LITMIR.BIZ

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with the string at the top, even though his strong arms held her up when she jumped, even though.

      Scarsford looked over. She was looking out the window, her profile still. He’d seen many people in trouble, and some weeks, those were the only people he talked to. Usually, they were chatty, trying to win you over, trying to make things easier by making a connection, hoping you would overlook whatever the hell it was they’d done. Not this one, not this girl. She couldn’t care less about him. She was probably thinking about what to wear to dinner.

       Sometimes they’d go to ride Charlotte’s pony, and he would walk alongside her, talking about the trees and the birds, making up stories about what the pony was thinking, about how he dreamed of her all week, waiting for her to come and ride him, and his head would be level with hers almost, because the pony was very small and he was very tall, Daddy was.

      She sighed. Scarsford sneaked a look again, nearly rear-ending a cab. The sudden stop made her jump, disturbing whatever shopping spree she was dreaming of. Charlotte turned to him, her eyes full of tears. She looked at him for a long moment, her face the prettiest and saddest thing he’d ever seen, and then the traffic moved again, and so did they, and he lost her to her dreams once more.

      Then they were there.

      THE METAL DETECTOR was interesting. Scarsford went first, pulling a gun from inside his jacket (Charlotte had been surprised to see it, short and ugly and lying like a toy in the plastic tray), then a wallet, a watch, a class ring.

      Then it was her turn. She removed her watch (IWC), a tennis bracelet (Tiffany’s, a present from her dad), a ring (emerald, vintage, Alexander’s), and a collar pin (also emerald, vintage, Alexander’s, of course). All told, it represented more than the annual salary of the woman working the metal detector, but she couldn’t have cared less. She’d worked there for nearly two decades, and honey, she’d seen it all.

      “Shoes?” Charlotte looked at Scarsford, but he shook his head.

      “Not here.”

      “Jacket?”

      This time, he nodded. She slipped it off, revealing a simple lawn chemise, sleeveless, utterly see-through, La Perla underwear clearly visible. She stepped over the metal threshold, but it beeped. She frowned, stepped back, tried again. Another beep.

      Scarsford was waiting on the other side as the woman stepped forward with the wand, and he let himself follow its path up and down her slender body. Clean all the way down, clean all the way up, but then it beeped at her head. She had been frowning, slightly embarrassed to be holding up the line to be scrutinized by strangers, but now her face cleared.

      “My clip.”

      She reached up to the back of her neck, pulling the transparent cotton tight across her breasts for an instant, making Scarsford start to get hard, despite his best efforts to think of the tax code. He was lost a second later, though, when her long hair tumbled down, just reaching her breasts, the diamond clip dropping into another tray, and then she was next to him, no beep, just the scent of her hair as she moved past him, the soft curve of her shoulder close enough to touch. What the hell was wrong with him?

      She was struggling with her watch, and he stepped forward to help, aching to touch her smooth skin.

      “No, thank you. I’ve got it.”

      Her cool voice made him feel twelve again, and he stepped back.

      She fastened the watch, the jewelry, the pin. Then she turned her back on him and twisted her hair, her long, thin fingers gathering it into a knot, revealing the soft nape of her neck. A click. She turned again, once more covered and under control.

      “Shall we go?”

      Scarsford just nodded, not trusting his voice, and headed to the elevators.

      After taking a deep breath, she followed.

       Chapter NINE

      Jacob looked at his daughter across the table, a cold cup of coffee the only thing on its chipped Formica surface.

      “You look lovely, Charlotte.”

      It had been his first thought when she walked in. Sun filtered down a mine shaft, illuminating what seemed like impenetrable darkness only seconds before. It had been a gray blur, the men in nice suits taking him from his office, the ashen face of his secretary, the ink on his fingertips. It was a nightmare, but now Charlotte was there, and he would hold on to that.

      “You look like your mother.”

      She sat and reached for his hands, so cold. “Have you eaten anything?”

      He shook his head.

      Charlotte looked around the room. Cinder-block walls with no paint. Painted cement floors, like an old school. Mysterious dark spots on the walls suggested blood and violence. Under it all, a smell of fear and confined sweat. Suppressing an urge to run as far away as possible, she stood again and went to the wide mirror on one wall.

      Raising her voice, she spoke to her own reflection. “Scarsford, I’ve watched Law and Order. I know you’re in there. If you don’t bring him some food immediately, I am leaving. He’s an old man. He has a medical condition. If I have to call for a doctor, you can be sure the press will hear of it.”

      She sat back down and smiled tightly at her dad. She had been shocked to see him when she walked in, and the lost look on his face had frozen her own fear in place, forced her to pull it together. She was getting quite an education in her own strength today.

      “I’m not old. Nor do I have a medical condition.” His quavering voice made it a lie.

      “You’re not old, Dad, but you aren’t young, either, and this must be horrible for you. I know it is for me, and Greta and Davis look as if they could fall apart at any minute. And the medical condition? They don’t know that.” Besides, she thought to herself, I might have a coronary any minute, just from the pressure of not losing it completely. But on the outside, she was cool, and among the men watching them through the one-way mirror, only Scarsford had any idea how much pain she was in.

      The door opened, and a young man came in, carrying a fresh cup of coffee and some sandwiches. He put them down without a word.

      “Eat,” instructed Charlotte. “Then we’ll talk.” She looked away, trying to give him some privacy. She read a poster about her rights that was translated into four languages, none of them giving her the right to take her dad and leave, which was the only one she wanted to exercise.

      The first bites of food nearly choked him, but gradually Jacob felt better, some color returning to his face. He drained the coffee cup, tucking it under the older one, neat and tidy.

      “What shall we talk about, honey?”

      Charlotte paused. For a second, she wondered if he’d lost his mind. His voice was just like normal, but it shouldn’t have been. Everything he’d built, everything he’d worked for, was under threat. Why wasn’t he storming around? Why wasn’t he angry?

      “I don’t know, Dad. How about you getting arrested for fraud? Seems current, anyway.”

      He frowned at her. “You’re mad at me.”

      “No, just confused. Why do they think you did this?”

      He shrugged.

      “Are they listening to us? Can they hear what we’re saying?” He shrugged again. “I expect so, but I don’t want to talk about it, anyway. I want to talk about your mother.” She paused. “Why?”

      “Because we’ve never talked about her, have you noticed?”

      Fantastic, thought Charlotte. Years of silence on this pivotal topic, and now all of a sudden, he wants to talk about it, now that we’re sitting in front of a hostile

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