Silent Surrender. Rita Herron
Читать онлайн книгу.
name in the headlines.
“Did you give him the story?”
She shook her head again and mouthed the word no.
The detective moved toward her. He surprised her by reaching out with one big thumb and slowly wiping a tear from her cheek. “Did you talk to him at all?”
She inhaled sharply, fighting the strong need to hold on to him. “He followed me to the car after I left the police station, but I told him to leave me alone,” she wrote on a piece of paper.
“That was the reason you raced out of the parking lot?”
She nodded and started to scribble an explanation, but her hands were shaking so badly she dropped the pen and it rolled across the floor.
He sat down beside her, then shocked her by pulling her hands into his larger ones. His touch felt amazingly gentle. His dark eyes watched her, caressing her with a kind of tenderness she hadn’t expected, causing a slow ache to burn in her belly. How long had it been since a man had touched her? Had looked at her in any way except pity?
How long had it been since a man had wanted her?
But what would a strong, tough man like Adam Black see in a woman like her?
“I have to warn you, Sarah,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but if you did hear something about my sister, the fact that the story was printed could put you in danger.”
“LOOK, SOL, I didn’t talk to the reporter. In fact I refused to,” Sarah signed in frustration. As if the meeting with Adam hadn’t left her rattled enough, Sol had arrived on her doorstep the moment Adam had driven away. She couldn’t believe she’d actually mistaken the detective’s concern for her, his interest in the information she had, as interest in her personally. She was a fool. He’d told her to be careful, to call if she remembered anything else. Then he’d left her place like a man on a foxhunt, and for some odd reason, she’d felt very alone.
“Sarah?”
Sol’s voice pulled her back to the moment. “He followed me and talked to someone at the police department,” she signed, not wanting to tell him about the note, “or maybe he eavesdropped.”
“I’m suing the little bastard! He’ll never work in this goddamn city again!”
Sarah’s hands released the death grip she held on her coffee cup to sign, “I’m sorry, Sol. I really am.”
He paced the length of her den, pausing to look at her mother’s photo. “I promised Charles I’d take care of you when you were christened. Part of that is keeping his name out of the paper. I hate the way the country crucified him back then. All that Cutter’s Crossing garbage.”
“So do I. And I certainly don’t want all that history dragged up again.”
“It looks as if this sleazeball intended to do just that. I’ve already got a call in to my lawyer.” He tunneled his hands through his thinning hair, pacing across the room. “Just think what this negative publicity might mean for the research center, Sarah. Arnold Hughes and I are just now getting CIRP off the ground. Catcall’s not even filled to capacity, and we still have a lot of space on Whistlestop to fill. I intend to make CIRP the research mecca of the world.”
Sarah signed, “I said I was sorry, Sol. Besides the article made me look crazy—it didn’t reflect badly on the center.”
Sol took her by the shoulders. “Promise me you won’t talk to any reporters or the police again. This mess has to die down, Sarah.”
Sarah tensed in his tight grip.
He frowned, then released her and gathered his jacket. “I have to meet Hughes. We’re having a press conference to deal with this situation before it snowballs out of control.”
Sarah bit her lip, thinking about Detective Black and his sister.
“Sarah? Promise me. You don’t want the center to get shut down, do you?”
“No, of course not.” Sarah wrapped her arms around her middle. She owed her life to Sol. His whole life revolved around the center.
She’d never do anything to hurt him or CIRP.
FROM WHERE HE STOOD at the reception desk, Adam heard the two doctors in the back arguing. Miss Johnson’s nervous gaze flitted to the door. “Dr. Tucker said he’s not available right now.”
The voices came again. “This is a damn nightmare!”
“Don’t you think I know it? Sarah Cutter’s a nut-case!”
Adam arched a brow and said, “Is Dr. Bradford available?”
The receptionist shook her head and reached behind her to shut the door between her cubicle and the main hallway.
The voices cut through the wood. “What the hell was Sarah Cutter thinking? For God’s sake, we give her back her hearing and then she spreads some cock-amamy story like that to the papers to discredit our center?”
“I’ve called a press conference for some damage control.”
Adam flattened his hands on the desk. “Look, Miss Johnson, I’m not going away until I speak with one of the doctors who worked with my sister.”
“I’ve explained to you that’s just not possible.” She gestured toward a red button on the side of her desk. “Now if you don’t leave, Detective, I’ll have to call Security.”
“Listen here, miss, if you don’t let me talk to Dr. Bradford, I’ll haul your skinny little butt in for interfering with an official police investigation.” He intentionally leered at her perfectly manicured nails. “And I don’t think you’d like some of the women in lockup.”
Fear danced in her eyes but she closed her smart mouth, jumped up and ran to the back, her heels clicking on the linoleum floor. He tapped his boot while he waited, deciding to give the doctor three minutes before he jumped over the security line and tore into him.
Two minutes, twenty-five seconds later, Bradford appeared and ushered him into his office. While Bradford cleared stacks of research material from a chair for Adam to sit in, Adam studied the man. He was Caucasian, short, gray-haired and portly. He wore a lab coat and gray slacks and had narrow, gray eyes with dark circles marring his leathery skin. “Miss Johnson said you were insistent on seeing me.”
Adam took the chair while Bradford seated himself behind his desk. “Yes, I want to know where my sister is.”
“Your sister?”
“Dr. Denise Harley.”
Bradford swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Your sister’s on leave—”
“That’s bull.” He stood, moving quickly, and jerked Bradford by the collar. “Denise always lets me know where she’s going. She wouldn’t leave her place without having someone take care of things, and I saw the papers piled on her porch yesterday.”
“Maybe she needed time away from her bully brother.”
Adam tightened his fingers around the doctor’s collar, grinning when the man yelped. “I don’t think so.” His eyes shot to the tabloid paper lying on the desk, looking oddly out of sorts with the research papers and medical journals.
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” Bradford chuckled without humor. “You’re questioning me because of some slimy tabloid reporter’s lies? You know those stories are fabrications, pure sensationalistic garbage.”
“Except this one may have a seed of truth.”
“You talked to that Cutter woman, didn’t you? You don’t actually believe her?”
Adam’s jaw snapped. “I’m checking out her story.”
“This is unreal! We help