“Do you think you can do that? Trace it back?”
Michele hesitated. “Maybe. Given enough time. And the odds are better if it was purchased legitimately. The company I work for has a West Coast office, and I have a contact there who owes me a favor. He might be able to find something.”
Ian nodded slowly. “You work on that end, and I’ll see what I can find out here in Atlanta. If one of our rivals is behind this, somebody knows about it; you can’t keep such an elaborate plan completely quiet.”
“It’s going to take time,” Michele reminded him. “And that’s something we don’t have a lot of. Jon promised to try and keep Dad from retaliating, but I don’t know how long he’ll be able to.” She paused, then said quietly, “We can’t do anything that might strike a spark. In the state he’s in, it won’t take much to push Dad over the edge.”
Chapter 7
Ian was silent for a long moment, then sighed roughly. “I know what you’re saying. As much as I hate to admit it, I even agree. But I don’t know how long I can stand not seeing you, Michele.”
She felt the same; the thought of not seeing him, possibly for weeks, made her ache inside, but she concentrated on the belief that maybe—just maybe—they could find a way to keep from building their future on the ruins of their families.
“It won’t be easy,” she admitted. “And even if we do find proof that someone else is involved, we might not be able to stop the feud. But we have to try, Ian. I don’t think either of us could be happy if we didn’t at least try. If just one person—the wrong person—sees us together…Too many people know about the feud. Too many people who don’t understand how serious it is. The whole thing could blow up in our faces. We can’t take the chance.”
He pulled her against his chest and just held her for a long moment, his cheek pressed to her silky black hair. “All right,” he said quietly.
Michele wanted to stay in his arms forever, and even though she knew she should leave she couldn’t make herself go. “What will your father do when he finds out about us?”
“I honestly don’t know. He won’t like it, but whether he’ll accept it is something else. He’s willing to concede the possibility of a third party being involved in the feud—especially now that he knows neither of us caused that explosion. And he doesn’t like being used; that’s to our benefit. I’ll keep trying to convince him.”
She half nodded. “If I can get Jon on our side, maybe he can help me convince Dad.” Then she sighed and gently pushed herself upright again. “I’d better go; it’s almost midnight.”
Ian didn’t protest again, even though he wanted to. She certainly knew her father better than he did, and if she believed he was so close to the edge, then they had to avoid calling attention to their relationship, at least until they could somehow manage to defuse the tension.
He walked her down to her car, reluctant to let her go until he absolutely had to. Standing by her Cougar in the brightly lit parking lot, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, wishing they had another hour, another night. It was so bitterly unfair that the woman he loved, the woman who might well be carrying his child even now, couldn’t walk beside him in public for fear of violence exploding between their families.
“I love you,” he murmured against her lips, holding her tightly. “No matter what happens, don’t forget that.”
“I won’t forget. I love you, too. And I’ll fight for us, Ian, I promise you. I don’t want to destroy my family, but if I have to make a choice—”
“You won’t,” he interrupted firmly, even though he knew it could easily come to that.
Insistently, she said, “If I do, I’ll walk away from them—not you.”
He held her for a moment longer, then reluctantly let her go. “I hope you don’t have to.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a key, pressing it into her hand. “A key to the apartment, just in case. I’ll tell the security guard he’s to let you pass at any time.”
“For when Dad throws me out?” she asked in a light voice that didn’t quite mask the pain.
Ian touched her cheek gently. “Any time. We don’t know what could happen, baby. If you need to come to me, for any reason, then I want you to.”
“All right.”
Another worry was nagging at him, and as she got into the car, he added, “Michele…be careful. Both our families have an enemy now, and he doesn’t seem to care who gets hurt.”
The caution sent a chill through her. She hadn’t thought about it that way, but the ruthlessness of an enemy who could plant explosives and then lure a potential victim to the site—even if the intention was merely to point suspicion at someone else—was only too obvious.
Neither way is without tragedy. The fortune-teller’s warning crept into her mind, and she shivered. “If I find out anything, I’ll call you.”
“Call me anyway,” he said. “If I don’t at least hear your voice, I think I’ll go out of my mind.” He made no pretense of keeping the statement light; his voice was low and rough with unhidden feeling.
Michele nodded, her throat too tight to speak, and when he closed the car door she started the engine and backed out of the parking space. He remained there, gazing after her, and her last glimpse of him in the rearview mirror showed her only a big, shadowy figure with gleaming hair under the stark lights.
She drove home slowly, trying to think, to plan. Even with the damage to her father’s building, he was only weeks away from completing the project, just as Brandon Stuart was weeks away from finishing his building; both had been originally scheduled to be completed by the first of the year, and that deadline was a critical one if either company hoped to win the Techtron project. The race was still on, more intense than before, and if the saboteur meant to cause more trouble, he was likely to find plenty of opportunity. He would probably wait at least a while, hoping that he had done enough to start the centuries-old hatred boiling, but if neither side reacted, he’d have to throw more wood on the fire. Logically, he would strike at the Stuarts next, a seeming retaliation from the Logans, assuming that Michele’s father didn’t strike first.
How much time did they have? Very little, she knew. And unless she could convince Jon the Stuarts weren’t behind the sabotage, there was no hope at all of controlling their father. He might listen to Jon, even if he didn’t like what he heard, but he wouldn’t listen to her.
She parked her car in the curving drive of their big, old house and let herself in quietly. There was a lamp burning in the entrance hall, but the rest of the house appeared dark. Leaving her purse and keys on the hall table, Michele started up the stairs. She was on the third step when Jon’s voice came quietly from the dark living room.
“A little late, aren’t you?”
Michele waited there as he slowly crossed the hall to the bottom of the stairs and stood looking up at her. She felt a flash of resentment, but it quickly vanished; she couldn’t afford the emotion, couldn’t take the chance of alienating Jon over his usual protectiveness.
Dryly, she said, “I talked Dad out of the curfew when I was twenty, remember? This isn’t the first time I’ve come in after midnight.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s usually your job, at least according to you. But you’re on vacation this week, Michele.” His gaze was very intent, searching; she had the feeling that he wanted to ask her outright where she’d been, but that for some reason he didn’t want to hear the answer.
Because he thought he knew the answer.
Michele wondered if it showed on her face. Keeping her voice calm, she said, “Yes, I’m on vacation. I’m also trying very hard to find out who ordered the sabotage. Your source at city hall, Jon—I want to talk to him.”
The distraction worked, at least for the moment.
“He’s on vacation,” Jon said. “Up north somewhere.”
“Now, isn’t that…convenient,” she mused, more to herself than to Jon.
“For God’s sake, Michele, he takes a vacation every yea
r!”
She looked at her brother. “In November?”
Jon hesitated, then swore softly. “No. Usually in August. And, before you ask, I don’t know if he took his regular vacation this year; I had no reason to be in touch with him that month.”
“Did he tell you he was going on vacation?”
Again, Jon hesitated. “No. I have his home number, and I called his house tonight. His wife answered and said she was packing to join him.”
“For how long?”
“Couple of weeks, maybe more.”
Even granting her suspicions where Jon’s informant was concerned, it still sounded to her as if the man had left Atlanta in something of a hurry. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.
“Misha…”
“Maybe I can track him down,” she said, saying the first thing that came into her head. Because Jon had been about to ask her a question she wasn’t yet ready to answer; she’d heard it in his voice.
“He could lose his job if you start asking questions about him.”
She wasn’t at all sure she cared; paid informers weren’t her favorite people. “I’ll be discreet. But I’m going to find out who’s behind this, Jon. You could have been killed, and Lord only knows what could happen next.” The very thought of what could happen next, all the myriad possibilities woven like a net around the people she loved, made her feel cold and afraid.
After a long moment, Jon said, “You’re very sure someone else is involved.”
Michele drew a deep breath. “Positive. I’ll need your source’s name and anything else you know about him. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“All right. Good night, Michele.”
“Good night.” She went on up the stairs to her bedroom on the second floor. And it wasn’t until she was changing for bed that a glimpse in the bathroom mirror told her what Jon had seen. It wasn’t in her face or eyes; the light in the hall downstairs hadn’t been good enough for that. But it had been good enough for him to see a definite change. When she’d left the house hours before, her hair had been neatly braided in its accustomed style. She had forgotten to put it back up before leaving Ian’s apartment; it now hung loosely around her shoulders, the curls a little wilder than usual because she’d gotten her hair wet in the shower.
Michele couldn’t think of a single good reason why she would have taken her hair down—except the truth. And she didn’t think Jon had been able to think of one either. Sooner or later, he’d ask the question, and she’d have to answer.
Sooner or later.
—
The following days passed slowly. Michele got in touch with her counterpart on the West Coast and persuaded him to try and find out who had acquired the state-of-the-art timer.
“Legally, or under the table?” he asked, frankly curious since she’d told him the matter was personal rather than business.
“Both, if you can manage it; I have no way of knowing if he had a legitimate reason for buying the thing. I can’t even tell you how far back to look, Steve. At a guess, a few months. There are only three legitimate sources on the West Coast, and the thing’s so new there can’t be many illegitimate ones. But this guy may have really covered his tracks.”
“So you want a list of every buyer for, say, the last six months? That’s a tall order, Michele.”
“I know. But if you come through for me, I’ll owe you a dozen favors.”
“Um. And I suppose you need to know yesterday?”
“Yesterday wouldn’t have been soon enough.”
“Gotcha. Okay, I’ll see what I can do. I know of a few shady dealers in explosives, so I’ll try them, too. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything.”
“Thanks, Steve.”
“No problem. By the way, are you as gorgeous as you sound?” He always asked that, and Michele always gave him the same calm answer.
“No. I have crossed eyes and buck teeth. If you can’t reach me at the office, call me at home.” She recited the number.
“One of these days,” he said pleasantly, “I’m going to fly east and find out for myself.”
“Don’t bother.”
“Ah—she has a man in her life.”
Michele could hardly help but laugh. “Yes. And believe me, that’s a story in itself.” The thought of Ian made her recall the saboteur’s apparent motives, and she added more soberly, “Steve, along with that list of names—see if you can get descriptions of the buyers, okay?”
“Descriptions? Why?”
“He might be using an alias. I’m groping in the dark; he’s nameless and faceless.”
“Michele, you want to tell me what’s going on?”
She had never met Steve Ashe, but over the past couple of years they had talked frequently, and phone relationships between strangers were sometimes close simply because they were unlikely to meet face to face. The normal guards of people came down somehow, until a name and a familiar voice became a friend.
“…a trusted voice, a strange but familiar face, eyes veiled against you.”
She shivered unconsciously as the fortune-teller’s warning flitted through her mind. Stupid to bank too much on that, she told herself. There was no way to look at cards on a table and see into the future, just no way. But her uneasiness grew. So much of the reading had been uncannily on target.
“Michele?”
“Sorry. My mind wandered for a minute.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“There isn’t much to tell. A project of my father’s was sabotaged, and I need to find out who’s responsible.”
“The police can’t help?”
“No.” She didn’t elaborate.
Steve sighed. “When I call in my favors, one of them’s going to be a request to hear the whole story.”
“Find out who bought that timer and I’ll tell you gladly.”
“Do my best. I’ll be in touch, Michele.”
After she’d hung up, Michele sat at the desk in her office for a long time thinking. There were innumerable details she could check, nebulous though they were. The rival companies here in Atlanta that could handle a project the size of the Techtron contract numbered only a half dozen or so; she could begin looking into them, searching for the signs of equipment, supplies, and manpower being readied for a big project and, conversely, those same resources being already committed to an on-going project and unavailable for anything new. She could piece together the recent histories of the owners of those companies and look for ambition and/or a driving need for a lucrative contract.
Jon had promised to do some checking on his own, but Michele had no intention of leaving it entirely up to him. He knew the construction business better than she did, but she had the training and experience in gathering evidence piece by piece and putting it together.
Assuming she was given the time.
She was grateful to have the work to do, not because it took her mind off all the problems—it could hardly do that—but because she felt less helpless with a definite plan of action, however sketchy. And if she was never distracted from her longing to be with Ian, at least working herself to the point of exhaustion allowed her to sleep at night.
Two weeks passed, with no results on either her end or his and no chance for them to safely meet, and Michele was very conscious of the growing tension in them both. She could hear it in Ian’s voice when they talked briefly on the phone, and she felt it in herself. And it wasn’t just one kind of tension, because they couldn’t be together; they were edgy waiting for their saboteur to make his next move, frustrated by their inability to find answers, and very conscious that time was running out.
The only bright spot during those weeks was Michele’s inner certainty that she was indeed pregnant. She almost held her breath when her period was late, but by the fourth day she was sure. She called her doctor—from the office, of course—and made an appointment after briefly discussing the matter with him and settling on a date that would ensure the test was a
ccurate. She decided not to mention it to Ian until it was confirmed, but she was certain.
It was a bittersweet joy. She felt all the wonder and happiness of a woman who wanted her baby with all her heart, and yet she couldn’t forget the presence of a nameless, faceless enemy who could destroy everyone she loved—possibly even her unborn child. Ian had promised to be careful, and so had Jon, but Michele’s anxiety wasn’t eased.
And when the answers finally did begin falling into place, they brought only a new set of questions.
Steve came through with flying colors, even though it took him nearly three weeks to cover the necessary area on the West Coast. He sent the list directly to Michele’s computer, and it was obvious he’d done a thorough job. As soon as she looked over the information, she called him.
“I owe you a dozen favors,” she said.
“And I’ll make you pay through the nose.” Then he sobered. “Any help at all?”
She studied the list on her computer screen. “I’m not sure yet. You’ve got about thirty names here, and all but three of them are located on the West Coast and legitimately involved with demolitions work. No addresses on these three?”
“No, sorry. The names are probably aliases; all three bought a timer from a man who had no business selling them, and all three paid in cash; it’s a miracle he got names from them. I got descriptions of two: George Norris is a blond in his twenties and looked mad as hell at somebody, and Robert Andrews is dark, slick, and probably a thief of some kind. The opinions are those of the man who sold the timer.”
Michele looked at the third name on the list. “And Nicholas South?”
“Now, there,” Steve said with satisfaction, “we hit a wall. Our shady dealer in rare explosives just couldn’t seem to recall what Mr. South looked like. In fact, he had all the signs of having been paid to keep his mouth shut. Would your man be cagey enough to buy a little silence?”
“He might,” Michele said slowly, feeling the first flicker of real hope. “Steve, do you think that dealer would be willing to talk if the price were right?”