Doggone Page 2

  Grimacing, Connor looked at me. I kept one hand over my mouth to keep from retching. The other hand clutched my blouse closed. In the hallway.

  ‘‘God, Sara, I’m really sorry. I didn’t know they would be here. They don’t usually drop in unannounced. They were probably just anxious to finally meet you.’’ He reached for me but I jumped away. His family. Naked. Hallway. God.

  ‘‘It’s okay,’’ I choked. They don’t usually drop in? It was so not okay.

  ‘‘I’m sorry.’’

  ‘‘No big deal. I just met my in-laws while stripping their eldest in a public area. At least, I assume that’s who those people were. I mean, maybe they’re just voyeuristic burglars, or we interrupted the plumber fixing the sink.’’ I concentrated on buttoning my blouse. Maybe he’d confirm one of my wild suggestions. Even a lie would be good here.

  He shook his head.

  ‘‘I’m sure I’ll be able to look them in the face again. In about a hundred years.’’ I put more room between us, rubbing my arms. When did it get so cold in this hallway? ‘‘Could you fix yourself?’’

  He looked down. His T-shirt was half-untucked, and the top button of his jeans was undone. He looked . . . mauled.

  ‘‘They know we’re married, Sara.’’ He straightened his clothes.

  ‘‘There’s knowing and then there’s knowing, Connor. This would be an overshare.’’ With a groan, I covered my face with my hands. A phone rang behind me as he tried to pull me into his arms, but no way was I going for that.

  ‘‘They’re grown-ups, babe. I don’t think we’ve shocked them.’’

  ‘‘Oh, God,’’ I moaned.

  ‘‘Uh, Sara?’’ The younger brother was back. ‘‘The phone’s for you.’’

  Not exactly saved by the bell since it was five minutes too late for premortification intervention. Timing was never my strong suit.

  ‘‘Thank you.’’

  ‘‘I’m Ryan, the younger, smarter, better-looking brother.’’ Ryan flashed dimples at me.

  ‘‘Hi.’’

  ‘‘Hi. You’re nothing like I was expecting.’’

  ‘‘Ryan, shut up,’’ Connor snapped. He moved to crowd his younger brother back toward the interior of the apartment, but Ryan didn’t budge.

  ‘‘I’m not sure I want to know,’’ I said.

  ‘‘No, it’s good.’’

  ‘‘Why don’t you take it in the bedroom, Sara?’’ Connor suggested as Ryan reached for my hand.

  ‘‘Particularly since the hall has gotten so crowded,’’ Ryan choked.

  ‘‘The phone. I meant the phone.’’ Connor pushed Ryan back.

  Ryan grinned and shifted his weight to avoid being moved. With his green eyes, he could pass for the Cheshire Cat before his disappearance. Well, if the cat had been a surfer dude. Connor was flushed, finally sharing my embarrassment. Served him right.

  ‘‘I could try to distract the ’rents for you, but short of setting fire to the place you won’t have time to get that shirt off a second time. She’s very focused, our mother. Which is too bad, because that’s a sexy bra,’’ Ryan assured me.

  ‘‘Uh, thanks.’’

  ‘‘Anytime.’’

  ‘‘Ryan, get the hell out,’’ Connor snapped, closing the front door in his brother’s face. ‘‘Sara, this isn’t as bad as it seems.’’

  ‘‘Oh, I’m pretty sure it’s every bit as bad as it seems.’’

  ‘‘I’ll get rid of them.’’

  ‘‘Permanently?’’

  Connor looked shocked. ‘‘They live about ten minutes from here. Siobhan, maybe a half hour. I could probably buy until tomorrow.’’

  At any time in the future, in a mere thirty minutes his entire family could descend. Very convenient. ‘‘I was kidding.’’

  ‘‘I’ll send them home. Then, when they come back, you can meet them normally.’’

  I stared at him. Yes, please, new in-laws, if you could just leave me with your sex-starved son and his misbuttoned jeans, I’ll be ready to exchange personal chitchat over dominoes some evening very soon. Honestly, for a smart guy . . . I took a deep breath.

  ‘‘I’m going to answer the phone. If I’m lucky, it’s an emergency that requires my immediate attention. If I’m really lucky, I’ll fall and smack my head on a table lamp and wake up having lost my own identity.’’

  ‘‘Honey—’’

  ‘‘Don’t ‘honey’ me. Just’’—I pointed toward the apartment—‘‘deal. I’ll be right back.’’

  Connor opened the door and held it. I walked past him and toward the bedroom I could see at the end of the hall. I saw his family milling about in the living room. I closed the bedroom door behind me and picked up the phone.

  ‘‘Hello?’’

  ‘‘Hey, Sara.’’

  ‘‘Joe.’’ I sank down on the bed. At this moment I wished I were in the office, having this conversation with Joe over the wall of our shared cube. Even Abercroft, Hamilton, and Sterns looked good compared to the family homestead, complete with appalled in-laws. I wanted to blurt it all out, but Joe and I didn’t have that kind of relationship. Neurotic blathering I saved for my best friend, Russ.

  ‘‘You okay?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘Fine.’’

  ‘‘You don’t sound that good.’’

  ‘‘It’s nothing.’’

  ‘‘O-kay. If you’re sure.’’ That was the closest Joe had ever come to asking a personal question. I was touched.

  ‘‘Really. It’s fine. What’s up?’’

  ‘‘You got a call. The receptionist misdialed and transferred it to me. It took a couple of minutes for me to figure out he really wanted you, and by then I thought I should just try to get the information before his medication wore completely off.’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘Think weird with a capital weird. Acted like Deep Throat.’’

  I was intrigued. Given the scut work that a new associate like Joe got to do for the firm, he was experienced with weird. If this guy was tripping Joe’s meter, he must have been odd indeed.

  ‘‘His name is DeVries. I guess you called him. He wants to meet you tonight. Nine p.m. He actually said, ‘Come alone.’ ’’

  Joe recited an address. I opened the bedside table for a pen. It was neat. Four paperbacks, all thrillers, a sudoku book, a bag of candy, and a technical manual of some sort. I took out a pen and checked the bottom drawer. More manuals. No porn. No little black book. Interesting. Did he clean them out before I came?

  ‘‘I checked him out. I didn’t have much time, but I did do a background on this guy. He’s nuts. Extreme right-wing, conspiracy theories, and a criminal record.’’

  Oh, brother. I should have done that before I’d left. Instead, my first call had been to Connor. It was a work trip and I had husband on the brain. Henry DeVries was just the guy who talked to the guy I was looking for, but if I’d been doing my job thoroughly, I would have done exactly what Joe did. And I would have had plenty of time to do more than scratch the surface.

  ‘‘What kind of criminal record?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘A lot of arrests. The most recent was inciting to riot. If you go back far enough, you get assaults and even a couple of domestic-abuse arrests.’’

  ‘‘Convictions?’’ I asked. Not that it really mattered. Anybody who’d been arrested enough probably wasn’t someone you should plan assignations with. I stroked the comforter. It felt like silk. Brown and blue stripes, masculine, but still silk. My brain flashed on Connor in this bed. His parents were probably thinking the same thing I was: Sara Townley is a sex fiend.

  ‘‘Sara, listen, this guy was off the chart on the phone. A colorful past or even a public persona is one thing; crazy so you can’t hide it is something else. I also checked the place. It’s not the same address as the radio station. You should make sure this meeting is in public. Or better yet, take him with you.’’

  ‘‘Him?’’

  ‘‘The guy. The husband
.’’

  ‘‘How do you know—’’

  ‘‘Russ has a big mouth. Take him with you.’’

  ‘‘I am perfectly capable of doing my job without him.’’

  Chapter Two

  I left a voice mail for Tom Senthe, the bank middle manager who was handling the fraud investigation from their side, then braced myself and went back into the living room to face Connor’s family. I explained that I had to meet someone with regard to my case. Everyone smiled politely—until Connor insisted on knowing the address.

  ‘‘Absolutely not,’’ he yelled. Actually yelled. At me. After the surprise family reunion and the sexual frustration. He had nerve.

  ‘‘This is my job, and I’ll do whatever I want to.’’

  ‘‘You will—’’ he started, before his mother smacked him in the back of the head.

  He turned, his green eyes wide.

  ‘‘Mother—’’ he began.

  ‘‘Don’t ‘Mother’ me, young man.’’

  Everyone got to their feet and started moving toward the front door.

  ‘‘Nice to meet you. I’m Siobhan,’’ his sister whispered as she walked past.

  His father patted my shoulder. ‘‘I’m Dougal. We’ll wait for you in the hall, Liss.’’

  ‘‘Don’t worry. She can take him,’’ Ryan whispered in my ear, kissing my cheek.

  ‘‘Do you have any idea where—’’ Connor began, his voice once again even.

  ‘‘Of course I do. I’ve lived here longer than you’ve been alive, Connor. But we do not yell like we are four years old,’’ his mother said.

  ‘‘No yelling, but hitting is okay,’’ he muttered.

  I bit my lip. He sounded like a kid. My Navy SEAL- trained, tough-as-nails husband being scolded by his five-foot-nothing, one-hundred-pound mother. Fascinating.

  ‘‘Sara has a job to do. You’’—she poked his chest with one well-manicured finger—‘‘will respect that. I’m Alyssa, dear. Welcome to the family.’’

  Connor stiffened.

  ‘‘Connor will go with you.’’

  I froze. My mother-in-law scared the hell out of me.

  ‘‘Agreed?’’ she asked.

  Connor and I exchanged a look.

  ‘‘Yeah,’’ Connor said.

  ‘‘What?’’ Alyssa asked sharply.

  ‘‘Yes, ma’am.’’

  ‘‘Yes, ma’am,’’ I repeated.

  She smiled. ‘‘Good. I’ll call you tomorrow, darling.’’ Connor leaned down and accepted her kiss.

  ‘‘We’ll arrange a proper introduction, then.’’ Alyssa said, kissing my cheek and breezing out the door.

  Connor drove in silence. As the sleek condos and manicured lawns became small shops and then depressed high-rises and boarded-up warehouses, I reflected on how my day had gone to hell. One minute Connor had his hands inside my blouse, the next I was hanging out in Beirut, trying not to show fear. It was hard to imagine that things could actually deteriorate from flashing his parents and yet . . . here we were. Note to self—the next time some source insisted on a gang-zone rendezvous, I was going to decline the invitation. Awkward social situations, even those that included my new in-laws, weren’t a legitimate reason to say ‘‘please can I’’ when offered an escape that led directly to hell. If I hadn’t taken the call from the office . . . Oh, who was I kidding? I would have volunteered for death row rather than make small talk with his family. They’d been very nice. Extremely polite. It creeped me out.

  Ryan seemed okay. Smart. Funny. Flirtatious. Connor without the grown-up gene. A little shorter, a little darker, the same green eyes. His father had barely spoken.Strong and silent, or calculating the slut factor? Hard to tell. He had silver hair and crisp golf clothes. His eyes were blue, his tan deep.

  His sister, Siobhan, was like the negative Polaroid of all of them. Her mother’s frame with a brittleness that screamed discomfort. Her father’s eyes in a watered hue, more pastel than sapphire. Ryan’s pleasantness without his confidence. Connor’s . . . what? She’d barely spoken since the hallway striptease. Okay, then. Connor’s ability to keep his mouth shut.

  Alyssa McNamara was gorgeous. Mahogony hair and chocolate brown eyes. All dancer’s grace and fashion sense. I felt like a polyester giant next to her. ‘‘Call me Liss,’’ she’d said. ‘‘We’ll have to plan an outing. Get to know each other. Maybe go shopping.’’ Shopping and family obligation? Root canal. Cosmetic brain surgery. Voluntary commitment for psychiatric evaluation. All higher on my list of must-dos. And that was before she’d done the scary-matriarch thing with the head slap.

  I glanced at him. They definitely had that in common. What did he expect? I didn’t do family.

  ‘‘That’s it. You wait here,’’ I said, reaching for the door handle.

  His arm flashed, locking me into my seat. He was scanning the street, barely turning his head. His body language radiated alert status.

  He might have a point. I looked at the steel-gated windows with the gang tags. A charred Honda was the only vehicle on the street. It had a certain get-the-hell-out air to it.

  ‘‘I’ll come with you,’’ he offered.

  ‘‘Absolutely not. We talked about this. My case. My problem. You are here strictly as a chauffeur, Connor, and even that’s against my better judgment. Besides, DeVries is squirrelly. He’s not expecting two people.’’

  I sounded confident. Yeah, the neighborhood was a little, um, lived-in, but I’d been in bad places before, and the informant was legit. This meeting wasn’t exactly my dream scenario, either, but no way was I acting the delicate flower in front of Connor. He was too alpha not to put his oar in.

  ‘‘He’ll cope.’’ Connor got out of the car. ‘‘Slide across.’’

  I reached for the door handle.

  ‘‘No, Sara.’’

  I got out and came around the car. I gave him my look, the one that said, Don’t mess with me. He stared back. Short of manhandling me, which he’d never do, he’d have to respect my autonomy. Patience. What I needed was patience. I waited him out.

  ‘‘Fine.’’ He tried to sound reasonable. ‘‘We’ll go together.’’

  I wasn’t so stupid that his suggestion didn’t sound good. Smart, even. Then again, if I gave him an inch I’d never get the edge back.

  ‘‘No means no. I’ve got it covered.’’ I frosted my look a little more.

  ‘‘Humor me,’’ he said.

  ‘‘There you are with that Tarzan-and-Jane thing again. Knock it off, Connor. It’s getting on my last nerve.’’ I glared. ‘‘Besides, he’d make you as GI Joe in ten seconds, max. I don’t think that will encourage him to open up, do you?’’

  ‘‘You don’t know that.’’

  ‘‘You’ve got the army crew cut. Believe me, it’s obvious you’re military.’’

  ‘‘It’s not a crew cut.’’ He reached up and smoothed down his hair. I had to fight against softening. He looked like a little kid pushing down cowlicks.

  ‘‘I could be a skinhead,’’ he continued. ‘‘I bet this guy loves skinheads. Probably hangs out with them.’’

  ‘‘Then it will be quite a cultural experience for me. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.’’ I turned away.

  He caught my arm. ‘‘I’m not letting you go alone.’’

  I stared at my hand, then skewered him with a look. ‘‘You don’t let me do things. I decide and then I do them.’’

  He let go. ‘‘You’re mad about the parents, I know. I’ll admit I was out of line when I told you not to meet this guy by yourself. And Ryan doesn’t know when to quit, but—’’

  ‘‘I like your brother. This isn’t about him. Or your parents, or even you, Connor. It’s about me doing my job, for which I neither need nor want your assistance.’’ What was with him withstanding my most withering look. I’d frozen muggers dead with it. I lifted my chin another inch. I was still looking up at him. The height mismatch was not helping. Next time I’d stay on the curb wh
en trying to back him off. Christ, he was stubborn. Pigheaded. Damn alpha males everywhere.

  ‘‘Okay. Go ahead. I’ll wait here.’’

  I stared with narrowed eyes. He couldn’t possibly think that reverse-psychology thing was going to work. I waited. He thought that if he said left, I’d go right. Please.

  ‘‘Fine.’’ I turned and marched across the street.

  ‘‘Terrific,’’ he mumbled.

  ‘‘I heard that,’’ I called over my shoulder.

  I kept my back straight. He was infuriating: pushy and arrogant and without the least little bit of faith in my abilities. Well, I’d show him. A voice inside my head whispered that this might not be the best time to insist on independence. I squashed it. I’d been in worse spots. Heck, I’d been in more uncomfortable spots today. I could handle this. Keeping my spine straight, I headed toward the radio studio.

  The building looked like the others. It had heavy metal gates in front of the window and a rainbow of graffiti across its face. Hard to imagine that it housed state-of-the-art equipment that allowed DeVries to broadcast remotely. It looked more like a down-on-its-luck warehouse. I moved from the door to the window and cupped my hands, trying to peer through the fencing to the window beyond. Maybe he’d stood me up. Thank God.

  I didn’t mean that. I wanted this informant to show. I wanted to make progress on this case. I wanted Connor to see what I could do and that I didn’t need his help to do it. I just would rather do it at the beach, with sunshine and smiling faces.

  An engine sputtered, and a rusty Nova crept out of an alley fifty yards away.

  ‘‘He’s not there,’’ Connor called, sounding entirely too happy about it.

  ‘‘I’m going to see if there’s a side door.’’

  Of course I was. I wasn’t giving up just because I could feel a hundred eyes peering at me from behind barred windows and the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. I was a professional. I rounded the building and Connor moved parallel to me, staying in my peripheral vision. I should tell him to stop. A dog started vocalizing. I looked up. He was sitting at the edge of the building, a black Lab mix of some sort, looking pretty good for being homeless. She stared at me with dark eyes, her song hitting a high note. It was like she was talking to me. Not barking, not growling. More of a Scooby Doo sort of thing.