Formula for Danger. Camy Tang
man had pivoted and thrown it open just as Rachel entered her bedroom. She hadn’t seen his face. In her first shocked glimpse of her room, she’d only seen the mess—clothes scattered, mattress upturned and slashed, drawers in splinters, book pages littering the room. She shuddered.
“Rachel!” Edward called.
She reached for Edward automatically, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder. He was warm from running, musky with the scent of pine and a thread of orchid. The smell wrapped around her, a shelter in the midst of the chaos she’d seen.
His embrace was tight, protective. She just wanted him to keep holding her. She wanted him to take the ugliness away and make everything okay again.
Except that nothing would ever be okay again.
“Dad! How did you…?” Monica’s shocked voice made Rachel look up.
Her father wheeled toward them, with Alex, Naomi and the housekeeper following. He hadn’t been upstairs since his stroke. “Alex carried me up the stairs, and Evita and Naomi carried my wheelchair,” he said. Then he saw Rachel’s room and paled.
It was the only thing that could have made Rachel move away from Edward. Her father wasn’t going to have a relapse, was he?
“You shouldn’t be here,” Monica said fiercely, reaching her father at the same time as Rachel and Naomi.
He took a few deep breaths. “I’m fine. Just surprised.” He looked at Rachel then, and she thought he might have said something more to her, or maybe might have even embraced her, but then he cleared his throat and the moment was gone.
She straightened and turned away. She shouldn’t have hoped for his comfort. Her father had never been very affectionate.
Evita gasped as she looked in the room. “How could this have happened?”
“We chased a man.” Edward explained what had happened when he took off after the intruder who exited her room. “No one heard him ransacking her room?”
The housekeeper wrung her hands. “I was in the kitchen all afternoon. It’s too far away—I wouldn’t have heard anyone in her room.”
“I was with Evita,” Monica added. “I didn’t hear anything, either.”
“Me, too.” Dad pounded a fist against his wheelchair. “I was in my bedroom for a few hours, then my study. The bedroom’s on the opposite side of the house, and the study’s on the first floor near the kitchen.”
“If you keep the house alarm on, how did he get in?” Edward asked.
Naomi’s brow furrowed. “Yeah, someone coming in the window would have tripped it the same way he tripped it going out.”
“Wait, there was that UPS man,” Monica said. “He dropped off something for Naomi.”
The housekeeper nodded. “I turned off the alarm when I answered the door, but I turned it on again after he left.”
“That’s probably when the intruder came in.” Monica said.
Despite the alarm on the house, someone had violated Rachel’s private bedroom. Despite the security at the spa, someone might have infiltrated her lab and computer and stolen her research formula. And despite the alarm at the greenhouse, someone had tried to destroy her plants, crippling her product launch. She still didn’t know how many of the basil plants would survive.
Her cousin Jane had said she’d finagled her boss to give her some time off from work, and she would come by tomorrow to look at Rachel’s spa computer, but even with that precaution Rachel was taking, it seemed like too little, too late. Security and alarms hadn’t stopped whoever was after her and her research.
She couldn’t stop them.
“Where’s that UPS package?” her father demanded.
“In the kitchen,” Evita said. “I’ll make some Japanese tea…” She eyed Edward and Alex. “And maybe some coffee, too?”
Edward seemed to hold back for a moment as they all trooped downstairs. Rachel glanced up at him, suddenly self-conscious about the way she’d hurled herself into him. “Edward?” Maybe he felt it, too, this awkward aftermath. No, he snatched at her hand.
“Are you all right?” Edward asked.
She shrugged, not wanting him to worry about her. But she also knew him well enough to know that if she didn’t tell the truth, he’d worry even more. “I’m still a bit shaken, I think. It’s hard.” She swallowed and glanced at the open doorway to her room, unwilling to look inside again.
He squeezed her hand, then let go. “A mug of tea will warm you up.” He ushered her downstairs.
When they entered the kitchen, at first Rachel thought something was wrong because everyone huddled around the breakfast table. She peered over Naomi’s shoulder and saw Alex tinkering with a gilded porcelain confection. “What is that?”
“A music box,” said Aunt Becca. “It came in the UPS package for Naomi.”
“Was there a note?” Edward asked.
Naomi nodded. “Just a short typewritten one. ‘From an admirer.’”
Rachel eyed the box with incredulity. “Did they hope we wouldn’t connect the package with the break-in?”
“It might be unrelated,” her father said slowly. “Whoever broke into your room could have simply been waiting for anyone to turn off the alarm so he could sneak in.”
“A bit risky,” Edward speculated. “If no one had showed up all day, the only time the alarm went off would be when Rachel got home.”
Dad shook his head slowly. “I usually go out into the garden in the early afternoon. I didn’t today because I had too much work to do.”
Rachel shuddered. Monica voiced her thoughts. “If you had, the man would have entered sooner, with just you, me and Evita at home.”
“Then praise God,” Aunt Becca said. “At least this way, he tripped the alarm when Edward and Alex were here and could at least catch a glimpse of him.”
“It wasn’t much of a glimpse,” Edward muttered.
“I think I found something,” Alex said.
They leaned in to see. He held out his hand, in which rested some small electronic device that reminded Rachel of a crumpled metallic spider. “What is that?”
Alex shook his head. “Not sure, but it doesn’t belong in the music box.” He gestured to the mess on the table—the porcelain housing, an assortment of gears and screws and other things Rachel didn’t understand.
“Are you sure?” Aunt Becca asked.
“Alex is a whiz at electronic and mechanical things,” Edward said.
Rachel nodded. At the greenhouse, she’d seen him repair both delicate electronics and tinker with his car engine. “I trust his judgment.”
The doorbell rang. Everyone froze for a moment, then Aunt Becca laughed at herself. “That’s probably Horatio. He mentioned he was nearby when I talked to him.”
Rachel gave her statement to Detective Carter, whose gentle gray eyes seemed to understand how terrible she felt about everything that had happened. At one point, he even touched her arm briefly. “I hate to ask this, but have you looked through your room to see if anything is missing?”
“I haven’t even gone inside yet,” she whispered.
He gave a small smile. “After my officers have collected any evidence, try to steel yourself and start cleaning up. And let me know if you notice anything unusual.” He squeezed her forearm. “Buck up, Rachel. It’ll be okay.”
His kindness buoyed her.