Unleashed (22 page)

And judging from her fast, agitated breath in his ear as she trailed him through every room, up the stairs and down the halls, she wasn’t in any hurry to go off by herself.

The guy who had tried to jump Danny was long gone, of course, and no one else seemed to be waiting in the shadows.

“We’re all clear,” he said in the most reassuring tone that he could muster. Caroline nodded, her face white, her eyes dilated with fear. Still he had to give it to her. She was remarkably calm, considering what had just happened.

Seemed the resilient core he’d always admired hadn’t completely disappeared during her years as a trophy wife.

“Why would someone do this?” Caroline asked as she looked around the master bedroom, seeming to take in its condition for the first time. It was in the same shape as the rest of the house. The king size mattress was on the floor and slashed open. The drawers of the nightstands were upended, the contents strewn across the floor. Clothes from both closets were all over the place, the dressers in both hers and James’s closets pulled out from the wall, emptied of their drawers, and turned on their sides.

“Is anything missing?” Danny asked after he’d satisfied himself that they were alone in the house.

Caroline’s fingers only shook a little as she sifted through the piles of clothes, shoes and purses littering the floor of her closet. “My jewelry’s gone.” She walked through the adjoining bathroom into what had been James’s closet. “And James’s watch. But there’s so much stuff they could have taken.” She picked up a high-end digital camera from the corner where it had been tossed. “But we surprised them. Maybe they didn’t have time…” her voice trailed off.

But they’d had plenty of time to tear the place apart. Plenty of time to load things like a flat screen TV or a computer into a waiting car. No, the robbery was incidental, a smokescreen to cover up their search.

Caroline was a smart woman. Danny didn’t need to spell it out for her. “Do you think they found what they were looking for?” A police siren sounded in the distance and she let out a peal of semi-hysterical laughter. “Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe they got what they needed and now they’ll leave me alone.”

A knock sounded on the front door and he reached out to guide her out of the room and down the stairs. “I suppose that’s in the realm of possibility, but I wouldn’t bank on it. In the meantime, as far as the police are concerned, this is a standard B&E. Don’t tell them anything about what we’ve been working on.”

Caroline nodded. “No reason to lay all our cards out, right?”

“Right.”

The officer was in and out in a little over an hour. Danny handed over the knife and the gun he’d taken off his attacker and told the officer they should be looking for a guy with a badly broken arm, not that he thought it would help much. The officer took Caroline’s report, left her a copy for her insurance, and left to canvass the neighbors. “In this economy we’re seeing a lot more property crimes,” he said as he left. “You should really look into upgrading your security system.”

Danny didn’t bother pointing out that whoever had done this either had enough skill to circumvent the alarm system, or was familiar enough with Caroline’s house to know the weak spots. “Who knew where we were yesterday? Who knew you were leaving town?”

Caroline pulled her dazed stare from the pile of wood, upholstery and stuffing that in no way resembled a couch. “No one. Well, I called Kate yesterday to tell her I was okay but she would never—”

“Are you sure?”

Her mouth drew tight with irritation and she folded her arm across her chest. “You asked about her before, and my answer is still the same. No way would she do this.”

“But would she tell anyone? Maybe inadvertently? Mention it in passing to someone not realizing who she’s talking to?”

Caroline let out a frustrated sigh and went down the hall to James’s office. The locked desk drawers had been pried open. A sea of papers and file folders carpeted the room, topped by a mountain of books that had been pulled from the shelves. “I don’t know. I can’t even think right now.”

He backed off, for the time being anyway.

“I’ve been over and over every inch of this house, gone through every single bit of data on the computers and I never found anything until Kate brought over that stupid box. I can’t imagine what they thought they would find.” Caroline’s voice was low, defeated, and she wavered on her feet as her unfocused gaze drifted across the room. Danny knew she was starting to shut down, her body and brain unable to deal with one more ounce of stress.

“Come on,” he said, as gently as he could given his current level of frustration. “We don’t need to do this right now. You need a hot meal and a good night’s sleep.”

She shook her head and dropped to her knees. She gathered papers in her hand, lining their edges and stacking them carefully. “I need to clean this up. I can’t leave the house like this—”

He knelt down beside her and placed his hands over hers. “We’ll come back tomorrow and put the house back together.” His voice was soft but his tone was steeped in authority.

Like all the green recruits Danny had trained over the years, she nodded without protest.

She let go of the papers and sat back on her heels, shoulders slumped. Exhausted. Dejected. It made him want to wrap his arms around those fragile shoulders, pull her into his lap, and promise he would make everything okay.

He shoved the thought away as he stood and guided her to her feet with a firm hand on her wrist. It wasn’t his job to give her reassurance and a shoulder to cry on.

Even when they’d been together, Caroline had stood firmly on her own two feet. She’d taken care of herself and her family and never asked him for anything. Self-sufficient, and unlike his mother, not too emotionally needy.

Not until the end, anyway. He watched her walk down the hall and climb the stairs to the bedroom, trying not to focus on the sway of her round ass in her tight jeans. Trying to remind himself of all the reasons it was good she’d dumped him a hundred years ago when he’d made it clear he wasn’t the kind of guy who dealt well with a lot of sharing and needing and all that other emotionally contrived bullshit.

“There’s a leather wheeled suitcase in James’s closet if you can find it in that mess,” she said wearily as she entered her own. He heard the shift of fabric and the thump of shoes dropping as she went through the piles on the floor. Even he, with his untrained eye, knew Caroline probably had tens of thousands of dollars worth of designer goods in there. Most women would be throwing a hissy fit seeing them thrown to the floor, stomped on, and in some cases, torn apart. Caroline simply picked up each piece, hung it carefully on a hanger, and placed it back in its designated spot.

Danny kicked piles of clothes and shoes out of the way until he found the suitcase Caroline was talking about. There was a deep slash in the leather and the inner lining was torn out, but it would still hold her belongings and survive a ride across the bay. Danny moved an empty dresser drawer aside and pulled the suitcase to the door.

Something caught his eye, so small he wasn’t sure he saw it at first. He backed away so his shadow didn’t fall over the section of the hardwood floor he was studying. He bent down and squinted for a closer look, then cleared the area of scattered clothes. He ran a fingertip across the wood floor panel. Right there in the middle, lost in the graininess of the oak, was a crack.

Or was it a seam?

He traced the crack with his finger. Thin and remarkably straight, it ran midway through the panel next to it.

Definitely a seam. Another ran perpendicular from the corner, crossed five panels, then turned again to run parallel, then back up, forming a rectangle about ten by twenty inches in size. He pulled his Randall Knife out of the sheath strapped to his calf and slid the tip in one of the seams. The panel came up without resistance.

“Like they didn’t do enough damage? Why are you tearing up my floor?”

He looked up to see Caroline staring down at him, hands on her hips, and an expression that said she thought he’d lost his mind. From her angle he was blocking her view of what was under the panel.

He moved back so she could see the metal door embedded into the floor.

“You think anyone else knows about James’s floor safe?”

Caroline braced herself with one hand on his shoulder as she leaned down to look. He heard her breath catch in her chest. “I had no idea that existed.”

“No reason you would. It’s one of the better jobs I’ve seen. It wouldn’t be obvious to anyone not trained to look for it.”

“Like you.”

He shrugged. “Even I wouldn’t have noticed it if the dresser hadn’t been shoved aside.” When he’d searched Caroline’s house before, the dresser had been flush with the corner, totally obscuring the panel. He gave himself a mental kick for not being more thorough in his initial searches.

“Can you open it?” Her voice was breathy with anticipation.

He nodded. “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s possible whoever was here already cleaned it out.”

She nodded. “Open it,” she repeated.

It took him a few minutes to bypass the code, then the lock slid free with a metallic snick. Danny flipped the door open and peered inside.

Not empty
.

His mouth pulled into a grin.

He reached in and pulled out a DVD, a thick sheaf of papers, and a computer flash drive.

“T
hese look like bank statements, numbered accounts,” Caroline called over the wind whipping through the battered Jeep.

“Put those away,” Danny barked. “That’s all we need is for them to blow away.”

She rolled her eyes, but obediently tucked them back in Danny’s computer bag, then tucked the bag under the seat for good measure. After all that, the last thing she wanted was for the contents of the safe to go blowing across Highway 80.

A floor safe
. How could she have been so clueless? Granted, it must have been installed well before she married James and was damn well hidden. But still. After all that time, the truth about James’s death had been right there under the floor of his walk-in closet.

Maybe. Danny cautioned her repeatedly not to get her hopes up.

Too late. Caroline had been nearly crushed with defeat when she’d walked into her house to find it trashed. Any last shred of security or sanity to be found in her home was gone. She just wanted all of it to be over.

But she was flying high on a second wind. Squirming like a puppy to find out what was in those bank records, what was on that flash drive, convinced they held the key to the hell her life had become over the past year.

She managed to make it to Danny’s house without badgering him to death. She knew he was as eager to look into the evidence as she was, but was more concerned with getting her somewhere safe first.

“We’re not doing anything until I know you’re somewhere they can’t find you,” was exactly how he put it. It was enough to give her a little rush of pleasure, amidst all the chaos.

Finally they pulled into his driveway. “Aren’t you worried they’ll follow us here?” she asked as she picked her way across the gravel drive and followed him up the two stairs that led to his wood porch.

He set her bag down beside him, keyed in the code for his alarm, and answered without looking. “I would have seen a tail, and no one but my family knows I live here.”

She cocked an eyebrow and looked around. “Who exactly do you think is going to come looking for you?”

His massive shoulders shrugged. “You never know. But count yourself lucky you get to stay here with me instead of in one of the piece of shit safe houses.”

Danny’s cell phone rang before she could reply

She drank in the small house’s cabin-like interior, even as she told herself she had no business caring what Danny’s house looked like, how he lived, or what clues it might give about the man he’d become.

She was no expert, but the heavy leather furniture, massive flat screen TV, and walls bare of any other sort of decoration screamed
confirmed bachelor
. She told herself firmly she was not happy or relieved in any way, and wandered over to a built-in bookcase crammed full of books, heavy on spy thrillers and military history.

Immediately off the front room was a small eat-in kitchen with a simple pine table and two chairs. A mountain of mail was piled on the table. Caroline flexed her fingers, fighting the urge to straighten and sort.

As Danny paced the sitting room, speaking in grim monosyllables to the caller, Caroline looked past him down a short, dark hallway. One that undoubtedly led to bedrooms.

Danny’s bedroom.

Don’t go there
.

But of course she did. There, and back to the motel last night, and all the things she said and did. Things she couldn’t seem to keep herself from doing when she spent too much time alone with Danny Taggart.

She swallowed hard.
Evidence
. They were going to go over the information they found in James’s safe. That was the priority, not the sharp ache that was forming between her thighs.

At this rate, it would be over so fast, it’s not like it would be much of a delay
—

“They identified Emily’s body.”

Danny’s words had the effect of a cold shower.

“And Derek has an eye witness up in La Honda who says she remembers a man who looked like James coming into her store shortly before Anne disappeared. And she remembers seeing him get into a car with a young woman who looked like Emily.”

The cold shower had turned into an icy deluge. Caroline’s heart seized in her chest and her stomach churned as she struggled to process the truth, even as her brain tried to reject the explanation.

James had killed Danny’s mother, and Emily Parrish along with her.

It shouldn’t have been so shocking. All evidence had pointed in that direction.

But somehow, even as they’d gone further down that path, Caroline had hoped there was another explanation. “Someone else was involved, someone else who doesn’t want the truth to come out,” she scrambled, grasping at straws.

Danny nodded, grim. She knew exactly what he was thinking. Sure, someone else had been involved. Someone who killed James to keep the secrets safe. Someone who would kill her to keep her from finding out the truth.

But in the end, her husband had been there. Through a twisted game of fate, Caroline had inadvertently ended up married to Anne Taggart’s murderer.

How could she have been married to James for a decade and have not seen, have had no clue that he was capable of something like that? Was James so very skilled at deception? Or had Caroline been so eager for security that she didn’t bother to ever really get to know the man who was her husband?

It was like a crazy Greek tragedy, playing out in her own life.

“Danny, I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling helpless, stupid for being unable to think of anything else to say.

“Don’t.” The single, cold syllable stopped her short, as did the glacial look in his gray eyes. Caroline, already chilled from riding around in the dead of winter in a windowless car, felt icy fingers creep into her very bones.

He was going to tell her to fuck off, to get out. She could see it in the hard set of his shoulders and muscle throbbing in his jaw. She’d been shut out by Danny enough in the past to know the signs. Back then, she knew how to deal with it, knew how to wheedle and charm him back from his black moods, his cold silences.

Now she didn’t have a leg to stand on. She was still the enemy, had been when she showed up at Anne’s memorial service. Was even more so now.

Contrary to her panicked musings, Danny wordlessly pulled out his laptop and turned it on. Caroline took a risk and sat on the leather sofa next to him. She made sure to leave plenty of space between them.

“Let’s see what’s on this flash drive,” he said, his voice remarkably steady for a man sitting next to the wife of the man who had probably murdered his mother.

Caroline took a deep breath. She was spiraling out of control. She couldn’t let herself do that again, not with him. She was the queen of capable, the master of keeping it together when the shit went down.

She could not hit one of her walls now.

She focused on the screen of Danny’s laptop, taking a second to admire his desktop picture of the eastern Sierras in all their flinty, snowcapped majesty. Danny slipped in the flash drive and clicked on the icon to open the drive. The file names were all gibberish as far as Caroline could tell. He clicked open one and was prompted for a password.

Her fingers clenched in frustration. “How are we going to figure out the password?”

“Don’t worry. There’s always a back door.” Danny closed the dialog box and executed a few quick keystrokes.

Suddenly the screen went blue. Danny yelled, “No, no, son of a bitch,” at his computer. His fingers flew across the keyboard, but nothing happened. The screen stayed that same flat, annoying, royal blue, an unmistakable sign to any PC user that he or she was royally screwed.

She watched helplessly as Danny thumped at the keyboard a few more times. He tried to restart, only to be greeted by that same blue screen.

“God
dammit
,” Danny said viciously. “Fucking cyber booby trap!”

“What, like a virus or something?”

He nodded. “When I didn’t enter the password it fried my hard drive.”

“What are we going to do now?” Her voice was getting that annoyingly frantic tone, but she couldn’t make herself calm down. Out of nowhere it seemed they’d been given the key to James’s murder, only to be tripped up by his cyber-terrorism.

Danny made a sound of disgust and closed his laptop. “I’ll have Toni take a look. That’s what I should have done in the first place.”

He pushed up from the sofa and walked the few steps to the kitchen. Caroline watched in disbelief as he pulled out two bottles of beer and silently offered her one.

“What are you doing? Why aren’t you calling her?” she said, ignoring the beer.

Danny closed the refrigerator and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not calling because it’s after eleven, she’s probably in bed, and we could both use some rest. There’s nothing on that drive that can’t wait until tomorrow.”

“Someone trashed my house and tried to kill me for what’s on that disk drive.”

Danny dug a bottle opener out of a drawer, flipped off the cap, and took a deep drink of his beer before he replied. “As long as you’re here with me, you’ll be safe. Come on Caroline, it’s late, we’re both exhausted, and we’ll be able to deal with all of this a hell of a lot better after a decent meal and a good night’s sleep.”

He turned his back and started rummaging through his pantry. He seriously wasn’t going to call Toni. He was actually pulling steaks out of his refrigerator and seasoning them like the key to her future wasn’t sitting on the coffee table three feet away.

She stomped over to the kitchen table where she’d left her purse and pulled out her phone. “What’s Toni’s number? I’ll call her myself.”

“I’m not giving you the number.” A cast iron grill pan hit the cooktop with a metallic thud.

“You’re seriously going to just eat steak and drink beer and not do anything to find out what’s on that flash drive?”

“That’s the plan.”

A red haze covered her vision as something inside her snapped. Without conscious thought her phone flew from her hand and smacked him in the back of his head.

He turned without flinching and pinned her with a steely glare. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You’re a selfish dickhead, that’s what’s wrong with me. It’s always all about you, isn’t it, Danny? Whatever you say goes, your way or the highway. I should have seen this coming. You’re not even going to help me, are you?” She couldn’t stop the words from spilling out of her mouth. She couldn’t hold herself together any longer. She was sick of feeling powerless, sick of watching her life careen out of control while she was helpless to do anything about it. She wanted answers, now, once and for all, and Danny was willfully withholding them because he wanted to drink his beer and eat his goddamn steak. “You probably never had any intention of helping me, did you?” She heard her voice raise an octave, knew she was verging on hysteria, but couldn’t make herself calm down as all of her fear, tension, and old, festering anger came roaring out. Helpless to stop the words from pouring out of her, she lashed out at Danny. “You just wanted to you use me for the information I had, and now that you know what happened to your mother, you’re going to leave me to fend for myself, just like you always did.”

She knew her accusations were unfair, irrational, but she couldn’t escape the gut-wrenching fear that he was going to stop helping her. As scared as she was, she couldn’t blame him. She’d married his mother’s murderer, for God’s sake. Lived in his house. Slept in his bed. So what if she’d had no idea. In Danny’s world, black was black and white was white. There was no room in his world for forgiveness or redemption.

The spatula in his hand hit the floor with a clatter. “Me? Leave you to fend for yourself? Funny, I remember it being the other way around.”

“Yeah, well, you would. But then you only ever see your side of things anyway.”

“Really? Enlighten me. Because from where I was standing, there was only one side. I came home for a few days of leave and you dumped me for no reason.”

“You didn’t call, and you went out and got drunk—” her voice cracked. She didn’t want to rehash the past. None of it should matter, not after all this time. But the pain of that night slashed at her, as fresh and raw as it had been in the moment she realized it was over between the two of them.

He rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. “I needed to blow off some steam before I saw you. Are we seriously going to rehash this right now? ‘Cause unless you have some new explanation for why you went mental and overreacted, I don’t want to hear it.” He paused, scratched his chin as though in deep thought. “Scratch that. On second thought, even if you do have a new explanation, I don’t want to hear that either. I’m just glad the needy psycho bitch you were so good at hiding reared her head before I was dumb enough to marry you.”

Caroline staggered back as though she’d been slapped. She’d had a pretty good idea what he thought of her, but somehow having him say it out loud hit her like a ton of bricks. After everything she’d done for him, all she’d given him, the way she’d stood up to him and stood by him through all the ways he tried to push her away.

Needy psycho bitch.

That was the one line descriptor she got in the story of Danny Taggart’s life.

“I had a miscarriage,” she spat out, before she had even a second to weigh the impact of finally launching that grenade after holding on to it for twelve long years.

He froze, then shook his head, blinking like he hadn’t heard her right. “I thought you said James had a vasectomy.”

“It wasn’t James’s, Danny. A month after I came home from visiting you in Fort Bragg, I found out I was pregnant.”

She could practically hear his thoughts careening through his head as he remembered their lust filled weekend in that cheap hotel room.

His lips moved but no sound came out, and for the first time since she’d seen him again at the memorial service, Danny Taggart actually looked unsure of himself. He leaned against the counter and took a deep drink of his beer. “Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?” he said the last word almost hesitantly.

“When? During the one five minute phone conversation we had after I found out?”