Her skin was deathly white, except for a vivid scratch along one cheek. He couldn’t see her eyes. She was looking at her palms intently as if she read the future there.
Maybe she did.
In which case he was fucked.
Ben squatted in front of her. Ran a finger lightly across the graze on her cheek, then settled his hands on either side of her legs on the couch.
She slipped her hands between her clenched knees and raised her gaze to meet his. Expecting tears, his heart kicked into reverse when he was nailed with suspicion.
“What were you doing there?”
Oh, shit.
Ben’s jaw locked. He had no cover story worked out. Hadn’t thought he’d need one. “I took a walk, heard a noise.”
“No. No, you didn’t.” The blue of her eyes glowed. “I barely made a sound. I—I couldn’t…”
Silence grew thick and tasted like deceit. He couldn’t stand it any longer. Scrubbing his hands over his face he stood and moved away. Jesus. So much for coming to the rescue. Now he was the one being interrogated. Verbal gymnastics had saved his ass on a couple of occasions, but his pals in Colombia hadn’t exactly been rocket scientists.
Leaning a shoulder against the wooden mantle, he picked up a framed black-and-white photograph of a man cuddling a little girl. Behind that another photo in a broken frame, of a woman in a caftan in a colorful marketplace. He fingered the pictures, searching for a story.
“I was in the bar. I heard Mackenzie bad-mouthing you.” He watched her in the mirror above the fireplace.
Lips pursed, she avoided his gaze and rubbed her thumbs rhythmically one over the other. She didn’t look like any other criminal he’d ever seen.
His voice dropped to the level of confession, and he wished to God he had enough faith left for absolution. “So I followed the guy to teach him a lesson.”
Her eyes rose to meet his. “You wanted to fight with Duncan? Why?” Her voice sounded fragile. “Because you felt guilty about how you acted after we had sex?”
“I was a prick.”
Jesus.
Even though she was a suspect, he’d been a jerk.
Lifting her head, she met his gaze in the mirror. “Yes, you were.” Her voice firmed up. Cement hard. “And believe me, you are not alone in the male population.”
Ouch.
She held up her hand as he opened his mouth to protest, the expression on her face emotionless and remote.
“You were right about this morning. I was needy and you were there.” The catch in her voice drove another nail home. “It won’t happen again.”
Rejection slammed into him, and he fixed a blank mask over his features to hide the unexpected jolt. Sorcha Logan was a criminal. He needed to remember that.
“Since I met you I’ve stumbled across a dead man, my equipment has been sabotaged, my uncle’s van stolen, my house broken into, and my best friend and I have both been attacked.”
He closed his mouth with the audible snap of teeth. They weren’t his crimes. He’d saved her life, for Christ’s sake. “None of that has got anything do with me.” His voice shook. Maybe because he’d played her from the start? Maybe because he’d slept with his chief suspect and, God help him, he wanted to do it again?
“Well, you definitely added to the joy by making me feel like a cheap whore.”
A whore?
“I didn’t mean for you to feel that way.” He just had a weakness for hot blondes with incredible legs—and if he kept telling himself that, maybe eventually he’d believe it. Even now his body craved more, intensifying the self-disgust that filled him.
He fisted his hands and kept his mouth shut. He had to stay away from her, emotionally and physically. He had a job to do.
Sorcha’s eyes were swollen and red from weeping. Not pretty, but it didn’t diminish her beauty, or her strength. She leaned forward and rested her chin on her hands, long hair spilling nearly to the floor, shining like moonlight by the light of the fire. Half circles shadowed her eyes and she looked more than physically exhausted. She looked emotionally shattered.
Ben was at a loss as to what to say. He’d made more mistakes during this operation than during five years in South America.
“I don’t need this…” She rotated her hands in the air. “You blowing hot and cold all the time. I don’t need a man. And I certainly don’t need you watching out for me.”
“Without me you’d be—”
“I know what I’d be!” She leaped to her feet, then staggered, clasping her head in her hands.
Panic made his heart race as he grabbed her and lowered her to the couch.
“What is it?” He ran his hands over her skull, delved deep into her hair and she yelped as he discovered a large bump. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”
She flinched. “It’s none of your bloody business.” The fight went out of her and she sagged back onto the couch, closing her eyes. She suddenly looked like the woman who’d lain in his bed that morning, soft and pliant as honey on a summer’s day. But when she opened her eyes, they were as forbidding as the deep.
He moved away from her, tried to put some distance between his job and his emotions. She was a drug trafficker, with more money in an offshore bank account than he’d ever see in his
lifetime, and she’d lied about it. But the cracks were starting to show. The strain was beginning to etch itself into the blue of her eyes.
“I want you to go.” Her voice crackled and tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. “Now, Ben.”
The tears reminded him of his mother after a very bad day.
If he pushed harder she might break, but he just couldn’t do it. Call him a fool, but after everything that happened today, he could not watch her shatter.
He turned on his heel and closed the door behind him with a quiet snick. Failure made his limbs leaden. He raised his face to the hoary moon that watched from the skies above. “Sorry, Jacob. Soon, buddy. Just not today, okay?”
The ringing of the phone woke him.
He stuck his hand out and swept it across the bedside table only to remember there wasn’t a landline in here. He shot out of bed, raced into the living room and grabbed the receiver. “Foley.” It sounded as though someone had taken a hacksaw to his vocal cords.
“I got hits on those guys you took photos of yesterday.” Ewan McKnight’s soft accent flowed over the secure line.
Ben moved to the window on the street, peered through the netting but couldn’t see a damned thing. It was 7 a.m. and full dark outside. There was supposed to be a plainclothes officer watching Sorcha’s cottage from a parked car and someone else on the beach. Both officers would need to be gone before dawn broke. This town was too small not to notice a stakeout, and they didn’t want to spook their prey.
Ben slumped to the sofa. “Who are they?”
“Richard Levy and Gary Parker. Both former British army. Both dishonorably discharged a couple of years ago. Looks like they’ve gone freelance.” Ewan sounded worried. Ben had no idea when the men had picked up Sorcha’s tail yesterday. He hadn’t been paying attention to anything except his own anger. Sloppy. They could have planted some sort of transmitter on the van that they removed when they planted the explosive.
Ben had no clue.
“You check their finances?” Ben asked.
“I’ve got someone looking into it, but if they’re pros—and they are—they’ll have an offshore account that will take time to trace.”
Time Sorcha didn’t have.
“What about this account of Sorcha Logan’s?” There were questions that bugged Ben since he’d found out about it yesterday. That’s what the meeting in Paisley had been about.
“The Swiss account?”
“Yeah. You got details?” Ben heard the tapping of keys.
“Set up for Sorcha Logan twenty-four years ago. No recent activity.” Ewan sounded as if he was reading the information off the screen. More tapping. “Transactions ended abruptly fifteen years ago with a biggie.” Excitement loaded Ewan’s voice. “Two hundred thousand pounds, a short time after we know a major drug deal went down. Dates fit.”
Ben shook his head. “Fit what? A child laundering money?”
“No.” Ewan’s tone was chiding. “Fit the possibility that Sorcha’s father was the original drug smuggler. The trafficking stopped for a few years after he died. Or the smugglers found another route into the country.”
Ben snorted. It wouldn’t be hard, surrounded by this much water. Which was why the smugglers had gone undetected for so long—and why this lead was so important, he reminded himself. “So you think what? Sorcha restarted the family business?”
“I don’t
think
anything, Agent Foley.” Ewan’s usually mild tone took on a battle edge. “You’re the one who linked a Colombian drug lord to Anstruther. You’re the one who found forty kilos of hard evidence in the old lighthouse on the May Isle.” Ewan took an audible breath. “We’ve been aware of possible drug running in this area for years. Now I’m looking at the evidence and the evidence leads back to Sorcha Logan.”
“She’s only been back a few months,” Ben pointed out. That bugged him. Santayana had been supplying drugs for at least a decade. Didn’t mean she hadn’t been trafficking elsewhere though. She always lived near the coast. “And she’s never touched the money.”
“She’s the only lead we have into the circumstances leading up to the death of your partner,” Ewan reminded him gently.
Ben lowered his face into his hands. The fact he’d had sex with Sorcha, and enjoyed it, made him too full of revulsion to speak.
The silence was deafening.
“Let’s follow the evidence, Ben. See where it leads.”
Hell.
Ewan was right. Ben propped his feet on the battered coffee table, swallowed the ball of guilt trapped in his gullet. “I need you to check out a Duncan Mackenzie for me.”
“You think he might be involved?”
Ben stared at the dead ashes of the fire. “He’s the guy who attacked Sorcha in the graveyard last night. Maybe he was the one who attacked her friend the night before and rolled her place.” He stretched out his shoulders. “He’s involved in something, I just don’t know what the hell it is.”
“She’s not exactly popular, is she?”
Wasn’t she? Maybe that was the problem.
Rubbing his hand over his jaw, Ben realized he needed a shave. “Did you pick up Levy and Parker?”
“Not yet. I’ll let you know when we have any more information. You just keep as close as you can to Sorcha Logan.”
Great.
He wasn’t about to admit he couldn’t do his job, but she was more likely to mainline venom than let him near her again. “Sure.”
The other man’s voice cooled on the end of the line. “Watch your back, Foley. Those guys are professionals and someone is trying to get rid of that girl. Don’t get caught in the crossfire.” McKnight rang off with a click.
Sonofabitch.
Ben dropped the receiver in the cradle, his brain racing. This didn’t make any sense though Sorcha was definitely part of the puzzle. But what about fifteen years ago when that big payment had gone into her bank account and she’d been only ten years old? Who was the key figure then?
Sorcha’s father.
Everything was tied to that long-ago night on the lifeboat and the death of Sorcha’s father.
***
Deep in the maze that was St. Andrews University’s Bute Medical Building, Sorcha put birdseed away in a plastic container, picked up a logbook and started filling it out. Carolyn’s orange-billed zebra finches screeched as they darted around their cages.
She’d had enough of being a victim. She heard voices—so what? She saw ghosts—so did a lot of other people who no one believed. She intended to do what she was trained to do—research the problem. See if she couldn’t come up with some sort of reasonable explanation.
She’d for certain had enough of men.
She pressed harder with the pen, but it didn’t work. The marker was dead. Irritated, she squatted down and began searching for another one in the cupboard. Her vision blurred from lack of sleep.
What did Ben Foley want from her?
He was like a knight in shining armor crossed with the one night stand from hell. Everything she felt when she was with him—the desire, the awareness, the freefall of excitement—mixed with the hurt and confusion of what they’d already been through together.
She closed her eyes. She hadn’t even thanked him for saving her from Duncan last night.
Or maybe she had. Getting laid did it for most guys.
Her mouth went dry. Every time she closed her eyes, she felt the sting as Duncan backhanded her across the face. She ran her fingers over the bump on her skull and winced. The swelling had gone down, even so it was still a little tender. With the help of acetaminophen and codeine she felt almost human again.
Was this how Carolyn felt? Or had her experience been even worse? Carolyn was recovering. Sorcha had spoken to her on her cell earlier and she was being released today.
Bright sunlight shone through the tall windows and bathed her skin with warmth. The birds chattered excitedly. They were part of an ongoing study to measure how a female bird’s food intake biased the gender of their chicks. Fat birds produced girl eggs, skinny birds produced boy eggs.
There. She pulled another pen from the back of the cupboard, shoving aside paper bags filled with God knew what. The noise of the birds was deafening. That’s why she liked it in here. She couldn’t hear herself think.
The door burst open and she jumped, dropping the marker to the floor.
“Oh, you’ve done it already.” Kevin slumped against the doorframe, shoulders sagging, eyes red-rimmed and narrowed against the glare of the sun. Probably a hangover. The guy liked to party.
“Yes. All fed and watered.” She placed the logbook next to the cages and in thick blue ink on a loose sheet of A4 paper wrote
Fed birds Thursday morning.
She taped the sign to the bars, not wanting some well-meaning soul to replicate the job and compromise the experiment.
He took a step forward and the door closed behind him. “It’s Friday,” he corrected.
Damn.
Irritated that fatigue had caused her to make such an elemental mistake, she scored out Thursday and wrote Friday instead. She, for one, was looking forward to the weekend.
“Going to the pub tonight?” Kevin asked.
“No.” She glanced at him, wondered what it was about him she disliked so much. “You?”
“Probably.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Carolyn said she’d see how she felt.”
Sorcha couldn’t imagine facing that nosy, jubilant bunch just a couple of days after being attacked. She shuddered. She hadn’t told anyone about Duncan’s attack. Although, according to Kevin, she was uptight and bottled things up. And Carolyn wasn’t.
Maybe Kevin had a point.
He squinted at her, as if he sensed weakness. “You need to get out more.”
Sorcha laughed. “Yeah, I probably do.”
But not with you.
Maybe she was being unfair. Maybe he just reminded her of Bruce. And maybe if she lightened up on him, he’d grow on her. However, it was hard to respect a guy who rarely rolled in before eleven and who made big noises about working late but actually spent most of his time in the pub. Not that Professor Richards noticed. Her boss was brilliant, if a little spaced.
“Just because you got burned in Oz doesn’t mean you should give up men forever, you know.”
Thank you very much, Carolyn, for not knowing the meaning of the word
confidante.
“Hmm.” She refrained from commenting.
“Not all men are bastards.” He gave her a self-deprecating grin and for a moment she glimpsed what Carolyn saw in him, but there was a glint in his eye she didn’t trust.
Was he hitting on her? Or being nice? She didn’t know which would surprise her more, and she didn’t want to find out.
“Look at all this junk.” She stuck a hand into the messy cupboard. “I’ll clean it out for Carolyn.” She picked up a brown paper bag and started to open it, but Kevin’s fingers clamped down on her wrist and he snatched it out of her hands.
Her lips parted in shock.
“That’s part of my research project.” He held the bag away from her. “Don’t worry.” His face was close to hers, his knee brushing her thigh as they crouched in front of the cupboard. “I’ll clean it out.” He held her wrist tight, not hurting her, but in control. “For Carolyn.” The light in his eyes was cool and assessing.
She bit her lip, not liking the way his gaze slid dispassionately to her mouth. He squeezed her wrist tighter and she tried to jerk it out of his grasp, but he wouldn’t let go.
“Don’t poke your nose in where it isn’t wanted, Sorcha.”
Adrenaline flooded her veins. Escalating anger made her gaze narrow and her muscles tense. Abruptly, the door swung open behind them and they both swiveled, Sorcha nearly falling on her backside as Kevin released her.
“Sorcha, I need you to come with me. I found an article on mercury levels in penguins and—” Professor Tony Richards stared down at them and frowned. “Am I interrupting something?” His eyebrows quirked over the top of his glasses.
“No.” Sorcha scrambled to her feet, getting as far away from Kevin as she could. “No, I fed the zebra finches, and Kevin’s about to tidy out the cupboard.” She rubbed her wrist, but the memory of his touch lingered on her flesh.
“Good idea.” Prof Richards beamed at Kevin with approval. “Hasn’t been sorted out in years.” With a wink, Richards held the door wide for her to precede him into the corridor. “You may as well do the whole lab, Kevin, as you’re in early.”
Sorcha let out a sigh of relief and grinned all the way to her boss’s office. Maybe professors weren’t as absent-minded as they liked you to think.
***
An hour later Sorcha hesitated before pressing the doorbell of Uncle Angus’s house in Rodger Street just a couple of streets over from her cottage. She’d borrowed the lab truck and raced home for one of Professor Richards’s textbooks that he needed for a lecture. On her doormat she’d found a thick white official-looking envelope from her lawyer and couldn’t wait to deliver it.
After pressing the buzzer, she stepped back and gazed up at the impressive three-storey stone terrace. She knew her bad luck was holding when her aunt’s pinched features peered from behind dazzlingly white net curtains on the second floor.
The wind whistled and tugged her hair. Two doors down a couple of old ladies eyed Sorcha curiously, sweeping the front stoops of their homes.
She looked away.
This had been her granny’s house. Her second home. She should have felt welcome here, should have belonged, but didn’t.
Hearing the deadbolt slide, Sorcha fixed a smile on her face and braced her shoulders.
Eileen Logan opened the door and clamped her arms over her chest. Her hair was noticeably grayer now, molded into lacquered curls. The smell of face powder brought back vivid memories from the past.
“Sorcha.” It wasn’t a question or a greeting. Just a cool statement of fact. The woman didn’t smile. Despite her age, her skin was smooth and unwrinkled. Probably because she never smiled. A smirk tugged the corners of Sorcha’s mouth, but she held it back. Eileen Logan would not appreciate her humor.
“Aunty Eileen,” she acknowledged. In the hallway, a cat sat licking its paws. “Is Angus in? Or Robbie?”
“No.” Eileen stared past Sorcha into the street, checking who might spot her on the doorstep.
“May I come in?” For a horrible moment Sorcha thought the woman was going to refuse. She fingered the envelope resting inside her bag, edged her foot across the threshold.
Reluctantly Eileen Logan stepped back and let her pass. “Aye, but I’ve only got a few minutes before I need to get to work.”
The decor looked new. Sorcha bent and stroked the cat on the way past, turned into the kitchen at the end of the hall. New units lined the walls and the laminate flooring sparkled brighter than a Class-4 laboratory.
Sorcha felt a stab of regret. There were no reminders of her childhood here. No nostalgia. Her grandmother’s house had been wiped clean of memories.
Eileen put the kettle on, standing stiffly with her arms grasping her skinny waist as Sorcha dropped her bag onto a chair. And to think Angus had told her to come here if she was in trouble. Angus and Robbie might help her, but Eileen looked like she’d rather suck spiders. Sorcha pulled the envelope from her bag and handed it to her aunt, who took it with wary fingers. It contained the deed to her father’s fishing boat.