Kane, Andrea (10 page)

"I'm... used to it. High-stakes gambling... is the only way
to come out on top.... That's how I built... my company."

"So let's say someone was desperate to shut down the
production of C'est Moi, so desperate they'd shoot you. Any particular rivals
spring to mind who fill that bill?"

"Cut-throat bastards, yeah. Cold-blooded murderers, not
off-hand... Primary competition's Etienne Pruet... Based in Paris and New York.
Strong, at least on paper... Call Jason Koppel at Merrill Lynch... Great
industry analyst... trustworthy, too... I've known him twelve years... Pick his
brain. Maybe someone's company's... worse off than I know."

The door opened and Dr. Radison walked in. "That's it for
now," he stated flatly, checking Carson's IV fluids and cardiac monitor as
he spoke. "Mr. Brooks needs his rest."

"Of course." Jeannie stood, following Frank's lead as he
inched away from the bed. "We'll get started with what we have."

"Do... that...."

She halted. "Unless you can think of anything we
overlooked?" she added quickly, hoping to jog his memory before Dr.
Radison intervened. "Anything you were too fuzzy to remember yesterday?
Did you notice anyone in the building? Was there someone in particular you
might have clued in to the fact that you planned to work on Labor Day?"

"Didn't need to make an announcement... I'm at Ruisseau every
day... holidays included. I ran late.... Supposed to leave around five... U.S.
Open... Was really looking forward to it..." Carson coughed. "Didn't
see anyone... Don't remember much... Dylan went to get files.... I went to
windows.... Heard pop... Felt pain... Smelled burning... Smelled..." He dissolved
into a spasm of coughing.

"That's it, Detectives," Radison broke in. "I mean
it. No more for this session."

Jeannie made an apologetic gesture. "We're on our way. You
take care, Mr. Brooks. We'll be back another time."

"Wait." In a slow, pained motion, Carson turned his head
in their direction. "Go easy... on my team. Even if one of them's
guilty... which I don't believe... the rest are innocent... Remember
that...."

Officer Laupen glanced up as Jeannie and Frank walked out of the
hospital room. "Hey, Stick, Stone. Any breakthrough?"

"Nothing to write home about," Jeannie replied tersely.

"Sorry."

"So are we," Frank said.

The two of them headed briskly down the hall.

"We're on our own now," Jeannie muttered. "We can't
push Brooks any more, not till he's stronger. If we want a rundown on his
staff, we'll have to get it elsewhere."

"Yeah, but from whom? Dylan Newport?"

Jeannie shrugged, reaching the elevator and pressing the down
button. "We'll pick his brain, yeah. He's certainly on the inside track.
But in the meantime, he's in New Hampshire. We're here. Let's go meet the
Ruisseau gang and see what we can dig up on our own."

Frank nodded. "We'll duck out the back way. The last thing we
need is a swarm of reporters to deal with."

They left the building and headed for the parking lot. Once
outside, they automatically punched their cell phones back on, having followed
ICU regulations to turn them off.

Jeannie had one message waiting for her. She listened to it
carefully, then turned to her partner.

"Dylan Newport called a few minutes ago. He's on his way
home. He'll be landing at LaGuardia around noon. Sabrina Radcliffe's with
him."

11:15 A.M.

Manchester Airport

The jet accelerated down the runway and took off, slicing the
skies as it climbed to its cruising altitude of thirty thousand feet.

Sabrina stared out the window, watching the wisps of clouds rush
by, wondering what was waiting for her at the other end of this flight.

"You haven't said ten words since we left CCTL," Dylan
commented beside her.

"I didn't have anything to say." She angled around to
face him.

"I dropped a bomb on you last night. You must have a million
questions. Ask."

Right. Ask. Sabrina sighed, thinking that she'd never felt so
displaced in her life. Oh, she was used to being a fish out of water. She'd
learned early on to become thick-skinned, and to draw on her own inner
resources to cope. But this one was a doozy to contend with, even for her.

"I'm not sure where to begin," she answered frankly.
"This whole thing is still too surreal. It's also too personal. I'm not
really comfortable getting into it with you. I realize Carson Brooks knows you.
But I don't. I don't know you, and I don't know him." She shot Dylan a
pointed look. "You, on the other hand, know my entire life history. I understand
why you felt compelled to dig it up. I'm not blaming you for doing it. That
doesn't mean I'm happy it was done. I'm a private person. My life is my
own."

"Yeah, I figured that out. I respect it, too. Believe it or
not, we're a lot alike in that way." He drummed his fingers on the armrest
between them, searching for the right way to get through to her. "Look, if
you think about it, I don't know the first thing about you. All I've got are
biographical specs."

"Nice try. But PI's dig up a lot more than stats."

"Not in this case. I wasn't investigating you; I was just
locating Carson's child. No in-depth personality traits, no activity log. The
one intimate detail I know about you is that you were conceived through donor
insemination. And that's pretty cut and dry. Hell, it's damned scientific and
boring compared to the way most people were conceived, and by whom. Have you
watched
Entertainment Tonight
lately?"

Sabrina had to bite back laughter. The image of Dylan Newport
glued to his TV set for nightly updates on what Hollywood's stars were up to
was priceless. "No, I can't say that I have. Why? Do you watch it
regularly?"

A corner of Dylan's mouth lifted in a crooked smile that made
Sabrina understand why Melissa had described him as hot. "Nope. Most nights,
I'm at my desk around that hour, with stacks of files and a quart of roast pork
fried rice in front of me. But my secretary Nina watches the show religiously.
And you should hear the stories she brings in. The stuff they reveal about
people is as intimate as you get. And millions of viewers tune in to see those
clips. Now
that's
personal."

He paused as the flight attendant stopped beside their seats and
inquired if they'd like a beverage. Dylan ordered a cup of black coffee for
himself, then turned questioningly to Sabrina.

"Cranberry juice," she responded. The flight attendant
handed her a can of juice and a plastic cup, which she took with a businesslike
smile. "Thanks."

"See what I mean?" Dylan asked with a hint of teasing in
his voice. "Talk about lack of personal details. I didn't even know your
beverage of choice."

"Point taken." Sabrina was beginning to enjoy the
lighthearted banter. It felt good to smile. Plus, a nice, superficial
conversation was all she could handle right now.

The tight knot inside her loosened a bit.

"I'll fill in the missing blank for you, then," she
supplied. "I usually drink either juice or water. As for coffee, I'm not
crazy about decaf. So I reserve my coffee-drinking for the morning. Too much
caffeine makes me nuts."

"Then I must be certifiable. I drink the leaded kind— strong,
black, and all day long." Dylan punctuated his words with an appreciative
swallow. "Okay, so it's juice and water. What about wine or mixed drinks?
Do you do those?"

"Merlot. But only in moderation or I get a killer
migraine."

"I rest my case. That's two personal preferences I didn't see
anywhere on my fact sheets."

She couldn't help but chuckle. "You must be a very effective
attorney. You're shrewd and disarming. I recognize the traits from my own
corporate training."

"That training is something I
do
know about you.
You've got quite a resume. So I'm flattered." Dylan set down his cup.
"While I'm learning nuances about you, let me ask something about your
career. You were well on your way to a partnership. What made you leave the
fast track and start your own company?"

"Are you really interested? Or just choosing nice, safe
topics that will help lower my guard and make me less ambivalent about meeting
Carson Brooks?"

"Both."

She hadn't expected him to be so frank. Nevertheless, she
appreciated it. The less he tried disguising his agenda, the less additional
work he'd create for her. She had no energy to cut through pretense to get at
truth. As for his question, she was fine with it. The reasons for her career
path weren't a secret.

"I left for a number of reasons," she replied. "I
wanted to run my own organization. I was arrogant enough to believe I could do
things better, and without a lot of corporate politics. I'm not very good at
games, especially when playing them means compromising on what's best for my
client. I also believed I could combine work and play into an ideal learning
experience. So I guess you could say my striking out on my own was a
combination of ideals, ethics, and ego. Plus, I had to get out of Boston. The
city air was having an adverse effect on me."

Dylan's brows rose. "Allergies?"

"No. I just have a hypersensitive nose. Cities are always a
bit much for me to handle. I'm a mess in L.A., with all the car emissions. Same
with Denver. New York's not a picnic, but it's not as hard on me as Boston is.
Maybe it's because there are so many bodies of water around Boston. One of the
guys in my CCTL team took some meteorology courses. He subscribes to the theory
that conflicting land breezes keep the stagnant air hanging around the city
longer. Or maybe it's because Boston's older than New York, with lots of
historic buildings. They're beautiful, but the mustiness drives me crazy."
She shrugged. "There's no particular rhyme or reason to what affects me.
Some smells do. Others don't."

"Not a surprise," Dylan startled her by saying.
"You have a heightened olfactory sense. That makes every smell more
acute." He went on, speaking as if he were reciting information he'd
stored in his memory. "The fact is, even the average person can
distinguish thousands of odors. Our noses contain sensory neurons. Different
neurons respond to different odors and—in some way that's beyond my
nonscientific mind's ability to comprehend— they end up stimulating specific
patterns of behavior. With you, the effects are even more extreme. A heightened
olfactory sense is a gift and a curse. As for why certain things trigger it
adversely, who knows? It's just one of life's mysteries."

Sabrina put down her cup in amazement. "You sound like a
textbook. How do you know so much about this?"

"Carson taught me. Of course, he explains it with all the
right chemical phrases and molecular drawings. I just nod a lot. As for why
he's so well versed on the subject, it's because he has the same trait. I guess
it's hereditary."

Whatever Sabrina had been expecting, it hadn't been that. She'd
always thought of her acute sense of smell as an idiosyncrasy. But an inherited
trait... "Wow," she murmured aloud. "That possibility never
occurred to me."

"Me, either. But listening to what you just said, it's
obviously true. In Carson's case, it's one of the reasons why he's so amazing
at creating the fragrances he creates. C'est Moi, for instance, was his baby
all the way— from test tube to stores."

"Right." Sabrina responded on autopilot. "I skimmed
some articles that mentioned it was Carson Brooks, and not his R&D team,
that came up with the formula."

Actually, she'd done a lot more than skim those articles. She'd
been fascinated by Carson Brooks's hands-on involvement in his company's
success, the way he'd combined business savvy with chemical genius and come up
with a unique fragrance formula that had knocked the industry on its butt. He
was the most versatile, brilliant CEO she'd ever come across. As for C'est Moi,
under normal circumstances, she'd be asking a million questions about Carson
Brooks's unique integration of human pheromones in the fragrance production,
probing his market research, his assimilation of facts. But right now, it
didn't seem to matter. In fact, for the life of her, she couldn't think of a
thing to say.

So, she'd inherited her heightened olfactory sense from him. How
weird, learning she had such strong commonalities and hereditary ties to a
father who'd been a nonentity in her life until yesterday. And learning about
them from a third party who saw this man every day, worked by his side, well
that made the whole scenario seem even more bizarre. She felt both involved and
detached, and she wasn't sure which she preferred.

"How did you meet Carson Brooks?" she heard herself ask.

Dylan had been watching her intently. He didn't seem surprised by
her question. "Through a work program he initiated," he replied in a
matter-of-fact tone. "Over nineteen years ago. Carson was barely past
thirty, and Ruisseau was less than a decade old. But the company was growing
like gangbusters. Carson needed help—kind of a guy Friday and errand boy rolled
into one. Rather than advertise in the newspaper, he went to a high school in a
crappy section of New York City. He was hoping to give some underprivileged kid
a break."