Last Man Standing

“I prefer a caramel on my pillow, thank you very much.” Speaking her real opinion out loud, even on a topic as mundane as candy preferences, reminded Tori that she was playing a role for the next several days. Professor Westin could talk freely. Agent Westin needed to be on guard every moment she was undercover. With her mind firmly in business mode, she conducted a thorough search of her room and the white-tiled bathroom. She found one listening device on the lamp atop the correspondence desk, but her sensor picked up no cameras. For a passing moment, she considered disabling the bug. But no sound from a room where someone intended to eavesdrop would raise suspicion.

“Let’s see, what shall I wear?” The mundane comment covered her as she ran her fingers along the joint where the walnut armoire butted against the wall. The tall antique with its flowery cornices rested flush against the rose-patterned wallpaper, not even separated by the width of the baseboard. One of the lovely eccentricities of Victorian manor houses was the scarcity of built-in closets. Architects and designers of any era rarely attached furniture to the wall itself. So that meant…

Tori opened the door and hauled out her suits and blouses on their hangers and dumped them onto the bed. She pulled a penlight from her bag and, reliving a favorite childhood book, climbed right up into the armoire itself, searching first with her eyes and then with her fingertips for any kind of latch. She’d almost given up in disappointment that she wouldn’t be transported into another world when she spotted a set of four odd marks imprinted in the dust on the back panel.

“Curious,” she thought, holding her right hand up beside the marks. The size was greater than her own hand, but the pattern was the same. Other than an odd span between the third and fourth spot, they lined up in the perfect imprint of four fingers. “I’ve had company.”

And she didn’t think it was the lost maid.

Even a forensic specialist would have a hard time recovering usable prints once a layer of dust had settled over them. But four out of five was a significant number. It should be easy enough, through casual observation, to find out who in the house was missing the ring finger on his or her right hand.

But it wasn’t the who so much as the how that interested Tori right now. Placing her own hand beneath the telltale prints, she pushed. And smiled at the answering click. A spring-loaded door. She backed out of the armoire as the panel sprang open, then stepped inside for a closer look.

“Ooh.” She shivered as she stepped into a pocket of cold air. Every follicle on her arms and legs puckered into a sea of goose bumps. Who ran air-conditioning inside the walls of a house? But as she took another step in, the chill passed. Tori’s skin and heartbeat returned to normal. “Curiouser and curiouser.”

Her light revealed a handle on the opposite side of the door for pulling it shut, a two-and-a-half-foot-wide passageway framed by the exposed studs and cross-beams of unfinished walls, and dozens of footprints trampled in the dust on the floor. She peered deeper into the passage, following the well-used path with her eyes. But the prints and her small light were swallowed up by the distant darkness.

“The guest room must be a popular destination.”

But for whom? And why?

Thunder rumbled in the sky like the distant hoofbeats of a galloping herd, shaking the foundations of the house itself. Tori squeezed her toes inside her shoes and refused to read anything more into the sky’s trembling and the house’s response than spooky coincidence. As well-maintained as the mansion might be, it was an old structure, susceptible to sound waves and atmospheric changes.

Her affirming sigh stirred the dank air and she sneezed as a spiral of dust motes tickled her nose. Was this part of Cole Taylor’s archaic security measures? Sneaking through the house and spying on guests? Were these hidden passageways a conduit for clandestine sexual liaisons? Or, were these catacombs the perfect hiding place for stolen artifacts?

Chad had hinted that secret rooms and passages cut through the entire mansion. The Divine Horseman could be stored anywhere inside this maze, transported in and out by visitors—known or otherwise—to this room. And though fanciful thoughts of knights and maidens and secret rendezvous tempted her to explore, Tori was practical enough to realize she should eliminate more obvious hiding places for the statuette before she went combing through the innards of the house.

She wrinkled her nose against the next wave of sneezing and climbed out of the armoire, quietly closing the door behind her and re-hanging her clothes to cover it. As much as Jericho loved his pretty things, he’d be more likely to put The Divine Horseman on display in a private room where he could look at it whenever he wanted. Besides, she had a hard time picturing an arthritic old man sneaking through the narrow, dusty catacombs. She’d be smarter to start her search in one of the locked rooms downstairs.

Smarter and cleaner.

As another spate of sneezes burned her sinuses, Tori noticed a soft spring rain falling outside her window now, punctuated by rumblings that foretold a more violent storm in its wake.

The gloomy weather was the least of her concerns. She stripped and stepped into the claw-foot tub with a pull-around curtain for a quick shower. She’d have a hard time explaining a stuffy nose and cobwebs in her hair if she showed up for dinner after poking around the secret passages.

One thug, one bug and a secret entrance to her room…Just enough security to keep her on her toes, but not enough to worry her. Yet. Maybe it was time to challenge this unseen Cole Taylor, she thought as she dried off. If he was the loyal protector Chad had made him out to be, then these amateurish efforts to safeguard the Meade mansion were intended to put her and any unwelcome guests off their game. But she’d been tested before; she wouldn’t let him lure her into a false sense of confidence.

“CLASSICAL MUSIC, HMM?” Cole was a rock-and-roll man himself, but the sudden blare of trumpets brought him from his desk to the bank of monitors that gave him visual access to key parts of the estate, and audio access to nearly everywhere else.

She had cranked the music in her room—the art professor with the fiery red hair. Now she was zipping around the guest room, wrapped in a white towel that covered her from armpit to thigh. She crossed to the far side of the room to retrieve something from the dresser, giving the camera a wide-angle shot. Cole started unrolling the sleeves of his shirt and buttoning the cuffs, watching the screen and enjoying his work for a change.

They didn’t make towels long enough to cover those legs.

Professor Westin had passed his background screening, the security check at the gate, and—other than those few minutes alone in the library—had been under constant surveillance by Aaron or someone else in the house. But their newest guest had shown an inordinate amount of curiosity in her surroundings. He supposed intellectuals were like that, always poking around, eager to learn something new. His brother Mac was a forensic scientist who never missed a detail. Mac could read a crime scene with all five senses, and with a little help from chemistry and computers, piece together the who, what, where, when, and sometimes even the why of the crime.

Cole’s powers of observation lay in reading people.

The professor had first caught his attention when she climbed into the wardrobe. Odd. But he’d seen stranger stuff in this house. When she disappeared into the bathroom, he’d gone back to his desk to finish up some paperwork. But now, as he watched the hurry in her movements, he realized her curious eccentricities served a purpose. What, he didn’t know yet. But she was up to something. Dinner wasn’t for nearly an hour, and she showed all the signs of a woman who was late for an appointment.

He hooked the last button on his cuff and unbunched the oxford cloth sleeves beneath the elastic and leather brace of his shoulder holster. He missed the days when he could just toss on a pair of jeans and… He froze with his hands at the knot of his tie.

She’d dropped the towel.

A better man might have turned away, but Cole couldn’t. Slim and delicate from the nape of her neck down to the heel of her foot—with miles of smooth, milky skin in between—Victoria Westin didn’t look like any professor he knew. Even in black and white, she was tall, lean and sexy. His pulse quickened. His lips parted to accommodate the sudden heat inside that sought escape.

She’d pulled on panty hose, a slip and a plain green dress before he forced himself to blink and look away. He retreated all the way to his desk to grab his suit coat from the back of his chair and slip it on, needing the physical activity to work off the tension that made him edgy and horny and frustrated as hell. He needed a long workout in the gym or a stiff drink. He didn’t need to be dreaming up scenarios about slender redheads doing stripteases.

He was in one screwed-up mess, sitting on a time bomb. He’d uncovered dates and codes and had no clear idea whether they were legit or not, without outside verification. He hadn’t heard boo about his mother’s recovery from being attacked. And he was certain that someone in this house suspected he was a traitor. They might not know he was a cop, but he or she saw him as a threat.

How else could he explain the influx of invitations to sit in on every meeting? Not just with Jericho, but with Chad and his fiancée. Paulie. Aaron, too. Supervising deliveries, consulting on stock options, hiring accountants. Strategies for dealing with a relentless district attorney who’d published yet another interview about his determination to rid Kansas City of organized crime. He’d never been so popular.

What did they want him to say? That he knew the assistant district attorney personally? That ADA Dwight Powers believed Jericho Meade had gotten away with murder?

Someone was trying to keep Cole very busy, and feed him lots of misleading information in an effort to trip him up and reveal his connection to Dwight Powers.

“What the—?”

Victoria Westin had just slipped something inside the lining of her jacket. Cole moved closer to watch. She smoothed lipstick over her lips and smacked them together, studying her appearance in the mirror. The luscious shape of her mouth interested him almost as much as what she did next. Instead of replacing the cap, she unscrewed something from the bottom of the tube and tucked that into her jacket as well.

“What are you up to?” he whispered to the image on his screen.

Cole buttoned his jacket as she opened her door and peered into the hallway. He typed in a command and switched the view to the one from the upstairs hallway camera, and caught her slinking along the railing toward the landing’s sitting area.

“That’s beyond curious, lady. Who are you?”

Instincts borne of too many years on the job transformed his suspicion into a defensive awareness that radiated through his skeleton and sharpened every sense. He looked past her to the bigger picture on the screen.

Where was Aaron? Polakis was supposed to be watching her until dinner.

A nosy guest. A missing guard.

Too many unanswered questions.

When Ms. Westin peeked over the top of the banister before tiptoeing down the stairs, a plan took shape in Cole’s mind.

It was crazy. It was desperate.

But it was a plan.

WITH RIMSKY-KORSAKOV filling the room and the ear of whomever might be listening on the other end, Tori slipped out her door and made her way to the grand staircase.