Mysterious Circumstances. Rita Herron
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or offer her a semblance of comfort—guilt also riddled his voice.
She didn’t want his guilt or pity.
“I have my car,” she said, swinging back around. “I drove myself here. I can drive myself home.”
“Miss Independent, huh? You never need anyone, right?”
“That’s right.”
His gaze locked with hers, the day’s events traipsing through her mind like a bad headline. Tomorrow, her father’s suicide would be splattered across the papers. She’d need to make plans for the funeral. Think about a burial plot. A memorial service. A casket.
That is, when the medical examiner finally released the body.
It was all too much.
Feeling weak-kneed, she scrounged in her purse for her keys, but Horn placed his hand over hers. “I’m taking you home, Olivia. No arguments. If you want to come back tomorrow, I’ll bring you to get your car. But you’re not driving right now.”
For once in her life, she was too exhausted to argue, so she nodded and followed him to his nondescript sedan. The interior was clean, cool, unwelcoming—just like the man.
She gave him directions to the apartment she rented, one half of an older house that had been converted into duplexes. The night sounds and lights of Savannah passed by in a blur. Blues music floated from Emmet Park where locals often gathered to jam, the rumble of traffic and Saturday-night partygoers and tourists flooding River Street, reminding her that, although she was grieving, life went on.
Down the street, two lovers walked hand in hand, enjoying the moonlight. Another couple laughed as they strolled with their baby.
She fumbled with her keys and climbed out, ignoring Horn when he followed her onto the stoop. Her hand trembled as she inserted the key and opened the door, a well of darkness greeting her from the inside, the happy couples a reminder of a life she might never have.
Craig Horn’s gruff voice broke the quiet. “Olivia, are you going to be all right?”
The heat from the apartment felt like a sweltering oven, the bleak emptiness threatening to swallow her whole.
No, she’d never be okay again.
But she nodded anyway. Just as she started to step inside, Craig caught her arm. She glanced at his fingers where they were pressed into her bare skin, the brief contact sending a tingling up her body that stirred another kind of heat.
God, she was hurting tonight. And she was so alone.
His arms would be so strong around her. If just for the night.
For a brief moment, they simply stood there, the anguish and horror of her father’s suicide a link between them, the guilt and nature of their jobs a barrier that stood in the way.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said in a strained voice.
She swallowed, unable to reply or to force herself inside just yet. He traced his finger down her arm, over the top of her hand. Her breath caught at the tenderness. She nearly opened her fingers and laced them with his to pull him into the darkness with her, to ask him to take away the pain.
Instead, she remained still, her emotions waging a silent battle. She couldn’t get hurt if she didn’t get involved. And she couldn’t ask for help or comfort…
He suddenly released her as if he’d felt the connection and didn’t like it, either. With a grim expression, he reached inside his pocket and withdrew a business card. The Iceman had returned.
“This is my work number, and here’s my home number and cell. Call me if you need anything.” His gaze locked with hers again, his voice husky. “I mean it, Olivia. Any time, day or night.”
She accepted the card, their fingers touching briefly, tempting her again. His masculine scent wafted toward her, teasing, erotic, eliciting images of hands and bodies touching.
But she summoned her courage and walked inside without bothering to reply. After all, they both knew that she wouldn’t call.
Olivia Thornbird couldn’t lean on anyone.
Especially Craig Horn, the man who’d gotten her father killed.
Chapter Three
The anguish in Olivia’s eyes haunted Craig while he drove to the cabin he’d rented on Skidaway Island. He’d wanted to go inside, to hold her, to kiss her, to soothe her pain.
But he couldn’t take advantage of her grief.
Then he’d be an even worse kind of bastard than he already was.
After all, he was responsible for her father’s death.
Frustrated at his weakness for the sexy woman, he opened the windows, welcoming the heat. When Devlin had first asked him to relocate to Savannah a few weeks before to investigate Nighthawk Island, he’d been grateful for the reprieve of the coast and warm sunshine. After years of living in Washington D.C., dealing with politics and the accompanying red tape, along with city traffic, noise and crime, he’d thought the job would be a picnic.
Though the scenery had changed and the pace of the southern town was much slower than the capital city, gaining access to Nighthawk Island’s secretive projects was just as difficult as infiltrating street gangs or corrupt politicians’ offices.
Exhausted, he yanked off his tie, tossed it onto the faded sofa in the den, flipped on the lamp which sprayed the room in a watery dim light, then opened the French doors. The sounds of the ocean crashing against the shore burst into the room, the high tide rising to wash away the remnants of sand castles built earlier.
The first day when he’d arrived he’d noticed the happy families vacationing, the babies in sunbonnets, the toddlers digging in the sand with big plastic shovels, the mothers chasing them to the edge of the water, the fathers tossing their kids into the waves and catching them as they squealed in delight. He’d tried to remember if his own family had ever vacationed like that, spending lazy days strolling on the beach gathering seashells and romping.
His memories consisted of formal dinner parties, being scolded if he tracked dirt on the marble foyer, eating with the housekeeper while his parents campaigned across the state, then later across the country.
And then his sister’s death… It had torn the family even further apart. Especially the family’s refusal to talk about it. It was almost as if his sister had never existed, as if she’d been wiped out like words on a chalk-board that had been erased. At family dinners and holidays no one even bothered to mention her name. Not that there were many family holidays or dinners…
An image of Thornbird’s face, bloody and pale with death, floated back, and he grimaced.
Although he hadn’t spoken to his dad in months, the urge to call him sent Craig to the phone, but he hesitated, his fingers lingering over the handset. His father’s parting words echoed in his mind. “You fool! You let a woman trick you into getting information on me. She nearly ruined my career.”
Just as it was his fault that Olivia’s father had died tonight.
He dropped his hand from the receiver. His father had never forgiven him.
Olivia wouldn’t, either.
Another reason some agents called him the Iceman. The end always justified the means. He’d use anyone he had to in order to get a job done. And if someone died in the process, hell, it was just a loss they had to take.
OLIVIA POURED HERSELF a glass of merlot, slipped on a nightshirt and opened the window in her bedroom, welcoming the sultry heat from the summer air while she desperately tried to banish memories of her father’s lifeless body from her mind.
The phone rang, shrill in the night, and she answered it, hoping it would be Agent Horn with some answers. Or maybe she just wanted to hear his husky voice.
God,