“Niall Malone.”
“In regards to?”
“It’s personal.”
I cringed. Based on the suit, my first thought tagged him as one of Shaughnessy’s goons. However, he didn’t have a Boston accent, or East Coast for that matter. He could have passed for local.
Second thought had to do with his last name. Could he be a long lost relative who’d just heard of Ryan’s death? Pretty slow on the uptake if so. I leaned sideways to peek around a leaf and noted he looked tan with dark hair and light eyes, possibly blue. Broad shoulders and chest. Quite possibly well-toned abs. Ryan had resembled my family, with varying shades of red hair. This stranger was darker. Other than coloring, he looked a bit like Aidan after a long summer of wielding a hammer–in a word, buff. But there the similarities ended. The shape of his jaw, the line of his nose were all more refined than the Shaughnessys I knew. He didn’t look at all like Ryan. And he wore a suit. Dark charcoal, crisp white shirt, dark tie. Few people in our valley, fifty miles east of San Francisco, wore suits and ties, especially in summer.
Government? Gangster? Police? My shivers of terror returned.
“You don’t have to talk to him,” Jacob murmured in my ear, suddenly bending over a file he placed on my desk. I hadn’t even heard him approach.
A relatively small man, Jacob was in his late fifties with liberally gray-salted brown hair, but looked much older due to the heavy wrinkles on his tanned face. Too much time sun worshipping, he’d confessed. And he still indulged. He and his wife liked baking beside their pool, and both were as brown and wrinkled as walnuts. Once Ryan had been diagnosed, they’d become my support away from home, part of the reason I felt I owed him loyalty and a full day’s effort. He often said I was too hard on myself. To tell the truth, we both knew it was to keep my mind off my all-encompassing grief.
I suppose I could have told Jacob about my noon time caller, but I didn’t want to trigger deeper feelings of responsibility in him or endanger him. A tiny part of me insisted once Shaughnessy had proof of my Ryan’s death, he’d go elsewhere and threaten someone else. I listened to that part instead of the side that wanted to pack my bags and run home to Daddy.
The phone on my desk rang and the man waiting for me looked my direction. No point in picking up. Brandy had pointed me out as clearly as if she’d turned and around and used her finger.
“I don’t like the look of him.” Jacob frowned, deepening the many wrinkles around his eyes. “Looks like a mobster to me.”
I glanced at the stranger again, moving a little to see around the spider plant. The suit looked a little more up-town than regular government issue. Still, he had the bearing of man who’d probably served in the military and possibly carried a weapon.
“He’s not going away. Either I talk to him here or he ambushes me outside the office,” I murmured to Jacob.
Smoothing my black linen skirt over my hips, I stood and made my way to the front. At home I’d swapped out my usual high heels for flatter sandals. I’d figured they were easier to run in, just in case. Considering only a few thin strips of leather held them to my feet, my logic was seriously flawed. As a result, I felt shorter than usual. In my heels I usually just about matched Jacob for height. In flats, I stood half a head shorter.
The man at the desk towered over both of us, but he paid little attention to Jacob, who followed me. Instead, the stranger’s blue-eyed gaze swept me from head to toe and back again. I felt as if I’d been scanned as surely as if I’d been slapped down on the printer-scanner on my desk. I also felt as hot as if I’d spent ten minutes baking in the one-hundred-and-ten-plus outside temperature. One hundred ten in the shade, but low humidity. I’d come to prefer it to the moist heat of the mid-west.
If the tall, dark stranger appreciated my appearance in any way, he didn’t show it. His eyes stopped briefly on the black hand-crocheted top I’d made, a camisole and cardigan in the style of Irish lace. Not that I cared one way or the other, but I was used to people either noticing my creations, or taking in my lack of height and making judgments on my age.
When it came to age, they usually underestimate by five years or so. Ryan had earned some scathing looks over the years from people assuming I was half his age. As a nineteen-year-old bride, someone from the hotel we’d stayed at had called the cops thinking he’d kidnapped an over-developed–but still underage–girl. Fortunately, we’d chosen a hotel in our town and the cops had known me from playing softball with my brothers. At twenty-six, I’d earned a few grief lines around my eyes, making me look more my age.
“I’m Cassidy Malone.”
“Niall Malone.” He didn’t offer a hand to shake. A part of me was glad, because I couldn’t have disguised my sweaty palms.
Jacob stopped at my side and I had the distinct impression he wanted to step in front of me. “Jacob Levin, senior partner here. What do you want with Mrs. Malone?”
The intense blue eyes shifted to my boss for a moment. “I’m afraid it’s personal. Mrs. Malone, is there some place we can talk?”
“I’m in the middle of a project with a deadline, if you could give me a hint of what this is about?”
“I need to ask you a few questions about your husband.”
“All right.” I folded my arms and waited.
His gaze flicked from Brandy to Jacob and back to me. “Really, if we can do this in private it would be best.”
“Who are you?”
“Niall Malone.” He extracted a business card from his breast pocket and handed it across the reception desk to me.
Raghnall (Niall) Malone, it said in plain black letters. I recognized the logo of the lab where Ryan had worked, and noted the word security.
On the heels of Shaughnessy, and his mention of defense secrets, I wanted to throw up.
“Cassie?” Jacob took my arm and glared at Malone. “She’s been under an incredible amount of stress. I can’t imagine what you have to say will make it better.”
“Nevertheless, it’s important. Mrs. Malone, we can do this the easy way, here and now, or the hard way.”
I didn’t need him to spell that out. I’d watched too many crime dramas. “Give me the first question and I’ll decide if it’s good enough to drop what I’m doing. Otherwise we’ll have to schedule something for later.”
That didn’t go over well. A muscle in the side of his cheek twitched and his lips tightened for a moment. “All right. Just tell me how to get in touch with your husband.”
Ever had one of those moments when it seems the world stops moving? The blood stops, then draws inward, leaving the sensation of limbs filled with ice water, heavy and cold. The roaring in my ears might very well have been the rush of blood leaving my head. This was far worse than when I’d had this same conversation not two hours ago.
Jacob plucked the card from my numb fingers and studied it as Brandy gasped.
“That’s not funny,” I managed to whisper from a throat so dry I could barely swallow.
“I’m not joking.”
“You want to know where my husband is?” I could feel my voice rising, sense it reaching to the very back of the office. Silence settled down around me and Jacob’s hand cupped my shoulder.
“Yes. Please.”
“All right.” If this were some sick joke, I’d play along for a minute. Maybe Shaughnessy had been setting me up after all. I didn’t think so, but the same conversation, twice in one day, less than two hours apart, who knew? “You know this town?”
He nodded.
“Well enough