Shadows At Sunset

“Why?”

“My brother told me all about you.”

“Nothing flattering, I’m sure,” he said lightly. His voice lacked the California softness—she couldn’t quite place his accent, which meant he was probably from the Midwest. It was the only clue that he didn’t belong in the sharklike environment where Jackson Meyer thrived.

“Depends how you define flattering,” Jilly said, wishing there was a way she could slip into her shoes without him noticing. He was already too tall as it was—she didn’t need the added disadvantage of being barefoot.

What had Dean called him? A pretty boy with the soul of a snake? It seemed accurate. He was pretty, indeed, though he lacked the feminine softness that usually went with such extraordinary good looks. She couldn’t tell whether he was gay or not, and she didn’t particularly want to know. Either way, he was strictly off-limits. Anyone connected with her father was.

Still, he was astonishingly easy on the eyes. Everything about him was perfect: the slightly shaggy, sun-bleached hair, the Armani suit, the Egyptian cotton shirt unbuttoned at the collar, exposing his tanned neck. He had a long, strong-looking body, like a runner. His eyes were hooded, watching her, so she couldn’t see either their color or their expression, but she had little doubt they were bright blue and frankly acquisitive.

She bent down and shoved her feet into her shoes, no longer caring that he was watching her, no longer caring that her silk shell probably showed too much cleavage. He wouldn’t be the type to be excited by cleavage. “I appreciate that you finally got around to me,” she said, “but it’s my father I wanted to see, not one of his minions.”

“I haven’t been called a minion in years,” he said with a drawl.

She straightened to her full height. Still a lot shorter than he was, but her high-heeled shoes made her feel less vulnerable. “Where is he?”

“Gone, I’m afraid.”

“Then I’ll just have to go over to the Bel Air house….”

“Out of the country. He and Melba left for a short vacation in Mexico. I’m sorry but I have no way of getting in touch with him.”

“I can see you’re devastated,” Jilly muttered, not caring if she sounded rude.

He didn’t seem to care, either. His smile was cool, unnerving. “Look, I’m here to help. If you’ve got some sort of legal problem I’ll be happy to look into it. A traffic ticket? Some problem with your ex-husband? The legal department can take care of things….”

“Can the legal department get rid of an interloper who stole my brother’s job?”

His eyes opened at that, and she got a shock. They weren’t blue at all, they were a dazzling emerald green. So green she figured he was probably wearing tinted contact lenses. And they weren’t acquisitive. They were calmly assessing.

“Is that what your brother told you? That I stole his job?” The idea seemed to amuse him, and Jilly’s anger burned even brighter.

“Not just his job. His father,” she said in a voice as cool as his.

“His father? Not yours? Jackson Meyer isn’t a sentimental man. I don’t think he gives a good goddamn about me or your brother. He just wants the job done well. I do it for him.”

“Do you?” she said in a silken voice. “And what else do you do for him?”

“Cold-blooded murder, hiding the bodies, anything he asks,” Coltrane responded offhandedly. “What are you doing for dinner?”

“I believe it,” Jilly muttered, and then his question sank in. “What did you say?”

“I said, what are you doing for dinner? It’s after seven and I’m hungry, and you look like you have at least another hour left in you of berating me for ruining your baby brother’s life. Let me take you to dinner and you can rip me apart in comfort.”

She was speechless at the sheer gall of the man. “I don’t want to go out to dinner with you,” she said, flustered.

“We can order something in, then. Your father keeps a caterer on call twenty-four hours a day.”

“And he’s not my baby brother. He’s only two years younger than I am,” she added inconsequentially.

“Trust me,” Coltrane said, “he’s definitely your baby brother.” There was no missing the faintly mocking admiration in his voice, but it only made Jilly angrier. She’d failed, her father was out of reach. As usual.

“I’ll talk to my father when he gets back,” she said coolly, reaching for her purse. “Thanks for your help, Mr. Coltrane.”

“Coltrane will do,” he said. “And you haven’t finished with my help. You can’t get out of here without me.”

“What do you mean?”

“The place has a top-of-the-line security system. No one can get in or out without the code once it’s past seven. It’s seven-fifteen, and I don’t think you have the code, do you?”

“No.”

“And where did you park your car? In the garage in the building, right? There’s no other place to park around here. You won’t be able to get in there without a different code. If you want to get home tonight you’re going to need my help.”

She would have said this was all some evil plan on the part of fate, but she didn’t tend to think fate had that much interest in one Jilly Meyer. She stared at Coltrane, her eyes narrowed as she considered her alternatives. She could call Dean, but he often ignored the telephone. Besides, he might be too drunk to answer, and she certainly didn’t want him driving to pick her up. God knew where Rachel-Ann was. And it had been so long since Jilly had been to the Meyer building that she no longer knew anyone who worked there who might be able to help her, with the exception of the draconian Mrs. Afton, and even Coltrane was preferable to the gorgon.

“I’d like to leave,” she said in a steady voice. “Now.”

“And you’d like my help? Pretty please?”

“Yes,” she said, hoping there was a special place in hell for men like him.

“My pleasure.” He flicked off the lights, plunging them into unexpected darkness just as she started toward him, and she almost slammed into him in her hurry to get out of there. Some blessed radar stopped her seconds before she did, but she was close enough to brush against his jacket, to feel his body heat in the enclosed area. It was unnerving.

But she had learned years ago not to let her unease show, and she stopped, following him at a more reasonable pace, determined to keep her distance. Trust Jackson to put her at a disadvantage, she thought sourly. Not only did he ignore his daughter, but he sent The Enemy to deal with her. If she hadn’t been pissed off before she was pissed off now.

The place was completely deserted, an astonishing circumstance. Jackson Meyer encouraged his employees to work long and hard, and he usually matched them in overtime. But there didn’t appear to be a soul left in the building as she followed Coltrane past the ghostly forms of neat desks, empty offices, echoing cubicles.

She had no idea what the people who worked at those desks actually did, any more than she knew how her father made his money. Meyer Enterprises had been her grandfather’s company. He’d started out in real estate in the 1940s, buying huge tracts of land, derelict factories and ruined mansions. The place where Jilly lived with her two siblings was one of the old man’s last acquisitions before he died in the early 1960s, the only building that hadn’t been razed and redeveloped to benefit the endless coffers of Meyer Enterprises.

And it never would be if Jilly had anything to say about it. It was one of the few things temporarily beyond her father’s greedy reach. Jackson Dean Meyer and his mother had had a falling out, and while Julia Meyer hadn’t been able to deed La Casa de Sombras to her three grandchildren outright, she’d still managed to keep Jackson away from it. It belonged to the three of them, Jilly, Dean and Rachel-Ann, for as long as even one of them wanted to live there. The moment the last one moved out it would revert to Jackson, and he’d have it torn down.

He’d been trying to get them out for years. Threats, bribery, anger had made Dean and Rachel-Ann waver. But Jilly was made of sterner stuff than that, and she’d kept the others firm.

Coltrane punched in a row of numbers on the security keypad by the door, too fast for Jilly to read them, then pushed the door open, holding it for her. She walked past him, too close again, and gave him her cool, dismissive smile. “Thanks for your help, but I can take it from here.”

“The elevator won’t come without the security code,” he said. “We’re on the thirty-first floor, it’s a hell of a long walk down, and when you get to the basement you’ll find the door is locked and you’ll just have to climb back up again. Besides, there’s the little problem of the parking garage.”

“I’ve got my cell phone—I can call a taxi.”

“You’ll still have to come back here for your car sooner or later. Unless you want to just go buy a new one with Daddy’s money.”

His easygoing contempt startled her, and she glared at him. “I’m surprised you don’t know that I don’t live off my daddy’s money, as you so sweetly put it. Maybe you’re not as involved in his affairs as Dean thought.”

Coltrane simply smiled. “It’s your choice, Jilly. You want to spend the night wandering up and down thirty-one flights of stairs, or do you want my help?”

Being trapped in a stairwell seemed vastly superior to being stuck with Coltrane in one of the bronze, art deco elevators Jackson had brought to the Meyer Building, but she wasn’t about to say so.