by Mary Buckham
But was that enough to tell Stone? Or would he shoot her down?
“Vaughn?” His voice nudged her.
“It’s a gut feeling. You’ve got to trust me on this one.”
He didn’t reply.
So she added, “And see if you can have Ling Mai reach some of my father’s people. No telling how much firepower Blade will have around the place. Stopping the transfer of the control and the password is too important to leave it just to us.”
“Copy.”
Another first. Stone taking orders that no doubt galled him as they did her. But she was right. This was no longer a test to see if Ling Mai’s fledgling agency had the power to go where others could not. They’d already proved that. Now they had to have the experience to know when to call in the big guns. Even if such a call meant Vaughn and her father would face off head-to-head.
It wasn’t a scenario Vaughn was looking forward to.
Calling Blade’s home a house would be an understatement. It looked like the fourteenth-century palace it’d originally been. It had been built at a time when fortified accommodations were all the rage. Golden-toned stucco walls several feet thick surrounded an exterior courtyard; there were small windows on all the lower levels, and a solid wood door looked as if it ate battering rams for breakfast.
The trip from India to Milan’s Malpensa Airport was not as rough as it could have been. Some day, she’d tell Stone how little experience she really had with a Javelin. But not now.
Now the two of them were crouched on the private roadway leading to Blade’s relatively secluded villa. The good news was it was obvious Blade had not arrived. The bad news was Vaughn might have guessed incorrectly.
“What now, princess?” Stone whispered at her side, adding, “If your boyfriend is coming, he could be here at any time.”
“He’s not my boyfriend and he will be here.” She kept her gaze straight ahead, discarding one option after another as to how best get inside the villa. “My guess is Blade would have stashed both the control and passwords here before he left for India. Safer that way.”
“We could scale the far wall, use the maneuvers we worked on first week at The Farm.”
“Or we could try something else.” She glanced over at what Stone was wearing and thought they just might be able to pull this off.
“I don’t like that look, princess. What’s your plan?”
“Simple.” She grinned. “We go in by the front door.”
Chapter 21
“This isn’t a plan, it’s suicide,” Stone grumbled at her side, but he kept pace with her step by step as they approached the twelve-foot solid wood doors. Their footsteps crunched across the graveled drive. Close by several dogs barked, then subsided into low-pitched growls.
“Sure it’s a plan.” She glanced over at him, pausing long enough to ruffle his hair with one hand and earn a frown. “This is the Billy Bob and Angelina plan.”
“The what?”
“You know? Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie arrived at some awards ceremony, disheveled, and Billy Bob says, ‘We just bleeped in the limo on the way to the show.’ You remember?”
He actually looked as if he had blushed. “My education is obviously lacking.”
“Appalling.” She grinned in spite of the rumba her stomach was doing because they’d reached the doors amid a rush of commotion on the other side of the stucco walls. She heard running footsteps, and dogs had started to bark.
She linked her arm with Stone’s and grinned as if there were a dozen paparazzi snapping pictures as the door opened and a stern-faced young man faced them.
“Ciao,” Vaughn gushed, adding a laugh when the man said nothing. “Mi ciamo, ah, oh.” She glanced at Stone, who looked wooden, before she turned back to the man. “I’m sorry. I always mess up my Italian. I’m Vaughn Werner.” She stuck out her hand, letting it dangle in empty space. She stepped closer to him, making sure she sounded deb-dim, aware Stone would cringe at the tone. “I’m an old friend of Blade’s. Is he here?”
“No.” The door started to close.
She stepped forward, tugging Stone with her. Two bodies made a better wedge than one. “But Blade told me to meet him here. Surely he should be arriving at any moment.”
“No.” The door shifted again, but it was blocked.
“Really.” Vaughn fisted hands on her hips. “Find me a majordomo or head person. Someone I can speak with.” When the man didn’t move, she clapped her hands. Associating with the rich and famous had its advantages, and being able to act like an aristocratic pain in the backside was one of them.
The man nodded to someone behind the door. Seconds ticked by while Vaughn held his gaze with an angled head. Soon the sound of heavy footfalls across marble floors reached her and a middle-aged woman who looked more like a peasant than majordomo moved into view.
“Thank heavens.” Vaughn spoke to her directly. “A woman. These men know nothing.”
“Sì.” The woman offered a faint smile, or maybe it was only a trick of the shadows.
“My name is Vaughn Werner and I’m a friend of Blade’s. An old friend.”
“Sì.”
So far, so good. At least they’d gotten around no as an only response.
She continued, “Last I saw Blade, he told me to meet him here. But this one—” she glanced at the first man still holding the door like a shield “—he doesn’t know how to treat guests.”
“Where you see Signor Blade?” the woman asked, suspicion darkening her eyes.
“In Simla. India. We were just there and flew directly in today.” For good measure, she added, “Blade said he would be right behind us and that it would be perfectly fine to meet him at his villa.” She threw up her hands in a gesture she’d seen her sister use with clerks and waiters. “But if it’s too much of a problem, we’ll just leave and you can deal with his wrath.”
“No.” The older woman stepped forward to peer at Stone. “And he?”
“I’m Billy Bob,” came the drawled reply.
Vaughn bit back a groan. Just like Stone to manifest a sense of humor at a time like this. She kept her smile firmly in place and focused on the woman before her.
“You may come in.” The woman stepped back. “But wait only in the study of Signor Blade. Nowhere else.”
Since the study was the most likely place Blade would have a safe, the idea was perfectly acceptable to Vaughn.
“Thank you.” She frowned at the man slowly opening the door. “Obviously it’s good to work with someone able to make command decisions.”
Then the woman added, “The signor should be here at any time. He called from Milan and is coming.”
Talk about bombs dropping.
Without saying more, tempting though it was, Vaughn and Stone followed the woman down a paneled hallway, their passage ringing off the Carrara marble floors. How long did they have? Thirty minutes? Less?
She gave the older woman a stiff smile as she closed the door behind them with a resounding click. It sounded awfully close to a death knell.
“Come on, Billy Bob,” Vaughn whispered, scanning the art-lined walls and bookcases for the most likely place to cache a safe. The Jackson Pollock looked promising. But then so did the Miró.
Stone obviously didn’t care for twentieth-century abstract painters as he was systematically checking the desk drawers.
To each his own.
Gently, in case there were booby traps or trip wires, Vaughn felt around the edges of both good-sized paintings.
Nothing.
She tried a small Chagall and a watercolor by Winslow Homer.
Still nothing.
“You dusting or hunting for a wall safe?” Stone said from behind her.
“Don’t get—” She turned and caught the faintest shadow along the far bookcase. Without another word she knelt beside the crack where molding met molding.
“In case you forgot the woman with one eyebrow, we don’t have a lot of time—”
“Shh,” she whispered, leaning closer to the case, catching the whiff of old leather bindings and dust. And something else. Something cool, damp and smelling of age.
It took breaking off two fingernails before Stone joined her and started searching, too.
“It’s got to be here,” she said, more to herself than him. “A lever or wheel or button. Something. There’s a—”
And just like that, her elbow grazed a first edition Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the wall shifted on well-oiled hinges.
“Voilà.” She grinned at Stone.
“Lucky guess.”
“Jealous.”
He grinned in reply as they faced a rough-hewn hardwood door that looked older than anything in the study. Older and more sinister. The hinges alone were thicker than Vaughn’s forearm.
Instead of moving, though, Vaughn glanced around the room again. “I’m not so sure this is what we should be looking at. Given the cool air coming from beyond this door my guess is it leads to a cellar of some sort.”
“Or a dungeon.”
Stone, always the optimist.
“Yeah, or a dungeon. But I’d think Blade would have a safe here in this room. That’s where he’d keep the controls and the codes. Not buried beneath the house.”
“You always were very perceptive, my dear.”
Vaughn froze, stealing a glance at Stone. The voice was not his.
It was Blade’s.
Chapter 22
Vaughn stood silently beside the massive Louis XIV desk as two goons with guns disappeared behind the wooden door and down a series of stone-cut stairs into pitch darkness. Stone was sandwiched between the Russians like ham between Swiss cheese. He didn’t even glance her way as the door swung shut behind them.
She smoothed damp palms along the front of her creased linen slacks—a little worse for wear given the excursions of the day.
“I am surprised to see you here.” Blade strode to a humidor on a marble-and-glass side table. He plucked out a hand-rolled Cuban, slowly massaging it between his fingers as if they were discussing crossing paths on a Paris sidewalk. “Very surprised. CIA or another agency?”
“I told you I wasn’t either.”
“And your husband?”
“Get real.” This next part bordered on the truth. “He’s pissed. Getting dropped off in a field instead of being one of the bidders made him testy.”
“So you came here because of your husband?”
“It was one of the reasons.”
Blade remained quiet and Vaughn followed suit. No sense in provoking Blade in any way until she judged his tenor better. Right now, she’d guess somewhere between impressed and put out. Or maybe she was being a little optimistic.
“You have nothing more to say?” Blade lit his cigar and took a few deep, appreciative puffs.
She coughed instead. Not that she really minded cigar smoke in the right situation. But being in a small, enclosed room, with a Russian planning on selling death and destruction, with Stone as a hostage, was not the best of situations.
“It bothers you?” Blade asked, his eyes glowing like the amber cigar tip through the swirling smoke.
“What bothers me, Blade, is the thought of what you’re about to do.”
One eyebrow twitched.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
“I mean it.” She stepped closer, fisting hands against her side. “You’re about to hand over a weapon of mass destruction to some crazy terrorist who will kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to make some political point.”
“You forgot for a tidy sum of money.”
“This is not about the money and you know it.”
“I do?” Now he sounded laconic.
“Of course it’s not.” She shook her head and added, “Not that I’m really sure what is driving you to do this idiotic thing.”
“Idiotic? I hold your Stone at gunpoint and you call me an idiot?”
Ego alert. But this was Blade. They had a history together and, if she was going to stop him, she had to reach him, or that part of him she remembered.
“Look.” She held his gaze steady. “It’s not too late to stop all of this. Nothing has been done yet that is irrevocable.”
Except for two dead MI6 agents, but take one step at a time.
“What is it you wish me to do?” he asked, puffing deeply. “Stop the auction now?”
“Yes. That’s a great start.”
“And the clients even now refreshing themselves after our journey? What do you propose I do with them?”
“What does it matter?” Her voice rose. There was a lot at stake here, and she wanted to get through to him. “They are nothing. Nobody to you. If they were in your place and had a chance to save their skin, they would in a heartbeat.”
“Is this what you are doing, then? Saving my skin?”
“Yes.” Or at least trying. “But I can’t do it without your help. You must stop the auction and destroy the control and codes.”
“And I will do this because?” His accent increased. “What do I get from these actions?”
“You’ll live.” She wanted to shake him. “Continue with the auction and you’ll make the hunt for Osama Bin Laden pale in comparison.”
“But I will make a name for myself then, no?”
“Is that what this is about?” No. No. No. “You’re better than this. Bigger than this. Nothing, absolutely nothing good will come of continuing.”
“I could kill your husband. That would bring a certain satisfaction.”
A chill snaked through Vaughn, but she stifled it. It would only play into Blade’s little game, whatever that was.
“This is not about Stone. Or me. It’s about you. Your choice. Your last chance to walk away from a mistake so monumental it’s hard to imagine.”
“You have not answered me yet,” he said, his voice thicker, deeper.
“Answered what?”
“What will I get for stopping now?”
“What is it you want?” She was practically shouting at him. Her mother would have been appalled. So would her father, but at least her father would have realized what hung in the balance and that any personal shortcomings gave way to the greater good. “Tell me, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“You offer me you, then?” He smiled, but it wasn’t warm.
“You don’t want me.” At least not the way he was implying. What was she missing here? “But I think there is something you want. What is it?”
“Ah, Vaughn, you are so—”
“Naive?”
“There is that.” He walked around her to stand behind the desk. “And passionate. I do believe you care what happens to me.”
“Of course I care. You saved my life once. I owe you.”
“There is that.”
“And you’re my friend.” At least she’d thought he was. Once. Lately the boundaries had become very murky.
But her words seemed to have reached him as he glanced away, for just a second, as if in internal debate. Then he glanced up.
She’d never seen such bleak, lonely eyes. Her heart twisted even as she squared her shoulders for what must come next. She’d lost. There’d be no going back.
“You’re going to continue, aren’t you?” she asked, fire no longer in her words.
“In my own fashion, yes.”
“And nothing I can say will stop you?”
“No. Not now. It is too late.”
“And what about Stone and myself?”
He pressed a buzzer on the desk. The far door swung open and the man she remembered from India stood there, his gaze fixed on his employer.
“Vassily, I would like you to escort our unexpected guest downstairs. She will be joining Marcos Stone.”
Blade hadn’t exactly said he was going to kill them, but what options did he have? He understood exactly where she stood and what she would do if released.
Checkmate.
“I’m sorry, Blade,” she whispered,
preparing to follow without a fight. Not here, at least.
“Sorry?”
“That it ends like this between us.”
“You are so sure.” He smiled then. A small, wistful expression she never would have associated with him.
But there was no time to ask what he’d meant by such a look or his cryptic statement. The solid wood door already yawned open, and Vassily did not look like the patient type.
“Goodbye, Blade,” she murmured as she stepped on the first step.
If he answered, she never heard it.
Vassily accompanied her down, down, down, deep underneath the building. When they reached a level that must have at one time served as a cellar, or dungeon, they navigated a dark passageway lit only by the dimmest of bulbs. As they wound through the labyrinth, her sense of direction deserted her. The only thing that remained, besides fear, was the knowledge that she was heading toward Stone. And to think that less than a week ago, that would have been bad news.
Her Gucci flats slapped across the stone floor. The good news was she hadn’t chosen some snappy Kate Spade or flirty Marc Jacobs strapless sandals earlier in the day: they weren’t exactly made for hightailing it out of danger zones. Which was what she was in up to her eyeballs.
Another thought for a future endeavor. If her career as an agent bit the dust, maybe she could go into high-fashion design for the woman who needed a little something extra—like a dress one could scale walls in, handbags to hold weapons of a decent size or shoes made to save one’s neck and not break it. On second thought, if she was no longer an agent, it would be because she didn’t make it through whatever Blade had planned for her and Stone.
The devil is in the details, her father used to say. And, as usual, he was right. She just hoped he wasn’t right about her getting in over her head with wanting to be a member of the Agency.
But now wasn’t the time to go there. Doubt did not belong in a warrior’s arsenal. She didn’t know where that pithy saying came from, but thought it deserved its own needlework pillow. She’d commission one as soon as she got out of this mess.
