Secrets and Seduction: 5 Romance Novels (22 page)

Ziko headed toward the front door of the Densmore.

“Did your building collapse because of something you did, or was it an accident?” She aimed the words at his back.

• • •

Christian flinched. Since the press had already slandered his name and reputation, he’d expected her question, but it hurt to hear her accusation. He didn’t think he would get used to strangers hating him for something he’d supposedly done, and for some reason it felt worse coming from her.

He turned, the denial automatic. “No.”

Then guilt swamped him. Maybe it was his fault. If he hadn’t been working on half a dozen projects at once, he would have caught whatever error created this disaster. He cursed himself for not being on-site during construction. Doubt crept in and gnawed at his gut. How could something he’d designed fail?

When he added, “It couldn’t have been my fault,” even he heard the uncertainty in his voice.

Gabrielle frowned, her gently arched black brows pulling together. “You don’t sound certain.”

Christian’s fists clenched at his side. “Something terrible happened to this building, Ms. Healey. I don’t know what, but I couldn’t have done it. I build things, beautiful things. I don’t destroy them.”

“Some of the news reports said your arrogance killed those people, that you were too brash in your assurances the design would work.”

There was something he was certain of. “DesignCorp tested my design. Mr. Densmore insisted on it because it was so radical. It withstood all their structural tests.”

“Maybe it only worked in the lab.”

Stung, he lifted his chin. “No, it should have held up.”

She waved toward the building. “Clearly it didn’t. A man whose sister died when she fell from the third floor wants you tried for murder.”

Someone else hated him. “I didn’t know that.”

Gabrielle’s blue eyes narrowed. “Hasn’t anyone kept you up-to-date, forwarded you the news?”

“No.” News upset the residents at the Crittenden facility, so medical management blocked it. And his brother Paul hadn’t told him any of it, although Christian had been too drugged to care if Paul had.

How had everything gone so wrong that he was considered a worse person in this town than Osama bin Laden? He’d believed the newspapers and magazines when they’d called him the Golden Boy of Architecture. His head had swelled with their praise over his work. Now he was accused of murder. No one seemed interested in proving his innocence, only in exhorting his guilt. Even this woman, who, in her capacity as an investigator, had the power to destroy him.

Gabrielle Healey was a striking woman. Her straight black hair and high cheekbones hinted at a Native American heritage. Her wide-spaced blue eyes were full of intelligence and incisive questions that might probe too deeply. Yet her full lips offered a sensuality he wanted to explore. She was a dangerous combination. She was an investigator and he had things to hide. Things like Crittenden and the reason he’d gone there.

If only she was on his side, she could use that intense mental focus to help him find out what went wrong with the Densmore and prove to everyone’s satisfaction he wasn’t at fault. Clearly, if he wanted to prove his innocence, he’d have to do his own investigation. He owed it to the dead and to himself to find out.

Gabrielle interrupted his thoughts. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

“I really don’t have time.” He was afraid what she’d ask, what he might admit accidentally, and what she’d read into anything he said.

She pounced anyway. “Do you have something to hide?”

Yes, he wanted to shout, a mental illness. But he couldn’t do that because bipolar disorder had a negative stigma attached to it. It was feared and scorned and misunderstood. And since he’d been at Crittenden, he couldn’t afford for anyone to find out, because if they did, they’d blame the Densmore’s collapse on it. Just like this woman would.

Instead, he said, “I don’t see how I can help you with your investigation.”

“Who better than the architect? What can it hurt to walk through the wreckage with me?”

That was a loaded question. Walking through it the first time had caused horrific nightmares and his spiral into a depression that got him committed to Crittenden. He’d been released only a few hours ago and had no intention of going back. He should avoid a repeat performance by steering clear of the interior.

Then why the hell was he here? If he was going to take on the task of clearing his name, he had to go inside. By now, the chalk outlines were probably gone. He hoped the bloodstains had been cleaned up.

“Yeah, let’s go inside.” He hoped she couldn’t hear the trepidation in his voice caused by his belly quivering with nerves.

Gabrielle stopped at the entrance and unlocked the padlock which held the doors chained shut. Christian hadn’t even noticed the chain. He couldn’t have gotten inside if he’d wanted to.

The interior was dim with so many windows boarded up. It smelled of dust and disuse … and death. Lights high up in the ceiling and along the brick walls came on, lighting his personal nightmare. Steel girders still hung exposed from the third floor structure, looking like at any moment they’d tear loose and catapult into the remaining unbroken panes of glass. One girder lay across the lobby floor like a huge forgotten piece of erector set. Part of the glass ceiling had been replaced by plywood.

This building had been his vision from the moment he first heard Charles Densmore speak about creating a tribute to his late wife. Christian had slaved over draft after draft trying to create a masterpiece of air and light, and he’d thought he had. Somehow his dream had turned into a nightmare. What was left was dreary ruin, the death of his dream.

“Mr. Ziko?”

Christian had a feeling Gabrielle had called his name more than once, but he hadn’t heard her. “What?”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” It was a lie, but at least his voice was steady when he said it.

“What do you see?”

“The same thing you do — devastating destruction. This place was beautiful when it was completed.” He remembered entering the Densmore for the grand opening. The guests had been awed by the seemingly unsupported third floor overhang. It had been a glittering spectacle that night. Now it more closely resembled a derelict from the ghettos of Detroit.

“Sometimes beauty masks something darker,” she said.

“No. I designed it in Mrs. Densmore’s memory. She wouldn’t have wanted this.” A sweep of his hand indicated the current state.

“You’re human. You made a mistake.”

He looked into her inquisitive blue eyes. She wanted answers, but was there judgment under the intelligent probe? He didn’t know. “I thought a man was innocent until proven guilty.”

She stiffened and he felt guilty because he’d lashed out.

“So you’re alleging you’re innocent?”

“It doesn’t matter what I say if you’ve already made up your mind.” But it did matter, a lot more than it should have.

“Believe it or not, I’m looking for the truth. However, I do know what the prevailing opinion is.”

If only he could sway this one person … but “if onlys” were for dreamers. If only he could go back in time and be on-site during construction, he’d prevent this whole calamity. He looked away from her intriguing face to the wreckage, from one torment to another.

This was his responsibility. He’d designed the Densmore. On paper, he was intimately familiar with every nook and cranny of the building. He was the best hope of finding out why it failed. And if he found he was at fault … well, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

Christian Ziko vibrated with a tension that was almost frightening. Gabrielle kept tabs on his whereabouts, not letting him get behind her because she didn’t want to be caught unawares in the explosion if he lost it. His face was too pale, his eyes too wide and his right hand made a fist at his side where his arm was stiffly extended. The man had serious issues with what he saw.

“What’s your take on the damage you see?” Maybe she could get him to focus away from the internal.

“It shouldn’t have happened.”

“I know that. I think everyone around Detroit knows that. What’s your guess on what failed?”

He pointed at the drooping girders. “Those shouldn’t have given way. My design balanced the weight. Those look like the weight was too much.”

His gaze moved to the girder in the middle of the atrium floor. “Too much force on the outer edge. But it’s just not possible.”

“Obviously it is.”

“I need a failure analysis of the support beams to determine what stress loads they experienced.”

“The building inspector did one. So did Michigan Casualty.” She wished she’d brought her copy with her. But he’d find out the results after the grand jury was through looking at it. Did he knew about that aspect of the investigation, since he was unaware of everything else? As volatile as he was now, she didn’t want to be the one to tell him.

“Without the failure analysis, what can you tell me?” she asked.

“The breakdown began there.” He pointed to the third floor where the support beam was missing. What was left of the floor sagged toward that point. “Instead of the force being distributed to the beams imbedded in the outer walls, as I designed it, it looks like it spread to the floor edge.” A frown pinched his brows together. “That’s not possible.”

“It’s possible. After all, the overhang was unsupported.”

Ziko shook his head. “It only appeared to be unsupported.”

“As you can see, the beams failed to hold the weight.”

The look on his face was like a trapped animal’s — too much white in the eyes, too many strain lines. He dragged a hand through his already disordered hair, mussing it further.

“It can’t be.” He said it as though to himself, then added, “A supplier must have substituted on the materials.”

“We checked. Each supplier provided exactly what was specified on the materials order.”

“Then there was a typo on the order.”

“No. We double-checked the orders to the drawings. They match.”

His chin came up. “The drawings were flawless. I double- and triple-checked them before submitting them.”

“If we ruled out everything else, it has to be your design.”

He pinned her with his gaze. “Did you rule out everything else?”

“Yes.”

A look of agony passed over his face. He walked further into the atrium until his back was to her. Glass crunched under his white sneakers. She tried not to feel pity toward him as he stood framed against the backdrop of his shattered dream. He should have done more extensive testing, and then this disaster wouldn’t have happened. Perhaps it was a cost-cutting measure not to do additional tests. Or maybe it was greed.

From what she’d seen in the past few minutes, she didn’t think he was motivated strictly by money. But she was a poor judge of character. Men she’d thought she could trust and respect, men who’d seemed grounded in reality had all turned tail and run when she told them she was psychic. She was the last person who could say anything for certain about other people, even if she was touching them. She just wasn’t reliable.

The facts suggested Christian Ziko’s design was flawed. The facts suggested his design had resulted in the deaths of six people.

As though she’d spoken out loud, Ziko reacted to her thoughts. “I need to see the results of the investigation.”

It would be a serious conflict of interest if their main suspect sifted through the evidence. Although if he was brought to trial, his attorney would get to see it all anyway. But it wouldn’t be her that leaked the facts.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“What?” When he turned toward her, he looked confused.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were talking to me.”

“No. Who do I talk to about getting a key to this place?”

“Mr. Ziko, I don’t think anyone will give you a key. Not yet, anyway.”

He frowned. “Why not? What do you mean?”

“You’re under suspicion, you must realize that. No one would want to give you the opportunity to tamper with evidence.”

There was an instant of extreme vulnerability in his face before grim resolve tightened his jaw. “You let me in.”

Oh shit. Her action was going to come back to bite her in the butt. “I wanted your take on the destruction.”

“You wanted me to confess.”

Gabrielle’s conscience hurt for a moment until she remembered the dead. “Yes. I want to know what happened.”

“At least you’re honest. How long do you intend to be here?”

“Not long.” Just enough time to touch the building again and see if she got a different reading from it than she had all the other times she’d touched it in the past two weeks.

“Oh. Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll let you do whatever you came for while I look around.”

“The building’s not safe inside.”

His blue gaze blasted right through her. “Do you care if I become another casualty? In your mind, wouldn’t that be a fitting end for me?”

Before she’d met him, that would have been her opinion. But his vulnerability gnawed at her. He wasn’t what she’d expected.

So her answer was a little evasive. “I think the families of the victims want a different kind of closure. They might want you dead, but they want you to suffer like they are.”

Her words were a direct hit. Pain flashed across his face. He turned away and walked toward the interior of the building. Remorse tore through her. She’d never been intentionally cruel before. Not that she’d meant to hurt him — she’d just wanted a reaction out of him. Too bad his reactions kept surprising her.

Before she could stop him, he opened the door to the stairwell.

“Wait!” she shouted. “You can’t go up there.”

His blue eyes blazed with defiance. The last glimpse she had of him was his shoulders thrown back and his chin lifted as he disappeared through the door. There was the arrogant architect the trade magazines wrote about.

Gabrielle ran after him. If he was suicidal, she couldn’t let him kill himself on her watch. No, she wouldn’t be responsible for that.

Flinging open the door to the stairwell, she found only emptiness. My God, he was fast. She jogged up the stairs, thankful for daily workouts on her treadmill. At the second floor landing, she heard a footstep on the stairs above her.