asked.” Not directly, anyway, and Claire had become very adept at sidestepping discussions that could lead to revelations about her past.

It wasn’t something she liked to talk about. Although she had a feeling Josette knew more than she’d told Brett, because she could remember a couple of conversations that had bordered on painfully frank.

“Well, I’m asking now.”

“What exactly do you want to know?”

“Who, if anyone, from your past might be after you now?”

“There is no one. I told you.”

“I know what you told me and I know what I see. The terrorist group we brought down might want to hurt Josie, but they’d have no reason for searching her house. Not now that the FBI has copies of all her files.”

“But I don’t have anything anyone would want, either.”

He said nothing, but she felt a distance opening between them, like he was cutting himself off from her. Suddenly, he wasn’t the man who’d given her the most sensual experience of her life. He was an aloof stranger, his eyes assessing her with cold implacability.

“If you did and they didn’t find it, it sure as certain wasn’t from lack of effort,” was all he said, however.

Then he turned and left the room.

She followed him, wanting to see the devastation to the rest of the house and trying to think of some way to bridge the mental barrier he had erected. He obviously didn’t believe her.

For three days, he’d given her a steady stream of unstinting and even
 
compassionate
 
support. Having it abruptly cease made her realize how much she had come to depend on it. That scared her more than the man who’d tried to smother her with a pillow.

Josette’s bedroom wasn’t nearly as messy as Claire’s, but that was because she had already moved her things to Nitro’s house. The bed had been torn apart and empty drawers had been left open, but that was about it.

She found Brett in the kitchen, apparently going back over the room for further clues to the intentions of the person who had attacked her. At least that’s what she assumed his careful scrutiny of every inch of the room meant.

“Find anything?” she asked.

He shrugged, his silence screaming along her nerve endings.

She didn’t bother to follow him out to the garage, but stayed inside and started tidying things in the living room. She really didn’t want to look in his face and keep seeing that blank, I-don’t-know-you expression.

He walked in after she’d put the cushions back on the sofa and had started to organize the entertainment center.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice accusing.

“Cleaning up.” If she sounded like she was talking to a dull-witted ex-merc, she could be forgiven.

It had to be obvious what she was doing.

“I told you not to touch anything. We need to call the authorities and report the break-in.”

Have the police involved…again? She stifled the shudder the thought gave her. “So they can come and make an even bigger mess with fingerprinting powder all over the place? No, thank you.”

“Don’t you want the perp caught?” Suspicion laced his voice and vibrated off of him in waves.

She glared at him. “Geez…you’re not overly paranoid, are you? Of course I want the perp caught.”

“Then why no cops?”

She was feeling exposed enough without voicing her irrational fear of the police. She knew it made no sense, but years of conditioning were hard to get rid of. She went on the offensive rather than deal with that reality. “If you wanted to bring in the police, why didn’t you call them as soon as we arrived and discovered the house had been broken into?”

“I wanted to look things over first.” His arrogance again.

“If you’re so good at what you do, then why do we need to call it in at all?”

“Because our chances of finding the culprit increase if we bring in more manpower. Besides, there are records the police have easy access to that I don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Fingerprint records.”

“It would take an absolute idiot to search my house like this and not wear gloves.”

“So, maybe he’s an idiot.” The look he gave her said he thought she was hiding something and he was just waiting for her to confirm that suspicion by arguing again.

Her mouth snapped shut, having been open and ready to do just that. She sighed. He was right, anyway. No matter how much she hated the thought of calling the police, it made sense to do so. Forcing herself to react like the grown-up she was and not the child she’d been, she stopped cleaning.

“Fine, call the cops. I’m taking my books in the backyard and studying.”

The pile she had left on the table was still there, but her notebooks had been scattered all over the floor. She went to pick them up, but was pulled backward by a hand on her shoulder.

“What part of ‘do not touch
 
anything
’ did you not understand?”

She moved away from his touch, unable to bear the warmth of his body when his tone was so cold. “What am I supposed to do, stand around and twiddle my thumbs while we wait for the police to come? The break-in isn’t exactly an acute situation; it could be hours or even tomorrow before they make it over here.”

“So, we wait.”

She huffed out an impatient sigh and turned to glare at him. “What difference can it possibly make if I pick up my books and notes?”

That suspicious look was back in his blue eyes and it was all she could do not stamp her foot.

She gritted out, “I’m not hiding anything, darn it.”

“Then why are you being so uncooperative?”

“I’m not. I’m being realistic. I know just how easy it is to evade the law.” She sighed, knowing it was useless to argue.

Worse, it would probably nourish his belief she was trying to cover something up. She clamped her mouth closed again.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, the suspicion in his voice magnified.

“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything. Call the cops already.”

“No. You said you knew how easy it was to evade the law. You want to explain that to me first?”

“Fine,” she snapped, pushed beyond endurance. “Let’s say whoever broke in and searched Josette’s house didn’t wear gloves, no matter how unlikely that scenario is. You said it yourself—he’s an amateur, which means this could be his first crime and his fingerprints won’t be on file.”

“Fingerprints are evidence against him later, not just a way of identifying who he is.”

“He has to be caught first and just how is that going to happen? What are the cops going to find that you haven’t?”

“I don’t know, but you can’t rule out the possibility his prints are on file and he may have left them here somewhere.”

“Even if he’s a criminal, the chances his fingerprints are on file with the local authorities are pretty dismal. And as quickly as many law offices and the FBI are going to centralized computer records, they aren’t all there yet. Not by a long shot.”

“A small chance is better than no chance.”

“Right, only even if they are on file and he has a record, he’s probably not gainfully employed and therefore easily traceable—if traceable at all. Do you have any idea how many crimes like this go unsolved every year?”

“Did you read about that on the Internet, too?” The sarcasm in his tone hit her on the raw.

“No.
 
I lived it
.”

He smiled grimly. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

When she realized he’d taken her words as proof that she had something in her past she’d been hiding, she wanted to groan at her own stupidity. Instead she crossed her arms and glowered at him with all the frustration she felt.

Unfazed by her anger, he said, “I’m going to call this in, and then, while we’re waiting for the police, you’re going to explain what you just said and tell me how I’m supposed to believe a woman with a criminal past doesn’t have any enemies.”

“I didn’t say I had a criminal past.” But she knew her denial was useless.

He had a thought stuck in his head, and until she told him the truth, it was going to stay stuck. Maybe even then.

Unsurprisingly, his only reply to her assertion was to turn away and make the call on his cell phone.

When he was done, he turned back to face her. “Someone will be by in an hour or so.”

“Great, here’s hoping it’s not too much
 
or so
.”

“Let’s go for a walk in the park. Maybe the fresh air will improve your mood.”

“I’ll still be with you, won’t I?”

He clenched his jaw, his blue eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

“Then I doubt my mood will improve.”

He didn’t say another word until they’d walked half the circumference of the park. “Explain.”

“What, the theory behind nanotechnology? Or did you want me to put quantum physics in easy-to-use terms?”

“Neither, smart mouth.” For just a second he sounded exasperated rather than distant, but then he drew his cold demeanor around him like a force field again. “You know exactly what I want here.”

“An explanation of why I know so much about the fallibilities of the system?”

“Yes.”

“When we weren’t on the street, which only happened twice and didn’t last all that long,” she hastened to add…she hated pity and she didn’t want Brett going all
 
sympathetic
 
on her, “after my dad’s death, my mom and I lived in low-rent housing. People’s places got broken into all the time in our neighborhood. Ours included.”

And they’d never once called the cops. Mom had been too sloshed and Claire hadn’t wanted the interference. Besides, they’d had nothing of any real value worth stealing. She’d been pretty sure the cops wouldn’t have even made a personal visit off the call.

Brett said nothing.

She sighed. “Look, I know how hard it is for the average citizen living in middle-class America to accept, but the cops aren’t all guys in white hats and even the ones who are heroic can’t fix society’s ills. They help, but there’s only so much they can do.”

“That doesn’t mean they can’t do anything.”

“I know that, but a call to 911 can only help when there’s something left to fix.”

“Explain what you mean by that.”

She bit back a sigh. “My dad committed suicide when I was eleven. He got laid off…you know how dynamic the computer industry is. Well, his job got phased out and he and my mom had been living on the edge of financial disaster since before I was born. We were in debt up to our eyebrows because they both had to have the best of everything. New cars every couple of years, a huge house…I was in private school. The works, but when he couldn’t get another high-paying job right away, the house of cards started to fold.”

“And he killed himself rather than deal with bill collectors?” Brett asked in disbelief.

“Yes. It devastated my mom. She found him…he shot himself. That sounds like a trite story told on the six o’clock news, but I lived it. She ran around screaming, ‘Call 911, call 911!’ Only there was nothing anyone could do. Dad was dead, we were in bankruptcy, and even her designer clothes got repoed to pay the bills.”

“You have a thing against the police because they couldn’t save your dad?”

“No. I don’t have a thing against police.”

He made a sound that effectively said, “Yeah, right.”

“Okay, so I have a thing…but it’s not against them. I just have a hard time dealing with them. Mom started drinking after Dad died, and she wasn’t an easy drunk. She didn’t just go to sleep on the sofa and snore the National Anthem. She brought men home, she had screaming rages and fights with her boyfriends. The cops would be called. They’d come and they’d threaten to take me away. Mom would get hysterical and I had to calm her down. She said if she lost me, too, that she’d do what my dad did.”

“Kill herself?”

“Yes.”