“You’re really good at this,” she croaked.
“We’re good together.” He kissed her, hard and thoroughly, until she clung to him in renewed passion.
He pulled his lips away and looked down at her, his expression as fierce as any tribal chieftain. “Remember that. You wouldn’t feel this way with another man.” He kissed her again. “Only me.”
She knew he was right, but was afraid it was because her emotions were a lot more involved than she could afford them to be rather than a simple sexual chemistry thing.
There was a city police car parked in front of the house when Daniel pulled his SUV into Josie’s driveway.
“What in the world is going on?” Josie asked.
“Let’s go find out.”
Claire came out the front door as Daniel and Josie got out of the four-wheel drive. She looked even more disreputable than the first time he’d seen her, and her face was pinched with exhaustion.
She stopped in front of him and Josie, her expression bleak. “The house got broken into last night.”
“What?” Josie asked. “When you were here?”
“No. It happened before I got home this morning.”
Daniel put his arm around Josie’s shoulders and hugged her into his side. “What did they take?”
“The usual…our computers, the television, my grandmother’s l-locket…” Claire’s face crumpled.
Josie pulled away from Daniel to wrap her friend in her arms. “Oh, honey…I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. My laptop is gone. I can’t do my schoolwork. Yours is, too. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure something out, and it’s certainly not your fault.”
Claire nodded. “The police don’t think I’ll ever see Grandma’s locket again. It was the only thing I had of my family. It’s like I don’t exist anymore.”
Daniel could hear the pain in her voice, but he didn’t know how to comfort Josie’s roommate and was frankly glad it wasn’t his job.
Josie hugged Claire again. “Oh, sweetie…”
Daniel left Josie comforting Claire and went inside to talk to the police.
“It looks like a standard break-in and entry and burglary,” the officer in charge said.
“Did the neighbors see anything?” Daniel asked.
“Not that we’ve been able to ascertain.” The uniformed policeman referred to his pad. “The best we can do is narrow the break-in time to a six-hour window.”
Daniel’s instincts were screaming at him that this break-in had been anything but routine. It was linked to the explosion on the mountain; he could feel it. He’d wait to see if Josie drew the same conclusion before saying anything, though.
He went over the list of items missing with the police officer. “Your girlfriend will need to go through her things as well, so we can make sure the list is complete.”
“I’ll make sure Josie does that.”
The officer nodded. “Well, there’s not much more we can do here. I’ll file my report and get back to you if we find anything out.”
“Josie, are your CDs in their cabinet?”
Daniel looked up from the list he and Josie had been compiling of her missing property.
Claire stood in the doorway, her brows knit in a disturbed frown. No surprise there. According to Josie, her roommate was a long way from having the financial resources to replace her stolen computer equipment. Since her class load was weighted heavily toward computer studies, that was a major problem for her. He figured there had to be a way to help Claire without damaging her pride, but Josie would know best what it was.
They could talk about it later.
“I don’t know,” Josie said in reply to Claire’s question, getting up from her swivel chair.
She crossed to the small corner entertainment unit in the spare bedroom she used as a study. Popping open a door on the lower cabinet, she revealed a large selection of CDs in their jewel cases. She looked up at Claire and asked, “Did you want to borrow one?”
“No, but the DVDs are in the entertainment center, too. And my portable CD player is still in the drawer beside my bed along with my music.”
Josie smiled, her green eyes flickering with warmth. “I’m glad. I hate the fact they took as much as they did.”
“I don’t think you’re getting the point your roommate is trying to make,” Daniel said, not happy to have confirming evidence the break-in hadn’t been a run-of-the-mill burglary.
He felt certain it had been orchestrated by the people responsible for the attempt on Tyler’s life. They had not balked at killing once. He could easily imagine what they would have done if either woman had been home last night. Josie could take care of herself, but even a seasoned soldier was at a disadvantage during a surprise attack, and her security measures were nonexistent.
Thinking about it made him ask, “Why don’t you have a security system?”
“Because this is my house, not my fortress.”
It was that normal life thing again. Her desire to leave her mercenary life behind was really starting to bite him in the ass. “Josette, normal people have security systems.”
“Which are useless if the perpetrator has any kind of specialized knowledge.” She closed the CD cabinet and came back over to her computer desk, where she’d been trying to identify what had been stolen.
“So go with something harder to circumvent.”
“But then I wouldn’t be living like a normal person, would I? I’d still be perpetrating the soldier mentality. Anyway, I don’t see what my lack of a security system has to do with the thieves leaving my CDs behind.”
“Whoever broke in last night is a lot more dangerous than a burglar looking for his next score.”
Claire pushed her black plastic-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “I think he’s right, Josette. I read this article online a few months ago about petty theft and the used entertainment industry market. According to what I read, CDs and DVDs are popular items to steal because they’re so easy to get rid of. You don’t have to prove ownership, and a lot of used dealers will give cash on the dollar for them.”
“If the perps who broke into your house were petty thieves, why take the television, which is easier to trace and more conspicuous to carry, but leave behind the CDs and DVDs?”
“Maybe they were in a hurry.”
She wasn’t being a smartass; she was being a good soldier and presenting another alternative, but she knew he was right.
“All of my CD-ROMs are gone,” Claire said.
“Mine, too.” Josie waved her hand toward her desk. “So are my disks, for that matter. They took pretty much everything related to my computer.”
Claire frowned, her intelligent eyes sharp. “Diskettes aren’t worth anything. Even new, they hardly cost anything. The only value they could have to a thief is the data stored on them, and you don’t keep data that could be turned into income.”
“You said you had copies of your dad’s records on your computer,” he reminded Josie.
“Yes.”
“Did anyone else know about the computerization of his files?”
She shrugged, her mouth twisting wryly. “Probably quite a few. He complained about it a lot to the other trainers that worked for him.”
“The school was destroyed along with all its files. Your computerized records were stolen along with anything that might conceivably have copies of them on it.”
“You think someone tried to kill Dad because of what he had in his files?”
“Yes.”
“But I’ve been through them. There’s nothing there that could warrant that kind of reaction. Despite his personal paranoia, he doesn’t keep track of behavior he deems suspicious.”
“Your dad’s records had to have something in them that someone didn’t want him to have.”
