by Amelia Autin
“I wish I’d known,” Mei-li said quietly. “I would never have suspected her of being involved in the kidnapping if I’d known her background.”
Dirk tugged his ball cap a little lower over his eyes. “You weren’t to know,” he said. “But from the minute Linden and Laurel were released from the ICU, Hannah has been like their grandmother, one who lives with them. I take the twins to visit Bree’s parents whenever I can, but it’s not the same as Hannah. That’s why I ruled her out.”
He turned and pretended to take pictures of the night skyline. “So answer a question for me,” he asked quietly, not looking at her.
She turned and moved a little closer. “If I can.”
“What does RMM stand for?”
Mei-li smiled to herself. “‘Right Makes Might.’ RMM. It’s from a quotation by your Abraham—”
“Lincoln,” he finished for her. “Yeah, I know it.” He was silent for a moment. “You said the two times you asked RMM for help they came through. Can you tell me about those times?”
She thought carefully about what she could say. She couldn’t name names, but...
“One was a high-ranking government official kidnapped by a terrorist group who demanded the release of some political prisoners—something the government here couldn’t agree to. Your government wouldn’t have agreed to it, either. Irrespective of the kidnappers’ motives, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the case where the political prisoners were concerned, governments can’t let themselves be held to ransom that way. The man’s wife knew that. She knew it was hopeless. But she came to me anyway, hoping for a miracle.”
“And the other time?”
“The pregnant wife of a wealthy industrialist.” She knew she’d gone pale. Her cheeks felt cold at the memory, but no one could see. “They threatened to send him his unborn baby in pieces if he didn’t pay the ransom.”
“Why didn’t he pay?” Condemnation was in his voice.
“He couldn’t. He wasn’t as wealthy as the kidnappers thought—he was leveraged up to his eyeballs. He could only raise a third of the amount they demanded in cash—and he had to mortgage his soul to get that much—but no matter how I negotiated, the kidnappers wouldn’t lower the price that far.” She swallowed hard and whispered, “I couldn’t let them kill a baby, Dirk, or the baby’s mother, not if I could help it.” She breathed deeply. “I... I’ve known the man who founded RMM for a long time, and he’s fabulously wealthy. I went to him, asking for a loan. I would have mortgaged my soul at that point, and he agreed to lend me the money...under one condition.”
“Which was?”
“That RMM be allowed to stake out the ransom drop, track the kidnappers and try to rescue the victim. The industrialist didn’t want to do it—he was petrified that would get his wife and unborn son killed. But he didn’t have much choice.”
“You told me before you’ve never lost a kidnap victim...so the outcome must have been successful.”
She nodded, then realized since he wasn’t looking at her he couldn’t see her nod. “Yes.”
“So, somewhere in this crowd is a member of that shadow group. Right?”
“Yes. One or more. But I honestly can’t tell you who.”
He turned to her. “And one of the kidnappers is also here, watching to see what we do.”
She nodded again, then darted a look at her watch. “It’s almost time. Let’s get into place.” She tucked her smartphone into her purse, took a firmer hold on the ransom bag, then followed Dirk toward the Clock Tower a short distance away.
Dirk’s iPhone rang just as they reached the base of the tower.
* * *
They were already walking in the front door of the Peninsula Hotel after successfully leaving the last ransom package where instructed, when Dirk stopped abruptly, turned to Mei-li and said, “I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s late and you need to get home.”
He turned back as if to ask the doorman to get a cab for her, and Mei-li said, “I don’t need a cab. I can take the Metro from here. It’s not far.”
Dirk shook his head. “Not at this time of night. Not alone.” And there was a stubborn set to his jaw that told her he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He passed a bill to the doorman, and when a cab appeared in response to the signal, he held the door for her. But he took her by surprise when he walked around the back of the cab and got in the passenger seat on the other side.
“Why—” she began, but he cut her off.
“I’m seeing you safely home. Give the driver your address. I know the street from yesterday, but I don’t remember the number.”
She did so, and the cab pulled out of the forecourt onto Salisbury Road. Then she murmured to Dirk, “Last night—”
“I was an idiot last night,” he told her. “I let you leave without thinking.” His hand covered hers. “I was just...you took me by surprise, and I...”
Tenderness washed through her as she remembered exactly what he was talking about. The kiss they’d shared. The kisses.
And just like that she made a decision. She wasn’t going to let Dirk go back to his empty hotel suite. She wasn’t going to let him toss and turn in his lonely bed, wondering and worrying about his daughters...the kidnappers...Terrell Blackwood. No, she was going to make sure he slept peacefully tonight. Tomorrow? Tomorrow would come soon enough, and she couldn’t do anything to prevent it. Couldn’t do anything to make tomorrow easier for Dirk to bear. But tonight...
Tonight he needs me, she told herself. He might not know it, but tonight he needs me.
When the cab pulled up in front of Mei-li’s apartment building, she looked at the meter, handed the driver a bill she’d already pulled from her wallet and murmured in Cantonese, “No change.”
“Wait,” Dirk said, reaching for her arm.
“Walk me up?” It was dark in the cab, but when her eyes met his she knew her intentions were unmistakable.
“This isn’t a good idea.” His words were decisive, his tone sure. But she heard an underlying note in his voice that admitted he wanted this as much as she did...if he could let himself. She didn’t know what was stopping him, but she was going to find out.
“Please.” She twined her fingers with his. “Please.”
* * *
Mei-li didn’t like walking into a dark apartment, so she had tiny night-lights in every room. High-tech ones that changed color every thirty seconds, casting a red, blue, green or white glow through each room. So when she and Dirk walked through her front door hand in hand, she didn’t have to turn on the overhead light to see.
But when she started for her bedroom, Dirk tugged his hand free from hers and repeated the same words he’d uttered in the cab. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“Why not?” A breath of a sound as she moved to stand right in front of him. She removed the ball cap so she could see his eyes in the shadows, and she sensed the iron control he was exerting on himself.
“Because you don’t know anything about me.”
She heard the desperate edge in his voice and pitched hers to be calming. Reassuring. “I know everything I need to know.”
“No, you don’t.” His words rasped in the darkness.
She knew this was the moment. She’d maneuvered him here, absolutely sure there was a secret he needed to confess. A secret he needed to get past. They both did. She reached up and cradled his face in her hands. “Then tell me.”
He dragged her hands away from his face and put distance between them, then paced her small living room restlessly. When he reached the lamp on the end table he switched it on, and the warm glow dispelled the intimate atmosphere.
He turned a ravaged face to her. “You don’t want to know.”
Oh, but she did. “Yes, I do. You’ve told me almost everything, but you’ve always
held something back. I know it, and so do you. So just tell me. Whatever it is, it won’t affect how I feel about you, Dirk. It won’t affect my determination to rescue your daughters.”
“We’re not going to find them.” The despair of his words echoed in his tone. “I let myself forget...”
“Forget what?”
“That God won’t let me rescue them. Terrell Blackwood has his revenge, and I’m left in hell...where I belong.”
“I won’t accept that.”
Torment slashed across his face. “You don’t know. You don’t understand. This kidnapping is my punishment, just like Bree’s death was my punishment—from God. It will always be my punishment...for killing Lyon.”
“Why?” She was so close. All she needed to do was... “Why do you believe God is punishing you?”
His expression turned bitter, self-mocking. “Because I lied. Yes, Lyon tried to rape Bree at knifepoint. And, yes, he turned that knife on me when I pulled him off her, and he did his best to kill me. But the truth is, he was a dead man from the moment I heard her scream and found him on top of her. I saw him...them... I saw the blood on Bree’s throat and I went crazy. There was no way he was walking away from that. No way Bree was ever going to have to face him in court. No way she was ever going to have to see him alive again.”
His eyes were the most tormented things Mei-li had ever seen. “That’s why,” he added softly. “That’s why. God knows what was in my heart. And now you. I never told anyone else the truth, not even Bree. She might have suspected, but I never told her.”
Mei-li walked toward him. “God doesn’t work that way,” she said, brushing a shock of brown hair out of Dirk’s eyes, then letting her fingers caress his cheek. “He doesn’t. He didn’t take Bree’s life to make you pay—that just happened. Bad things happen to good people, Dirk. You know that. I’m a perfect example. And God didn’t allow Blackwood to arrange your daughters’ kidnapping as a way of punishing you. That’s all on Blackwood.”
“But—”
She placed her fingers against his mouth to cut him off. “No. I won’t let you blame yourself for this.” Her mind was racing, trying to figure out what to do, what to say, to convince him. “Survivor’s guilt, Dirk. That’s what you’re feeling. Your wife died and you lived, and because you couldn’t save her you feel guilty about it. So you’ve built this all up in your mind as God punishing you for something you did that is a perfectly human reaction to a situation not of your making.”
She let her emotions free. “Did you make Lyon rape that other girl?” she asked fiercely, grasping his upper arms, feeling them tense against her touch. “No. Did you make him try to rape Bree? No, again. Did you make him turn the knife on you? No, a third time. You did what you had to do to protect yourself and Bree. You cannot know what you would have done if he’d dropped the knife!”
Suddenly she was in his arms, held so tightly she could barely breathe. But she wrapped her arms around him in return, knowing he needed this from her more than she needed her next breath.
Eventually his hold slackened, and she gulped in air. Still in his embrace, she forced herself to a calmness she was far from feeling. “Bree died,” she said, feeling the shudder that ran through his entire body. “Just like Sean died. Those things happened, and we just have to live with them. But that doesn’t mean our lives are over. And it doesn’t mean we can’t find happiness again.”
Dirk raised his head and stared down at her, and she knew he could see the tears trembling in her eyes. “You’re a good man, Dirk,” she whispered. “You are. Are you perfect? Of course not. No one is. But you’re a good man. And you have so much love to give...if you just let yourself.”
Chapter 17
Afterward, Mei-li could never remember how they ended up in her bedroom. One kiss had led to another. And another. Then one thing had led to another. And another. And suddenly they were standing next to her bed.
“Let me,” she whispered, tugging his shirt loose from his pants and stripping it off over his head. “Let me.” Then her hands were roaming his chest, her fingers sliding through the silky thatch of golden-brown chest hair, finding his beaded nipples and toying with them. This is my seduction, she was telling him with each kiss, each caress. You just have to let yourself enjoy it.
Her hands slid down and found his belt buckle, and he sucked in his breath as she loosened his belt, undid his jeans and unzipped his zipper.
He whispered her name, and it was both a question and a surrender.
“Let me,” she breathed, as her lips sought his again, her tongue luring his into an intimacy she’d only ever allowed with one person before. At the same time, one hand slipped into the opening of his jeans, burrowed beneath soft cotton and found him. He was already hard and needy, his erection threatening to escape the boundaries of cotton and denim. Mei-li stroked and Dirk groaned his pleasure into her mouth.
Then he cursed and pulled away. “I can’t.” He was breathing as if he’d been running, and he was still hard, so she knew that despite his words he could...but did he want to?
“I want to,” he whispered, cradling her cheeks with hands that weren’t quite steady, answering the question her eyes had silently asked. “God knows I want to, but I—” He laughed abruptly. “No condoms. I never thought I’d need them.”
The relief she felt was all out of proportion to his statement. “It’s okay,” she reassured him softly. “I’m on birth control. To regulate my system,” she was quick to add, not wanting him to think she made a habit of sleeping with men she barely knew.
Not that she barely knew Dirk—far from it. Yes, the number of days she’d known him were few, but she knew him. She’d spent hours in his company, had seen him in the worst conditions two people could find themselves in...and she knew him.
A flash of tenderness crossed his face, replaced by something she’d yet to see in Dirk...uncertainty combined with vulnerability. “I don’t sleep around,” he confessed. “You’re the first woman since...” And she knew what he was trying to say without actually naming his dead wife. “I never cheated on her, either, and we were married for twelve years.” His voice was so low she had to strain to hear him. “We were together for years before that, too. I waited until I could support her before I asked her to marry me, but...” His next words took her breath away. “She was my one and only.”
She believed him. Incredible as that statement was, she believed him. She’d grown up around actors and had an uncanny ability to know when they were acting and when they weren’t. Dirk wasn’t—he was telling her the truth that Bree was the only woman he’d ever slept with.
The sexiest man alive—so voted by numerous tabloids and magazines—was also the faithful, monogamous kind. Mei-li’s heart turned over, and the thudding sound echoing in her ears was her falling head over heels in love with him. Again.
The only thing she could think of in that moment, the only thing she wanted to do, was show Dirk the love he so desperately needed. Give him the comfort of her body, the shelter of her arms, but also give him the love that would stitch up the devastating wounds on his soul. She’d made a good start with her words in the living room a few minutes ago. Now she had to show him.
Sure now—even more so than she’d been only a few minutes ago—she moved back into his embrace. “Let me,” she repeated, her eyes promising what only her heart could deliver.
* * *
Dirk had desired women in his life other than Bree. It hadn’t meant anything—men were just hardwired that way, and it had never bothered Bree at all. She’d understood he would never act on those momentary fantasies. His physical and emotional relationship with his wife had given him everything he needed, everything his heart desired, and he’d pitied men who found it necessary to stray.
But the intensity of what he was feeling now shook the foundations of his world. Was
it because he knew how ephemeral life truly was? Because he’d loved and lost and needed something real to hold on to that wouldn’t fade into the mist of dreams? Or was it because Mei-li took him high up onto a mountain with her, teaching him things he’d never known he could learn? Because she gave him wings?
She took him into her body as if she were welcoming him home, and he held himself there for a moment, savoring the peace that enveloped him. But his body’s urgent needs drove him to move, to slide in and out of the tight sheath of Mei-li’s body with a rhythm she matched as if she were made for him. Only for him.
He moved faster now, his breath catching, listening to Mei-li’s soft moans, knowing he was pleasing her as much as she was pleasing him. Feeling her arch beneath him, loving the smooth skin beneath his lips as she threw her head back, her whole body tightening. Gritting his teeth and holding himself back, wanting...needing...to bring her to completion with him. Stroke followed stroke, faster and faster, each one threatening to shatter his control. Then she cried out his name, and he just let go, thrusting into her one last time as her body throbbed around him.
They cuddled in the aftermath. Dirk had never been the kind of man who could roll over and go to sleep afterward, no matter how exhausted he might be. He’d always needed the closeness, the bond, that seemed a natural extension of sex.
“You are incredible,” he told Mei-li now, tightening his arm around her.
“It’s been a while for me,” she murmured, brushing her lips against his bare shoulder. Sighing a little, the way a woman did when she’d been pleased. Very pleased. “Could you tell?”
Dirk pulled back so he could see her face. “Define ‘a while.’”
A tiny smile played over her lips. “Eleven years?”
“Eleven—” He drew a deep breath. “Are you telling me...?”
