Darkness Before the Dawn (Maggie Bennett 2)
“You.”
Maggie set her coffee cup down carefully. “Any connection with me is ancient history. I realize that half the intelligence network of the world knows all the sordid details—”
“Never sordid, Maggie.”
“Sordid,” she said firmly. “But they should also know that I haven’t even seen you in six years.”
“It still provides decent cover. I don’t necessarily have to be investigating Francis’s proclivities. I could be here to take up where we left off in Gemansk.”
“It’ll be a cold day in hell,” she snapped.
He raised an eyebrow, that quiet, elegant gesture that used to defeat her. But not this time. There was no way he could touch her, no way he could demoralize her, she promised herself fiercely.
“I didn’t say we were going to, Maggie dear. I just said it could look that way.”
“You’d need my cooperation for that.”
He smiled that cool, mocking smile that still managed to cause an occasional nightmare. “Oh, I’m counting on that.”
“And why would you be so foolish as to do that?”
“Because your sister’s at stake. We can protect her—I can protect her, if I want to. Or I can throw her to the wolves. It’s not an opportune time for your sister to be charged with murder. Or at the very least with obstructing justice. It does happen to be against the law, you know, to drag murdered bodies around Chicago.”
“Is it really?” She kept her voice cool and remote, not for a moment showing her inner panic.
He nodded. “Not to mention freezing them first. Really, Maggie, how unspeakably tacky. Couldn’t you have tossed him into the trunk sooner?”
“It was spur of the moment,” she said faintly. “What do you want from me, Randall?”
He smiled briefly, that chilly, slightly mocking smile, and for a moment she stared at him in complete confusion. How could she have ever thought herself in love with such a man? He had no warmth, no love, no tenderness at all—qualities that Mack Pulaski had had in abundance. Randall Carter was a cold, calculating man, permanently bereft of any trace of human kindness. The thought of making love to such an automaton was distasteful, and she wondered how she could have done it. And how she could have become so obsessed with him in such a short time. Thank God all that was in the past, more like a bad dream than a memory. There was no way he could touch her, ever again. Not with the memory of Mack’s real love like a talisman to guard her against evil.
“Cooperation,” he replied. “Simple cooperation, Maggie. I want to know what you know about all this, and I want you to keep out of it from now on. No more lugging bodies around, no more phone calls to Bud Willis, no more snooping and prying. Leave it to me.”
“Screw yourself, Randall,” she said pleasantly. “The only thing I’d leave to you is the Titanic.”
He moved so fast, she didn’t have time to react. One moment he was staring out th
e window, the next he was looming over her, his hands gripping the arms of her chair, his long arms imprisoning her. He didn’t touch her, but the threat was very real, tangible, and faintly, perversely erotic. “Don’t be tiresome, Maggie,” he murmured. “What do you know about Francis Ackroyd?”
She stared up at him, determined not to be intimidated. But he wouldn’t move away until he got the answers he wanted, and she needed him to move quite desperately. “Nothing. He and Kate had a fight over some discrepancies in the books at Stoneham Studios. I think it was Caleb McAllister who first discovered the problem.”
“I’ve met him.” He stayed where he was, unmoving.
“According to Kate they had a massive blowout, screaming and yelling at each other in the studio commissary with many witnesses,” she continued. Her voice was low-pitched and nervous, and there was nothing she could do about it. “Francis disappeared shortly afterward. Kate worked late. When she got home, sometime after six, she found Francis in the guest bathtub with a bullet in his brain.”
He nodded. “That explains your distaste for the guest bathroom. When did you appear on the scene?”
“An hour later. I was flying in to stay for a few days to give her moral support during the court hearing.”
“And instead you’ve been serving as impromptu undertaker. Whose idea was it to hide the body?”
“I don’t know.” She reached up a hand to push her hair out of her face, and it brushed his gray suit jacket. She pulled her hand back quickly, and her breathing was ragged. “Would you mind moving back a little, Randall? I don’t like being crowded.”
“In a moment.” He remained where he was, and she considered kicking him. She would have if she weren’t so afraid of touching him. No, that wasn’t it. She wasn’t afraid of anything. She just didn’t want to. “So you shoved him into the refrigerator, and then carted him back to his apartment. How did you know he was murdered there?”
“I didn’t. It was an educated guess. Randall—”
“Do you think your sister told you the truth? Do you think she killed him?”