Hot Contact (14 page)

A
rianna was usually the first one in the office every day and the last one to leave. Today, even though she was hours late, she didn't rush from the parking lot but strolled instead, hearing birdsong more than traffic and smelling the crispness of the day, not exhaust.

“Good morning,” Arianna said to the receptionist, Julie. What she wanted to say was, I'm in love! Can you believe that? Me? In love?

“Good
afternoon,
” Julie teased as she handed Arianna a stack of messages.

She smiled. “Are Nate and Sam in?”

“Nate's out of the office until after lunch. Sam called a while ago to say his plane was delayed, but he'll be here by—” she looked at her watch “—well, anytime now.”

“Thanks.” Arianna thumbed through the messages as she made her way to her office, saying good morning to
people but not engaging in conversation. One of the messages was from Doc.

She was dialing his number before she'd even settled at her desk. “I hope you're ready to make a deal,” she said after he answered.

“Maybe.”

She smiled at the enigmatic response. She would enjoy working with him. “What do we need to do to entice you?”

“I want a partnership.”

Disappointment twisted inside her as tightly as the phone cord she fingered. “That's not an option. Sam, Nate and I worked too hard to build ARC to give up part of the control to someone else. As you suggested on Saturday, I'd be willing to pay a bonus.”

“There isn't a bonus big enough to cover the client base I'd be bringing. I'm e-mailing you the list right now. Take a look at it. I think the revenue is worth a partnership.”

She booted her computer, waited as it loaded.

“Anything else you require?” she asked, although resigned to not having him come aboard.

“I don't want to be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the office, but I'd be willing to hire the other investigators you want.”

“Do you have anyone in mind?” She typed a few keystrokes, connecting to her e-mail.

“Cassie Miranda. She's an in-house investigator for Oberman, Steele and Jenkins, a big law firm in the city. We should lure her. She's good. Damn good. And James Paladin. He was a bounty hunter for a long time, but gave it up recently. You'd be lucky to get him.”

She pulled up the client list, scanned it, and sat back in awe, then clicked on the print button to make a copy. Politicians, celebrities and executives to rival ARC's extensive
and exclusive list. Doc didn't talk through her silence. “What's your real name?”

He laughed. “Does that mean we have a deal?”

“I have to talk to Nate and Sam before I can make the offer.”

“Okay. How'd things work out with your father's case?”

“When you're on board, I'll tell you,” she said with a smile, reminded of her trip to San Francisco with Joe just two days ago. Only two days ago. She hadn't known she was in love then. If she had, she might have tried to convince him to spend the night in one of the world's most romantic cities.

Then they wouldn't have had Sunday free, and time to go to the Lakers game, and for Joe to see Jane, which he still hadn't told Arianna—

“Deal,” Doc said, pulling her back into the conversation.

“I'll get back to you, probably later today,” she said. She heard voices from outside her office and looked out her open door but saw nothing.

“My name's Quinn Gerard,” Doc said.

“A perfectly respectable name. Why are you called Doc?” The noise from the outer office increased, but she still couldn't see a reason for it.

“You can't go in there!” she heard Abel Metzger, her biggest, burliest investigator, bellow.

“I'll tell you some other time,” Doc said. “Talk to you later.”

She said goodbye and hung up, standing at the same time, and heading for her door.

 

Joe found his path to Arianna's office blocked by a huge guy with an attitude.

“Call him off,” Joe said when he spotted Arianna.

“Let him go, Abel,” she said to the hulk. “It's okay.”

Joe moved around him and went toward Arianna. She let him in then shut the door. He passed her a grocery bag filled with the things she'd left at his house. She glanced inside, paused, then set the bag on her desk, the motion deliberate, her face schooled. He knew that look. She was gathering her defenses.

“What's going on?” she asked, not able to hide her hurt completely.

Hurt.
As if
she
should be the one hurting.

“Why didn't you tell me someone else played the sex card?”

Her face went blank for a moment, then something flashed in her eyes before she looked at the floor. Dammit. He'd hoped he'd been wrong. Hoped—
Dammit, Arianna. I can't believe you didn't tell me. I can't believe it.

“You talked to my mother,” she said, finally making eye contact.

“She called right after you left, looking for you. I guess you're not returning her calls.”

“Let's sit down.”

“To hell with sitting down. When were you going to tell me? Ever?” The words scraped his throat like sandpaper. He'd learned to trust her, and now… “My father and your mother? You didn't think I deserved to know?”

“I thought you had enough to deal with.”

Disbelief chiseled a wedge into his anger, widening it, deepening it. “You think you have the right to make that kind of decision for me?”

She hitched a shoulder defensively. “Their relationship never went anywhere. It was an
infatuation.
” She pounded the word, emphasizing it. “An infatuation. One my mother took advantage of in her grief. Your father got protective of her—and me. She used his feelings to get him to declare
my father's case unsolved so that I would remember him as a hero, not as someone who'd cheated on my mother and gotten himself killed because of it.” Her voice had picked up volume and speed. She put out a hand as if she were going to touch him, then changed her mind.

He was glad. He didn't want her to touch him.

“She said your father fell in love with her,” she continued, although in a quieter, slower voice, getting control of her emotions, keeping him from seeing anything below the surface. “And she used that love or whatever it was—which was despicable of her—but nothing happened between them.”

“You couldn't have explained that to me?”

“I was trying to do you a favor.”

“A
favor?
” He laughed harshly. “By not providing me with one of the key pieces of evidence?”

She frowned. “I don't know what you mean.”

He stared at her, stunned. She couldn't be that dense. According to this guy she was trying to hire, Doc, she had the logic skills of a man. He'd seen it for himself. “Who do you suspect killed your father's killer?” he asked.

“Fred Zamora, as revenge,” she said as if it were obvious.

He crossed his arms, waiting for her to elaborate. She didn't. “How do you figure that?”

“Because my father and Rollie were both killed with my father's police revolver. Zamora is the common denominator. He hunted down Rollie, probably trapped him, got the gun away from him and killed him with it.”

“Cold-blooded murder?”

She shifted feet, obviously uncomfortable. “Maybe. Maybe they struggled. I don't know. What's your point?”

He was working hard at staying calm. “Who else could've killed Rollie?”

She half sat on her desk and rubbed her forehead. “He wasn't exactly one of the good guys. Probably any number of the creeps he hung around with, and who would've had access to the gun.”

“True. Or my father.” There. He'd said what had driven him there. The truth that had swept Joe into a whirlwind the moment he learned about his father's relationship with her mother. The secret relationship that Arianna had kept from him—him, the person with the most right to know.

She jerked away from the desk, her mouth open but no sound coming out. She shook her head over and over. “No. He wouldn't, Joe. He couldn't.”

He tried to sort through her expression and her tone of voice. She hadn't considered it? But she
should
have. And she should have let him consider it. “Why not?” he asked. “He fell in love with her. Maybe he told her he knew who'd killed your father. Maybe she used my father for more than just getting the case sealed. Maybe she got him to kill. In fact, logically he's the most obvious suspect.” He ground out the words that destroyed him to say out loud. How could anyone believe their own father was a killer?

He pounded a fist against his chest, as if his heart needed to be jump-started from the shock of the idea, then he pressed her again, harder. “By you withholding the fact that my father was in love with your mother, you denied me access to all of the evidence, denied me the ability to find the truth.”

Arianna shook her head. Gone was the cool, controlled woman. In her place stood a different Arianna, one who looked a little frantic and desperate.

“Why not?” Joe asked.
Give me a reason to believe I'm wrong. Please, give me a reason.

“Because sealing a case is one thing. Killing? I can't believe it.”

Not good enough.
“I couldn't believe he would be involved in a cover-up, but he was. Why not more that that?”

“You can't compare the two. You can't.” She took a few steps away from him, her body rigid, then she hurried back and grabbed his arms, demanding his attention. “My mother wouldn't have asked it of him, either.”

There it is.
She just didn't want to believe her mother capable of using someone for her own purposes. “People are capable of all sorts of things you wouldn't believe. That was evidence you withheld. You make or break cases based on evidence.
Evidence.
The gun was in my father's safe.” It all made sense. And it hurt. “And then there's the other piece of evidence you decided not to tell me about. Why didn't you tell me about ‘dove'?”

Her brows drew together. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“The connection of your mother's name, Paloma, to the word dove, which shows up in my father's notes.”

“Where? I never saw that.”

“She's mentioned several times.”

Something in her changed then. She dropped her hands and took a step back. A light went out in her eyes. Her giving up got to him more than her defensiveness. He wanted her to battle him on this, to tell him he was wrong, to make him believe it.

“I did not see it,” she said without emotion. “But I'll reread the notes. Maybe there are answers there.”

“I doubt it.”

Another transformation came over her, slowly, agonizingly, bleakly. Then ice frosted her expression, turning her pale, taking away any trace of the fire he loved about her. “So, you have tried and convicted me.”

When she put it like that he realized what a mistake he'd
made. A huge one. He started to speak, but she wouldn't let him, stepping over his words.

“You accused me early in this relationship of using the sex card, and now you accuse my mother. We are one and the same to you.”

The truth snaked through him, past his shock and hurt, and coiled around his heart, squeezing hard. Uncertainty reared up. “I don't know what to believe.”

“You could believe me. Have a little faith in me.” She drew herself up proudly. “I never played the sex card,” she said, cold and clear and strong. “Never. And I shouldn't have to defend myself, but I'm going to, so there are no misunderstandings. Yes, I sort of tricked you into meeting me, but I wasn't using sex—” she said the word harshly, accusingly “—to get you to do anything. What happened between us was mutual and totally out of my control—and yours, I think.”

She barely stopped for a breath. “Second, I know I told you we wouldn't sleep together again after that first night, then I came to you anyway—but again, because I couldn't stop myself. I wasn't playing a game with you. I'd always had control over every relationship I'd been in before. I didn't know how to handle the loss of control. Maybe I made a few mistakes because of it.”

“I—”

“Just listen. You owe me that much.” She seemed like herself again—strong and majestic. “I've avoided cops as potential partners all of my adult life because I know they generally don't deal well with emotion,” she said, moving close, getting in his face. “I should've avoided you, obviously, but I thought you were different. I even became protective of you, wanting to take care of you when no one else had for a long time. To help you heal.”

Her eyes filled with fury, devastating in its truth, which
he was just beginning to see. He should've asked questions, not made accusations. The price he would pay for his mistake could be enormous. How could he fix it? How could he settle things down so they could figure out what to do next?

“Arianna—”

“How dare you accuse me of doing what my mother did.” Her anger filled the room like a snarling monster. “She used your father's infatuation for her own purposes. I never used you. I worked with you. I made love with you. I gave you more of myself than I've given anyone. Ever. And what do you do? You throw it back at me, saying I lied. Maybe there's a fine line between withholding the truth and lying. Maybe you think I crossed it. But so did you.”

“I—” He stopped. “When?”

“First, when you didn't tell me your parents wouldn't be at their house when I said I wanted to come there.”

“I was curious why—”

“That's crap.” She waved a hand. “You could have—should have—told me. And, second, yesterday you had a conversation with your ex-fiancée at the Lakers game, a conversation that upset you. Not only did you not tell me about it, you denied anything was wrong when I outright asked you about it.”