Ford inclined his head. “Downstairs.”
“When?”
“Two days ago.”
She lifted her pen. “And you’ve just now discovered it?”
“No. I was here when it occurred.”
She felt her brows pull together and consciously smoothed her expression. “Why don’t you explain to me what happened,” she said.
“Why don’t we sit down first,” Ford countered. He took a step forward, into the light from a side window, so that she got her first good look at his face.
Oh, boy. Oh, man. She felt the punch of sexual attraction like a blow to her midsection. This was Simon Ford? The geeky inventor? The soft-living millionaire?
It just went to show her the chief was right. A good detective should never theorize ahead of her facts.
He looked like something out of her adolescent fantasies, a warrior poet or a priest king. Not that Laura believed in fairy tales anymore. His face was cold, strong and striking. Guarded, she thought. His dark hair—longer than she usually liked—fell over his forehead. His eyes were cool as rain.
They narrowed on her, and she felt again that odd prickle like a warning on the back of her neck. “Have we met?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure? You look…”
She didn’t want to think about how she looked with her ball cap jammed over her untidy braid and sweat stains under her arms. The boat ride over had been windy and rough.
“Familiar?” she provided.
“No. As if you recognized me.”
“Nope.” She shook her head. From another man she might have suspected a pickup line. But Ford’s voice was perfectly dispassionate. His face gave nothing away. “Sorry.”
He continued to study her with those disconcertingly light gray eyes, plainly unconvinced.
Annoyance sharpened her voice. “Look, if we’d met, you’d remember.”
“Not necessarily.”
They hardly ran in the same circles. Hell, they barely inhabited the same town. Ford kept himself to himself. He even did his grocery shopping in Chicago, well over an hour away. It hadn’t endeared him any to the local merchants.
“You have a problem with your memory?” Laura asked dryly.
Ford smiled a small, wintry smile. “Actually, yes. I do.”
Her eyes widened. She had to watch her mouth. She was off balance, reacting emotionally, like some stupid traffic officer letting a pretty woman flirt her way out of a ticket.
There was no quicker way for a cop to get into trouble.
“Maybe we better sit down after all,” she said, making a grab for the situation. “And you can tell me why you called.”
Could he? Simon wondered.
Doubt hammered inside his chest and seized his head in a vise. He’d expected a seasoned police chief to respond to his call, not this young, wary female. He didn’t want her. But he was attracted to her.
Was she his type? He didn’t even know. She was as lean and graceful as a greyhound, with a narrow, intense face and a wide, mobile mouth. Her light brown gaze was clear and direct.
She looked honest. She might even be competent. But he couldn’t rely on his own judgment. For all he knew, he was a lousy judge of character.
He hesitated, his head pounding.
Her mouth quirked. “Or we can stand.”
Her humor tipped the scales in her favor. He couldn’t trust anyone who worked for him. Why not a total stranger?
“We’ll sit,” he said.
He lowered himself cautiously onto one of the cordovan leather couches flanking the fireplace. Sudden movement, he’d discovered, hurt his head.
Detective Baker sat, too, her back straight beneath her bulky vest and ugly uniform.
Simon opened his mouth. But he still didn’t know how to begin.
His vacillation, his helplessness, infuriated him. Was he always like this? God, he hoped not.
“So.” Detective Baker regarded him expectantly, her notebook open on her knee. “You called the station.”
And now he was questioning even the wisdom of that idea.
But after more than twenty-four hours of groping and bumbling in a fog, Simon had reluctantly acknowledged he couldn’t cope on his own. He needed professional help.
Fear clawed him. Yeah, like a psychiatrist.
He took a deep breath for calm. “On Wednesday night, I left the corporate headquarters in Chicago and came here.”
Detective Baker nodded. “Alone?”
“No, I was accompanied by one of my security staff.” Or so he’d been told. “We left the office at seven, which means we would have arrived on the island no later than seven-thirty.”
Her brows arched. “You must have broken some speed limits.”
He didn’t smile. “We took the company helicopter.” He’d been told that, too.
“I’ve seen it.” She scribbled something. “Who was your pilot?”
“I flew myself.” He told himself he wasn’t trying to impress her. Just as well, because her expression never flickered.
“Okay, so you got here at seven-thirty and found…what?”
Simon teetered on the edge of self-revelation, an enormous chasm that yawned at his feet and threatened to swallow him.
He took a step back. “Everything must have been in order then. I know I made dinner.” There had been dishes in the dishwasher the next morning and fresh vegetables in the stainless-steel refrigerator.
“And then?”
“I went down to the lab.”
“Did you have a reason?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did something attract your attention?”
“I don’t know.” He closed his teeth on the thin edge of desperation he heard fracturing his voice. “I don’t think so. I may simply have intended to get some work done after dinner.”
“‘May have.’”
“My company—Lumen Corp—has several new projects in development. Laser research.” He could say that with some certainty now. He’d spent hours yesterday fighting off pain and despair, searching for clues on the Internet and in the house, struggling to make sense of the equipment and files downstairs. The scope of his loss still stunned him. He needed to trust her, to tell her exactly how serious his situation was. But pride and panic constricted his chest and tightened his throat. “I must have been working on one of them when I was interrupted.”
“‘Interrupted,’” she repeated without inflection.
It wasn’t quite a question. It stopped short of actual challenge. But he was insecure enough to bristle. “I presume so.”
He was relieved when she appeared to let it go. “Okay. So, you were downstairs working in your lab and…what happened?”
His brief relief evaporated. “That’s the problem. I don’t know. I must have lost consciousness when I was attacked. When I came to, I was staring up at the ceiling with a bump on my head and a whopping big headache.”
“Mr. Ford.”