Deceived (10 page)

“Why?”

“Once he left Intrepid, some of Victor’s targets for Ali were people he’d once been paid by Intrepid to protect. Victor had killed one too many of Intrepid’s clients, and Intrepid had a bounty on him. The two men who I hired were at one time shadowing Victor to kill him for Intrepid. That’s the ugly reality of this business. These guys are good. They’re sure he’s dead, and so far, Black Raven’s data searches confirm that he’s dead, but we’ve only got preliminary results at this point.” Sebastian was silent for a second. “You okay?”

Brandon hesitated, but only for a second. “Yeah. Victor and I didn’t have a relationship. It’s been years since I spoke to him. This is going to hurt my mom and Kate, though, and I hate to do that. They had no idea what an amoral son a bitch he was.”

He caught a glimpse of Taylor in the other room, then she disappeared in the direction of more boxes. He thought about telling Sebastian of everything happening in his life right now — Lisa’s death and his new status as a parent. He’d been friends with Sebastian since first grade. They’d been on the police force together and had gone to law school together. Sebastian had been his best man at his wedding and his best friend when, five years earlier, Brandon’s life became a living hell.

Sebastian had been working and out of contact when Brandon learned about Michael. Brandon could have gotten word to Sebastian about the life-changing event of having a child through Ragno, but Brandon hadn’t wanted to bother Sebastian until he got a grip on things. He decided against telling him on the phone. Letting Sebastian know about Michael would be the stuff of a longer conversation, face-to-face, maybe with good rum. It would be one that had to take place soon, so that Uncle Sebastian could enjoy babyhood.

“Hey,” Brandon said, “You should come for a visit this weekend.”

Sebastian said, “Not a bad idea. I’m dying for some good food and I’d like to see what your sorry ass looks like at forty.”

“Don’t get cocky. You’ll be there soon.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? He was your brother, Brandon. It’s got to be weird, at least.”

Brandon drew a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m fine. You knew him. Except for mom and Kate, and their feelings for him, the world’s a better place without him.” Brandon broke the connection. He watched Taylor reappear in the doorway of a study, then lean against it as she leafed through a notebook. He asked, “Find anything interesting?”

When Taylor looked up, something behind him and over his shoulder caught her eye. All color left her face. He leapt to his feet, as she said, “Someone. Someone’s there.”

Brandon turned and looked in the direction Taylor was facing. Beyond the glass pane there was darkness, yet he didn’t doubt that she saw something. He lunged across the room, grabbed his knife, then ran out of the house. He jumped off the porch and into the narrow lane that the window faced.

No one was there.

The backyard wasn’t fenced. If someone had been there, they could have disappeared in any direction. A car started on the street behind Lisa’s house, but by the time he ran there, it was gone. He backtracked to the empty front yard, where the street was dead still. He returned to the lane between the two houses. Beneath the window, lush grass revealed slight indentations that could have been his own footprints. He thought about doing a run around the block, but when he stood, Taylor was at his side. He didn’t want to leave her alone. He shut the switchblade, but gripped it in his hand instead of pocketing it.

“Did you see anyone?” she asked.

“No. If someone was here, he moved fast.”

“I saw only a flash. Someone ducked and turned when I looked up.”

“You didn’t see his face?”

“No,” she shook her head. “I only saw part of his forehead, hair, and shoulders.”

“Describe what you can.”

“Maybe white, or a light-skinned black man. His hair was black,” she said, “but maybe,” she bit her lower lip. “Maybe it was a cap.”

Brandon eyed the window. He could see into the raised house without an assist, but he was six four. There were no signs that the person had used a prop. “He was probably about your height,” she said. “I think I saw his face as he turned. His chin hit at the sill.” She lifted her hand to her forehead and rubbed her temple. Her hand shook. He reached for her shoulder and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “I’m really, really certain that I saw someone.” She shivered. “He was watching us.”

She stepped closer, as though seeking comfort. He pocketed his knife, then wrapped his arms around her. She stepped into his hug.
Hell
. Want simmered through him.

Want
? This wasn’t a want. Want was something that happened when he encountered the usual females with whom he surrounded himself, women who treated sex as casual fun. This thing that made his nerves sizzle wasn’t merely want. There was nothing awkward about the way their bodies fit together. She wore high heels, but he was still a good five inches taller. Her face fit in the space between his shoulder and his head. Full breasts hit him where his ribs started tapering. He lifted her thick ponytail and bent his head to where her hair met the delicate, soft skin of her neck. Behind her ear, and down, he found where she had applied her perfume. He inhaled the heady scent of gardenia, and once again became an instant addict. Damn. If he died with that scent wafting around him, with her lush body pressed against his, he’d die happy.

He opened his lips and touched the spot with his tongue, tasting her and that heavenly scent.
Wrong. This was wrong.
Taylor wasn’t his type. High expectations oozed from her pores. There was nothing casual about her, from the flawless streaks in her hair to the tips of her shiny toenails. She’d been handed a perfect world at birth, and he’d bet that she wasn’t used to compromise. When a woman was with him, she better be ready to settle for less. His capability for intimate relationships and enduring love died five years earlier, when he had buried Amy. In the first few years after she died, he’d been too hell-bent on destroying himself to be interested in women. In the last couple of years, he enjoyed women who were amenable to a no-strings-attached way to have fun, and, from the frown on her face when he had told of the one-night stand with Lisa, he knew that Taylor would never be the sort of woman who had learned to expect zero in terms of feelings from a man. There were plenty of those women, women who were happy to have a good time and casual sex and go about their life without expecting much of anything from him. Those women came in all shapes, sizes, and ages, and once he was able to start looking for them, he didn’t have a problem finding them.

Brandon started to ease out of the bad-idea hug, but before he released her and moved far enough away so that he wasn’t drowning in her scent, she lifted her arms over his shoulders and turned so that her face was only inches from his.
Damn it.
He hugged her tighter, pressing more of her soft flesh into him. She raised her face a bit more, holding his gaze while offering lush lips. He touched his lips to her forehead, cheek, then her lips. They were full, soft, and dewy with sweet moisture. Brandon ran his tongue along the gentle curve of her full lower lip, then he slipped inside her mouth, where she met him with a silk-like touch of her own.

More.

He wanted more.
More
tastes, more touches with his lips, his tongue, and any other part of his body that he could rub against her.
More. Damn it. More.

She moaned. It was softer than a kitten’s purr, yet it screamed
wake-the-hell-up
. He eased away from the kiss, pulled his arms away from her, stepped back, and tried to squelch the need for her that had seized his body. They stood, frozen, staring into each other’s eyes.

She found composure before he did, with a half-smile, a deep breath, and squared shoulders. “Well,” she said, with a shrug, as though mentally wiping away whatever had happened. “That’s one way of forgetting about being scared.”

“Then mission accomplished,” he said, glad he could sound normal, like his body wasn’t screaming for her.

“This has been the oddest of nights, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah. Damn odd.” But there was nothing odd about his body’s reaction to hers. There was nothing to be done about his desire, though, because now that sanity had returned, he wasn’t going anywhere near her anytime soon. She might taste like nectar of angels, but for him, she was about as good as arsenic. “Let’s go inside and lock up.”

They walked through the alley and into Lisa’s house. Taylor crossed the living room and picked up the notebook that she had dropped on the floor. “Is your mother named Rose Morrissey?”

“Why?”

“She lives in Folsom, Louisiana?” Taylor held up the notebook.

“Aw hell,” he said, knowing where Taylor was going.

“Lisa spoke to her.”

Brandon’s world, for the billionth time in the past twenty-four hours, tilted. He sat on the couch. Taylor sat next to him. He made sure that he didn’t touch her, because space was a good thing for a man with a hard-on and no hope for release.

“At least once, maybe twice. This notebook is sort of a calendar, sort of a to-do list. Anyway, it looks like ten months ago Lisa visited Rose Morrissey, in Folsom, and three months ago, she met with someone named Rose on Magazine Street.”

“Ten months ago was after I talked to Lisa, after I asked Lisa not to contact my mother.”

She lifted a perfectly-arched brow. “And it was also when you weren’t returning Lisa’s phone calls, right?”

Son of a bitch.

He hadn’t returned Lisa’s calls, so Lisa did exactly what he didn’t want her to do, which was go to Rose with her questions. “My mother didn’t mention that she met with Lisa.”

“Would she?”

He thought about it. “No, and I wouldn’t typically mention anything about this to my mother. My mother hated what my father’s theories did to him, and she didn’t talk about it with us. She didn’t want it to warp our existence. It was bad enough that HBW was everywhere. One of your shipyards was even down the street from where we lived. My father’s theories about HBW were a cloud over our daily existence,” he paused, “and my mother hated it. We only stayed in the area because we never had the money to leave. My mother wouldn’t have twice revisited the subject with Lisa.”

Taylor handed him the notebook. The entries were there, as she said. Ten months earlier Lisa had scribbled an entry with Rose’s address in Folsom and a time. The entry of three months earlier said, “Rose. Ten o’clock. PJ’s. Magazine Street.”

“Once I can understand, because my mother is gracious. Twice? No.” He shook his head as he studied the entries and persuaded himself that he was correct. “The second entry for Rose doesn’t say Rose Morrissey. My mother didn’t meet with Lisa twice.” The notebook didn’t provide details regarding whether any information had been gathered from Rose Morrissey, three months ago or from Rose, seven months before that. Brandon thumbed through a few pages, then glanced at Taylor. “Lisa also talked to your father. Two months ago. Three weeks ago. There’s also a scribbled entry that says Rorsch and document, but there’s not enough here to know what she was talking about.” He paused. “The jump drive text that we looked at earlier indicated that she was wondering if Rorsch had documents.”

“Maybe she found them.” She chewed on her bottom lip for a second, then glanced into his eyes. “If Rorsch testified at your grandfather’s trial, do you think he could still be alive?”

“My grandfather’s trial was in 1944. Rorsch could be alive is if he was really young then. Even so, he’d be well into his nineties.” He turned more pages. “Over the last year there are entries here for meetings with Alicia Westerfeld. Claude Westerfeld. A Mr. Hutchenson.”

“The current Mr. Hutchenson is actually the second,” Taylor said. “Like my father, he’s the son of the Hutchenson who was the original founder. All of the original HBW Board members are deceased.”

“Well, it looks like she talked to someone from each of the HBW families.”

“I saw that,” Taylor said. “She also had recent appointments with Lloyd Landrum, which is something that I expected earlier today when I learned of the subject of her graduate work. He’s an expert in that area and on the faculty at Tulane. I’ve placed a call to him to ask what he discussed with her. He hasn’t returned my call. I could also make inquiries with the people in the HBW families whom she talked to. You and I certainly won’t be able to figure out how far she had gotten by looking through these boxes.”

He glanced around the apartment. “Maybe she made a preliminary report to the school.”

“I’ll ask Lloyd.”

As he glanced at her, a distant caution bell clanged in his mind. “I wasn’t intending to encourage you to become an investigator.”

She shrugged. “We’re talking about my father and men I’ve known all of my life. Why wouldn’t I ask them a couple of questions?”

“I can’t imagine that your father had much time for her.”

Her expression turned serious. She narrowed her eyes a bit, enough to tell him that his words had hit a sensitive spot. “Do you know my father?”

“No,” Brandon said, “but I’ve sued HBW quite a few times. I’ve tried to take your father’s deposition for legitimate reasons. He resists. He sends corporate henchmen and tough lawyers who play dirty. I assume they’re following his orders.”