Trust Me Once Read online

She watched him pour the milk on her cereal.

  “Why are you doing this?” Sarah asked softly.

  “Most people like milk on their cereal.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean. Why don’t you put me out?”

  Owen sat across from her, his expression thoughtful.

  “I don’t know,” he said after a lengthy pause. “I guess I figure, like it or not, I’m already involved. And it’ll make everything look a hell of a lot better if we turn ourselves in to the officials with some reasonable amount of evidence in hand, instead of saying, ‘Sorry, we were just trying to play cops and robbers, but we didn’t do too well.’”

  “What do you think is a reasonable amount of evidence?”

  “You are the lawyer. You tell me.”

  His comment bolstered the flicker of confidence she still had left somewhere in her battered psyche.

  “Let’s think about what we have. Maybe the list is the key. Maybe, with a closer look at it, you and I can see something there that makes a difference.”

  “It’s a good place to start.”

  “But what about Archer?”

  Owen sat back in his chair. “The way I see it, there are two basic scenarios at either end of a whole range of possibilities. At one end, Archer could be innocent of any of this and thinks you’re dead. In which case, my connection might just be a distraction. After all, he really just wants to compile as much evidence against the judge as he can get. And other than getting a search warrant for this apartment—which he probably wouldn’t go to the trouble of getting since he’s already been in here—he won’t find out anything about me that the tabloids haven’t printed already.”

  “And at the other end…he’s actively involved in everything?” She played with her cereal when he pushed it at her.

  “Right. He’s in on the murders, and he knows you’re alive. If this is the case, then he has people out there waiting to get you. And if that’s true, you won’t be safe turning yourself in anyway. You can’t make an accusation against him without evidence.”

  “He might guess that I’m staying with you.”

  “He wouldn’t figure I’m that stupid. Nor you, for that matter. Plus, he practically turned the place inside out when he was here yesterday.”

  She glanced down at the flakes floating in the bowl.

  “Have you always played with your food, or is this a new pastime?”

  Sarah found him smiling at her. “Have you always helped damsels in distress, or is this a new pastime?”

  He chuckled and covered her hand with his. “I can see you are feeling better. How about me making us some real breakfast? Then we get another copy of that list.”

  “Are you sure about this, Owen?” She had to ask. “About me staying?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” He rose to his feet and took the bowl away. “You heard what Archer said. It’s an ‘unofficial’ inquiry. That makes us ‘unofficially’ involved.”

  Chapter 15

  Is spite of the fact that it was Friday, there was no traffic on Newport Bridge going west toward Jamestown and the mainland. It was half past eleven in the morning, and Andrew Warner turned up the volume on the radio of his car. Shaking his head occasionally, he listened hard to every word of the newscast on Hal Van Horn’s murder. He’d heard the same news, virtually word for word, on the 7:00 a.m. television news broadcast this morning. He’d considered waking Tracy and telling her about it before he’d gone off to an early meeting at the college, but he’d decided against it at the last moment.

  Andrew picked up his cell phone and glanced at the blank screen. There were no messages waiting. No calls from Owen. And still there was no news anywhere of Sarah Rand being alive.

  Andrew desperately hoped Owen knew what he was doing. He’d considered calling him numerous times since yesterday. But every time he’d stopped himself at the last moment.

  It wasn’t as if Sarah Rand were some kind of flake. He’d first met the young attorney when she’d started her association with Judge Arnold. She had been bright and charming, a young woman with seemingly unlimited potential. And while some had thought the association was a great opportunity for Sarah, Andrew knew Arnold was the lucky one. And smart. With her looks and intellect and Ivy League degree, Sarah brought a new visibility to the judge’s practice, providing a shot in the arm on both the local and state level.

  Oh yes, Andrew knew that the judge was well aware of the prize he had lured away from the Boston legal circles. And that was why the news of her murder had been so shocking.

  But Sarah wasn’t dead.

  Andrew took the second gravel road that led up through the woods surrounding their property and parked his car halfway between the road and the north fields.

  He only wished the whole situation wasn’t so twisted. It would be a dream to have Owen involved with someone like Sarah. Despite all the fame, despite the money and the investments that the young man had managed to accumulate, Andrew knew Owen was not happy. And this troubled him more than anything else.

  Today the air was dryer, and much easier on Andrew’s lungs, though each passing week was becoming more difficult. He took a large tarp out of his trunk and pushed through the underbrush into the woods. He’d intended to do this yesterday—to go back and cover Sarah’s car until she and Owen were ready to take it away. But his argument with Tracy and later his lack of breath had him stranded in his chair for most of the day.

  With all the small airports around and so many helicopters going back and forth, the chance of someone spotting the stranded car in the woods was always a possibility. So this morning before leaving for the college, he’d dragged the old green tarp out of the barn.

  The sports car was still there when Andrew broke through the bushes. Taking a better look at the shattered side windows, he frowned at what looked like bullet holes in the windshield. The older man shook his head, feeling his chest tighten with worry.

  Someone had been trying to kill her. And this someone was out there loose, waiting for another chance.

  Andrew spread the tarp over the car. Walking around it, he placed branches and rocks on the corners to keep it in place against the wind. By the time he was done, he found himself completely out of breath. He reached for the pouch at his waist. No pouch. No inhaler.

  “Damn,” he muttered. He knew where it was. It was sitting right where he’d left it on the kitchen counter. Shaking his head again, he slowly made his way back toward the gravel drive.

  ~~~~

  Tracy Warner’s immediate reaction was to run to the door when she heard the crunch of Andrew’s tires on the gravel outside. She didn’t, though. The cold gun barrel pressed against her temple kept her where she was, and she simply covered her mouth with her hands and cried silently. She heard a car door close, and then there was the sound of her husband’s coughing.

  “Sit,” one of the two men ordered, pushing a chair toward her. She saw him move to the window and peer outside.

  “Sit,” the one with the gun pressed against her head repeated, hurting her arm as he forced her into the chair.

  The sound of Andrew’s coughing drew her attention. Tracy glanced at the inhaler that he’d left by the coffee pot.

  “He…my husband might not be able to make the stairs without it.” She pointed at the open pouch containing the medicine. “He needs his inhaler.”

  “He is coming.” The man by the door whispered as he stepped back along the kitchen wall.

  Andrew Warner’s breathing was more than labored as he pushed the outside door open and stepped in. The college president’s jacket was on his arm, his tie already loosened, and the top button of the collar undone. He pulled at the neckline of the shirt as a hoarse cough rose from his chest.

  His gaze focused momentarily on the empty beds of his dogs in the mudroom door before he noticed there was anything wrong. He walked into the kitchen. Tracy was sitting and staring wildly at him, while a man held a silver-plated pistol to her head.

 
; “What the hell is this?” he managed to say, as another attack of coughing threatened to shut down his lungs.

  “They had badges.” Tracy blurted. “I let them in, thinking—”

  “Shut up.” The man jabbed her in the temple with the gun, and tears ran down her terror-stricken face.

  “Just a min—”

  “Where did you take her?”

  Andrew’s heart nearly stopped at the sound of the second man behind him. He half turned, backing against the sink, his intermittent coughs forcing him to choke out his words. “What do you mean by this?”

  “They’re looking for Sarah Rand.” Tracy sobbed. “For God’s sake, Andrew, tell them she’s dead. Tell them. They won’t believe me. They’ve turned the house upside down.”

  From where he was standing, Andrew had a clear view of the door leading into the open living room. The furniture had been toppled and thrown about. Shards of broken glass glittered on the floor. The tightness in his chest was getting worst. He could no longer breathe without coughing. The man who’d been behind him suddenly shoved the pouch with the inhaler at him.

  Andrew let it drop, and that was when he saw the dogs. He looked up at the killers.

  “Let her go.” He forced out the words. “She…is totally innocent…of this whole thing. Please…let her go.”

  “I don’t think so, Warner,” the man spat out.

  “I won’t tell you anything until you let my wife…”

  “No, Andrew,” Tracy gasped, starting to rise from the chair. “I won’t let you.”

  The single shot rang out, and Andrew looked in horror as his wife spun to the floor of the kitchen. Her body jerked and then lay motionless, twisted in the most unnatural way, her blood seeping out of her back and her chest onto the tiles.

  Andrew looked at her to an endless moment, and their entire life together seemed to pass before his eyes. The disagreements. The fights. His infidelity. Tracy’s continuing forgiveness.

  “Christ,” he muttered.

  He hadn’t really loved her. Ever. As hard as she’d tried—as much as she’d deserved better—he’d kept her a prisoner in their marriage, depriving her of the happiness that she might have had with someone else.

  Their entire fifty years of marriage had been one long battle. A battle in which Tracy had constantly tried to win his love. A battle in which Andrew had defeated her at every turn.

  As Andrew Warner turned to the armed man behind him, he no longer cared about the breaths rattling in his chest. He no longer cared about his wife or his job. He no longer even cared that he’d deprived everyone around him of the peace and happiness that they may have deserved.

  He only thought of one thing. He only thought of this one last thing he could do for Owen…his own flesh and blood…and for Becky.

  Andrew reached for the barrel of the gun, wrestling for it with all his failing strength until his brain exploded in a brilliant flash of golden light.

  ~~~~

  Owen grimaced as Sarah took the drugstore bag out of his hand and started emptying the contents out on the kitchen table. Make-up. Hair dye. Cheap, oversized sunglasses.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “I can’t be a blond anymore. And the hat and sweatshirt look doesn’t cut it, either.” She read the label on the hair color before picking up the sunglasses and going to the bathroom mirror to look at her reflection. “They were flashing a sketch of me on the five o’clock news. I hope your neighbors in the building weren’t watching.”

  Owen put the bag of groceries on the counter. “I heard two woman talking in the store. About the fifteen…maybe sixteen-year-old girl who might have been a witness to the stabbing.”

  “If I live through this, I’m giving that hostess a very generous tip for knocking almost twenty years off my age.”

  Owen watched her come out of the bathroom, the sunglasses in place. “Imagine me in dark brown hair, wearing a scarf and these shades. How would I look?”

  “Like Garbo in the seventies?”

  She took the glasses off and came toward him. “And remind me to give you a good beating for adding so many years onto my age.”

  Owen caught her wrist as she tried to punch him in passing. Their gazes locked. The moment hung suspended in time. His hand holding her. The wild beating of her pulse matching the sudden rush of desire in his body.

  The sound of the sunglasses slipping out of her hand and falling to the kitchen floor broke the moment. He let go of her, and she immediately leaned down and picked up the shades. Then she turned away.

  “I was finally able to download the list. Linda, or someone, must have been in the office today. I tried to call first, just to see if there was an answer. If she was working on the same batch of files, she might know I was accessing them.”

  She went on talking, but refused to look at him. Owen, however, found his attention riveted to her profile, to skin of her cheeks and the color spreading across them. He couldn’t remember ever being as aware of a woman as he was of Sarah. He was certain he had never been so captivated with another person as he was with her.

  Unlike the annoying feeling of being reeled in—a feeling that was all too common in his experiences with other women—he felt that with Sarah, he was doing the pursuing. And surprisingly enough, he was doing it willingly, gladly. And looking at her now, he realized he was beyond caring about why he was acting this way. What he was doing felt right, and that was all there was to it. Period.

  “I want you to look at the list with me.” She finally turned to him. “I’ve gone over it again and again, but nothing stands out. I just can’t figure what might be in there that someone would want to kill for.”

  “Where is the list?”

  “On the laptop.” She pointed at her computer. “Why don’t you go over it and let me make dinner tonight?”

  “Had it with my cooking?”

  Sarah sent him a smile that started in her eyes. “I’m just trying to give back something in return for all you’ve done.”

  “Payback time is coming. Don’t you worry about that.”

  Forty minutes later, they were sitting side by side on the sofa and pouring over the list item by item. But just as Sarah had said before, there was nothing on the list that stood out as unusual. Nothing that would make Judge Arnold want to go back and check the box, in person, twice in one week.

  “I assume the safe-deposit boxes were solely Avery’s?” Owen asked sometime later, getting to his feet to retrieve the bottle of wine from the dinner table. He topped her glass and refilled his, as well.

  “They were.” Sarah tucked her feet under her. “But not because she didn’t trust him. There were other legalities involved. When Everard Van Horn, Avery’s first husband, passed away, everything was left to the wife. Naturally, his will contained all kinds of provisions on how much of the assets would be released to Hal, and when. Because most of the items being in those boxes were left over from Everard’s era, Judge Arnold’s name and signature was never added to the bank record, except for one. But the items contained in that box are on this list, as well.”

  “How old was Hal?”

  She swirled the wine in the glass, staring at the dark ruby-colored liquid. “He would have been thirty-eight this fall.”

  “Not old enough to inherit everything that was coming to him?”

  Sarah shook her head. “That was the way the Van Horn family operated. Everard and Avery used trusts extensively in their estate planning. Over periods of time, control would have continued to shift to Hal. But based on Avery’s last will, he would have been an old man before he ran the whole show.”

  Owen sat back down on the sofa. “Do you think the contents of those boxes were a surprise to Judge Arnold?”

  “No, I don’t believe so.”

  “Did Avery check them often? I mean, were they just left there, untouched, for thirty years?”

  “She had some new things in them. They went into the box the judge had access to while Avery wa
s alive. Here, look at this list.” She leaned forward and turned on the screen again. “This matched set of jewelry was a gift from the judge. The marriage certificate. The deed to the building, dated six years ago. Judge Arnold bought that building in anticipation of opening the offices downtown. He had the deed made out in Avery’s name.” She sat back, her brow furrowed with concentration. “I’d say the boxes were actively used, but certainly not on a daily basis. Of course, the bank records would show that.”

  “Did you personally make the transfer on the boxes?”

  “Of course. One of the officers of the bank was present with me the whole time. We made the list as we went along.”

  “And when was that?” Owen asked. “Do you remember the exact date?”

  “End of June. Beginning of July, maybe.” She put the wineglass on the table and opened up her schedules on the computer.

  As Owen scanned the dates over her shoulder, it was fascinating to him to see how hard she worked, and how little time she appeared to have to play. His gaze was again drawn to her profile, to her mouth.

  “There it is. June 28 and 29. It took two days.”

  He frowned, forcing himself to think about the safe-deposit boxes.

  “Did you give copies of the list to the judge and to Hal immediately after that?”

  “Within a couple of days. Maybe the early part of the week after. There was other paperwork involved.” She gave him a look over her shoulder. “You are getting at something.”

  “What was Hal’s reaction to the list?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t deliver it personally. He didn’t call me with any questions.”

  “So he didn’t want to go and see the box for himself?”

  “Not that I know of.” Her eyes narrowed. “But Judge Arnold wanted to. As I told you before, we went to the bank twice.”

  Owen put his wine glass on the table. “Was he rushed when you took him there for the first time?”

  “No.”

  “Were you with him? I mean, standing beside him when he checked through the box?”