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Except for Caroline.
She’d been driving the vintage sports car that Vincent Montoya had slammed into.
Caroline had been injured, too, and supposedly lost her memory of not only the accident but that entire fateful night. The so-called amnesia bothered the hell out of Egan. Was she faking it to save one of her rich friends who might have caused the hit-and-run? Or was she covering for herself because she’d been negligent in some way? Egan didn’t know which, but he was almost positive she was covering something.
Almost.
“The police will come inside any minute,” Egan told her. He moved her back into the doorway so that she’d be away from the windows. “Then, I can question you and have them check for trace and prints. We might be able to get something off those shoe impressions and the doorknobs.”
He didn’t want to get too engrossed in processing the crime scene just in case the cops flushed out the intruder and the SOB came running back into the house. That’s the reason Egan kept his service pistol aimed and ready.
“You’re sure you had your security system turned on?” he asked her.
“Of course. Since the murders, I always make sure it’s set. But as I said, it wasn’t working when I came home.” She looked around. “At least nothing appears to have been ransacked. And besides, there wasn’t much to steal since I don’t keep money or expensive jewelry in the house.”
“This person might not have been after stuff,” Egan grumbled.
She touched the highly polished dresser, which was dotted with perfectly aligned silver-framed photos of what appeared to be family members. “Do you think the intruder could have been the person who murdered Vincent Montoya?”
“It’s possible.” More than possible. Likely. Especially since the ritzy neighborhood of Cantara Hills had been virtually crime-free prior to the hit-and-run. But afterward…Well, that was a whole different story.
“Why isn’t Lt. McQuade here?” she asked a moment later. “I figured he’d be the one to come.”
Brody McQuade, the Ranger lieutenant in charge of the Cantara Hills murders. “He’s in California trying to track down a person of interest.”
“Oh. Then what about the other Ranger—Sgt. Keller?” She spoke in a regular voice. Not whispers. And Egan didn’t have to listen hard to that shiny accent to know that she didn’t seem to care for his presence. “He was at the country club earlier. Why didn’t he come?”
“Hayes is in Austin at the crime lab. And before you ask, I’m in charge of this investigation right now, and you’re stuck with me.”
“Stuck with the surly one,” she mumbled. Her chin came up when he glared back at her. “That’s what people around here call you. Brody’s the intense one. Hayes is the chip-on-the-shoulder one.”
Egan’s glare morphed into a frown. “And I got named ‘the surly one’? That’s the best you people could do?”
She nodded as if his you-people insult didn’t bother her in the least. “It suits you.”
Yeah. It did. But for some reason it riled him, coming from her. “You’re the richer one.”
“Excuse me?” She blinked.
Egan tried not to smile at her obvious indignation. “There are three young Cantara Hills socialites involved in this investigation. The ‘rich’ one is your lawyer friend, Victoria Kirkland. You’re the ‘richer’ one. And Taylor Landis, the third socialite, who hosted that infamous Christmas party, is the ‘richest of them all.’”
She gave him a flat look. “How original. That must have required lots of time and mental energy to come up with those.”
“About as much time and energy as it took you and your pals to come up with surly.”
They stared at each other.
There was a sharp rap at the front door, causing both Egan and her to jump a little. But even a little jump for Egan was an embarrassing annoyance and more proof that Caroline Stallings was a distraction he didn’t need or want.
“SAPD,” the man said from outside the door. “We can’t find anyone on the grounds.”
Egan didn’t even bother with profanity—he was past that point. He went to the door and let the two uniformed officers in. Both were drenched from the rain, as were the two security guards behind them. That same drenching rain would likely wash away any tracks or evidence that the intruder had left in the yard.
“There are shoe prints in the bedroom,” Egan informed them, and he hitched his thumb in that direction. “It looks as if that’s the point of entry and escape. I want that entire area processed.”
The taller Hispanic cop nodded. “I’ll get our CSI guys out here right away.” He paused and looked at Caroline. “What about her? Does she need medical attention?”
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
Egan slipped his pistol back into his leather shoulder holster. “Secure the crime scene,” he instructed the officer. “Check for signs of forcible entry and a cut phone line. Someone probably tampered with the security system, too. And let me know the minute the CSI guys arrive. Ms. Stallings has to show me a thing she found in her car, and I’ll question her about the intruder while I’m doing that.”
“Oh, yes. The thing,” Caroline said as if she’d forgotten all about it. “My car’s in the garage. This way.” She led him through the foyer and back into the kitchen—all thirty to forty feet of it. She slid the knife back into the empty slot of a granite butcher’s block.
“You’re sure you didn’t see this person in your house?” Egan proceeded.
“No. Not even a shadow.”
Egan kept at it. “But you heard a sound. Footsteps, maybe?”
“I’m not sure what I heard. Movement, yes. But not footsteps per se.”
Too bad. The sound of footsteps could have given him possible information about the size of the intruder. Since they were nearing the solarium and the garage, Egan shifted his focus a little. “What exactly is this thing you found in your car?”
“A little black plastic box about the size of a man’s wallet. It fell out from beneath my dash while I was driving home tonight.”
That didn’t immediately alarm him. “And you don’t think it’s part of the car?” Though he couldn’t imagine what part of the car that would be, exactly.
She lifted her shoulder. “I guess it could be. But it’d been secured with duct tape.”
Now, the alarms came. She wasn’t the sort of woman to buy anything that required the use of duct tape. “Did you open this box?”
“No. It fell as I was pulling into my garage so I let it stay put and went inside. I’d left my cell phone at the restaurant in the country club, and I was going to use my house phone to call someone about the box, but then I heard the intruder.”
So, she’d had two surprises in one night. Were they connected? “What do you think this box could be?”
“Maybe some kind of eavesdropping equipment,” she readily supplied. “My family and I are in the antiques business. Competition is a lot more aggressive than you’d think, and I’m within days of closing a multimilliondollar deal.”
That silenced some of those alarms in Egan’s head. “So you think your competition could have planted a listening device to get insider information?”
“It’s possible.”
Egan followed her through the massive solarium. More lights flared on as they walked through, and those lights gave him a too-good view of his hostess’s backside. In that short black skirt, it was hard not to notice that particular part of her anatomy. Ditto for her long legs, which looked even longer because of the three-inch heels she was wearing. She was no waif, that was for sure. Caroline Stallings had a woman’s body with plenty of curves.
“The garage is through here,” she explained, and she reached for a door.
Egan caught on to her arm and pulled her behind him.
There was renewed alarm in her eyes. “You think the intruder could still be around?”
“No. But I don’t want you to take any unnecessary chances. I want you alive and well because if you ever get your memory back, we might finally be able to figure out who’s behind these killings.”
She made a noncommittal sound. “And that’s why you set up the appointment for the day after tomorrow for me to see the psychiatrist. The one who specializes in recovering lost memories from traumatic incidents. She wants to try some new drug on me.”
Egan didn’t think it was his imagination that Caroline was upset about that. Probably because it threw off her daily massage schedule or something. But he didn’t care one bit about inconveniencing her. He only wanted the truth about what’d really happened the night of that hit-and-run.
“The psychiatrist also wants me to keep a journal of my dreams,” she added. “I was up at three in the morning writing down things that I’m sure won’t make a bit of sense to her. I just don’t think this’ll do any good.”
“You never know,” he mumbled. “It might be the key to the truth.” But even a long shot like this was a move in the right direction.
He preceded her into the garage. The lights were still on, and there were two cars parked inside. A vintage white Mercedes convertible, top up, beaded with rainwater, and a 1966 candy-apple-red Mustang with a coat of dust on it. What Egan didn’t see were any signs of the person who’d left those tracks in her bedroom.
“The box thing is in the Mercedes,” she volunteered, stepping ahead of Egan. She, too, made vigilant glances all around them. But the vigilance didn’t seem necessary because no one jumped out at them, and no one was lurking between the vehicles.
She opened the passenger’s door and pointed to the object on the floor. Yep. It was a small black box all right, and it had strips of black duct tape dangling off the sides.
“Like I said, I think it’s an eavesdropping device,” she commented.
And she reached for it.
Her fingers were less than an inch away when Egan practically tackled her so he could snag her wrist. In theory, it was a good idea because he didn’t want her to smear any prints that might be on the box. But that snagged wrist and his forward momentum sent them sprawling onto the passenger’s seat.
Caroline landed face-first. He landed with his face in her peach-scented, shoulder-length hair. And another part of him, a brainless part of him, hit against her firm butt. Egan grunted from the contact.
Her body nearly distracted him from hearing the tiny, soft sounds.
Clicks.
But Egan shook his head, mentally amending that. Not clicks.
Ticks.
The sounds were synchronized. One right behind the other. Marking off time.
Or rather counting it down.
Hell.
“Get out of here!” he shouted, dragging Caroline from the seat. “It’s a bomb.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_1082ee88-f282-5843-b21e-98f14135bee2)
Before Egan Caldwell’s words even registered in Caroline’s head, he already had hold of her and was running toward the door with her in tow.
Mercy, was that black box really a bomb?
She’d heard the ticking sound, of course. Not while she’d been in the car earlier when the engine was running. But now—when Egan and she had tumbled onto the seat. She seriously doubted that an eavesdropping device would have a timer on it.
The adrenaline jolted through her, and Caroline somehow managed to run in her unsensible business heels. Probably thanks to Egan. He had a death grip on her left wrist and practically plowed them through the door that led to a narrow mudroom and then the solarium on the back of her house.
“Evacuate now—there’s a bomb in the garage!” he shouted. Which, in turn, caused more shouts from the cops and the security guards.
All of them began to run. Egan didn’t stop, either. He hauled her through the kitchen, then the living room, and they exited through the front door, on the opposite side of the house from the garage. The cops were ahead of them. The two civilian guards, behind.
The rain was coming down harder now and lashed at them like razors. So did the blinding blue strobe lights from the police cruiser parked at the end of her cobblestone drive. It didn’t hinder Egan. He barreled down the front porch steps with her and made a beeline to the driveway, getting her even farther away from the garage.
“Call the bomb squad,” Egan shouted over his shoulder to one of the guards who was sprinting along behind them. He glanced around through the rain and the night until his attention landed on the other guard. “Keep everyone away from the house.”
Because the place might blow up.
That “bottom line” realization sent Caroline’s heart to her knees. Someone might get hurt. Also, her house might soon be destroyed, and there was apparently nothing she could do to stop it.
But who had done this?
A car bomb certainly seemed like overkill for an overly zealous competitor in the antiques business. Sweet heaven. Had the intruder also been the one to plant that bomb? And if so, why?
Of course, she couldn’t discount the four previous murders. All people she’d known. All of them involved in some way with the City Board, of which she was a member.
Was she now the killer’s next target?
Her legs and thighs began to cramp from the exertion. She wasn’t much of a runner, and the heels didn’t help. Caroline was wheezing for breath and her heart was hammering in her chest by the time they made it to the end of her drive.
Egan stopped, finally, and pulled her in front of him. Actually, he put her against the wet stone pylon that held the open wrought-iron gate in place. He got right behind her, pushing her face-first against the stones.
“Don’t look back,” he warned. “And shelter your eyes just in case that damn thing goes off.”
That’s when she realized he was sheltering her. It wasn’t personal; Caroline was sure of that. She’d seen the disdain in his eyes. Sgt. Egan Caldwell was merely doing his job, and right now, she was the job.
“You really think the bomb’s about to explode?” Caroline asked.
“It’s a possibility, but I don’t believe the device is large enough to create a blast that’ll reach us here. At least, I hope not,” he added in a mumble.
But the officers apparently didn’t believe that because one of them began to sprint in the direction of her nearest neighbor. “I’ll have them evacuate,” the Hispanic cop relayed to Egan.
Mercy. Now her neighbor and best friend, Taylor Landis, was perhaps in danger.
Caroline wiped her hand over her face to sling off some of the rainwater. She wished she could do the same to the adrenaline and fear because it was starting to overwhelm her. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“If we have a vigilante killer on our hands, it doesn’t have to make sense,” he reminded her.
Yes. She’d heard that theory. Or rather the gossip. That Vincent Montoya might have been murdered by a vigilante who maybe wanted to tie up all loose ends of the hit-and-run.
“I can understand why a vigilante would go after Montoya,” she mumbled. “But why try to kill me?”
“You got an answer for that?” Egan asked.
Since that sounded like some kind of challenge, she looked back at him. She didn’t have to look far. He was there. Right over her soaking wet shoulder, and the overhead security light clearly showed his rain-streaked face.
Surly, beyond doubt.
