Read Online Smoke Screen by Sandra Brown - Free Book Online Page A

shoulder. She remained that way for several seconds, then raised her head and said emphatically, “I can’t remember.”
    Defiance now. She must have read a how-to book. “Tell me what you do remember.”
    For a full minute, maybe more, they stared across the narrow space separating them. In person, with her face clean and her hair loose, she looked younger than she did on TV. Smaller, too. Her eyes were blue, her gaze steady and guileless, which he knew she must use to her advantage in front of the camera as well as away from it.
    The earnestness in her gaze didn’t work on him, though. He was immune. She must have sensed that, because she was the first to relent. She didn’t break their stare, but she took a swift little breath. “I arrived…No, let me back up. I went to The Wheelhouse at Jay’s invitation.”
    She told him that Jay had called her earlier that day, inviting her to join him for a drink, saying he needed to talk to her about something. “He didn’t say what. Only that it was important.”
    She spoke without emotion, almost by rote. He figured she’d been over this with the police a dozen times already.
    “It wasn’t like he was asking me for a date,” she said. “I hadn’t seen him in months. Hadn’t talked to him on the telephone. This was the first contact we’d had in a long time. I said, ‘Sure, that would be great.’ He said seven o’clock. I arrived right on time.” She paused for a breath, then asked, “Have you ever been to The Wheelhouse?”
    “This evening.”
    “This evening? You stopped off for a drink before breaking into my house and kidnapping me? Although I suppose felony could be thirsty work.”
    Ignoring that, he said, “The Wheelhouse didn’t open for business until after I’d left Charleston, so I’d never been there. I wanted to see the layout of the place.”
    “What for?”
    “Which table did you sit at?”
    “Far corner.”
    “Right-hand side as you enter? By the window?”
    She shook her head. “Left-hand side.”
    “Okay.”
    While he was fixing that image in his head, she asked, “How did you know where I lived?”
    “I followed you there.”
    “Today?”
    “Five years ago.”
    He could tell that made her uneasy. She shifted slightly in her seat but didn’t comment.
    “I knew you’d have an alarm system,” he went on. “I also knew that the back door going into the kitchen is probably the one you most frequently use and figured that it would have a delay on it. So I picked the lock.”
    “You know how to pick locks?”
    “The alarm started beeping. I counted on having at least a minute and a half before the actual alarm went off. Most people set the delay for even longer, but I figured I had at least ninety seconds to get you to punch in the code. I also figured that a single woman, living alone, would have a remote-control panel within reach of her bed.”
    “How did you know I was single and living alone?”
    “Jay never dated married women.”
    She left that alone, saying instead, “Ninety seconds for you to find my bedroom and force me to turn off the alarm. That’s not much time. You were awfully sure of my compliance.”
    “I counted on you being scared.”
    “I was. Out of my wits.”
    “So my hunch was right.”
    “What if I hadn’t been scared?” she asked. “What if I’d had a gun at my bedside instead of a remote? I could have killed you.”
    He glanced around his cabin for effect, then came back to her. “I don’t have anything to lose.”
    That, too, made her uneasy. Her eyes drifted away, then back. “Can’t you please release my feet? Just my feet?”
    He shook his head.
    “They’re numb.”
    “According to the newspaper,” he said, “The Wheelhouse was crowded that night.”
    After a mutinous pause, which didn’t faze him, she continued, describing to him the usual happy-hour bar scene. “The place was packed, but I spotted Jay as soon as I came in. I went—”
    “Wait. Were there people at the