Storm Warning (12 page)

She was his prime suspect.

But he’d hurt her.

Damn.

She stormed out of the room, slammed the door with such wicked force the cottage shook.

Wincing, he counted to ten and smiled grimly. He’d made a mistake. This was his fault.
Way to screw up an investigation, Agent Foley.

He found a clean shirt, pulled it on and buttoned it up. His heart rate settled as he walked into the living-room and saw her by the front door jerking on her sneakers.

She’d pulled on jeans and grabbed her bag. The T-shirt she’d slept in was flimsy against the morning chill and clung to puckered nipples, instantly drawing his eye. When she noticed the direction of his gaze, she raised her bag to cover her chest, gave him a look of acid derision and with a low growl grabbed the door handle.

“Where the hell are you—”

The door slammed on his words.

“—going?” he finished.

Sorcha tore out of Ben Foley’s cottage so hurt, so full of self-reproach she could barely breathe.

When will I ever learn?

Tears formed but she blinked them away. Disorientated, she stood on the pavement for a moment finding her balance, confident Ben wouldn’t follow now he’d gotten what he wanted. Morning sex with no strings.

Great.
And it had been, right up to the moment he’d realized he was in bed with
her.
She was such a fool.

A car door banged shut, echoing off the old stone walls of the street. She raised her head. Winced. Uncle Angus and Robbie were standing outside her house, next to their van, which was parked up on the curb so traffic could squeeze past.

Their frowns matched her mood. Okay, so they hadn’t missed her sharp exit from Foley’s cottage.
Bugger.

She fished her sweatshirt from her bag. Pulled it over her uncombed hair and silently cursed Ben Foley. He’d got her into bed with false promises, woken her up with wandering hands, given her the best orgasm she’d ever experienced, and then treated her like a slut.

Was it her? Did she send out some invisible signal that told men to treat her like crap?

Plastering on a smile, she walked toward her family. And then she remembered Carolyn. How could she have forgotten?

Without a word, Uncle Angus opened his arms and she found herself enveloped in a warm familiar hug that smelled of comfort and home. She rested her forehead on the tickly wool of his Guernsey sweater. Absorbed the strength and love of his embrace.

“Why did you not come to us, lass?” Hurt underlay the words. But Sorcha hadn’t felt comfortable in her uncle’s house since she’d been back, not with the obvious disapproval of Aunty Eileen.

Thinking about where she’d ended up, even Aunty Eileen might have been better. Though maybe not. She pulled back, avoided the watery gaze that always saw through her. “It was late.”

“Och, Sorcha, give over. Late doesn’t matter.” He hooked his arm over her shoulders and they made their way to her cottage. She didn’t miss the look that passed between her uncle and cousin. As though she was a small child in need of cosseting. Or a mental patient in need of a dose of Prozac. She didn’t know whether to be resentful or cheered that at least somebody in the world gave a damn.

She sniffed. Pushed inside the front door and noted with relief that the house was tidied. The advantage of having an uncle on the police force.

“We heard what happened when we docked this morning.” Robbie shifted his feet. “About your friend.” Angus and Robbie shook their heads in unison. It was such a terrible thing to happen in their town.

Sorcha nodded and headed for the phone. “Make yourselves at home while I check up on her, okay?”

Robbie headed to the kitchen to put the kettle on. The call was brief, the nurses would only tell her that Carolyn was resting and not taking calls. Sorcha hung up and wondered what to make of that.

“Did she recognize the bloke?” Robbie called out.

“No. It was too dark.” Sorcha locked her hands together and clamped down on the terror that wanted to flood her senses again. When had she become such a coward?

“Did they take anything?” Angus fingered two halves of a broken abalone shell. His bushy eyebrows knitted as if he were trying to fit the pieces back together.

Sorcha gently took the shell from his fingers. “I’ve nothing to steal, Uncle Angus, you know that.” She put the shell in the rubbish bin. Another memory destroyed.

“Aye, but youngsters’ll take anything these days.” Angus rubbed his chin.

“Whoever it was probably thought I have cash lying around, or maybe a nice TV or stereo.”

“Unless it was Duncan Mackenzie,” Robbie said.

Sorcha swung to face him as he carried in three mugs of tea. Her cousin had voiced her biggest fear. Would Duncan really go that far with a grudge? Break in? Attempted rape?

She paled, remembering the knotted hanky she’d handed him in the pub. An old-fashioned curse for impotence. Delivered in full view of his drunken mates.

God.

She squeezed her eyes shut, furious with herself for messing with things she didn’t believe in and didn’t understand. She wasn’t a witch. Wielded no power except for logic and wits. And look where they’d got her. The image of Ben Foley holding out his hand to her flashed through her mind. Humiliation singed her cheeks before she pushed the memory aside.

Had Duncan attacked Carolyn? Would a man whose sexual competence had been challenged need to prove his virility? Had she caused Carolyn’s pain with no more than a twist of knotted cotton?

Robbie handed her a mug of sweet tea, stepped back to sip his own. Deep lines of fatigue gouged the skin beside his mouth. “We put in early so you can take the van, if you still need it?”

She frowned, not knowing what he was talking about, and then suddenly she remembered. Her legs felt weak as she sank to the sofa. She’d forgotten—with everything else going on, she’d forgotten.

“You don’t have to go…” Robbie trailed off as if he’d said too much and looked away, out across the Firth that shone blue-gold in the sunshine.

“I do. I want to go.” She glanced at her watch. She’d have to hustle to make it in time.

“I’ll come with you, if you want?” Her cousin smiled despite the exhaustion clear on his face.

Sorcha touched his cheek. “Robbie, you’ve always been there for me. I don’t know what I’d have done without you all those years ago…or now for that matter.” Her heart filled with a sense of love and belonging. “But you’ve been up all night fishing. I saw you pulling creels earlier.” That reminded her she needed to ask her lawyer if he’d switched the boat deed into Robbie’s and Angus’s names yet. She’d found out only recently that her father had willed the trawler to her, but she didn’t feel she had any right to it, not when they worked so hard.

Smiling, she sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “Plus you need a shower.”

Robbie grinned, his eyes dancing innocently. “You don’t smell so sweet yourself, cousin.”

Sorcha stepped back as heat flooded her cheeks. She was all too aware she was smothered in the essence of Ben Foley. She looked away from Robbie’s teasing gaze, more depressed than ever. “It was a bad night.”

***

Sorcha stomped on the clutch in her high-heeled boots, maneuvered the unwieldy van through a busy roundabout. Floored the accelerator in the hopes of getting to the church on time. The voices in her head twittered nervously. She ignored them. She’d miss the service, but wanted to be there for the burial. It had taken two hours to drive this far, which was ironic because if she looked across the River Forth she could probably make out Anstruther on the opposite shore.

Even as she drove, humiliation tormented her with shame and guilt. Because the blasted man was right. She’d wanted him. And when she’d woken to find his rock-hard body pressed against hers, she’d thought he’d wanted her too.

Hollow laughter rang around the cab.

“I won’t make that mistake again.” What was so wrong with her anyway? Shaking her head at her own foolishness, she flicked her hair out of her eyes. No matter how lonely she was, she was done with men. Period.

An itch between her shoulder blades made her look around and check her rearview mirror. Nothing but a line of unfamiliar cars behind her.

So now, on top of seeing ghosts and hearing voices, she was becoming paranoid. Driving herself a little more crazy every day.

It was a beautiful October day and, though she’d never been to this part of Scotland before, it looked much the same as Fife. Flat, green, arable, with the sapphire sea edging the horizon.

Suddenly her father stood in the road and she veered dangerously across the median-line but still hit him. She swerved again to avoid an oncoming car and wrestled the steering wheel back into her lane. Her heart raced even though the rational, logical side of her brain knew the man she’d hit hadn’t been real.

But while he might not be real in the corporal sense, she’d just damn near killed herself and the poor innocent people driving in the car opposite. She was becoming a liability to everyone she encountered.

Her pulse slowly returned to normal. A brown information sign pointed to the village of Whitekirk and she followed it, grateful this journey was almost over.

Up ahead she spotted a church with a large red sandstone tower that belied the town’s name. Cars were parked all along the verge. She pulled up behind a Transit van as the minister came out the door of the church, leading the mourners.

And there was her father climbing the steps, mingling with the crowd—underdressed for a funeral but too dead to care. Her palms went damp as she grabbed her tote, checked her wing mirror and slid out of the cab. She wrapped her long black cardy around herself and tied the belt to ward off the chill. Squaring her shoulders, she marched up the hill toward the churchyard, hoping no other ghosts lurked on consecrated ground.

***

Two hundred yards back down the road, Ben sat and watched Sorcha exit the van and head into the churchyard.

A rendezvous?

Seemed likely.

He was supposed to be in a meeting with the Scottish-DEA’s crime coordination officer in Paisley in an hour’s time. He checked his watch, figured he’d never make it. Thought about
phoning in, decided to wait until he found solid evidence to back up his suspicions rather than this half-assed hunch.

He’d been on his way to the meeting when he spotted Sorcha filling a white van with gas on the outskirts of town. She’d been dressed in head-to-toe black, maybe in memory of this morning’s debacle, but her hair glistened like white gold in the bright sunshine.

The van belonged to Sorcha’s uncle. He’d run the plate while crossing the Forth Road Bridge, then he’d dropped way back in case she spotted him. He didn’t think she had, though her lack of driving skills had nearly shaken him loose a couple of times. The woman didn’t believe in using her signal lights any more than she practiced safe sex.

Dammit.

It was his fault this morning had ended up totally FUBAR. Didn’t matter that she was beautiful and willing, he should never have touched her. What the hell had he been thinking?

Nothing. His dick had been in charge.

She was his prime suspect—even more so following the phone call he’d received from D.S. Ewan McKnight seconds after she walked out the door. Seconds before he’d have made a fool of himself by chasing her down the street and apologizing.

Treetops tilted in the breeze as she disappeared up the steps of the church. He lost her in the emerging crowd of people attending a funeral. All dressed in black.

Very clever, Miss Logan.
He reached for the door handle. Froze. Two men walking down the road stopped at the fish van.
What the hell?
Ben delved into his bag for his digital camera and racked off a few frames. Was this a delivery? How had it slipped past surveillance?

The men wore knit caps pulled low, scruffy jeans and sweatshirts. They looked ordinary, as ordinary as any drug dealer. They had the rear door of the van open, one of them climbing in to place something inside.

Money? Too small. Diamonds? Information?

The second man obscured his view. Ben didn’t have a good visual. He frowned, watching the way the men worked. They were doing something, planting something, and looked like professionals.

Were they cops?

He grabbed his cell to check only to swear at the lack of signal. Slid the phone back into his pocket. The men climbed out of the van, closed the door, then loped back down the road and climbed into a silver Mercedes.

He got out of the Renault and walked swiftly along the verge, however they sped off before he got the full license plate.

“Goddammit!”

Something—probably a drug deal—had just gone down. Ben’s heart pounded, blood filling his limbs with angry heat.
Sonofabitch.
He needed to report in, needed to call in the make, model and a partial plate.

Where was she? The woman had played him like a maestro, and would have continued to do so if he hadn’t freaked out on her this morning.
Damn.
His hands shook and he needed to hit something, to kick something, to wrap his fingers around someone’s throat and strangle the truth out of them.

Did she know he was DEA or was he just some dumb schmuck to set up?

He homed in on the church and stormed the steps. All that mattered was confronting this woman and letting her know she hadn’t gotten away with a damn thing.

It finally hit him how crazy he was acting. He cut into the shadow of the church, squatted down, breathing hard before a worn-out tombstone, and peered around the corner. His blood pounded with hatred, but it was a cold, frozen emotion.

Feigning interest in the tombstone, he traced a carved skull and crossbones with his fingertips, brushed away lichen. He scanned the congregation, who had gathered way over in the far corner of the cemetery, circling a black hole in the ground. Sorcha stood at the back of the crowd, head bowed, hands clutched in front of her as if in prayer. Ben’s lips curled. It would take more than prayer to save her now.

Next to the grave, a middle-aged woman clung to the guy beside her as if she couldn’t stand on her own. Two young women hugged each other, their sobs catching on the wind. A group of people stood silent and respectful as the minister spoke.

Ben watched Sorcha flinch as the first handful of dirt hit the coffin.

As he listened to the minister’s words, it dawned on him they were burying the boy she’d pulled out of the sea, the boy who’d been a user and turned up dead in her arms.

Was Sorcha responsible for his death?

It wasn’t feasible. She hadn’t killed that boy. He’d watched her trying to outrun the storm that day. Seen the moment she stopped and veered off the path, launching herself into the water. He’d had to force himself onto that beach to see what was going on.

The autopsy had time-of-death at least twenty hours before she’d dragged him out of the water. So what was she doing here?

The preacher said the final prayer, and childhood habit had Ben crossing himself. Sorcha wiped her eyes and blew her nose, as if truly grieving.