Her face heated up again. Was it possible he knew about the note her mother had received and was playing her?
“You would obviously know if you had been contacted, and I imagine your mother would have told you if she had.” His tone was gentler. For some reason, he was retreating from their little sparring match. “And, no. No one’s contacted your brother, his wife, or the Simmers, but we’re monitoring their cell phones and e-mail accounts.”
“Not mine or my dad’s?”
“Not at this time,” he said. “We only got a court order for family members who were likely to be contacted with a ransom demand.”
Aubrey looked at the pizza crust in her hand so that Smolleck couldn’t read her face. “What about regular mail? Are you checking that?”
“Obviously,” he said.
She tried to keep her voice neutral. “Did one of your people bring the mail in today and check it?”
She followed his glance back at the FBI crew inside the brightly lit family room. “Yes,” he said.
“There were a lot of people in the house today,” Aubrey said. “FBI, police. Are you keeping track of everyone? Have they all been background-checked?”
He stiffened. “Do you have any reason to believe someone tampered with the mail?”
This wasn’t going the way she wanted. She needed to back off before she inadvertently revealed anything about the ransom note. She met his gaze. “Special Agent Smolleck. We don’t know who took Ethan or why. I want to be sure my mother and I aren’t in any danger sleeping in our own home.”
“Is that what you’re really worried about?” He didn’t look away.
Blood pounded in her ears. “What I’m really worried about is getting Ethan back.” She stood up. “And I hope you are, too.”
She hurried out of the patio before he could ask her any more questions, because it was becoming clear that all her expertise in analyzing human behavior was worthless in a sparring match with a master.
CHAPTER 13
Diana left the park and stood on South Bayshore Drive waiting for traffic to break. A number of cars sped past, heading toward downtown Coconut Grove. Probably people heading out to dinner or going home after working late.
She couldn’t go home.
Not yet.
Not with the FBI creeping around.
She flagged down a passing taxi and got in. It was a little past seven, and Jonathan wouldn’t arrive in Miami for a half hour or so, but she could wait for him at his apartment.
She gave the driver his Brickell Avenue address, a couple of miles away, then called Aubrey to tell her where she was going so she wouldn’t worry. There was no point in calling Smolleck. Her phone had GPS if they were interested in locating her. Instead, she texted Jonathan to meet her at his apartment. He’d see the message when his plane landed.
She pressed “Send,” and shuddered. Jonathan and the FBI now knew where she would be. Did whoever was threatening her know, too? The taxi turned onto Brickell Avenue and headed toward downtown, passing luxury high-rises that overlooked Biscayne Bay. She was uncertain about what she would do when she saw Jonathan. Whether she would tell him about the note. He had a brilliant mind; maybe he could help figure out who had sent it and what to do next.
She was jolted out of her thoughts as the taxi stopped in front of Jonathan’s towering building, a recently built condo with all the amenities of a five-star hotel. She’d been surprised the first time Jonathan had brought her here. The building’s modern marble facade didn’t fit her image of the unassuming man who loved to talk about economic theory and ancient civilizations. But Jonathan had explained that he’d bought the condo shortly after his wife died. A place with twenty-four-hour room service had been a good choice for a widower who didn’t know how to cook and had no interest in learning.
She paid the driver, then walked through the high-ceilinged lobby filled with abstract art to the elevator bank. She input the security code, and the private elevator zipped her up to Jonathan’s apartment on the forty-second floor. In the outer foyer to the apartment, she input the code again and was hit by a blast of icy air as she opened the door. She shivered as she turned on the lights, which bounced off white-marble floors, white furnishings, and white walls. There were a few bursts of crimson from strategically placed paintings and heavy glass paperweights on the coffee table and on the shelves on either side of the gigantic flat-screen TV.
A decorator had designed the interior, clearly with no understanding of the sensibilities of the man who would be living here. A man who loved books, not television, and who wore ten-year-old suits, not the latest fashion. But maybe Jonathan had wanted something devoid of warmth and personality when his wife died after battling cancer for several years.
Diana glanced at the rectangular Lalique crystal tray on the entryway table. It was an antique piece with three compartments, a piece the decorator had been very pleased with. But Jonathan had altered it to serve his own purposes. With a labeling gun, he had made blue stickers that he’d affixed to each compartment that held his keys: Car, House, Office. What’s wrong with labels? he’d asked when the horrified decorator saw his handiwork.
Diana picked up the keys to the black Ford SUV, which he’d owned forever and had no intention of getting rid of. She put the keys down, turned the A/C up to seventy-five, then went into the bedroom and got Jonathan’s burgundy sweater from his closet. He was a small man, and the sweater was only slightly large on her. She could smell his scent on it, the aftershave he often used. Eau Sauvage. He had once told her he’d been wearing it since college, which didn’t surprise her at all.
She heaved open the balky balcony door and stepped outside. The wind was strong out there, so she closed the door behind her to keep it from blowing everything around inside.