A Score to Settle (19 page)

Tucker, apparently satisfied that the park was free of marauding squirrels and enemy dogs, flopped down on the grass near the quilt with a contented sigh.

Daniel scratched the dog’s belly. “Not you. Me. You just got in the way. Do you remember the drink Jillian tried to give me when we were arguing?”

Jamie tried. She had a vague memory of something red, but that was it. She shook her head.

“You drank it. The whole thing, according to several witnesses. A few minutes later you passed out suddenly. You’d drunk some champagne earlier, which only magnified the effects of the tranquilizer.”

“I do remember the champagne. Oh, Daniel, why would Claude want to kill you? That doesn’t make sense, either.”

“I didn’t think so. But Claude was supposedly in a car accident early on the morning after the party. Now, he can’t be found. The police are looking for him.”

“It does seem suspicious that he would disappear,” Jamie agreed.

What no one else knew was that his own people were investigating Claude, too. In addition to trying to determine his whereabouts, they were searching for any possible connection Claude had to either of the two murders.

“We have only Jillian’s word that Claude gave her the tainted drink that was meant for me,” Daniel said.

“So it could have been Jillian herself who doctored the drink.”

“It’s another scenario the police are considering. Frankly, I don’t like either one. All those years I insulated myself from the outside world, surrounding myself with only the most trusted people, thinking I was safe. To discover a lethal threat coming from my inner circle—it’s life-changing.”

Jamie said nothing. She threw a grape to Tucker, who snapped it up in midair.

“I’d like to apologize for the way I treated you at the party. It was horrible. I was horrible.”

A shadow crossed her face. “It certainly took me off guard. Not the Daniel I thought I knew.”

“That angry man isn’t someone I often show the world. But he’s there, inside me. The fact I was so out of control—that was another revelation for me. Again, I thought I had control of my life. But not everything. Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?”

She gave him a wry smile. “Can you ever forgive me for not telling you who my father was? I meant to. I planned to. But it never seemed the right time.

“At first, it didn’t matter. I assumed my association with you would be brief. By the time I realized you’d become—” she stopped and took a sip of mineral water “—more than a friend to me, it was too late to tell you without some fallout. So I took the easy way out, and didn’t say anything. I didn’t think you’d find out until I was ready. Who told you?”

“Jillian, at her most scarily efficient. She knows more about investigating than I thought. She got hold of your birth certificate.”

“I’m sure she enjoyed telling you all about it.”

“She thought she was protecting me. I spoke to her this morning. I told her things were going to change, and that there would always be a place for her on my staff—but not as my assistant.”

“Ouch. How’d that go?”

“Not well, but it needed to be said.”

“You’ve really put yourself outside your comfort zone today, Daniel. I’m amazed.”

“And impressed?” he asked.

“Daniel, you don’t have to impress me. You just have to be yourself. You once told me you were broken, but I don’t believe that. Not anymore. You’ve showed me today that you’re capable of change. You see yourself clearly, and you’re willing to fix the things in your life that aren’t working. That’s extraordinarily healthy.”

“So you are impressed?” he asked with a grin.

“Yes. Clearly you have more work ahead of you,” she teased. “But I am impressed.”

“A lot of things in my life weren’t working. For instance, I wasn’t the kind of man you could fall in love with. Could that change?”

She reached up and touched his face. “Yes, Daniel, it could.” She raised up on her knees, leaned in and touched her lips to his.

It was the sweetest kiss Daniel had ever experienced, filled with so much promise it took his breath away.

He reached for her, but she pulled away and sat back down on the quilt, looking guilty. “Probably not the best decision I ever made.”

“Why not? I can’t think of a better occasion than a picnic for two people to make out.”

“I don’t want to rush things, Daniel. With all that’s going on, I have so much to think about.”

“Nothing’s ever perfect. When I was in prison, I spent a lot of time regretting the things I didn’t do, the chances I didn’t take.”

“The women you didn’t bed.”

“That, too,” he admitted.

“You aren’t going to prison again,” Jamie stated emphatically. “Not unless the police think that you mixed the drink Jillian gave you, intending to murder yourself.”

“The police have come to stupider conclusions.” Daniel pushed himself to his feet, then offered Jamie his hand. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

She willingly placed her hand in his and pulled herself up. He was amazed she trusted him so easily. The Jamie he’d first met two weeks ago trusted no one.

He led her to the pavilion, then to the wooden slat door that was part of the miniature mission-style building. Grateful that he’d thought to bring the key, he opened it.

It was just a large storage room where the man who took care of the park left his lawn equipment and paint. Everything was clean and well cared for, and the room smelled faintly of earth and freshly mown grass.

“What’s in here?”

Daniel closed the door behind them.

“You, me and some privacy.”

She laughed nervously. “You’re kidding, right?”

He took her hand and guided it toward his zipper. He wanted her to feel just exactly how serious he was. “I’ve said in so many words how sorry I am for heaping blame on you where it wasn’t warranted, for making you the scapegoat for anger that had nowhere else to go. But words don’t really cut it, do they? Let me show you, Jamie.”

“You want to have sex in a garden shed?”

“You can say no. You did just get out of the hospital.”

She didn’t answer with words. Instead, she peeled her thin cashmere sweater over her head and tossed it aside, allowing him to admire her in a wispy, barely-there bra.

Amazing what a tiny scrap of lace could do to a man’s brain, sending hormones and neurotransmitters racing all over his body, hooking up with receptors everywhere in an instant, causing his erection to surge forward, begging for freedom.

The delicate skin of her breasts blushed pink as he gazed at them.

“Your first time out of the house on your own in months—”

“Years,” he corrected her.

“—and you go completely berserk.”

He got busy unbuttoning his shirt, pulling it out from his jeans. “The freedom has gone to my head.”

“I’d say it’s gone somewhere else in your body.” She unfastened his jeans and pulled them down, along with his boxers. His erection sprang forward, and she immediately leaned over and took him into her mouth.

She’d done the same thing the last time they’d had sex. She must like it, he thought hazily. It was a good quality in a woman. But he wanted to be inside her.

It took a monumental amount of willpower, but he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away. “Too much.”

“No, it’s not. It’s just enough.” She drew him inside her mouth again, and again he pulled away. “I want to make love to you, Jamie.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible in here.”

“Of course it is.”
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
He spied a stack of bagged garden soil, stacked four deep and two wide, that would make a dandy bed.

She saw it too and shook her head. “I’m not having sex on a pile of manure.”

“It’s not manure. It’s good clean dirt in nice plastic bags.”

“Works for me.” She kicked off her loafers and shucked her jeans. They piled their clothes on the plastic bags and fell onto the impromptu bed, both of them naked and hungry.

He spotted the bruise on the inside of her elbow, where her IV had been, which prompted a stab of guilt. “I shouldn’t be ravishing a woman who just got out of the hospital.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him on top of her. “You are the only medicine I need, Daniel Logan.” She kissed him as if she meant business, and he forgot everything except how much he wanted to be inside her. He wanted them to be one. He was crazy about her. Somehow, she’d brought him back to life when he didn’t even realize he’d been numb, almost dead, inside.

His awakening was both painful and thrilling.

He ran his hands lightly up and down her body as if he’d never felt a woman’s body before. Everything felt new, fresh, exciting—her hip bone under his thumb, the soft swell of her breasts. He kissed the inside of her elbow where the bruise was, then her wrists. He placed his mouth over one nipple and sucked gently, and she whimpered and wiggled in response.

“Daniel.” Her name on his lips was a caress, stoking his desire more fiercely than any stroke of her hands or her mouth could. She was so alive, so vital, and yet he knew now that he could lose her with careless words and actions.

The first time he’d made love to her was mind-blowing, but now it meant so much more.

“Daniel,” she said, more insistently this time.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” He reached between their bodies and touched her soft mound. His fingers sought the warmth between her legs. She was slick and hot, but suddenly she clamped her legs closed.

“Stop being so freaking concerned about me. You, inside me. Now.”

No one ever dared speak to him like that. It was a turn-on.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She opened her legs again and he poised himself above her. She wrapped her hand around him and guided him inside her. The outside world slipped away. The universe contracted until all that was left were Jamie and himself, joined as one, soaring together. Each stroke brought him closer to paradise as she alternately encouraged him and cursed him for prolonging her climax.

It wasn’t deliberate. But the fates intervened so that when he finally reached that peak from which he could not return, she did, too. Their cries mingled as he released himself into her, waves of ecstasy washing over them in violent crescendos that gradually calmed to ripples in a pond. Their surroundings came back, and Jamie gave one last shiver.

“Well,” she said.

“Exactly.” He laughed in pure delight. “I think I’m going to like rejoining the human race.”

Just then, Tucker started barking.

“Oh, hell, someone’s out there,” Daniel said, reluctantly separating himself from Jamie.

“Great, just great!” She moved faster than he’d ever seen her move, grabbing her clothes and wiggling into them in a fast-forward, reverse striptease that he cataloged in his memory for review later.

“The door’s locked,” he reminded her.

“Don’t other people have keys? Like the gardener?”

Tucker’s barking grew more frenzied just as the knob turned. Daniel thrust Jamie behind him, ready to face the intruder.

But the middle-aged man who entered hardly looked threatening in his overalls and worn denim jacket. In fact, he was the one who looked surprised and a little scared when he spotted them.

He unleashed a stream of frantic Spanish. To his surprise, Jamie replied—in what sounded like pretty competent Spanish to him—while nudging Daniel toward the door. The man stood aside and allowed them to make their escape.

Tucker greeted Daniel enthusiastically, tail wagging, and Daniel gave him a quick scratch behind the ears without pausing. “Good boy. Thanks for the warning.” The dog would never bite anyone, but Daniel was grateful the gardener hadn’t hurt his dog or called animal control.

He and Jamie quickly packed up the picnic and made a hasty exit from Logan Park.

“What did you say to him?” Daniel asked.

“Just that we meant him no harm and we were leaving. He thought we were trespassers.”

“He didn’t recognize me?”

“Apparently not.”

“Good.” Daniel laughed as he started the car. He was about to pull away from the curb when his phone rang.

Ordinarily he would have let it go to voice mail: bad manners to take phone calls when he was entertaining a lady. But given that he was expecting all kinds of urgent news, he felt compelled to answer.

“Go ahead,” Jamie said.

Daniel checked the caller ID. The call came from Project Justice. “Daniel Logan.”

“Daniel. It’s Mitch. I hope you’re sitting down.”

“Spill it.”

“I’ve been doing deep background on Claude Morel. At first, he didn’t appear to be connected to the Frank Sissom murder. But it turns out that while you were in prison, he was in business with…wait for it… Christopher Gables.”

“Are you kidding me?” Daniel’s mind struggled back into its habitual pathways, analyzing data, finding the patterns. But this one wasn’t difficult. In each murder case, Claude had been the former business partner of the man accused of the crime.

“They opened a French restaurant about ten years ago. The business filed for bankruptcy after only nine months.”

“Then it’s him. That’s the connection we’ve been missing.”

“Theoretically, he might have tried to kill you—or at least put you out of commission and buy himself some time—because you were getting too close to the truth.”

“We have his DNA. He must have known that.”

“I have more. Flight reservations for two, in the names of Claude Morel and Marie Morel, departing Houston Intercontinental at 4:17 p.m. this afternoon headed for Paris. Marie is his mother, right?”

“Yes.” And a sweet little lady, at least in his memory. “Call Abe Comstock at the Houston P.D. Fill him in. If Claude boards that plane we’ve lost him, and probably any chance for a DNA match.”

“Is there time?” Mitch asked.

“We have to try. Without knowing his current location—”

“Wait, I have an address. From Marie’s credit card.”

“Give it to me.”

“Seventeen-oh-three Templeton.”

Daniel punched the address into his onboard GPS. It took him a couple of tries to get the unfamiliar gadget to respond, but finally he had a map.

“I’m about nine miles away. I can go there and…” And what? “See if he’s there.”

“Will you…send Randall?”

“I’m in my car. I can drive there.”

“Wait, you’re…
where?
”

Daniel didn’t have time to explain his sudden metamorphosis from recluse to man-about-town. “Send Randall as backup. Call him after you call the police. Quickly.”

Daniel disconnected, set the phone on the console and pulled out into the street, very nearly colliding with a Toyota approaching from behind.

“Watch out!” Jamie yelled, but Daniel had already put on the brakes, and the car swerved around them.

“Sorry.”

“What’s going on?” she asked urgently.

“Claude murdered both Andreas and Frank Sissom, that’s what. Mitch found the link.” He pulled into traffic, then cut across to the left turn lane.

“Where? How?” She knew the name of every person connected to Sissom. She’d been studying this case for weeks.

“Claude and Christopher once owned a restaurant together. But he knows we’re on to him—that’s why he tried to kill me. He’s trying to leave the country and I’m not about to let that happen.”

“So, call the police!”

“Mitch is handling that. But convincing takes time. Comstock might not be available. He might be off duty. Mitch will have to explain how he got the information he has, which could be dicey.”

“He got it by hacking?”

“I don’t ask how Mitch gets his information. We can’t wait for all this to filter through the proper channels. Claude is probably packing as we speak. He might already be on his way to the airport.”

She looked at the GPS screen, then back at Daniel as he pulled a U-turn. “Wait—we’re going to Claude’s house?”

“His mother’s house, I think. Claude lives in Montrose.”

“But if you’re right, he’s a cold-blooded murderer! What are we going to do? We’re not cops, we don’t have guns or badges or any kind of authority.”

“You’re right. I wasn’t planning to confront him, but it could be dangerous. I’ll drop you off someplace safe on the way.”

“You will not. Daniel,
I’ll
call Comstock. He’ll listen to me.” Maybe. She dug into her purse for her cell phone. But after two days in the hospital without a charge, it was dead.

“Mitch is already doing that. Anyway, Comstock would just tell us to go home and lock the door.”

Which would be very good advice. Just exactly when had Daniel gone from agoraphobic to action hero?

“Hang tight, Jamie. All we’re going to do is drive by the house. See if it looks occupied. See if Claude’s car is in the driveway.”

“All right. Okay.” Jamie took a few deep, calming breaths. That didn’t sound too dangerous. “He won’t know this car?”

“This car is brand-new. Just drove it off the lot this morning.”

“And it goes from zero to sixty in five seconds, I see. Daniel, seriously, you haven’t driven in years. Don’t you think this is a bit much for your first outing?”

“It’s all coming back to me. Like riding a bicycle. You never forget.”

“Fine, but if we get pulled over for speeding—”

“I could outrun a cop.”

“Daniel, listen to yourself! What about the new Daniel who insisted on putting quarters in a parking meter because he intended to follow the rules like an ordinary person? Was that all a lie? Do you believe you’re above the law? Are you still trying to impress me?”

He was impressing her, all right. His tone, his manner and that determined gleam in his eye impressed her as being just a little bit crazy.

Something she’d said must have gotten through to him, because he did ease off the accelerator. They were still above the speed limit, but not excessively so.

“I just… I’ve never been this close to finally catching the man who stole six years of my life. My parents’ lives. Every waking minute of their last good years was spent trying to prove my innocence. Trying to save my life.

“Claude. Of all people. He was my friend. I brought him into my house, gave him a great job, paid him well, gave him complete freedom to set up the kitchen with the latest equipment, buy the most exotic ingredients, cook anything he could dream up. It’s all he ever wanted. Why would he do this?”

Jamie, who had seen all kinds of people commit all kinds of crimes for all kinds of bizarre reasons, had an idea.

“Jealousy. He started a restaurant with you. It failed. Then you went on to own a successful restaurant with Andreas. What better revenge than to kill one partner and frame the other?

“Then, he and Christopher Gables owned a restaurant. It went bankrupt, I’m guessing. Christopher then partnered with Sissom. Their restaurant was a success. It was like slapping Claude in the face with the proof of his inadequacy.”