Secrets and Seduction: 5 Romance Novels (23 page)

“Stop, Mr. Ziko! Don’t go up there.”

When she got no response, she continued climbing. Her thighs burned from taking the stairs too fast. Before she reached the turn, the third floor stairwell door slammed.

Damn. She’d never catch him. She didn’t want to see one more body splattered in the atrium, his limbs twisted into unnatural contortions.

She double-timed it up the rest of the stairs, reaching the door out of breath. As she jerked it open, she realized she didn’t know what direction the atrium was. Damn, and Ziko did because he’d drawn the floor plan.

Think, Gaby. The disco owners had taken down all the signs for the dance club. She tried to place her current location in relation to the lobby below. Right. Go right.

She ran to the end of the short corridor and turned the corner. There were the glass doors to the disco, but no sign of Ziko.

Sprinting the short distance to the doors, she swung through them and skidded to a stop. Fifty yards ahead, Ziko stood precariously close to the tilted edge. She sucked in her breath and tried to prepare herself for the sight of him throwing himself from the rim.

“Ziko, don’t do it!”

He didn’t turn or indicate in any way he’d heard her. Then he moved forward and she flinched. But he only squatted down and ran his palm over the floor.

She frowned. What was he doing?

Moving cautiously forward, her curiosity awakened with a vengeance. She hadn’t been up here. When the building inspectors couldn’t confirm the safety of this floor, Michigan Casualty had paid experts to do an evaluation. They’d done so with safety ropes and harnesses, all the equipment to save them from a nasty fall.

But Ziko had none of that. He was on his knees now, moving left to right as he studied who knew what. Gabrielle stepped closer. She couldn’t shake a sense of uneasiness, or the icy finger tracing her spine. She wanted to clutch at the support beams, but she didn’t know how secure they were. Ziko was too close now to the jagged hole in the floor.

“Don’t get so close.” She was careful not to yell and startle him, lest he fall and she be directly responsible for his death.

An ominous groan from the floor went right through her like an electric current and she stiffened. “Get back from the edge!”

Amazingly enough, Ziko obeyed, giving the depression in the floor a wide berth. Her heart was in her throat and she did clutch the vertical support.

A vision blasted into her mind with the force of a speeding train.
Young people dressed to party ran past where she stood, the women screaming in terror. The floor shook as though in an earthquake. Beyond the fleeing bodies, she saw a sandy-haired young man pinwheeling his arms, and then he tumbled backward over the crumbling edge with a cry. The most awful sound competed with the screams, a screech like when a nail was torn from a board, only much lower pitched and slower, a haunting sound, as much internal as it was external. Gabrielle heard the shattering glass and knew the support beam had torn loose and struck the atrium floor with the force of a bomb. Screams rent the air. The cacophony of sound was deafening.

“Miss Healey? Gabrielle?”

It was physically wrenching to tear loose from the past, but Ziko’s voice finally broke through the horror of the floor’s collapse. He stood less than a foot away from her, not touching, but invading her space all the same. His blue eyes showed concern and something else she couldn’t decipher.

“What?” Her voice sounded hoarse and choked to her ears.

“You shouldn’t be up here if you’re so afraid.” His hand opened and closed by his side.

She took a small step to the side without trying to look like she was moving farther from him. But she didn’t want him to touch her, not right now. “I didn’t get to investigate this floor myself. I want to.”

“You know it’s not safe.”

“You’re here.”

“I have to know why it isn’t safe. If you’ll go back downstairs, I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“I’ll wait for you here.” She crossed her arms across her chest to prevent further argument. She had her own probing to do, and if he’d turn his back, she’d do it.

He stalked back toward the edge, although his steps became gentler the closer he came to what had been a glass wall. He bypassed the depression in the floor and hunkered down nearby to once again study the floor.

Moving farther away from the center of the collapse, Gabrielle found a position out of Ziko’s line of sight and dropped to a crouch, gently laying a hand on the floor. She wanted to see the building being built, the decisions that had gone into this floor.

Softly a scene began, blurry but coming into focus.
A man in a white hard-hat holding rolled up drawings stared out at the exposed beams of a building not yet finished. She knew from his photo this was Ziko’s partner, Roger Barrett, a successful architect in his own right, but of the traditional sort. His designs were timeless, not groundbreaking like Ziko’s. His light blue eyes were possessive as he viewed his creation, but they didn’t hold the love she’d seen in Ziko’s eyes.

She didn’t care about Barrett’s involvement in the building. She wanted to see Christian Ziko. She shook away Barrett’s image, but try as she might, no image of Ziko appeared. She didn’t understand it. Why couldn’t she picture him on this floor?

“What are you doing?” Ziko’s voice snapped her out of her musings.

Her temples throbbed from trying to exert control over her vision. She tried to think of a plausible answer quickly as she rose to her feet. “I was duplicating your movements, trying to see what you saw.” Boy, did that sound stupid.

“You’re not an architect.”

No, she’d had to give up that dream and had ended up at the other end of the spectrum, after buildings were destroyed. “I have enough knowledge of how buildings are made to make educated guesses.”

Ziko looked like he wanted to probe further, but then he glanced away. “Do you have measuring tools with you?”

The question startled her. “No, not today.”

“Too bad.” He strode away from her, his long legs carrying him to the edge in moments.

He went so close to the drop-off Gabrielle almost yelled at him to stop. Then he began to pace toward her. At first she thought he was walking, but his steps were closer together and more deliberately placed. He was pacing off distance.

When he reached the upright column, he moved to the left approximately six feet from where he’d started and paced out to the edge again.

Ziko was frowning as he neared the dip in the floor. Before she could cry out an alarm, he skirted the area. He paced the distance all along the edge, his frown ever present.

As Ziko got further away from her, Gabrielle walked along the line of upright columns, touching each one under the pretence of resting against them. When she reached the pillar closest to the sloped floor, a vision filled her mind.

Once again, Roger Barrett stood studying the unfinished floor. A black-haired man stood beside him, and for a moment Gabrielle thought it was Christian Ziko. But when he turned to Barrett, she saw he was older than Christian, his face rounder, but the familial resemblance was distinctive. This must be Christian’s brother, Paul, Barrett’s best friend.

Christian’s muttering shattered the vision like a stone dropping into a pool of water. “This can’t be right.”

She shook herself, eager to get back to the focus of her investigation. “What’s not right?”

“I could swear it was thirty feet, but this is twenty-five.”

“Maybe you measured incorrectly. Your feet aren’t exactly accurate instruments.”

“They’re close enough, and I’ve never been wrong.”

Gabrielle filed that little tidbit of information away. “Then maybe you remember the length incorrectly.”

“No. I remember most of the specs on my drawings.”

“Maybe you’re remembering the first draft. How many times did you redraw the blueprints?”

His blue eyes narrowed. “Is that for your investigation?”

“I was trying to help.”

“Three times.”

“Then maybe you’re remembering the first or second draft. I’m sure first plans have to allow for reality.”

“Maybe.” But he continued to frown.

“I’ve got a copy of the drawings in my car. Do you want to see them?” She couldn’t believe she’d offered that to him. What was wrong with her?

“Yes, I’d like that.”

“Are you through here?” Between the ragged edge of the floor and the knowledge the building might not be sound, her nerves were shredded. The sooner she got off this floor, the better.

“I guess.” He looked around, as though trying to find something. He raked a hand through his hair with a jerky movement that looked like frustration.

Gabrielle headed for the exit, assuming Ziko would follow her. When she reached the door, he was right behind her. Once again he’d invaded her space. Her skin felt too tight, she was too warm and she was very conscious of the animal warmth of him. He smelled of soap and oddly enough, antiseptic. His nostrils flared slightly as though he was scenting her, too.

As he reached past her to take hold of the door, she noticed a raw red patch on the inside of his wrist.

“After you.” He indicated the open door.

Gabrielle was mortified. She’d stood there gawking at him like a woman who’d never seen a man before. She’d never had a man’s heat go to her head like strong liquor before. And for that man to be as inappropriate as Christian Ziko was humiliating. He wasn’t even attracted to her.

Oh yes, he was.

No, he wasn’t. Besides, he was probably guilty, so there was no future in this imaginary attraction.

She was very aware of Ziko behind her all the way down the stairs. She didn’t want to speed up and risk taking a nasty tumble or let him know how nervous he was making her feel. Never let a suspect put you on the run. That gave them the upper hand.

At the first floor, Gabrielle turned toward the front door. But Ziko walked out into the atrium to the fallen girder, crunching through broken glass to reach it. He crouched beside the end of it, reaching out to touch something on its surface. She should probably move closer so she’d know what he was doing.

But he stood and once again paced off the length of the girder. At the end of it, he frowned and looked up toward the third floor. She didn’t know what he was thinking, but whatever it was disturbed him. His scowl deepened. Then he turned and strode purposefully toward her. There was such an aura of violence around him she opened the outer door and got out of the way so he could stalk through it. But even the concrete courtyard wasn’t enough room to hold his disquiet. He paced back and forth while she locked up the building until he stopped with a jerk.

“The blueprints?”

Gabrielle headed for the parking lot, where she unlocked the back of her Subaru Outback and handed a round cardboard tube to Ziko. While he pulled out the blueprints inside it, she noticed the heavy clouds were nearly black with impending rain. An ominous rumble nearby heralded the oncoming storm. She wondered why she hadn’t heard thunder while she was inside the Densmore.

One fat drop decided her. “It’s going to pour. We’d better get in my car if your want to look those over.”

No sooner were they inside then the sprinkles turned into full-fledged rain. She turned on both map lights so he could better see the drawings.

“Here,” Ziko pointed. “Hmph, twenty-five feet. I could have sworn it was longer.”

“I told you the material matched the drawings.” She tried to keep any accusation out of her voice. But it all came back to the drawing and who had drawn it. That’s where the fault lay.

“I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t make a deathtrap.”

“Maybe not intentionally.” Oh, she was a sap. Ziko could be playing her for a fool. It was a good thing she worked with the structural end of investigations and not the people end, otherwise Michigan Casualty would lose millions each year as she was suckered by sob stories.

“So I’m guilty in your eyes.” There was bitterness in his voice and pain in his blue eyes.

“I’m not your judge and jury.”

“No, but your report will convict me.” He rolled up the drawings and shoved them back in the cardboard tube before he handed it to her. “Thanks for letting me into the building.”

He ran through the pouring rain to a Jeep parked close by. As he drove away, she started her car and the blast of air conditioning made a shiver run down her spine.

Or was it the lost look on his face that chilled her?

Christian shivered with chill by the time he turned into the driveway of his condo in Bloomfield Hills. He’d held his emotions in check all the way home because he feared letting them lose anyplace public. He couldn’t risk anyone seeing him have a possible breakdown and recognize who he was. Gabrielle Healey had enough nails for his coffin. He wouldn’t give other people the chance to have more.

He cursed his stupidity. She’d told him who she was and what she was doing at the Densmore. She’d as much as told him she believed it was his fault. Yet he’d foolishly tried to change her mind. He’d been so sure about the measurement. He’d proven to her he was fallible, that he made mistakes. Now she was sure he’d made a fatal mistake on the Densmore.

After showering away the rain and the final taint of antiseptic from Crittenden, he dressed in black slacks, loafers and a navy button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The stuffy, medicated feeling in his head was almost gone, making it much easier to think. He’d check out the blueprints of the Densmore at the office and let his partner know he was back on his feet again.

He’d finished eating a fast food sub sandwich when the doorbell rang. In case it was the press, having learned he was back in town, Christian checked the peephole first. Finding his brother Paul on his doorstep, he sighed. He’d hoped for a few hours reprieve. He let his brother in.

Paul’s hair was as black as Christian’s, only wavier, and his eyes were the same shade of Caribbean blue. He had a handsome face and an upper torso muscled from years of working construction. “What the hell are you doing here? You need to go back to Crittenden.”