by Kay Hooper
Josh started to suggest that she put the bracelet in a drawer somewhere, but the shrill summons of the doorbell stopped the words in his throat. He and Raven stared at each other for a moment, then he swiftly retreated to the bedroom.
Raven drew a deep breath and went to answer, forcing her features into an indifferent mask, which nearly cracked when she saw who was there.
“Theodore. Leon isn’t here—”
“I know that.” Theodore’s thin lips were pressed tightly together; clearly, he hadn’t forgiven her slap. “He’s waiting down in the limo. If you want to see your merchandise, come with me. We’re going now.”
Her mind raced wildly. “I don’t recall inviting you to come along,” she said coolly.
“You think Leon would trust a limo driver with something like this, Miss Anderson? I’m driving. Are you coming or not?”
“I’ll get my purse.” She turned from the door and stepped over to the table, reaching into the drawer and pulling out her purse. The one that counted. “I only hope you know where we’re going.” Her comment was automatic; she had no hope at all that Theodore would let something slip. But the scorn in her voice must have gotten to him.
“I think I can find my way to Long Beach,” he said stiffly.
Raven pulled on sunglasses and went past him out the door, her face impassive. But her mind was still racing. Had Josh heard? And what was it that was still bothering her? She felt that somehow another piece of the puzzle had dropped into her lap if she could only recognize it.
What was different? Out of sync? Leon’s restlessness at lunch, his tension. This abrupt trip—was that planned? To shake off any possible pursuit, maybe. But why was Theodore driving? All of Leon’s people were trustworthy. The limo had taken him to that house where the twins had been so briefly held, hadn’t it? With the regular driver, their operative had reported. Why was Theodore driving today?
Raven was tense all the way down in the elevator, but one suspicion vanished when they stood by the limo. Theodore opened the back door and she saw Leon within the car.
“Good afternoon, my dear.”
“Leon.” She got into the car. So Theodore hadn’t planned a trick of his own, she thought. Still, she had learned to profoundly mistrust anomalies; a sudden change in anyone’s routine was a danger signal, especially when that routine was as set as Leon’s was.
Why was Theodore driving?
“I apologize for giving you no notice, my dear,” Leon said smoothly. “I hope you had no plans?”
“None at all.” Training held; there was nothing in her voice to indicate her furiously racing mind. “Frankly, Leon, I’m simply glad that finally we are getting down to business. I could lose an important commission if my clients found their merchandise elsewhere.”
“I believe you’ll find the merchandise satisfactory,” he said indifferently.
Conscious of the extra weight her gun lent the purse in her lap, Raven said, “I gave you a rather long list; not every item is available today?”
“No.” Leon stared straight ahead. “But the special item you requested is. Twins.”
She infused her voice with cool satisfaction. “Good. The largest commission of all for me.”
“I knew you’d be pleased, my dear.”
Josh wasted no time in getting to his car. He had told Raven he wouldn’t follow her, and he had intended to keep his word, knowing that he would likely be spotted. But he had heard Travers’s man say Long Beach, and resolution had vanished.
If he could get there before them, he thought, there was a chance. A small one, but a chance nonetheless. He had to assume they’d take the most direct route to Long Beach, and he had to believe that he would be able to spot them. And if he was careful, he could follow them from that point.
Familiar with the area, he drove swiftly, avoiding heavy traffic and holding himself just below the speed limit; he had no intention of being stopped by a member of the highway patrol. His mind was working, second-guessing Leon Travers and his driver, hoping desperately that his instincts were good.
He had to be there. Had to be as near to Raven as possible when this entire situation reached its final conclusion.
From the beginning there had been little for him to hold on to in all this. Except Raven, and that certainty was still too new and wondrous for him to fully comprehend. As for the rest …
He couldn’t control it. Someone else did. Travers. He controlled it. Or … A very small part of his mind concentrated on that mental wavering, questioning it, examining an abrupt and deep uncertainty. Something Stuart had said about Hagen … or something Serena had said … Raven’s “nebulous” uncertainty …
What was it?
Hagen and Kelsey moved as close to the secluded house as they dared, crouching behind the cover of overgrown shrubs that had once lined a fence. A small case containing electronic equipment lay open beside Kelsey, and the soft sounds of people talking came from the tiny speaker.
“If you will wait here, my dear, Theodore will get the girls and bring them to you.”
Raven’s voice, dry and amused: “Four guards for two teenaged girls? So cautious, Leon. Oh, I’ll wait here.” Then, more softly as a door closed in the background: “If you’re leaving the room, Leon, please take these men with you. I’d like to talk to the girls; I don’t want them frozen with fear.”
Leon Travers’s voice: “Two of the guards will remain here with you, my dear; I’ll take the others with me. Theodore will remain in here as well.”
“Don’t you trust me, Leon?” Raven asked dryly.
“I trust you, my dear.”
Hagen was staring at the house and listening intently to the voices. “Good girl,” he murmured. “We know how many guards, and where at least two of them will be.”
Kelsey’s face was stone, and his eyes glittered. Almost to himself, he muttered, “I should have known. Dammit, I should have known. After eight years, why didn’t I know? You’ve lost two agents, you know. Raven. And me.”
Hagen sent him a wry look. “I expected as much.”
“She’s a sitting duck, damn you.” The violence of Kelsey’s voice was softened by need, but not suppressed. “There are only two of us. How in hell—”
“More than two,” Hagen interrupted dryly, and gestured slightly.
Kelsey looked, and his bleak face brightened. “You couldn’t have known,” he told Hagen flatly. “There’s no way you could have planned this!”
“No appreciation for genius,” Hagen murmured sadly.
Josh reached them then with his three men behind him. “Hate to crash the party,” he said, words light but tone taut.
“You were expected.” Kelsey glared at his boss. “Apparently.”
Hagen spoke before Josh could react to that. “Mr. Long, you and your men are private citizens and this is a federal operation,” he said in a steely voice. “You can’t—”
“The hell I can’t.”
Hagen studied the four men, then nodded as if to himself. “Very well. But if you insist on participating in this operation, you must be properly authorized. You work for me or you leave. Now.”
Kelsey groaned softly but didn’t intrude. And nobody heard his muttered, “That’s how he got me.”
Josh answered only for himself. “Fine.”
Rafferty winced, but answered for himself and the others since they had anticipated this. “Looks like you’ve got yourself four new—temporary—agents, Hagen.”
Hagen nodded in a weighty manner, but his small eyes twinkled brightly for a moment. “Very well. Consider yourselves duly sworn-in and authorized agents of the United States government. You answer to me and only me. Armed?”
It was Rafferty who nodded, since Josh was busy listening to the voices still coming from the speaker. “We’re armed.”
Impatiently, Josh said, “When do we move?”
“We move now. This is what I want you to do …”
In a rapid tone and concise words, Hagen
explained what was going on inside the house, then told the listening men precisely what they were to do in the coming moments. Precisely.
And it took the combined strength of his men, Zach included, to keep Josh from strangling Hagen then and there.
Just minutes later, while they were waiting much nearer the house for their carefully timed move, Kelsey murmured wistfully to Hagen, “He almost got you.”
More shaken than he cared to admit, Hagen muttered, “A miscalculation on my part. From all reports, Long is extremely cool under pressure.”
“Not this kind of pressure. You forgot to figure love into the equation,” Kelsey pointed out, enjoying his boss’s discomfiture despite everything.
“I always learn from my rare mistakes,” Hagen said.
It took all the control she’d mustered over the years for Raven to keep cool when she first saw the girls. So young. So innocent of cruelty until this had happened to them. Like her sister. Like herself. They were identically beautiful, fragile, delicate—and half-mad with fear.
Forced to keep her alter ego alive because of Theodore and the watching guards, Raven acted her part. She walked around them as though they were so much cattle on the auction block, subtly maneuvering them until they were standing, shaking and clinging to each other, near one end of a battered love seat; one shove from her and both would be somewhat protected from gunfire behind the furniture.
“Healthy?” she snapped at Theodore.
“Certainly.”
“Virgins?” She hated the question, hated watching the girls wince and shrink away from her brutally businesslike tone.
“Doctor’s certificate.”
“I trust you haven’t been drugging them.”
“Of course not,” Theodore said calmly.
Something moved in the back of Raven’s mind, heavy and slow. It was wrong; there was something wrong here.
But she played her part. And even while she played her part, her mind was working on several levels.
The major portion of her mind was occupied with thoughts of Josh and their love. She wished she had been able to tell him again that she loved him—just in case. Wished they had shared more time together—just in case. Wished she had told him the dozens of tiny little things that didn’t really matter—just in case. Wished that she knew his favorite color … his favorite music … his favorite food—just in case.
Wished she could touch him.
On another level of her mind were the wispy flashes that were a kind of summing up of things left undone, unsaid, which always filtered through her thoughts at times like this. A lingering curiosity about the three men who seemed so close to Josh. Regret that she had not thanked Kelsey for being a good partner. Faint irritation that she had never told Hagen what she really thought of his devious methods and his invariable habit of—
Hagen. Hagen, who never told anyone everything, who always schemed within plots, and then plotted within schemes.
With a silent crash inside her head, everything came together. Her vague uneasiness of today made sense now—at least partially. Seemingly unrelated facts in a history made sense. That was what was wrong. A leopard couldn’t change its spots. She knew. Suddenly, she knew. Not why, because there had to be facts she was unaware of, but who.
Hagen, a wily old leopard who would never change, could never change. Leon, a leopard who had changed too quickly, too abruptly.
And Leon wasn’t in the room.
Raven felt that everything stopped, and then time advanced in agonizingly slow motion. Her back to Theodore and the guards, she stared at the girls, seeing each nervous blink, each frightened shift of the eyes.
She kept her body easily relaxed with a tremendous effort, but all her consciousness was focused in listening. It would come first in the other room; it had to come first in the other room because—
“Leon didn’t mention price,” she said without turning.
Flatly, Theodore quoted a price, clearly non-negotiable.
The sound she heard was only a distant thump, but Raven was reacting. With one hand she shoved the girls violently while her other hand dived into the purse and emerged with a gun. In the same moment, even as shots sounded in the other room, she was dropping behind a chair, her gun rising, aiming unerringly at Theodore.
And the rabbity little office boy was reacting, his thin face twisting in an expression of violent rage, nothing timid or nervous about him now. He clawed for his belt, for the gun she could see at his waist.
In the same instant, one of the guards dived toward the hallway, and Raven was almost instinctively aware that he was met there, crushed in a pair of powerful, merciless arms that belonged to one of Josh’s men.
The front door crashed open, and Kelsey was on the floor, his gun pointed at the second, frozen guard.
And behind Theodore, an arm extended to close about his throat, lifting him literally off his feet. “I wouldn’t,” Josh said in a very gentle tone, plucking the gun from Theodore’s belt.
Into the jarringly silent, frozen tableau walked Hagen very calmly. He stepped over Kelsey, looking only at Theodore, and his smile was a mixture of triumph and cold delight.
The door to the other room opened and Leon stepped out, his arm around a small dark woman with a thin face and haunted eyes, a woman smiling, crying with obvious happiness.
Hagen looked at them for a moment, then returned his gaze to Theodore’s livid face. “Theodore Thorpe Thayer the Third,” he said, clearly enjoying every syllable, “I hereby arrest you for the crimes of kidnapping, trafficking in human beings …”
NINE
“I COULD KILL him.”
Josh laughed a bit ruefully. “I almost did.”
They were in the penthouse apartment for a last night—courtesy of a grateful U.S. government Hagen had said, although he hadn’t managed to placate anybody with that fiction—and were in bed together.
Raven shook her head. She was lying on her stomach beside Josh, and gazing at him as he sat leaning back against the headboard of the bed. “That snake didn’t tell me anything. I never considered Theodore as a threat, except to my virtue. If I hadn’t figured out at least part of it there at the end, he might have shot me before I could react.”
Josh was still rueful. “It appears that your esteemed ex-boss had everything neatly worked out. He knew you’d guess the truth. He knew Zach, Rafferty, Lucas, and I would show up to lend the support he’d need. He knew that Travers would somehow manage to get his wife alone, leaving the other two guards ready to be grabbed by us. He claims that he even knew exactly how the guards in the living room would react.”
Josh shook his head, beyond astonishment, having exhausted his repertoire of curses hours before. “The man’s a lunatic.”
Almost unwillingly, Raven laughed. “You must admit—he was right on all counts.”
Josh toyed with a strand of her long hair, smiling at her. “By the skin of all our teeth—yes.”
“I should have guessed sooner,” she said in self-censure. “It was there all along. I’d studied the file on Leon until I could have recited every fact. But it wasn’t until I’d spent time with him that I began to wonder why he’d changed so radically, so suddenly. Until three years ago he was not only a law-abiding citizen, but also active in charity work. Then overnight he turned into a particularly evil type of criminal.”
Soberly, Josh said, “I’ll never stop regretting how badly I misjudged that man. In hell for three years, working as delicately as any surgeon to gather information that would put Thayer away—and all the time knowing that a false move by him would mean his wife’s death.”
“And then contacting Hagen,” Raven agreed, “and knowing what a chance he was taking. Literally putting his wife’s life in Hagen’s hands. He had the information he needed to get Theodore, but that wouldn’t have helped Christine, unless he could somehow be with her when Theodore was grabbed. She was moved from house to house with the girls every time, and Leon never knew where until h
e took a buyer to see them.”
Josh nodded. “It was a smart move on his part to demand that he see her whenever he had to escort buyers to see the girls. And since he’d been doing that for over a year now, Thayer grew less suspicious.” He smiled suddenly. “Your maxim: People don’t feel threatened by things they’re accustomed to.”
“At least it worked this time. Leon always went into another room to visit with Christine, and the guards had begun to leave them alone together. It was no problem for Leon to signal your men outside, and after Lucas forced the window …”
She was silent for a moment, then shook her head wonderingly. “Poor Leon. He hated white slavery above all else, but he had to stand by for three years with a gun held to his wife’s head and watch it happening. It must have torn him apart, seeing those girls.”
Softly, Josh said, “I can understand how he must have felt. If someone held a gun to your head, I’d do anything they asked.”
Raven caught the hand gently caressing her cheek, holding it against her. “I know.”
Josh tried to keep his mind on the conversation. “I’ve heard of devious plots before, but Thayer is really something. Blowing up that yacht three years ago so that Travers’s wife could publicly ‘die’ and then using Travers and all his money and connections as an elaborate cover for his slavery ring.”
“He is related to Leon, you know,” Raven said almost absently. “Some kind of fourth cousin or something. He knew how much Leon loved Christine, knew he’d do anything—anything at all—to keep her alive and well.” Remembering suddenly, she said, “You told me how you managed to get to the house in time, but what about the others?”
“They had me bugged,” Josh explained dryly. “Apparently, Zach was certain I’d go chasing after you—I can’t imagine why—and he decided they should run along to make sure I didn’t hurt myself.”
Raven giggled.
Disgusted, Josh said, “Well, that’s how it sounded when he explained it to me. Seems they felt I hadn’t been myself lately, and that I’d very likely go berserk just any minute.” He sighed. “Zach, damn him, had pretty much figured things out, but he didn’t feel certain enough to confide in me. That’s what he said, too—confide.”
