by Kay Hooper
That was a depressing thought, she decided.
“You haven’t told me your last name,” he observed, carrying his plate to the sink.
Her hesitation was fleeting. “Anderson. Look, I have a lunch appointment for this afternoon. I can drive you to your hotel.”
“Thank you,” he said gravely.
All Raven’s instincts warned her that there was absolutely nothing meek about this man, warned that he had no intention of vanishing from her life. She ignored the warning, and ignored the scornful voice that told her why she was ignoring it. “Keep the clothes,” she offered lightly. “Jud won’t miss them.”
“Jud?”
“My friend’s husband.”
“Ah.” He nodded, then stepped over to the phone on the kitchen wall, lifted the receiver, and briefly studied the plastic-covered strip bearing the number. Then he replaced the receiver and smiled at her. “Got it. I assume you want to leave now? I’ll get my things.” And he strode from the kitchen.
Frowning a bit, Raven stowed the plates in the dishwasher. She didn’t doubt he’d memorized the phone number; he would probably make a mental note of the address when they left. “Damn,” she murmured.
Oddly enough, the curse didn’t sound as fierce as she wanted it to. Not nearly as fierce …
Almost half an hour later, she pulled her battered Pinto to a halt before the imposing glass-and-steel hotel he had named. The doorman, his well-trained face impassive, came forward, only to be waved away by Josh. Turning in the bucket seat, he gazed intently at her.
“Go out with me tonight?”
She kept the smile on her face. “Sorry, I’m booked.”
“Then I’ll call you.” He leaned toward her suddenly, kissing her gently but with more than a hint of the raw fire he had earlier unleashed. “Tonight.”
Raven said nothing. She watched him gracefully unfold his length from the cramped little car and shut the door, then waved vaguely and drove away. Several blocks down the street and out of sight, she pulled her car over to the curb and sat for a moment, contemplating her shaking hands. “What lousy timing,” she murmured. “Damn.”
She thought of the night before, of laughter and an easy companionship she’d never known before. She thought of warm blue eyes and a passion that still tingled within her. She thought of proposals, drunken and sober. Then she thought of a phone ringing in an empty apartment.
Swearing in a soft, toneless voice, she pulled back out into traffic and went on her way.
“I never made it to the party,” Raven said. She was sitting at a picnic table, the paper clutter of lunch between her and the man opposite. Absently, she poked a finger at the horn-rimmed glasses slipping down her nose.
“Why not?” His voice was low and deep and his face boasted the open, ingenuous expression of a man with no secrets and few wits. It was a deceptive expression, to say the least.
Raven studied him for a moment in silence, although she knew his face almost as well as her own. “Well, ridiculous as it sounds, Kelsey, I knocked a man down in the hall at the hotel.”
Kelsey ran blunt fingers through rusty hair. “You would. Did you kill him?”
“Funny.” She decided not to explain the remainder of the night. “Anyway, I missed the party.”
“There’ll be questions.”
“Yes. I know what I’ll say, don’t worry.”
He nodded, then pushed a flat envelope across the table toward her. While she casually studied the contents, he studied her. Not a strand of her long black hair showed beneath the drab brown wig she wore, and her loose blouse and shabby jeans effectively shrouded a figure that normally caught every eye in passing. The heavy-rimmed glasses changed her features remarkably, leaving her with a curiously harried, fretful appearance, which was enhanced by her frequent, seemingly nervous gesture of pushing the rim up her nose.
Her own mother would have passed her without a glance.
“Travers having you followed?” he asked.
Raven shook her head, still gazing down at photographs. “No, not now. He was at first, so I stayed close to the penthouse and perfected my ice-maiden act. He relaxed a bit after a few days.” She looked up at Kelsey, expressionless. “The background checked out, I imagine. I’m still being careful, though. No need to take chances now.”
Kelsey snorted softly. “I certainly hope the background checked out. God knows it took us enough time. When will you make your move?”
She returned the photographs to their envelope and pushed it back across the table, stirring restlessly. “I don’t know. He’s leaving L.A. tonight, and last time he had men watching my place while he was out of town. I bet he will again. So I’ll behave myself while he’s gone, then see how things look when he gets back.”
“Watch your step,” Kelsey warned needlessly. “He’s a barracuda with a full set of teeth.”
She smiled a little. “I know. I’ll be careful.”
“You’ve got the pictures?” he asked.
“Of course.” Raven tapped her forehead lightly with a finger. “Right here. I’ll know when the time comes.”
It was Kelsey’s turn to move restlessly. Almost to himself, he said, “If he sticks with his normal mode of operation, the merchandise will leave the country within the next month or so. You don’t have much time, Raven.”
She knew.
Late that afternoon, Raven drove her battered Pinto into a private garage and parked it beside a gleaming silver Mercedes. The garage was deserted, and she moved swiftly and expertly within the car before getting out and stowing a small case where the spare tire should have been at the rear of the Pinto. She stood there for a minute, smoothing her long black hair and adjusting the silk dress. Then she put on a pair of mirrored sunglasses, slung an expensive leather handbag into the Mercedes, and got in herself.
She drove uptown to a towering apartment building and pulled up in front, smiling politely at the doorman, who rushed to open her door. “Thank you, Evan,” she said, her tone low and cultured.
“My pleasure, Miss Anderson.” The doorman escorted her up the tiled steps while a valet appeared from thin air and hurried to tenderly drive the Mercedes to its secluded parking place. A uniformed guard at the front desk rose respectfully to his feet as Raven entered, murmuring a greeting as he handed her a sheaf of messages.
“Mr. Travers is waiting for you, Miss Anderson.”
The sunglasses hid Raven’s expressive eyes, which might have revealed how entirely unwelcome this information was. “Oh? Thank you,” she commented. Gracefully, she moved to the elevator, where another uniformed man punched the buttons so that she wouldn’t strain herself.
The door opened onto the top floor, and Raven stepped out of the elevator with the gliding, feline movements she’d perfected. The grace was wasted, however, since she was forced almost immediately to jump to one side to avoid being run over by an untidy stack of papers and files with legs.
“Oh!” A harried, timid voice came from behind the obstruction, and a pale, thin face peered around at Raven. “Miss—Miss Anderson. I’m so sorry—”
“No harm done,” she murmured, tempted, as always, to abandon her role, but resisting because experience had taught her caution. It certainly was difficult, though, to maintain her cool detachment in the presence of Leon Travers’s assistant-or-whatever; she’d never been clear on the relationship.
Theodore Thorpe Thayer III was the optimistically grand name bestowed, possibly by a lisping mother, some thirty-odd years ago on the child who could never hope to equal it. Theodore—never Ted, Raven had decided—was about five foot four and might have weighed a hundred pounds on one of his hearty-eating days. He was pale, and his thin face invariably wore the expression of a hunted rabbit. And behind the cruelly distorting lenses of his glasses, spaniel-brown eyes pleaded with the whole world.
How on earth the amazingly inept man had secured a job with Leon Travers had been a total mystery to Raven until Leon had explained in a long-suffering tone that Theo
dore was related to him and, as he pointed out, who else would hire him?
Bringing her mind back to specifics, Raven asked coolly, “What are you doing here, Theodore?” The question was mild enough, but Theodore looked crushed.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Miss Anderson, but I thought Leon—I mean, Mr. Travers wanted to work here. I could have sworn he told me, but I was wrong.” The spaniel eyes blinked rapidly behind thick lenses.
Raven glanced back over her shoulder, where the elevator operator, expressionless, was still waiting. She looked at Theodore. “Did you really think you could accomplish all that anyway?” she asked dryly, gesturing to the stack of work he clutched to his chest.
Theodore promptly lost himself in a morass of unfinished sentences and stuttered explanations, none of which made the least bit of sense.
Raven waved it away. “Never mind. The elevator’s waiting, Theodore.”
He nodded miserably and scurried into it.
When she stepped into her penthouse apartment a few moments later, Raven smiled far more welcomingly than she had at the doorman, but there was an almost-imperceptible chill in the curve of her lips, stamped there, it seemed, as a glacier permanently stamped its mark on the soft earth beneath it.
“Hello, Leon.”
“I used my key,” he said.
The phone rang endlessly in the empty apartment.
Josh counted the rings, hanging up when he reached twenty. She wasn’t there. He had called from ten P.M. last night until two this morning, then had given up. Waking after a restless night, he had begun calling at eight this morning; it was Saturday, she shouldn’t be working.
Three hours ago he had driven his rented car to the apartment she was supposed to be living in. The manager had been shocked by the very idea; the tenants were back east, she’d said, but there was no sublet, no helpful friend watching the place for them. Raven Anderson? She’d never heard of her.
Josh lit a cigarette, not, by far, the first of the day, and stared broodingly at the phone. Well, hell, he hadn’t imagined it. He remembered ripe curves and warm lips far too clearly for it to have been a dream or a drunken delusion—and he wasn’t given to imagining things.
Nor had his body forgotten. He still felt that new, strangely vivid sensitivity, the feeling that everything inside him was focused intensely on her. Restlessness and frustration were making him jittery, uncomfortable—and he had never been a man to let his emotions manifest themselves physically. But these emotions were growing more powerful by the moment, even without the sight or touch of her to feed the hunger; his mind was filled with vivid images that had haunted him since he had first seen her.
Images of beautiful violet eyes and gleaming black hair, of tender lips curved in amusement and faintly swollen from his passion. Images of full breasts lovingly restrained by a blue dress and lending a seductive shape to a bulky sweater. Images of curved hips and long legs …
He lifted his gaze to look around the penthouse suite, barely taking notice; he had been in too many far too similar suites for the architecture or decor to make any impression on him.
The desk where he sat was near wide, floor-to-ceiling windows running the length of one wall. The floor was sunken, an off-white pit grouping allowing seating space for a small convention and a fireplace offering more than electric or gas heat. A far-from-compact bar stood in one corner, and two closed doors hinted that there were at least that many bedrooms and quite likely more.
In short, it was a very large suite.
From one of the bedrooms stepped a man whom most people would cross the street to avoid. It wasn’t only that he was several inches over six feet and tended to fill doorways; it wasn’t even that a wicked scar twisted down his lean cheek. What it was about the man that frightened even the stouthearted was a palpable aura of leashed power and an atmosphere of cold menace.
He moved like a big cat as he came into the room, as if he walked on dried leaves and wished to be silent. And he would have been silent even with dried leaves underfoot. The immaculate business suit he wore did absolutely nothing to conceal the danger of him, nor did the calm, almost bland expression on his rugged face or the serene gray eyes.
Josh focused on the man. “Zach,” he said slowly, “I’ve got a job for you.”
His security chief, sometimes bodyguard, and friend of fifteen years eased his considerable bulk into a chair by the desk. “We aren’t going on?” he asked equably.
“No. I’ve canceled the remainder of the trip.”
“Then put me to work.” The big man’s voice was curiously soft.
Having made up his mind, Josh began speaking rapidly, concisely. “I want you to do a background check on a woman named Raven Anderson. Waist-length black hair, violet eyes, tall, striking. Late twenties, I’d say. Says she’s from back east somewhere.” He described her car and rattled off the license plate, then gave the address of the apartment and phone number. “The manager claims the apartment is empty, not sublet, but Raven knew where everything was in the kitchen.”
Zach had not made notes, but he wouldn’t forget; he possessed a phenomenal memory. He didn’t ask Josh why he wanted the background, nor did he think for a moment that it was because of personal interest. His friend and employer’s aversion to brunettes was well known, and had stopped being a joke years ago.
“Pull some of the team in if you need to,” Josh was saying as he restlessly lit another cigarette. “I don’t care what it costs. Just find out.”
“Right.” Zach rose soundlessly from his chair and left the room, prepared to do anything on the right side of legal to get the information. Josh Long was perhaps the only truly honest man Zach had ever known. Left to himself, Zach would probably have crossed into the gray area that was the despair of judges and courtrooms, but he knew his employer too well.
And because of Josh’s somewhat unusual background, it wasn’t necessary. In every major law enforcement agency the country could boast, Josh Long merely had to ask to be granted instant and complete cooperation.
Los Angeles was no exception.
Still, it took hours. Zach decided not to call in the team of investigators and security men he had built over the years to handle some of the more complex aspects of Josh Long’s empire. Instead, he requested of hotel management—and was instantly granted—a small office off the lobby, complete with computer and phone linkup, and went to work.
Computers were one of Zach’s many areas of expertise, and he carried in his mind access codes the federal government tended to be possessive about. He hardly expected to find anything earth-shattering … but what he found was quite definitely interesting.
Just before midnight, Zach returned to the sunken den of the suite, carrying a computer printout of some length. He found Josh seated at his desk, having obviously just hung up the phone, a frown on his face.
“Well?” Josh never snapped, but that came close to it.
Zach came forward to place the printout before his boss. He was understandably pleased with himself, since he had spent hours not only gathering information from several data centers, but also confirming every fact. “I wouldn’t recommend reading this before bedtime,” he said in his soft, pleasant voice. “Give you nightmares.”
Josh sent him a sharp look, then bent his dark head to study the printout.
Zachary Steele, in the opinion of all who knew him, was afraid of nothing that walked on earth. But as he watched Josh reading, he began to feel very edgy. He knew his employer and friend well, but he had never seen anything like the utter stillness slowly gripping that lean face. He quite unconsciously braced himself, powerful muscles growing taut, and had sudden visions of heads lopped off and flying across hotel rooms. One head, at least. His own. He was abruptly glad he had made up his will years before.
Josh looked up. “What the hell is this?” he asked softly.
It took all the strength Zach could command not to blink at the fixed, intense rage in those normally cool and calm blue eye
s. But he had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Background on Raven Anderson. I verified every fact.”
“Then you’ve got the wrong woman.” Josh’s voice was flat and hard.
Zach hesitated, then reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and unfolded a sheet of stiff paper. “I called and requested a wire photo. Picked it up a little while ago.” He placed the sheet on the desk faceup.
Josh could scarcely bear to look. Through his mind swam the madness of what he had read. A long list of aliases going back ten years. Indictments—but no convictions—for grand theft, forgery, fraud, solicitation for the purposes of prostitution … The FBI listed her as a possible subversive, linking her with a terrorist group but claiming no proof. And the CIA believed that now she was representing “international interests” in the area of white slavery.
Madness …
“Her present address,” Zach said woodenly, feeling skewered by those eyes and wondering why Josh hadn’t looked at the photo, “is a penthouse in a very exclusive high-rise here in L.A. The lease is held by Leon Travers.”
Slowly, every inch a stabbing agony, Josh looked down at the picture. It was grainy, but clear for all of that. A young woman with icy eyes holding a numbered card in front of her. And below the photo was printed height, weight, coloring, general description. The report of an identifying scar on her lower back, the wound gained during a knife fight.
It was Raven.
“Thank you, Zach.” Josh’s voice was toneless now. “Your usual … thorough job.”
Zach hesitated for a moment, then turned and silently left the room, bothered by what he had left behind.
Josh drew out his lighter and held the printout to the flame. When the last charred ashes in the glass tray on his desk heaped to overflowing, he burned the picture. Not that it mattered, since the efficient Zach would have made duplicate copies of both. And he couldn’t burn the words or the image in his mind of a striking face with merry eyes, an image not even the harsh photo could replace. He turned off his desk lamp and sat in the darkness, gazing sightlessly out over the glittering lights of the city far below.
