She chatted with Hans a little longer, but then aimed below. Both Hans and Arthur were her early coffee cravers, and once the urn was set to brew, she started on breakfast. Scotch eggs this morning, she thought. Something easy.
At least easy on her terms. Before six, her galley had turned into a production line. The sausage, onion and fresh sage were in one bowl. The stuffing crumbs in another. The flour set up to dip the peeled hard-boiled eggs into. She was humming some silly blues tune when she suddenly whipped around and saw Harm in the doorway.
His blond head was still damp from a shower, his sweatshirt almost-
“Hey,” he murmured.
“Hey right back.” Something clutched in her stomach, something tight and sharp and unexpected. She’d say it was fear; she hadn’t felt fear-real fear-since the fire when she was a kid. Still, this was that same sensation of watching her life spin out of control, risking the loss of everything, unable to stop it.
She wanted to be there for Harm. To see that light in his eyes every morning.
It was the scariest thing she could remember. And then he started talking.
“I have a favor to ask you.”
“Shoot.” She pulled out two frying pans, measured the oil.
“I need your help. So I want you to come home with me.” Before she could answer, he said, “Now don’t say no without hearing me out.”
“I’m listening. But only for two seconds. No more.”
He started talking, his tone all lazy and easy-on the surface. “When we get back home, the mystery’s still waiting, nothing solved, nothing right. Every bit of information seems to lead to more dead ends. I need your eyes, your perspective, your ears. I’ll be completely alone when I go back to Cambridge-I’ve got a team of lawyers, a firm of private investigators. But I only moved there a few weeks back, so there’s no one who’s close to me. No one I can trust.”
“You’re getting that tone in your voice. That I-can-seduce-you tone. Forget it. I have to earn a living, remember? I can’t just go off gallivanting anytime and anywhere I want.”
“I thought you could. And did.”
She frowned, started slicing tomatoes for a garnish, almost nipped her finger. “Well, actually, I do. But I still have to earn a-”
“Yeah, I heard you. But do you have an immediate chef job lined up after this?”
“Not immediate, no. I’ve got the next gig lined up, but I have to have a space of time between to pay my bills, regroup, plan ahead. The Internet’s my office, how I find and set up jobs, initially. And if I hit a dry spell…which usually happens a couple weeks in a year…then I hit on one of my chef friends I know from New Orleans, hang out in their kitchens. It might sound a little…well, braggy. But a good chef can always pull down good money. Even for short-term gigs.”
“That would only sound braggy to someone who hasn’t tasted your cooking.”
Her eyes narrowed again. “Don’t you start with that tone again. I don’t do sweet-talking.”
“I know, Cookie. You’re tough. But the question is whether you’re pinned down for the next couple weeks.”
“Not exactly,” she said firmly.
“In other words, no. So here’s the deal. I’ll pay your flight, your expenses, a wage.” He named a figure that made her choke. In fact, she had to lean forward, while he helpfully thumped her on the back to get her over it.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she gasped.
“I need help. Your help. I’m willing to pay for it.”
“Look, hotshot. I can be bought. It’s easy. But that’s an insane amount of money. Period.”
“Everyone’s in a hurry to get home, Cate. There has to be a reason. Something’s there, in the lab, something the one guilty party is worried about. Something the investigators haven’t caught, that I haven’t caught, that the whole team working together after my uncle died couldn’t see. I need a fresh set of eyes. More relevant, I need
She could feel herself start to relent, which was crazy. She was smarter than that. “What I know about science wouldn’t fill a thimble.”
“Join the club. The core of this mystery, I’ve become convinced, isn’t about knowledge. They all had the same knowledge. It’s about something that doesn’t belong. Something that’s been hidden. Something that needs to strike one of us as out of place.”
“Really, I can’t.”
“It wouldn’t be for long. I figure we’ll be in Cambridge no later than three days from now. Late Friday night’d be the soonest, if we can book flights and arrangements all work out. If we’ve got a chance of finding something, I believe it’s got to be this weekend-before everyone shows up on Monday, and the culprit has another chance to cover his tracks.”
“Really, Harm. I can’t.” In the dining room, she heard sounds…probably Arthur, pouring his first cup of joe. And then Purdue. Both of them started talking, then went up on deck.
Harm picked up the argument the instant they were out of earshot. “The police have been all over the place, found nothing. And there’ll be a funeral I’ll need to attend, for Fiske. My absence will be another occasion for the culprit to hide his tracks. So we’ve only got a short time where there’s a shot at getting to the bottom of this. And you’re the only one who can help me.”
“Harm, are you deaf? I can’t!”
“I’d worry if you said yes easily,” he admitted. “You’ve already been hurt. The last thing I want is to risk putting you in any more danger. The problem, though, is that our guilty guy could think you know something, which is likely why he pushed you off the deck to begin with. And if he’s smart enough to pull off everything else he has, from theft to hiding something so massive and protected, to possibly murder and definitely hurting you-then he’ll sure as hell be smart enough to track you down, wherever you are. So, I think you’re safer with me than alone. That we’ll both be safer if we stick together until this is resolved.”
For the first time since early yesterday, her head screamed like a banshee. “You’re so slick. You think you can talk anybody into anything,” she said disgustedly.
“Only for my girl.”
“I’m not your girl. And just for the record, I’m not falling in love with you!” She whirled around, just in time to see Arthur and Yale standing patiently at the end of the doorway.
“We were just going to ask about breakfast,” Yale said guilelessly.
“Out! All of you! Out!”
Yale shot out of sight. Then Arthur. Harm turned around, too, carrying the two dishes she handed him to put on the table-but he still didn’t leave until he’d dropped a kiss on top of her head.
“Last night,” he said, “you took my heart.”
Then he left. After doing that same thing that roiled up her stomach and igniting the same miserable fight-flight instinct again.
Chapter 10
When the jet bounced down onto the tarmac at Logan Airport, Harm was buzz-tired. Making sudden travel arrangements meant all of them had been on different flights, different times, and never, for damn sure, conveniently. He’d managed to keep Cate with him all the way, but they’d still been traveling for two nonstop days, with meals on the run, and layovers in airports that all looked alike.
He’d never been able to sleep on planes, partly because he was prone to insomnia and primarily because the seats were made for midgets. Cate, by contrast, had zoned out each time an engine started and slept like the dead,
