The security man took out a key and unlocked the door, then looked around the immediate area before finally opening the door and entering with the guest in tow.
Less than a minute later, the security guard was back out in the hallway, without the guest. He carefully locked the door behind him and left.
Tiana waited until Ashcroft’s security man was well clear of the area before she made a move. Satisfied that the man was gone, she crossed quickly to the door, then paused to listen.
She heard nothing coming from the other side. But she had a feeling that either the door was soundproof or if there were any girls to be found there, they might be so drugged that they were unconscious, or close to being paralyzed. As for the guest who had disappeared behind the door, she was fairly certain that she could take him. He presented no threat to her.
Here goes nothing, Tiana thought.
The door was locked. She’d expected nothing less, although it would have been nice to catch a break, she thought wearily. However, this was not an insurmountable obstacle. She’d learned how to pick a lock years ago while still a teenager. To punish her whenever she committed some infraction of the rules he laid down for her and her sister, her father would have the locks on the front door changed, leaving her to spend the night out in the cold. One of his friends on the force took pity on her and showed her how to use a set of skeleton keys. To this day, she was never without them.
Today was no exception.
Easing the door open, to her surprise Tiana discovered that the door didn’t lead to a room. It led to a hallway, beyond which were a number of doors.
She had no idea which to try first or what she might find behind them.
Playing odds she had calculated in her head, she tried the doorknob to the second room. It gave. The room was empty, but it gave the appearance of having recently been vacated. The bed was in complete disarray. Someone had been there, but they were gone now.
The third room was empty, as well, but unlike the previous room, this one didn’t appear to have been recently occupied, then quickly vacated.
The bed looked untouched. It was beginning to appear as if the last guest had been taken somewhere farther down the hallway. Tiana was determined to try every room until she found either the guest, or her sister.
The fourth room, the last one on that side of the hallway, was occupied. The man she’d seen following the security man wasn’t there, but there was a girl lying facedown on the bed.
She was dressed in pink, her strawberry blonde hair covering any visible portion of her face.
Tiana’s heart all but stopped as she quickly entered the room and closed the door behind her. The face might have been obscured, but she knew, knew this had to be her sister.
“Janie?” she whispered.
The girl on the bed didn’t respond. There was no indication that the female she was talking to was even conscious.
Crossing over quickly to the bed, Tiana gingerly touched the girl’s shoulder.
She shrank away, her head still buried in the comforter.
Tiana knew fear when she saw it. Janie had shrunk away exactly like that when she was cringing before their father’s wrath.
“Janie?” Tiana repeated in an urgent whisper. “Is that you?”
The girl still didn’t respond except to attempt to shrink even farther into the bed.
Tiana’s heart told her it was Janie, but even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t just turn away and leave this girl here like this. Tiana gently placed a hand on each of the girl’s slender, bare shoulders and raised her up to look at her.
When the girl finally lifted her head, she stared blankly at her, as if she couldn’t process who or what she was seeing.
Janie.
“Oh, my God, what have they done to you, Janie?” Tiana cried in a strangled whisper, horrified at what might have happened to her sister, afraid to let her imagination go. Whatever had been done to her didn’t matter right now. The only thing that mattered was getting her sister out of here.
“Can you walk, honey? Can you stand up? Please, baby, try. I’ve got to get you out of here,” she told her sister urgently.
The girl continued to stare at her, but finally, there seemed to be an inkling of recognition entering the blue eyes. A spark of understanding.
“T?” Janie murmured in confusion, as if she couldn’t understand what her sister was doing here in her nightmare.
T.
Tiana’s heart all but seized up on her. That was what Janie used to call her when they were little girls, because she couldn’t say her whole name. Tiana felt tears welling up in her eyes.
Now wasn’t the time, Tiana angrily upbraided herself. She’d cry after she got her sister out of here and to some safe area, not before. Right now this definitely didn’t qualify as a safe area.
“It’s me,” she told Janie urgently. “C’mon, we’ve got to get you out of this room before someone comes in.”
But as she drew her sister up from the bed, struggling to get her to stand up, Janie collapsed at her feet. Tiana tried getting her up again, but with the same results. Janie’s legs seemed rubbery and incapable of sustaining any sort of weight.
“I can’t,” Janie cried in a hoarse, frustrated voice. “I can’t. Go,” she ordered, finally beginning to get a glimmer of spirit in her voice. “They’ll be back any second. You’ve got to get out of here.”
“Not without you, I don’t,” Tiana informed her fiercely. Taking hold of Janie’s arm, she slung it over her shoulder and held on to it tightly with her other hand as she struggled to get her sister upright. “We’re getting out of here together.”
“Very noble. I take it you’re related.”
The smooth, suave voice, coming out of the blue like that, managed to slice through her consciousness. Tiana turned to see that Ashcroft was standing in the doorway, blocking her way out.
“Yes, you’re sisters, aren’t you?” he said, answering his own question. “I can see the resemblance now. Actually,” he confessed, “it struck me when you offered me that goblet of wine from your tray. I have a rather well-developed memory, and I saw immediately that you have the same features.” His eyes narrowed onto their target as he looked at her lips. “The same tempting mouth. Except that you’re too old for most of my clientele. Their tastes apparently have never fully progressed past high school. Personally, I’m not that restrictive,” he said, moving in closer.
Tiana’s flesh felt as if it wanted to crawl away. This other side to a man who had been dubbed “Mr. Generosity” was cold and decidedly creepy.
Desperate to save Janie and not wanting to allow Ashcroft to think that he was frightening her, she pointed out to him rather icily, “Then Janie’s too old for them, too. She’s nineteen.”
Ashcroft nodded as he spared Janie a quick, admiring look. “I rather suspected as much,” he told her as if they were old friends, sharing a confidence, “but you have to admit, your sister looks younger than her chronological age—her boyfriend swore that she was underage, but then, he was enamored with the ‘finder’s fee’ he thought he was getting.
“Poor thing,” he commented, regarding Janie now as if she were an inanimate object, “being handled like so much chattel by that worthless boyfriend of hers. She really should have been a better judge of character,” he said, shaking his head.
“That doesn’t matter at the moment,” Tiana bit off. Did Ashcroft think he could just chat her up, diverting her attention from the real issue? Just how simpleminded were the people he dealt with? “It’s over. Don’t make things worse for yourself by trying to keep us here.”
Ashcroft laughed and it occurred to Tiana that she had never heard a harsher, more chilling sound.
“Oh, my dear, you’re right about it being over, but I’m afraid that it’s you who’s over, not
me.” Ashcroft cocked his head, looking at her sympathetically. “You must be intelligent enough to understand that. I couldn’t be that poor a judge of character—could I?” he asked whimsically.
“People know I’m here,” she told him in no uncertain terms, even though, to the best of her knowledge, only Brennan knew and he was only one man. A man who most likely was on the other side of the mansion right now. “It’s just a matter of time before—”
“Please, don’t insult my intelligence,” Ashcroft requested with incredibly polite civility. “No one knows you’re here. We both know that. If there was an official investigation going on, or something that might eventually lead people to my doorstep, I would have known about it long before this moment. I stay abreast of things like that, because leaving them to chance is worse than foolish. I have people everywhere,” he informed her smugly. “And you, my dear, are apparently being a tad dramatic. Well, I’m afraid I must tell you that it won’t do you any good.”
He watched in amusement as she did her best to get to the door with Janie, who half dragged first one leg, then the other. All the while Janie held on tightly to her waist.
“She’s drugged,” Ashcroft pointed out needlessly. “How far do you think you’ll get?”
“As far as she needs to,” Brennan said, his presence filling the doorway to the expensively decorated torture chamber.
Things from that point happened almost too quickly for Tiana to process.
Seeing Brennan here, judging by the expression on Ashcroft’s face, the philanthropist knew he had come face-to-face with the end of his elaborately fashioned charade. Fearing exposure, the billionaire grabbed Tiana, yanked her to him and quickly converted her into a human shield for himself as her sister, deprived of support, crumbled to the floor.
He aimed a gun right against Tiana’s temple.
“Think again,” Ashcroft taunted.
Chapter 18
“You don’t want to do this,” Brennan told Ashcroft, his eyes never leaving the billionaire’s as he trained his handgun on the man.
“You’re right, I don’t,” Ashcroft replied, sounding almost amicable. Even so, his grip around Tiana’s waist tightened and the weapon he had remained against her temple. “However, the way I see it, I have no choice. Either I give up everything I’ve worked for all these years and see my reputation dragged through the mud, or I eliminate the two witnesses who have it in their power to destroy everything that I am.”
“You took care of that yourself,” Tiana snapped at him, her anger getting the better of her.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Ashcroft allowed. He glanced at the girl on the floor and must have decided she wasn’t a threat. Brennan was much more forbidable at that moment. “But the question right now is how to fix this. Giving up is not an option here,” he told Brennan.
“Death by cop isn’t exactly a feel-good alternative,” Brennan countered. The tension within the room was mounting quickly.
“Oh, but I don’t intend to die,” Ashcroft said to Brennan. “In case it hasn’t hit you, that would require you taking one hell of a shot, Detective. Are you that good?” he asked, his tone mocking him. “Put your weapon down on the floor and maybe I’ll let her live.”
“Brennan, don’t do it,” Tiana cried. “Don’t put down your weapon! He’ll kill all three of us. Shoot him!”
“I wouldn’t chance it if I were you,” Ashcroft told him, shifting Tiana so that she blocked most of him. All except for the fact that he was about three inches taller than she was.
“But you’re not me.”
The gun Brennan had kept leveled on Ashcroft went off as he fired one well-aimed bullet directly into the center of Ashcroft’s forehead. The second the bullet exploded, Tiana lunged forward, clear of the man even as he sank down on the floor, an utterly surprised expression frozen on his lean, patrician face.
Tiana stared at Brennan, wide-eyed. That was an incredible shot, given his vantage point. “You killed him,” Tiana cried.
“Had to. If I’d just wounded him, he would have gotten his shot in and that would have been you lying on the floor right there instead of him.” His eyes all but devoured her. She was all right, he assured himself. She was all right. “I picked him. That okay with you?” he asked, sounding almost laid-back about what had just transpired.
She saw no point in acting nonchalant. “That’s wonderful with me.”
His concern got the better of him for a moment. “Are you really all right?” he asked her solicitously.
Tiana allowed herself just ten seconds to exhale and pull herself together. “Yes, thanks to you.” And then she was turning toward her sister, trying to drag Janie to her feet. Brennan gently moved her out of the way and picked up the unconscious girl, placing her on the bed.
“I don’t know what he gave her, but he really drugged her. She’s completely out of it,” she told Brennan. “I tried talking to her, but I don’t know how much she absorbed.”
“The hospital should be able to figure it out,” he assured her. “There’re more girls in the rooms around the corner down the hall. The place is honeycombed with them. We hit the mother lode. Looks like Ashcroft wanted one last hurrah before he had the girls smuggled out of the country.” He took out his cell phone to call in Duncan and what was by now the rest of his backup.
She had to know. Tiana put her hand on his cell phone, interrupting his call. “How did you happen to appear just in the nick of time?”
He looked at her, amused. “Complaining?”
“Oh, God, no, just curious.”
He pressed a few numbers on his keypad and listened to a phone ring on the other end. Once it was picked up, all he said was “Come now. It’s over.” Getting Duncan’s confirmation that he was on his way, Brennan put his phone away and told her, “I could say it was magnificent timing.”
“You could, but it wouldn’t be the truth.” Brennan didn’t strike her as the type to leave things up to chance like that. “This end of the mansion is just littered with rooms. Just how did you pick the right one at the right time?” she asked.
“I used a tracking device.”
“On me?” she asked incredulously. “What kind of tracking device?” And just how had he managed to pin it on her person without her noticing it, or having it set off any alarms?
“The kind that works,” he told her drolly.
“Brennan.” She stretched his name out, a warning tone in her voice. Her nerves stretched to their full capacity, she wasn’t in the mood for word games.
Brennan made up his mind to tell her everything. There was no point not to. “You know when I told you not to do anything too stupid?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I did give your arm a squeeze,” he reminded her.
“Yes?” She was still waiting for a plausible explanation.
“That was so you wouldn’t notice I was planting a tracking device on your person.” He could see that she was struggling with accepting this information, with being kept in the dark about something so blatant. “I wasn’t about to risk having something happen to you,” he said fiercely.
“Oh?” she asked, picking up something in his voice that made her stop and take stock of the situation, of what they had between them.
“The report about a partner’s murder has to be done in triplicate,” he deadpanned. “I’m a man of action. I’m not a typist. I’d be at the station all night.”
She nodded, her tone matching his. “Well, can’t have that.”
He looked at her for a long moment, allowing himself to lightly touch a strand of hair that fell into her eyes. “Not when I have someplace better to be.”
She nodded, telling herself not to melt right here. Not yet. “Which would be anywhere but behind a desk, filling out forms.”
“I was thinking
of someplace more specific,” he said. “Like my place—with you. Now that this is finally over, I can show you where I really live—if you’re interested,” he added, watching to see her reaction.
“Oh, I am.” She glanced over toward her sister. Janie was still unconscious. “But I need to get Janie checked out first.”
“That goes without saying,” he agreed. A commotion had him reaching for the gun he’d holstered. Tiana was quick to pick up the gun that Ashcroft had dropped. Both weapons were trained at the door when it opened again.
Duncan stopped dead in his tracks, pushing Valri behind him before either of them realized what was actually happening. “Is that any way to treat backup that you sent for?”
“Sorry, just a little edgy,” Brennan confessed, holstering his weapon again.
“Understandable,” Duncan allowed. “You all right?” he asked, looking from his brother to the woman who had accompanied him on this mission.
Before either could answer, Duncan looked down at the dead man on the floor. His mouth dropped open. “Oh, hell, is that...?”
“One and the same,” Brennan told him.
“You mean he’s the one behind all this?” Valri asked, stunned.
“That’s the way this played out,” Brennan told his sister. He glanced back at the man who had built up as well as destroyed so many lives. It was the perfect cover, he couldn’t help thinking. “Guess he was a little too self-made for his own good.”
By the sound of the indignant protests, reinforced by echoes of running feet, police personnel were flooding the entire mansion, leaving no room untouched. Festive party attendees turned into shocked and angry detainees until everything could be sorted out.
Ambulances arrived to take the girls who were found chained and held captive to several different hospitals in the immediate vicinity.
Tiana accompanied her sister within the ambulance that was taking Janie to the closest hospital.
“I’ll meet you there,” Brennan called after her as a paramedic shut the doors. She nodded in response, but the truth of it was she really didn’t expect him to follow through on his promise.
Cavanaugh Undercover Page 20
