Against the Storm1 (3 page)

“They’re very good.”

“I’ll tell him you said so.” Gabriel Raines was Dev Raines’s brother, one of his closest friends. They had worked together last year when Gabe was having trouble with an arsonist. Gabe was in construction. Taking pictures was just a hobby, but Gabe seemed to have a good eye.

They drove away from the office, leaving the small business district behind, moving along Kirby Street through a neighborhood of stately older homes and smaller, even older residences like the one in which he lived. Big sycamore trees overhung the streets, shading the asphalt. Manicured lawns climbed from the curb to the front of each house.

Heading south at Maggie’s direction, they passed Holcomb Street, wound around a bit, eventually turned onto Broadmoor and into a six-unit town house development that looked very new. The units were nicely constructed, utilizing the land without destroying too many trees. The buildings, beige with redbrick trim, had a vaulted roofline, and each unit had its own brick chimney.

“That one’s mine. The one on the end, unit A.”

He pulled into a space Maggie indicated in front of a
row of matching two-story dwellings. “This your usual parking spot?”

She nodded. “There’s a guest space on the right. I keep my car in the garage at night.”

They got out of the car and Maggie led him toward the door of her unit. He liked the way she moved, sexy and confident. He liked the way she looked, too, with that little spray of freckles across her forehead and the tip of her nose.

His groin tightened. His instincts were warning him to stay away from temptation, and Maggie O’Connell was certainly that. He would give the case to Alex or Ben, he told himself. As soon as he had a little more information.

She unlocked the door and Trace followed her in. “I’ll get the note,” Maggie said. “I’ll be right back.”

He watched her climb the stairs in the entry, admiring the firmness of the muscles in her hips and thighs. The lady stayed in shape, it was clear. He liked that in a woman, since he believed in staying fit himself.

As she disappeared, he glanced around the condo, which was almost empty. Just a beige, floral-print sofa and matching chair in the living room, a maple coffee table and a couple brass lamps, one of them sitting on the floor. Cardboard boxes were stacked everywhere. There was a dining table in an area off the living room. She had a laptop set up there. Good to know she was computer literate.

Maggie returned with the note, carrying it gingerly but not as carefully. “I handled it when I first got it. Fingerprints never occurred to me until today.” She walked to the breakfast counter and laid the note on
the gold-flecked white granite top. Trace moved it a little so he could read the words.

There it was again, that odd, eerie tone. Trace couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it meant, but he didn’t like it. He placed the second note beside the first, compared the hand-printed letters. Bold. Well formed. No misspelled words.

Maggie looked up at him. “Will you help me?”

Give the case to Alex,
a little voice said.

A muscle tightened in Trace’s cheek. Alex Justice, with his good looks and dimples… Trace glanced down at Maggie and desire curled through him. Her eyes were on his, green and worried. A surge of protectiveness overrode his good sense.

So she was a redhead. So what? So what if he already felt a strong attraction to her? It didn’t mean a thing. She could be in serious trouble and she needed his help.

“You have any idea who might have written these?” he asked.

Maggie shook her head. “I’ve tried to think. It doesn’t sound like anyone I know.”

“Educated. Forceful. Older, maybe. This is not some bum off the street.”

“No, I don’t think so, either.”

“If I’m going to find this guy, you’re going to have to help me. I’ll need to know things about you. Things about your past, about your work. Some of it fairly per
sonal. If you’re willing to tell me what I need to know, I’ll help you.”

He watched the uncertainty move across her face. Unlike his ex-wife, talking about herself didn’t seem to be high on Maggie’s agenda.

“I’ll tell you as much as I can,” she said, which wasn’t the answer he wanted. He guessed for now it would have to do.

“All right, Maggie O’Connell. If we’re going to get this done, we might as well get to it.”

“B
efore we get started,” Trace said, “I need to go out to my car. I’ll be right back.”

Maggie walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa in front of the empty brick hearth, waiting while he disappeared outside, then returned carrying a leather briefcase. He sat down in the floral-print chair at the end of the sofa, took off his cowboy hat and rested it on the padded arm. He was dressed in sharply creased jeans, a short-sleeved white Western shirt with pearl snaps, and a pair of freshly polished, plain brown cowboy boots.

His hair was a dark mink-brown, but in the sunlight streaming through the window, little streaks of gold wound through the ends. The man was broad-shouldered, lean and fit, but she had already discovered that during his run-in with Bobby Jordane in the Texas Café.

She had noticed the gold in Trace Rawlins’s brown eyes, his straight nose and white teeth. Now she noticed the sexy, sensual curve of his mouth, and found herself staring more than once. He was a good-looking man.
But that and the fact he knew how to use his fists were all she really knew about him.

After the way he had bullied her in the café, she wasn’t even sure she liked him.

The brass latch on his briefcase clicked open and Trace took out a state-of-the-art recorder, a Montblanc pen and a yellow legal pad.

“Let’s start with the present and work backward,” he said, turning on the recorder. “You’re a photographer. Is that a hobby or what you do for a living?”

She smiled. “I’m lucky. I’m not rich, but I make a very good living doing the work I love.”

Trace glanced at the barren white walls of the town house.

“My pictures are all still in boxes,” Maggie explained in answer to his silent question. “I’m working on a photo project that’s been keeping me really busy. I’m unpacking a little at a time.”

“What kind of project?”

“A coffee-table book. It’s called
The Sea.
It’s set around the ocean and the different kinds of things people do that involve the sea—jobs, recreation, that kind of thing.”

His gaze sharpened with interest. When he looked at her with that direct way of his, her skin felt warm. “Why did you pick that subject?”

“I love the ocean. I do mostly outdoor photography. I love shooting any kind of landscapes, but the sea has my heart.”

His eyes gleamed and tiny lines appeared at the corners. She wondered if they were laugh lines or life lines, or just a reflection of the time he spent out-of-doors.

“I’d love to see some of your work,” he said.

Maggie smiled. “I guess I’d better get busy and unpack those boxes.”

They talked about her business a little more, about the people she dealt with in the galleries where her photos were displayed, and people she might have encountered during her shows.

“Do you keep a list of your clients?”

“As much as I can. I enter them into a file on my computer.”

“Anyone in particular who’s bought an extraordinary amount of your work?”

“Not that I can think of. I have clients who’ve purchased three or four pieces. That’s not that uncommon.” Maggie sighed. “As I said, the notes don’t strike any sort of chord. I can’t imagine I know this person.”

“Maybe you don’t. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to put a tail on you for a couple of days. It’ll be me or a guy who works for me named Rex Westcott. I’ll show you his picture, so if you happen to spot him, you’ll know he’s not the guy we’re after. We’ll keep tabs on you, watch for anyone who might be following you.”

She felt a trickle of relief. “All right.”

“Of course, that might not be the way he operates. Obviously, he knows where you live. He might know a whole lot more.”

Maggie didn’t like the sound of that. It was one of the reasons she stayed away from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Trace asked her more questions about roommates at school, old boyfriends, someone she might have jilted.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t date that often. I had a boyfriend when I went to college. We were pretty serious for a while, but it didn’t work out.”

“What was his name?”

“Michael Irving.”

“Anyone else?”

She hated to mention David, since she had been the one at fault for the breakup, and she didn’t want to cause him any more trouble. “Maggie?”

She released a breath, determined to reveal as little as possible. “I went out with an attorney named David Lyons for a while. We lived together a couple of months.”

“Bad breakup?”

His eyes were on hers. The man didn’t miss a thing. “Pretty bad. It was my fault. I didn’t mean to hurt him, but I did.”

“When did it end?”

“First of April, two years ago.”

“Where is he now?”

“I haven’t seen him. I heard he was dating someone.”

Trace stopped making notes and looked at her. There was something in those golden-brown eyes that seemed to see more than she wanted.

“What about now?” he asked. “Are you involved with anyone at the moment?”

Maggie shook her head. “I’ve been way too busy.” She wondered if there might be something personal in the question. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “And I really don’t like the dating scene. I suppose eventually I’d like to meet someone, but not right now. I’ve got my career to think about. I’m happy the way I am.”

He studied her as if he wasn’t sure he believed her. She wondered if he was one of those men who thought every woman was desperate to find a husband. Or maybe exactly the opposite. That she was just another faithless female concerned with only herself.

“It’ll take some time to check all this out,” he said. “The thing is, you might know this person and not realize it. He—or she—could be using this odd style of writing so you won’t figure out who it is.”

She frowned. “You don’t actually think this could be a woman?”

“Unless your sexual preferences go both ways, probably not.”

She smiled. “I’m boringly heterosexual.”

His eyes seemed to darken. Maggie felt a warm, unwelcome stirring in the pit of her stomach, and inwardly cursed her bad luck. An attraction to Trace Rawlins was the last thing she wanted.

“The handwriting looks masculine,” Trace continued, “but there definitely are women stalkers. Jealousy over a past relationship with a man, or your success as a photographer. That kind of thing.”

He kept asking questions, moving her backward in time. Thinking about the incident with Josh Varner, she began to grow more and more uneasy.

“Tell me about your family,” Trace said, making notes now and again.

“My mom and dad divorced when I was four. Mom moved back to Florida where she was raised, remarried not long after and had another kid. I stayed here and lived with my dad.”

“He still alive?”

“He passed away a couple of years ago.”

“I lost mine a while back. I still miss him.”

Maggie made no comment. Her dad had been demanding and a tough disciplinarian, but she had loved him and still missed him.

“How about high school? Anything stand out? Any old grudges that might blossom years later?”

She forced her gaze to remain on his face. No way was she telling him about Josh Varner. Josh didn’t even live in Texas anymore. He had gone to UCLA on a scholarship and then taken a job in Seattle with Microsoft. She’d heard he made barrels of money.

And if he wrote her a message, it wouldn’t sound anything like the words on the notes she had received.

“I, um, can’t think of anything. Besides, if it was something from high school, why would the person wait all these years?”

Trace’s pen stopped moving. “Usually something happens, an event of some kind. A stressor, it’s called. A trigger that digs up old memories, sometimes twists them around in a weird direction.”

She shook her head. “I really can’t think of anything.” At least nothing that had recently occurred. Still, she was glad he looked down just then to write another note. She had always been an unconvincing liar.

“It may well be that this guy has seen you somewhere but the two of you have never met. He could be fixated on you for no good reason other than the color of your hair, or that you look like someone he once knew.”

A little chill ran through her. “I see.”

Trace reached over and squeezed her hand. “Look, we’re going to catch this guy. There are very tough laws against stalking.”

She nodded. Just his light touch reassured her. Maybe this was a man she could count on, a man who could make things turn out all right.

They talked awhile longer, but he didn’t bring up her past again. If something happened that involved her Great Shame, as she thought of it, she would tell him. If she did, she knew the look she would see on his face. At the moment, she just couldn’t handle it.

Trace rose effortlessly from his chair, to tower over her on his long legs. “On the way back to the office, you can show me where you lived when you got the first note.” He packed up his stuff, closed the briefcase, clamped on his cowboy hat. “I’d like to take the notes,” he said, “check them for prints.”

“All right.”

Trace bagged the notes and she led him to the entry. “You keep your doors and windows locked?”

“I’m pretty good about it.”

His glance was hard and direct. “You be better than pretty good. You be damned good.”

She didn’t like his attitude. On the other hand, he was probably right. Even in a good neighborhood, the crime rate in Houston was high.

“I’ll keep the doors locked.”

“Good girl. Let’s go.”

She felt his hand at the small of her back, big and warm as he guided her out of the house toward his Jeep, then opened the door and helped her climb in. They cruised by her old apartment. He stopped in front and made a thorough perusal of the area, then turned the Jeep around and headed back toward his office.

“Anyone in your old apartment building who might be interested in you in some way?”

“There’re only four units. A retired lady schoolteacher lives in one. There’s a single mother and her four-year-old son, and an older man in a wheelchair. The one I left is still vacant.”

“Looks like we can rule out the apartment residents.”

They reached his office and Trace walked her over to her car.

“Remember what I said about keeping your doors locked.”

“I will.”

As Maggie drove back to her town house, she couldn’t help thinking that in going to a private investigator she had done the right thing.

She didn’t like the attraction she felt, but it was only physical, nothing to really worry about. Trace was a handsome, incredibly masculine man, and she hadn’t been involved with anyone in years.

And she felt better knowing she had someone to help her.

Even if she had to pay for it.

Trace sat in front of his computer, staring at Maggie O’Connell’s webpage. The black background showed off a dozen photos of the Texas Hill Country, including the imported African game that roamed the grasslands, and a variety of magnificent sunsets that lured the viewer deeper into each scene.

On another page, there were shots of small towns and beaches along the coastline bordering the Gulf, and wonderful action photos of various power-and sailboats skimming over the water in Galveston Bay.

The colors were brilliant, the angles of the photos showed the subject to the very best advantage, and there was always something a little different, something intriguing about each picture. At the bottom of the page, information on the three galleries in Texas that carried limited-edition prints of Maggie’s work was listed, and a contact email address.

Trace searched through the dozens of other sites that popped up on Google when he referenced her name, and the more he searched, the more frustrated he became.

Damn, his client wasn’t just a good photographer, she was practically a celebrity. She was a well-known,
well-respected artist whose work had been viewed by thousands of people.

And any one of them could be the person who was stalking her.

Trace leaned forward in his leather chair and punched the button on the recorder, listening again to his conversation with Maggie. When he finished, he reviewed the notes he had taken.

He went to work on her list of names, verifying what little information he had. Nothing turned up. Michael Irving and David Lyons both had webpages. Irving was a certified public accountant in Dallas. Lyons was a corporate lawyer in Houston with Holder Holder & Meeks.

It was after seven by the time Trace finished. The office was closed. Annie had left for the night and Alex and Ben were out working cases. Trace had decided to postpone his trip to the shore until next weekend, and had called Rex Westcott to start the tail on Maggie tomorrow morning. He had sent Rex’s photo to the email address she had given him: [email protected].

Photolady.
Looking at some of her work, he realized she was far more than that. He might have smiled, except that he didn’t like complications, and Maggie O’Connell was nothing but. Her life was complicated. The possibilities of who her stalker might be were endless.

And the unwanted attraction Trace felt for her only made matters worse.

He sighed as he rose from his chair, plucked his hat off the credenza behind his desk and prepared to leave. A knock on the front door caught his attention. He glanced at the clock, saw that another hour had passed and wondered who knew he would be there this late.

He settled his hat on his head and started for the front door, turned the lock and pulled it open.

“Good heavens, Trace,” said a familiar female voice, “where on earth have you been?” Carly Benson Rawlins stormed past him into the office, whirled and set her hands on her hips. “Why didn’t you return my calls? I needed you, Trace. Why didn’t you call me back?”

“Good evening, Carly. Why don’t you come on in?”

His sarcasm went unnoticed.

“How could you be so insensitive?” She was petite and voluptuous, with long, straight red hair that fell past her shoulders. She had the prettiest blue eyes he’d ever seen. He cursed as he watched them fill with tears. “H-how could you ignore me like that?”