Dirty Secrets by Karen Rose Page B

brown eyes could hold so many different emotions. The way he felt . . . complete and at peace.
    He needed her right now, as his thoughts seesawed to Darrell and the detective’s visit that afternoon. His friend had been murdered. Over dirt.
    It was still too impossible to be true. But it was. They’d gone over his old notebooks, looking for something suspicious. But all they found was a list of more than fifty samples Darrell had been preparing to run. The fifty samples came from at least two dozen different places. They’d seen no pattern. No smoking gun, as it were. The only thing they could do was re-create Darrell’s tests, to find out what it was that someone didn’t want him to learn.
    The phone rang and out of habit he let Megan pick it up. It was always one of her friends anyway. Until he saw the 513 area code on the caller ID. Cincinnati.
Emma
. “Hello?” he and Megan both said together. “I’ve got it, Megan. You can hang up.” He waited until he heard the click before uttering a smooth, “Are you ready to come back?”
    “Chr-Christopher?” Her voice was shaking and instantly he was sober. And afraid.
    “Emma? What’s wrong?” He listened as she stuttered the details, his blood running cold. His fist clenched around the phone. “Are you hurt?”
    “No.” He heard her shudder. “Not like you think. He didn’t touch me. Not like that.”
    Staggering relief stole his breath. “Then he just robbed you.”
    “No,” she murmured. “No, he didn’t do that either.”
    “Then what did he do, Emma?”
    “He . . . he was looking for something.”
    Christopher’s cold blood turned to ice. “
What?
”
    “He was looking for something.” He heard her swallow. “He ripped my hard drive out of my computer. He went through all my papers, all the boxes I’d packed of Will’s things. He threw Will’s things all over the house.” She choked back a sob. “Now I have to pack them away all over again.”
    The bastard had gone through her papers. Emma’s papers. Darrell’s notebooks. It seemed too fantastic, but so had the idea of Darrell being murdered. He closed his eyes and took a hard hold on his churning gut. “Emma, honey, where are you now?”
    “With my friend K-Kate. She came and got me after the police came and untied me.” She was shivering, her teeth chattering. In shock.
    The thought of her tied and gagged . . . and afraid . . . It made him want to find the bastard who’d terrorized her and rip him from limb to limb. “I’m coming.”
    “Christopher, no. I just needed to hear your voice. I really am fine.”
    “No, you’re not. Emma, I just lost a graduate student because he was working on something somebody didn’t want him to know. Now you’re attacked in your own home.” He gritted his teeth, feeling so helpless. “Don’t you think that’s coincidental?”
    “Oh, God. Christopher, I never . . .” Her breath was labored. “But you’re right. It is too coincidental to be ignored.”
    “Put your friend on the phone. Please.” Trapping the phone between his shoulder and ear, he put both hands on his keyboard and pulled up a travel Web site. By the time her friend Kate said hello, he’d booked one flight up and two flights back.
    “This is Kate. Christopher?”
    “Yes. Tell me the truth. Is she all right?”
    “She’s shaken up and bruised, but other than that she’s not hurt. The guy tore up her house. He was looking for something, the cops were sure of it. Why would somebody think Emma had anything of yours in her possession?” Kate’s voice was slightly accusing but mostly terrified, and Christopher couldn’t blame her a bit for either.
    “I gave her an envelope this morning at the airport. If someone was watching me . . . Dammit. Listen, I’ve got a ticket on the seven a.m. flight tomorrow morning. I’ve got two seats on the eleven a.m. flight back here. I’m going to bring her here, where I can keep her safe. Can you make sure she