“Shit. You’re making me remember why I hired you. You can really get into the twisted way someone like Lightman would think.” She glanced up at the apartment building. “Maybe it’s a onetime thing. And maybe you’re being paranoid about Lightman. He should be grateful that she helped get him off of death row.”
“Hard to bank on that with a crazy psychopath.”
“Hannibal Lecter had a soft spot in his heart for Clarice.”
“Lecter was a fictional character. Lightman’s not. But I may have a plan to keep her out of harm’s way for a while.” Duncan supposed it had been forming in his mind from the moment she’d walked into her apartment that morning.
“Then it was worth tracking you down in an alley,” Adrienne said.
“The problem will be selling it to her.”
Adrienne smiled at him. “I can’t imagine the day when you won’t be able to sell something to a woman.”
AT A FEW MINUTES PAST SIX THAT evening, Piper started down the back stairwell in the building where Abe Monticello rented office space. She was wearing dark glasses, and she’d tucked her hair into an old golf cap her boss had dug out of one of his desk drawers.
A disguise.
Abe and Richard were, at this very moment, exiting through the front of the building, thus distracting the few die-hard reporters who had hung out all day hoping to interview her about the Rose Petal Killer’s visit to her apartment.
No use telling the media that it hadn’t been the real RPK who’d broken into her home and strewn those flower petals around. Some official spokesperson from the D.C. police department had already tried to clarify what had happened. And although the clips had aired all day on the twenty-four-hour cable news stations, first impressions were lasting. And whoever had taken that original video clip and released it to the press had created a dilly of a first impression.
Within hours some enterprising reporter had located her graduation photo from Georgetown Law and she’d become the celebrity of the moment, the latest face that could be blamed for letting Patrick Lightman out of jail.
Duncan had said that she had a target on her back. And by the end of the day, she’d felt it grow brighter and heavier by the moment. It hadn’t helped one bit that every time she thought about the target, she thought about him and what she’d imagined doing to him and with him on that sheet in her apartment.
Seeing him again had blown open a floodgate of feelings that she’d successfully buried for years. The intense attraction she’d felt for him at their parents’ wedding should have been history.
Piper started down the last flight of stairs. All day she’d tried to convince herself that what she’d felt when she’d seen him that morning had been a fluke. A onetime phenomenon that had been caused by the adrenaline rush of coming home to that terrible scene in her apartment.
But try as she might, she couldn’t seem to get Duncan Sutherland completely out of her mind. Even as a child, she’d liked him the best of the triplets. He’d helped her out of an embarrassing situation once. She could still remember it as if it were yesterday. They’d been playing pirates, and Nell had drawn the short straw, which meant that she had to play the captured princess and sit in those dumb caves in the cliff face for hours on end until someone rescued her. Boring. But even though Reid had offered his help, Nell had looked frightened at the prospect of climbing up the cliff face to get to the cave. So Piper had volunteered to take her place.
She’d gotten there just fine because she and Cam, who’d been the pirate that day, had climbed up from the beach. For a while she’d amused herself by poking around in the small string of caves, three of them in total, but after a couple of hours, she’d known them like the back of her hand. Bored out of her mind, she’d decided to rescue herself. But when she’d started down the cliff face, she’d frozen.
When Duncan had arrived to “rescue” her, he’d found her just below the cave, clinging to the rocks. He’d told her he’d be right up, and when he was beside her, he simply told her that he’d go first and tell her what to do.
And he’d done just that, coaching her through it, telling her where to put her hands and feet. He had to have sensed her fear, but he’d never mentioned it or teased her. More importantly, he’d never ratted her out to his brothers or her sisters.
Duncan Sutherland was a man who could be trusted. She only wished she could trust her boss as unconditionally. But something was stopping her. Frowning, she strode down the hallway that led to the alley door. At five o’clock, Abe had called her into his office for a little heart-to-heart talk. He was worried about her safety. There might be other incidents.
Then he’d given her the really bad news.
He wanted her to take some time off. Maybe take a trip just until the media found something else to focus on. When she’d objected and pointed out that she was sitting second chair for the Bronwell trial in two weeks, he’d told her that he’d had to reconsider that decision. Richard Starkweather was going to take her place.
Her already much less than perfect day had become a whole lot worse.
Not that she could fault the logic of Abe’s argument. The media circus that had surrounded him right after Lightman had been released had begun to die down. And the break-in at her apartment had stirred everything up again.
Just as seeing Duncan Sutherland had stirred her up again.
No. She was not going to think about him. What she’d felt had been a fluke.
She had bigger problems, not the least of which was the implied death threat on the vellum notepaper. Thus, her Greta Garbo-like exit down the back staircase. Her ride home, arranged by Abe, would be waiting at the end of the alley. And maybe, just maybe, her improvised disguise would allow her to sneak into her apartment unnoticed.
She turned the knob on the alley door. A relaxing bath, layered with bubbles and accompanied by a glass of icy white wine, would help her to think. There’d be other trials. And other setbacks. Piper MacPherson didn’t believe that getting depressed or discouraged was ever an effective way to handle life’s rough patches.
She was never going to become her father’s daughter. He’d avoided life for years after her mother had died. She believed in facing life head-on. She’d figure out a way to deal with the rose petal incident and she’d win back the opportunity to sit second chair with Abe.
The instant she stepped out of the building into the alley, she stopped short and every thought or plan she had in her mind disappeared. All she could do once again was stare.
Duncan stood leaning against the hood of a very shiny red convertible. The kind that was meant for the open road and speed. Not at all the kind of car she’d expected the quiet, studious Duncan Sutherland to drive.
Neither of those adjectives seemed to apply to the man leaning against the sexy car. He looked as big as he had in her apartment that morning. And his effect on her senses was just as intense. She could see more of him now. A lot more. Broad shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist and then long, long legs crossed at the ankles. With each passing second, the sizzle in her blood grew stronger, hotter.
He’d changed into a black T-shirt and jeans that made him look just a bit dangerous. His face, with its slash of cheekbones, broad forehead, unruly hair and strong chin, was nearly movie star perfect. That was the image of him that had kept sneaking into her mind all day, even when she’d been talking to Abe and losing her dream assignment.
When she met Duncan’s eyes, they had the same effect on her senses they’d had that morning, sending a shot of heat that hit her dead center, then radiated right out to her fingers and toes. Okay. The way she was reacting to him was not a fluke and not the result of an adrenaline rush.
Terrific.
As if she hadn’t had enough to deal with today. A nut who wanted to scare her, a boss who wanted to protect her, not