“We need to get into the house. If we wait until after dark, we could climb up onto the porch roof.
“No! It’s too damned risky.”
“All right, then, we’ll go to the police.”
“No, we won’t. We don’t have any proof, and if we’re wrong, the Post is going to be embarrassed.”
“Heaven forbid!” She rolled her eyes disgustedly.
“Kate, you have to start thinking about things like that. The Post is a powerful paper and it has powerful enemies who’d like nothing better than to embarrass it. Remember that Hanlon story?”
“I was new then.” She didn’t want to rehash that disaster.
“Right, and that’s how Damon was able to smooth things over. But it wouldn’t work that way this time.”
Kate’s temper flared, but only briefly. Later, she would see this moment as representing something of a turning point in her stormy relationship with Sam. In the past, she’d rebelled against what she saw as being his patronizing advice—as she’d done in the Hanlon story—but now, however begrudgingly, she accepted it.
“Okay, but what do we do now?”
“First we get out of here and go to the cabin. Then we can decide. Even if Charles is in there, we know he isn’t being harmed. You said that the kids looked well cared for.”
If you can call being kept as zombies “cared for,” she thought, but didn’t say. If it turned out that New Leaf had something to do with the present condition of those kids, they were going to pay big time.
“THE FERRET ISN’T GETTING anywhere—at least not yet,” Sam said as he joined her on the screened porch at the cabin. “But he said that those biotech firms are stretched to the limits and appear to be engaged in some very creative financing.”
“What does that mean?” Kate asked. The world of business was a mystery to her, and one in which she had little interest.
“It means that they could be targets for the kind of close-to-the-edge deals that Newbury’s buddies arrange.”
“Isn’t all this stuff a matter of public record?”
“Technically, yes. But remember that these guys have set up a whole series of dummy corporations, and some of them are offshore in places like the Caymans that specialize in shady deals.”
“I hope this isn’t going to turn into just a financial story,” Kate said with a grimace. “Then I won’t even get to write it I’ve been thinking that maybe we should try to get into New Leaf instead of the farmhouse. If I can get to those files in Ted Snyder’s office, I can check to see if the names with that code match the names of the boys at the farmhouse.”
“That’s too big a risk to take for so little value. They’ve got to have good security.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“Let’s wait and see what Tony has to say.”
“You already said that you don’t trust him.”
“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to get some information from him. Does he know where this cabin is?”
“No. I told him that some friends had a cabin out here, but I never said where it was. I think I should try to meet with him. That way, I can tell better if he’s lying.”
“Yeah, and if he is, then you give him and his buddies a second chance to kill you.”
“So I won’t meet him at his house. We could meet somewhere in town—you can come along.”
Sam nodded. “That’s a good idea. Why don’t we go down to the inn for dinner, and you can call him from there?”
Kate looked down at her challis pants, then at her arms. She’d definitely lost the battle with the blackberry bushes. “I need a shower, and I can’t go into town dressed like this—unless it’s very dark.”
“Geri keeps some clothes out here,” he reminded her. “And in the interests of conservation, I’ll join you in the shower.”
She rolled her eyes. “I shouldn’t have let you take that nap.”
He glanced meaningfully down at his snug-fitting jeans. “We’re awake now.”
“So I noticed,” she said over her shoulder as she went into the house. “I think I’m beginning to remember why I divorced you.”
“It wasn’t for that reason,” he replied, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her. “We’re damned near perfect together and you know it.”
“‘Damned near?’“ she repeated archly.
“Okay, we are perfect.” They had stopped in the middle of the living room. He nuzzled the curve of her neck, sending tiny curls of heat all through her. “Remember the first time here?”
“Yes, Sam, I remember.”
“I was nervous, you know.”
“Hah! The superstud of the Washington Post? I was the one who should have been worried that you were just looking to carve another notch on the old bedpost.”
“I was,” he said, and she could feel his smile against her skin.
She tried to turn in the tight circle of his arms. “You’d better not be serious, because—”
“I got very serious that weekend. I asked you to marry me.”
“You did not! You suggested that I move into the apartment.”
“Well, it was a first step. I figured that you’d move in and then I’d work my way up to a proposal. But Katy Kool wasn’t having any of that. You were holding out for a ring.”
“I was not! I didn’t even know if I wanted to marry you.”
“But you did and it’s ‘til death us do part, Kitty-Kat.”
This time, she succeeded in breaking away from him. “This is not the time to be discussing our relationship, Sam.”
He shrugged. “Okay by me. There’s nothing to discuss anyway. We belong together and that’s that.”
Belonging together and being able to live together were two entirely different things as far as she was concerned, but she wasn’t about to get into that now.
They stripped off their clothes and got into the big shower stall. Kate was immediately swept up in memories of other showers here, some of them a prelude to lovemaking and some of them resulting in several very interesting new positions.
They lathered each other, fingers gliding over wet bodies as they stared into each other’s eyes and saw desire spark and then ignite. Kate felt that connectedness to him that had always seemed to be far more than their mutual desire, as though each was an extension of the other.
The water pouring over them turned cool, but their bodies were superheated, heavy with wanting. Still wet, they fell onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs and she welcomed him and drew him deep into her as they rode the wave of passion to its crest, then lingered there as long as possible, wanting more even when they had it all.
Sam propped himself up beside her and stared at her as she lay there with that satisfied smile she always wore after they’d made love. That lazy, secret sort of smile reminded him of the Mona Lisa, except that it looked much better on Kate.
“Stop staring at me,” she ordered halfheartedly, her voice husky. “What are you thinking about?”
“If I told you, then I wouldn’t be thinking—I’d be talking. And that’s what always gets me into trouble.”
It was true. Still, he thought—or maybe just hoped—that things had changed. She was different—more sure of herself now. A couple of times, he’d said the kind of things that would have set her off before, but she hadn’t started in on him.
For three years, he’d wondered what it was about her that felt so right, and why he’d never felt that way with any other woman. He still didn’t know, and he thought maybe he never would. Kate was electric, quicksilver, always somehow just beyond his grasp. But he knew that he’d happily spend the rest of his life chasing her.
“I love you,” he said simply, planting a kiss on her flat belly and thinking suddenly how much he wanted to have children with her, share their love with a couple of kids.
But he wasn’t about to say that. Not only were things between them too fragile right now, but that discussion had happened before
and had quickly turned into a full-blown argument over his failings. Or imagined failings. It amounted to the same thing.
Her stomach growled and he kissed her again. “I just had an idea! Why don’t we get some dinner?”
She glanced at the clock. “I think I’ll try to reach Tony now. Maybe he could meet us at the inn.”
But there was no answer at Tony’s. She didn’t bother to leave a message, deciding instead that she’d try later from the inn.
THE CHARMING, pine-paneled dining room at the inn was nearly empty on this weekday night. Sam and Kate took a table in the corner that afforded them maximum privacy, even though neither of them had spoken again about their story—or stories.
As they sipped an excellent wine and then dined on chateaubriand, they both seemed reluctant to turn their attention back to their work. Instead, they spent the time catching up on three years—something they were both surprised to realize they hadn’t yet done. Sam told her more about his exploits in Europe and the Middle East and Africa, while she talked about interesting stories she’d covered.
It felt strange to Kate to be talking like this. In some weird sort of way, she resented the fact that she had to tell Sam what had happened in her life during that time. It seemed that he should somehow have known, and the fact that he didn’t only pointed out to her that gaping hole in their relationship. It also reminded her of their unresolved future.
Maybe he’s right, she thought over dessert. Maybe there really was nothing to discuss. Sam did have a knack for cutting through to the crux of the matter. But still she feared simply picking up where they’d left off.
After they ordered coffee, Kate went to call Tony again. By now, it was certainly late enough for him to be home. His fiancée answered the phone. Kate introduced herself and asked if he was there. The silence that followed her question went on for so long that she thought for a moment they’d been disconnected.
“He’s…not here,” the woman said in a tremulous voice.
Kate felt the first faint stirrings of alarm, but quelled them with the thought that she might be interrupting a lovers’ quarrel.
“Do you know when or how I can reach him?” she asked.
“No.” Then, after a brief silence, the woman said, “He’s gone!”
“I don’t understand, Lisa. Do you mean that he’s not living there anymore?”
She heard an inhalation, then, “He’s disappeared!”
Her dinner congealed into a large lump of ice in her stomach. “Lisa, I’m not far from you. Can we come to talk to you?”
“Who’s with you?” Lisa asked suspiciously.
“My ex-husband. He’s a journalist, too. Please let us come and talk to you. I want to help if I can.”
Lisa breathed a soft okay, then hung up quickly, but not before Kate heard her sobs. She dashed back to the table and signaled their waiter for the check.
“Tony has disappeared! His fiancée says she’ll talk to us, and I told her we’d be over right away.”
“THIS IS WHERE THE TIRE was shot out,” Kate told Sam as they drove up the mountain road.
Sam slowed down and looked around, then swore. “If you’d been driving a piece of junk like this, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Thanks a lot, Sam. That’s not what I wanted to hear right now.”
“Well, it’s true,” he persisted. “A blown front tire on a road like this in anything but the Porsche, and you’d have gone over the edge.”
Kate didn’t know if it was just Sam’s obsession with Porsches or if he might be right, but she didn’t really care. All that mattered now was finding out what had happened to Tony. She was clinging to the hope that he might simply have left after an argument, but that hard lump in her gut was telling her otherwise.
Lisa greeted them at the door with a brave smile that failed to offset her reddened eyes and her tearstained cheeks. The only animation she showed was when Kate introduced herself and Sam, and Lisa said, “Oh! You’re the Sam Winters from CNN.”
Sam acknowledged that he was indeed, though he was no longer with them. Lisa’s smile drained away into a haunted look, but she ushered them into the living room.
Tony had called her from New Leaf the previous evening, saying that he would be late because of a problem with one of his kids. He feared that the boy might be suicidal and was reluctant to turn him over to the night staff. It had happened before; Tony was very dedicated.
Then he called her again several hours later, and when she said that she hadn’t yet eaten, he suggested they meet at a restaurant in town.
“He said that he’d gotten the boy calmed down, and since the counselor on the night shift was someone the boy related to well, he felt he could leave. He told me he’d probably get to The Greenhouse—that’s the name of the restaurant—before I did.
“But when I got to the place, he wasn’t there. I didn’t get worried for a while, because I figured that maybe he’d been wrong about the boy. Then, when he still didn’t come or phone, I called New Leaf, and they told me that he’d left right when he said he would.”
The tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over and she excused herself to get a tissue. When she returned, she was maintaining a tenuous control over her emotions. She said that she’d ordered dinner because she was starving, but by the time it came, she was so worried about him that she couldn’t eat it. So she came home, hoping that somehow ‘they’d gotten their signals mixed and he would be here. But he wasn’t—and she hadn’t heard from him since.
“Have you reported this to the police?” Sam asked.
Lisa nodded. “I called them right away. I was worried that he might have been in an accident. They told me that I couldn’t report him as a missing person for seventy-two hours. That’s three days!”
“And you’ve checked to see if he showed up for work today?” Kate asked.
Lisa nodded. “He wasn’t there and he didn’t call. I checked with his friends in the area, too.”
“Lisa, I have to ask this. Could Tony have chosen to disappear? Was he having any problems?”
Lisa shook her head vigorously. “That’s what Ted Snyder asked, too. He even tried to suggest that Tony might be having some second thoughts about our marriage. Now I know why Tony doesn’t like him,” she added indignantly.
Kate recalled having gained that impression herself when Tony had mentioned the camp’s director. “What do you think might have happened?”
“I don’t know,” Lisa said with a sob. “But I think it has something to do with that place—with New Leaf.”
Chapter Nine
“I think she’s right,” Kate said the moment they returned to their car. “New Leaf is behind Tony’s disappearance.” Then, when Sam said nothing as they started back down the mountain, she prodded him. “Well?”
“I don’t know what to think because I don’t know Tony. Ted Snyder could be right. He could be getting prewedding jitters.”
“Get real, Sam! Even if he was, would he just walk away from his job? He loved his work—and he had a kid in trouble.”
“People don’t always behave in their own best interests,” Sam stated. “But okay, I’ll admit that it sounds suspicious.”
“Thank you, O Wise One. Now what are we going to do?”
“Well, first of all, I want to have a look at the route Tony would have taken to get from New Leaf to the restaurant. Then I’d like to do some checking up on Tony himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t want to ask her for the names of any of his friends, because that would have made it sound as though we didn’t believe her. But didn’t you say that he’d worked at another boot camp before he came here?”
“Right. Some place in Virginia—near Richmond, as I recall. I have the name in my notes because I’d thought about contacting them.”
“Good. Tomorrow, one of us can call them and pretend to be asking for a reference.”
“Fine. You do it, because then you’ll be hearing
about him firsthand, instead of relying on my judgment.”
“I’m not questioning your judgment.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Dammit, Kate, you do the same thing. That’s one of the reasons we make a good team. Each of us questions the other’s assumptions.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m really worried about Tony. I like him a lot.”
“And you think that something could have happened to him as a result of your nosing around.”
“Yes.”
“But you said that he and some others were already questioning what goes on at New Leaf, and Lisa confirmed that.”
She sighed. “I just wish that Tony had confided more in her.”
“A lot of people keep their professional and personal lives separate—unlike us.”
“Do you think that’s our problem, Sam?”
“No, because I don’t think we have any problems—at least not anymore.”
“But you admit that we did?”
“Yes. Do you want to get into this now?”
“No.” But when would they? After he talked her into marrying him again? She was afraid that might not take much persuasion…just as it hadn’t the last time.
They drove to New Leaf, then began to retrace Tony’s route into town. As they passed by the gate, Kate stared at the handsome sign, then at the not-so-handsome chain link fence and guarded gate.
“I wonder who told her that Tony had left,” she said, wishing that she’d thought to ask.
“Hmm. Interesting question. Let’s call her when we get back to the cabin. You’re thinking that something could have happened to him in the camp itself.”
“It’s a big place. I think Ted Snyder told me it covers nearly fifty acres. And from what Lisa said, it sounds like there aren’t that many staff on duty at night.”
They drove past wide stretches of open field and short spans of wooded land, then into the town and past the restaurant where Lisa had expected to meet Tony.
“Well, I didn’t see any place where someone could have shot at him,” Sam remarked. “And no place where a wrecked car could escape notice.”
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