The Honeymoon Assignment

by Cathryn Clare

  The problem was that Kelley had instincts of her own. And they were all telling her now that she and Sam had just passed up an opportunity that might not come their way again.

  The local diner was already open for business at this early hour, but its phones, too, were out of commission.

  “A big tree came down on the road up to the highway,” the waitress told them. “Nobody in Cairo’s got phones this morning. But we’ve got coffee and the morning papers, if that’s any consolation.” She poured them two cups without being asked, and Sam and Kelley slid into a booth while they considered what to do next.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” Kelley demanded as she stirred cream into her coffee.

  Sam’s brows were drawn together in a scowl, a sure sign that he was concentrating on putting the pieces of a puzzle together in his mind. “What I’m thinking,” he said, “is that your description of Wayland flourishing this list at you reminded me a lot of the way my dad used to flourish his credentials when he was trying to impress somebody with how legitimate he was.”

  Kelley finally saw the connection. “But your dad’s credentials were mostly bogus ones,” she said.

  “Right. And it makes me wonder—” He waved a hand in front of his face in a frustrated motion. “Maybe it’s nothing,” he said. “But I still want to check out how those companies are doing. Something about it just doesn’t feel right to me.”

  “But without a phone—”

  “I know. Maybe we should head over to Port Lavaca and see what Jack can do for us. Let me think it over while I get some caffeine into my system.”

  He seemed to want to do his thinking silently, and Kelley didn’t interrupt him. Her own thoughts kept drifting back to the warmth and intimacy they’d wakened into, and her sense that it had been a mistake to leave it.

  Trying to chase those thoughts out of her mind; she turned her attention to the morning edition of the Houston paper. There was nothing in the world news that grabbed her eye. But when she came to the life-style section, Helen Price’s name jumped out at her.

  “Sam,” she said, reaching a hand out to touch his forearm, “look at this.”

  The photograph that dominated the page showed three stylishly dressed older women in front of several framed pictures. Helen wasn’t among the women, but the caption credited one of the artworks as hers.

  And the story beneath the picture mentioned that Mr. and Mrs. Harold Price had been unable to attend the glittering charity art show at which Mrs. Price’s watercolor Gulf Dawn had won a prize.

  “’Unavoidable commitments elsewhere,’” Sam muttered, reading as Kelley’s finger marked the spot.

  “But they told Wayland they were going to be at that art show,” Kelley said.

  “Or at least that’s what Wayland told you.” Sam sat back, frowning at her.

  Kelley pressed her fingertips to her temples. Now it was her turn to be nagged by some tiny detail out of the past, some fact she’d noted in passing but hadn’t connected to anything at the time. What was it?

  She closed her eyes and heard the soft slap of water and the jangle of metal fittings against a tall mast. And then she knew.

  “Helen had a thorough art training in Europe,” she said, looking at Sam again. “She learned all the standard techniques, she told me. That would include engraving, wouldn’t it?”

  “Engraving…” Sam echoed the word, frowning now. “But they hired us,” he added. “They started this investigation. They—”

  “No, they didn’t.” Suddenly it was all falling into place. “Their bank manager started it, when the counterfeit bills were discovered. He had to report it. But what if—”

  “What if Harold and Helen are behind the bad bills?” Sam’s eyes locked on to hers as they both chased down this new idea. “They’d have wanted to cover their tracks when the bills caught somebody’s attention at the bank.”

  “So instead of letting the bank manager call in the feds, they called a private-investigation agency instead.”

  Sam shook his head, tangling the dark hair he’d just pushed back into place. “This can’t be right,” he said. “We can’t actually be considering that our clients are guilty.”

  “But it makes sense, Sam. It explains why we’ve had this feeling of being manipulated. And why it’s been so hard to get a handle on things. If Harold and Helen Price have been stage-managing this entire investigation—”

  “And trying to get us to focus on Steve Cormier—”

  Kelley put a hand down flat on the tabletop between them, startling the breakfasting couple in the next booth. “They could have rigged that leaking gas tank,” she said, lowering her voice but unable to calm her excitement. “And they would have known it was fairly safe to do it, because—”

  “They knew we weren’t really honeymooners.” Sam finished the sentence grimly. “They knew we wouldn’t be sleeping in the same bed.”

  Last night they had been sleeping in the same bed. And they’d been swept away by the same passions, too, oblivious to everything in the world except their driving need for each other.

  If something had threatened their lives last night—

  Kelley couldn’t stand to think about it. “What about Wayland?” she asked, aware that her voice was shaking slightly. “I wonder how he’s involved.”

  “Maybe he’s not. Wayland doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy you’d want as an accomplice.”

  “Me, too. But—” Kelley snapped her fingers. “He does strike me as enough of a freeloader that he might have lifted a twenty-dollar bill or two from his parents if he needed some spare cash.”

  “And those bills did show up after Wayland came to live at Windspray,” Sam commented.

  “So maybe Wayland was an accessory without meaning to be.” Kelley glanced down at the newspaper story again, and added, “None of this tells us where Harold and Helen really went last night. Or why Wayland took off in such a hurry.”

  “I know. But I’d be willing to bet my last nickel it has something to do with this case.” Sam gulped down the rest of his coffee and slid out of the booth.

  “Another hunch?” Kelley asked as she tossed a couple of bills onto the table and followed him.

  Sam looked grim now, more than ever like the loner she’d first met three years earlier.

  “Once in a very long while,” he told her, “it turns out to be the smart thing to do.”

  When his eyes met hers, cold and steely and blue, it was as though they’d never loved, never trusted, never shared anything at all.

  And Kelley had the powerful impression Sam was trying to convince her that he preferred it that way.

  On the way to the truck, they took a quick, hard look at their options. It was tempting to head straight over to Jack’s motel room in Port Lavaca and enlist the FBI’s help in uncovering everything possible about Harold and Helen’s personal finances, in the hope of turning up some hidden income or some hint of why the supposedly wealthy Prices had resorted to counterfeiting.

  On the other hand…

  “If they’re not back yet, I sure would like to get a look inside their house,” Kelley murmured.

  “I know. And this may be the only chance we have.”

  The only chance we have.

  The words echoed somberly in Kelley’s mind. Were they passing up a chance at something more lasting, more important, in order to solve the case they’d been assigned to?

  Or was their work, in the long run, the only lasting thing they had to share?

  She swallowed hard and looked at the hard lines of Sam’s profile. This wasn’t the time to try to reach him, she knew. The only thing on his mind right now was the prospect of searching the Prices’ vacation home, and her own professional experience was telling her that the idea was a smart one.

  By the time they reached the big house, the cloud cover was starting to break up and there were patches of blue out over the cove that the Prices’ home faced. The sun was still low on the horizon behind
them, and the air around the coast was fresh with salt spray and all the ocean smells that the storm had churned up during the night.

  This is it, Kelley thought, as Sam scouted all the doors of the Prices’ house and finally chose the cellar bulkhead as the most likely way in. Things were finally coming to a head.

  The last time they’d been in this situation together, she’d nearly gotten both of them killed.

  And what really scared her now was that she was having such a hard time keeping her thoughts focused on her work.

  For all the experience she’d accumulated since that night at the warehouse, for all her promises to herself never to take a chance on getting into the same kind of trouble, she found herself thinking about all the wrong things as she watched Sam picking the padlock on the bulkhead.

  His long, agile fingers, probing at the inner workings of the lock with the metal picks he’d pulled out of his back pocket, made her think inescapably of the way he’d caressed her last night, the way he’d turned her nearly inside out with his knowing touch.

  She could almost feel the heavy thickness of his hair as she watched the wind blowing it into his eyes.

  And his long legs, taut and rangy as he half knelt on the slanted bulkhead door, were splayed at an angle that Kelley found too eye-catching and sexy to ignore.

  This is all wrong, she told herself. But the intrusive thoughts kept coming.

  “All right.”

  The lock slid open with a quiet click under Sam’s expert hands. A moment later he and Kelley were standing in the basement of the old house, looking around them while they waited for their eyes to adjust to the low light.

  Sam was muttering something about splitting up the search once they got upstairs into the main house. Half of Kelley was attending to him, while the other half worked at slowing her beating heart and fighting against Sam’s nearness in the big, dim cellar.

  In spite of her dangerously distracting thoughts, she was the first one to notice the locked room. “That’s probably worth checking,” she said, nodding toward the padlocked wooden door.

  Sam made short work of the second lock. It was as though his mind was becoming more focused on the task at hand, while Kelley’s was more and more tempted to wander into all the wrong places.

  But she had no problems concentrating once Sam got the door open and they found themselves looking at a set of equipment that spoke volumes to their trained eyes. Presses, engraving tools, reams of paper—it was in various stages of being dismantled and packed into crates, but in the light from the small window high up on the wall, it was very clear what they’d found: a complete set of the tools needed to practice the counterfeiter’s art.

  She never saw the quick movement behind them until it was too late to do anything about it.

  By the time she realized she and Sam weren’t alone, she was feeling the hard edge of something cold and metallic between her shoulder blades. Harold Price’s voice was calm enough, but his words were laced through with a threat that made Kelley’s skin tingle.

  “I’m sure you’re armed,” he was saying. “Unfortunately, as Ms. Landis can confirm, I am, too. I’d take it very kindly if you’d hand over your weapons before we go upstairs and continue this conversation.”

  Sam was only letting himself think about one thing: finding a way out of this.

  Thinking wasn’t easy, not when his whole head still rung from the impact of the butt of Harold Price’s gun against his skull. Sam had lunged at the older man just before Wayland, at Harold’s orders, had started to tie Sam’s hands and feet. But Harold had been on his guard.

  Sam supposed he was lucky Harold had just hit him and not shot him. Unfortunately that didn’t do anything to ease the throbbing in his head.

  Ignore it, he told himself now, as the Prices’ minivan jounced underneath him. Pain is the least of your problems.

  He couldn’t stand to consider what the worst of his problems was.

  He couldn’t—wouldn’t—let himself think about what might happen if he didn’t come up with a way to get himself and Kelley out of the Prices’ hands.

  The minivan gave another jolt, and Sam deduced that Wayland had turned off the paved road and onto a gravel one. He scanned the map in his mind and realized that the only gravel road this close to Cairo was the one leading toward the firing range.

  It wasn’t a comforting thought.

  He could hear Helen and Wayland conversing quietly now in the front seat. For such a gentle-looking lady, Helen had turned remarkably fierce once she’d gotten a gun in her hand. Sam was willing to bet she was still holding Kelley’s pistol, and that even though her voice was low, she was issuing definite orders to her son Wayland, who was driving.

  Harold Price wasn’t with them. He’d headed toward the boat slips once Sam and Kelley had been safely stashed in the back of the minivan.

  And that meant that if the plan evolving in Sam’s head had any chance of working, he had to set it in motion soon.

  Kelley was sitting across from him. Her hands, like his, were tied tightly behind her back, and her ankles were knotted together with what seemed to be ropes from the Prices’ sailboat. Her face was white and serious, her ash blond hair loose and disordered. Her eyes seemed focused on the distance, remote and endlessly blue, almost as though she was trying to withdraw herself from the mess they were in.

  He didn’t blame her. If you’d just kept your mind on business, he berated himself, silently, furiously. If you’d gone straight to Jack, instead of playing that hunch of yours…

  It didn’t help to know that Kelley had had the same gut instinct. Sam had known there was danger in this case. He’d felt it, sensed it—

  He cut himself off. There wasn’t time for this. And it was leading him too close to all the things he didn’t want to think about, anyway.

  He glanced at Helen and Wayland, who were still conversing in undertones, and managed to take advantage of another bump in the road to roll himself closer to Kelley.

  She seemed to see immediately what he was up to. She tilted toward him, as though the two of them had just happened to lose their balance and had ended up with their faces close together on the floor of the minivan.

  The feminine scent of Kelley’s hair and skin seemed to reach out and envelop Sam—damn it, he thought he was even catching the earthy, seductive musk their two bodies had generated in the heat of their lovemaking last night.

  He fought off the urge to drink in that heady perfume and concentrated on keeping his voice as low as possible.

  “Listen to me,” he murmured. His lips were close to Kelley’s ear, and the memory of the way he’d cried out his need for her last night was driving him half-crazy. “I think Wayland is on the fence about this whole deal.”

  “I agree.” The quiet strength in her voice surprised him. “If we get him talking, try to exploit whatever doubts he’s having—”

  So he’d been wrong. That distant look on her face had meant she was thinking hard, not simply wishing she was somewhere else.

  The problem was that her thoughts were the exact opposite of Sam’s.

  “Talking with the Prices is a mistake,” he said bluntly. “We don’t have time for it.”

  He couldn’t see her face. But the sudden bite in her voice was very clear. “Is that an order, Mr. Cotter?” she asked.

  “It’s a plain fact. Kelley, listen to me.”

  The ache that stabbed him from inside was sudden and fierce. I want you to come out of this alive. The words battered at him, demanding to be said. I can’t stand to see you hurt again…I can’t stand the idea of losing you.

  I love you…

  Sam closed his eyes, trying to hold back the torrent of feelings that was rising inside him.

  This was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid. He couldn’t afford to think of these things now—not now.

  And he couldn’t stop thinking about them.

  He couldn’t forget the way he’d lost himself in the sweet haven of
Kelley’s arms last night, the way his whole soul had come alive with visions of a happiness he’d thought had disappeared from his life for good.

  He’d thought about waking up next to Kelley every morning for the rest of his life.

  He’d thought about babies—their babies—chubby, uncertain new lives, tottering in to ease the pain of the child— and the happiness—they’d lost so cruelly.

  He’d gone to sleep picturing babies with blue eyes just like Kelley’s, wide and calm and beautiful.

  He wanted to tell her that, but he couldn’t.

  He wanted to take her in his arms and never let her go.

  He couldn’t do that, either.

  They were both hog-tied and helpless in the back of Harold and Helen Price’s van. The time was all wrong for these thoughts, these longings.

  And if Sam couldn’t come up with a way to get them both through this safely, there never would be a right time.

  Never had a lonely sound to it. Sam’s throat hurt as he fought against it, and against the wave of panic that kept threatening him from deep in his gut.

  “We’re going to have one shot at this, when Wayland stops the van. I want you to—”

  “Sam—”

  He shook his head in frustration. “Just listen,” he said, more forcefully now, as though by sheer strength of will he could make this come out the way he wanted it to.

  But his voice caught Helen Price’s ear. “That’s enough talking back there,” she said sharply, turning to look at them.

  This was it, Sam thought. Their only chance, and it was about to slip through their fingers.

  He started to roll himself back to a sitting position again, but just before he moved away from Kelley, he managed to mutter very quietly against her ear, “Launch yourself at Helen when the van stops. I’ll do the same. Maybe Wayland will—”

  “I said that’s enough.” Helen sounded irritated now. “Although what you think you stand to gain at this point, I really can’t imagine. Wayland, look out for that pothole. The storm has made a wretched mess of these roads.”

  Sam had a sudden vision of what it must have been like to grow up under Harold and Helen Price’s thumbs. He’d never encountered a pair so affable on the outside, yet so callous under their mask of gentility. No wonder Wayland had turned out to be so slick and shallow.