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  “What?” She barked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Jonathan, I’ll see you during the week. Maybe we can get lunch.” For now, he needed to place a call to Jarrod Harmon. He might have been wrong about his mother’s willingness to help Tyvek.

  Jonathan gave his sister a weary look that said he was tired of the theatrics she seemed to crave. As tired of them as Warrick was. He offered a weak smile for Warrick and nodded. “Next week.”

  Warrick turned to walk away, but Jonathan called out to him. “Warrick, try the museum. It makes a nice place for a not-date date.”

  Chapter 16

  “Have you ever been to the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments?” Warrick asked as he opened the passenger door to his car for Sara. She eyed the car as though she wasn’t entirely comfortable sitting on luxury leather seats, then slipped in. He saw the glint in her eye when she felt the softness of the seats envelop her. It was something he’d grown up taking for granted. He knew now how lucky he was to have luxuries in his life. In fact, he’d been thinking he might downgrade his car a bit. The Maybach he’d been in for the last two years was a luxury not a necessity.

  “No,” Sara said, after he’d shut her door and jogged around to his own. “What is it?”

  “It’s a museum. Yale houses a gorgeous collection of old instruments. Everything from harpsichords to string and percussion instruments from around the world. It’s not well-known, but it’s beautiful. I thought maybe we’d head there, then grab a bite to eat on the green.”

  Sara turned to smile at him as he pulled onto the highway, and his groin kicked into high speed just as the car did. It was going to be a long night if his body kept responding to her like that.

  “Sounds great.” She turned back to look out the front of the car.

  “I used to love it when I was in school. I’d go there sometimes just to get away from things. The collection doesn’t change very much, but I’d always manage to find something new to look at.”

  “You went to Yale?”

  He nodded. “It was expected. It’s the family school.” He frowned. “Sorry, that sounded stuck up. It’s just that there was never any question that’s where I’d go. If I hadn’t gotten in, my father would have paid my way in. Or, at least, that was his plan. I’m not sure that really goes on anymore.”

  Now she was watching him again, and he focused on pulling into a spot a block away from Prague Hall where the music school was housed.

  “You would have hated that, wouldn’t you?” She asked quietly.

  “What? Having my dad buy a spot for me?” He laughed. “Oh yeah. In fact, that was more motivation for me to get in than anything else. I don’t know why, but it didn’t occur to me to rebel and go someplace else. I wanted to sail in on my merits so he wouldn’t get the satisfaction of making some grand donation to save me.”

  They got out of the car and he hit the key fob to lock the doors as he gestured across the street. She was quiet as they walked across the street and into the Yale campus through one of the old stone walkways that would take them to the right building. He had to admit, the campus was stunning. There’d always been a sense of reverence about the buildings for him. Like he could somehow hear the voices of the past speak to him there.

  “You and your dad didn’t get along?”

  “No. Not at all.” He took her hand in his and led them to the right, matching her shorter strides. “But who does?”

  She didn’t say anything and he didn’t know if she was simply giving him the chance to expand or if she got along with her dad and didn’t understand what he was talking about.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to bitch and moan about my childhood. Believe me, I know I had it easy. I wasn’t abused, always had money and a roof over my head, and had advantages I can’t even begin to count. Let’s just say, my dad and I didn’t agree on anything. That translated into motivation to show him up. To be better than him. To take over the company he had no interest in running, and to build it into something even bigger and better than it was.”

  “Did he get into Yale?” She asked with a grin.

  “Of course he did. There was a large donation made that year by my grandfather. And every year after that for five years.”

  “Five?”

  Warrick shrugged. “He wasn’t the best student.” He opened the door to the collection and paid their entry fee.

  “So did your dad run the company before you?”

  “No, he never had any interest in it. My dad liked to party and travel and spend money. He wasn’t really into working. Luckily, my grandfather was happy running the company until I took over.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “No. He died six years ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, quietly. She didn’t say what he had a feeling she was thinking. He’d lost his grandfather six years ago, his father four, and his wife three.

  He nodded, never sure what to say when people offered their condolences for a loss like that.

  She seemed content to let it go.

  Together, they entered the first of the exhibit halls. He heard the intake of her breath at the sight. He’d reacted much the same way when he’d first seen the exhibit.

  He was partial to the harpsichord room himself and they moved in that direction. He watched her face as she took in the harpsichords of every shape and size, some with polished shining wood, others with murals or decorative edgings painted on them.

  “Oh, wow. These are incredible.” The hushed tone in her voice was one he understood. They were incredible. The collection ranged in color, shape, and size. Some were plain in decoration, but even those had a burnished shine to their wood and decades of nicks and wear that spoke of their secret history. Others were hand painted masterpieces where the art itself was worthy of collection.

  He noticed right away, though, that Sara seemed to view them differently.

  The realization ran through him, warming his chest. She was so different. It was what made her so enticing. She bent and studied the inner workings of one of the instruments, then bent further. Christ, she was getting to him, and he could honestly say it wasn’t just the sight of her pants pulling tight over her backside and the view she was giving him. Although, if he were honest that was doing things to him that he probably wouldn’t be able to ignore much longer.

  It was how she saw the world. He liked watching her face as she studied the instruments.

  “They’re amazing.” She moved to the next, then another next to that, a piece that held two keyboards, one on top of the other.

  She was equally fascinated with the other instruments in the collection, her face lighting at the smallest of percussion instruments or the largest horn. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would value and appreciate how each piece worked so much, but it should have. She was an engineer. She saw things in ways he and others didn’t, and that was quickly becoming one of his favorite things about her.

  Sara wished she could say she had a bad time, but she hadn’t. After visiting the Yale collection, they’d grabbed pizza, then wandered around the rest of the campus looking at the old buildings. She hadn’t taken the time to walk the campus before, and she had to admit, it was gorgeous.

  Now, sitting in Warrick’s car as he pulled into her building’s parking lot, she suddenly felt nervous. The kind of jangly nerves that tell you something is about to happen. She could feel the shift in the air as Warrick came around and opened her car door, offering a hand to her as they walked into the building.

  Before they reached the entrance, he broke the silence. “Why do you need this practice, Sara?” She knew he was referring to practice being around a man again. Dating.

  She let out a breath and decided telling him was better than trying to skirt around the issue. She’d never really been one to skirt. “My fiancé left me right after I was injured. Said he couldn’t handle it.” She raised her prosthesis and made the muscle movement in her forearm that caused the rob
otic fingers to wave.

  Warrick didn’t comment but raised his brows and she could see in the stark shadow in his eyes that he had some thoughts on the subject.

  “I guess, since then, I have friends and my family, but I don’t date. I’m careful to keep things from going there. I’ve been sort of hiding out from that side of things. Hiding out from life in some ways.”

  “I have some experience with that.” They stopped in front of her apartment and he turned her to face him. Her breath caught at his intense expression. “You said we could practice this part a little.”

  “Okay,” she murmured, and realized almost immediately, it was too husky, too breathless.

  He leaned closer and heaven help her, she pressed into him, lifting onto her toes slightly as he came down to meet her. His mouth closed on hers and the jangly nerves flipped into overdrive.

  The kiss was hot and hard and soft all at once. It wasn’t the kind of kiss that only happened with your mouth. It was a whole body kiss, his arms coming around her to pull her close. And damn, if her body didn’t just sit up and beg for more. A lot more.

  He softened the kiss, letting his lips barely brush over hers for a moment, before deepening it once again, as if going back for seconds. Sara brought her right hand up to his shoulder, running it over the muscles and letting herself sink into the feel of his body wrapped around hers. It was a feeling she had missed. One she wasn’t sure she’d ever experience again.

  Then he pulled back and broke the kiss, and she realized with a start she hadn’t been ready for it to end yet. He studied her for a minute, and she saw the smallest of smiles form. “Good night, Sara.”

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter 17

  Warrick tossed his keys on the side table in his entranceway and stalked to the kitchen. Kissing Sara had felt entirely too good. He’d meant for it to be a quick kiss goodnight, but it had gotten out of hand much too quickly. He’d been seconds away from hauling her inside her apartment and stripping her bare. Stripping her and exploring every inch of her. Seeing what she liked and didn’t like. Finding out what made her moan. What made her come.

  And that couldn’t happen. It couldn’t. It wasn’t fair to Sara.

  He grabbed a bottle of water and chugged half of it, then realized water wasn’t going to cool him down. Drinking it wouldn’t, anyway. It would take a lot more than that to stop what Sara had started.

  He turned, planning to take a cold shower, but caught sight of the rose bush he’d transplanted from the old house. The sight of its yellowing leaves was enough to douse the heat, at least partially.

  It sat outside the sliding door leading to his patio. He moved closer and saw that a lot of the leaves had a yellow tinge to them and a few of the branches looked funny. They were darker and looked like they were collapsing on themselves somehow. Maybe they were dry.

  He went to the kitchen for the watering can, giving the plant a good drink of water. Maybe he hadn’t been watering it enough.

  Walking into his bedroom and kicking off his shoes, he pulled up the web browser on his phone. He didn’t know what to search for. Save a rose bush. The search pulled up all kinds of results, and the memory of the kiss with Sara was nothing more than that; a memory that tickled at the back of his mind as he read through the results of his search.

  He would fix this. He needed to fix this.

  Chapter 18

  Detective Jarrod Harmon hung up the phone, knowing without looking at his partner that he was sporting a dumbass grin a mile wide. Carrie Hastings had taken his breath away the first time he saw her. He still loved it when she called in the middle of the day to see how his day was going. It was no wonder she owned his heart.

  His partner, Cal Rylan, seemed about ready to open his mouth to comment when Jarrod’s phone rang again. He gave Cal a look designed to tell him to shut up and drive, then smiled wider and answered. They were headed to have a chat with Warrick Staunton’s mother and see if she had any information about William Tyvek’s whereabouts.

  “Detective Harmon.” He listened for a few minutes, asked a few questions, then hung up. After months of searching, this was the first lead they’d had on Tyvek, but as leads went, it was shit.

  “The lab?” Cal asked, likely having guessed from the questions Jarrod had asked.

  “Yeah. Get this. There was a break-in reported the day William Tyvek slipped out of that fire.” He didn’t need to specify that it was the fire Tyvek had set and left Carrie in to make it look like Warrick Staunton had killed her. Cal had been there. He knew Tyvek was insane. Knew he’d slipped into the ether somehow after almost taking Carrie from Jarrod.

  If that had happened, Jarrod didn’t know how he would have survived it. Before he’d met Carrie, he knew he was missing something in his life. He’d even had a vague idea that finding the right woman might be the answer to that missing piece. He’d never in a million years guessed how much of a difference finding the woman you were meant to spend a lifetime with would make. She was…well, she was simply everything to him. There was no other way to put it.

  “Yeah? What the hell does a break-in have to do with Tyvek? They find a link?”

  Jarrod nodded. “Not much was missing from the house. Clothing and food. It looked like the perp had broken in primarily to bandage wounds from some kind of injury. The CSI guys collected blood samples from the scene and lifted a few prints, but the samples have been sitting on the shelf while higher priority stuff was processed. No one really thought the case would go anyplace. Even the homeowners didn’t press the issue. They had wanted the report on file in case they discovered something else missing or the person came back.”

  “Tyvek?” Cal asked, his face telling Jarrod he was just as surprised as he’d been. It was a random lead, and not one he thought would have been found.

  “Uh huh. Prints match. They only lifted prints from the box the bandages were held in. They figured it wasn’t worth dusting the whole place. In fact, the only reason they collected anything at all was because they had a rookie on scene that day and wanted him to practice. We don’t have a DNA sample from Tyvek to compare the blood, but it’s reasonable to think Tyvek was there alone and injured.”

  Cal squinted his eyes in thought. “Can they tell us anything about the injury? Was he burned in the fire or maybe injured getting away?”

  Jarrod shook his head. “She said she can’t tell. She did say she might theorize if there was a burn wound, there might be more dead skin on the bandages. They only found blood. But she said that was just theory and she really had no way of knowing.”

  “Doesn’t give us much,” Cal said, giving voice to Jarrod’s thoughts, “but at least we have another stop on his trail.”

  Jarrod lifted his phone. “I’ll call tech and see if they can check traffic cameras in the area for him. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find another piece to the puzzle.”

  Cal nodded. “We can canvas the area, see if anyone remembers seeing him. Check for reports of stolen vehicles in that area. How far was it from the fire?”

  “Not far at all. Less than a mile.”

  Jarrod stopped relaying the report to Cal long enough to tell the tech team what he needed, then hung up. “They’re going to check for other break-ins during that time frame, too.”

  “I’ve always assumed he used his money and influence to leave the country, or at least the area. He’s the last person I would have guessed would be breaking into houses to patch himself up.”

  Jarrod rubbed the back of his neck. At least they had something to go on now. It was thin as hell and didn’t give them much, but it was the first credible lead they’d had in weeks.

  Chapter 19

  The woman gave them nothing.

  Warrick had warned them his mother was a bit stiff and formal, but he hadn’t known it would be this bad. After being shown to a sitting room by a uniformed housekeeper, they’d been made to wait twenty minutes for Anna Elizabeth Simms Staunton to appear.

  Jar
rod cringed at the name. Somehow, it screamed privilege and money. It also seemed a bit much. Who went by that many names? He wondered if she signed all four names when she wrote a check or signed a form.

  Warrick’s mother had been, well, dramatic was probably the best word for it. Or perhaps theatrical. Whatever the word, she thrived on attention and confrontation. Jarrod couldn’t imagine the parenting tactics the woman would employ. Must have been a hell of an upbringing.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why would I have any continued contact with William Tyvek?” Anna Elizabeth placed a splayed hand on her breast as though she needed to hold onto her heart from the shock of their questions. Like it might get up and run right out of her chest cavity.

  He and Cal were there simply because Warrick had gotten the uncomfortable feeling his mom might have been involved in hiding Tyvek. Warrick hadn’t had anything to back that feeling, but if a guy calls and asks you to look into his mom’s involvement in a crime, well, that tended to get them to sit up and notice. Not to mention, they needed more to go on in this case.

  Warrick had asked Jarrod not to mention he’d been the one to instigate this chat. Jarrod was going to do all he could to respect Warrick’s wishes. The man had lost enough throughout this ordeal. His mother might be a piece of work, but she was the man’s mother. That had to count for something.

  “We’re simply asking if you have any information on where he might be hiding.” Cal answered calmly and Jarrod knew his partner was looking for any telltale sign. Any flinch or crack in her demeanor.

  He had to give her credit. She maintained her composure. She’d moved on from the hand to her heart thing and had picked up her teacup, holding the miniature plate that went with it in one hand.

  “Why would I have any information about where he is?” She was the picture of innocence. In fact, too much so.