Bound and Determined (23 page)

Suspect one
. Rafe trailed behind Kerry—admiring the
view—as she crossed the faux marble floor, across aging gray carpet, and stopped before a tall redhead wearing a very conservative brown suit perched behind a desk twice her size.

“Tiffany!” Kerry smiled in greeting to her sister-in-law.

Model-thin redhead had been the perfect description. From the looks of it, Tiffany and Calista Flockhart could have shared a closet. Wide blue eyes and fair, barely freckled skin made her look like a waifish creature of the runway. Though such women had never appealed to Rafe—who wanted hipbones poking you during sex?—he saw where Smikins, suspect number two, might want her. Kerry could easily be right about unrequited lust/love being Smikins’s motive . . . if he was guilty.

“There you are!” Tiffany greeted. “I called and called last night. Are you okay?”

“Fine.” She looked in Rafe’s direction. “Just busy.”

“Something you want to talk about? If listening can help, I’m all ears.”

“I appreciate it, but all is well. You?”

“Good.” Tiffany sighed, then bit a plump lip smeared with sheer gloss. “Well, mostly. I misplaced my house key. Did I leave it with you, by chance?”

“No, haven’t seen it.”

Her shoulders drooped. “I was afraid of that. I’ll just keep looking.”

Kerry smiled. “You’ll find it.” After Tiffany’s murmur of thanks, she continued. “Where’s Smikins?”

“Pouting in his office. The e-security guy he hired is supposed to show this morning, and Shorty says he wants to make him wait as long as the consultant made him wait. So he’s hiding in his office and ‘isn’t to be disturbed.’ ” She dropped her voice, imitating Smikins.

“What a geek! Let me intro—”

“Oh! Before I forget, I somehow undid whatever you did to fix the remote controls. I know you had them all programmed into one, but I can’t keep it straight. When I tried to use them to record
General Hospital,
I ended up with an hour of some documentary about deadly plants.”

“Ouch. Sure, I’ll help you.”

“Mark always teased me when I did something like this. I suppose it’s kind of funny if you think about it. I’m just not in the mood to laugh.” Tiffany shrugged.

“Hey, what are sisters-in-law for? Besides, you’re always feeding me and listening to me whine about school.”

“I like hearing about your school stuff. Helps take me away from . . . everything else.”

The catch in her voice caught Rafe’s attention. Tiffany looked down toward the sleek high-heeled pumps on her feet. Was she hiding tears?

Kerry slid a gaze to Rafe, then took Tiffany’s small hand in hers. “How about I come tomorrow to fix the remote?”

With a sniffle, Tiffany lifted her head and managed an awkward smile. “Tomorrow is great. Sorry to be a burden. I’m just a little distracted these days.” She raised her gaze, moisture shimmering in the corner of her blue eyes. “Mark’s absence is getting to me more and more.”

“I know.” Kerry squeezed her sister-in-law’s hand.

While Rafe imagined Mark’s arrest hadn’t been easy on the young bride emotionally, Tiffany struck him as the kind of woman who floated through life leaning on everyone around her and never saw anything wrong with it. He shook his head. The external package might be tempting, but not enough existed between the ears to interest him. But Smikins might be another case. Was it possible that, in addition to a husband, she had a man who potentially wanted her enough to commit a crime to have her?

Well, he had to give Kerry credit for her assessment. While he wasn’t ruling anyone out as the party guilty of framing Mark, her description of Tiffany as someone not likely to join a think tank seemed reasonable. Personally, it wouldn’t surprise him to know that Tiffany had married Mark to help her with electronic gadgets and find her keys. If that was the case, why would she want him in prison? And could she possibly bury code in the kernels of a mainframe system?

Then again, looks could be deceiving. Maybe, somehow, in an alternate universe yet to be explained, Tiffany was actually very bright.

“We all depend on Mark,” Kerry murmured sympathetically. “We all love him.”

Tiffany’s eyes widened as if she suddenly remembered something. “Oh, speaking of Mark, he asked about you when I visited on Friday. Jason said you were away over the weekend?”

Kerry flushed thirty shades of red. “Yeah, which reminds me, this is Rafe Dawson. He’s—”

“Just the person I wanted to see,” said a male voice behind them.

They both turned. Somewhat short, angry blue eyes, narrow face. Definitely not smiling.

“Jason, I didn’t see you when we came in.” Kerry moved toward him.

Suspect three
.

Rafe watched as she approached the shorter man and embraced him. The sting of a hundred hornets pricked at his stomach as he watched Jason’s arms curve around his woman.

His woman?

Figure of speech.

Kerry cast both men a nervous glance. “Rafe, Jason. Jason, Rafe. You two . . . know each other. Sort of.”

Rafe stared at Jason. He glared back. Neither offered a hand to the other. After a long stare-down during which Rafe thought he could feel his blood boil, Jason looked away first as Tiffany’s phone rang. Brow furrowed at the silent spectacle, she excused herself to get it. Kerry seemed to take that as an opening.

“How’s work?” Kerry asked.

Jason faced her with a smile that made Rafe grit his teeth. “The usual. How are you, sweetheart?”

“Great. You?”

He stabbed Rafe with a glance. “Worried about you.”

“Don’t bother. She’s in good hands.” Rafe gritted his teeth.

“Is this where I’m supposed to mimic your smarmy New York accent and ask if you’re Allstate or something?”

Rafe crossed his arms over his chest and took the brief, petty enjoyment of looking down his nose at the shorter man. “If trite jokes are your speed, go for it.”

“Can you two speak a civil word to each other?” she hissed in a heated whisper.

Jason fumed. Rafe brooded. Neither answered.

Kerry shook her head. “Great. In one corner, we have
Immature the Idiot. In the other, Juvenile Jerk-off. Can you two please put a cork in it for an hour? We’re here for a reason. So let’s play nicely.”

At Jason’s stiff nod, she went on. “Okay, is this your break? Can you talk now?”

“Got an hour,” Jason confirmed. “I think we should talk away from this place.”

“Good point,” said Kerry. “Smikins could come out of his office any minute.”

The tense trio walked to a nearby taco chain, Kerry between them. She sat with a salad and a diet soda. Rafe picked at a couple of tacos and some rice. Jason seemed to have ordered one of everything.

Kerry ignored the enormous amount of food on his plate, as if it was commonplace, which only led Rafe to imagine it was.

“Did you manage to find the list of terminal IDs and who they’re assigned to?” Kerry asked the minute they’d all sat down.

Jason looked around the room as if searching for spies. Rafe resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“Yeah.”

“And?” Rafe snapped.

Jason glared at him before turning back to Kerry. “There’s no 4389 listed.”

“What? That’s not possible!” she asserted. “It exists. We know it. Rafe saw it in—”

“Here, look.” Jason thrust a folded scrap of paper across the table at them.

Rafe laid the page out flat. Beside him, Kerry stared at it, too. No 4389.

“Have you looked at older records?” Rafe cut in. “Gone back a year or two?”

Jason hesitated, clearly debating between his desire to help his best friend and piss off his competition. “Those records don’t exist anymore. When his old assistant left in a huff after Smikins passed her up for another promotion in favor of Tiffany, she deleted every file on her computer and half the files on his. She took stuff off the server, renamed documents so they were impossible to find, you name it.”

“So, as far as records go, the terminal doesn’t exist.”

“Pretty much.”

“Another dead end.” Kerry squinted, clearly fighting tears.

She looked his way. Unshed tears lent a glossy appearance to her green eyes, eyes that pleaded to him for help. God, he would’ve done anything to help her, just to make those damned tears go away. For now, all he could do was squeeze her hand.

She squeezed back. “So what do we do now?”

S
o far, this day wasn’t turning out as she’d hoped.

During a silent walk back to the bank, Kerry let her thoughts wander. Her stomach twisted, tears threatened again. She had so many questions buzzing through her brain, they drowned out rational thought. But when Jason had gone for a refill of his drink, Rafe had cautioned her to leave the details of the programming oddities he’d discovered a secret, at least until he could rule Jason out as a suspect.

Rafe’s tone indicated he didn’t think that would happen soon. Kerry wished he’d get over his odd dislike and suspicion of Mark’s best friend.

Upon arrival at the bank, they entered its cool, muted interior. Jason kissed Kerry on the cheek, as usual, then went back to his window. Beside her, Rafe tensed, clenched one fist.

“Why does it bother you when Jason kisses me on the cheek? It’s just a sweet, friendly thing to do.”

“We’ve been over this. All I’m going to say now is that I don’t like liars.”

Rafe’s voice was flat. But his eyes . . . they were alive with anger and passion, like clouds churning over a storm-filled sea. Was it possible he cared, at least a little?

Stupid, stupid wishing. His plane left tomorrow afternoon. By then, he’d be long done with her. In a month or two, he’d likely completely forget her. She’d better not, for a moment, lose sight of that.

“Fine. Then explain to me why the FBI didn’t notice the fact terminal 4389 doesn’t appear to exist? That’s an anomaly, right? They didn’t question that.”

“They didn’t know about 4389, babe. I just found it in the code last night, remember? The programming made it look as if every transaction occurred from Mark’s machine. Even if
they found it, it’s possible they would have surmised that with the last secretary being as destructive as she was, the terminal used to be in service. Mark would have known it and simply used it for his purposes.”

“By programming it to make himself look guilty?”

Rafe shrugged. “Or making it look like someone else was trying to frame him. Or something else entirely. Who knows?”

“This circular logic is giving me a headache.”

He planted a gentle kiss on her mouth. “I can take your mind off it. Are you still wearing—”

“Yes.”

“Ah, you’re killing me here.” He discreetly adjusted the front of his expanding slacks.

“You want to see, don’t you?” She flashed him a teasing smile.

“You know I do,” he whispered as a customer, an older man in overalls, passed them by. “I want you to wear them tonight . . . all night.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I’ll persuade you.”

“You’re welcome to try.”

Rafe flashed her a killer smile, one that not only made her knees go weak, but seemed to burn itself in her brain. For the rest of her life, when she thought of him, somehow she knew she would remember that smile.

“Go talk to Tiffany. I’m going to see if Smikins came out of his office while we were away. Oh, and I need your car keys to get my laptop.”

Kerry handed the keys over. Rafe raised a brow when he looked at her conglomeration of key chains.

“Universal Studios, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Elvis, Sponge-Bob Squarepants, Phantom of the Opera, holy cow! Is this Justin Timberlake?”

“Are you blind? It’s Orlando Bloom.”

“You think he’s . . . what? Cute?”

“Well, duh!”

“Probably gay.”

Kerry stared at him in amusement. “Why is that the universal male response? Any man considered incredibly good
looking automatically needs bashing by every other man. Feeling threatened?”

Rafe rolled his eyes. “By a pretty boy? Hardly. I just think I’m far more likely to be interested in what you’re wearing under that shirt than some dude named after a tourist town. Can we find a quiet corner so that I can see? Just take a quick peek?”

Still snugly in place, they made Kerry very aware of her own body, of the little edge of arousal simmering each moment she wore them. “No.”

“Knowing what you’re wearing,” he whispered, “is making me so damn hard. And since I ended up with tacos for lunch, instead of you, I’ll definitely want a fulfilling dinner.”

“Kind of a glutton, aren’t you?” Kerry resisted the urge to laugh.

“Where you’re involved, yeah.”

A middle-aged woman passed close on her way out the door. As she stared, Kerry wondered how much of their conversation she’d heard and understood. Rafe apparently wondered the same thing when he changed the subject.

“Why so many key chains? Do you use this as a hand weight in your spare time? Do biceps curls from the car to the door?”

“Funny. No, I collect key chains. Friends give them to me as gifts when they go places or I buy ones that I think are interesting. What do you collect?”

He thought about it for a minute. “Gadgets. I never put much furniture in my apartment, just lots of electronic . . . stuff.”

“Oh, sounds like you could be featured in
Better Homes and Computers
.”

Smiling, he walked out the door. Kerry meandered toward Tiffany’s desk, watching as Rafe walked toward the parking lot. A glance told her Tiff was still on the phone and looking stressed. Mark had always complained about unreasonable customers wanting to circumvent the bank’s policies for their convenience. Likely, her sister-in-law was feeling that heat now.

A minute later, Rafe returned from the car, laptop case in hand.

“Where is Smikins’s office?”

She pointed him to the appropriate door.

“Thanks.” He winked and set off. “I think I’ll just go knock and make suspect number two see me.”

Once he’d gone, Tiffany stepped up behind her in a cloud of Chantilly. Tension showed in the lines of her mouth. “He’s very handsome. Who is he?”

“Rafe Dawson.”

At Tiffany’s blank look, Kerry supplied, “You know, the guy the bank hired to shore up electronic security.”