The idea of Susanna stealing anything still boggled Cate’s mind. But if it was the only way she knew to prove that something was wrong, or to find out for sure what had happened to that little girl…
“Things seemed okay until yesterday. Trent went to pick up some donations from the Wallace Foundation, and he didn’t come back. Most of the staff was already on vacation. Susanna called me, then sent the local employees away and had them take the remaining girls with them. She went looking for Trent, and she didn’t come back, either.” He exhaled and his shoulders rounded, as if the telling had worn him out.
“What was on the files?”
“Don’t know yet. They were encrypted. One of my buddies back home is working on them.”
Encrypted files, missing friends, young girls disappearing into the confidential control of a questionable adoption agency. And, oh, yeah, gunshots, a phoned-in threat and a break-in at Justin’s house. Cold seeped into her bones, spreading until it made her shiver. She hugged her arms across her middle to fight the chill, but it didn’t help.
She must have looked about as freaked out as she felt because, abruptly, Justin laid his hand on her knee, and he gave the closest to a charming smile she’d ever gotten from him. “Hey, don’t worry. Remember you used to say Trent had the luck of the devil? He still does. He’ll get out of this, and Susanna, too.”
“When I said he had the luck of the devil, I was actually referring to you,” she grumbled.
He grinned. “I know.”
She tried very hard to not notice how long his fingers were, or that the tips were callused against her skin. He might live a life of luxury, but he didn’t pamper himself. He’d earned every one of those calluses, and the muscles, with hard work. Too bad he didn’t apply himself to something like a job or, just to be totally frivolous, making the world a better place, but at least he was dedicated to something.
As the moment of silence dragged out, she kept staring at his hand, its warmth slowly thawing the cold underneath. He looked relatively calm and reasonably assured, but she couldn’t help but call to mind a take on a Kipling quote: If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…it’s obvious you don’t understand the situation.
For Trent’s and Susanna’s sakes—hell, for her own sake—she prayed Justin did understand.
Chapter 4
“Tell me again why we aren’t calling anyone.”
Justin withdrew his hand—had she realized they’d touched more in a few hours than in thirteen years?—and hefted the backpack between his feet, unzipping it. “Because the bad guys with the guns and the hostages said not to or they would kill us all.”
“So far you’ve talked about kidnapping and—” Cate breathed, but sounded fairly normal when she went on “—black-market adoptions at best, child trafficking at worst. Do you believe the brothers are capable of murder?”
“I do,” he said flatly, as he dug through the clothes he’d stuffed into the bag to get to the cell phone charger near the bottom. He plugged it into the same outlet as the bedside lamp. The last thing he wanted—besides being involved in this mess—with Cate—was to let his cell go dead.
Just thinking the word murder made him wince.
“That’s a big step up.”
He gave her a cynical glance. “Child trafficking compared to murder? They seem equally disgusting to me.”
She nodded. Her little town might not be a bed of criminal activity, but it had some, and as an E.R. doctor, she must have seen her share of the violence humans could commit against other humans. “Isn’t it fairly common for kidnappers to make threats they don’t carry out?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask your cop friends about that.” Instantly he wished he could recall the words. No need for her to know that Trent had kept him updated on what was going on Cate’s life; even less need to let her know that he’d paid attention.
She didn’t seem to notice, but gazed at the drape-covered window and mused, “Making threats seems to me to be primarily a scare tactic to get people to do what you want. Actually carrying through on them—”
“They sent a photograph.”
Her gaze jerked to him and sharpened. “Who did? Of what? Trent and Susanna?”
“The guy who called at lunch. And no, it wasn’t them.” He wasn’t giving details of exactly what it was, and he damn sure wasn’t showing her. She would just have to take his word for it. “It was a photo of the last person who stole from the Wallaces. Remember Benita’s joke about dumping Mario at sea?” His attempt at a smile was sickly. “It’s not funny when someone
really does it.”
Cate blanched. He half expected her to demand to see it anyway, to remind him that she was a doctor and had been dissecting dead people and putting back together live ones before she’d finished school. She didn’t, though. She just swallowed really hard and nodded. When she spoke again, it was softly, fearfully. “So what do we do?”
As he opened his mouth, a knock sounded at the door. She backpedaled across the bed so quickly that her head bumped the wall, and her eyes were wide enough to pop out of her head. “Damn, I wish you had a gun in that bag,” she whispered.
“Me? I’ve never touched a gun in my life,” he whispered back. He eased from the bed and went to the door. There was a peephole, but he kept thinking of the countless movies he’d seen where the victim looked out the hole and got a bullet through the eye in return. Stiffening his spine, he bent to look out.
An older man stood a few feet back from the door, a tray balanced in his hands. He was dark, his features distinctively Mayan, and he clenched an unlit cigar between his teeth. “Señor, señorita, I have refreshments.”
He did: a couple bottles each of beer and water, three foam cartons and—bless him—a bottle of tequila and two glasses. Justin unlocked the door and opened it. The man smiled broadly as he carried the tray to the dresser. Turning, he acknowledged each of them. “I’m Pablo, and you are the friends of my son-in-law’s cousin’s brother-in-law, Mario.” He must have caught the vague confusion on their faces. “We consider it all family.”
“We appreciate your putting us up on such short notice,” Justin said, the tequila on the tray damn near making his mouth water. What he wouldn’t give to down the entire bottle, and maybe another one, if that was what it would take to pretend this day had never happened.
“Don’t worry. As far as anyone knows but my family, you don’t exist. If you need anything, knock on the door.” Pablo gestured toward the connecting door opposite the bathroom. “Our quarters are next door, and my wife is always there.”
“Thanks,” Justin murmured as the man left again.
He reached for the tequila at the same time Cate reached for the foam boxes. Their hands bumped—nothing much, as contact went. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have even noticed, but this wasn’t anyone else. It was Cate. Trent’s ex-wife. The woman who raised every hostile instinct in his body. The woman who, in just the past few hours, had grabbed his arm, shoved him and pinched the hell out of him. His fingers should be itching to curl around her throat, not to touch her again. For damn sure not to see if her skin was as soft everywhere.
Scowling, he took the tequila and a glass and settled on the bed again. While he poured an unhealthy slug into the glass, she sat down and opened the boxes.
“Sandwiches,” she said with disinterest. “Some sort of sweet.” As he took the first long drink, she opened the third box. Her brows raised as she turned it around so he could see.
“It’s a Mayan avocado. Is there lime? Salt?” He lost interest in the booze, surging to his feet, finding a dish of quartered limes and a saltshaker on the tray. “It’s like a regular avocado, only about a thousand times better. They grow as big as your head—” He stopped squeezing in lime juice to cock his head and look at her. “Well, not your head, but anyone else’s. They’re incredible.”
Her smile was as sour as the juice. “Oh, look, the egomaniac is insul
ting my ego. Isn’t that—”
He picked up a chunk of the juiced and salted avocado and slid it into her mouth.
Her expression switched from sarcasm to bliss so quickly, it was comical. “Oh, wow.”
She remained silent until the entire fruit was gone, when she licked the dribs of juice and salt from her fingertips. “That was wonderful.”
“See? I’m right at least part of the time.”
She opened her mouth, and he waited for her typical kind of retort. Everyone gets lucky once in a while. Or When you waste your life partying, sooner or later you’re sure to come across something good. Instead, she just nodded. “I don’t suppose I could stick a few of those in my suitcase on the way home.”
“Not unless you want to hand them over to the customs guys.”
His phone rang, a familiar tone, and he picked it up without glancing at the screen. “Hey, Garcia, give me some good news.”
Amy Garcia was one of the few people, besides Susanna and Trent, whom he trusted without question. They’d met at the rehab center six years ago where he was recovering from a motorcycle accident and she was teaching computer skills to spine patients. She wasn’t the least bit impressed by him or his money; she was blunt and honest; she had a tender heart, and she could sweet-talk a computer into dancing Swan Lake for her.
“I have a date tonight.”
Good news for her, maybe. Not so much for Susanna and Trent. “Haven’t you broken enough hearts?”
“There can never be enough men mooning over me, darlin’. How are things in your tropical paradise?”
“It’s not looking much like paradise at the moment.”
“Maybe I can change that. I accessed one of the files. I’m sending it to you as we speak.”
Balancing the phone between his ear and shoulder, Justin put his drink on the night table, then dug the iPad out of his backpack. “Anything of interest on it?”
“Only if you consider the names and current addresses of every child adopted through the Wallaces’ agency interesting.”
He watched as the email opened on the screen, followed by Garcia’s attachment. The database contained the girls’ names, their adoptive parents’ names, addresses and phone numbers, along with various dates and what appeared to be references to other files. “You’re the best, Garcia. You should accept that job I offered you.”
“Why? You get my services now for free. Besides, I like doing what I’m doing. I’ll keep trying on the other files.”
“Thanks. Did I tell you I love you?”
Her laugh was husky. “That’s what all the guys say. Later.”
After disconnecting, he gestured to Cate to join him on the bed. When she sat down, he caught a faint whiff of lime juice, underscored by sunscreen and, even fainter, cologne—something sweet and fruity. Hell, she smelled damn near good enough to—
Deliberately he blocked the thought. Cate, he reminded himself. The last woman in the world he was interested in. The last female in the universe he would get involved with.
He held the tablet where she could see the screen, too. “My buddy came through.”
Twenty-two names scrolled down the screen. The youngest had been five at the time of adoption, the oldest eleven. Their alleged new homes were mostly clustered in the South, with six or eight scattered across Texas, Arizona and California.
Twenty-two girls who’d already been orphaned or abandoned, who’d already lived through too much hardship. Twenty-two girls who could possibly be living a normal life…or facing anything from slavery to sexual exploitation to death.
“All Susanna ever wanted to do was help girls like these. It was her dream. Her calling.” He felt Cate’s glance—so close; how could he not?—but he didn’t look at her. He couldn’t take his gaze from the names. “She just needed money, and the Wallaces had so much of it to give. She never imagined…I never imagined…”
Cate shook off the heavy silence that had settled over them. “Evil often hides behind good deeds. The Wallaces will pay for what they’ve done, and the girls… We’ll find the girls. We’ll make it right.”
Then he did gaze at her. She wore an expression of fierce determination, the same look he remembered from the night before the wedding, when he’d told her she didn’t deserve Trent. He loves me, she’d said icily. We’ll make it work.
They hadn’t. Trent had been no more interested in marriage than Justin had been. At the bachelor party, he had admitted as much, but it had been easier to go through with it than to disappoint his bride and his parents or upset all the elaborate plans. Back then, going along had always been easier for Trent, dealing with the fallout later. He figured there was no problem that wouldn’t get better with time. Arguments would be forgotten, tempers would fade, a wife would undergo a total personality change and stop minding his absences…
Justin grimaced. Cate really had deserved better.
* * *
“Okay.” Cate breathed deeply, sweet oxygen laced with expensive aftershave filling her lungs, then repeated, “Okay. We can’t just sit here and wait for the Wallaces to call or for Trent’s and Susanna’s bodies to wash up on the beach somewhere.” The thought made her shudder and a knot formed in her gut, but she doggedly went on. “We can at least try to find out what happened to these girls.”
Justin glanced at her. “You want to go back to the States and…what? Ring some doorbells?”
“Why not? Let’s look at what we know. One: Susanna asks questions about the adoption agency’s policies and gets the brush-off. Two: she steals computer files regarding the agency and only the agency, right?”
He nodded.
“Three: she and Trent go missing. Four: people shoot at you and me just for being at the shelter. Five: you get a call threatening both of us, accompanied by a photo of the last person who pissed off the brothers.” She gazed at the fingers she was holding in the air. Five small fingers, five big points. “If the adoptions were all legitimate, if they’re just trying to recover stolen files, do you think they’d really use tactics like kidnapping, intimidation and threats of murder?”
Earlier he’d been trying to convince her the Wallaces were capable of murder, she reflected. It seemed he’d succeeded. It was the photo. She didn’t need to see it. Just the look on Justin’s face had been more than enough. If it had persuaded him the men were dead serious, she’d take his word for it.
“Okay. Where do we want to go?” He studied the database. “The best flight home would probably be Atlanta, and that would put us within reasonable driving distance of one, two, three…six girls.”
“Then let’s go to Atlanta.”
He shifted the tablet, then began a search for flights. Her muscles taut, her stomach acidic, she stood to stretch her legs, walking back and forth the length of the room. She wasn’t used to being cooped up. At work she spent most of her shift on her feet, and with more people than she had ever wanted to see in a twelve-hour span.
She wasn’t used to being scared, either. She was accustomed to worrying about Trent, though she’d gotten out of the habit since he’d met Susanna.
Since Justin had introduced him to Susanna.
“All right, we’re on the 11:00 a.m. flight for tomorrow. You have anything in particular in mind for this?”
She turned to give him her friendliest smile and thickened her accent until it was heavy and sweet as honey. “‘Hey there. My husband and I have just moved in down the street, and the neighbor said you have a daughter the same age as our little Lily, so I just wanted to come by and introduce myself and see if we could set up a play date. It’s so hard for her, moving to a new neighborhood, you know.’”
Justin grinned and—who would have believed it?—it was charming. “Lily, huh?”
“‘It’s an old name in his family. I’m just grateful it wasn’t Zinnia or Peony.’” She dropped the accent and picked up a bottle of water from the tray, twisting the cap off. “I assume the files are with Garcia.” She also assumed Garcia was
a woman. Justin just wasn’t the type to say I love you to a male buddy. He and Trent had been best friends for years, and moron was about the fondest thing either of them said to the other. So when he called her a buddy, what exactly did that mean? Girlfriend, wannabe girlfriend, potential girlfriend, ex-girlfriend?
It didn’t matter.
“Yeah, we’ll swing by her place to pick up the flash drive in case we need it to try to make a trade.”
It really didn’t matter.
“Where is her place?”
“Jackson, Mississippi.”
Cate could picture her: tall, willowy, blond—that was Justin’s type. It had also been Trent’s type before and after—and apparently even while he was with—her. She’d often wondered on lonely nights when Trent was elsewhere if coloring her hair would help keep him home more often. If she should work out enough to at least build muscles if she couldn’t have curves. If she should dress better, wear more makeup, dumb down her conversation. But no matter what she did on the outside, she would never be tall, willowy or blond on the inside, so she’d stayed the drab little mouse and Trent had strayed further and further until their marriage was nothing but a sad joke.
Deliberately, she turned her thoughts to planning as she paced. Once they reached Atlanta, she would have to be the one to approach the parents. Justin was drop-dead gorgeous and prince of a powerful Southern family—just a tad memorable. She, on the other hand, was as everyday normal as they came. Ten minutes after talking to her, a stranger would have trouble recalling what color her hair was or whether she’d had an accent.
In the Enemy's Arms Page 6
