Free Smoke Screen by Sandra Brown Page A

cried out when he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. “Oh, God,” she whimpered. “Please don’t hurt me.”
    Putting his mouth directly above her ear, he whispered, “Relax, Ms. Shelley. I only wanted to check your hands, make sure you weren’t bringing something out with you.” He released her abruptly.
    She turned, took several deep breaths, swallowed. He watched as her fear evolved into anger. “You deliberately frightened me into thinking—”
    “What? That I’m actually the brute you painted me to be?”
    “What did you think I might sneak out? A razor ?”
    He didn’t respond. He hadn’t brought her here to bicker. “We’re wasting time. Go sit down.”
    “How long must we keep this up?”
    “Until I’ve got from you everything I need.”
    “Everything you need for what? What is this leading to? The kidnapping, the Gestapo-type interrogation. What do you plan to do?”
    “I plan to make you sit down.” He hitched his chin toward the living area. “If you don’t sit down willingly, I plan to tie you to the chair.”
    She marched back to the chair. Once she was seated, he knelt in front of her and took a roll of duct tape from the black bag. She tucked her feet beneath the chair. “Please. I promise not to get up until you tell me I can. Please.”
    After a short staring contest, he relented and resumed his place in the other chair. “You never answered my question. Did you have sex with Jay?”
    She studied a button on his shirt. At least her gaze landed in that vicinity of his chest and remained there. “I swear to you, I don’t know. My gynecologist examined me, but all she could determine was that there hadn’t been any…any trauma to the tissue.”
    Raley gnawed the inside of his cheek, ruminating on that, wondering if he believed her, wondering why he gave a damn whether she and Jay had had sex or not.
    “You joined him at the table in the corner of the bar. How was he?”
    She laughed softly, but there was a touch of sadness behind it. “Like Jay. Handsome and well dressed. Charming. Flirtatious.”
    “That’s our Jay.”
    She looked at him curiously. “Was he always like that? Even when you were boys?”
    “Always. What did you have to drink?”
    She seemed about to ask more about their boyhood friendship but answered his question instead. “He was drinking vodka, maybe gin. Something clear, on the rocks. He’d had two or three. He ordered another when I ordered my wine.”
    “From one of the waitresses?”
    “She came to our table.”
    “Did the same waitress deliver your drinks, or another?”
    “I’m almost certain it was the same one. I remember thanking her when my wine appeared, but I was involved in my conversation with Jay, so I didn’t really take much notice.”
    “What happened then, after your drinks came?”
    “We clinked glasses.”
    “Do you think Jay slipped something into your wine?”
    “Why would he?”
    “Do you think he did?”
    “No.”
    “Did he have an opportunity to?”
    “No. We—”
    Suddenly she stopped, her gaze turning inward.
    “What?”
    “I…” She looked at him, wet her lips. “I just remembered something. I took a cardigan with me. I always do. Air-conditioning.”
    “So?”
    “The bar was crowded, warm, so I didn’t need my sweater. I remember turning away to drape it over the back of the chair. The chair had a curved wood back, sort of like that one,” she said, nodding toward the one he was sitting in. “My sweater slipped off onto the floor. I bent down to pick it up.”
    “Giving Jay enough time to drop something into your wineglass?”
    “I don’t know. I suppose. But he would have had to be incredibly quick and dexterous.” She shook her head. “I don’t believe he did. And, anyway, why would he?”
    “Right. When he knew you’d go to bed with him without being drugged.”
    She stared back at him with teeming animosity, but she didn’t address the insult. He didn’t apologize, but