They got out of the car, and she waited a moment before climbing the two steps to the sagging porch, aware of Max behind her. They’d been here only a couple of days, and already she was uncomfortable with the living arrangements. If she could have fixed him up a place in the barn, she would have done it, but of course that was impossible—for a lot of reasons. She had hired him for this job, and she could hardly be so ungracious as to kick him out of the house. And then there was the demanding newly engaged couple act that they had to pull off.
When she started to unlock the door, Max put his hand on her arm. “Remember the alarm?”
Her jangled nerves made her mutter an unladylike curse under her breath. “No. Sorry.”
Early in the morning, the three Rockfort men had done a hurry-up job of installing an alarm system in the house. If anyone opened a door or a downstairs window without punching in the code, a siren would go off right away. If they opened a door, there was a two-minute delay to give you time to enter the code. In any case, if the alarm went off, the system would also send a signal to the Rockfort offices. Max had punched in the arming code when they’d left, and she’d been so focused on the upcoming meeting that she hadn’t thought about it now.
“But you remember the numbers?”
“Yes.”
She turned the key and opened the door, then heard it chime before a series of beeps started, reminding her she had two minutes to press in the code.
In the kitchen, she switched on an overhead light, then walked to the control box and punched the keys in the right order. Not so hard for her to remember since they were her parents’ wedding date—0483.
The beeping stopped, and she walked farther into the kitchen. Pretending she was thirsty, she opened the refrigerator and got out one of the bottles of water that they’d bought the day before.
She could hear Max in the living room pulling down shades and turning on more lights.
After twisting off the cap on the water bottle and taking a sip, she stayed facing away from the door. Opening a kitchen cabinet, she pretended to check some of the supplies they’d bought, desperately trying to avoid thinking of what a newly engaged couple would be doing when they got home. When she heard his footsteps in back of her, the image grew even stronger. Like wouldn’t she and Max screwing each other’s brains out be a good way to defuse some of the tension blooming between them? They could get the sex part out of their systems and focus on the murder investigation.
And what would Max think about her then? That she’d picked up some bad habits in New York? He probably wouldn’t realize that her busy schedule had kept her from having much of a personal life.
Glad that her back was to him, she dismissed the sexual thoughts as completely inappropriate. She wasn’t going to do anything of the sort with Max.
He cleared his throat. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“Right.”
“Maybe you should start by telling me what you’re not saying about your school days.”
The words and the tone of his voice made her go rigid, then whirl toward him. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you worried that what happened to Gary, Patrick, and Angela could happen to you?”
Chapter 5
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Olivia said, although she was pretty certain she knew where Max was going with this.
“What do the four of you have in common?”
“We were all popular.”
“What else?”
Olivia was saved by her cell phone ringing. Relieved, she said, “I have to get this.”
But after she’d dug the instrument out of her purse and looked at the number, she went rigid all over again.
“What?” Max demanded.
“It’s not about the murders¸” she snapped, then ordered herself to calm down as she clicked the icon to answer. She’d been on edge all day, and this was one more reason to set her nerves jangling.
“Olivia. I left a message for you to call,” Jerry Ellison, her agent, said. Of course, she’d told him she was going to be out of town for a few days, and while he hadn’t flat out told her she couldn’t come down to Maryland, she’d known he was opposed to the idea. Jerry was the kind of guy who liked to wield power—especially over people who worked for him. And she silently admitted that one of the reasons she’d been so anxious to get away was to give herself space to evaluate her career. She’d walked into the Ellison Agency as a wet-behind-the-ears wannabe. She’d felt like fortune had smiled on her when he’d taken her on. Now she knew he’d seen the potential in her. She’d had raw talent, but he’d taught her how to walk and turn, how to hold her head and body. And he’d gotten her jobs that built her career, starting her off with runway gigs, where she had received good reviews as a promising newcomer from the fashion press—which had led to magazine and television work. Those jobs had allowed her to stop starving herself and gain a few pounds. But she’d still kept up her killer schedule. Partly that was because Jerry had pushed her to take on any good job that was offered and partly because she was afraid that if she said no, they wouldn’t ask again.