“What’s going on here?” he demanded.
Luca and Tate got to their feet. Luca swiped at his forehead. “Sorry, officer. I lost my temper.”
The officer looked from Luca to Tate. “That right?”
Tate nodded. “I egged him on. Wrong thing to do. Won’t happen again.”
He gave them another hard look before he turned to Luca. “I’m following up on our earlier conversation. I came by to tell you we’ve turned up nothing trying to ID the hit-and-run driver. How did you do coming up with any potential enemies?”
Stephanie caught Luca’s eye. She sent him a pleading look and a shake of her head. Luca hesitated for an excruciating moment. “Nothing yet, but my sister’s here now. We’ll see if we can think of anything useful.”
The officer’s gaze flicked once more over the three of them. Then he nodded and excused himself to make a phone call.
Luca rounded on Tate. “Just so we’re clear. You’re no good for my sister, and you’re not welcome here. You’re involved only until we hand this over to the police or decide on a plan to get our father back.”
“And my sister.” Tate’s lip curled. “You remember my sister, Maria, don’t you Luca? You two have a history, don’t forget.”
Luca’s face was a mask of rage. Stephanie stepped between them. “In light of the situation,” she hissed, “can you two knock it off?” She felt the beginnings of an idea flash through her. “My files. I kept paper files when I worked for Bittman. Just odds and ends, bits that I found unusual in his business dealings. Maybe there’s something in there that might give us a search direction.”
She didn’t want to go back to those dark days, the path she had taken that whisked her away from her family, from her faith. The twinges had been there when she first started doing some consulting for Bittman, a year before Tate’s father was killed. Tate hadn’t wanted her anywhere near Bittman. Tate’s words rang in her mind.
The way he looks at you...he wants you. You’ve got to quit working for him.
She’d brushed him off, chalked up his reaction to jealousy. Maybe she was even the tiniest bit flattered by it. In any case, her stubborn streak would have prevented her from giving up a job she enjoyed. The work intrigued her, challenged her, but she’d felt the odd sense every now and again that something was not right.
God had been talking to her even then, but she hadn’t listened.
Luca nodded, eyes riveted to hers. “It’s the last effort before we go to the cops, Steph.”
She was already heading for the door. “I’m going home to look.”
He shifted uneasily. “I don’t want you going alone.”
She smiled. “I’ll be okay. You need to stay here until Brooke arrives.”
Luca checked his watch. “She should be here in a few hours. Then I’ll come. Let me call someone to go with you.”
“I’ll go.” Tate’s tone was casual, but Stephanie could hear steely determination underneath.
“No way.” Luca took a step toward her.
Tate hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “Doesn’t matter what you want.”
“She’d be safer alone.” Luca’s green eyes shone with anger.
Stephanie didn’t want Tate around any more than her brother did. She also knew that every moment they wasted brought them closer to disaster. She went to Luca and hugged him. “I’ll be okay.”
He squeezed her. “Don’t let him back into your life,” he whispered in her ear. “He’s trouble.”
Trouble. Truer words were never spoken. She kissed his cheek and headed for the door, trouble following right along behind her.
THREE
Tate parked the motorcycle on the curb outside Stephanie’s Victorian. She was already headed inside, the afternoon sun casting long September shadows over the neat yard, catching the gloss in her dark hair. The idiocy of his own actions came sharply home.
At worst, Stephanie despised him—and with good reason. He was, after all, a former drug addict who pushed her away, ignored her repeated attempts to get him help, and nearly ran her down while trapped in a cloud of painkillers. As for Luca, he’d just as soon take Tate apart one piece at a time. Not surprising. The Gages were tight and, in times of crises, impenetrable in their solidarity. They’d been just that way when he had descended into addiction. Guilt flared anew, along with the pain in his leg.
The Fuego family was an altogether different bunch, he thought with bitterness. They scraped for every opportunity, earned their living through hard work. Truth was, he’d been lost in a narcotic haze when his sister needed him the most, when she moved in with Bittman, six months after Stephanie quit working for him. Tate had been too addicted to painkillers prescribed after his leg was ruined in the accident that killed his father to do anything about it. Again the guilt stirred inside, but he fought it down.
His life had turned out scarily similar to his work as a demolitions expert. All the meticulous planning, endless mental rehearsal and the best of intentions was supposed to ensure that a condemned building would fall neatly, right on its footprint, with no overspray of deadly flying debris or partial failures that left structures tilting dangerously, still primed to explode. His relationship with Stephanie had turned out to be more like the time he’d witnessed the deadly power of a shock wave, a wave of energy and sound released when Fuego Demolitions took down a building. The massive wave traveled upward as was intended, before hitting a heavy cloud cover that forced the energy outward, exploding windows in the neighboring buildings. He could still hear the sounds of that shattering glass with the same perfect clarity that he recalled the end of his life with Stephanie.
He hesitated, trying again to steady his nerves. “Time to show some Fuego solidarity and do what you have to do to find Maria,” he muttered to himself. It would be difficult because it meant sticking close to the most amazing woman he had ever known, a woman he could never have again, due to his own personal destruction.
Forget about your past with Stephanie. Find Maria. That’s all you’ve got left.
He marched resolutely to the door and let himself into a small kitchen, painted in soft yellow tones. In the next room he could see boxes stacked in neat piles. “Nice place. Just moved in?”
“Couple days ago. I haven’t made the time to unpack.” She busied herself preparing coffee and pulling a plate of cheese from the refrigerator, along with a box of crackers, before she opened a can of cat food and put it on the floor. “Tootsie never misses a meal. She’s like clockwork.”
He watched her put the cheese and crackers on the table.
“There’s bottled water in the fridge.”
“You don’t have to feed me, Steph.”
She adjusted the crackers in the bowl, removing three broken ones and tossing them in the trash. “It’s going to take hours to go through the files. You’ll be on your own.”
“Is this your way of keeping me out of your hair?”
She looked at him then, eyes like melted chocolate. Suddenly she was the sixteen-year-old girl he’d met while running the track in high school, eyes sparkling as she challenged him to a race. His stomach jumped. For a moment he thought she would say something, but her expression changed and she headed for the front room. “My files are in here.”
He sighed. Stay in the kitchen and be quiet, was the unspoken command. She ought to know that idle wasn’t his