“Is what?”
Her voice dropped so he had to lean closer to hear.
“Following me.”
* * *
Stephanie and Victor stared at Brooke, and she could feel her cheeks flame with embarrassment.
Victor’s look was half suspicious, half amazed. He thought she was paranoid and, from the guarded expression on his sister’s face, she agreed with him. Brooke was beginning to think it herself.
She waited in the outer office while they discussed the situation, even though she knew what the outcome would be. She thought about her brother. Tad’s goofy smile played in her memory.
Chin up, he would remind her at every opportunity. Deep down he was a gentle soul, sweet and loving, and no one would ever convince her otherwise. She raised her head. She would find the Tarkenton and they’d have enough, more than enough to take care of Tad, to bring him home where he belonged. The door opened and she shot to her feet.
They emerged, their demeanor kind, professional and firm.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Ramsey,” Stephanie said. Brooke was afraid to look her in the eye, so she focused on the second tiny gold hoop in Stephanie’s ear, just above the lobe.
“We have several projects in progress right now and we don’t feel we can give your case the attention it deserves.”
Victor thanked her for coming and offered to help her find a private investigator. She declined.
As Brooke exited the outer office and headed for the elevator, she puzzled it over. Of course a successful doctor, already wealthy, who found treasures on a lark wouldn’t be interested in her fanciful tale of a vanished Tarkenton painting. And he and his sister would definitely be put off by some paranoid woman who believed someone was following her.
As she waited for the elevator, the fright she’d experienced over the past few months seemed ridiculous. The lady she’d thought was tailing her, the phone calls. She swallowed. Was her mind going? Was it an early manifestation of the disease that was eating away at her father? A version of the terrible genetic error visited on Tad?
She shook it off and willed the elevator to hurry. The quiet of the hallway was oppressive. Didn’t anyone else work on this floor of the San Francisco building? She longed to get home to Southern California where the fog did not lie like an oppressive blanket over the spring sunshine. Shivering, she realized with a start that she’d left her jacket in Gage’s office.
She would rather lose it than go back and face the former doctor who already thought she was delusional. It had taken every ounce of courage to seek him out. She had not one bit of bravery left. A familiar sense of failure hung heavy on her shoulders. The elevator doors slid open and Brooke stepped forward until she saw the lady in the back, her hair a perfect black in spite of the fifty years or so written on her hardened face.
That face.
That woman.
Brooke knew her; she’d seen her back home at the coffee shop, at the library.
Fear bubbled up inside and she backed away.
The woman stepped forward, a question in her eyes. She reached into a black slouch bag.
Brooke didn’t wait. She whirled around and ran toward the end of the corridor, slamming through the stairwell door. Her feet moved faster than she’d thought possible as she plunged down three flights of stairs, heart thundering.
She did not know exactly why, but the woman had been stalking her, waiting to make her move. The cement corridor echoed her frantic run as she pelted down the stairs.
Get to the next floor. There will be people around. She can’t hurt you with people around.
Brooke continued on her flight until she saw the door marked Floor Six just ahead. Only a half-dozen steps left to go when she heard the unmistakable sound. The door began to open.
* * *
For all his years as a surgeon and the personal trauma he’d survived, Victor thought he was immune to surprise, but he found himself taken aback at Brooke Ramsey’s declaration that someone was following her. They’d exchanged a few words. She’d shaken his hand, her fingers cold and small in his grip, and practically run out the door, before he could even recommend someone else to help her. He was grateful for the chance to try to sort out his tangle of feelings as he returned to his desk and sank into the chair.
“What are you thinking?” Stephanie said, her hand on his shoulder.
“Me? Just wondering if we did the right thing refusing her case.”
“If she’s telling the truth, she needs the cops, not us. If she’s not…”
“Then she’s crazy?”
Stephanie sighed. “I’ve wondered that about myself many a time.”
He wanted to take her hand and squeeze it, to tell her that there were brighter days ahead, but he didn’t think he could sound convincing and she wouldn’t welcome the gesture anyway. He felt certain that all his brighter days were firmly in the past. Long gone, like his wife, Jennifer. He looked at the framed picture on his desk of a smiling Jen with her arms around him. Ironic that the afternoon she died she was wearing the same colorful scarf she’d been sporting the day he’d proposed.
Jen was gone; the joyful years were now buried deep and sealed over like an ugly, improperly healed wound. Now the only thing left was Treasure Seekers. It was the single reason he pulled himself out of bed some mornings. There were treasures still to be found in the world, the perfect job for his mixture of tenacity and curiosity. “Something about Ms. Ramsey is familiar. Why do I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere?”
Stephanie headed for the door. He recognized the determination in her perfect posture. “I’ll go do a little digging and get back to you.”
Victor stared after her. He replayed his last question to Brooke Ramsey in his mind, after he’d refused her case.
“What will you do now?” Why had he even said that? Why did he have the desire to keep her from leaving?
She’d turned her head, the light catching the determination in her profile and the streak of little-girl vulnerability. “I’m going to find another way to return my father’s painting. Thank you for your time.” Then she’d bolted out the door.
His eyes wandered back to the chair where she’d sat, looking at him with emotions that went far deeper than her words. It took him a moment to realize she’d left her jacket on the chair. He fingered the soft brown suede, remembering how it accentuated the almost luminous quality of her coppery hair. A light citrusy scent clung to the material.
He hurried to the door, calling to his secretary. “Trudy, I’m going to step out for a minute.”
She nodded. “I’ve got a message for Ms. Ramsey. Did you get her cell phone number?”
“Yes,” he said, frowning. “A message from whom?”
“Her sister, asking for a return call.”
Just a brother, she’d said.
Without a word, he took off running toward the elevators.
* * *
Brooke froze, heart slamming into her ribs, paralyzed. Should she run by the door or back up the stairs?
She was about to bolt past when the door swung open. A startled maintenance worker jerked when he saw her.
“Man, you scared me,” he said.
“Sorry,” she managed after sucking in a breath. “Is… Did you see anyone out there? A lady with black hair and a big bag?”
He chewed a piece of gum and considered. “Saw someone like that earlier in the lobby. She looked around for a while and made a phone call, then I lost track of her.”
She nodded her thanks and continued on down until she reached the lobby. Opening the door and peeking out, she was relieved to see no sign of the lady. Trying to appear calm even though her heart was still thundering inside her, she walked to the reception desk and asked the attendant to summon her a taxi. While she waited, her attention divided between looking out the glass doors for the taxi in the bustle of the financial district and watching the elevator and stairwell for any sign of her stalker, Brooke shivered.
Could be the lady was completely innocent, but Brooke was positive it was the same person she’d noticed the week before in San Diego, watching her from a parked car.
Brooke positioned herself nearer to the glass doors where she would be easily seen by passersby and the front desk person. Once again she was overreacting. Her fears were silly. She tried to focus her thoughts on the next step. Since Victor had declined, she had to find another way to get access to the tunnels under the college. How? Dean Lock would never allow it, not considering his hatred of her father. The police wouldn’t get involved. Who could pressure the dean into allowing her access?
No one but Victor Gage.
She pushed the dark thought aside.
God will help me through this,
she thought. He’d held on to her and her father and brother through a lifetime of struggle. He wouldn’t turn His back on them now. She didn’t need anyone’s help anyway.
The elevator doors opened. Brooke was startled to see Victor step out, troubled eyes scanning the room until he found hers. There was an intensity in his face she hadn’t seen before.
He’d changed his mind. Her heart leaped until she saw her jacket in his hand. Merely returning a forgotten item. Disappointment swirled inside, but she held up her chin and plastered a gracious smile on her face.
A moment later the smile fell away. Brooke watched over Victor’s shoulder as the black-haired woman emerged from the stairwell, her expression grim.
Brooke gasped and took a step backward.
In a fog of confusion, she saw a look of horror twist Victor’s handsome features, his eyes rounding over her shoulder as he looked out the glass doors.
She had no idea what had startled him until the glass shattered around them and Victor pulled her to the floor.
TWO
V
ictor saw the situation unfold, but his head did not believe it. One moment he was heading toward Brooke Ramsey, wondering at the frightened look on her face. The next, he saw a car pull up outside the office, the window rolled down just far enough for him to see a gun thrust through the opening. He had a split second to leap on top of Brooke and carry her to the ground before three shots drilled through the glass. They tumbled along the tile floor, small pieces of the safety glass crackling underneath them. There was a scream from somewhere as the car pulled away and out of sight.
Her breath came in short pants against his cheek. He pushed away a section of her glossy hair and looked into her eyes, so close he could see his own expression mirrored there.
“Are you hurt?”
She tried a few times to answer before any words came out. “I don’t think so. What happened?”
He took another look to make sure the car hadn’t returned before he rolled off her and moved her away from the glass. “A shooter,” he managed, before he noticed the front desk person sprinting across the lobby, shouting into a radio.
Victor followed his progress. Brooke must have, too, because he heard her gasp, her hands flying to her mouth. Then his body was moving on instinct, feet crunching over the broken glass, mind running like a mad thing as he raced to the dark-haired woman lying motionless on the floor.
Mid-fifties, he guessed as he checked her vitals. No breathing, no heartbeat, bullet wound visible on her forehead. He knew the prognosis of a bullet plowing through the frontal lobe of the brain, but he ignored it, tilting her jaw to open the airway and starting chest compressions. Every few cycles he rechecked the vitals without much hope.
Cold horror seeped into him as he was transported back to the moment when he’d awakened in a wrecked car, Jennifer unconscious and broken next to him. He could still feel the warmth of her body under his hands as he frantically tried to restart her heart. There must have been people there, too, as there were now, standing helplessly, dialing cell phones, calling encouragement to the victims of the awful accident, but he hadn’t heard them. Everything faded into a mumbling haze except the reality of his hands on her ribs, his lips blowing air into her mouth, the fading pulse under his frantic fingertips.
“Help me, God,” he’d said, because that’s what Jen would have prayed.
And He hadn’t.
And Victor couldn’t either.
Jennifer was gone.
Victor knew with the same sickening certainty that the black-haired woman was gone, too. He could force her heart to pump, squeeze it into pushing the blood around, but the life, that indefinable force that separates the living from the dead, was gone. He continued the compressions anyway, shoulders burning, until the paramedics arrived and took over the effort. When he finally did move away, he saw Brooke staring at him in shock. An officer took her by the arm and another one escorted him to a nearby hallway, away from the broken glass and the death that lay in awkward display on the cold tile floor.
He was surprised to find that his hands were shaking, so he stuffed them into his pockets as the officer began to ask him questions. He retold the strange interview with Brooke and her assertion that someone was following her. With a start, Victor remembered why he’d gone to the lobby in the first place.
“Someone called my office looking for Ms. Ramsey, pretending to be her sister.”
The officer raised an eyebrow and dutifully recorded the information. “Why don’t you sit down here while we look into some things, Mr. Gage?” The officer moved off and Victor caught sight of Brooke talking to another cop, the freckles standing out strikingly against the paleness of her skin.
He wished he could settle on one feeling, but a stream of conflicting emotions surged through him. Post-traumatic shock, he figured. He’d just witnessed a murder, and if he hadn’t been there it would have been Brooke on the floor. The thought sickened him.
Stephanie appeared, eyes wide and scared. She took hold of his arms, squeezing hard. “Are you all right?”
He reassured her, bringing her briefly up to speed. Stephanie shook her head. “Drive-by shooting? Gang related, maybe?”
He shrugged, and he read in her face that she didn’t believe it was a random shooting any more than he did. He glanced over at Brooke.