little black plastic box about the size of a man’s wallet. It fell out from beneath my dash while I was driving home tonight.”
That didn’t immediately alarm him. “And you don’t think it’s part of the car?” Though he couldn’t imagine what part of the car that would be, exactly.
She lifted her shoulder. “I guess it could be. But it’d been secured with duct tape.”
Now, the alarms came. She wasn’t the sort of woman to buy anything that required the use of duct tape. “Did you open this box?”
“No. It fell as I was pulling into my garage so I let it stay put and went inside. I’d left my cell phone at the restaurant in the country club, and I was going to use my house phone to call someone about the box, but then I heard the intruder.”
So, she’d had two surprises in one night. Were they connected? “What do you think this box could be?”
“Maybe some kind of eavesdropping equipment,” she readily supplied. “My family and I are in the antiques business. Competition is a lot more aggressive than you’d think, and I’m within days of closing a multimilliondollar deal.”
That silenced some of those alarms in Egan’s head. “So you think your competition could have planted a listening device to get insider information?”
“It’s possible.”
Egan followed her through the massive solarium. More lights flared on as they walked through, and those lights gave him a too-good view of his hostess’s backside. In that short black skirt, it was hard not to notice that particular part of her anatomy. Ditto for her long legs, which looked even longer because of the three-inch heels she was wearing. She was no waif, that was for sure. Caroline Stallings had a woman’s body with plenty of curves.
“The garage is through here,” she explained, and she reached for a door.
Egan caught on to her arm and pulled her behind him.
There was renewed alarm in her eyes. “You think the intruder could still be around?”
“No. But I don’t want you to take any unnecessary chances. I want you alive and well because if you ever get your memory back, we might finally be able to figure out who’s behind these killings.”
She made a noncommittal sound. “And that’s why you set up the appointment for the day after tomorrow for me to see the psychiatrist. The one who specializes in recovering lost memories from traumatic incidents. She wants to try some new drug on me.”
Egan didn’t think it was his imagination that Caroline was upset about that. Probably because it threw off her daily massage schedule or something. But he didn’t care one bit about inconveniencing her. He only wanted the truth about what’d really happened the night of that hit-and-run.
“The psychiatrist also wants me to keep a journal of my dreams,” she added. “I was up at three in the morning writing down things that I’m sure won’t make a bit of sense to her. I just don’t think this’ll do any good.”
“You never know,” he mumbled. “It might be the key to the truth.” But even a long shot like this was a move in the right direction.
He preceded her into the garage. The lights were still on, and there were two cars parked inside. A vintage white Mercedes convertible, top up, beaded with rainwater, and a 1966 candy-apple-red Mustang with a coat of dust on it. What Egan didn’t see were any signs of the person who’d left those tracks in her bedroom.
“The box thing is in the Mercedes,” she volunteered, stepping ahead of Egan. She, too, made vigilant glances all around them. But the vigilance didn’t seem necessary because no one jumped out at them, and no one was lurking between the vehicles.
She opened the passenger’s door and pointed to the object on the floor. Yep. It was a small black box all right, and it had strips of black duct tape dangling off the sides.
“Like I said, I think it’s an eavesdropping device,” she commented.
And she reached for it.
Her fingers were less than an inch away when Egan practically tackled her so he could snag her wrist. In theory, it was a good idea because he didn’t want her to smear any prints that might be on the box. But that snagged wrist and his forward momentum sent them sprawling onto the passenger’s seat.
Caroline landed face-first. He landed with his face in her peach-scented, shoulder-length hair. And another part of him, a brainless part of him, hit against her firm butt. Egan grunted from the contact.
Her body nearly distracted him from hearing the tiny, soft sounds.
Clicks.
But Egan shook his head, mentally amending that. Not clicks.
Ticks.
The sounds were synchronized. One right behind the other. Marking off time.
Or rather counting it down.
Hell.
“Get out of here!” he shouted, dragging Caroline from the seat. “It’s a bomb.”
Before Egan Caldwell’s words even registered in Caroline’s head, he already had hold of her and was running toward the door with her in tow.
Mercy, was that black box really a bomb?
She’d heard the ticking sound, of course. Not while she’d been in the car earlier when the engine was running. But now—when Egan and she had tumbled onto the seat. She seriously doubted that an eavesdropping device would have a timer on it.
The adrenaline jolted through her, and Caroline somehow managed to run in her unsensible business heels. Probably thanks to Egan. He had a death grip on her left wrist and practically plowed them through the door that led to a narrow mudroom and then the solarium on the back of her house.
“Evacuate now—there’s a bomb in the garage!” he shouted. Which, in turn, caused more shouts from the cops and the security guards.
All of them began to run. Egan didn’t stop, either. He hauled her through the kitchen, then the living room, and they exited through the front door, on the opposite side of the house from the garage. The cops were ahead of them. The two civilian guards, behind.
The rain was coming down harder now and lashed at them like razors. So did the blinding blue strobe lights from the police cruiser parked at the end of her cobblestone drive. It didn’t hinder Egan. He barreled down the front porch steps with her and made a beeline to the driveway, getting her even farther away from the garage.
“Call the bomb squad,” Egan shouted over his shoulder to one of the guards who was sprinting along behind them. He glanced around through the rain and the night until his attention landed on the other guard. “Keep everyone away from the house.”
Because the place might
