Release (14 page)

“And you were the last one to leave last night?”

She nodded.

“You didn’t notice anything unusual when you locked up?”

“No,” she said after a moment of rehashing her memories. “I left at a little after nine. Everything was quiet.”

Until she’d gotten home, anyway, and seen all the fire trucks and emergency vehicles at her house. Her gaze shot to Sean’s face. She wondered if he wasn’t thinking the same thing when his blue eyes narrowed into slits. He didn’t seem too happy about the turn of events. Not that she was, either.

“Genny . . . is there anything you’re not telling me? Anything I should know?”

A chill skittered down her spine. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve got to admit, it’s kind of strange. Your house burns down one night and then your store is broken into the next afternoon. Those tracks out back are fresh, you know. Not a half an inch of snow has accumulated in the guy’s footprints out in the alley. My guess is that he was in here at about two o’clock—at about the same time we left the penthouse.

When he saw her stunned expression, he shook his head, his eyes never leaving her face. “Come on. Let’s get you back to the penthouse. I think you’ve had enough surprises in the past twenty-four hours.”

CHAPTER
TEN

S
ean hung up his cell phone and stared thoughtfully out the window into dense, swirling snow. Genny had been shivering uncontrollably by the time they had returned. The rosy bloom that had been in her cheeks when they’d left the penthouse had entirely faded, leaving her wan and pale. He’d hustled her off to take a hot bath the second after they’d removed their coats.

He’d just spoken to Joe McMannis, an ex-Army buddy of his who worked as a private investigator in Indianapolis. Maybe he was paranoid, but Sean suddenly had a burning need to know the exact whereabouts of Albert Rook.

He knew it didn’t make sense, but the hackles that had been raised by the report of the fire at Genny’s house had turned into a sudden, sure prescience when he’d seen those muddy footprints on the floor of her boutique and felt the draft of cool air emanating from the back of the building.

Something wasn’t right. Genny was in danger. And when he thought of Genny being threatened, his mind automatically went to Albert Rook. Maybe it was because part of him had been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since Max Sauren had been found shot dead in his car in an abandoned warehouse parking lot on the north side of Chicago.

The police had never been able to make an arrest, although Genny had been their primary suspect. The fact that Max’s own gun had never been located had indicated he’d been murdered by his own weapon.

And any detective worth his salt knew that a man shot by his own gun was probably shot by someone close to him. If that was a fact for a normal gun owner, it was three times true for Max Sauren. Max had lived a dangerous life, beginning with his days in the CIA and ending as the owner of a private intel firm. Max had accumulated quite a few enemies over the years. No one knew that fact better than Max himself. No stranger or mere acquaintance could have slipped inside Max’s defenses easily.

Plus there was the fact he’d been shot in his own car. No prints had been found inside the car that shouldn’t have been there, given Max’s associations. Genny certainly qualified as a Max Sauren insider, just as Sean himself did. But so did Albert Rook.

Rook was like a cockroach—you could make him disappear from sight for a while by sending out a warning to his existence, but he’d eventually come sneaking out of the cracks of the dark corners of your life.

Sean just wanted to know one thing: What had made his threat to Rook wear thin?

He thought back to two nights after Max had been found dead. Sean’d just left the Sauren mansion. He’d been fulminating because Genny had sent word through an apologetic Jim that she was too exhausted to see him. It’d been the fourth time he’d been turned away from seeing her, and she refused to return his phone calls.

Sean hadn’t shared more than three sentences with Genny since New Year’s Eve.

He’d just cleared the front door of the mansion when his cell phone rang. He frowned when he saw the name on the caller ID. He’d experienced a feeling of foreboding not unlike the one he had three years later after seeing those footprints on the carpet of Genevieve’s boutique.

“What do you want, Rook?”

“Is the
grieving
widow refusing to see you again?” Rook asked snidely.

Sean paused on the front steps, making a quick survey of the wooded area surrounding the circular drive. Rook and his car were nowhere in sight.

“I told you we need to keep business going as smoothly as possible at Sauren. Clients are going to get cold feet when they hear about Max’s death. We need to show them we’re as on top of their cases as ever. I assigned you to the Singleton account. What the hell are you doing spying on
me
instead?” Sean muttered furiously.

“You weren’t the only one who was friends with Max. So what if I want to see his murderer brought to justice?”

“You and I both know you and Max were a hell of a lot more than
friends
.”

“You can’t prove that,” Rook said silkily. “Not like I can prove just how close you, Max, and his wife were five nights before Max was killed. I have incontrovertible evidence—extremely
graphic
evidence—that illustrates just how amorous you were with Genevieve Bujold in the penthouse on New Year’s Eve. Don’t you think Detective Franklin would be fascinated by that proof? No?” Rook goaded with mock innocence when Sean went silent in shock.

“What do you want?” Sean stood on the front steps of the mansion, as rigid and furious as the two carved limestone, roaring lions that guarded the entryway to Genny’s home.

“Aren’t you listening, Kennedy? Justice.”

“
Justice?
I guess some have mistaken justice for revenge, but I’ve never heard of justice being mistaken for cold hard cash before. Leave it to you to make that interpretation, Rook. Or maybe it’s shares in Sauren that you want? You never could stand the fact that Max agreed to let me buy in to Sauren when I signed on as his chief operating officer, could you?” Sean murmured, his light tone belying the ache he felt growing in his gut.

Someone had taken
video
of the three of them in the bedroom that night, Sean thought as panic tickled at his awareness. But who? Rook? Max?

And why?

The only thing he knew for sure was that the knowledge of that video would decimate Genny. Not to mention be a volatile piece of evidence if the police got their hands on it.

“What’s that supposed to mean—
what do I want
?” Rook actually had enough nerve to sound insulted when he asked the question.

“Stop beating around the bush. What do you want?”

The fact that their fragile surface peace had been shattered seemed to suddenly light a match to Rook’s anger. “Max always acted like nothing could ever faze his decision- making, but he clearly let his cock make his choice when he hired a redneck like you to run his company.”

“Yeah? He sure as hell wasn’t letting his brains rule him when he let your ass get anywhere near his dick, was he?
Shut it
,” he said sharply when Rook started to shout into the phone. He glanced back at the brick Tudor mansion and continued more quietly. “Just get it over with. What do you want from me?”

“I’ll tell you what I want when we meet,” Rook snarled. “I have solid evidence to show you in regard to your girlfriend—evidence that’d put her behind bars for a very long time if I showed it to the police.”

Sean loosened his clenched jaw. It hurt; he’d been clamping it so tightly while he waited for the attack to come. “Meet me in my office in an hour and a half.”

“I want you to know I’ve taken measures to make sure this evidence will come to light if you do anything to harm me.”

Sean bent his head and spoke into the receiver softly. “I know you’re somewhere around here, Rook. You’d better turn around, get in your car, and drive away, because I want
you
to know something. If you so much as glance at Genevieve Bujold before we’ve settled things downtown in an hour and a half, you’ll be seeing Max a lot sooner than you think.”

He hung up the phone and walked to his car. His muscles felt stiff with shock and rising fear, but his mind moved agilely as he worked all the angles.

Sean had assumed he was attending a blackmail meeting on that gloomy winter day three years ago, and he hadn’t been wrong. Sean’d played the hand that had been dealt to him on that day with Albert Rook. He might not have had the best of cards, but Sean had learned early on that even the worst hands had the potential to be winners.

Max had once revealed to Sean that Albert Rook had sold secrets to the Chinese during his stint in the Navy as a weapons systems analyst. Max possessed hard evidence of that powerful secret.

Sean didn’t.

But that hadn’t stopped him three years ago from using the information in a bald-faced bluff in order to protect Genny.

After a bit of theatre involving a fake version of Max Sauren’s infamous leather-bound attaché case and a threat to expose the evidence of Rook’s treason to the United States government, Rook had backed off in his blackmail scheme.

Rook himself might well have been bluffing about the evidence he showed Sean in regard to Genevieve—digital photos of Max’s gun, two bullet shell casings . . . and the real kick in the ass: Genevieve’s prints on those shell casings.

They’d never been able to pull prints off the two bullets that killed Max, but the fingerprints on the brass shell casings were definitely Genevieve’s. Rook was able to prove at least that much to Sean. Before they’d updated to retinal scans, Sauren Solutions had used fingerprints for several security entry points. They had an archive of employee and several key family member fingerprints, so Sean had been able to cross-check the prints on his computer during that blackmail meeting with Rook.

Sean’d never truly possessed the hard evidence of Rook’s treasonous activities, although thanks to Max, he knew it existed—and he knew
Rook
knew it existed. Max had likely enjoyed dangling that volatile knowledge over his lover’s head. Hell, for all Sean knew, he’d used it to get Rook to have sex with him. Neither man had ever struck Sean as overtly gay or bisexual, but in the world of secrets and espionage, that was the type of personal knowledge that would be held close to the chest.

Very close.

Sean suspected Max kept the evidence of Rook’s treason with the rest of his volatile secrets—inside his high-security attaché case. Chances were, Rook believed that’s where the evidence was, as well. Sean’d seen Max subtly flaunt that attaché case too many times in rivals’ and enemies’ sweating faces in order to think otherwise. He’d searched the Sauren Solutions premises after Max died, but he’d never been able to find the attaché case.

But Rook didn’t need to know Sean’d come up short.

The air in Sean’s office had seemed to pop with fury and animosity when Rook had entered on that day three years ago. Sean had sat at this desk and watched the other man silently, waiting for Rook’s opening move.

Rook’s thin, hawkish face looked rigid with tension as he approached. He wore what Sean had come to identify in his mind as the
Rook uniform
—one of many dark, well-made European suits, a white shirt, black leather briefcase and conservative tie. Sean’d never seen the knot loosened, never seen a brown hair out of place on Rook’s head. Not having any sexual interest in men himself, Sean wasn’t sure what Max found appealing in his lover. Sean guessed that some might find Rook’s intense manner and lean, wiry body attractive.

Personally, Sean thought the guy was an oily creep.

As he approached Sean’s desk, a small smile grew on Rook’s thin lips. Sean ignored the urge to change the shape of that insolent grin with his hammering fist. He waited silently while Rook set down his briefcase on Sean’s desk and opened it.

“Everything you need to see is on here,” Rook had said as he withdrew a thumb drive. Sean took the drive and inserted it into his computer, still fantasizing about planting his knuckles in Rook’s smug face. “As I’m sure you already know, that’s just one of several copies. I have all the hard evidence and other copies secured in a safety-deposit box. I’ve left instructions with my attorney for how to proceed if something should happen to me.”

Sean’s smile was a thinly disguised snarl. “Little worried about your safety, Albert?”

“You’re the one that should be worried.”

“We’re about to find out which one of us has more of a right to his anxieties,” Sean murmured.

“Why don’t you open up the file that says
penthouse video
first,” Rook had challenged. “That ought to make you
sweat
a little . . .”

Rook had seemed to enjoy Sean’s fury as he’d watched the video of himself making love to Genny while Max held her. He’d certainly relished informing him that Max had planned the whole taping incident to keep as a ready resource should Sean or Genny ever get out of hand in their love affair, or make any onerous demands on Max. Sean could only imagine Genny’s reaction if Max had threatened to show the video to someone like Genny’s mother.

You knew Max. He always wanted something tasty to pull out during a tight spot,
Rook had taunted.

Sean had known that the police were hungry to pin Max’s murder on Genny. Whether she’d done it or not, Rook’s evidence had the potential to get her arrested at the very least. That was a possibility Sean refused to allow to happen. So he’d played the hell out of the hand that he’d been dealt, and it’d worked. He’d sent Rook running scared.

But now the asshole might be back.

Sean blinked, temporarily rising out of his memories, when he heard the water start running in the guest bathroom again. Genny was heating up her bath. He kept his gaze trained down the hallway and set his phone on the coffee table. Something told him she was stalling about leaving the bathroom . . . about their being together in these intimate surroundings.