Authors: Virginia Kantra

Tags: #Contemporary Romance, #mobi, #Romantic Suspense, #epub, #Fiction

Home Before Midnight (25 page)

BOOK: Home Before Midnight

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She wasn’t dumb. She was sharp and competent, loyal to a fault . . . and in a shitload of trouble. It took guts for her to come here tonight. His respect for her grew. As did his concern.

“Not dumb at all.” He leaned back in his chair in a wasted attempt to restore some distance between them. “So what’s my role in this movie of yours?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I could really use a hero about now.”

His lungs expanded. Was it possible . . . could she possibly . . .

No
and
no
.

Do the job. Go through the motions
.

Maybe it wasn’t very heroic, but if he was going to save her, he had to do it by the book.

He got out his notebook. “Tell me again what you were doing with the box.”

He took her back over and through her story until he was satisfied she’d told him everything she remembered. But he still didn’t know how she felt or what she thought, all the things any competent defense attorney would toss out as speculation that were suddenly, vitally important for reasons Steve didn’t want to think about.

“What made you think this could be the object used in the attack on Mrs. Ellis?”

Bailey considered his question, her head to one side. “You gave me a copy of the search warrant, remember? This is exactly the kind of thing you were looking for. Plus, it was so obviously out of place in this box.”

“Any idea how it got there?”

“I can’t be sure. I didn’t see.”

“But you have some idea.”

She nodded silently.

Still protecting that asshole.

“Can you tell me? For your statement,” he said.

“Right. All right. I think Paul put the award in the carton and carried it out to my car so that you wouldn’t find it if you searched the house.”

She almost had it.

“Or so I’d find it in your possession,” Steve said.

Her eyes widened. He felt like crap. Like she was six years old and he’d just told her there was no Santa Claus. Or twenty-six and he’d told her the guy she’d had a crush on for the past two years had totally set her up for the murder of his wife.

“Did you two have a disagreement?” Steve asked gently. “Words, maybe?”

Her hands twisted in her lap. “No. Tonight he said . . . He wants me to go back to New York with him.”

Son of a bitch
.

“Is that what you want?” Steve asked. Very cool. Detached. Professional.

“Not anymore.”

He fought a fierce flare of satisfaction. “Why not?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She gave him a small smile that struggled to match his, cool and professional. “Personal reasons.”

It pissed him off. “How personal?”

She blushed. “It’s not what you’re thinking. More professional personal, if you know what I mean.”

He didn’t have a clue. Any more than she had any idea what he was thinking. Which was a good thing, because some of his thoughts weren’t professional at all.

“Maybe you could explain it to me,” he suggested.

She sighed. “I went to work for Paul Ellis because I wanted to write my own book. That was two years ago.”

She was writing a book? he thought, amazed. Impressed. But what came out of his mouth was, “You haven’t finished a book in two years?”

“Oh, it’s finished.” She looked down like it was no big deal. Like finishing a book was nothing. “But it’s not ready to submit.”

“How do you know?”

“Paul told me.”

Anger bubbled through him. She was so smart. How could she be so dumb where this one guy was concerned? “You think a guy who killed his wife and stuck you with the murder weapon is the best person to turn to for career advice?”

Bailey winced.

Steve winced, too. This was not the detached, just-the-facts-ma’am discussion they should be having.

She rallied. “It’s not like I knew two years ago that things were going to work out this way. Anyway, one doesn’t have anything to do with the other.”

Fuck detached
.

“Sure it does. The guy’s a user. He’s proved he’ll put his interest before yours. Maybe he doesn’t want to lose you as a personal assistant. Or maybe he doesn’t want the competition.”

She shook her head. “That’s a nice theory. And an even nicer compliment. But there’s no way Paul could consider me competition. Even if I were any good, I don’t write true crime.”

He let himself be diverted. “What do you write?”

“YA. Young adult fiction,” she explained, as if he might not know what that was.

“
The Princess Diaries,
” he said. “
The Outsiders
.”

Bailey’s smile lit her eyes. Her face. “Your daughter?”

He nodded. “I’m no expert, but I bet I know more about what girls that age like than Ellis does. I bet you do, too.”

Her mouth opened. He could practically see the wheels spinning inside her pretty head as she absorbed his words.

“Paul knows a lot about the industry,” she said.

“Does he know you don’t want to go back to New York with him?”

Her gaze dropped. “Not yet.”

“When were you planning to tell him?”

“Tomorrow.”

Steve made a disbelieving noise.

“It’s true,” she insisted, her big brown eyes fixed on his face. “That’s why I was packing up the boxes. To give everything back to him.”

“You were going to quit,” Steve said with heavy skepticism.

“Yes.”

“The day after his wife’s funeral.”

The chin came up. “Yes.”

He didn’t buy it. She was too conscientious, too self-effacing, too fucking loyal to leave her boss in the lurch like that.

“Why?”

Bailey moistened her lips. “There was a little, uh, awkwardness before I left tonight.”

Awkwardness?
What the hell did that mean?

“What kind of awkwardness?”

“Well . . . Paul was drinking.”

Terrible images flooded Steve’s brain. Had her boss hurt her? Hit her? What? “Are you telling me what happened or making excuses for him?”

Again.

She flushed. “I’m trying to tell you what happened. Paul was drinking, and before I left, he . . . kissed me.”

TWELVE

T
HE intruder paused in the doorway, his heart pumping.

Ellis raised his head and stared blankly. “What are you doing here?”

Did he suspect? But there was no awareness in his face. No awkwardness. No fear.

Was it possible, after all, that he wasn’t a threat?

“I was hoping we could talk.”

“Now.” Ellis didn’t sound alarmed. Maybe curious, and a little drunk.
Perfect
. He sprawled in one of the room’s big leather chairs, his legs stretched out on the Oriental carpet. The desk might have been even better, but the chair was positioned a good three feet from the bookcase behind him.

Plenty of room.

“I wanted to catch you without an audience around.”

“If you mean my darling stepdaughter, she’s upstairs.” Ellis set an empty brandy glass on the table beside him. “You know she wants me out of the house.”

“I heard.” Hands in his pockets, he walked behind Ellis’s chair, pretending to study the books on the shelves. “These your books?”

“Some of them.”

He scanned the spines.
Breathing Space. Murder-in-Law. A Time to Die
. Ellis was a clever guy. Just not clever enough.

“Shame about Billy Ray,” he offered.

Paul rested his head against the back of the chair. “Shit happens. It won’t affect me.”

He looked down at Paul’s full, graying hair, a little taken aback by his dismissive attitude.

“It will affect your book. Unless you plan to write about the Dawler murders without talking to the murderer.”

“But I did talk to Billy Ray. Several times, in fact. And I have other sources.”

“What other sources?”

“You want names, you’ll have to get in line to buy the book. Just like everyone else.” The bastard had the balls to sound amused.

Rage rose like bile in his throat, but he controlled his voice carefully. “If you’ve discovered new evidence, then it’s a matter for the courts. Or the police.”

Paul sniffed. “I’m not an officer of the court. I don’t have to do your dirty work.”

“You’re bluffing,” his visitor decided. “You don’t know anything.”

Paul smiled. “I know there was a witness.”

He froze, his hand curled in his pocket. “To the killings?”

“Not quite. But according to Billy Ray, someone else was in the house that night.”

His heart threatened to choke him. He dragged in air. “Did he tell you who?”

“He told me . . . enough to figure it out. Sooner or later.”

Really, Ellis left him no choice.

He brought this on himself.

“Sooner, I think,” his visitor said.

Hooking his arm around Paul’s neck, he jammed the gun to his temple. Quick. Hard.

Paul’s body arched. His eyes went wide.

He turned his head, the way he would from a camera flash, a popped balloon. And squeezed the trigger.

The blast shook him. Hot. Loud. Noisier than he’d reckoned. He had considered using a silencer, but Ellis was the type who would choose to go out with a . . . well, with a bang. Anyway, Regan was dazed with drugs and alcohol and grief. The noise wouldn’t rouse her.

Slowly, he straightened, quelling the lurch in his stomach, and looked. Not bad. A round black hole to the side of the head, welling blood. A .22 was only one step from a BB gun. The bullet tumbled inside the skull without sufficient force to exit.

But it certainly did the job.

He eased his hold on Ellis. The body slumped, the head dropping forward. Very natural. If not for the blood and the spatter on his clothes, he could have been drunk or asleep.

Carefully, he took out his handkerchief and wiped the gun. He wrapped Ellis’s flaccid hand around the butt of the revolver and, pressing the unresponsive index finger to the trigger, held the barrel to the small neat hole in Ellis’s head. Done.

He released the hand and the gun together, surprised to notice his own hands shaking. Ellis’s arm fell to his lap.

He stepped back to survey the scene. One gun. One glass. No sign of struggle. He didn’t worry about footprints in the carpet. People had been in and out of every room of the house all day.

Ellis slouched almost as he’d found him, a suicide, overcome by grief or guilt.

Let the police decide. He tucked his handkerchief back in his pocket. Either theory suited him fine.

BOOK: Home Before Midnight

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