Secretive Stranger Read online

  “Do you know anything about the fancy technology my brother set up in his place?”

  “Like what?” She forgot being spooked. The groan in his voice was just funny. Pretty clearly, Cord wasn’t the kind of man who tolerated frustration well-or enjoyed asking anyone for help.

  She identified the crisis two seconds after entering Jon’s apartment.

  She’d encountered precisely the same problem the first time she babysat for Caviar. The light switch on the living room east wall didn’t turn on lights. It had been rewired to turn on Ravel’s “Bolero,” close the living room drapes, and start the gas-lit fireplace.

  She hiked across the room to the light switch by the drapes, hit it.

  The seductive music quit. The gas-lit fire fizzled out. Only the drapes stayed closed.

  “What the hell was that?” Cord murmured.

  “You don’t recognize a staged seduction scene when you see it?”

  He scraped a hand through his hair. “Um…to tell you the truth, no.”

  The thought seeped into her mind that Cord really wouldn’t stage anything artificial or contrived with a woman. He wouldn’t need to. But she shifted her attention back on track. “You had to know your brother loved gadgets. I always wondered why he didn’t make his living as an inventor. Good grief, what’s that smell?”

  Normally, she’d have waited for an answer before charging into someone else’s space, but it was fairly obvious that Cord-no matter how smart-was way, way over his head. No one had been inside the place since the police investigation, and naturally their prime concern hadn’t been housekeeping. She had a key, but since Caviar was already safe at her place, she figured she didn’t have a reason-or right-to use it.

  The bottom line, though, was a symphony of ghastly smells emanating from the kitchen. The sources were easy enough to identify-an uncleaned litter box, some garbage rotting in the disposal and trash, and then there was the opened refrigerator door, which Cord had obviously been trying to clean out.

  “That was where I was working,” he said. “Obviously, I couldn’t do anything else until I cleaned out the rotten fruit and meat, and it was pretty disgusting, so I threw open the window and then walked into the other room for some fresh air. Only, I turned on the living room light-”

  “And immediately got stripper music,” she said wryly.

  He washed a hand over his face. “Look. The smells have to go. And then the place has to be completely aired out before I can pretend to tackle anything else. I don’t suppose you’d be up for a walk somewhere? Lunch?”

  “I don’t think…” But she hesitated. “You want to talk about your brother,” she murmured compassionately.

  It was his turn to hesitate. “Yeah. Of course I do.”

  “Okay then. We’ll just take a quick break, all right?”

  “Right.”

  Cord hadn’t been lying. He needed fresh air, thinking time away from his brother’s place would help to clear out the cobwebs in his head.

  More by instinct than intention, he steered Sophie at a brisk pace toward Georgetown. The hike down Pennsylvania Avenue was as peaceful as a tornado drill, between nonstop sirens and barking horns and the occasional thrown-up barrier when a fancy limo or security entourage took over the streets. Oddly, all that craziness struck Cord as comforting. It was just a status quo day around D.C.

  What distinctly wasn’t status quo was the woman striding next to him.

  Looking at the surface facts, Sophie was everything the cops had led him to expect.

  She knew his brother’s apartment, knew all the details of Jon’s corny seduction setup. Very well.

  She was jumpy around him, the way a guilty person was jumpy.

  And she was so damned easy to be with that he had to believe she could con anyone. God knew, she’d gotten him to readily talk, when Cord had never been a chatterer with anyone.

  Of course, he did have stuff he could naturally ask her. “I hate to admit it,” he muttered, “but I’m downright confused by my brother’s place. I’m not a techno-innocent.” An understatement, not that he was going to get into security programs and codes with her. “I can usually get around any computer system. But I don’t know what Jon’s interest was in all that…gadgetry.”

  Her chuckle was warmer than sunlight. “I take it you’d never been in your brother’s apartment before?”

  “No.”

  “But surely you knew he was a hard-core tinkerer. He seemed to spend his insomnia time inventing stuff that had no use to anyone-except him.”

  Damn, but she forced him to chuckle now. “Yeah, in a way. I mean, as a kid, no clock or watch was safe around Jon. He loved inventing things, putting spare parts together and coming up with god-knows-what. But I’m finding switches and locks that seem to go nowhere in that apartment.”

  “Even worse, because he was renting. I’m afraid you’ll never get your damage deposit back,” she murmured.

  By then they’d reached the Potomac. The river was the color of pewter, the skies a matching moody gray. Yet, in spite of the gloom, in spite of the stress surrounding Jon’s death, Cord found his spirits lifting from just being around her. Since they’d walked this far, he chose a restaurant he was familiar with-a second-story bar, with a view over the river. She wanted a hot mug of tea; he ordered a tall-necked amber.

  “I’m not worried about the damage deposit. I’m just…trying to understand what was going on in his life.”

  “It doesn’t sound as if you and Jon were very close.”

  “Sure we were. As a close as a cougar and a fox raised in the same den.”

  “Uh-oh,” she murmured, and had him smiling again.

  He was honest. No reason not to be. “I keep trying to think back to something Jon and I saw eye to eye on. Maybe we could agree the sky was blue on some summer days, but that’s about the end of it.”

  She cocked her head, her gaze compassionate. “So you really must feel stuck, having to deal with all his business and stuff.”

  “I do. But there’s no one else to do it, so that’s that.” He took a long pull from the bottle. “Are you from a big family?”

  “Yes and no. Originally there were five of us-my mom and dad, and three girls. I was the baby.” She dropped her eyes from his. “Unfortunately, there was a fire when I was around five. We not only lost our parents in one fell swoop, but for a long time we lost each other. No one could foster the three of us together, so we were separated.”

  “That’s not just rough. That’s god-awful,” he said quietly.

  “I have to say…it was. But I was fostered out to a really terrific couple-older-both professors at Georgetown. It was a quiet, safe home in every way. Couldn’t have been a more calming situation for a terrorized little kid. They were wonderful to me.”

  “Are they still around?”

  “I only wish. But cancer took Mary a few years ago, and William had a stroke the next year. They were both past sixty when they took me. Anyway, my oldest sister-Cate-never stopped looking for the two of us. She found me first, then Lily. We may not all live in the same city, but we’re close enough, phone talk or e-mail talk all the time.” She lifted her eyes, “Which is partly why I’m sorry you weren’t close with your brother. Family’s everything when the road gets rough. As a little girl, I used to have nightmares about being abandoned, lost without anyone. Finding my sisters again has been so great…”

  Cord fell silent, trying to imagine a sedate, older couple taking in a rambunctious five-year-old…and what that must have been like for Sophie, to not only lose her parents, but then her sisters. Yet again, he couldn’t fathom that anyone with that background could turn into a money-grubbing, ruthless woman who’d pair with his brother. No matter how he turned those cards around, they just didn’t play. If she was a hussy who blackmailed people for sport, he’d eat snails.

  More complicated yet, the more he spent time with her, the more he felt an electric, emphatic pull toward her. He wanted to hear more. T
o look more. To touch.

  His grip tightened around the long-necked bottle of beer. “Sophie, you were around Jon enough. Can you tell me what his job was, how he made a living?”

  “His job-no. I mean, he used to laugh and say he was a bureaucrat, then just drop it. It’s not as if I was in Jon’s confidence. The only reason I knew some things was because…well, because he was gone so much. He needed someone around for Caviar, to be there to pick up packages, his mail, that kind of thing. It wasn’t one-sided. Whenever I’d leave for the weekend to see my sisters or something like that, he offered to watch over my place the same way.”

  Cord figured he was going to have to get blunter, or they’d never get down to any brass tacks. “The picture I’ve gotten…Jon had a lot of women friends.”

  Color climbed her cheeks. “Yes. I’d say more than ‘a lot.’”

  “Yet you were always the one he asked to watch the place when he was gone?”

  She nodded. “I guess that does seem weird, doesn’t it? But actually, he really didn’t have women at the apartment all that often. Or if he did, they didn’t tend to stay the night.” She suddenly tensed up. “Not that I was watching his every move-”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest you were. I’m just trying to understand anything I can, about his life, about what happened to him. Anything you could tell me would help.”

  She relaxed again. “Well, as odd as this sounds…I don’t think your brother particularly trusted the women he got involved with. I mean, he never seemed to turn down a party. Always seemed to have a good time. But almost no one came back to the apartment more than once. He was kind of like Caviar. Go out and howl in the night, but come back to nest someplace alone when he was tired.”

  “But he trusted you,” Cord pressed.

  “I believe he did…but I think for obvious reasons. He looked at me and just didn’t see anyone particularly…interesting. Not for him. So we made good neighbors. Seriously good neighbors, actually.”

  Cord stared at her. She didn’t see herself as interesting or sexually appealing to Jon? Or interesting to a man in general, her tone had implied. With that skin, those eyes, that soft red mouth?

  For Pete’s sake, was she a fabulous fake or the real thing? An award-winning actress or just what she seemed like-the genuine article?

  A complex, interesting, and damn beautiful woman.

  He spun that word beautiful in his mind for a moment. God knew, it wasn’t his first impression of her. At first sight, he’d summed her up as frumpy. Lumpy. Dorky.

  “What?” she asked warily, when she realized he was staring at her.

  “You took off your glasses,” he said.

  “Oh. I just forget sometimes.” Immediately, she popped them back on her nose.

  But now he peered closer. They sure as hell looked like clear lenses to him. A disguise. To hide those damn incredible eyes.

  Cord resisted the urge to pull out his hair. Whether or not he could trust Sophie should have been clear by now. In the ultraquiet work he’d done for the government, no one had ever doubted his judgment. But then came Zoe, of course. Life-and-death decisions seemed a whole lot easier than any conclusions he could draw about women.

  And in the meantime, she’d finished her tea; he’d sure as hell finished his beer, and he had no more answers now than when he’d taken this break.

  When he reached for the bill, Sophie leaped to her feet as fast as he did. “I need to get back, too,” she said swiftly.

  “I never meant to steal this much of your Sunday afternoon.”

  “I offered to help,” she reminded him.

  “I know you did. And to tell the truth…” He hesitated. “When we get back, could I ask for a couple more minutes of your time? Not a ton. I’d just appreciate your running through the place, see if you’re familiar with any more of my brother’s fancy gadgets. I’d just as soon not set off any unintentional alarms.”

  She smiled. “Sure. In fact…if no one showed you Jon’s security setup already, I can do that, too.”

  A frisky breeze nipped at their cheeks on the walk back. Sophie kept up with his brisk stride, as if she liked a fast pace as much as he did, but Cord noted that she stayed a few inches apart, her hands tucked in her pockets, as if making a point not to encourage any physical contact. Still, she kept shooting him quiet glances.

  Both of them were probably doing the same thing. Cord suspected she had her own reasons for sizing him up, measuring who he was-especially because she obviously didn’t have too high an opinion of his brother.

  Once back at the Foggy Bottom brownstone, she came in, as asked, but she made a point of not shedding her jacket-just started a free-flow information spill. It wasn’t babbling. She really knew a lot about Jon’s apartment.

  “The thing is, Cord, a hundred years ago, this building was a single-family residence-so my half of the upstairs isn’t a mimic of your brother’s. Jon’s side is bigger. But it’s more than that. The odd shape of Jon’s kitchen is probably because it was once a bedroom…”

  He’d been through the place before, obviously, but Sophie made him see the layout with new eyes. Jon may have picked an old place because architecturally, there were more ways to hide things. The kitchen may have once been a bedroom, but it was predictably stuffed with new appliances and gadgets. The red-and-black bathroom had been outfitted with a towel warmer, a disappearing steam machine, a cupboard that revealed a chilled square-for drinks? Food? God knew.

  Still, past the living room and kitchen and bedroom was the only beyond-weird room in the flat. Cord stood in the doorway, hands on hips, feeling as if he’d just stepped into a sci-fi setting. Sophie ambled right in. “I never saw Jon’s bedroom, so I don’t know what’s in there. But this was your brother’s…sandbox, so to speak. The room where he played. And it’s the room he told me most about, because when he was gone for a night or two, he worried about the security in here.”

  Cord knew computers and security setups, but nothing remotely like this. Not for a private citizen, anyway. A square platform desk took up the room’s center, covered with four functioning computers and symbiotic hardware. Writhing snakes of electric cords tangled every which way. Beneath the single window was a long bench table, obviously a worktable of some kind.

  “No,” Sophie said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “You don’t want to touch that picture,” she warned him.

  “Why?” For some insane reason, Jon had hung an incongruous and tasteless picture of a naked Mona Lisa on the inside wall. Sophie suddenly showed up beside him, touched “the smile”-and all the computers abruptly when blank.

  She touched the eyes in the painting, and throughout the room, locks turned on all the desk and file drawers.

  And then she chuckled at Cord’s expression. “I know. I can’t imagine why Jon did it, either. He just seemed to have fun with this kind of thing. He was always afraid I’d come in to feed Caviar when he was gone and I’d touch something by mistake.”

  She motioned to a specific tile in the checkerboard floor. “If you step on that square, you’ll set off an alarm in the kitchen. Caviar’s done it a few times, although I think Cav’s figured out most of Jon’s booby traps by now. You see that weird little square quilt on the wall? It really is a quilt, but if you poke it, it opens up to a mini bar, with drinks and glasses. It shares the same wall as the kitchen, and he put this in so he didn’t have to walk all the way around the hall to get a drink and put in his dirty dishes. Jon was on the lazy side. And then…”

  She shifted past him, leading him back toward the kitchen. “I know you’ve already seen this room, but this drawer here-” She pulled at the latch, revealing the usual catchall utensil drawer everybody had, the one that held a hammer and screwdriver and flashlight and all the junk that refused to belong anywhere else. “The drawer doesn’t have a false bottom, but see? There’s a row of three buttons here. The first shoots the dead bolts on the front and back doors. The middle one shuts
off all the lights in the house. Pretty silly, if you ask me. Why would you want to be standing in the kitchen in a dark house? Anyway. The third one…um, shoot. Your brother only told me about this stuff once, and I never thought about it again. I forgot what Jon told me the third button was for.”

  She glanced up with an impish smile, clearly wanting to share humor at his brother’s idiosyncratic ideas.

  Cord was inches away from her at that second. Inches away from that smile, those silly glasses. Inches away from the woman who’d been confounding him from the minute he met her. From the very beginning, he was uncertain whether she was saint or sinner…angel or thief…a truly fascinating woman or a manipulative sociopath.

  But it was about time he found out.

  So maybe a kiss wasn’t alchemy. Maybe there was no miracle test to definitively separate the truth from the lies. But he knew something definitive the instant his mouth dropped on hers.

  He lifted his head with a frown. She lifted her head with the same perplexed frown.

  Some instinct made him pluck the glasses from her nose, set them on the counter, then go back for another kiss. This one involved tongues and teeth and pressure. This one involved framing her head in his hands and closing his eyes.

  Her mouth was softer than butter. The way she stilled reminded him of a doe in a buck’s sights. She went soft-still, worried-still…yet she didn’t bolt. Cautiously, carefully, her lips returned the pressure, as if she were sampling him no differently than he, as he was getting a serious, deep taste of her.

  And then her arms reached out, reached up, the bulk of her jacket making a whiskery sound when her hands locked behind his neck. A groan, helpless and vulnerable, shuddered from the very back of her throat. Suddenly she was up on tiptoe, kissing him back, offering her mouth, her tongue. She was like…a firecracker. It was as if a fuse suddenly lit, a spark that suddenly flared into a female combustible firestorm in three seconds flat.