Texas Ransom

by Amanda Stevens

  “What does that have to do with the current situation?”

  “If PemCo suffers enough losses, they could be forced to pull out of the alliance. It’s possible Esteban wants to use this leverage to bargain for his brother’s release. As the architect on the project, you’ve had unlimited access to the building. I wouldn’t be surprised if Esteban has had you in his sights from the very beginning.”

  “What about Leo Kittering?”

  “I’m guessing he paid Esteban to do what he couldn’t—come across the border and get your wife. Esteban gets the funding he needs and Kittering gets his revenge.”

  Graham got up and started to pace. “How do we stop them?”

  “As I said, Kittering’s compound is being watched around the clock, and we’ve got a lead on where Kittering may be holding your wife.”

  Graham’s heart thudded. “What kind of lead?”

  “It looks promising, but we won’t know for sure until I’ve put men inside the compound. As soon as my guys go in, the game changes. Without your wife or your family as bartering chips, Esteban will come after you with everything he’s got. And make no mistake, it’ll be a bloodbath.”

  Graham sat down at the table across from Clarkson. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to that. It all sounded like something from an action movie. But Graham was no hero. He wasn’t any kind of hero. He was just a desperate man who wanted his life back.

  Clarkson opened another folder and took out a photograph that he passed to Graham. This one was of a woman. Dark hair, late twenties, attractive.

  “Have you ever seen this woman before?”

  Graham shook his head. “No, who is she?”

  “Her name is Nikki Singer. She used to be with the American consulate in Mexico City before she left to work for Leo Kittering.”

  Graham glanced up with a frown. “What’s her connection to this?”

  “Leo Kittering’s son was found murdered in this woman’s apartment. She disappeared that night and no one has heard from her since. The consulate tried to locate her, but she didn’t leave a trail. If she came across the border, she did so under the radar.”

  “I still don’t get what she has to do with any of this. Are you saying this woman killed Kittering’s son? If that’s the case, why would he come after Kendall?”

  “He didn’t. He came after Nikki Singer.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Clarkson nodded toward the photograph. “Take another look. Are you sure you’ve never seen her before?”

  Graham glanced down, started to dismiss the photograph impatiently, then froze. There was something about the woman’s eyes. Not the shape or the color, but what was behind them. A haunted look he’d seen before…

  His heart flailed wildly against his ribcage. For a moment, he couldn’t tear his gaze from the woman’s eyes, and then slowly he looked up.

  Clarkson nodded. “It would explain why Kendall Hollister’s fingerprints weren’t found in your hotel suite, wouldn’t it?”

  It would explain a lot of other things, too, but Graham shook his head. “It’s not possible.”

  Plastic surgery had changed Kendall’s appearance. The near-death experience had altered her personality. And the gaps in her memory…the doctors had told him they were normal following a severe trauma. Everything was attributable to the accident. Of course Kendall had changed. So had he. But to suggest—

  Graham flashed suddenly to the key taped to the bottom of the music box. The key to Kendall’s past. Or was it Nikki Singer’s past?

  He glanced up from the photo. “I don’t believe it. I would have known.” But even as he denied it, Graham was assailed by doubt. The woman he’d been living with for the past five years was nothing like the woman he’d married.

  “How could I not have seen it?” he murmured.

  “The more important question is this. Does any of what I’ve told you this morning change our arrangement?”

  Graham glanced back down at the photograph. Images flashed through his head. Kendall’s smile. Her laugh. The touch of her hand.

  The way she looked at him. The way she whispered his name in the dark. The way she moved beneath him…

  He closed his eyes. “Just get her out of there. I don’t know what happens after that, but I can’t leave her down there, no matter who she is. Kittering will kill her.” He couldn’t have that on his conscience no matter what Nikki Singer had done to him.

  And there was a chance that Clarkson was wrong about this.

  There was a chance that the past five years of his life hadn’t been a lie after all.

  He rubbed a hand across his face. “If what you say is true, where’s Kendall?” he asked. “Where’s my wife?”

  Clarkson’s gaze met his. “My guess is, she’s dead.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  With Terrence’s help, Graham had the rest of the ransom by two o’clock that afternoon, but it was after midnight before he received his next set of instructions. He was to bring the money and the plans to an alley behind a warehouse on Navigation.

  The neighborhood had once been German, but was now predominantly Hispanic. The original Ninfa’s restaurant was located in the area, along with a few artist’s galleries and lofts that were cropping up in some of the warehouses.

  Graham located the address and parked on the street. Getting out of the car, he grabbed the briefcase and plans from the back seat and slowly walked toward the dark alley. Before he’d gone more than a few feet, a van swung up next to him. The side door opened, and two men wearing ski masks jumped out.

  One grabbed the briefcase and tubes while the other clipped him on the back of the head with his gun. Pain shot threw his skull and Graham’s knees buckled.

  Before he could hit the ground, he was shoved toward the van door. As he fell forward, hands reached from inside the vehicle and dragged him in. He landed with a hard thud on the metal floor. The door slid closed and the van backed out of the alley, then eased back onto the street.

  Graham tried to sit up, but someone put a knee in the small of his back and pushed him back down. He was searched for weapons and a wire, and when nothing was found, his arms were pulled back and handcuffed behind him.

  The pressure on his back eased as the knee lifted from his spine and he was rolled over. The men who had grabbed him still wore their ski masks as they knelt on either side of him.

  “Check the tubes,” one of them barked in Spanish.

  While his partner checked the blueprints, the one who had spoken kept his eyes on Graham.

  He tried to sit up, but the guy beside him didn’t like that. He shoved him back to the floor. “No mueve.” Don’t move.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To see Esteban.”

  “Why? You have the plans. Why don’t you let me go?”

  The man said something in Spanish to the driver. The van slowed, made a quick turn, then picked up speed. Graham could see nothing from where he lay. He wasn’t even sure how many men were in the van. Three, for sure—the two that had grabbed him and the driver. He didn’t know if someone rode in the passenger seat or not, but it didn’t matter. The odds were against him, even if his hands hadn’t been fastened behind his back.

  The van stopped for a traffic light, and Graham turned his head to try and get a look out the window.

  Suddenly, the side glass on the driver’s side shattered and the man slumped over the wheel. The door opened and hands reached in to drag him out of the seat. He rolled out and landed on the street.

  At the same time, the passenger door opened and another man jumped inside. “Nobody move,” Clarkson ordered, aiming a gun toward the back of the van.

  Graham had never been so glad to see anyone in his life.

  Behind him, the man who had checked the blueprints went for his gun. Clarkson fired, and the guy’s head flew back against the metal panel. He fell to the floor, eyes open but sightless.

  Graham hadn’t been prep
ared for that. A rush of adrenaline and terror made him feel light-headed and sick, but he tried to shake off the dizziness.

  Having witnessed his comrades shot at pointblank range, the third man dropped his gun and put up his hands. While Clarkson climbed into the back and unfastened the handcuffs around Graham’s wrists, the man who had shot the driver climbed behind the wheel. When the light changed, he drove calmly through the intersection.

  “Now then,” Clarkson said as he sat down on the floor, gun pointed at the third man’s forehead. “Let’s have a little chat, shall we? You can start by telling me where the hell we’re going.”

  THE MAN’S name was Hector Reyes, he informed them, and he had been sent to act as a liaison between Esteban and Reyes’s boss, Leo Kittering.

  He hadn’t been forthcoming with this or any other information at first, but Clarkson, as Graham soon discovered, was brutally persuasive. When they arrived at the PemCo Tower—the van’s destination—Reyes’s screams still echoed in Graham’s ears.

  After handcuffing the man to the van floor, Clarkson and his associate pulled on the ski masks and escorted Graham at gunpoint into the building. They were let in through a side door by a guard who said something to Clarkson in Spanish.

  Clarkson grunted, then gave Graham a shove. “Dónde está Esteban?”

  The guard nodded toward the elevator. “Arriba.” Upstairs.

  Another guard lay dead on the floor, which explained how Esteban and his men had gotten control of the building. Graham glanced away as Clarkson gave him another shove toward the elevator. They rode up in silence to the eighty-fifth floor where they were met by more of Esteban’s armed men.

  Graham was taken into a luxurious conference room where Esteban sat at the head of a gleaming ebony table. Another man confiscated the blueprints and handed them to Esteban.

  “Welcome, Mr. Hollister. I’ve been waiting for you. Please…” Esteban nodded to the chair next to him. “Have a seat.”

  “I’d rather stand.”

  Esteban shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He waved a hand toward the blueprints he’d placed on the table. “As you can see, we have a lot to go over.”

  “You’ve got the money,” Graham said. “Seven million dollars. Let my wife go.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Not yet at least.”

  “Why not? What more do you want from me?”

  Esteban’s dark eyes gleamed. “Tell me something, Mr. Hollister. If you wanted to inflict damage to this building, how would you go about it?”

  Fear churned in Graham’s stomach. “What do you mean?”

  “You designed the PemCo Tower. You must know its weaknesses better than anyone.”

  “You’re out of your mind if you think I’ll help you.”

  Esteban just laughed. “We’ll see about that.”

  He flicked his wrist, and one of his men sat down at the table and opened a laptop. With a few keystrokes, he located a Web site and waited for it to load. Then he muttered to himself and typed a few more keys. After a moment he looked up.

  “The woman. She is gone.” He looked terrified when he said it.

  Esteban sat rigid for a moment, and then slowly he turned, his eyes burning with cold rage.

  Graham smiled. “She’s somewhere safe,” he said. “Someplace where you’ll never find her.”

  Esteban rose, trembling with rage. “Kill him!” he screamed.

  But before his men could draw their weapons, Clarkson and his associate whipped off their masks and started firing.

  It all happened so fast then that Graham had no time to process his fear. He dived for cover as bullets whizzed over his head.

  He saw Esteban disappear through a door at the back of the conference room, and, keeping low, Graham rushed after him. He could hear the gun battle raging fiercely behind him as he raced into the hallway. A door up ahead swished closed, and Graham lunged toward it, pausing briefly inside to get his bearings. A set of stairs led up to the observation deck on the roof. If Esteban had gone up there, he was trapped. Graham had him.

  Drawing the weapon that Clarkson had given him earlier, Graham ran up the stairs. He eased the door open and stepped out on the roof, his gaze quickly scanning his surroundings.

  The moment he stepped onto the roof, Graham could feel the vertigo pulling at his balance. He stumbled, and his loss of balance saved him. A bullet sang passed his cheek, and Graham hit the deck. He saw Esteban then, a dark shadow racing toward the elevator in the far wall.

  “Stop!”

  Esteban whirled and fired.

  Graham tried to focus. Tried to gain control of the panic that siezed him as the building spun beneath him. Blinking away the sweat that dripped into his eyes, he drew a bead on Esteban and squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit him in the shoulder and the gun slid from his grip.

  One hand clutching the bullet wound, he watched as Graham rose and walked toward him. “Kick the gun over here,” he said.

  Esteban laughed. “Getting off a lucky shot in the heat of the moment is very different from killing a man in cold blood. You don’t have it in you, mi amigo.”

  “You’re wrong,” Graham said, and fired again.

  “MR. Kittering?”

  Leo had been standing at the window in his office, gazing out into the courtyard, his mind a million miles away. He wanted to lash out at the unwelcome visitor, but instead he turned, his brows lifting in surprise when he saw who it was.

  “Maria!” he said in delight. “What brings you here this time of night?”

  “I have a message from Hector.” The young woman stood in the doorway, and even from across the room, Leo could see tears glistening on her cheeks.

  “What is it?” he said in consternation. Surely nothing had gone wrong in Houston. Hector would have called Leo himself. He wouldn’t have sent his sister with a message of any import.

  “My brother has been arrested,” she said. “He’s in an American jail.”

  The pulse in Leo’s neck jumped erratically. “How do you know this?”

  “I heard from him myself. He said to tell you that Esteban and his men are dead and the woman is gone.”

  “Gone?” Leo stared at her as if she’d taken leave of her senses. “That’s impossible. My men are guarding her. No one can get to her.”

  “Your men are all dead. Hector said to tell you that it’s all over.” Maria turned to walk away, but Leo stopped her.

  “Where are you going?”

  “It’s not safe here,” she said, and for a moment, Leo could have sworn he saw pity in her eyes. “They’re coming for you, too.”

  For the first time in a very long time, Leo Kittering felt real fear. “Who?”

  She turned and disappeared down the hallway without another word.

  Before she reached the stairs, though, Maria turned and glanced over her shoulder. The gunshot that came from Leo’s office brought a knowing smile to her lips.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Awakened by the quickly descending Cessna, Graham sat up and rubbed his eyes.

  He wouldn’t have imagined that he would be able to sleep on the flight down from Houston. Only forty-eight hours ago, he’d shot a man. Taken another life without hesitation, and yet he’d drifted off the moment the plane left the tarmac.

  It was the first real rest he’d had in days, even after Esteban had been eliminated and he knew Kendall was tucked away in one of Clarkson’s safe-houses. Clearing his name with the FBI had been no small feat, but Terrence hadn’t been kidding when he said Nathan Clarkson had connections. With Esteban and his men dead and Hector Reyes all too willing too cooperate, the truth had finally been sorted out.

  But that was only the beginning. Graham had had to come to terms with a very harsh reality—the woman he’d been living with for the past five years wasn’t his wife. The contents of Nikki Singer’s safety deposit box had confirmed Clarkson’s suspicions.

  As if reading Graham’s mind, Clarkson leaned back from the copilot’s s
eat as the Cessna touched down. “You okay?”

  “I will be.”

  “You sure you’re ready to face her?”

  Graham shrugged, but didn’t answer.

  SO IT HAD come to this, Nikki thought as she walked barefoot in the surf, waiting for a phone call she feared would never come. Graham knew who she was. He knew where she was. And he’d chosen not to come for her.

  She didn’t blame him, of course. She should have told him the truth a long time ago. She should have trusted in their love, and now it was too late. He would never be able to forgive her.

  She shivered and pulled the shawl tightly around her shoulders. Now that the sun had gone down, the breeze from the water was chilly, but she couldn’t make herself go inside. The house was comfortable, but that didn’t stop the walls from closing in on her. That didn’t stop the regret from eating her up inside.

  “Kendall?”

  She whirled. And her heart stopped.

  There he was. The man she thought of as her husband. The man she had once planned to spend the rest of her life with.

  The man she had lied to and deceived. The man whose wife had died and he had not been allowed to grieve. Because of her.

  “I guess I should call you Nikki.”

  She tightened the shawl around her shoulders, unable to utter a word. Tears threatened behind her lids and she turned to stare out at the water.

  “I didn’t think you’d come,” she finally said.

  “I wasn’t sure I wanted to,” he admitted. “I guess I just needed to hear your side of it.”

  She nodded and tried to swallow past the knot in her throat.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked.

  She drew another breath. “I was scared and in trouble. You were my only way out.”

  “You killed L. J. Kittering, didn’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “What happened?”