First Impressions Read online

  “I’ll get forensics in here,” Jared said from behind her.

  She whirled on him. “And what will they tell you? That some criminals did this to my house? That will be news, won’t it?”

  “I don’t know why you’re angry at me,” he said as he followed her out of the room. “These weren’t my men.”

  “Not through any intent of yours!”

  “That’s true, I did try to…” He straightened his shoulders. “To keep you from throwing me out, I tried to make you see the seriousness of this situation. I didn’t tell you this, but an agent was murdered here in Arundel just before you arrived.”

  At that she turned and looked back at him, her hands into fists, her eyes narrow with anger. “Now that’s news! An FBI agent got killed. Isn’t that what happens to you guys? Isn’t the whole idea that you’re supposed to fight trouble? So one of them was down here, in a small town, snooping around, no doubt asking a lot of questions about people’s private business and he—”

  “She.”

  “Oh,” Eden said. “A woman.”

  “Go on. What were you going to say?”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Hit-and-run.”

  Eden gave a sigh. “A hit-and-run could have been an accident. She wasn’t necessarily murdered.” Her anger was returning. “And as for this today, did any of you think that those men were after you?”

  He didn’t answer her, and she didn’t expect him to. She threw open the door to her bedroom and saw that it was exactly as she’d left it. Apparently, no one had been inside. The fact that no one had tried to find anything in her bedroom made her more sure that whoever had done this today had been after McBride, not her. With every minute that went by, she was more sure that his spy, this man Appleby or whatever his name was, had probably wanted her to publish his tell-all book, and, as McBride had said, maybe he’d not wanted the FBI to find out about it, so he’d tried to destroy Eden’s name. Maybe he was afraid that the FBI would block the publication of his book. He, like everyone else who wrote, wanted that greatest of achievements: immortality, a book that lived forever.

  Eden thought that after her meeting with Brad, she’d call her publishing house and see if any reader had read a book written by a man who’d been a spy. Or maybe he’d done what Eden had with the Farrington data and fictionalized his story. She glanced at the blue boxes stacked in the corner of her bedroom. Four of the manuscripts were by unknown authors. Eden was to read them and give a report. If the book was good, it would be given to an editor who had an in-house office to be read again, and perhaps published. If the book was no good, it would be sent back to the author with a polite thankyou. For all Eden knew—because she’d had no time to work—Applegate’s book could be in that stack. Maybe the men who’d vandalized her house were looking for the manuscript but hadn’t found it. But that made no sense, as the boxes were in plain sight.

  Turning, she faced McBride. “As you can see, no one has searched my room. That’s because they have no interest in me. If you look in your room, you’ll probably find it’s been torn apart. Now, Mr. McBride, I’m going to take a shower, then I’m going to meet a man I’m beginning to like a great deal. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll—”

  She wasn’t prepared for Jared’s lightning-fast movement. She had the door half closed when his arm reached out, grabbed her, and pulled her out of the room. He half threw her behind the door. “What—?” she began but didn’t finish her sentence because McBride nearly leaped into her bedroom. Was someone hiding in there? She put her hand to her throat and her heart raced. When she heard no sound from him, her heart calmed down and she tiptoed around the door. McBride was standing in her room, staring at her bed. The covers had been thrown back, but as far as she could see, there was nothing unusual. Straightening, she walked into the room. “There’s no one here,” she said.

  Jared held out his arm to keep her from getting any closer to the bed. “Go down to the end of the hall,” he said quietly and calmly, “and get a broom. No, get two of them, then come back here. Don’t make any noise and move slowly.”

  She wanted to ask questions, wanted to make him explain himself, but then she saw her bedcovers move. Something was alive and under the covers! She backed out of the room slowly, then ran down the hall to the closet that held the brooms and the stairs down. The door was open, and two brooms and an old mop were halfway out, but, as far as she could tell, no one but the two of them had been down the stairs. It was so unusual for a staircase to lead out of a broom closet that the intruders hadn’t checked.

  Grabbing two brooms with sturdy handles, she went back to the bedroom. McBride hadn’t moved. In the middle of the bed was the head of a snake. It seemed to be warm and cozy under Eden’s covers and in no hurry to leave. It was staring up at McBride as though it wanted to say hello.

  Without looking at her, Jared reached out his hand for the brooms. “Would you please go to that far window, open it, then go downstairs?” he said in a quiet, even voice.

  Eden walked slowly toward the window, her back against the armoire that was against the wall. The snake turned to look at her, but it didn’t otherwise move. It seemed to have chosen McBride as its prey, and Eden was of little interest. At the window, she had to push upward hard. The wood in the windows had been replaced as was necessary to keep them from rotting, but they were still over two hundred years old—and they were a pain in the neck to work. More than once, years ago, Eden had looked at the ads for Pella and Andersen windows with longing.

  Finally, the window was up. There were no weights inside it so it wouldn’t stay up. She grabbed one of the blue boxes on the floor and stuck it in the window—she hoped it was the spy’s manuscript. Once the window was open, she made her way back to the door, keeping against the wall and the furniture. As far as she could tell, McBride hadn’t taken his eyes off the snake. They seemed to be hypnotized by each other.

  Eden left the room but stayed just outside the door and watched. As though he were a snake charmer, McBride used a broom in his left hand to attract the snake’s attention. With his right, he eased the second broom down under the snake’s body, which had begun to emerge from under the warmth of the covers. It took time and patience, but soon he had the broom handle under the snake. When Jared lifted, the snake wrapped itself around the handle, and Jared quickly walked toward the open window. It was only a few steps but it seemed to take an hour. In one quick movement, he reached the window, then he dropped the enormous snake outside.

  Relieved, Eden opened the door and started back into her bedroom, but McBride put his hand up to stop her. “Let me check the place out,” he said, then began a slow, systematic search of her bedroom, then her bath.

  He found a little copperhead inside the big armoire at the foot of her bed. It liked the warmth of the TV set and had curled up under it. Eden would never have seen it until she was bitten as she reached for something inside the cabinet. Under her bed, inside her gardening shoes, was a red-bellied moccasin. In her bathroom, behind a stack of towels in a cupboard, was a cottonmouth.

  She stood at the door, growing weaker every time McBride pulled another poisonous snake out of her room. She figured a sack full of them had been released in her bedroom, then the door closed. She watched as he turned over chairs, stripped the bed, lifted the mattress and springs. He climbed on a chair and looked on top of the armoire, and on top of the mirror over the dresser. He lay down on the floor on his back and scooted under her bed, looking over every inch of it with a flashlight.

  When he was sure that her room was clean, they went to his bedroom and he began to search it. There were no snakes in his room. Only in Eden’s.

  At last, she sat down on the old chest in the hallway and sighed. “Someone wants me dead.”

  “It would look that way,” he said quietly, looking at her in speculation. “You and I have to figure out what you know or who you know. We have to—”

  Everything that was happening to her was so o