sunlight angled through Tyler’s hospital-room window, flooding the crowded room with a brilliance that made her wince as she straightened from gathering her clothes and shoes from the small bedside locker. With careful movements, she transferred the items into the small overnight bag that was lying open on her bed.
Apart from Detective Farrell and her father’s personal assistant, Claire Wheeler, the room was full of men: her father, Harrison, and her brother, Richard, Ray Cornell, the investigating detective, and two of Laine’s key managers, Kyle Montgomery and Ashley James.
They were all here ostensibly out of concern for her welfare, but Tyler couldn’t help a spurt of cynicism at that thought. Over the past few days, after the initial storm of publicity over the theft, she’d noticed her work colleagues had begun to avoid her, and the sense of isolation stung.
Unless the business managers of Laine’s diamond house could shed light on the theft or the mugging, there wasn’t much point to the visit. With the press crucifying her for the loss of the jade, and the details of her past splashed across the front pages of all the major dailies, there was nothing much to do but pick over the carcass.
The media had dismissed her doctorate, her years of experience and her charity work. They had thrown a murky shadow over the fact that she was even in the business of buying, selling and consulting on rare jade and artifacts. They had taught the public and, it seemed, her work colleagues, to view her in a different light. She was no longer Dr. Tyler Laine, expert on Eastern and Pacific-Rim artifacts, she was the daughter of Sonny Mullane, a petty criminal with a record as long as both of his lean, sinewy arms. Aside from operating as a small-time fence, Sonny had been a thief, a safecracker, and a pimp. If there was any crime he hadn’t committed other than murder, then, as far as Tyler was concerned, that crime hadn’t yet been invented.
According to the tabloids, the fact that Sonny Mullane’s daughter had been adopted by the Laine family didn’t make her any better than she had been.
“Can you remember any other details about the people who attacked you?”
Tyler shifted her attention to Cornell. The question was delivered politely, but with a flat patience that told Tyler that no matter how devoid of emotion his light gray eyes appeared to be, Cornell wanted more from her than the scanty details she’d so far been able to supply him.
“I can’t give you any more of a description,” she said flatly. “There were two of them. It was dark and they were wearing balaclavas. One of them was olive-skinned and tanned: he looked Asian.”
She gripped the bedside table and lowered herself enough that she could perch on the edge of the bed.
Just those simple actions were enough to make her break out in a sweat. She’d protested at spending the night in hospital, but there was no getting past the fact that her head was still throbbing despite the painkillers she’d taken, and that she was still wobbly on her feet.
Aside from the initial head injury, and the damage she’d done to her right hand and shoulder when she’d thrown that punch, she’d sustained a second head injury when she’d fallen and hit her head on the concrete. The first hit had been brutal enough to concuss her; the second one hadn’t been as violent, but had compounded the first injury with the added bruising and swelling. On top of all that, she was bruised and stiff all down her left side from the fall.
Gingerly, she pushed hair away from her face. She’d managed to shower that morning and change into the jeans and cotton shirt Harrison had brought in, but her hair was still a mess, tangled and matted around the wound, and she’d left it that way. Her one attempt to drag a comb through the tangles had left her clinging to the bathroom counter, a fine film of perspiration beading her upper lip.
The doctor who’d treated her the previous evening had only needed two stitches to close the cut on her head, but the area was still swollen, her scalp so tight and sensitive that even the movement of her hair hurt.
Some time around midnight, she’d stopped seeing colors. In medical terms, the swelling in her brain had subsided to a point where it was no longer pressing on the optic nerves, thus producing the neon-bright display, but she still felt oversensitive and fragile. Colors were too bright, voices were too loud—even the surface of her skin felt oversensitive, as if several layers had been peeled away and all of her nerve endings exposed.
“You said you thought someone followed you on two separate occasions the previous week. Have you got any idea who that might have been?”
The question was clipped and businesslike, not Cornell this time, but his partner, Elaine Farrell.
Tyler lifted her chin, and spoke carefully, mostly because the answer was so obvious, but partly because the small movements of her mouth and jaw pulled at the skin of her scalp and intensified the deep ache, so that even talking hurt. “If I’d been absolutely certain that I was being followed, and had any idea who was following me I would have done something about it.”
The small buzz of conversation in the room stopped.
Cornell went down on his haunches, his gaze neutral. “Are you certain the dark-skinned man who attacked you was Chinese?”
Anger flickered at Cornell’s deliberate alteration of the facts, his subtle sidestep into the shady realms of the jade investigation. There had been some speculation that the Chinese interests could be included in the thefts, but that was mostly media generated. “I saw part of his face. I’m certain he was Asian, not that he was Chinese.”
Richard made a sound of disbelief. “Are you saying the mugging could be linked with the theft of the jade?”
Cornell didn’t acknowledge Richard’s question, or answer. All of his attention remained focused on Tyler—the pressure of his gaze like a weight.
Bitterness and an odd indifference congealed in Tyler’s stomach—a grim remnant from childhood. Cornell was questioning her in order to track down the men who’d assaulted her, but she was beginning to feel more like the offender than the victim. She could feel herself stepping back inside, divorcing herself from the legal process that was unfolding around her.
With an effort of will, she slammed the door on the temptation to simply close off and go blank. When she’d been a child she’d been an expert at the tactics—the ice-queen of eight-year-olds. She’d worked hard to leave that pattern behind; it had taken years, and she’d be damned if she would start running now. There was too much at stake, too much to lose. Her reputation, her career. Her family.
She glanced at Richard and Harrison. They were standing side-by-side—both tall, lean and tanned, with light brown hair. Except for the thirty years Harrison had on Richard and the silvery wings at his temples, the likeness was so pronounced that they could have been brothers. Their jaws were both identically set, their dark eyes cold, voices clipped, as they grilled Cornell about the possibility of a connection between the mugging and the jade theft, and for a moment, confusion and an acute sense of separation swamped Tyler. It was obvious that Harrison and Richard were father and son—also obvious that they were similar in ways that transcended the father/son relationship.
They were her family, but in subtle ways they weren’t. Harrison’s wife, Louisa, had always been the glue that had held them all together, but since her death three years before, Tyler had felt herself drifting, her connection to both Harrison and Richard increasingly more tenuous.
Richard crossed his arms over his chest, his frustration palpable. “So what the hell are we investigating? A theft, or some kind of conspiracy?”
With her as the prime suspect.
Tyler rubbed at her temples. Her mind was still fuzzy, her head throbbing despite the painkillers she’d had with breakfast. “Leave it, Richard. The guy was Asian, that’s a fact. I was mugged, that’s another fact. At this point there is nothing to connect the mugging with the theft of the jade. As for the phone calls, and being followed…” Her own frustration welled, sending a fresh stab of pain through her skull. “All of that started happening before the robbery, so how could any of it possibly be connected?”