by Julie Miller
“I’M GOING WITH YOU, and that’s final.”
“You screwed up, buddy.” Frank Connolly’s accusation resonated deep in Vincent’s bones. He returned his attention to the ten-inch army knife he was strapping to his leg. “She was on your watch, and now she’s gone.”
Vincent stood off to one side of the command center located in a secret room beneath the Lonesome Pony’s ranch house, and watched Frank, Court Brody and Kyle Foster gear up for an unsanctioned mission into the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains. They had an impressive storehouse of weapons to choose from. Swiss double-action Sig-Sauer pistols. Uzi submachine guns with twenty-and twenty-five-round magazines. Smith & Wesson .38’s. Not to mention the two grades of plastique explosive Kyle stuffed into his backpack.
“You’re taking all that?” Vincent questioned. Other than refilling his ammo supply, he’d packed nothing besides the contents of his nylon duffel bag.
He had nightmare visions of all that firepower playing out. They might bag Chilton and his men, but what about Whitney? He kept having flashes of her lying on the floor, bleeding.
Just like his dad.
Pale and helpless and bleeding to death.
Because it was the right thing to do. Because she had to prove something to herself and to these men, and maybe even to him.
“There has to be a better way.”
Court Brody, once an outsider to the group himself, pointed out a more logical argument. “Your orders say to take out Chilton by whatever means necessary. I’ve seen what the man can do. Believe me, this is necessary.”
Vincent’s new orders from the president had been simple and to the point. But he didn’t give a crap about them right now.
His first priority was the same as Montana Confidential’s.
Bring Whitney home.
He’d known she was gone the moment the sunlight hit his face and woke him that morning. The bed was cold. Her scent had faded on the sheets and on him.
And in the hollowed-out dent of the pillow beside him where she had slept, she’d set his father’s badge.
The message she’d left him had been excruciatingly clear.
Bait.
Despite the tears she’d cried, despite the passion they’d shared, despite the way he’d dropped his guard and shared part of his past with her—she’d left him.
Alone and cold, she’d left him.
She’d set herself up as bait to draw out Ross Weston’s connection to the Black Order.
To prove to the world what kind of hero she could be.
A combination of unwanted emotions twisted deep in his gut. Was he angry with her for using him like that? Was he angry with himself for thinking he could trust her?
Or was it just stone-cold fear that he wouldn’t find her in time that nestled around the unfamiliar ache in his heart?
Unused to dealing with the emotions Whitney stirred inside him, Vincent shut them down entirely. He buried them in that neat, orderly place inside him where feelings didn’t matter. He dug a deep hole and hid them away where they couldn’t get in his way. He had a job to do. And, by damn, if he had to take on every man in this room to get that job done, he would.
“MacNair’s my responsibility.” He braced his feet in a defensive stance, preparing to do battle against impossible odds to have his way. “You need me. Or do you want to give Chilton more time with her while you track down Weston’s hideaway?”
Daniel, who’d quietly sat in front of a computer monitor while the rest of them argued their point, finally stood and joined the divisive clash of titans.
“Look. She’s already in. We can’t change that.” He picked up a stack of printouts and tossed a set of papers to each man. “We hope that she’s okay, and play it like she was one of us.”
“She is one of us,” Frank insisted.
Daniel spared him a glance and held up the papers in his hand. “Montana Confidential was formed to uncover and destroy the Black Order, to eliminate the threat of terrorism on American soil. Whitney’s the only one who seems to remember that.”
The coiled tension in the room subsided a notch as each man retreated into himself.
“I read her plan. Brief yourselves on it. It’s solid. She’s our inside man on this assignment now. We don’t jeopardize that by bickering among ourselves. Now let’s get out there and give her some backup.”
The others assembled the last of their gear as if Daniel’s dictate was the final word on the matter.
“That means you, too, Romeo.”
Vincent nodded. He slipped his bag onto his shoulder and prayed to God that Whitney could fool Chilton and Weston as completely as she’d fooled him.
LONG BEFORE they turned off the main highway, Chilton had forced Whitney to lie down on the back seat. Using her own scarf as a hood, he covered her face. He bound her wrists together with something hard and leathery. A belt, perhaps.
Blindfolded in such a way, she breathed in her own stale air. The hood was hot and suffocating. She knew the moment they turned onto the gravel road that wound up into the mountains. However, the driver had never learned the wisdom of driving slowly on gravel. Whitney felt each bump, jolt and curve in her head and stomach. Her sense of balance went haywire. Her head pounded, and throwing up that bit of fudge she’d eaten earlier seemed like a very real possibility.
But she didn’t dare sit up to steady herself, didn’t dare complain. Chilton’s gun seemed to always be stroking her shoulder or hair, keeping her in her place.
When the car finally lurched to a stop, Whitney tried to steady her spinning head. She had to get a grasp on her location, had to prepare herself for playing along with this undercover game she’d volunteered for, wherever it might have taken her.
She could be anywhere, she realized. Back at Chilton’s cabin. In the middle of nowhere beside a ditch that would become her final resting place. She prayed that when she opened her eyes, this would all look familiar.
Wraparound porch. Stone house. Metal outbuildings.
She prayed she had figured this out right. Maybe her instincts were off. Maybe she’d put the pieces together wrong. Maybe Chilton wasn’t taking her to Ross Weston, after all.
When she screwed up, she did it big time. And when she was a success… Oh hell. When was the last time she’d gotten anything right on her own?
She heard the distinctive click, slip, smack of weapons being checked and loaded. She’d learned to recognize the action by sound, after spending time with Vincent. It was a cold sound, a deadly sound. Maybe more frightening than the gunshot itself, because of the ominous import of what it promised. Two car doors slammed in front of her, and Whitney knew the driver and the guard in the front seat had gotten out. To stand watch or to assassinate her, she couldn’t tell.
Oh God, oh God, oh God. How could Vincent live in a world like this? How did a man survive this kind of torturous uncertainty day in and day out?
There’s a time to run, a time to fight and a time to shut up.
Whitney added a time to think to Vincent’s list of crime-fighting advice.
The weight on the seat beside her shifted and the door opened. She welcomed the rush of crisp mountain air that swept over her body, cooling the gagging heat and clearing her mind of the paralyzing panic.
She had to gather her wits. She had to…
“Get out, Miss MacNair.”…think faster.
Sitting up was a dizzying task in itself. But when Chilton dug his talons into her upper arm and dragged her across the seat, she lost all sense of up and down in her crazy, off-kilter world. She would have landed on her knees in the gravel, but Chilton jerked her upright, wrenching her shoulder. Whitney cried out as she fell against him.
In the next heartbeat she felt his breath on her skin through the scarf. “Shut up.”
The dirty little whisper pressed against her ear and she obeyed.
He released her for an instant and she sucked in half a breath of cool air. But before she exhaled, he snatched her by the leath
er strap at her wrists and tugged. She grit her teeth against the cut of the band in her tender skin and followed, stumbling over her own feet on the gravel, led like a sacrifice to the slaughter.
She managed to stay on her feet long enough to feel the change in terrain beneath them. Now she was on something hard and flat, a sidewalk or paving stones. Did Weston’s ranch have a path leading up to the broad porch? She couldn’t remember.
When Chilton stopped, so did she. She squeezed her eyes shut, cocked her ear, fine-tuned her senses and tried to determine what was going on around her before she fell victim to it.
She jumped at the unexpected pounding of fists on wood.
Moments later she heard the slip of a dead bolt and the turn of a doorknob.
“Yes?” The clipped question held no trace of an accent.
She didn’t dare cross her fingers for Chilton to see, but in her heart she prayed.
“I wish to see him.” Chilton’s condescending order was easy to identify.
The silence that followed lasted a lifetime.
The next voice she heard was Chilton’s. “I have a delivery for you.”
“What have you done to her?”
Whitney bit the inside of her lip to keep her breath from whooshing out in a noisy celebration of success.
Ross Weston.
She knew that charm-filled, resonant, patronizing voice by heart.
“She is more trouble than she is worth. I hope you know that.”
In a face-off of evil versus evil, neither Chilton nor Weston wanted to back off. “I know all I need to.”
“It is time to complete our bargain.”
Weston’s impatient sigh was audible to her own ears. “Untie her first.”
With all the callous care she expected from him, Chilton loosened the wrist strap and pulled it off. She wiggled her fingers as circulation returned to her cold, numb hands, and prepared herself for the performance of a lifetime—the unveiling of Whitney MacNair, grateful little rich girl.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the glare of the clear afternoon sunlight as Chilton pulled the hood from her face and let it hang around her neck.
Whitney blinked her eyes open and looked straight into Dimitri Chilton’s cultured sneer. She staggered back a step with a gasp of fear. She breathed in a reviving lungful of crisp autumn air to clear her head and play her part.
She turned and saw the terrorists on the porch, weapons hanging loosely in the crook of their elbows. She looked toward the door and saw four Secret Service types in dull blue suits flanking the tall, stately man in the open doorway.
Then she lifted her gaze to the man who represented everything that had gone wrong in her world.
She squeezed out a few tears, just for effect, then ran up the stairs and threw herself into his arms.
“Ross!”
Senator Weston folded his arms around her and pulled her close. There was something more territorial than comforting in the kiss he pressed to the top of her hair.
“You’re safe now, Whitney. I’ll keep you safe.”
While she snuggled against his barrel chest, he lifted his head and barked orders to the men in suits beside him. “Take their weapons. Pay them what we discussed and hand over their travel papers. Then get rid of them.”
Whitney pushed some space between her and Weston’s suede vest. She tipped her head back and offered up an innocent smile. “You negotiated my freedom? How? Why?”
His white teeth gleamed down at her with the promise of future explanations.
But the smile stopped when he gave one more order. “Escort them over the border yourselves. I don’t want to see their like in my country again.”
Chapter Ten
The next hour played out like a skewed scene from an Agatha Christie parlor mystery.
Clinging tight to Weston’s arm, Whitney followed him into his study at the head of an entourage that included two professional bodyguards who answered to Jordan and Buck, a reserved Native American woman in a maid’s outfit, and Ross’s campaign manager, Warren Burke.
The room itself was massive, the size of a small apartment. Behind folding walnut doors lay a room straight out of one of Ernest Hemingway’s safari stories. It was an eclectic mix of heavy wood furniture covered in animal-hide prints and leather. Row upon row of bookshelves and cubbies had been built into the side walls and filled with impressive gold-foil editions of books that looked as if they’d never been read. A stone hearth and fireplace filled the wall opposite the door. And hunting trophies of various sizes, from all parts of the world, had been stuffed and mounted on the walls or set out on display.
It was a room filled with power and wealth and secrets.
Weston pushed open the doors with grand ceremony and ushered everyone inside. Standing in the middle of the room was a fiftyish woman wearing an impeccable Chanel houndstooth wool suit with strands upon strands of gold chains hanging around her neck.
If she was startled by the sudden influx of guests, she didn’t show it. Whitney hardly recognized her when she turned and looked at the senator. The woman gave everyone else a disinterested glance, but lingered a moment at Warren Burke’s expressionless face.
A deep sigh lifted her shoulders before she stepped forward to greet everyone.
Weston pulled Whitney along with him to the center of the room. “You remember my wife, Margery.”
“Mrs. Weston.”
Whitney smiled and shook hands with the superficially beautiful woman. Her perfect nails and perfect upsweep of too-blond hair played well on television. But in person there was something brittle and forced about her welcoming grace.
“I can’t believe you brought her here.” The shock and hurt on Margery’s face was diluted by the vodka she held in her left hand. But she smiled anyway and asked, “How is your mother, Whitney?”
“Busy with Gerry’s campaign in Massachusetts.”
Her heart went out to the sad, used-up woman. Apparently Whitney hadn’t been the only victim of Weston’s lust for power.
Everyone who wasn’t carrying a visible weapon sat at Ross’s request. The two guards stationed themselves inside the door. Ensconced on a leather sofa, Whitney sat on something that felt suspiciously like real leopard skin and kept an eye on the moose that watched her from above the stone fireplace while drinks were served.
She was dying to ask just what kind of arrangement he had made with Dimitri Chilton. What kind of payment had the terrorist agreed to? What was the going rate for her life these days?
Was this the only way the Black Order could get out of the country?
Somehow, she doubted it. There had been too many of them. One died. Another took his place. They had a stronghold or a pipeline somewhere. They didn’t need Ross Weston’s influence to get out of the country.
So what did they need from the senator?
And what had he asked for in return?
Her?
Common sense as well as modesty told her that she alone wasn’t worth the price of the innocent lives that had been lost or destroyed along the way.
Frank Connolly’s plane had been sabotaged. He and his wife, C.J., had been stranded in the mountains with a hit man from the Black Order on their heels. Court Brody had infiltrated a local militia to expose the Black Order’s influence on the group. His identity had been revealed and he was nearly killed. Kyle Foster had dealt with a bomb threat at the capitol and nearly lost his own life to a lethal virus the terrorists created to poison Helena’s water supply.
Carl Howard had died trying to save her. Jewel, an innocent child, had been attacked.
And for what? For what?
This was clearly Ross Weston’s room, a blend of cultured wealth and violence.
Not unlike Dimitri Chilton.
Did the two men have more in common than their personalities?
The answers were here in this room. Some instinct, deeper than female intuition, stronger than logic, told her the answers to all her questions were here
. Inside the big teakwood desk. On his computer. Hidden behind one of the cabinet doors.
Here was where she’d find the evidence to implicate Ross Weston.
Now how did she go about finding it?
“Whitney?” She blinked her eyes into focus and realized she’d been staring at Weston. With one foot up on the hearth, he rested his elbow on his knee and stoked the fire burning there. “You all right? We were just talking about our next step.”
Play the game, MacNair, she reminded herself. Play the game.
She cleared her throat and stood. “The next step should be calling my father and telling him I’m all right.”
Margery saluted her husband with her empty glass. “Yes, Ross. Why don’t you call Gerald, Sr. and tell him his little girl is safe with us.”
Weston straightened, ignoring his wife’s embarrassing sarcasm. “I want to wait until my men have taken care of the problem. There’s no sense raising Gerald’s hopes until we know for certain the Black Order is no longer a threat. I want his gratitude, not his wrath breathing down my neck.”
Right now Whitney wanted nothing more than to call her father and share her suspicions about Weston. Though she’d been hurt that he’d sent Brian to check on her instead of coming himself, he could earn a huge number of brownie points by destroying Weston’s career for her.
Satisfying as the prospect might be, that was personal, vengeful thinking. She had a job to do, a part to play.
“So are we hostages here?” she asked.
Even Margery perked up at that question. Warren brought over the crystal decanter of vodka and refilled her empty glass, soothing Margery’s flare of concern. “That’s an unfair question, Miss MacNair.”
Warren Burke’s pointy nose reminded Whitney of a weasel. He was attractive, she supposed, in a plastic-toy-doll kind of way. Tanned features. Blue eyes. Hair that went through a weekly trim and was coated with enough hair spray to withstand a winter blizzard.
He definitely spoke the party line. “The senator is doing what’s right, not only for you but for the country.”
