Page 26

Squaring her shoulders in resolve, she stepped inside and closed the door.

“Here.” Connor pressed the flashlight into her hands. “Lead me to the office.”

“It’s in the basement.” She bit her lip. “There’s a separate entrance. I should have told you?—”

“I saw it already. This was the easiest lock. Lead on.”

Lexi made her way through the kitchen, feeling like a thief in the night, which was exactly what she was, come to think of it.

“Here,” she said when they reached the basement door, and she pushed it open. She took a step downward, only to gasp in surprise when Connor’s arm snagged her waist.

“Easy,” he whispered. “I don’t want you to fall.”

She closed her eyes, resisting the impulse to lean back against him, or tip her head sideways so she could press her ear to those lips whispering so close.

Instead, she took a deep breath and moved on.

More slowly now, though. And instead of worrying about being guilty of breaking and entering, she was wondering why he’d be so concerned about her falling if he didn’t care about her.

And wondering if he felt the same chills and tingles of awareness that she did whenever they touched.

She reached the bottom. He let go of her. Her disappointed sigh was involuntary, and he couldn’t have missed it. He was still too close. She turned left at the base of the stairs, moving the flashlight’s beam around until it landed on the office door.

“That’s it.”

He went to the door, tried the knob. “Shine the light on the lock.”

She did. This time he didn’t bother with the tools. A simple credit card maneuver that even she was familiar with, and the door surrendered as the first one had. It swung slowly into darkness even more inky than that filling the rest of the house.

“There are no windows in here. You can safely turn the light on.”

He did, filling the square oak-paneled office in light.

“That helps.” Then he turned slowly, scanning the desk’s many coffee stains and uneven stacks of envelopes and scattered notes on scraps of paper.

He turned to the filing cabinet and pulled a drawer open.

“Hey, what do you know? Unlocked. Let’s see, Smith, Stanton, there we are, Stoltz, Elliot.

” The file folder slid from the drawer with an ominous hiss.

Lexi stiffened, wondering if its contents would shatter everything she’d ever believed about her father. Or vindicate him, as she’d been insisting all along they would.

Connor set the folder on the desk and, to her surprise, stepped away. She looked up and met his steady gaze. “Go ahead,” he told her. “He was your father. You have every right to look first.”

Nodding, she pulled out the desk chair and sat down.

Then, hands trembling, she flipped open the folder.

Her father’s will sat on top. Beneath that, the letter he’d left behind describing the funeral arrangements he preferred.

The cremation. She flipped more pages, found more papers and finally came to a copy of the one she’d signed, giving Jim McManus permission to retrieve the contents of the safe-deposit box for her.

There was a handwritten note on the bottom. It said simply, “Safe.”

She read the word aloud, lifting her head slowly, turning it until she met Connor’s eager stare.

He frowned. “Safe?”

She nodded, lifting the paper to him, showing him the notation. Connor scanned the room, stopping when his gaze fell on a painting of dogs playing poker on the wall to the left. He went to it and lifted it down, revealing the small wall safe the painting had been concealing.

“Oh.” If the single word conveyed a wealth of disappointment, it was no wonder. Lexi had been hoping to find the truth once and for all tonight. “I guess we’re out of luck.”

“Sweetheart,” he said, and there was a gleam in his eyes. “You’re forgetting how I got my nickname.”

She widened her eyes and leapt to her feet. “You can’t ? — ”

“I won’t hurt anything but the safe, and we’ll reimburse him for that.”

She shook her head. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Come on, Lexi. What’s more important? Finding and ending a WMD that could wipe out millions, or the chance we might mess up some lawyer’s office?” He pulled a roll of duct tape and a plastic grocery bag from his duffle, then stood up on a chair to cover the smoke detector with them.

“It’s just not …” She’d been turning in a circle out of sheer frustration as she spoke, and then she stopped. “Look! The light on the answering machine is blinking.”

“So?”

“Well, if we listen to the messages, we might find out they’re on their way home right now. We might find out they’ll be here later tonight or early tomorrow. And if that’s the case, we don’t really need to do this.” She turned to face him, lifting her hands. “Do we?”

He grimaced. His chin fell to his chest. But he got off his chair, reached past her, and pressed the playback button.

Beep.

“Hi, Grandma! Hi, Grandpa!” said the child’s voice, bubbling with excitement. “Mommy says we’re coming to visit you for Christmas!”

“Ah, God …” Connor gripped the edge of the desk as if he’d sink to the floor without it.

The little voice went on, but Lexi hit the button to stop it. Then she turned to him, clasped his shoulders and searched his tormented face. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

His face was a grimace of agony, eyes closed tightly, lips thin and pale. “I will be,” he whispered. “Just as soon as I kill that murdering bastard.”

She took a step closer, hearing pain beyond the anger in his voice, wanting to hold him, to comfort him. But he turned away from her, opened his canvas bag and dug around inside. Then he was playing with something that looked like clay.

His entire countenance was meant to warn her away. She couldn’t reach him in that place where his pain sent him, so she didn’t even try.

He pressed his clay stuff to the safe and stuck little probes at the end of some wire, into it.

Then he unrolled more wire from a spool as he stepped backward through the room, backing right out the office door, motioning for her to come with him.

When she was out, he closed the door with the wire running underneath it.

Taking a small, electronic-looking device from his pack, he attached the ends of the wires to it, then held it in one hand.

He used his other hand to push her behind him.

Then he moved a knob on the device, and there was a firecracker-like pop in the office.

It made her jump, but that was all. For a bomb, it hadn’t seemed too terrible.

“Stay here.”

She did. When he opened the door, she smelled the heat and saw faint tendrils of smoke.

He went back inside the office, and a few minutes later, the light went off, and he emerged with his little rucksack, a thick manila envelope, and the flashlight.

Behind him she saw the safe neatly closed with the painting once again hanging in front of it.

Nothing else was out of place. He’d even uncovered the smoke detector.

He aimed the flashlight’s beam on the handwriting across the front of the envelope. “Stoltz.”

“This is it,” she said, and her mouth went dry.

“Maybe.” Connor tucked the envelope inside his coat, reached to take her hand and started up the stairs. “We’ll read it when we get back.”

Those words filled Lexi’s soul with an inexplicable dread.

He didn’t just want, anymore. He needed.

Dammit, when she touched him, she reached past the grief and guilt and bloodstains on his soul.

Her very presence soothed the ache. Just looking at her eased the torture he’d lived with since the bombing.

And he was getting used to that. He’d almost grabbed her when he’d heard that little boy’s voice on the outdated answering machine.

He’d almost wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair.

Like she was his refuge. Like she could make it all right.

Like if he only held her close enough, long enough, he’d find salvation. Redemption.

It was so damned ridiculous it was almost laughable.

Only Romano wasn’t laughing. There was no room in his life for anything like this. No room for her. Only vengeance. Lexi Stoltz would take up too much space. She’d shove vengeance right out of his soul and fill it with her own brand of goodness instead, if he let her. He knew she would.

He couldn’t let that happen. He had to resist with everything in him, and he had to get away from her.

One more night, he vowed. Because tonight he’d find the truth and tonight he’d figure out a way to get Lexi to safety. Far away from him. Then he’d deal with White.

That voice, the precious voice on the answering machine had reminded him why he was here, what his job was. Thank God for that voice.

The house was warm when they returned. He found he was beginning to like the place.

Somehow, she’d taken a cold, oversized log monstrosity and made it cozy.

Cheerful. Even comforting. The fireplace was trimmed in darkly stained woodwork.

The sofa was an overstuffed teddy bear of brown velour that hugged you when you sat on it.

He stood beside her nearly naked Christmas tree, looking out the big windows at the moonlit night.

It was too bad he had to keep his priorities in line. He might enjoy spending more time here.

And who the hell was he kidding? It had nothing to do with the house or the setting. It had everything to do with Lexi.

The envelope was clasped in his hands. He tore it open and pulled out a leather-bound book. And when he looked closer, he saw that it was a journal. There was nothing else.

Well, maybe the formula was in the book. He wouldn’t give up hope just yet. He opened the cover, then paused, feeling her gaze on him as surely as he would feel her touch.

Lexi stood across the room, near the fire. Her wide brown eyes filled with more fear than he’d ever seen in them.

He closed the cover. “Maybe you ought to read it first.” He held it out to her.

She came forward, her legs none too steady, and extended a hand that trembled as it closed on the supple leather. The way she looked at that diary in her hands, he thought she half expected it to grow teeth and bite her arm off.

She dragged her eyes upward, away from the dreaded book, to his face. “I will. Not yet, though.”

“Lexi—”

“Please. I need some time.”

“We don’t have time,” he told her. Her brown eyes pleaded with him, and his granite heart turned to mush.

“We can’t leave until the roads are cleared anyway, can we? We used about all the gas in the snowmobile.”

He lowered his head. “They could be cleared momentarily.”

“If they are, we’ll leave then and I’ll read on the way.

” She sighed heavily. “I’ve been through more in the past few days than I’ve had to deal with in a lifetime, Connor.

I need a little normalcy to bolster me. I can’t just wade into that diary without something.

A hot bath. A decent meal. A glass of wine.

That’s all I’m asking for. Surely we have time for that. ”

Connor fell into those velvety brown eyes and figured it would be as hard for White to reach them via snow-blocked roads as it would be for them to leave. “Go ahead, get your normalcy fix. The book will wait.”