Jennifer Greene - Secretive Stranger

More complicated yet, the more he spent time with her, the more he felt an electric, emphatic pull toward her. He wanted to hear more. To look more. To touch.

His grip tightened around the long-necked bottle of beer. “Sophie, you were around Jon enough. Can you tell me what his job was, how he made a living?”

“His job-no. I mean, he used to laugh and say he was a bureaucrat, then just drop it. It’s not as if I was in Jon’s confidence. The only reason I knew some things was because…well, because he was gone so much. He needed someone around for Caviar, to be there to pick up packages, his mail, that kind of thing. It wasn’t one-sided. Whenever I’d leave for the weekend to see my sisters or something like that, he offered to watch over my place the same way.”

Cord figured he was going to have to get blunter, or they’d never get down to any brass tacks. “The picture I’ve gotten…Jon had a lot of women friends.”

Color climbed her cheeks. “Yes. I’d say more than ‘a lot.’”

“Yet you were always the one he asked to watch the place when he was gone?”

She nodded. “I guess that does seem weird, doesn’t it? But actually, he really didn’t have women at the apartment all that often. Or if he did, they didn’t tend to stay the night.” She suddenly tensed up. “Not that I was watching his every move-”

“I didn’t mean to suggest you were. I’m just trying to understand anything I can, about his life, about what happened to him. Anything you could tell me would help.”

She relaxed again. “Well, as odd as this sounds…I don’t think your brother particularly trusted the women he got involved with. I mean, he never seemed to turn down a party. Always seemed to have a good time. But almost no one came back to the apartment more than once. He was kind of like Caviar. Go out and howl in the night, but come back to nest someplace alone when he was tired.”

“But he trusted you,” Cord pressed.

“I believe he did…but I think for obvious reasons. He looked at me and just didn’t see anyone particularly…interesting. Not for him. So we made good neighbors. Seriously good neighbors, actually.”

Cord stared at her. She didn’t see herself as interesting or sexually appealing to Jon? Or interesting to a man in general, her tone had implied. With that skin, those eyes, that soft red mouth?

For Pete’s sake, was she a fabulous fake or the real thing? An award-winning actress or just what she seemed like-the genuine article?

A complex, interesting, and damn beautiful woman.

He spun that word beautiful in his mind for a moment. God knew, it wasn’t his first impression of her. At first sight, he’d summed her up as frumpy. Lumpy. Dorky.

“What?” she asked warily, when she realized he was staring at her.

“You took off your glasses,” he said.

“Oh. I just forget sometimes.” Immediately, she popped them back on her nose.

But now he peered closer. They sure as hell looked like clear lenses to him. A disguise. To hide those damn incredible eyes.

Cord resisted the urge to pull out his hair. Whether or not he could trust Sophie should have been clear by now. In the ultraquiet work he’d done for the government, no one had ever doubted his judgment. But then came Zoe, of course. Life-and-death decisions seemed a whole lot easier than any conclusions he could draw about women.

And in the meantime, she’d finished her tea; he’d sure as hell finished his beer, and he had no more answers now than when he’d taken this break.

When he reached for the bill, Sophie leaped to her feet as fast as he did. “I need to get back, too,” she said swiftly.

“I never meant to steal this much of your Sunday afternoon.”

“I offered to help,” she reminded him.

“I know you did. And to tell the truth…” He hesitated. “When we get back, could I ask for a couple more minutes of your time? Not a ton. I’d just appreciate your running through the place, see if you’re familiar with any more of my brother’s fancy gadgets. I’d just as soon not set off any unintentional alarms.”

She smiled. “Sure. In fact…if no one showed you Jon’s security setup already, I can do that, too.”

A frisky breeze nipped at their cheeks on the walk back. Sophie kept up with his brisk stride, as if she liked a fast pace as much as he did, but Cord noted that she stayed a few inches apart, her hands tucked in her pockets, as if making a point not to encourage any physical contact. Still, she kept shooting him quiet glances.

Both of them were probably doing the same thing. Cord suspected she had her own reasons for sizing him up, measuring who he was-especially because she obviously didn’t have too high an opinion of his brother.

Once back at the Foggy Bottom brownstone, she came in, as asked, but she made a point of not shedding her jacket-just started a free-flow information spill. It wasn’t babbling. She really knew a lot about Jon’s apartment.

“The thing is, Cord, a hundred years ago, this building was a single-family residence-so my half of the upstairs isn’t a mimic of your brother’s. Jon’s side is bigger. But it’s more than that. The odd shape of Jon’s kitchen is probably because it was once a bedroom…”

He’d been through the place before, obviously, but Sophie made him see the layout with new eyes. Jon may have picked an old place because architecturally, there were more ways to hide things. The kitchen may have once been a bedroom, but it was predictably stuffed with new appliances and gadgets. The red-and-black bathroom had been outfitted with a towel warmer, a disappearing steam machine, a cupboard that revealed a chilled square-for drinks? Food? God knew.

Still, past the living room and kitchen and bedroom was the only beyond-weird room in the flat. Cord stood in the doorway, hands on hips, feeling as if he’d just stepped into a sci-fi setting. Sophie ambled right in. “I never saw Jon’s bedroom, so I don’t know what’s in there. But this was your brother’s…sandbox, so to speak. The room where he played. And it’s the room he told me most about, because when he was gone for a night or two, he worried about the security in here.”

Cord knew computers and security setups, but nothing remotely like this. Not for a private citizen, anyway. A square platform desk took up the room’s center, covered with four functioning computers and symbiotic hardware. Writhing snakes of electric cords tangled every which way. Beneath the single window was a long bench table, obviously a worktable of some kind.

“No,” Sophie said suddenly.

“What?”

“You don’t want to touch that picture,” she warned him.

“Why?” For some insane reason, Jon had hung an incongruous and tasteless picture of a naked Mona Lisa on the inside wall. Sophie suddenly showed up beside him, touched “the smile”-and all the computers abruptly when blank.

She touched the eyes in the painting, and throughout the room, locks turned on all the desk and file drawers.

And then she chuckled at Cord’s expression. “I know. I can’t imagine why Jon did it, either. He just seemed to have fun with this kind of thing. He was always afraid I’d come in to feed Caviar when he was gone and I’d touch something by mistake.”

She motioned to a specific tile in the checkerboard floor. “If you step on that square, you’ll set off an alarm in the kitchen. Caviar’s done it a few times, although I think Cav’s figured out most of Jon’s booby traps by now. You see that weird little square quilt on the wall? It really is a quilt, but if you poke it, it opens up to a mini bar, with drinks and glasses. It shares the same wall as the kitchen, and he put this in so he didn’t have to walk all the way around the hall to get a drink and put in his dirty dishes. Jon was on the lazy side. And then…”