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“Where did you two hook up?”
Steffi’s question set his teeth on edge, but he tried not to show it. “She was downstairs waiting on the elevator,” he lied.
“Oh. Well, I guess everybody’s here now, so we can start.”
“Stall them a few minutes longer. I gotta use the men’s room.”
Hammond went into the rest room, glad to see that it wasn’t in use. At the sink, he bent from the waist and splashed cold water onto his face, then braced his hands on the cool porcelain and hung his head between his shoulders, letting the water drip from his face into the basin. He took several deep breaths, releasing them on a stream of low curses.
He had requested a few minutes, but it was going to take longer than that to restore himself. Actually he would probably never be free of the tight band of guilt squeezing his chest and restricting his breathing.
What was he going to do? This time last week, he had never even heard of this woman. Now Alex Ladd was the eye of a maelstrom that threatened to suck him under and drown him.
He saw no way out. He hadn’t committed just one malfeasance; he had compounded it, and he continued to. If he had come clean when he first saw the sketch of her, he might have redeemed himself.
“Smilow, Steffi, you are not going to believe this! I spent the night with this woman Saturday night. Now you’re telling me that she bumped off Lute Pettijohn before luring me into bed?”
He might have weathered the storm if he had admitted his culpability early on. After all, when he took her to his cabin he hadn’t known she would later be implicated in a crime. He had been the innocent victim of a carefully planned seduction.
He might have been ridiculed for taking a total stranger to bed. He might have been censured for being indiscreet. His father would have accused him of being just plain stupid. Hadn’t he taught him better than to have sexual intercourse with a woman he didn’t know? Hadn’t he warned him about the calamities that could befall a young man at the hands of a devious female?
It would have been embarrassing for him, his family, and the solicitor’s office. He would have been the hot topic of gossip and the butt of a thousand lewd jokes, but he would have survived it.
But the point was moot. He hadn’t revealed her identity, and he hadn’t exposed her when she lied about a nonexistent trip to Hilton Head. He had stood there, juggling duty and desire, and desire had won. He had consciously and deliberately withheld information that could be a key element to a homicide case, just as he had omitted telling Monroe Mason about his Saturday afternoon meeting with Pettijohn. According to any prosecutor’s rule book, his conduct over the last few days was unforgivable.
What was even worse, given the opportunity to rethink those decisions, he feared he would make the same wrong choices.
* * *
Alex distrusted the polite manner in which Smilow pulled out a chair for her. He wanted to know if she was comfortable, if she would like something to drink.
“Mr. Smilow, please stop treating this like a social visit. The only reason I’m here is because you requested it, and I felt it was my civic responsibility to grant that request.”
“Very commendable.”
Frank Perkins said, “Let’s dispense with the pleasantries and get on with it, shall we?”
“Fine.” Smilow resumed his position of the day before on the corner of his desk, a distinct and calculated advantage because it forced Alex to look up at him.
When the door opened behind her, she knew that Hammond had come in. His vitality stirred the air in a particular way. She hadn’t fully recovered from being alone with him again. Those moments in the elevator had been brief, but their impact was profound.
Her reaction had been physical and apparently noticeable, because when she joined Frank Perkins, he had commented on her flushed cheeks and asked if she was feeling all right. She had blamed the heat outside. But the weather hadn’t caused her blush any more than it had brought on the tingling in the erogenous parts of her body.
Those sexual and emotional stirrings were coupled with the guilt she harbored for unfairly placing Hammond in such a dilemma. She had deliberately compromised him.
Initially, she emphasized to her conscience. Only initially. Then biology had taken over.
And she could feel the tug of it now that he had entered the room.
She curbed the impulse to turn around and look at him, afraid that Steffi Mundell might detect that something was afoot. The prosecutor had seemed avidly inquisitive when she saw them together in the elevator. Alex had tried to seem unperturbed as she alighted, but she’d felt Steffi’s stare like a branding iron between her shoulder blades as she walked down the hallway. If anyone picked up the signals she and Hammond inadvertently gave off, it would be Steffi Mundell. Not only because she came across as being sharp as a razor, but because, generally speaking, women were more attuned to romantic frequencies than men.
Alex was brought back to attention when Smilow turned on the tape recorder and recited the day and time along with the names of those present. He then handed her a laminated newspaper clipping. “I’d like for you to read this, Dr. Ladd.”
Curious, her eyes scanned the short headline. She had to read no further than that to realize that she had made a dreadful blunder and that it was going to cost her dearly.
“Why don’t you read it out loud?” Smilow suggested. “I’d like for Mr. Perkins to hear it also.”
Knowing the detective was trying to humiliate her, she kept her voice even and emotionless as she read the story about the evacuation and shutdown of Harbour Town on Hilton Head, at the precise time she had told them she was there taking in the attractions. When she finished, a long, weighty silence ensued.
