The Villa

pretenses.
    He'd send a personal message to the family expressing his sympathy and regrets. Best, all around, he decided, to keep his distance from the family for the time being.
    He'd make his move there when he was ready.
    For the moment, he'd have a little wake of his own. Damned if he wasn't going to open a bottle of champagne and celebrate murder.
     
    Sophia spent nearly a week handling her father's murder like a business assignment. With emotions on hold, she made calls, made arrangements, asked questions, answered them and watched her mother like a hawk.
    When she ran into a wall, and she ran into plenty, she did what she could to scale over or tunnel under. The police gave her nothing but the same repetitive line. The investigation was ongoing. All leads were being actively pursued.
    They treated her resentfully, she thought, no differently than they did a reporter. Or a suspect.
    Rene refused to take her calls, and she grew weary of leaving dozens of messages on the machine. Sympathetic messages, concerned messages, polite ones, angry ones, bitter ones.
    Her father would have a memorial service. With or without his widow's input or cooperation.
    She made excuses to her mother, citing a few problems at her San Francisco office that needed her attention, and prepared to drive to the city.
    Tyler was pulling up in the drive as she stepped out of the house.
    "Where're you going?"
    "I have business."
    "Where?"
    She tried to move by him toward the garage, only to have him step into her path. "Look, I'm in a hurry. Go prune a vine."
    "Where?"
    Nerves wanted to snap, and that couldn't be allowed. "I need to run into the city. I have some work."
    "Fine. We'll take my car."
    "I don't need you today."
    "Teamwork, remember?" He knew a woman who was teetering on a thin wire, and he wasn't letting her drive.
    "I can handle this, MacMillan." Why the hell hadn't she said she was going shopping?
    "Yeah, you can handle anything." He put one hand on her arm, opened the car door with the other. "Get in."
    "Did it ever occur to you I'd rather be alone?"
    "Did it ever occur to you I don't care?" To solve the problem he simply picked her up and plopped her on the seat. "Strap in," he ordered, and slammed the door.
    She considered kicking the door open, then kicking him. But she was afraid she'd never stop. There was such a rage inside her, such a burning, raging grief. And she reminded herself, as she'd promised she would, that he had been there for her at the worst moment.
    He slid behind the wheel. Maybe it was because he'd known her more than half his life. Maybe it was because he'd paid more attention to her over the past few weeks than he had over the last twenty years. Either way, Ty thought, he knew that face almost too well. And the composure on it was no real mask, at least not at the moment.
    "So." He turned the car on, glanced toward her. "Where are you really going?"
    "To see the police. I can't get any answers on the phone."
    "Okay." He shifted into first and headed down the drive.
    "I don't need a guard dog, Ty, or a big, broad shoulder or an emotional pillow."
    "Okay." He just kept driving. "For the record, I'd just as soon you didn't need a punching bag, either."
    As an answer, she folded her arms, stared straight ahead. The mountains were shrouded with mist, laced with snow, like a soft-focused photograph. The staggering view did nothing to cheer her. In her mind all she could see was the torn-out sheet from an industry magazine that had come in her mail the day before.
    The photograph of her, her grandmother, her mother that had been published months before had been defiled, as the Giambelli angels had been. Red pen had been used this time, slashing bloody ink over their faces, branding them murdering bitches this time.
    Was it the answer to her repeated calls to Rene? Sophia wondered. Did the woman think such a childish trick would frighten her? She wouldn't let it frighten her. And as she'd burned it in the flames of the fireplace, Sophia had felt disgust, anger, but not fear.
    Yet still, a day later, she couldn't get it out of her mind.
    "Did Eli ask you to baby-sit me?" she demanded of Tyler.
    "No."
    "My grandmother?"
    "No."
    "Then who?"
    "Here's the deal, Sophia. I take orders in business when I have to. I don't take them in my personal life. This is personal. Clear?"
    "No." She looked away from the mountains now, studied his equally compelling profile. "You didn't even like my father, and you're not that