In Harm's Way Read online

  “I want you,” he said. A simple unvarnished declaration that was stamped on every one of his features. “I don’t think… No, I know…that I’ve never wanted anybody this way. Ever.”

  Somewhere in her mind a faint alarm sounded through that lovely haze of desire he had roused. You have heard this before, it chimed.

  Reluctantly she listened to that voice, heeded it, made herself draw away from him and turn in the chair to face the monitor again. “Let’s take a look at that bank balance, shall we?” she said, her voice weak and unsteady.

  His swift reaction told her how deeply her insult had cut him. “Sure,” he snapped. “You do that.” He was standing now, his back to her as he scooped up the pages they had printed. “While you figure out just how desperate I am to get my hands on your money, I’ll see if I can solve this damned murder and get you the hell out of town.”

  “Mitch…”

  But the door to the office slammed on the word and he was gone. Robin sighed, looked back at the monitor. She should log off now. Mitch Winton’s business was no business of hers. It never would be now. She had made certain of that.

  A part of her desperately wanted to take the risk, to see where this thing she felt for Mitch would take her. A good thing her brain was still in control.

  Robin stared at the screen, not really seeing it. Instead she focused inward, her mind engaged in the poor choices she had made in men up till now.

  Troy had swept her right off her feet with his fake charm and very real good looks when she, of all people, should know how misleading beauty could be. And James had played on her need for someone to look a little deeper than her own appearance. How ironic that he had done that and found a tall, awkward child inside with a yearning to find love.

  Robin reflected on how easily she had fallen into that relationship and how glad she was that she’d at least had the good sense to protect herself financially before she’d met either man.

  She wondered if James had put off the divorce, thinking perhaps he could coax her into some sort of settlement. He’d only mentioned it once, and then jokingly, when they’d separated. It almost seemed as though her continued goodwill had meant more to him than a portion of her wealth. Perhaps he’d had more money than she realized and didn’t need hers.

  Inspired by that thought, she quickly entered his name and the statistics she knew about James Andrews into the program she had already accessed to check out the others.

  A quarter hour later she still followed the trail, printing as she went. Now things were beginning to make sense. Robin felt like kicking herself for not doing this before she had married James. But then, of course, she had respected his privacy too much. And at that time she’d still had a modicum of that worthless commodity called trust.

  Mitch made the rounds of Kick’s house, checking the windows and doors before turning in for the night. He would spend the night on that awful leather sofa in the living room. Couldn’t afford to get too comfortable, even though he was a light sleeper. He doubted he’d be sleeping, anyway, after what had happened with Robin. And what had almost happened.

  He should have heeded the captain’s command and avoided any involvement with her. Now Mitch had her believing he was some kind of gold digger. The rotten timing of that kiss could hardly have left her with any other impression but that.

  With a muttered curse, he automatically checked the security system and headed back for the living room.

  Robin was sitting on the sofa waiting for him, a sheaf of papers spread out on the brass-and-glass coffee table in front of her. Her eyes were narrowed and her lips compressed into a firm line, disguising their soft fullness. She had her arms folded over her chest and her long legs crossed at the knee. One foot swung erratically, further betraying her anger. Not that she was attempting to hide it.

  Mitch sighed and dropped into the chair across from her. No way could he explain what he had done. No way could he reassure her that he had no designs on her money.

  “Okay. Think what you want to think,” he told her. “No defense. I wanted to kiss you so I did. You want an apology, you got it.”

  “I think he had mob ties,” Robin announced as if she hadn’t heard him.

  Mitch blinked. “Who?”

  “James!” she said with a huff. She leaned forward and tapped the papers with her hand. “It’s all there. Sal Andreini financed his education. James had a law degree!” Her breath rushed out in a shudder as she recrossed her arms. “This is my fault.”

  “That he had a law degree or mob ties?” Mitch asked. He knew very well that wasn’t what she meant, but he needed a second to switch gears here. He’d been expecting her to light into him about the other issue, apparently forgotten now, or shoved aside for this old proof of betrayal. “So you checked him out.”

  “Finally!” she admitted with a furious nod. “He had even changed his name! Can you believe that?”

  “Related to Andreini, was he?”

  Again she nodded. “Nephew. He had absolutely no Italian characteristics! He didn’t even look Italian. I still can’t believe it!” She pushed up from the sofa and began to pace. “I bought every word out of his mouth! I was so stupid!”

  Mitch got up, too, and reached out to touch her arm. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up, Robin. You had no reason to think he wasn’t telling the truth. He must have cared—”

  She rounded on him, her eyes shooting sparks. “No! He never cared. You were absolutely right. He used me. I don’t know how yet, but he did.” Her throat worked as she swallowed heavily. Mitch thought she might be about to cry.

  “Come here,” he said roughly, drawing her into his arms. Mistake. But he didn’t care. She needed a little comfort and he couldn’t help but give it. When she would have pushed away, he gentled her. “No kissing, no ulterior motive here, Robin. Just a hug, okay? You need it and so do I.”

  He patted her back, feeling her give in and bury her face in his shirt. Her shoulders shook. “Now listen to me,” he ordered, “James might not have been what he appeared to be, but he did what he could to get rid of that guy who kept bothering you, didn’t he? That Troy whatever?”

  He felt her nod against his chest.

  “See? And I can’t think of any benefit he would have gotten from doing that, or marrying you, a famous model, when one of his main objectives in life must have been to keep a low profile. Right?”

  Again she nodded.

  “So he must have been sincere in wanting to help you out. All that other stuff I said about him and your money was just my jealousy talking. Even if he was mixed up with the mob, he was still a man with feelings. And I can’t imagine any man not wanting to play white knight to you, sweetheart.”

  She reared back, her palms braced against his chest, and looked up at him. “Why?”

  “Well…”

  “No, I really want to know. Why?” she asked again, seeming almost desperate for the answer.

  Mitch knew he had to be careful here. He was not only answering for James Andrews, but for himself. “Because you bring out protective instincts, I guess. Not that you look defenseless or anything, but there’s something about you that seems inherently good, Robin. Innocent. Any man worth his salt would do just about anything to preserve that. You’re the sort of woman he would want to think well of him, to like and respect him, maybe depend on him a little. I’m sure that’s what James had in mind.”

  “He lied to me,” she insisted.

  “Yeah, he sure did. But what else could he do if he didn’t want you mixed up in whatever he had going, hmm?” He brushed a strand of hair off her brow and tucked it behind her ear.

  “But he did involve me,” Robin said sadly. “He called me to bring him the disk.”

  “Desperation, I bet,” Mitch answered truthfully. “He must have been up against a wall, don’t you think? His life probably depended on turning over what was on that disk.”

  “And I came too late to save him,” she whispered.

  “You
can’t blame yourself for that,” Mitch said, taking her by the shoulders and giving her a gentle shake. “You had no idea what was at stake and he didn’t tell you. How could you possibly have known?” He guided her over to the sofa again, urged her to sit and joined her. “Now why don’t you show me all you found out about him?”

  She’d discovered quite a lot. Mitch went over every fact she had unearthed. College records. Andrews had been no dummy, that was for sure. Hadn’t graduated at the top of his class, but came close. Sure enough, one of New York’s favorite crime bosses had footed the bill at the University of Virginia.

  After graduation he had worked briefly for a small law firm in downtown Manhattan dealing with contract law. He had resigned in good standing after two years. Another two years with an investments and securities company. Again he had resigned. No record of any private practice or other employment. There was no record of any job with an insurance company. Apparently, Uncle Sal had put him to work for the family after the four years in legitimate trenches.

  So what dealings did the Andreini family have with Somers down here in the South?

  “What do you think it means?” Robin asked when Mitch had put down the printouts. “He was almost certainly working with his uncle, right?”

  “All we can do is guess at this point. Maybe Somers and the others on the list provided some service for the Andreinis. James was probably in charge of the payroll. Say he electronically transfers the funds from his uncle’s account and sets up offshore accounts for the men on the list. All he had to do then was to give them the account numbers. That way the money never comes stateside and won’t need laundering. Maybe one of them got greedy and decided he wanted all of the numbers.

  “This Somers man?” Robin asked.

  “Must be. The others are dead.”

  Robin sighed and leaned back against the sofa. Instead of angry, she now seemed simply weary. “James probably would have come here to oversee whatever deal they had going with the Andreinis.”

  Mitch agreed. “Yeah, that makes sense. His uncle would want to keep an eye on whatever it was.”

  “But the Russian, Mitch? What does that mean?”

  “Russian mafia’s big in New York. Maybe they were collaborating with the Andreini family on something. It’s already done, whatever it was. It’s the payoffs that went south.”

  He patted her hand that rested on the cushion next to his. “Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of it. You’ve helped a great deal by digging up this much. The D.A. will be ecstatic. The feds, too, maybe.”

  Robin smiled, but it looked a little wan.

  “No, I mean it,” Mitch assured her. “You know, I bet you could hire on with the Bureau here doing BIs. You’re damned good.”

  She frowned.

  “Background investigations,” he explained.

  “I know what a BI is,” she said. “And I don’t need a job.”

  “Oh.” He had forgotten for a minute that she was independently wealthy and didn’t need to work.

  “I have a job,” she told him.

  “Designing Web pages,” he said, nodding.

  Robin cleared her throat. “Well, that’s only a sideline. Something to feed my creativity. Actually, I have another occupation I suppose I should tell you about. You’ll probably find out, anyway, since there are bound to be questions about how I acquired this much information on James and the others. Much of it you can buy if you know where to go, but some I, uh, got from unauthorized sources.”

  Damn, she intrigued him. To tell the truth, all she had to do was sit there to intrigue him, but this beauty had smarts he suspected he hadn’t even begun to guess at. “Well? Exactly what do you do?”

  She looked a little defensive. “I’m an intrusion tester.”

  A what? “The job title sounds interesting. You want to tell me what it means?”

  “You’d call it a hacker for hire, I guess. Companies, institutions, agencies and so forth, hire people to test their accessibility. You see, the network administrators set up the systems, but they rarely test it to see whether they can withstand dedicated intrusion. They install proximity servers or firewalls, but someone has to check whether they work properly. Most of them don’t.”

  Mitch laughed. “You actually get paid to snoop?”

  “Paid quite well. I also track down those who do it without sanction. Which tonight, I guess, would be people like me.”

  He shook his head in awe and squeezed the hand that rested under his. “You’re something, you know that?

  Robin drew her hand away and looked at him. “I apologize for the accusation I made earlier,” she told him. “I tend to get a bit paranoid about the…the money.”

  Mitch smiled. “It’s okay. If I had that much, I would be, too. Please know that I don’t have dollar signs in my eyes when I look at you, Robin. If you recall, I was mighty attracted to you before you told me you had it.”

  He could see that she wanted to believe him.

  “I’m not very good with…people,” she said, staring at her hands, fiddling with a small gold ring on her right hand. “I don’t read them well at all.”

  “So you said. Well, I think you do just fine. My family liked you. I like you,” he said, using his most ingratiating smile on her. “A whole lot.”

  She blushed and ducked her head. “Thank you.” Her reluctance to continue was obvious. “I like you, too. But I think we should restrict our…whatever this is…to business.”

  For a minute he couldn’t respond to that. Well, he could, but the response he had in mind wouldn’t do. He wanted to take her in his arms again, this time to kiss her senseless, to shake her right out of that shell of insecurity. If insecurity was what it was. It could be she had a very real aversion to starting up something with a cop who she still might think had her bank balance on his mind.

  She raised her gaze to his, awaiting his answer.

  Finally he nodded, trying to hold his smile in place. “Okay. Strictly business for now. For the record, though, I would like to be friends when all this is over, if that’s okay with you. Maybe call you sometimes and see how you’re doing? Drop by if I ever get up your way and take you out to dinner?”

  She brightened. As if she were six and he’d offered her a pony. “You would? I could show you the city! It’s a great place!”

  “Yeah, that’d really be something. I’d like that.” He didn’t have the heart to tell her he had already seen New York as well as a large part of the rest of the world. Besides, he wanted to see it all again. With her.

  Mitch was torn between begging her to trust him and warning her not to offer her friendship so easily to a man she knew so little about.

  This woman was such an ironic blend of sophistication and vulnerability. What the hell was he going to do with her? How would he resist her while she was here? And how in the world would he protect her when she left?

  Chapter 11

  Robin leaned forward and massaged the muscles in the back of her neck. Her eyelids felt heavy as lead. Maybe she could sleep now.

  After Mitch had ordered her to bed, she had tried. An hour later, she had headed to the kitchen for a glass of milk, hoping that would help. Unfortunately, she noticed Mitch was sleeping on the living room sofa and she abandoned her quest. She didn’t want to risk waking him. Then neither of them would have a good night’s sleep.

  Instead of going back to bed, she decided to do something productive. Feeling only a bit guilty for using her host’s computer yet again without permission, she had gone into Kick’s den, logged on and tried to find out more about what might have caused James’s death.

  The New York City, New Jersey and Nashville news archives offered nothing helpful. Neither had a global search of arrest records. James had no priors under either of his names.

  A couple of the men on the list had arrest records, but for nothing serious. No convictions. They were all businessmen, fiftyish, with seemingly nothing else in common.

  “Don’t
tell me. You found out about my C-minus in Algebra.”

  Robin jumped, then swivelled in the computer chair until she faced him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  He handed her another glass of wine. “I know. I heard you wandering around earlier. See if this will help. Find anything new?” he asked as he handed her the glass.

  “Nothing much. I was wide-awake, thought I would dig a little deeper and see what came up, but I don’t think I got any facts that would add much to what we already know.” She closed the program, backtracked carefully and logged off.

  “What we already guess,” he corrected in a wry voice. “It’s two o’clock, y’know.”

  Robin shook her head and got up, set the wine aside and stretched. “I’m sleepy now. Thanks for the wine.”

  “No problem.” His hot gaze wandered down from her face, growing intense as it traveled slowly over the tacky T-shirt she was wearing, hesitated at the top of her thighs where the shirt ended and then followed the line of her legs. “Oh, wow.” His words were little more than a sorrowful murmur.

  Robin resisted the urge to stalk past him and simply stood there, feeling gawky and woefully underdressed. Her hair was a mess, her breasts were too small and her feet were too big. At least now he’d seen the worst she had to offer.

  Finally his eyes met hers again. He offered a sheepish smile and a shrug. “Sorry, couldn’t help it. You just look so damned incredible.”

  He was the one who stretched credulity, but she wasn’t about to comment on the width of his broad, bare shoulders, the trim line of his waist or the fact that he’d forgotten to fasten the waistband of his trousers.

  She quickly looked away from him and focused on the picture beside the door, just to his left. “I guess we’d better get back to bed.”

  She heard his breath rush out in a short laugh. “Yeah. I could get ideas a friend shouldn’t be entertaining. Some legs you got there, kid. You’re the only person I know with pretty knees, you know that? Now some girls,” he said with a negligent wave of his hand, drawing her attention back to him in spite of her resolve, “they have great thighs, curvy calves and cute ankles. Even pretty toes.” He shook a finger at her legs. “You do, too. But I have never, ever seen one with knees that good.”