Deception (Southern Comfort) (39 page)

“A very nice one,” she agreed, feeling bemused by his apparent ignorance.  Was he acting or was he truly in the dark?  “And two dozen roses.  Pink ones.”

“And you suspected me?”

At his tone Sam felt a blush stain her cheeks.  “Actually, I thought you had nothing to do with it.  It didn’t seem quite your style.”  She tugged on the comforter awkwardly, feeling ridiculous for making the assumption.  But in the scheme of things it had made sense. 

If Dane hadn’t sent them, who did?

“You’re right,” he agreed, rubbing a hand over his chin.  “It’s not.  Once I’d gotten you into bed, sure, I’d buy you lingerie, but to do so beforehand would be tacky.”

Seeming to realize what he’d inadvertently admitted, he stopped rub
bing and winced at her in consternation.

If their situation weren’t so dire, Sam thought she might have laughed.  “So you were trying to get me into bed?”

“Well not like this.”  He flung an arm out toward the bed in question.  “But yeah, I was working my way up to it.”

Sam simply stared at him a moment.  “You were working your way up to it?  You, Dane Wilcox, who merely has to snap his fingers for his wish to be granted, were working your way up to seducing me?”  She couldn’t stop a wry laugh from escaping.  “All you have to do is stop and point and any girl you want will come crawling.”

“Yeah, well, that approach didn’t work with you, did it?  I stopped.  I pointed.  I did calisthenics and you simply ignored me.  Donnie had ranted and raved about you for months before I even met you – how proud he was of you, what a great woman you’d turned into, how lucky he was to have you for a sister – and all the while I was thinking dude, you need to get a life.  But then I saw you sitting by his bedside in the hospital and I thought wow, maybe Donnie had a point.  And then you came to work for me and proceeded to turn me inside out.  I knew you thought I was a spoiled jerk and so of course that just challenged me to prove otherwise.”  He shook his head in exasperation.  “Why do you think I spend so much time in that damn bar, Sam?  Certainly not because I appreciate the clientele.” 

He started to cross to her then stopped, clearly remembering the dynamics of the situation.  “Ev
en my father figured it out.  Obviously that’s why you ended up here.”

Sam swallowed hard and shifted uncomfortably.  “I’m sorry, Dane.  I honestly had no idea.”

Frustrated, spent, Dane sank into the chair his father had vacated.  “That’s the trouble with you, Sam.  You spend so much of your energy focusing outward that you really don’t recognize your own appeal.  It’s part of your attraction.  Sin and innocence in one incredible package.  Hell, any man with half a brain would be a fool not to fall for you.”  He sounded miserable as he said it.

“Oh, Dane.” She was truly apologetic.

“I know,” he sighed, expression unreadable in the shifting shadows.  A tiny sliver of moonlight filtered between the curtains, silvering his hair so that it shone pale and ethereal. If she hadn’t loved Josh for the past eight years, she could easily have been swept away by Dane Wilcox.

Well maybe not easily, but still swept.

Seeming to follow the direction of her thoughts, Dane turned and examined her closely.  “It’s the detective, right?”

“Josh,” she agreed, softly.  “We’ve known each other forever.  He, um, asked me to marry him the night before last.”

As that registered his facial expression tightened.  “Are you sure he didn’t send you the negligee and roses?  You know, scare the girl so that he could play big bad policeman and come riding to the rescue?  Sounds like a pretty good scheme to me.”

Sam recalled how her own thoughts had run along those lines when she’d caught Josh lurking outside her apartment.  “He loves me too much to want to scare me.”  It might not be the most sensitive thing to say at the moment, but she was determined to at least be honest.  Surely if Dane knew she was engaged to another man, he wouldn’t entertain any notions of going along with this farce. 

“Hmm,” was his enigmatic reply.

Because she instinctively believed he was no real threat and she felt the urgency of the situation, Sam crossed awkwardly to kneel beside him.  Her entire body ached and protested the movement, but determination lent iron to her will.  She had to press her advantage while it was still possible.  If she didn’t get off this boat and soon, she’d be trapped here with Dane and his father. 

Dane, she wasn’t too worried about, but his father scared her silly.  There was something about a man who could bed his best friend’s daughter and then have her murdered that said: I’m crazy, and you really can’t trust me.

“Dane, you have to do something.  This plan is crazy and we both know it.  He’s your father,” she continued, a little desperately.  “But that doesn’t mean he really knows best.  Think what will happen if the police catch up with us – they’ll think you’re just as guilty as he is.  You’ve got to make him turn the boat around.  If he cooperates it won’t go so bad for him.”

Dane’s laugh held no mirth.  “You’ve been living with your detective too long, darling, because that’s cop bullshit if I’ve ever heard it.  That girl my father had killed?  You want to know who that was?  That was Mayor Beaumont’s daughter.” 

When he saw her shock, he stabbed a hand through his hair, the gesture inelegant and jerky.  “Why do you think I was so horrified?  Not that any murder wouldn’t be bad enough, but I practically grew up with Allie Beaumont.  Our fathers were the best of friends.  Hell, we do Thanksgiving with each other every year.  Do you have any idea how hard Charles will go after Dad if it ever comes to light what he’s done?  And if Beaumont doesn’t kill him, there’s always the mafia.  God, Sam, that man
you killed was some kind of mafia honcho!  If we turn back, who’s to say that all three of us won’t be walking targets?”

At the muted roar that had come with the frustration in his voice, Sam shrank back and pulled the comforter around her.  “It was an accident,” she said in her own defense.  “And why would they bother with you when you don’t know anything?”

“Why would they try to kill your brother when he’s lying in a coma?  These are not people who worry about little niceties like just cause.  If they think someone’s a liability to their organization, that person will find themselves getting fitted for concrete overshoes, metaphorically speaking.” 

When he saw her horrified expression he blinked hard, forced himself to calm.  “I’m sorry.” He gentled, trailed a single finger down her bruised cheek.  “I’m sorry you’ve been hurt by this, and I’m sorry that I can’t do more about it.  But my dad’s right, Sam.  With everything poised to blow up in our faces, getting out of the country is the safest option.”

Defeated by his implacability and realizing she’d get no real help from that quarter, Sam sat back and let her head fall into her hands.

Dane rose from the chair and knelt beside her.  He gathered her with tenderness into the circle of his arms and rested his cheek on the top of her bowed head.  “I’ll make it up to you,” he whispered, and Sam felt like screaming that he was wrong.  As much as she liked Dane and had come to value his friendship, he could never, never replace Josh.  Not to mention make her forget that she was a prisoner. “I know it’s hard to accept that this is the way it has to be, but I promise I’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy.”

Since the only way she’d be happy was to get back home to Josh, Sam let him hold her and silently started to plan.  

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT                                                        

KATHLEEN
leaned over Josh’s shoulder as his fingers flew across the computer keyboard, trying to bend the image enhancement software to his will.  The angles were tricky, the images poor, but he put everything he had into making them reveal something.  This was the only real lead they had to even make a guess at Sam’s whereabouts.

Kathleen cleared her throat, clearly wanting to say something.

“What?” he asked softly, tone no less dangerous for its lack of volume.

“I was just wondering if you’d stopped to consider that maybe this has nothing to do with Dane Wilcox.  Maybe this guy,” she pointed to the supposed rescue worker on the monitor, who other firefighters at the scene had confirmed wasn’t one of theirs, “might be the man who’s been stalking Sam.  It’s possible, since he was so Johnny-on-the-spot and utterly prepared with a realistic disguise, that he may have even set the fire.  To smoke Sam out.  No pun intended.”

Josh had been so caught up in his fury and frustration and raw fear since he’d seen that video clip that he hadn’t even stopped to consider.  “You’re right,” he said, hands poised over the keyboard without moving.  “I bet he did start the fire.”  He thought about the rest of the puzzle, and how that particular piece might fit.  “But taking everything else into account, I still think that Wilcox is behind this.  The timing is just too coincidental for me to accept that the aborted attempt on her brother’s life and this… unbelievably bold abduction are in no way connected to each other.” 

He flexed his fingers and glanced at Kathleen.  “Setting fire to a building to get hold of a woman is a huge leap from leaving her presents.”  He considered everything else they knew about this whole case and abandoned his laptop temporarily.  “You know, there were some odd things about that fire that killed Tony Salinas.  Like we discussed earlier, it seems plausible that that whole thing was a hit.  Maybe the guy tonight was the firebug for that one also.”

“But if that’s the case,” Kathleen asked slowly, “wouldn’t that make Sam’s abduction more likely to be a case of… mob justice?”

Josh felt his blood turn to ice.  He refused to accept that possibility.  “It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through just to hit her.  There are so many easier ways to go about it.  I think this was an elaborate way to get Sam out of the condo and into a confused environment where it would be easy to grab her.  And the only person who I can logically reason would want to do that is Dane Wilcox.”

Kathleen didn’t show any indication of whether she agreed with him or not, she simply chewed the inside of her cheek.  “I met Dane once, you know.  At the Policeman’s Ball a couple of years ago.  The year his uncle was inducted as Chief.”  Josh closed his eyes, because he’d forgotten. A new wave of fear swept the ice through his veins. 

“You think… the Chief knows about the mafia connection?”  His voice was so low it barely carried.  If the corruption went that high in this department, that meant he’d just become the proverbial sitting duck.  There was no way he’d find Sam if they didn’t want him to find her, and they’d probably kill him for even trying.

“Honestly,” Kathleen murmured, “I don’t.  Wilcox Senior was married to the Chief’s sister, and by all accounts it was a rocky relationship.  Wilcox has a reputation as a ladies’ man, and there was talk he basically drove his wife to her death.  She was tanked and got behind the wheel of her Mercedes one night, drove it into a lagoon.  I don’t think the Chief ever forgave him.”

Josh slumped with relief, but it was short-lived.  He still had no idea where to find Sam.

“My point about Dane,” she continued, glancing over her shoulder surreptitiously, “is that he’s… a piece of fluff.  Pretty to look at, but no real substance.  Certainly not what I’d think of as cold-blooded.  Or conniving enough to pull something like this off.”

Josh grew stiff at Kathleen’s half-assed compliment to the man, but couldn’t help remembering that Sam had said basically the same thing.  And despite the fact that he knew looks to be deceiving, there was no denying that both women had good instincts. 

So contrary to what he’d like to believe, it was possible Wilcox was innocent. Or at least not as culpable as Josh suspected.  “So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that maybe we’re looking at the wrong Wilcox.  From everything I’ve ever heard about the father, he’s a shark in a three-piece suit.”

Josh mulled that over for a moment, but couldn’t figure how it fit. So he returned his attention to the keyboard.  After a few more minutes he finally got a partial image of the plate.

“That looks like a P.”  Kathleen extended one long finger toward the screen.  “But what is that next one? An O, maybe?”

“I think it might be a G,” Josh said, pointing to the right side of the letter shape.  “See that little line right there?  And this side looks flatter.  Not as round.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it, your artist’s eyes are better than mine.  That next letter is definitely an X,” she asserted.  “And the numbers look like three, zero, one.”

“Eight,” Josh decreed after a closer examination.  “I believe that first number is an eight.”

“I’ll run it both ways,” she said, calling to Mac as she moved off.  Josh tried not to freeze over while he waited for the verdict. As certain as he felt that this wasn’t a mob hit, some of what Kathleen had suggested began to chew his frayed nerves. 

What did Alan Wilcox have to do with this, if anything?  Was he the one who was sending gifts to Sam? 

Except that that made even less sense than suspecting Dane.  If the man was the aggressive womanizer Kathleen indicated, the anonymity of the backward approach just didn’t make sense.  He was a man who was used to power, of bending people to his will. Josh felt strongly that if he wanted Sam, he’d simply try to find a way to have her.