Scarlet Nights (20 page)

His hands came up to the side of her head and she felt his strong fingers in her hair, against her scalp. She put her head back, her eyes closed, and tipped her head to one side to give him access to her neck.

But the kiss she anticipated didn’t come. Instead, she felt Mike’s body tense up and his hands freeze in place.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. Mike’s cheek was against hers and he was looking down at Mr. Lang below. Sara shifted a bit so she could see the man more clearly. He had brought two big plastic buckets with him, and they were both full, but she couldn’t see what was in them. He was muttering in his guttural voice. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he sounded angry.

She was much more interested in the fact that she was backed up against Mike than she was in whatever odious thing Mr. Lang was doing. Probably building another trap, she thought.

When Sara moved her cheek against Mike’s, he pulled away, and she repressed a sigh. Of course it wasn’t true, but her first thought was that yet another man had lost interest in her. In her lifetime, many men had come on to her, but only two of them—and Mike—had interested her. But then, she couldn’t really count Mike as one of the men in her life, could she?

It was while she was contemplating this that she heard Mr. Lang say the word
Anders
. She heard it clearly enough that, before she thought, she gasped.

Instantly, Mike’s hand went over her mouth. Below them, Mr. Lang stopped what he was doing and looked around.

Mike removed his hand and Sara held her breath. If Mr. Lang saw them hiding in the tree above him, they’d never find out why he was muttering Greg’s name.

Mike pointed to the lower tree branch and she knew that he meant to go there so he could hear better. Quickly, and with great
agility, Mike moved away from Sara, grabbed an overhead branch, and swung down to the one below. He stretched out on his stomach, flattening himself, as he listened.

Sara wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what the old man was saying. Wouldn’t it be better not to know if the man she was going to marry was somehow involved in what Mike had called a war? Surely Greg couldn’t have—wouldn’t have—done something that caused Mr. Lang to set traps all around the property.

It was when she heard the word
dogs
that she sat up straighter. Below her, to her right, Mike was looking up at her. He’d heard the word too.

Sara’s instinct was to put her palms over her ears. If Greg was doing something he shouldn’t, she didn’t want to know of it.

On the other hand, if she didn’t listen, she knew she would be postponing the inevitable.

With a defiant gesture, Sara secured her sandals on her arm, then stretched out on the tree branch just as Mike was, and gave her attention to the old man below. It was easy to see that he was constructing another trap. He put almost invisible nylon fishing line across the bottom of the doorway to the summerhouse, and attached something inside, but she couldn’t see what it was.

Minutes later, she heard him chuckle—an ugly little sound—and he stepped away to admire his handiwork. He picked up a small rock and tossed it, hitting the line with one shot.

To Sara’s horror, four big, steel-tipped arrows flew across the doorway and landed in the wood at the other side.

Sara had to put her hand to her mouth to keep from shouting in protest. She glanced at Mike and he mouthed, “Okay?” She nodded, but it wasn’t easy to do. If she and Mike had come later or tomorrow, there was a chance the metal spears would have hit him, for it was Mike who always went first.

When Mike smiled at her, the calm of him restored her equilibrium. He turned back as Lang began to mutter again, but this time it was louder.

“That’ll teach you, Greg Anders,” Brewster Lang said as he pulled the arrows out of the wood and reset the trap. “You can’t murder my dogs and get away with it. I hope these arrows kill
you
!”

Angrily, he picked up his tools, put them in the buckets, and made his way back to the path to the house.

Mike looked at Sara across the space between the branches and waited for at least ten minutes before he stood up on the heavy branch.

“Can you step across to me?” he asked.

She was distracted by what she’d heard. “Sure.” Mike took her hand, and Sara made the long step, but her mind wasn’t on it and she slipped.

But Mike caught her. He was holding on to a branch above his head with one hand and to Sara with the other. As fast as she could, she scrambled up and leaned against him. They were standing on the branch, Mike with his back against the big tree, with both arms around Sara.

She stood there, her arms folded against his chest, and was glad for the security of him. When had Greg done this? she wondered. He was always at the shop, so when had he had time to go to Merlin’s Farm?

And
why
? Just because he wanted the place? Did Greg think that Mr. Lang was the reason Rams wouldn’t sell it to him? Or was the reason because Sara, the woman he loved, wanted it?

Mike put his hand under her chin and lifted her face up to his. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Shocked, but I’m all right. What about you?”

“Not shocked,” he said quickly and looked around them. “Even
though I’d like to stay here all day, just like this, I think we should get down and go.”

Sara didn’t want to leave either. Besides, she knew that when they were back on the ground she’d have to face the truth about the man she was to marry.

“Sara?”

“I know,” she said as she reached up to hold on to a branch.

Mike started to move away, but then turned back and sweetly kissed her cheek. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said and tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage it.

Mike jumped down from the low branch, and got Sara to fall into his arms. He tried to make a joke about her nearly knocking him down, but when he looked at her expression, he stopped.

He quickly led her around the hedge and back past the house to get to his car. He unlocked it and held the door open for her. When he saw that her hands were shaking, he fastened her seat belt for her, then got in the driver’s side.

They were halfway back to Sara’s apartment before either of them spoke. Mike wanted to give Sara as much time as she needed to digest what she’d heard. For him, he wanted to call Lang and thank him. From here on, Mike would start the process that would end in his telling Sara the truth, that the man she planned to marry only wanted her because … He hadn’t yet figured that out.

He glanced at her, sitting silently in the seat next to him. Her pretty dress was covered with leaves and twigs, and there was a tear at the shoulder.

“Sorry about your dress,” he said.

“Do you think Greg was trying to get Merlin’s Farm for me?”

“You can answer that better than I can.”

“Greg might have done what he could to get Mr. Lang to leave,
but he wouldn’t kill the dogs. I think that must have been a coincidence of timing and Mr. Lang put them together without any evidence.”

It was too soon for Mike to tell her what he knew. When he was younger, he’d learned the hard way not to tell too much too soon. On his first undercover case, right away, he’d gleefully told a woman her husband was an arms dealer and that he had two mistresses. In his naïveté, he’d thought the woman would be grateful for the information. But she’d had the opposite reaction. She’d called Mike a liar and had stood by her husband to the very end. When she was being led off to prison, she spit on Mike. Yes, he’d learned to be cautious. “Are you sure you know him well enough to be able to say that?”

“Greg may not be the most honorable person on earth, but he is a good man.” Sara was silent for a moment. “I know Greg does some things I don’t like, but—”

“Like what?”

She told him about Greg switching the dress sizes. “But that was just to make the women feel good. It’s a far cry from poisoning dogs.”

“I didn’t say they were poisoned, and I don’t know that they were. What made you say that?”

She hesitated for a full minute. “The owner of Edilean Drugs told me to remind Greg to be careful with the rat poison he bought.”

Mike gritted his teeth, as this was something she hadn’t told him. “I take it you don’t have a rat problem?”

“When I asked him about it he said there was a nest of them in the back wall of the store. It made sense that he’d buy poison.” She took a breath. “Even though I still don’t think Greg would do something like that, I wish I could replace Mr. Lang’s dogs.”

Mike grinned at her. “Now there’s where you’re lucky.”

“Why?”

“On this case, I’m working for the federal government, and you know why we put up with their delusions of their own grandeur?”

“No.”

“Money. They have lots and lots of greenbacks. Tell me what kind of dogs Lang had and we’ll replace them.”

“I was only a child when I saw them so I don’t know what breed they were. But I thought they were beautiful. My mother once said that they were Irish.”

“Would you recognize them if you saw a picture of them?”

“Maybe.”

He handed her his phone. “Text Tess to send you photos of Irish dogs.”

“You always remember your sister but you forget that she’s married to my cousin. How about if I text Rams to tell me what kind of dogs Mr. Lang had?”

“Even better.” He smiled at her.

“What’s that look for?”

“I was thinking how much you’re like all the other women I’ve worked with.”

His sarcasm made her feel good. “They didn’t hide with you in trees?”

“No, and they missed a lot. I liked holding you.” When Sara kept looking straight ahead, he added, “And they didn’t want to replace the dogs of some old man they disliked.” Mike had to look away to hide his pleasure at the way the day had gone—and at the way Sara was sitting there frowning. It was the first real dent that had been made in the myth of Greg Anders.

“How about if we take the night off from the case?” he said.

Sara’s eyes brightened. “Watch more movies together?”

“I was thinking that maybe we could go to your apartment and fix dinner over there. You haven’t even shown me your place yet.”

“I guess you forgot that I have no kitchen sink.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You want to search through everything I own, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said, but in such a lascivious way that she laughed.

“Fine with me. You can not only look at the jewelry Aunt Lissie left me, you can try it on.”

“I’d rather you model it for me.”

“After what I heard today about my fiancé, I just might do that.”

Mike’s grin almost cracked his face.

13

E
VERYTHING ABOUT SARA’S
apartment said “family.” Whereas Tess’s place was like Mike’s, with furniture that had come from stores—preferably in preplanned rooms—he didn’t think Sara owned so much as a dish that hadn’t come through her friends and relatives. And what she’d bought had been carefully chosen because it looked old and worn in that romantic way that women liked.

As soon as she opened the door—unlocked, of course—she ran to her bedroom. But Mike stood in the doorway and stared.

Even though Sara’s living room was shaped like Tess’s, they couldn’t be more different. Sara’s room looked like something off the History Channel titled “Furniture Through the Ages.”

She had a big peach-colored couch with huge rolled arms. Mike wasn’t much of a historian, but he could imagine ladies in long dresses taking tea on that sofa. The chair next to it was nearly as plush and was covered in a flowered fabric. On the other side was a big chair upholstered in old brown leather, and
he was sure he’d seen one just like it in some World War II movie.

Around the room were little tables and knickknacks that ran the gamut of years from Thomas Jefferson’s time to the 1980s. Nothing he saw was new.

And everywhere, there were photos in frames. They ranged from so old it looked like Matthew Brady had taken them, to one of Tess on her wedding day. Mike smiled when he saw she was dressed in a dark blue suit that she’d probably later wear to work. He and Tess had been taught frugality and recycling long before it became fashionable. He remembered how hard he’d tried to be there that day, but he’d been tied up—literally.

“So who gave you all of this?” he called to Sara.

“Everybody,” she answered. “There’s a saying in town that if you don’t want it, give it to poor Sara.”

Mike snorted at that. Nothing could be further from the truth because every item had been carefully selected. He ran his hand over a small table that had extensions on the sides. He didn’t know much about antiques, but he’d spent a lot of time in rich houses, and he knew Sara’s little table was worth some money. If he’d been dealing with a different criminal he would have said that whatever treasure was being sought was somewhere in this room. But Stefan had lived here with Sara, so he must have seen all this—and known that there was something more valuable elsewhere.

Sara came into the room. She’d showered and changed into a dress of pale blue cotton, and he thought she’d never looked prettier.

Sara walked to Mike and turned her back. “Could you please button me?”

There were about thirty little white buttons down the back of her dress, and he started from the bottom up. Her skin was covered by an old-fashioned slip, and he wondered if she’d also inherited her
clothes. “You couldn’t get out of this dress very quickly,” he said, joking, and working very slowly.

“But then that’s the point, isn’t it?”

Mike chuckled. “I guess it is. There. Done. So tell me about your home. Have you ever bought a piece of furniture in your life?”

“No. Just knickknacks. In fact, my dad pays the rent on a big storage unit in Williamsburg that’s full of old furniture and photos that relatives have given me. They like Ikea; I like Edwardian.”

“It sounds like a giant hope chest.”

“At one time I thought it was.”

“And you showed what’s in storage to Anders?”

“I don’t want to know how you guessed that, but yes, Greg and I spent three days going through everything. He wanted to see what we could use when we have our own home. I’d planned to take it all with me with Brian, but …”