Page 83 of Mr. Dangerous

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Rob

Naomi parkedin the parking lot beneath Mitch’s condo building. I took a slow, deep breath, steeling my nerves, before I opened the door andclimbedout.

I wouldn’t have expected Naomi to notice, but she rubbed her hand comfortingly over my back as we headed across the concrete floor to the elevators. I felt a spark of comfort as her slender hand brushed against myshoulder.

I hoped Mitch had made things easy. I hoped to find some kind of clue, a journal or documents that would point us towards a possible reason for my father to have been attacked. The police said it might be random. I didn't believe that for aminute.

I also hoped to find a key to the family lock box before I showed up to a bank where no amount of sweet-talking should getmein.

We took the elevator up to the lobby, where I headed briskly across the lobby to the bank of elevators. Alone when I pressed the button, I turned around to find Naomi, wide-eyed, looking around the plush marblelobby.

She smiled as if she knew she'd been caught, a self-conscious quirk of her lips, as she quickened her stride to reach my side. "It'snice.”

"Yeah, I guess,"Isaid.

"I guess if you've been here, it's lost its charm,"shesaid.

"I haven't," I said. "We had a holiday together a few years ago – I forget if it was Thanksgiving or Christmas – but we did it at the house. Mitch picked this place for its high security and deliberately low profile. As well as that worked out. He always claimed it didn't have room for the lotofus."

"When did Mitch buy thisplace?"

I reached past her to push the elevator button, inhaling the scent of her perfume, a floral with vanilla notes. A familiar tingle of desire ran through my body.Stay ontask,Rob.

"Five, sixyearsago?"

She was silent, but I knew she was thinking about how Mitch had owned this place for half a decade without his sonsseeingit.

"Rich families are dysfunctional. That's the comfort poor people take,right?"

"I didn't say any such thing. And I wouldn't take any joy in your family havingtroubles,Rob."

"I know," I said, feeling shitty for the way I'd said that, even though I was trying to be light-hearted. Everything I said to Naomi seemed to come outcock-eyed.

We got off on the eighth floor. The door with the crime scene tape: that was how I knew which was my father’scondominium.

I knocked, a quick rat-tat of my knuckles against the smooth wooden door. Why did I bother to knock? I shrugged self-consciously atNaomi.

Then I stood with my body blocking Naomi from the CCTV that looked down the hall, leaning casually against the door as if I were waiting for my father. Naomi hesitated for a second, and then she dug into her purse for the lock-picking kit. She half-crouched in front of the lock, and a minute later, the knob turned inherhand.

I nodded and went in aheadofher.

I had known, in a distant kind of way, that this was where my father had been attacked When I walked into the condo, with the modern photography prints on the gray walls and expensive Brazilian hardwood underfoot, and I saw the coffee table kicked over on its side, a glass spilled across the floor, itcamehome.

Suddenly I could imagine my father in a fight for his life, tripping over the coffee table. My stomach dropped with dreadandrage.

I knelt to right the coffee table, picking up the glass to take it to the sink. It was sticky from the spilled liquid. The bitter, honeyed scent brought me back instantly to my father's study when I was a boy, after my mother died. My father, multi-tasking, drinking Scotch as he read us bedtime stories. I'd bet Naomi's father hadn't been drunk every night before his kids were eveninbed.

"Are you okay?" Naomiasked.

"Fine," I said. "Absolutely. I'm going to take the art off the walls, move the heavy stuff. You want to get started searching thebedroom?"

"Sure," she said. "Call me if you need help with the bigstuff."

That thought made me quirk an eyebrow, feeling slightly better. I tried to push away the image of Mitch’s struggle, what might have ended up being his last minutes of consciousness. The odds were high Mitch would never surface from his comaagain.

Naomi disappeared into the back of the condo, and I was grateful to have space to myselffornow.

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