Loe raamatut: «Questioning the Heiress»

To Mallory Kane and Rita Herron. Thanks so much for this wonderful experience.

Chapter One

San Antonio, Texas

Sgt. Egan Caldwell already had four dead bodies on his hands. He sure as hell didn’t want a fifth.

“I need a guard in place by the entrance gate. Now!” he ordered into the thumb-size communicator clipped to his collar. And by God, the two rent-a-cops had better be listening and reacting. “Secure the area and await orders. Do not fire. Repeat. Do not fire. If this is our killer, he might have a hostage.”

And in this case the hostage would be none other than Caroline Stallings, the Cantara Hills socialite who’d made a frantic call to Egan six minutes earlier. He’d been a Texas Ranger for over four years, and that was more than enough time on the job to have learned that six minutes could be five minutes and fifty-nine seconds too late to save someone from a killer.

With his Sig Sauer Blackwater pistol gripped in his right hand, Egan blinked away the sticky summer rain that was spitting at him, and he zigzagged through the manicured shrubs and trees that lined the eighth of a mile-long cobblestone driveway. He’d parked on the street so the sound of his car engine wouldn’t alert anyone that he was there. He tried not to make too much noise, listening for anything to indicate the killer was inside the twostory Victorian house. Or worse.

Escaping.

Egan couldn’t let this guy get away again.

Things had sure gone to hell in a handbasket tonight. Less than ten minutes ago, Egan had been eating a jalapeño burger, chili fries and going over forensic reports in his makeshift office at the country club. Less than ten minutes ago, the two-hundred-and-eighty-six residents of Cantara Hills had been safe with a Texas Ranger and two civilian guards they’d hired to stop anyone suspicious from getting into the exclusive community.

And then that phone call had come.

“This is Caroline Stallings,” she’d said, her voice more breath than sound. Egan had felt her fear from the other end of the line. “There’s an intruder in my home.”

Then, nothing.

Everything had gone dead.

Well, everything except Egan’s concerns. They were sky-high because two of the three previous murders in Cantara Hills and an attempted murder had been preceded by break-ins.

Just like this one.

And even though the person responsible, Vincent Montoya, had been murdered as well, there was obviously someone else. Montoya’s boss, maybe. Or someone with a different agenda. Maybe that someone was now right there in Caroline Stallings’s house.

Egan slapped aside some soggy weeping willow branches and raced toward the back of the house. He didn’t stop. Running, he checked the windows for any sign of the killer or Caroline Stallings. Enough lights were on to illuminate the place, but no one was in sight in the large solarium that he passed.

“I’m at the entry gate,” one of the guards said through the communicator. “My partner’s by the west fence. That covers both of the most likely exit routes, and San Antonio PD backup should be here soon to cover the others.”

Soon wasn’t soon enough. He needed backup now.

“I’m going in the house,” he told the guard. Egan had to make sure Caroline Stallings was alive and that she stayed that way. “If the intruder comes running out of there alone, try to make an arrest. If he doesn’t cooperate, if you have to shoot, then aim low for the knees. I want this SOB alive.”

Because this particular SOB might be able to answer some hard questions about the four deaths that’d happened in or around Cantara Hills in the past nine months.

Egan glanced around to make sure the intruder hadn’t escaped into the back or east yards. If he had, then it was a long drop down since the house was literally perched on the lip of a jagged limestone bluff. An escape over that particular wrought-iron fence could be suicide. But Egan did spot someone.

The brunette with a butcher knife.

She was standing just a few feet away on the porch near double stained-glass doors, and she had a white-knuckled grip on the gleaming ten-inch blade. Her bluegreen eyes were wide, her chest pumping with jolts of breath that strained her sleeveless turquoise top.

It was Caroline Stallings.

Alive, thank God. And she seemed unharmed.

Egan had seen her around Cantara Hills a couple of times in the past week since the Texas Rangers had been called in to solve three cold-case murders and then a hot one that’d happened only forty-eight hours earlier. During those other sightings, Ms. Stallings had always appeared so cool, rich and collected. She wasn’t so cool or collected now with her shaky composure and windswept dark brown hair.

But the rich part still applied.

Despite the fear and that god-awful big knife, she looked high priced, high rent and high maintenance.

She jumped when she saw him. And gasped. That caused her chest to pump even harder.

“Where’s the intruder?” Egan mouthed.

She used the knife blade to point in the direction of the left side of the house. The opposite location from where he’d come. “My bedroom,” she mouthed back. “I ran out here when I heard the noise.”

Wise move. From her vantage point, she could see a lot through that beveled glass, including an intruder if he was about to come after her.

She reached over, eased open the door, and Egan slipped inside through the kitchen. The floor was gray slate. Potentially noisy. So he lightened his steps.

There were yards of slick black granite countertops, stainless appliances that reflected like mirrors, and in the open front cabinets, precise rows of crystal glasses, all shimmering and cool. He lifted an eyebrow at the halfempty bag of Oreo cookies on the kitchen island.

The A/C spilled over him, chilling the rain that snaked down his face and back. “Has the intruder come out of your bedroom or moved past you to get to another part of the house?” he asked.

“No one’s come out of that room,” she insisted.

So Egan turned his ear in that direction and listened.

Well, that’s what he tried to do, anyway, but he couldn’t hear much, other than Caroline Stallings’s frantic breathing and her silk clothes rustling against her skin. She was obviously trembling from head to toe.

“When I came home from work, I noticed my security system wasn’t working. Then I heard someone moving around in my bedroom,” she muttered. “I dialed 9-1-1, they dispatched my call to you, and something or someone cut the line.”

Yes. The line had indeed gone dead. Egan had hoped it was because of the rain, but his gut told him otherwise. It wasn’t difficult to cut a phone line or disarm a security system, and perps usually did that when they wanted to sever their victim’s means of communication. Murder or something equally nasty usually followed. Hopefully, he’d prevented the “equally nasty” part from happening.

“And I found this thing in my car,” she added a moment later.

The vague thing got his attention. That wasn’t good, either. Egan didn’t want his attention on anything other than the intruder.

He glanced over his shoulder at Ms. Stallings and scowled at her so she’d hush. The scowl was still on his face when he heard the sound. Not breathing or rustlings on silk. It came from the direction of her bedroom, and it sounded as if someone had opened a door.

“What’s the status of SAPD?” Egan whispered into the communicator.

“Not here yet,” was the guard’s response.

Egan silently cursed. It was decision time. He could stand there and continue to protect Ms. Stallings, or he could do something to catch a possible killer.

It didn’t take him but a second to decide.

“Follow me,” he instructed Caroline. “Stay low and don’t make a sound.”

She nodded and kept a firm grip on the butcher knife.

“And don’t accidentally stab me with that thing,” he snarled.

She tossed him a scowl of her own.

Egan took his first steps toward the bedroom, moving from the slate floor of the kitchen to some kind of exotic hardwood in the dining room and the foyer. He stopped. Listened. But he didn’t hear any indication that the intruder was coming their way. So he took another step. Then, another. Caroline Stallings followed right behind him.

From the massive foyer, it was well over twenty feet to her bedroom. The door was open, and he paused in the entryway to get a look around. It, too, was massive. At least four hundred square feet. He wasn’t surprised by all the space.

There were more dark hardwood floors and an equally dark four-poster bed frame, but nearly everything else was virginal white. The walls, the rugs, the high-end dresser and chest that were glossy white wood. It smelled like linen, starch and the rain.

No visible intruder.

However, there was movement.

Egan spun in that direction, re-aiming his weapon, but he realized the movement had come from the gauzy white curtains that were stirring in the breeze. He quickly spotted the breeze’s source. Another set of French doors.

And these were wide open.

The doors shifted a little with each new brush of wind. That was obviously the sound he’d heard when he’d thought the intruder was escaping.

Mentally cursing again, Egan stepped just inside the room so he could get a better look at the floor. It didn’t take any Ranger training or skill to see the wet footprints on the hardwood. The prints didn’t just lead into the room. There were also some going out.

Hell. The intruder had likely left before Egan had even arrived.

“The cops are here,” the guard informed Egan through the communicator.

Maybe it wasn’t too late. “Have them check the grounds, but it looks as if our guy got away.”

“He got away?” Caroline repeated with more than a bit of anger in her voice.

She went forward until she was right at his back and came up on her tiptoes so she could peer over his shoulder. She touched him in the process. Specifically, her silkcovered right breast swished against his back. That didn’t stop her from looking and obviously seeing those tracks.

“He’s gone,” she mumbled, moving back slightly. She cursed, too, and it wasn’t exactly mild. But it was justified. Judging from what the Rangers had learned about the murders, Caroline Stallings just might be on the killer’s list.

The problem was—who was the killer?

And why exactly would he want Caroline dead?

So far, all the victims had been connected to a fatal hit-and-run that’d happened nine months earlier on the night of a high-society Christmas party at Cantara Hills. The now-dead Vincent Montoya was responsible for that incident, in which a young woman had died. In fact, everyone directly connected to the hit-and-run was dead.

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.”