Page 36 of Edge of Secrets

While she hustled around, pulling a suitcase from her closet, I studied the photos on the wall. Most of them were of two young women and a distinguished-looking elderly woman in different combinations and settings.

“This is your mother and sisters?” I asked.

She glanced up from where she knelt in front of a small chest of drawers. “Yes.”

I studied them. Pretty, like Nell, but in different ways. “They don’t look anything like you,” I observed.

“We’re all adopted,” Nell said. “Lucia took us in as foster children when we were teenagers.”

That information made me curious about what had shaped her—what had made her so smart, so difficult. But not tonight. There would be other chances. I hoped.

She looked exhausted, staring down at two different T-shirts in her hands as if she couldn’t decide which one to bring.

“Pack both,” I advised. “You’re not coming back for a while.”

She shot me a narrow glance. I walked over and knelt beside her. She swayed back slightly, her eyes going wide and wary as I pulled open her first drawer. My fingers closed around a fistful of silky fabric. Panties, stockings. I dropped the tangled wad into the open suitcase.

“Pack a lot,” I said softly.

Her eyes dropped, color rising in her face. Her nipples tightened against the stretchy fabric of her stained, rumpled dress.

That white-hot episode in the conference room hovered between us in the silence, complete in every delicious erotic detail. She licked her lower lip until it gleamed. The look in her eyes was cautious, but a hint of a smile played there.

I scoped the room with my peripheral vision. The bed, piled high with books, didn’t look promising, but the beanbag chair behind her had possibilities. I could wedge her into it, pin her down with my weight, rock against her, slide into her—her body squeezing around my cock every time she came. Yes.

I reached out, letting my fingertips glide down her cheek, her soft throat. Over her breastbone. I spread my whole hand over her, feeling the quick, hard throb of her heart beneath my palm. My other hand slid up her thigh, gripping where the fabric of her stockings ended and soft, hot skin began. The energy built between us, swelling into something inevitable. She bit her lower lip, her breathing uneven.

Then it happened again—just like on the street. That ghostly sensation. Like a cobweb breaking across my mind. My guard slipping.

I froze, my grip tightening on her thigh. My eyes swept the small apartment. Nothing moving. Nothing changed. Just the sounds of the street outside.

“What is it?” Nell asked.

“Shhh,” I hushed her, reaching out with my senses.

Two steps took me to the barred window overlooking a blind courtyard filled with garbage cans. Empty. Just a couple of rats scrounging. But the feeling remained. And by now, I trusted it blindly.

I was being watched. The hairs on my neck stood on end.

My gaze landed on the smoke detector attached to the low ceiling. I reached up and carefully detached it.

“Duncan, what are you?—”

“Shhh.” I didn’t want to talk. Not with unfriendly eyes watching, unfriendly ears listening.

It was almost too easy. A tiny video camera was taped to the side of the black smoke detector, nearly invisible. The device had been gutted, its interior used to house a transmitter. I stared at it, cursing myself for touching it.

Finger-fucking the evidence.

Gant would lecture me. He never wasted an opportunity to give me hell.

“What on earth is that thing?” Nell’s voice was thin and high.

“A video camera,” I said. “Someone’s been watching you.”

She made a strangled sound and put her hand over her mouth.

Shit-eating bastards, violating her hard-earned private space. Watching while she undressed, bathed, ate, slept. Probably watching her now—seeing her hurt and scared. That infuriated me.

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