By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс

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СКАЧАТЬ his backside. The other, more annoying, was the insistent vibration of his cell phone against his left thigh.

      In one smooth move, he shifted, lifting her onto his lap as he leaned back against a tree. She fit her head into the crook of his shoulder in a gesture he found so endearing that for another moment, he simply held on to her, ignoring his phone.

      “This isn’t working,” she said.

      Alarmed, he pressed a finger under her chin, tilting her head so that he could look into her eyes. “I know I was rough. Did I hurt you?”

      “No. Even if you had, I’d let you do it again in a second.” She drew in a breath, let it out. “Just as soon as I catch my breath.”

      “What exactly isn’t working?”

      His cell phone vibrated again. He ignored it.

      “That’s what’s not working,” Piper said. “You’re ignoring your cell phone. And I can’t even think straight yet.”

      “Have to say, we’re in the same boat there.”

      “The whole idea of the on-demand-sex fantasy is that it compartmentalizes sex so that it’s less distracting. That’s why I fantasized about it all those years ago. I wanted simple. We should be able to keep our eyes on the goal and do the work we came here to do. But you’re currently ignoring your cell phone. And I haven’t even checked mine yet. Plus, we just narrowly escaped from someone who may have wished us bodily harm.”

      She sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder again. “It should have been the perfect solution for us, but I can’t seem to be near you without wanting to rip your clothes off.”

      Duncan laughed. He couldn’t stop himself. She’d hit the nail on the head. And when she gave up and joined him, he squeezed her in a friendly hug. “Look on the bright side. Since we’re both pretty much naked, that problem seems to be solved temporarily.”

      She gave his shoulder a punch. “Not funny.” But the shared laughter was still clear in her voice. “We have to get serious and figure out who followed us into the cave and why.”

      “Those are the questions of the day,” Duncan said. And they were enough to sober both of them.

      “I think we can cross your favorite suspects, Abe and Richard, off the list,” Piper said.

      “Agreed.” He couldn’t picture either one of them scaling down those rocks so effortlessly. And how would either of them have found the time to come to the castle? “They could have hired someone, mind you.”

      “Why? If your theory is right, they’ve achieved their goal. I’m out of town. Richard’s sitting second chair. Why follow us? But …”

      “But what?”

      “What if we’re looking at this from the wrong angle?” She raised her head enough to meet his eyes. “They’re not the only ones who might have wanted me out of D.C. Maybe the whole point of that staged scene and the flower deliveries was to get me back up here to the castle?”

      “I’m listening,” Duncan murmured.

      She rose from his lap and began to pace. “What if this is all about Eleanor’s dowry?”

      Duncan narrowed his eyes, following her train of thought. “The sapphires could very well be playing some role in this. Cam’s theory is that whoever was visiting the library had some kind of inside information, something that makes him or her believe that the library holds the key to the location of Eleanor’s dowry. But then lightning struck the stone arch and Adair found the first earring before he could unlock the secret.”

      “Had to be a bummer for him,” Piper said.

      “It gets worse. Cam set up extra security so he couldn’t visit the library anymore. It’s not a stretch to think that the library guy starts thinking there might be some link between you and your sisters and the rest of Eleanor’s sapphires.”

      “Or he could see us as competition. Adair found the first earring. Could be he’s afraid Nell or I will beat him to the rest.”

      He had to admire the way her mind worked. Shifting the lens and looking at it from that angle made a great deal of sense. “Very possible. But then my guess is that the library guy wouldn’t want you up here. So I’m still not convinced he was behind the scene in your apartment. But it’s certainly in his interest to keep tabs on you now that you’re here. And if he followed us from the castle earlier, he heard everything I told you about my theory of where that earring might have been hidden. But I don’t think he could know for sure that we found it.”

      “So the guy in the hooded sweatshirt could be the library guy.”

      “I like it as a theory. Whoever he is, he’s obsessed with finding Eleanor’s sapphires. But we can’t discount other possibilities. The guy who’s sending you death threats could have easily caused that little avalanche. My suspicion is that he’s someone who’s really angry that you let Lightman out of jail. And he wants you to suffer at least part of what the victims suffered before they died. The fact that you left your apartment may have made him even angrier. Why not kick a few stones down on you? Or someone else could have followed us out to the cliffs, someone we haven’t thought of yet. The key to being a good profiler is that you can’t jump to premature conclusions.”

      “Great. You’ve already pointed out there’s a target on my back. Now I can worry about the number of people taking aim at it.”

      Standing there naked in the slants of sunlight, she looked like Diana the Huntress. Was that why it hit him so hard again? All he knew was that she was beautiful in a way that made his heart take a long tumble. That was dangerous. Almost as dangerous as the image he’d planted in both their minds. And he had to keep focused on the fact that she was in danger.

      Rising, he went to her and took her hands. “I want you to picture it. I want both of us to imagine the worst and hope for the best. We can’t be certain yet that there isn’t more than one thing going on here. In fact, I have a definite feeling that there is.”

      When his cell began to vibrate again, he released her so that he could retrieve his jeans and dig it out of his pocket. He checked the ID. “Adrienne.”

      “You’re not answering your phone,” she said.

      “I am now. Good or bad news?”

      Adrienne’s sigh spoke volumes.

      Duncan tipped the phone so that Piper could hear the bad news. “I’m letting Piper listen to what you have to say.”

      “The men I’ve assigned to keep tabs on Lightman have lost him. He hadn’t made an appearance outside his place all morning. When my men checked his apartment about an hour ago, there was no sign of him. Last visual they had on him was yesterday around dinnertime.”

      Duncan’s mind was racing. Maybe he’d been too quick to dismiss Lightman as the person who’d staged the scene in Piper’s apartment.

      But it was Piper who spoke the suspicion out loud. “Lightman is smart. He could have bought the wrong kind of sheet and used fresh rose petals just to throw us off.”

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