Under the Microscope (7 page)

He gestured toward the elevators. “Are you ready to go?”

“Don’t I look ready to go?” she snapped, then pressed her unpainted lips together in a thin line. “Sorry. Not your fault. I just…” She shrugged beneath the sad-looking wool coat. “I’ve got one outfit and an SUV to my name. The FDA has taken over my office and some bastard burned down my house and put plane tickets in my car to make
me
look like the villain here. Worse, everyone believes it.”

By
everyone,
Max knew she meant him. But was it the truth or an act? Ever since she’d reappeared in his life, he’d been jarred by the differences between Raine today and the one he’d walled off in the back corner of his memory.

The Raine he’d remembered—when he’d thought of her at all—was soft and a little tragic, scared about being pregnant by her ex-husband, frightened of the clotting disorder that had landed her in the hospital, clingy when it came to her boss, who’d been one of the few constants in her life.

Back then, she’d reminded him of his nieces, Deena and Diana. The girls were only a few years younger than him, but in the way of complex multigenerational Czech families, he was technically
their uncle rather than their cousin. He’d been responsible for nurturing them in the rough-ish Czech-dominated neighborhood north of Boston.

He’d protected the “Double Dees” growing up, just as he’d tried to protect a hurting, vulnerable Raine. But how could he protect this new Raine? Instead of cringing from the danger, she was stepping into it, chin out-thrust, ready to defend her territory.

Or was that the act? Was she really just biding her time, looking to cut and run as she had before?

Hell, he didn’t know.

All he knew was that part of him wanted to hold her close and tell her he’d protect her, that he’d never let anything happen to her. But another, smarter part of him knew that was a bad idea. She hadn’t come to him for personal reasons. It was business this time, more so than it had been before.

He’d do best to keep it that way. He should just pursue his investigation, get the name Vasek and Caine out in the marketplace as positively as he could and draw his paycheck.

Then walk away.

ONCE THEY LEFT THE HOTEL, Raine insisted they stop at the nearest mall, so she could buy a few changes of clothes and other necessities. The look Max shot her suggested he thought she was being
frivolous and feminine, but he didn’t get it. She was the boss. Her people relied on her to maintain a certain image. And besides, she could hardly hold her own against the FDA investigators wearing yesterday’s smoke-smelling clothes.

“Give me ten minutes,” she said once he’d parked near the department store entrance.

He raised one thick eyebrow. “I’m coming in.”

“You don’t need to. I’m perfectly— Oh. Right.”

He was coming in to make sure she wasn’t in danger. To make sure she didn’t take off. Both. Neither. “Fine. I’ll make it quick.”

But she paused just inside the doors of the department store, overwhelmed by the number of little things she needed to live life as she knew it.

Makeup. Underwear. Nylons. Toiletries. Everything.

Think of it as a business trip,
she told herself.
Pretend the airline lost your luggage and you need enough to look professional for a few days.

She couldn’t think beyond the next few days. The future was too uncertain. Too dependent on things she couldn’t control.

Like Max Vasek.

Hyperaware of his stern, watchful presence, she quickly grabbed an armload of clothes that should come close to fitting. She dumped her under things
and a casual outfit—jeans, a sweater and sturdy boots—on the counter and kept hold of a pair of trim black pants, a burgundy silk shell and a fitted black blazer. She snagged a few staples from the hair and makeup counter, then ducked into the ladies’ room, where she put herself together.

The clothes and makeup were a shield, a veneer of competence slapped over a shaky core. She forced her hands to stay steady when she applied a layer of gloss over her painted lips, and fought the tears back when they wanted to mist her vision.

She could do this. She could handle this.

She could handle
him
and the heat that touched her skin when she was near him. When she thought of him. She was going to have to handle it because she was on her own.

No leaning this time. She didn’t want to be that passive wimp anymore.

And she didn’t want a man who was attracted to victims.

Mask firmly in place, she emerged from the restroom and nodded to Max, who had leaned against a nearby support beam with feigned casualness. “I’m all set. You getting anything?”

He shook his head. “I have a bag packed—it’s in my truck. We’ll swing by your place, pick up my stuff, move the truck off the street, and maybe have a look around now that it’s daylight.”

The last thing Raine wanted to see was the burned-out wreck of her house. “Can you drop me at the office first?”

She thought his eyes softened, but that must have been wishful thinking because his tone was brisk when he said, “For both our sakes, I’m not letting you out of my sight. Sorry.” Then he pulled out his wallet. “Here. For the clothes.”

Their fingers brushed when she took the credit card, sending a fine current of electricity dancing up her arm. She tightened her lips and forced herself not to jerk away.

Max didn’t acknowledge the flare of chemistry—if he’d even felt it. “Make it quick. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can figure out what happened to those women, and whether or not the fire was related.”

Despite her resolution not to lean on him, and the awkward intimacy of paying for her new bra and panties with his credit card, Raine drew a measure of comfort from his words.

She had a professional on her side. And if anyone could figure out what had happened to those four women, it was Max Vasek.

He was too smart, too stubborn to fail once he’d decided on a goal.

It was a short ten-minute drive from the mall to her house—or rather, where her house used to be.
Now, it was a pile of wet, blackened rubble that looked faintly slimy in the cold mid-morning sun.

Max glanced at her. “Can I trust you to stay in the car?”

Irritation surged over a faint churn of nausea. “I’m coming with you.”

He scowled. “You don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do. I might remember something that could help.” She opened the door and climbed out, then shivered when a sharp breeze pressed her wool coat around her and brought the smell of smoke.

She didn’t remember much about the night before, but the odor brought a slap of fear and flame.

Max stepped to her side and gestured for her to cross the line of police tape prominently strung across the driveway. “Stay close. Detective Marcus will be annoyed enough when he finds out we’ve been here. I’d rather not mess up his scene.”

“Do you think he left someone to watch the house?” Raine glanced around, but saw only empty cars parked on the streets. There didn’t appear to be any curious faces peering from the windows of neighboring houses, but Raine narrowed her eyes when she saw a red-and-white sign on a door directly across the street. “For Rent, huh?”

Attention already focused on the burned-out shell of her house, Max answered, “That’s right, you were a tenant. Hope you had renter’s insurance.”

“Not me. Over there.” She gestured across the street. “Didn’t the detective say the 911 call came from Unit A? There aren’t any curtains in the windows.”

Now she had his full attention. “It’s vacant?”

“Looks like it. What if…heck, I don’t know.” She broke off, not even sure what sort of a theory she could build. “That doesn’t make any sense. If he wanted to kill me, why call 911? And if he wanted me to live, why set the house on fire with me in it?”

As she glanced back at her ruined house, the basic unfairness of it all grabbed Raine by the throat. Only days earlier, she’d been on top of the world, anticipating Thriller’s release and planning public appearances with a blend of nerves and excitement. She’d been alone, yes, but she’d had everything under control and was moving in the right direction.

And now? Everything was a mess. Her life was spiraling out of control. She was powerless. Helpless. All the things she’d tried so hard not to be anymore.

“You coming or not?”

She looked up at the question and found Max halfway up the drive, waiting. “Sorry. I’m right behind you.” She caught up with him, trying to step where he stepped so as not to tick off the detective any more than necessary. “What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know exactly. I’ll know it when I see it.” He led the way around the back of the building, where the simple landscaping had taken a beating. The shrubs had been reduced to scorched stumps, and where the mulch hadn’t burned away, it had run away from the house in red-tinged rivulets, borne by the hundreds of gallons of water that had been used to kill the blaze.

What was left of the house still radiated heat. Or maybe that was her imagination, she thought as she looked at the wreckage, at the blackened spikes of charred and splintered wood and the haphazard disarray of ruined appliances, ruined everything.

She swallowed hard and tried not to think about the fact that she’d been in the house. That she could have died.

Instead, she focused on the immediate problem. Finding evidence of an intruder, something that would prove she hadn’t set the blaze herself to cover an escape. “What about those?” She gestured to a mess of footprints in the now-frozen slushy mud.

Max glanced over, then shook his head. “Probably the firefighters.” He stopped and looked around, scowling. “The heat melted off most of the snow, and the water and the foot traffic destroyed anything that was left. Besides—” he touched his toe to a half burned book “—it’s going to be
damned difficult to separate out something your intruder left behind versus your stuff.”

Raine tightened her coat around her torso, chilled by the sight of the book, which had been on her night table. “Then why are we here?”

“So I could get my bag out of the truck.” But the look he sent her suggested that wasn’t all.

She stiffened and balled her fists at her sides. “And so you could see me back at the scene, right? What was this, some sort of a test?”

He shrugged. “I told you to wait in the car.”

Irritation spiked toward fury. “And if I had? Would that have meant I was guilty or not?” She lifted her fingers to the back of her head, where the raised bump had subsided, but the skin remained tender. “For the last time, I didn’t set the fire, I wasn’t flying anywhere using my foster mother’s last name and I’m
not
giving up on Thriller!”

Max froze. “What did you say?”

“I’m not giving up on Thriller.”

“Before that. The name on the plane ticket was your mother’s name?”

“My foster mother,” Raine corrected. “My father took off when my mother found out she was pregnant, and Social Services removed me when—” She broke off and blew out a breath. “Never mind. The Ashertons were my third foster family, but I lived with them the longest, until I graduated from
high school.” She swallowed hard, realizing what that meant. “Oh, hell.”

“If you didn’t buy that ticket, then somebody else did. Somebody who knows you that well.” Max watched her carefully.

She could feel her heartbeat, hear it in her ears. “Nobody knows me that well. My childhood isn’t the sort of thing that comes up in casual conversation, and I don’t have many close friends.” Make that zero close friends, though Max didn’t need to hear about that.

“Somebody knows,” he said grimly and turned back toward the SUV. “Come on. I’ll grab my stuff and we can get out of here.”

Raine resisted. “But we didn’t find anything.”

“Yes we did. The scene jogged your memory, and now we know about the name. We know the intruder must be someone with inside information or enough pull to run a very good background check on you.”

Hope unfurled in her chest. “Then you believe me?”

He glanced back at her, expression flat. “I’m not sure what I believe. Let’s just say that for now, I’m keeping an open mind.”

“Oh.” Raine tucked her hands in her pockets. “I guess—”

Her cell phone, one of her few personal posses
sions that had remained safe in the SUV, chimed, interrupting her. She pulled out the small unit, flipped it open and checked the caller ID before she said, “Hi, Jeff. How are things at the office?”

She’d phoned in first thing that morning, and everything had been status quo. But now the young man’s tone was deadly sober when he said, “Are you on your way?”

Raine’s blood chilled. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“The FDA investigators want you here, pronto. They found something, but they won’t tell me what.” There was a pause before Jeff said, “And there’s more. There’s a cop here named Marcus. I don’t think he’s with the FDA. Is there something you want to tell me?”

Raine’s fingers went numb on the phone, and the smell of stale smoke churned in her stomach. “We’re on our way.”

She battled sick nerves as Max drove them into New Bridge and parked in her numbered spot near the entrance of the office building that housed Rainey Days. She was tempted to babble, to give voice to the thoughts that swirled around in her head.

But she wasn’t sure whose side Max was on yet—hell, she didn’t think he knew, either. So she clamped her lips together and twisted her fingers against each other, straining with the need to reach the office, yet not wanting to be there at all.

Until she actually heard the FDA reps
say full recall of everything, even the samples,
and
Thriller is banned from the market,
the worst hadn’t happened. Not yet, anyway.

THOUGH HE STILL WASN’T SURE if the danger came from an outside source or the woman walking beside him, Max kept his senses alert as he pushed through the doors to her world.

Based on the whimsical company name and his past experiences with Raine, he’d expected something smart and creative, but with a thrown-together feeling. He’d figured she would go for something temporary. A cardboard cutout office she could pick up and move on a moment’s notice.