Now You See It (7 page)

“Look,” he said with more control than he’d thought he could muster, “I’m just trying to do the job Mike asked me to do. That doesn’t include playing nice with some slick politician in a two-thousand-dollar suit. I’m trying to keep you safe. And if testosterone is what it takes, then that’s what you’ll get.” He watched her face go from an angry flush to the dead white of sheer rage, and was about to meet her temper for temper when he saw a nearly full glass of orange juice on the shelf behind her head wink out of existence.

Oh, fuck!

He softened his expression to neutral, and he reached idly down to scratch Nikki’s head with one hand, trying to get his thoughts together.

So it did run in Mike’s family, as he’d suspected. Right along with the red hair and scary temper. She didn’t seem to have any idea what had just happened. She just stood in the same position, taut as a bow, chin in a truculent tilt and eyes challenging. Did she even know what she could do? Just what
could
she do?

Shit!
Everything had just become a lot more complicated. By a factor of a zillion or so. That must be why her energy had felt so clear to his
touch
.

Now what?
“I’ll leave as soon as the locksmith gets here. You shouldn’t be alone in this house until the locks are changed.” He straightened and glanced back at her. “We can work on the password later.”

She pulled out her cell phone, flipped it open and listened for a second. “I’m fine, Mike,” she said.

There was another pause, and without answering, she handed Brady the phone.

“Yeah,” he said abruptly.

“Gemma sounds pissed.”

“That, too. Listen, Mike, I’ve got cops coming to the office at four. I’m installing a couple of extra layers of security, and as soon as that’s done I’m out of here.”

“Ouch. She’s that mad, huh?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“But she’s okay? Let me talk to her.”

“Right. Maybe we should take a rain check on tonight. Tomorrow okay?”

Gemma’s chin came up another notch at that, and when he held out the phone, she snatched it from his hand and turned her back.

* * *

An hour after Brady left, Gemma was still furious, and that told her just how close she was to the edge. She never stayed mad after she’d blown off steam.
Almost never
, she amended.

The locksmith had come and gone, and the security company had reset her alarm codes. The whole time, Brady had behaved as if nothing had happened. She’d been half hoping he would do something outrageous so she could yell at him again, but he’d been courteous, professional, cool and detached. By the time he finally left she wanted to throw things at him, or say something devastating, but he never gave her an opening.

“Get a grip, Gemma,” she muttered. She was through packing for today—in this mood she was likely to start smashing things, or worse, spiral back into the grief and resentment she’d been feeling earlier.

And nothing that serious had happened, after all. Just schoolyard posturing, like two boys arguing over a ball. She resented being the object of their contention.

She also hated feeling so out of control. Up, down, sappy, furious. And why did Brady trigger so much rage? He hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Was she that afraid of trusting him? Not with her life—that was easy, and he came well-recommended, seemed hard and competent. But with herself.

It wasn’t his fault she was so attracted to him. That her nipples got hard and her core got soft and ready whenever she thought about him. She barely knew him, they’d only just met, but the pull she felt was undeniable—and frightening. What was the threat he represented? To her peace of mind? Her independence?

She was just learning again to function as a person, not half a couple. To make her own choices, follow her own heart. Did Brady threaten that tender new sovereignty? He hadn’t done or said anything to make her think so, beyond a little flirting and a lot of bossiness. But seeing him facing off with Doug...she’d never been one of those women who enjoyed being fought over. It was damned insulting to have two strutting males assume she would be “won,” like some tawdry prize at a street fair, by whichever of them succeeded in beating the stuffing out of the other. Just thinking about it started her temperature heading upward again.

As she set her dishes in the sink and started the hot water, she remembered Brady had taken his cup up to her office.
Inconsiderate, too,
she fumed as she stomped up the stairs.
Jerk!

The cup sat on her desk where the little Pegasus had been, but the statue wasn’t there, or on the worktable, the bookshelves, the floor—what had he done with it? Had he taken it into one of the other rooms? Why would he? Why go into them at all, where he had no business being? Why would he do that?

Gemma’s mouth went dry. She was probably overreacting, but her husband had been murdered, her home broken into, and she knew she wasn’t thinking straight. Did Brady have a key to the new locks, too? She hadn’t been watching. Some SEALS could open locks. It was part of the training.

She hadn’t been worrying about any of that. She’d been too busy thinking about the tawny skin on his inner thighs whenever he sat or hunkered down, the crisp look of his short dark hair, and how it would feel between her fingers.

I’m such an idiot!
“When you hear hoof beats...” her dad would always say, and she’d always answer, “think horses, not unicorns.”

No need to try to lay this one on Brady, even if he was a total asshole. She must have
filed
the Pegasus, either yesterday when she was so upset, or today when she lost her temper.
Rats!
And she’d been getting so much better, too.

Chapter Six

Gemma took a bite of her sandwich and pushed back a slice of avocado that seemed determined to squeeze out from between the bread and pepper jack cheese. “These are great,” she said, lifting the sandwich-half in Mike’s direction. “They’re huge, though.”

He grinned and swallowed. “I know. They’re guilty pleasures I save for special occasions.”

She finally managed to get the bread in a grip that held most of the contents in with only an occasional poke, took another bite and licked her fingers. “I’m not making a lot of progress with the packing.” She put her foot up on a box and winced as the key in her back pocket stabbed into her seat.

“You okay?”

“Yah. When I found the key to Ned’s camping trunk yesterday, I stuck it in my pocket. I need to put it someplace it won’t get
filed
.”

“Give it to me.” He put the key into his shirt pocket. “How’s that going? The
filing
?”

“Interesting. I think I told you the other day, but once Ned moved out, things started reappearing. No order, no rhyme or reason to it. Maybe that means I’m growing out of it the way you did.”

“I was thirteen, Gemma. Puberty changes that kind of thing.”

“Well, I was going on the theory it was more about transitions.” She swallowed and took a sip of soda. “But now, with everything that’s happening, I don’t want to take any chances it will start up again.”

“When are you putting this place on the market?”

“I’m going to let the Realtor put up a For Sale sign as soon as I get two or three more rooms packed up.”

Mike rattled the ice in his cup. “Why wait? Just pick up the phone and call a mover. And don’t say it’s money,” he added, as she opened her mouth to say exactly that. “You’re loaded, remember?”

“Maybe when everything gets sorted out.”

“I’ll have someone here tomorrow. You need to get out of here, Gemma. You can pay me back later. Deal?”

She stared at him, thinking. “They can store everything, too, can’t they? Until I find a place?”

He nodded. “Well, I’m glad you mentioned that. It just so happens, there’s a house for lease about four blocks from us. I was planning to drive you over to take a look at it this afternoon. It belongs to a friend of ours, and you can stay there month-to-month until this all settles out and you decide what you want to do.”

Gemma swallowed hard and caught her breath. “A house? Just like that? God, Mike, that’s like jumping off the end of the pier. Up to now, I’ve just been standing there with my toes hanging over the edge, trying to make myself move.”

“Yeah, I know. I can tell when you’re stuck. That’s when it’s a big brother’s job to give you a sneaky little push.”

“Okay,” she said after a long inhale. “Let’s go see it, and if it’s okay, I’ll call the movers myself. But not tomorrow—the day after.”

“Deal.” He grinned at her.

She didn’t smile back.

“Okay, Brat. What’s up?”

“I want to talk to you about that guy you’ve sicced on me. Since you want to talk about pushing me.”

“Brady?”

“‘Brady?’ says he, looking oh so innocent.”

“What about him?”

“You trust him?” she asked.

“He’s a brother.” The one word said everything—trust, honor and an understanding that surpassed time, place and branch of service. “And I haven’t sicced him on you.”

“He nearly punched Doug Wheeler yesterday,” she said and took a sip from her diet cola and a quick bite of escaping avocado.

Mike perked up at that. “Trust me, Gemma. If Brady felt like punching someone, there’d be no ‘nearly’ about it.”

“I was ready to tear into both of them, myself. I’m pretty much over it, though,” she said, not meeting her brother’s eyes.

“Oh, yeah? Well, it’s a good thing you are.” Mike glanced at his watch and took out another sandwich and drink, wadded the bag and two-pointed it into a box of trash. “He should be here any minute.”

Gemma came to a full stop. A quick rush of joy clashed with a damping wave of conscience and an undercurrent of lust. “Okay,” she managed.

“Is there a problem? I’ve got some information I want to share, and I’d like to only go through it once.”

“No. No problem. He makes my palms sweat.”

Mike grinned, but if he had comments, he kept them to himself.

“You don’t think the timing is just a little too cute—his coming into my life when he did?”

Mike looked surprised. “No. Not at all. I’ve been planning to get you two together ever since you told me you were getting a divorce from What’s-his-Nuts.”

“I was just wondering why a guy like Brady would be so interested in me. I appreciate it, Mike, but—”

Mike’s jaw came out and his eyes lit for battle. “Why the fuck do you think it’s so odd Brady finds you attractive? Because he does, you know. He can’t take his eyes off you.”

She felt her face flush with pleasure. Did Mike know how much it meant to her that he was ready to take on anyone who thought she might be less than perfect?

She reached over with one finger and wiped a blob of mustard off the corner of his mouth, then smeared it on the tip of his nose, He looked so surprised she started laughing. After a second or two, he rubbed his napkin across his nose and laughed with her.

* * *

“The sandwich okay, Brady?” Mike asked.

Brady nodded, his mouth full of pastrami on rye.

Gemma wished he didn’t look so good in her kitchen. “When you’re ready for dessert, I’ve got some granola and cranberry cookies on the counter. I’ve been craving them lately. Ned hated them, so it’s been a few years since I made any,” she added, and smiled at the avarice in both men’s expressions as she popped the lid from a storage container.

“Cookies?” Brady asked, swallowing a lump of sandwich. “Really? Homemade?”

Mike stared round-eyed at the bowl of cookies, looking for all the world like a kid on Christmas morning. “Those look like Mom’s cranberry cookies.” He looked up at Gemma with such hope she had to smile.

“They are. Her recipe. I made plenty, so you can take some home for Tim and Mary-Kate.”

“Oh, man.” He bit in and had to catch a falling cranberry with his cupped hand.

Brady bolted the rest of his sandwich and followed suit. He didn’t say a word until he’d started the second cookie and reached for a third.

“Okay,” he began between bites. “After our little chat with Olsen and Abernathy yesterday morning, I decided to tap a couple of sources to see what more I could find out. I’ve talked to some people downtown. For what it’s worth, the cops aren’t looking at you any more, Gemma. Not at the moment, anyway, even if you did set off their radar the other day.”

He brushed crumbs off his tie and took another cookie from the dwindling pile in the bowl. “I know the investigator in the DA’s office who works with the police. According to him, right now they’re still looking at Asian gangs. Supposedly the murder is consistent with a revenge killing for a member of the family. They ID’d a photo from a suicide from a few months back. I know some people who may be able to help track that down, find out what it’s about.”

Mike nodded and took another cookie himself. It must have been his fourth or fifth one, and Gemma tried to hide her smile. At least someone was enjoying something about this conversation. That was about to change. She took a deep breath.

“I may know,” she said. “Ned did the firm’s pro bono work. Some of that was for women’s shelters, charities, that sort of thing. I don’t have proof—no names, dates, places—but I’m sure Ned was sleeping with clients he met there. He as much as admitted it to me, taunted me with it. I even have a picture. It’s no good in court, but—”

“You never told me you have a picture,” Mike said. “Jesus, Gemma.”

He sent her a straight look, and she dropped her gaze.

“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “Okay. I only have the one photo.” Suddenly she was too aware of Brady, sitting absolutely motionless across the table from her. She felt a humiliated blush rise from her chest into her face, and her T-shirt began to cling damply to her back. She did
not
want to talk about this in front of him.

She wished Mike would just let it go. “There aren’t any faces in it—not of the men, anyway.”

Mike looked at her, then at Brady for a second. “So it shows, what? Women?”

“Women—girls, really. Young Asian girls. Anglo men—just their bodies. One of the men was Ned—just trust me on that,” she added, staring hard at the carpet. “But Mark—Mark Taylor—my divorce attorney,” she clarified for Brady, “told me it wasn’t enough to take to court. I recognized one of the girls, but when Mark and his staff tried to find her, she was long gone.”

“Someone you knew?”

She shook her head. “No. Not really. I’d seen her at a Christmas party at the shelter. I remembered her because she had this amazing skin, and a beauty mark.” Gemma touched her eyebrow at the outer corner.

“If he was having sex with clients there,” Mike said, his voice carefully bland, “and if someone’s wife or daughter was victimized, it might be a revenge thing. The cops must have the picture too.”

“From what I was told,” Brady said, “they have dozens of them. Photos were scattered all over the room where they found the body, of lots of different women. Nobody I’ve talked to has had anything to say, but it’s early days, yet. It would help if we had copies of some of the pictures.”

Mike said, “I may be able to finagle some copies. I don’t want to make any ripples, though.”

“Why don’t you let me do that, Mike?” Brady asked. “It’s going to be easier for me to stay under the official radar.”

“Okay,” Mike answered. “And I’ll check with some of the people at the places where Ned worked. They may know something.”

“Some of them might,” Brady said, “but sex games are usually pretty closely held among the players.”

Mike swallowed and turned back to Gemma. “How long have you known?”

She sighed and took a sip of Coke. “It took me way too long to figure it out. I found the photos in February. It took some time to dig out the rest of the information and get the legal process going.”

“That gives you a hell of a motive.”

“It could have, I suppose, if I’d still cared enough about him. But by then all I felt was stupid, pissed at myself for being such a fool. Sorry for myself because I’d let someone like him warp my life off course. Otherwise I guess I could have blasted it all out into the open in divorce court.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Mike said.

“I thought about it, but he begged me not to. Said it would destroy his career, ruin his life. Blah, blah. All I wanted was out. And I felt sorry for him. He was so scared, he started making hints about committing suicide. I was too naïve to realize it was just a ploy to get what he wanted.”

“So you ‘dug out’ the rest of the information,” Brady said.

She nodded. “He’d left a trail—enough of one, anyway, so I could fill in the blanks. I gave all that to Mark, just in case Ned tried to get cute.”

“Mark Taylor’s a good attorney,” Mike said, “but I’m still a little pissed off about that. You could have come to me, at least for a referral.”

She dropped her eyes, then stared straight back at him. “No. Then I’d have had to tell you all this stuff, and I didn’t want you to know what an idiot I’d been.”

“Okay. We’ll let that go. Where’s the photo, Gemma?” Mike asked.

Gemma flushed hard. “Um, I stashed it upstairs.” In a box of tampons—one place she was positive Ned would never look. “I’ll get it.”

* * *

“Christ on a cracker,” Mike swore. His face was red, but whether with anger or embarrassment, Gemma couldn’t tell. Probably both.

He had put the photo on the coffee table between himself and Brady. Gemma had no need to look at it again—it was seared into her soul in every painful detail.

She could describe from memory the room full of people in various attitudes of sexual frolic. The photo had been cropped so the men’s heads were outside the frame, but no such care had been taken about the women, and many were identifiable, as was the scorpion tattoo on Ned’s shoulder blade.

“That watch is Ned’s,” she said, pointing at the figure with the tattoo. The hand with the watch was busy on a girl—a child, really—who lay slightly to one side with her knees raised and spread wide to give easy access to his exploring fingers and to the camera lens. The beauty mark showed clearly at the outer corner of her eyebrow.

“My God,” Brady’s voice was hoarse, “she must be all of thirteen.”

“She’s nearly twenty,” Gemma said. “I thought she was younger, too, when I first saw her, but she was married and had a child. The watch Ned’s wearing was a gift from a client who’s a metal artist in Port Townsend. Ned designed it himself, so it’s one of a kind. And you can see the scorpion tattoo, on his shoulder.”

Mike stood up abruptly and walked to the window.

“Since the separation,” Gemma went on, “people have been telling me things. Hinting, really. I even confronted Ned about some of it, but he just made me feel gauche and paranoid. When I showed the photo to Mark, he said without corroboration it wouldn’t be any use in court, because Ned’s attorney would claim I was there, just not on-camera. He said the usual argument these people make is it was something Ned and I did together.”

“It’s a good thing he’s dead.” Mike’s voice was colder than she had ever heard it. He looked around as if the walls had suddenly erupted in slime. “I’ve gotta get out of here. Let’s hit the road. See what you think of the house I told you about.”

* * *

“How did you ever find this place, Mike?” Gemma asked. “It’s wonderful!”

She looked around and hugged herself. It would be like living inside a mushroom, a bright and airy one. The house rose over a garage, two stories wrapped in wide decks. The downstairs deck was roomy enough for a barbecue, and a hot tub with a cedar roof squatted on one corner so she could sit in the warm water and listen to the rain, smell it, feel the wind.

Most of the lower floor was open living-dining-great room with a surprisingly roomy kitchen through an arched door on the far side of the dining area, and a small bathroom and a bedroom off to one side. The bedroom on this floor was too small even for a guest room, but Mike had said the owners used it as a library. As she looked it over, it seemed just right for an office. The two stories were tied together by an open center stairway. On the second floor, she found a large bedroom, a bath with a Jacuzzi tub, a deck just begging for a couple of chairs—maybe even a hammock. It was a great place. Convenient, a little offbeat. It seemed to wrap her in welcome.