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. To 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
“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
