Tess Gerritsen - Presumed Guilty

“Especially if you were happy there.”

He smiled. “Exactly.”

For a moment they stood and regarded the old porch swing, creaking back and forth in the breeze.

“Do you have a key?” she asked.

“There should be one under here.” He crouched down beneath one of the windowsills. “There’s this little crack in the wood where Mom always kept a spare key….” He sighed and straightened. “Not anymore. Well, if the door’s locked, maybe we can find a window open somewhere.” Tentatively he reached for the knob. “How do you like that?” He laughed, pushing open the door. “It’s not even locked.”

As the door creaked open, the front room swung into view — a faded Oriental carpet stretched across the threshold, a stone fireplace, wide pine floors. Miranda stepped inside and suddenly halted in surprise.

At her feet lay a jumble of papers. A rolltop desk stood in the corner, its drawers wide open, their contents strewn across the floor. Books had been pulled off a nearby shelf and tossed haphazardly among the papers.

Chase stepped inside and came to a halt beside her. The screen door slammed shut.

“What the hell?” he said.

In silence they took in the ransacked desk, the scattered papers. Without a word Chase moved quickly toward the next room.

Miranda followed him into the kitchen. There were no signs of disturbance here. The pots and pans were hung on a beam rack, the flour and sugar canisters lined up neatly on the butcher block counters.

She was right on his heels as he headed for the stairs. They ran up the steps and looked first in the small guest bedroom. Everything appeared in order. Quickly Chase circled the room, opening closets, glancing in drawers.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. He moved across the hall, into the master bedroom.

Here double windows, flanked by lace curtains, faced the sea. A cream coverlet draped the four-poster bed. Motes of dust drifted in the sun-warmed stillness.

“Doesn’t look like they touched this room, either,” said Miranda.

Chase went to the dresser, picked up a silver hairbrush, and set it back down. “Obviously not.”

“What on earth is going on here, Chase?”

He turned and glanced in frustration about the room. “This is crazy. They left the paintings on the walls. The furniture…”

“Nothing’s missing?”

“Nothing valuable. At least, nothing your ordinary thief would go after.” He opened a dresser drawer and glanced through the contents. He opened a second drawer and paused, staring inside. Slowly he withdrew a pair of women’s panties. It was scarcely more than a few strips of black lace and silk. He pulled out a matching bra, equally skimpy, equally seductive.

He looked at Miranda, his gaze flat and unreadable. “Yours?” he asked quietly.

“I told you, I’ve never been here. They must belong to Evelyn.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“How would you know?”

“She never comes out here. Despises the rustic life, or so she claims.”

“Well, they’re not mine. I don’t own anything like — like that.”

“There’s more inside here. Maybe you’ll recognize something else.”

She went to the dresser and pulled out an emerald-and-cream bra. “Well, it’s obvious this isn’t mine.”

“How so?”

“This is a 36C. I’m…” She cleared her throat. “Not that big.”

“Oh.”

Quickly she turned away, before he could confirm her statement. Not that he hadn’t had the chance to look. He had eyes, didn’t he?

And he sees too damn much, she thought. She turned toward the window and stood with her back to Chase, all the while struggling to regain her composure. Outside, the fading light of day slanted across the treetops. A long summer dusk. In the field below there would be fireflies and the hum of insects in the grass. And the chill. Even on these August evenings there was always the chill that rose from the sea. She hugged herself and shivered.

His approach was gentle, silent. She couldn’t hear him, but she knew, without looking, that he was right behind her.

Chase was standing so close, in fact, that he could smell the scent of her hair — clean and sweet and intoxicating. The fading daylight from the window brought out its glorious chestnut hues. He wanted to reach out and run his fingers through those shimmering strands, to bury his face in the tangled silk. A mistake, a mistake. He knew it before it happened, and yet he couldn’t help himself.

She shivered at his touch. Just the tiniest tremble, the softest sigh. He ran his hands down her shoulders, down the cool smoothness of her bare arms. She didn’t pull away. No, she leaned back, as though melting against him. He wrapped his arms around her, enfolding her in their warmth.

“When I was a boy,” he whispered, “I used to think there were magical creatures in that field down there. Elves and fairies hiding among the toadstools. I’d see their lights flitting about at night. It was only fireflies, of course. But to a kid, they might have been anything. Elvish lanterns, Dragon lights. I wish…”

“What do you wish, Chase?”

He sighed. “That I still had some of that child inside me. That we could have known each other then. Before all this happened. Before…”

“Richard.”

Chase fell silent. His brother would always be there, his life and his death like a darkness hovering over them. What could possibly thrive in such shadow? Not friendship; certainly not love. Love? No, what Chase felt, standing there behind her, hugging her slim, warm body to his, had far more to do with lust. Well, what the hell. Maybe it runs in my family, he thought, in my tainted bloodline. This propensity for reckless, hopeless affairs. Richard had it. My mother had it. Is it my turn to succumb?

Miranda shifted in his embrace, turned to face him. One look at that soft, upturned mouth and he was lost.

She tasted of summer and warmth and sweet amber honey. At the first touch of their lips he wanted more, more. He felt like a man who has fallen drunk at his first sip of nectar and now craves nothing else. His hands found their way into that silken mass of hair, were buried in it, lost in it. He heard her murmur, “please,” and was too fevered to think it anything but a request for more. Only when she said it again, and then, “Chase, no,” did he finally pull away.

They stared at each other. The confusion he felt was mirrored in her eyes. She retreated a step, nervously shoving back her hair.

“I shouldn’t have let you do that,” she said. “It was a mistake.”

“Why?”

“Because you — you’ll say I led you on. That’s what you’ll tell Evelyn, isn’t it? You think it’s how I got hold of Richard. Temptation. Seduction. It’s what everyone else believes.”

“But is it true?”

“You’ve just proved it. Get me alone in a room and look what happens! Another Tremain male bites the dust.” Her voice took on a cold edge. “What I want to know is, who’s really seducing whom?”

She’s all motion, all skittishness, he thought. In another moment she would shatter and fly into pieces.

“Neither of us did any seducing, any tempting. It just happened, Miranda. The way it usually happens. Nature tugs on our strings and we can’t always resist.”

“This time I will. This time I know better. Your brother taught me a few things. The most important thing is not to be so damn gullible when it comes to men.”

That last word was still hanging in the air between them when they heard footsteps thump onto the porch below. Someone rapped on the front door.