Loe raamatut: «Possessed by a Warrior»

Chapter 2

“Is there a problem, Ms. Anderson?” said the attorney, who was visibly sweating in his penguin suit of funereal black.

Is there a problem? Chloe mused, tears threatening to seep through her defenses. Let’s see. My billionaire playboy uncle Jack wrapped his Porsche around the oak tree out front because he supposedly drank too much at the yacht club, and now our dysfunctional relations are circling like hungry raptors. And, oh, yeah, he named me executor. Fun times.

The sarcasm couldn’t shut down the pain squeezing her heart. She already missed her uncle like crazy—but right now it was her job to be cool, collected and businesslike.

“No, there’s no problem,” she said in a tight voice, memories choking her until her words were little more than a whisper.

Thankfully, she hadn’t been the one to identify Jack—his butler had done that honor before she’d even arrived at Oakwood. The faithful old servant had quit after that. She didn’t blame him one bit.

Chloe swallowed hard, feeling faint as she unfolded the scrap of notepaper with the combination to her uncle’s private wall safe. It was slow going because her hands were clumsy and sweaty. The cause wasn’t nerves, exactly. It was more like her body’s attempt to melt away so she wouldn’t have to deal with whatever was behind that steel door. Opening the safe was like admitting Jack was gone. She didn’t want to believe it.

What happened, Jack? Did you really drive home drunk? For a moment, tears blurred the numbers on the notepaper. It just doesn’t make sense. None of it does.

For one thing, Jack was never a drinker. Chloe had told that to the police. They’d given her a pitying look, as if she were a rosy-cheeked innocent. In the end, they hadn’t listened to a word she’d said.

Her tears dried as she felt a pair of steel-gray eyes boring a hole between her shoulders. Irritation flooded her, momentarily washing out grief and the daunting sense of responsibility thrust on her as executor. Is there a problem? Oh, yeah, there’s a problem. The room is a thousand degrees, my feet hurt in these stupid shoes and that guy over there is giving me the screaming willies.

The guy in question was named Sam Ralston. He’d shown up for the funeral along with two of Uncle Jack’s other friends. They were big, handsome men, pleasant, mixed with the other richy-rich guests well enough, but there was something off about the lot of them. Something other.

Who was Ralston to Uncle Jack? It was hard to say. Although she referred to Jack as her uncle, he was actually a distant cousin, and she’d never quite worked out his place in the family tree. Even though Jack had been her guardian after her parents’ death, he’d not been around a lot of the time. At fourteen, it wasn’t as if she’d needed supervision 24/7—at least not once the initial shock had passed. So, there were chunks of Jack’s life she knew nothing about, Sam Ralston among them.

Jack had named him as the other executor, which was why he was here with her and Mr. Littleton, the family lawyer. Whatever was in the safe Jack had installed in his palatial bedroom would have to be documented as part of the estate, even if it was meant for Chloe.

Too bad. When she’d found out Ralston would be her partner in settling the estate, Chloe had actually shivered, as if someone had opened a refrigerator door right behind her.

“Do you need help?” Ralston asked, his baritone voice threaded with impatience.

“No,” Chloe returned.

“You know you need a key, too. The safe has a double lock.”

“Got it.” She turned and gave Ralston a look over her shoulder.

The view, at least, was no hardship. More than once, she’d found herself staring at him, her body clenching with an unexpected and unwelcome fever of desire. He was somewhere in his thirties, tall and hard-bodied, with thick dark hair combed back from a broad forehead. He had the kind of face advertisers of leather jackets and fast cars would have liked—strong bones, a few character lines, and a dark shadow of beard no razor could quite obliterate. His nose was blade straight, his lips full and sculpted above a slightly cleft chin. The set of his head and shoulders said he owned whatever room he was in, and the rest of the planet besides.

Yummy and forbidding at the same time.

At the moment, he was returning her glare with a face carefully scraped clean of expression—and yet every line of his body screamed “Hurry up!”

So what’s the rush? she wondered. He’d been like this—barely repressed urgency—ever since he arrived.

A career as a wedding planner had honed Chloe’s skills at reading people. Too many couples ordered an event based on what they thought was correct rather than what was in their hearts. Chloe was good at ferreting out the truth from a shared look, an inflection in the voice, a finger drawn down the picture of a fluffy white dress in a magazine.

Just like her gut said Ralston and his buddies might have fat wallets and Italian-cut suits, but they’d break heads just as easily as they tossed back their single-malt whiskey. Now he was standing a little to the side, just out of the splash of late afternoon sunlight pouring through the French doors—a shady guy staying in the shade.

Ralston shifted, making a noise like a stifled sigh.

“Cool your jets,” Chloe said evenly. “Whatever’s in here is what Uncle Jack left me.”

“He already left you a nice bequest,” Ralston pointed out.

“So?”

Chloe cursed the lawyer for staying tactfully silent. She turned back to the safe and away from Ralston.

“Whatever is in the safe is going to be the interesting part.” He sounded amused, the first sign of warmth she’d seen in him. “He liked his secrets.”

“How do you know?”

“I know—knew—Jack.” Now he sounded sad. She liked him better for it.

“How did you come to know him?”

He gave the same nonanswer he’d given her once before. “We hung out in a few of the same places.”

Chloe began spinning the dial on the safe, her mouth gluey with unease. What was in there? Gold bars? The deed to a private island in the Caribbean? A stack of bearer-bonds with tons of zeroes? Jack had possessed a Midas touch, turning every business venture into a wild success.

Poor Jack. People would remember his GQ style and his tragic death, but Chloe would remember him starting a game of hide-and-seek with her when she was six. He’d sent the care package of flowers and chocolate when her engagement had fallen apart. He’d always been there, a steady friend and the best of listeners in a world where people were too busy to slow down and truly care. Sure, he’d had money, but he’d always offered his heart, too. People—especially their family—had never stopped grabbing long enough to notice.

Chloe swallowed hard, her fingers fumbling with the dial. The safe lock clicked. She swallowed again, feeling as though she was gulping down the entire situation and it was stuck painfully in her throat. Blinking to keep her vision clear, she took the key to the second lock out of the pocket of her sleeveless, indigo sheath dress.

The key slid into the lock. Chloe turned it and then pushed down on the long handle. The safe opened on a silent glide of hinges. It was wide enough that she had to step back to accommodate the swing of the door.

The men were suddenly behind her, Ralston so close that she could feel his lapel brush her shoulder. The lawyer was a bit better about personal space, but she could sense him hovering. If curiosity had a frequency, theirs was vibrating high enough to shatter glass.

All three of them made a noise when they saw what was in the safe. There was nothing but a white box about eight inches tall and maybe four feet by three feet, with a note taped to the lid. Chloe reached in, pulling the note off. The clear tape made a ripping sound as it pulled a tiny patch of the box’s white lid away with it. She unfolded the note and felt the men lean in as she read.

Chloe,

If you’re reading this, I’m gone. Keep this secret and safe. When the story comes out, you’ll know what to do with it, and I know you’ll do the right thing. Trust Sam. Be careful.

Love you, kid,

Jack

Chloe reread the note. Trust Sam. Why? With what?

“What could it possibly be?” asked Littleton, a little breathlessly.

“Let’s find out,” said Ralston, lifting the large white box out of the otherwise empty safe.

Chloe took it out of his hands before he had taken one step away from the safe. “Uncle Jack left this for me, remember?”

His eyes flared with surprise, as if people rarely snatched loot out of his grasp. “I was just going to put it on the bed.”

Chloe looked up into his steel-gray glare and smiled sweetly. “Thanks. I can manage.”

Her heart kicked a little at Ralston’s frown—part fear, part perverse enjoyment. He was a bit too pushy for his own good. Trust Sam.

She walked the few steps to Jack’s orgy-sized bed. The whole room was in a black-and-white color scheme, making the scene look like a homage to liquorice allsorts. When she set the large white box on the ebony silk counterpane, the mystery of the package seemed even more emphatic.

The room was utterly silent, the rasp of Littleton’s rapid breathing the loudest sound in it. Chloe felt for the box’s opening. There was no tape. The lid lifted off, revealing a nest of blue-white tissue paper, the type meant to keep cloth from turning dingy with age. Ralston was at her elbow, close enough that her skin tingled with the breeze of his movements. Even now, her body felt magnetized to his nearness.

He pulled back one piece of tissue at the same moment that Chloe picked up the other. Despite the fact that they were strangers, they shared a look. It was utter astonishment.

“A wedding dress?” Chloe asked aloud. She touched the beaded bodice with one finger. The glittering stones were cold. Definitely not plastic. She’s seen a lot of dresses in her career, and she could tell the work was exquisite.

“What the hell?” Ralston looked utterly stunned. “Jack would never have married.”

“When the story comes out,” Chloe said, repeating the note Jack had left. “What story? What was Uncle Jack doing with a dress?”

Ralston’s eyebrows shot up with sudden dark amusement. “Well, it’s tiny. At least we know it wasn’t for him.”

Chloe smiled, but her mind was already racing ahead. There were only so many reasons Jack would lock something away for safekeeping, whether it was treasure or weapons or even a gorgeous dress: because it was valuable, because it was meant for someone important to Jack or because dangerous people wanted it for the wrong reasons.

She was willing to bet the confection of lace and satin was all three.