Her Marine Bodyguard (4 page)

“James is calling Luke and Damon. Damon’s downtown today with Helena, so he’ll likely get here first.”

“Maybe we’re making a big deal out of this?” They could be something her agent or his wife dropped off. Though, chances were highly unlikely. They’d have simply written “Shannon.”

Lauren wrapped an arm around her. “Rule number one: assume the worst. That way we can be pleasantly surprised.” With a little pressure, she guided Shannon away from the mail and back to her lunch. But no matter how cool and relaxed Lauren seemed, she still pulled a taser out of her purse.

“Do you think we’re going to need that?” But she knew the answer before Lauren said it. “Assume the worst.”

“Exactly,” she said with a smile. “So, while we’re waiting, tell me all about Boston, and don’t leave out a single detail.”

More nauseous than anything, Shannon shuddered. The random hotel break-in. What if it hadn’t been random? Her pulse began to race, and black spots edged her vision. It took force of will to take a breath. “Maybe I should wait.”

Worry tightened Lauren’s brows, and she frowned. “Why?”

An hour later, Shannon wanted to be anywhere but her studio, surrounded by uniformed police officers, one DPD detective, and four Marines. God, she swam in testosterone. Lauren sat right next to her, a bulwark of feminine support, and Damon Sinclair had planted himself on her right side.

He’d been the first to show up. Fortunately, she knew him well enough not to retreat at the first sight of his fierce expression. Normally genial, he’d inspected every lock in her place and then started making a list of “changes” he wanted her to consider—including a video camera on her front door. His effortless charm left her uncomfortable even if he meant nothing by it. The cops arrived fifteen minutes after Damon, with two more Marines hot on their heels. Logan Cavanaugh and Zach Evans were flip sides of the same coin—it never failed to amaze her how close the two were, because they were so opposite.

Logan seemed ferocious, and the scars on the left side of his face leant a darker air to him, whereas Zach was pure golden beauty to his partner’s beast. The two were best friends and married to the same woman. If Damon’s charm made her uncomfortable, she didn’t know how to cope with Logan and Zach in her space. They seemed to fill the large space. They’d also taken a position between she and the police.

They introduced the fourth Marine as Archer Morgan—he hadn’t come with the ones she knew, instead arriving with the Detective Eric Foster. Foster examined the envelopes then sent the two uniformed officers out to ask some questions of her neighbors—not that she had many. The reclaimed warehouse area had grown in popularity with artists like herself.

“Miss Fabray, do I have your permission to open these?” Detective Foster’s question was the first one he’d asked her directly. He’d spoken to the officers, to Lauren, and even to Logan and Zach, but not her.

“Yes, that’s fine.” No quiver betrayed her rapidly escalating heart rate or nerves.

He’d taken a moment to put gloves on before he slit the envelope open. “The most recent one arrived today?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry?” His narrowed eyes pinned her, and she suddenly wanted to be anywhere but here.

Lauren wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Shannon’s been traveling and pretty caught up in her work, so she didn’t go through her mail. Before lunch, I carried up a bundle with me from the front. The envelope you have there was in that bundle.”

Grateful for Lauren’s intervention, Shannon tried to rein in her scattering thoughts. “I got home from Boston three—no four days ago. I brought mail up then and I haven’t been back down.”

“You haven’t checked your mail in four days?” The harsh line of his mouth twisted and added to the skepticism layering the question.

“I was working,” she said in a low voice. Maybe he didn’t understand what she did, but she could get lost in projects for days.

He slid a paper out of the envelope and studied it. Logan and Zach shifted toward him, but photos came out next. “You were in Boston for a gallery opening?” Nothing in his tone betrayed what the contents were.

“Yes.” She cleared her throat, and Lauren gave her a gentle squeeze. “It was a huge one. I’ve never been featured in another city, and I had fourteen pieces—well, fifteen if you count
Her Marine
.”

“And how long were you in Boston?” The detective had pulled out his phone and snapped images of the paper and then each of the photos. After returning them to the envelope, he opened the next.

“Two weeks. I had meetings and then worked in the gallery, helping with the arrangement of the pieces. Then they had arranged a private fundraiser dinner.” She tried to relax her shoulders, but her neck ached with the tension bunching the muscles. The dinner had proved a grueling affair, but Liam hadn’t left her side. He’d been such a wonderful friend to keep everyone at bay and redirecting conversations when her anxiety surged.

“And the opening?” He didn’t look at her but at what appeared to be news clippings.

“That was Wednesday evening—last Wednesday.”

“How did it go?”

What did any of this have to do with the mail? Could she really have earned some crazy fan in a week?

“Fine.”

“You have a half-million dollar offer on one of your pieces and the others went in the low six-figure range. I think it went more than fine.”

How the hell did the detective know?

“Leave her alone, Foster.” Logan jerked his chin toward the news clippings. “Those are Boston papers.”

They were?

The Detective didn’t appear moved by Logan’s order. “She can answer my questions here or down at the station. Have you ever had any sales in this range before?”

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“No, you haven’t.” Damon had his phone out. “FYI, my wife is on the line. She’ll be listening to the questioning.”

Damon’s wife, Helena, was an attorney.

Foster turned, the third envelope in hand. “I’m not blaming the victim, boys. Relax. Miss Fabray, you’ve been in the…sculpting business for a while. But this was your first full gallery show.” He held up a news clipping. Shannon recognized the headline from the arts and leisure section of the Boston paper. It declared her debut a smash success. “How active in the art community were you prior?”

“I don’t know. Some of my earlier works were featured in shows, but only as one of many. I had a few other pieces commissioned.” Critics panned most of her early work as too cold and lacking in passion. “I did some replicas for a few art openings, and other clients.” Though never her favorite type of work, she’d needed to pay the bills.

“So to the best of your knowledge, you weren’t a celebrity sculptor or anything like that?” Whatever the third envelope contained had his attention, and Logan edged closer, his frown deepening.

“No.” She rubbed a hand over her face. She’d thought Lauren overreacted earlier, but the others were so serious she couldn’t help the trepidation racing through her system. “I’m not even very active in the art community.” Not online or in person. Large groups of people still made her uncomfortable. Stomach clenching, she blew out a breath. “Someone did break into my hotel room in Boston.”

Everyone looked at her and she spread her hands. “Nothing was taken. We interrupted them, I think, before they could find anything of value—and I didn’t have anything really for them to take except the laptop.”

“Who is
we
?” Foster focused on her, and she did her damndest not to fidget under his hard-eyed, assessing gaze.

“Liam Gardiner, he’s a friend of mine. He walked me back to my room, but when I went to go in, a man burst out of it.” She left off her bump on the head. It wasn’t related to the envelopes. In truth, she didn’t want it to be related. “We called the hotel security and the police.”

“Do you know the name of the officer in Boston?” Foster added a note on his phone and then took more photos of the third envelope and its contents. Odd how he didn’t show her what any of it was.

Was that good or bad?

“I have his card.” She stood and then hesitated. The officer had given her his card, and she’d put it…where?

“Hang on,” Damon said into his phone. “Helena is reaching out to Liam right now and getting the information.”

Relieved that part was over, Shannon glanced at the men in her loft, then back at the envelopes. “This isn’t that big a deal, is it?”

Instead of answering her question, Foster asked, “Anything else odd happen in the last few weeks?”

“Odd? No. I sculpt. I work a lot in here.” She motioned to her loft. “I get a lot of junk mail, and I keep the flyers and the advertisements because I can use them.” Sometimes she ran out of drop cloths or needed to cover a surface for a piece to dry on. She had so much debris in the work area she’d made a pact with herself to clean it out at least once a month. Of course, the last time she’d actually cleaned was six months before. It was such a wreck at the moment.

“Boyfriends? Dates? Other social engagements?”

“What?” No. She frowned. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

Zach twisted to stare at her and Damon gave her a sidelong look.

“Well, I don’t think of Brody as a boyfriend.” She backed away from the masculine questioning and sought help with Lauren.

“But you’re seeing Brody. You two have been together for a couple of years now.” Lauren answered for her then added for the cop’s benefit, “Lieutenant Brody Essex, he’s deployed at the moment.”

Yes, if one could call two weeks in two years together as seeing each other. She adored Brody and missed him, and she couldn’t wait for him to come home, but were they really seeing each other? Or was she simply clinging to the lifeline he’d thrown her?

Oh, she needed all of these people out of her place. Pacing away from them, she retreated to one of the windows overlooking the city. From here, she could see the abbreviated skyline of Dallas. The sidewalks below didn’t quite teem with people, but it was after lunch and before happy hour.

Quiet time.

The perfect time to get some work done.

Or it would be if all these people weren’t here.

“Shannon.” Lauren came to stand next to her, and she spoke in a low tone, “I know you don’t like this and you want it to be nothing. Maybe it is nothing, but those letters were hand-delivered.”

She knew that.

“And I think whatever is in them is making the detective nervous.”

“Not nervous, Ms. Kincaid. But I am concerned, particularly because they were hand-delivered. It suggests whoever is sending them knows where you live, Miss Fabray.”

Yes, she’d already come to the same conclusion, but hearing the detective say it aloud added to the harsh reality. Chills chased across her skin, and she folded her arms tighter. “Are they threats?”

“Not precisely,” Foster said. “I’m not a profiler, but I have been a cop for a long time, and while I don’t want to scare you, you need to take this seriously. Can you stand taking a look at the contents? I want to ask you some questions about them.”

She angled away, her courage shredding before it could even form. What she wanted to do included throwing up, pushing everyone out, locking the door, and pretending none of this had happened. She could crank the music, turn the water on, and go back to chiseling. Losing herself in the stone would be so much more preferable.

Asking them or telling them?
  Brody’s voice whispered through her memory, and she sucked in a deep breath. The information couldn’t hurt her. Running away and sticking her head in the sand could.
God, I wish he was here
….

Squaring her shoulders, she returned toward the kitchen and the counter where Foster stood. Lauren followed her, and Shannon was grateful for her presence.

“Don’t touch anything, I’m going to have our lab see if they can lift prints.” Foster laid the contents out, each stacked on the envelope it arrived in and each envelope on a plastic evidence bag. “I’ve arranged them in the order they seem to have arrived.”

Five total. She’d only seen him open four. The first seemed innocuous—simply a letter and, like the envelope, bore the address of
Mine Artiste
. She skimmed the letter. It read like a piece of fan mail; her work was provocative and beautiful, it touched the letter writer, and they couldn’t get enough of it, and they really wished she’d held her gallery opening in Dallas rather than Boston. The signature read
Yours
. Nothing else.

Innocuous enough. The next letter had also been addressed to her, and it complained again about her gallery opening and the media coverage. Her fan didn’t like how much attention
Her Marine
received, and recommended she work on more classical subject material. Three photographs were included—all seminal works from classical sculptors including Michelangelo.

The third had held the news clippings from Boston. She’d been photographed in two of them—one at the actual gallery opening, and another a headshot her agent had insisted she have in her promotional materials. Every mention of
Her Marine
had been highlighted, and the note attached took her to task for celebrating the military and warmongering and went on at length about her betraying her gift. It seemed a little insane.

It also made her mad.

The fourth envelope contained the photographs. Normal, four-by-six snapshots like those developed from traditional film. Each taken in Boston and all with Liam. A red circle had been drawn around Liam—only there was no letter with it. “What do the red circles mean?”

“Good a question, this man isn’t Brody Essex.”

“No,” she told Foster. “That’s Liam Gardiner. He’s a banker in Boston. Should I call him?” Proximity to her had already hurt him once. She didn’t want this to mean anything else would happen to him.

“Helena is calling him again right now,” Damon said. Shannon had forgotten he still had his wife on the phone. His quiet murmurs had blended into the background of her racing heart.

None of this made sense.

“You and Mr. Gardiner seem pretty intimate in this photograph, but nothing is going on between you?” Foster drew her attention to the last picture. It had been taken in the bar at the second hotel she’d moved to after the break-in. They were laughing, and Liam had a hand on her arm.