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Eliza jerked around to face him. He’d hit the nail on the head.
“I suppose I can tell you now that I’ve assigned you to the case,” she said. “We’ve been watching the house since the tip from the SEC. As soon as Maddox told me where your accident happened, I figured another pair of eyes wouldn’t hurt.”
“So why keep it a secret from me? As you said, you did just assign me to the case.”
She shrugged. “Habit, I guess. I like to play things close to the vest.”
David snorted. “Maybe too close. Either you give your field agents all the info, or you wind up with a mess, maybe even egg on your face. We can’t operate in the dark.”
She tipped up her chin. “Are you trying to tell me how to do my job, Agent Latham?”
He rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t presume.”
She narrowed hers. “Good. Keep it that way.”
David took her response as dismissal. He went toward her office door. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Yes, you will. And one more thing, Latham.”
“What’s that?”
“Just see that you don’t pull a stunt like J.Z. on the Papparelli case, will you?”
He faced her in slow motion. “What do you mean by that?”
Eliza placed her hands on the top of her desk and locked her emerald gaze with his. “No fraternizing with the enemy…the subject of the investigation.”
In a flash, Lauren’s frightened face burst in his memory. Her clear green eyes, so different from the dark, unreadable emerald ones of the woman before him, seemed to reveal everything inside her.
Fear.
Horror.
Confusion.
Up until then, David hadn’t realized the strength of the pull Lauren DiStefano exerted on him. And J.Z.’s and Maryanne’s wedded bliss had nothing to do with it.
He left the office without another word.
At nine o’clock the next morning, Lauren dragged her sore, creaky body out of bed. The long soak in the Jacuzzi tub and the four tablets of ibuprofen hadn’t helped one bit. She felt as though the proverbial Mack truck had rolled right over her—twice.
The house was quiet. More than a hundred years ago the builders had made the walls so thick that they insulated the occupants from all outside sound. That was a blessing.
On the other hand, so much silence could also mean trouble. She did share the place with a normal, mischievous five-year-old. No noise often offered warning of a disaster in the making.
With great reluctance, she pulled her silk robe over the matching pajamas, and made herself walk the short distance to Mark’s bedroom. He could still be asleep. After all, they hadn’t made it to bed until well past midnight.
She opened the door and sighed in relief. The boy’s slight body lay right where it should be, on the custom-built racecar bed he loved.
Poor kid. He’d lost his mother to leukemia three years ago. Then Ric died in that horrible wreck. And now, he’d gone through the shock of a near miss with an out-of-control car. It was a miracle the child could sleep at all.
She closed the door and went downstairs. She needed coffee, a double-shot espresso, at the very least. Maybe then her blood would start to circulate. Something had to oil her beat-up muscles. She couldn’t waste a whole day on the old fainting couch in the library like some wilting lily from the Roaring Twenties.
Even though the aches and pains tempted her to do just that.
At the professional stainless steel machine, she poured roast beans into the grinder, buzzed them into fine powder, then pushed the appropriate sequence of buttons, and watched the contraption do its thing.
Her brother had been so proud of his espresso maker. “It’s just like the ones they use at Starbucks,” he’d said the day he’d had it installed.
She felt a pang of sadness. Ric hadn’t been able to enjoy it for long. Three months after installation, during which he’d been out of town on business more than once, he was gone.
The luscious scent of fresh-brewed coffee filled the enormous kitchen. Lauren didn’t like the room’s sterile whiteness, but she did appreciate the high-end appliances and the extreme convenience the appointments provided. And she did love to cook.
She took her cappuccino cup—the double-shot didn’t fit the thimble-size espresso cups Ric had imported from Italy—to the table. From the jar on the marble countertop, she took a large, anise seed biscotti then plopped in a chair. After a few sips of rich java and crunches of crisp biscotti, she began to feel more like herself.
Not good.
The memories of last night flooded in with a vengeance.
That silver car had gone straight for her. And she did get a good, clear look at the driver.
If that hadn’t been Ric at the wheel, then it had to have been his ghost come back to haunt her.
But she didn’t believe in ghosts. She never had. Not any more than David Latham did. FBI Agent David Latham.
He’d made no secret of his suspicion. But there was nothing she could say. She had no idea how or why Ric—or his ghost, the one that didn’t really exist—would have wanted to run her down.
“Aunt Lauren?”
She shook herself. “I didn’t hear you come into the kitchen, honey. How’d you sleep last night?”
Mark crawled up into her lap. “Good.”
When he laid his head on her shoulder, her heart melted. She gave the Lord silent thanks for the boy’s safety. She didn’t know what she would have done had he been injured last night.
That had haunted her dreams.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“What would you like? Cereal or waffles?”
“Awfuls. With whip cream.”
Lauren smiled. Normally, she would have corrected him, but not today. Today his little-boy talk seemed even more precious than ever.
“Okay, then. Awfuls it is.” She rubbed his dark curls. “And how about juice? Orange or grape?”
“Great’s my favorite.”
She hummed a few bars of the old song about the Purple People Eater. Mark giggled. Just as he always did.
The normalcy of the moment helped set her fears at bay. But she knew it was just a temporary reprieve. Something had happened last night. Something terrible. And she didn’t know why.
But she had to find out.
If not for her sake, then for the sake of the child she loved so much.
“Wanna watch my shows, Aunt Lauren.”
“Sure thing, kiddo.” She grabbed the remote and clicked on the children’s educational program Mark liked. She pulled out ingredients and mixed batter for the waffles. She sprinkled water to test the heat of the electric waffle maker, then spritzed it with nonstick spray, and finally poured the thick mixture onto the distinctive, ridged surface.
The scent of food made her stomach rumble.
As she withdrew a plate from the warming drawer where she’d put it five minutes earlier, the doorbell sang with the Westminster chimes.
“Whozzat?” Mark asked.
“Good question.” Lauren wasn’t expecting company. And no one she knew would just show up so soon after a death in the family.
“Only one way to find out, kiddo.”
Mark nodded, his attention on the television set.
“Stay here, okay?”
He nodded again.
“I’ll be right back.”
“’S okay, Aunt Lauren. Go on.”
She headed toward the front of the house, a smile on her lips.
A smile that died when she looked out the tiny round peephole.
The stranger on the front stoop didn’t exactly give her a case of the warm fuzzies. Although he was well dressed in an expensive-looking charcoal summer-weight wool suit, his hard-set features and brooding gaze alarmed her.
She’d just about decided to pretend she wasn’t home, when the guy rang the bell again. The melodious chimes were followed by pounding.
“I know youse in there,” he said, his voice a low growl. “So open up already.”
With a prayer for protection, Lauren opened the door—but only as far as the chain on the lock would let her.
“Yes?”
The man looked startled. “Oh. It’s you.”
It was her turn to be surprised. “Of course, it’s me. I live here. Who’re you?”
His chin, just shaved but already darkened by the regrowth of heavy beard, jutted. “So where’s your old man?”
“My old man?”
“What’s wrong with youse? Can’t you hear right?” He shook his head. “Where’s Ric? Last time I spoke wid him he told me to be here by ten. And no one can say ah…er…Boris Martinez is ever late.”
A spooky feeling overtook Lauren. Boris Martinez had talked to Ric. And what kind of phony, cooked-up kind of name was Boris Martinez, anyway? Who really was this guy? “You…you talked with Ric?”
He muttered something.
She was glad she didn’t quite catch it.
“That’s what I said, ain’t it? I talked to Ric, and he told me to be here by ten. I’m here, and you ain’t him. So where is he?”
Tears filled her eyes. Too many emotions to identify any one ripped through her. Lauren closed her eyes for a moment, prayed for help, for peace, for this horrid person to leave her alone.
“Ric’s dead, Mr. Martinez.”
That shocked him. After a few moments of slack-jawed surprise, he clamped his mouth shut and narrowed his gaze. “How can he be dead, lady? I just talked to him…oh, not three weeks ago. And I woulda heard if someone’d—” He stopped, cleared his throat. “I woulda heard if something’d happened to him.”
Lauren had had it with her unwanted visitor. “Well, something did happen to him. Three weeks ago, as a matter of fact. And it doesn’t matter whether you heard about it or not. My brother died in a car accident twenty-four days ago, Mr. Martinez. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a lot to do. Goodbye.”
He stuck the pointed toe of his hand-sewn leather shoe in the crack between the door and the frame. “Not so fast, lady. I don’t believe a word you said. Ric DiStefano ain’t dead. And you better not try and pull a fast one on me. He owes me a whole pile of dough. And he ain’t about to stiff me by pretending he’s stiff—you get my drift?”
All she wanted was for him to leave. So she said, “Fine. I’ll be sure to tell him the next time I see him. At the cemetery, when I go put flowers on his grave.”
“We’ll see about that grave thing,” he groused.
Lauren looked down at his fancy footwear, then, with determination and total disgust, she did what she should have done at the start. She shoved her foot against his, dislodged it enough to gain a scant advantage, and shut the door.
Despite the house’s heavy construction and the thick wooden door, she heard his objections all the way to the kitchen.
If he didn’t leave in the next five minutes, she was calling the cops. No matter what.
Because now she realized that the deer-in-the-headlights feeling she’d experienced last night had been no accident. Something was going on. Something dangerous. Something she didn’t like.
And she wasn’t going to just sit and take it.
She was going to find out what was what.
Lauren didn’t know how or why she knew it, but she did know her life depended on what she learned. Worse yet, Mark’s life depended on it.
And no one was going to hurt that little boy.
No matter what.
FOUR
