by Cara Summers
“That’s correct.”
“From now on we’ll use taxis,” she said. “While we have some time, I’d like to ask you some questions that I was going to ask in the office earlier. They’re the same ones I’d ask any client that came to me with a problem like yours.”
Jonah decided he’d been playing the role of “good client” too long. “I’d like to start by discussing this.” On one of the sheets she’d given him, he wrote td. Then he held it so she could read the letters.
“‘Td’?”
“I’m wondering when that little tracking device was put on your car?”
She pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “My guess is that it was last night when I was with you at Pleasures.”
“So our friend Tank must have revisited the scene of the crime after his getaway and planted it then. Gutsy bastard.”
“Yes. The van was parked across the street from the parking lot. He would have seen us drive in. He’d know my car.”
“He couldn’t have been happy with the way you interfered. So he puts a tracking device on your car, and now he probably knows who you are.”
“And your point is?”
There was an edge to her tone, and he liked it a lot better than the chilly, lecturing one. “We’re not merely security expert and client. We’re partners, and you may need someone to watch your back as much as I do.”
“David Santos is watching both of our backs.” She leaned closer, the edge in her voice sharpening even as she lowered it. “As soon as Mark brings us what he’s found on the garage’s security discs, he’ll join the team. So I think you should remember that you are the client and let me do my job.”
Janine appeared with their coffees and a plate of cinnamon buns. “They’re on the house.” She was shaking her head as she walked off. “Bomb scares four days before Christmas.”
As soon as she was out of earshot, Jonah said, “Your eyes get darker when you’re angry but not as dark as when I’m kissing—”
“Stop!” She hissed the word as she poked a finger into his shoulder. “Stop that right now or you’ll be proving that I was right all along and David and Mark should be sitting here, not me. We should not have been doing…what we were doing in that garage.”
“Maybe not.” He took a strand of her hair, tested the silkiness between his fingers. “I’m not sure we can prevent…what we were doing…from happening again.”
“Backseat rule,” she reminded him. “Let me do my job.”
“Okay.” He leaned away from her. “I’ll go back to playing good client for a while on one condition.”
She shot up a brow. “What?”
“You’re staying at my place tonight.”
“Why should I do that?”
“The tracking device and bomb were put on your car. This guy has gotten you in his sights. If we stay together, we can make better use of G.W. Securities’ resources. Hopefully, we can prevent more people on your staff from becoming targets.”
He pulled out his cell phone. “Until this is over, we’re together, 24/7. I can make that argument to Gabe right now if you’d like.”
Cilla frowned at him while her mind raced for an alternative argument. But dammit, he was right. Gabe would not only agree with him but wonder why she didn’t. “I can see why you’re good at negotiating deals.”
He smiled at her. “I’m good at other things, too.” He gripped her chin in his hand and gave her a brief kiss. At least, he’d intended it to be brief. But that intention flew out the window when her lips softened and opened for him, and her taste lured him into taking more. Each time he kissed her, there seemed to be more flavors to explore—layers of sweetness and spice that changed as the heat grew.
He’d expected her to pull back. But she had yet to do that. And the thought, the challenge of it had him adjusting the slant of the kiss and plunging them both deeper. The flavors changed again. Now what he tasted was a mix of surrender and greed, and he was no longer sure that he had the power to pull back. He sank fast, further and further until something inside of him gave way.
He was vaguely aware of a smattering of applause, a couple of whistles. But that wasn’t what gave him the strength to draw away. It was the realization that this woman might be able to take everything from him. Every thing.
Jonah leaned back in his chair and reminded himself to breathe. His head was still spinning but he managed to keep his hand steady when he reached for one of the buns.
He took a bite, watching her and waiting for her eyes to clear before he pointed at the plate Janine had brought. “We’re going to need another order of these. Suddenly, I’m starved.”
Cilla spoke in a very low voice. “You were supposed to play good client.”
“I tried.”
“Try harder.” She lifted her pencil. “This is a question I would ask any client during a first session so don’t give me any grief. How exactly would you describe what’s happening to you? I want it in your own words.”
He sipped his coffee again. She had to have been as affected by that kiss as he was, and he admired the way she could snap right back into Priscilla mode. But it had been Cilla he’d kissed. Cilla who was as vulnerable to him as he was to her.
“I’m not asking for a novel here or a dissertation,” she said, “just a short description, twenty-five words or less.”
The thread of sarcasm in her tone had him smiling. “Someone has sent me three mildly threatening notes all wrapped up as Christmas presents. And they hired some rather incompetent thugs to mug me.”
“Why ‘mildly’ threatening?”
He paused long enough to bite into another bun, chew and swallow. “Because the notes aren’t specific, I suppose. Reminding me that life and fortune are fleeting doesn’t amount to a death threat. Life and fortune are fleeting. Everything can be lost in a heartbeat.”
“But they also want you to pay.”
“For what? Even that’s vague. Maybe the notes are leading up to some kind of ransom demand.”
She tapped her pencil on the pad. “For money?”
“Yes.”
“And the attempted mugging, the bomb planted under my car are geared to scare you and motivate you to pay.” She considered for a moment. “None of the people on the list you gave me rings a bell yet?”
“Not a one.”
Cilla studied him closely. “Any ex-lovers who might hold a grudge?”
He smiled again. And just that sudden curve of his lips softened her bones. She could no longer feel the pencil she held in her hand.
“No complaints so far,” he said.
There wouldn’t be. Cilla certainly didn’t have any. And she didn’t seem to have any resistance to him. Not in the garage earlier and not when he’d kissed her a few minutes ago. It didn’t matter where they were when he kissed her, she wanted. Nothing, no one else existed but him. It was that simple. That terrifying.
A man who could kiss the way he did could probably ease his way out of a relationship as easily as he indulged in one. With no hard feelings on anyone’s part. Wasn’t that exactly the deal he’d offered her in that hotel bar? The thought brought the feeling back to her fingers.
“And the use of words like pleasures and interludes, names of your clubs—does that seem mildly threatening also?”
He frowned. “Yes. And more specific in a way.”
She glanced up and met his eyes again. “Your businesses mean a lot to you.”
“Yes.”
Although it was the answer she expected to hear, Cilla felt a tightening around her heart. To a man like Jonah Stone, the businesses he’d created would take precedence over everything. That had always been the case with her father.
Then she refocused. “You’re more worried about the threat to your clubs than you are about the possible threat to you.”
There was a beat before he said, “Yes.”
“Who would know that about you?”
He thought for a moment. “My close friends, anyo
ne who works for me. Perhaps even anyone I’ve done business with.”
“A manager like Virgil would certainly be aware of this. How about the manager of Interludes?”
“Carmen D’Annunzio. Yes, she would. She volunteered at the St. Francis Center my last year there when opening Pleasures was on my mind 24/7. Her two sons were regulars. I thought of her a few years later when I opened Interludes and she agreed to move here to San Francisco.”
“I’ll want to talk to Virgil and Carmen. They could have valuable insights.” After jotting down the names, she glanced at him again. “It would be better if I could speak with them alone.”
“We’ll be at both places today. I can give you some time with them.”
“What about your family?”
“I don’t have one.”
The sudden coolness in his tone was a perfect match to what she saw in his eyes. He wanted her to back off.
She kept her voice calm, her tone reasonable. “Everyone has a family, even if we’d rather trade them in for different models. Gabe wouldn’t have to ask the question because he probably already knows. But I don’t, and you insisted that I work the case. What happened to your family?”
He said nothing for a moment. “I’ll tell you about my family if you’ll tell me about yours.”
She bit back a sigh. “I’m not asking you to satisfy idle curiosity. Finding out about your family is part of my job.”
He nodded. “A job you’re good at, so you must have to negotiate with difficult clients. I don’t like to talk about my family. So if I have to dig them up, what can it hurt to humor me a little?”
She raised her brows. “This is your idea of playing good client?”
He lifted his mug, his eyes laughing at her over the rim. “You didn’t stipulate perfect. And I haven’t really shown you bad yet.”
She couldn’t prevent the laugh. And when he joined her, she was charmed by the sound. “Okay. But you first.”
He cupped his hands around his mug. “My parents were Susan and Darrell Stone. They met at a party my mother was waitressing at. He was a guest. It was love at first sight. Darrell Stone had some kind of secret government job that kept him away from home more than he was there.”
As Jonah spoke, his tone was neutral. So were his eyes. Cilla felt her heart twist all the same.
“When I was a kid, the happiest days of my life were the ones he spent with us. He used to tell stories of the adventures he had, some in countries I’d never heard of. The year I was nine, he’d called my mom and promised to be home for Christmas. We waited and waited to open the presents and have dinner. But he never came, never sent word. Because of his work, my mother never had any way to contact him. Shortly after Christmas, the checks he always sent us stopped coming, and my mother went back to work waitressing. I watched her grow sadder and sadder. She kept telling me that he would come home soon, but I think it was to convince herself.”
Jonah set down his mug, and Cilla reached out to take his hand in hers. The image of Jonah as a nine-year-old boy was so vivid in her mind.
“Six months after Christmas, a beautiful June day, my mom was struck and killed by a bus. Later, when I was older, I read the reports of the accident. Witnesses said she stepped in front of the bus. I don’t think she could live without him.”
“I am so sorry about your mother.” Both parents had abandoned him and she couldn’t begin to imagine what that might feel like. “Didn’t anyone try to find your father?”
“Sure. A social worker told me they were doing their best to trace him, but no branch of the government employed a Darrell Stone who matched my father’s description or age. So I went into foster care.”
“Did you ever try to trace him? Gabe tells me you’re the best hacker he’s ever met.”
“No. When I was young, I hadn’t developed that skill yet.” He shrugged. “By the time I did, I had no interest in finding my father. He’d been dead to me for a long time.”
Cilla met his eyes steadily. “We’ll have to try to locate him, see if he’s still alive.”
She waited a beat, and when he said nothing she continued, “We’re already tracking down names of families and kids you met in foster care. Gabe is getting the names of people you came in contact with when you worked at the St. Francis Center.”
“It’s a long list, but you’ve already met one of the kids I knew in foster care. Virgil.”
She glanced up at that.
“The first foster home I was in, he stood up for me. When I knew I was going to open Pleasures, I tracked him down. He was working in a bar over in Sausalito, and I hired him to manage my club.”
“You hire Virgil from your first foster home, then you hire Carmen from the St. Francis Center. You don’t abandon your friends, Jonah Stone.”
“I make good business decisions. Now it’s your turn.”
She set her pencil down. “My parents are Penny and Bradley Michaels. My mother has Boston blue blood in her veins, and my father met her when he was getting his MBA at Harvard. They divorced when I was five because my mother wanted more attention and he was focused totally on his work. He’s had a stellar career and become a CEO at four Fortune 500 companies. He’s currently trying to get a fifth one on the list. My mother’s mission in life is to find Prince Charming. She’s sure that husband number four, Bobby Laidlaw, is the one.”
He studied her for a moment. She was giving him the same Reader’s Digest version he’d given her. It only made him more curious. “How in hell did you end up becoming a cop?”
She smiled at him. “Textbook case of rebellion. My career still annoys my father. He calls me twice a year—on my birthday and at Christmas—and he always offers me a job with his current company.”
“That’s not the only reason you do the work you do.”
“Maybe not. How did you end up creating places like Pleasures and Interludes?”
“I like creating worlds that offer people a chance to escape from the ordinary.”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “That’s not the only reason. But—” she picked up her pencil “—we have other things to discuss.”
Adjusting the pad so they both could read it, she wrote: Christmases past, Interludes, Pleasures, for- tune, fleeting and you’re going to pay, six, five, four and counting.
She tapped her pencil on Christmases past. “My hunch is we’re going to find the answer here.”
“I agree, but I’m coming up empty.”
She moved her pencil to six. “That number has to mean something. What was going on at Christmas six years ago?”
He hadn’t thought of that angle and he had to concentrate for a moment before it came to him. “I was still in Denver working for Gabe at G.W. Securities while I was getting together a business plan and attracting backers. Any spare time I had during the holiday season, I always helped out at the St. Francis Center.”
“That would have been 2005. Can you think of anything more specific?”
Jonah frowned as the year suddenly rang a bell. “Yeah, now that you mention it. That was the year I spent Christmas here in San Francisco. This was where I wanted to open my first club because of St. Francis. I figured he’d always brought me good luck before, so I thought it was a good idea to begin in a city that was named after him. Nash’s grandmother, Maggie Fortune, had gotten together a group of backers, and I asked her to come with me to look at some properties I had lined up.”
“Was Carl Rockwell around? You said he was one of your original backers.”
“No. I hadn’t met any of them yet. It was just Nash’s grandmother and me. Nash was overseas and I had some idea of getting her away from the Fortune Mansion over the holidays. We came up with the name of the club on that trip.”
He smiled. “We spent every day for a week, save Christmas Day, looking at real estate. And we found the building where Pleasures now stands.”
“So that year, you were particularly focused on business.”
“You could say that.�
��
Cilla turned the pad around and began writing. “Gabe can check with Father Mike and contact Mrs. Fortune to see what they can remember about that December. In the meantime, we can’t ignore other possibilities.”
“But this is a good one. I can feel it.” He placed a hand on hers. “You’re good, Cilla Michaels.”
“I need to get better.” With her pencil, she tapped on the paper where he’d written td. “We need a better handle on who this Tank guy is. Part of what he’s doing is carefully planned. The notes, the boxes and ribbon, even some of the places he chooses for delivery—it all needs to be precisely orchestrated.”
She tapped her pencil again. “But there’s a part of him that’s less careful and more open to going with impulse. There’s no way that he could have known we’d be at the police station this morning until we actually got there.”
“You’re right,” Jonah mused. “And why would someone who has been so meticulous with this countdown-to-Christmas scenario hire a couple of low IQ thugs like Mickey P. and Lorenzo?”
“Or why drive a van that backfires? And last night at Pleasures, why lower the window and shoot his gun? Why not just drive away?”
“Temper? Maybe we’re dealing with someone who isn’t as stable as he thinks he is,” Jonah said.
When her cell phone rang, she took the call. “Finelli, what have you got?” As she listened, she summarized the information for Jonah. “The bomb hadn’t been fully wired yet. The bomb squad thinks we may have interrupted whoever was working on it.” Then she went silent, listening hard.
When she finally disconnected Finelli’s call, she looked straight at Jonah. “Someone on the bomb squad recognized the type of explosive. He’d served in the military and seen similar ones used in Iraq. Whoever built it was good, probably ex-military, and it would have had to be set off by a detonator. When Joe learned that, he had someone search the garage and they found the detonator in the stairwell on the floor where my car was parked.”
Jonah thought for a moment. “The tracking device allowed Tank to locate your car and he was planting the bomb when we interrupted him. He slips away, and when he sees us checking the car, he panics and runs.”
