Annie's gray eyes widened. "Now that's more like it. She didn't even own an electric guitar before she met Boyd. Her mother said electric guitars weren't feminine."
"Barbara Miller and Boyd Monroe seem to be cut from the same cloth." The same one, actually, that his parents shared.
"Oh, they've got similar ideas about Harley, all right, but Mrs. Miller is basically a weak woman. Harley's taken care of her all of her life. No one would ever call Boyd weak."
"No," Duncan said, "that's not how I would describe him." He stopped a moment. It was a wonder Harley hadn't turned to booze or drugs or even sex to escape the man. But she hadn't. She had simply taken a holiday. She was … admirable.
"Look, Annie, I know the guy's a control freak," Duncan hurriedly pushed on, "but is there anything else going on with him? Anything that feels strange or looks odd or somehow doesn't seem to fit his job or his character?"
Annie was silent for a long moment as she considered this. "The only thing I can think of is that sometimes he gets tense about our schedule when there's no reason to be tense."
"Like what?"
"Well, like getting back to Los Angeles, for example. When he returned to the suite after trying and failing to bring Harley back Sunday night, he ranted and raved for a good half hour, not about her being out in the city alone, but about bow we'd probably miss the next afternoon's flight to L.A."
"But the recording studio wasn't booked until next week," Duncan said slowly. "Still, he'd scheduled a press conference at LAX."
"Yes, but that's not it," Annie said, frowning in concentration. "He wasn't yelling about Sony or the reporters or anything like that. He was yelling about how Harley had screwed up his schedule and how he had to be on that flight to L.A., not an earlier flight, and not a later flight, but that one o'clock flight we had tickets for."
"Interesting," Duncan murmured, staring out at the lush trees without really seeing them. Boyd had created a schedule that had nothing to do with Harley and everything to do with reaching Los Angeles on a particular day and at a particular time. He suddenly stood up and held out his hand. "Annie, you've been a tremendous help. Thank you."
"You're welcome," she said in confusion, shaking his hand as she stared up at him. "What does it mean?"
"I haven't the vaguest idea. But I'm going to find out." He started to turn away, and then stopped. "Just out of idle curiosity, what kind of cash advance limit do you have on your Visa?"
"Ten thousand dollars. I told her to use all of it."
"She's doing her best," Duncan said with a grin.
He strode into Emma's office ten minutes later bristling with energy and excitement. "Em," he said by way of hello to his assistant, "I want you to get me a detailed itinerary for every second of Jane Miller's recent world tour."
"Sure. But before—"
"I also want you to get me Harley Jane Miller's complete bank records, and then do the same by Boyd Monroe."
"Okay. But you—"
Duncan strode through the connecting door and into his sunlit office. "Then I want—" He stumbled to a halt. Two inordinately handsome men were sitting at his conference table. He glanced back and saw now how anxious Emma seemed. She mouthed, "I tried to warn you." He nodded and, feeling very much like a truant child being confronted by the principal and the truant officer, walked across his office to the two men. "Hi, Dad. Hi, Brandon. You're both back early."
Brandon Lang was two inches taller than his younger brother. At thirty-two, he had golden blond hair, pale blue eyes, a sleek, well-groomed body draped in a dark blue Armani suit, and a million-dollar smile that had effortlessly opened every door for him his entire life. Their father, Colby Lang, was Brandon's older, slightly thickset twin. He was wearing a pale gray Oxxford suit. He was not smiling.
"What in blue blazes do you mean by taking on the Miller case without my approval?" was how he greeted his younger son.
Duncan's eyes narrowed. "I couldn't reach you and it's just the kind of high-profile case you're always hammering at us to bring to the firm," he coolly replied.
"Precisely," the elder Lang snapped as he rose from his chair and began to pace the office. "You botch up this case and the whole world will know about it. You'll give the firm a black eye. I want you to turn the job over to Brandon. Now."
"No," Duncan said. If the Princess of Pop could take a stand, then so could he.
His father stared at him. "What did you say?"
"I said no. I am not a child, Father, no matter what you believe. I am fully capable of completing this case to everyone's satisfaction, and I will."
"You haven't got a clue how to run a proper investigation," Colby sneered. "You've worked on this job for a day now and I'll bet you anything you care to name that you don't have an idea where the girl is."
"Then you'd lose," Duncan retorted. "I know exactly where she is."
Colby stared at him a moment. "Then why the hell haven't you brought her in and closed the case?" he demanded.
"Because there are some things that don't add up," Duncan replied, shoving his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. His wardrobe was his one corporate rebellion. After two years even his father had stopped complaining. "I want to pursue a few leads and make sure nothing fishy is going on before I return Miss Miller to our client."
Colby swore, virulently. "I might have known you would try to make a mountain out of a molehill. There is nothing going on, Duncan, except a very simple missing-persons case which you claim to have solved. There will be no grandstanding in this company, particularly by you. Bring the girl in and bring her in now."
Duncan felt shrink-wrapped. "Oh, I'll bring her in, Father."
"Good," Colby barked, heading for the office door. "I've got a five o'clock meeting. I expect this case closed when I return."
The two brothers stared after their father for a moment. "Do you really know where Jane Miller is?" Brandon asked mildly.
"Of course I do!" Duncan snapped, whirling around to his desk.
"Good work," Brandon said, standing up. "I didn't think you had it in you."
"Imagine my surprise," Duncan said bitterly as he sat down in his green leather chair.
"I'm joking, Brother!"
Duncan flushed. "Sorry, Brandon. I'm the overly sensitive type."
"That must be why you get all the best women," Brandon retorted.
Duncan wryly regarded his older brother standing in front of his desk. "You do all right. How come you're back from Florida so soon?"
"Oh, case successfully closed, on to new adventures. The usual sort of thing."
Duncan chuckled ruefully. "It must be nice where you live. Don't you ever get tired of everything going so smoothly and easily for you?"
Brandon's smile faded for a moment and then made a quick recovery. "It has its benefits."
"Yes—Dad doesn't yell at you every hour on the hour, for one."
"He'll lighten up, Duncan. Just be patient."
"Two years adds up to a lot of patience, Brother."
"Yes, and everyone is impressed. Really, we all are, Duncan."
"Except Mother and Dad. There are times, Brandon, when I've resented your status as Favorite Son."
"And there are times, Brother, when I've resented all the fun you've had while I stayed at home with my nose to the grindstone."
"Really?" said Duncan with interest.
"Really," Brandon replied with his million-dollar smile. "Or at least I've resented all the party invitations you've received from the Beautiful People over the years."
"Sure you have."
Brandon chuckled. "Look, Duncan, I need your help. I've convinced Armand Giscard to use Colangco to protect his collection of diamonds while they're in the country for the Bartlett Museum jewelry exhibit."
That made Duncan sit up. "I thought Baldwin Security was handling that job."
Brandon's smile was smug. "I convinced Giscard that we're the better firm."
"But Colangco doesn't take mob client
s, even French ones."
"There is an exception to every rule."
"Publicity?"
Brandon nodded. "This is a very high profile security job, and not because of Giscard's connections. It's not every day that a million dollars' worth of diamonds that once belonged to Catherine the Great go on display at the Bartlett Museum. And it isn't every day that we get to guard them. It took a while, but I finally convinced Dad just before you came in that Americans have no idea that Armand Giscard is one of the kingpins of the French mob. Our clients will hear the name Catherine the Great and that's all they'll care about. The publicity for Colangco will be tremendous.
"Anyway," Brandon continued, "I'm in charge of managing security while the diamonds are in the country, and I've got a problem. Giscard only agreed this morning to hire us, and the diamonds are due to arrive Thursday for the Friday opening. I'm up to my neck on this one. The Bartlett's security system is ten years out of date. I'll be working day and night until the opening to make sure the diamonds are properly protected. I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me out with the transport route. Come up with the security plan we'll need to get the diamonds from Giscard's private jet to the museum, you know the sort of thing."
Duncan was not merely surprised, he was stunned. It was the first important job anyone in the firm had ever voluntarily given him, and it was Brandon playing Santa Claus. Recognition of any kind from his older brother was rare. "Sure," he said, careful to hide his eagerness. "Glad to help out. Have the background material sent to Emma. I'll come up with a plan by tonight."
"Great. Thanks a mill, Duncan," Brandon said with a lazy salute as he strolled from the office.
Duncan folded his arms across his chest with a happy sigh. He'd been right all along. The Princess of Pop was just the push he needed to start carving a niche for himself in the family firm. He glanced at his watch. Three-thirty. His father would be back by seven. Time to grab a late lunch or an early dinner.
He walked out into Emma's office. "Brandon's going to be sending over some information on the Giscard diamond job. When it arrives, have it messengered to my apartment, will you?"
"Sure," Emma said. "Are you really going to bring Jane Miller in before we check out this banking and itinerary information you asked me to get?"
"That's what Dad wants," Duncan replied, walking out into the hall.
* * *
It was just after four-thirty when Duncan walked into Bryant Park. He didn't need the tracker he had surreptitiously attached to Harley's mini-amp to find her. He seemed to have developed his own personal Harley radar in the last few hours. She sat cross-legged on a wooden bench beneath well-manicured shade trees, softly playing the new guitar balanced across her thighs, a small black tape recorder sitting beside her, and oblivious to the crowd of people around her. She had kept her word not to run off, then, in spite of her pleas and her arguments for freedom. Interesting.
He should not be here, of course. There were other things—like the transport plan for Armand Giscard's diamonds—that needed his time. But sitting all alone eating a late lunch had given him time to think, and all he had thought about was Harley. He had wanted to see her again (he would not let himself ask why), so he had tracked her to the park.
Now he had found her, but he didn't want to disturb that vacuum in space she had created for herself. It seemed too important to her. So he sat down on a park bench two rows away and studied her, wondering why he couldn't seem to take his eyes off her.
She wasn't beautiful or even pretty in the traditional sense, but there was something wonderfully attractive about her, even with the fake brown hair and eyes. He watched her playing her guitar now and envied that guitar. She had beautiful hands—strong and slender and graceful. He wondered how they would feel against his skin. And he liked her expressive, slightly freckled face too. But it was more than that.
There was something within her that radiated out for all the world to see, if the world would only look. His world had been gray for so long, that it took a moment for him to identify that bright aura: it was passion. Passion shimmered in her and around her with a glow that was hypnotic. A passion for freedom. A passion for the music she played, even though Boyd Monroe had spent the last nine years trying to murder that in her.
Duncan had never summoned the energy to hate anyone before, but he began to think that it would be an easy thing to hate Mr. Monroe. Annie Maguire had described nine years of soul murder. It had made him think of his own existence. Was that what he'd been doing these last two years? Murdering his own soul? Did he have his own internal little Boyd Monroe smothering the life out of him?
It had never occurred to him before this, perhaps because he had never really understood what life looked like and felt like before this. He began to understand now. Life was the passion shimmering in Harley, which he lacked. It was intelligence that was startling in its intensity. It was a smattering of freckles across a pert nose and angular cheeks that had always been hidden before by Jane Miller's skillful layers of makeup.
But this wasn't the Princess of Pop he studied, and he suspected it wasn't even the Jane Miller who had been caged for nine years. This was Harley, the Harley that Barbara Miller despaired of and Boyd Monroe despised and Annie Maguire was so loyal to. A Harley who was beginning to spread her large, cramped wings just when he had been ordered to stuff them back into her gilded cage.
Duncan shuddered a little. What kind of self-respect would he have if he turned her in to Boyd? She didn't deserve imprisonment, she was too much a creature of life. He knew what it was like to live in a small cage. He'd lived in one of his own choosing these last two years. Was escape his only chance for happiness too? But how could it be? Freedom for him had been just as bereft of satisfaction as the Lang family penitentiary.
Duncan had got the idea at an early age that life should be enjoyed, and he had set out to enjoy it with gusto. He had partied his way through high school and college, graduating from both institutions by the skin of his teeth. Rather than stepping onto the narrow path his family had laid out for him straight to a corner office in the prestigious Colangco International security firm, he had fled New York and even the country to partake of wine, women, and song with an exuberance that had made him extremely popular on every inhabited continent.
But after a while, a life of wine, women, and song had begun to pal. All of his relationships with women like Charmaine Relker and la Comtesse Pichaud had been casual—pleasurable, it was true—but short-term and ultimately unsatisfying. At the age of twenty-seven, he had finally taken stock of himself and didn't like what he saw: a man without strong morals or ethics, a man whose life was empty and purposeless, a man who had hundreds of friends and was very much alone.
There had seemed only one way to escape that miasma of the soul: forsake revelry and follow in his brother's footsteps. From his birth, Brandon had been held up to him as the good son, the perfect son, the pedestal to aspire to. Duncan had quite naturally rebelled against that goodness at an early age.
But as a very experienced and world-weary twenty-seven-year-old man, he had decided that perhaps Brandon had had the right idea all along.
So he had crawled over broken Dom Perignon bottles back to his parents, vowed to be good and sober and even celibate if necessary, and asked to be taken into the family firm to prove himself. And he had been taken in, except no one in his family believed his sincere avowals of temperance, obedience, and duty for a second. They had relegated him to the simplest of cases to keep him out of trouble and to avoid staining their company's sterling reputation with his inevitable (as far as they were concerned) mistakes, laziness, and disregard.
This mindless work left him bored out of his mind after one year, and in agony after two. He had tried to stay the course, thinking his sheer persistence would finally prove that he was an able member of the firm. He had even dated all of the trust-fund females his parents had thrown at him as suitable potential mates. But it hadn't worked. W
atching Harley now, he felt the absolute failure of these last two years.
There had been no satisfaction, and no happiness. Watching Harley now, he realized that in his entire life he had never tasted even a moment of the sheer happiness she exuded as she softly played her Stratocaster. Not with Charmaine Relker. Not in obediently coming into the office on time every day for two years.
Did the possibility of such happiness even exist for him? He thought about escape again, but where could he go? He couldn't think of a job or a career he'd like. Relationship, commitment, and marriage were not in his vocabulary. What else was there?
Duncan looked again at Harley through the growing shadows in the park. Well, there was this case. It had actually demanded that he use his brain, and it offered a real opportunity to finally prove to his family that he had value. Maybe he could siphon the beginnings of satisfaction from this case. Maybe he could learn something about happiness by studying it in its native habitat for a little while. Maybe the Princess of Pop really could help him turn his life around.
He smiled as he watched her. She was a gamine with a lovely, slender throat that he very much wanted to feel arched against his lips.
Suddenly the air left his lungs. He had the sensation of major backpedaling, and he was grateful. This was not the time to let hormones wreak havoc with his life, and this was not the woman at whom those hormones should be directed. She was an innocent, for Christ's sake, and a professional responsibility!
She was also his long-awaited pardon from this damned barren rock of penitence and obedience to which his family had banished him.
He stood up, slipped a stick of cinnamon gum into his mouth, and walked toward Harley just as she began putting her guitar back into its case. Duncan had deliberately missed his father's arbitrary deadline to turn her in. He'd miss it some more by letting her have this one last night of freedom. He'd given her his word and not even Colby Lang could make him break it. Only at midnight and not before would he take her back to the Ritz-Carlton, close out the case to his father's and Boyd Monroe's satisfaction, and maybe, just maybe, jump-start his life.
STOLEN MOMENTS Page 6
