Plugging a disk into the drive, she checked its directory and frowned. All the files were old. Almost two years old. There was nothing new. She checked two more disks in quick succession. Same thing. Weird! Leaning back in the chair, she contemplated the problem.
Maybe Court simply hadn’t backed up his files in a long time. In that case, the files on the computer’s hard drive would be the current ones. She used the mouse to click on successive folders, checking the file dates. Same thing. This computer hadn’t been used in a long time.
Since the data on this computer was so old, there probably wouldn’t be much of interest here to DiMona. Still she supposed she’d better scan some of the files just to be sure.
She’d just clicked on an icon to open a word processing program when a man’s voice came from her right. “Can I help you, miss?”
Heather shrieked.
It wasn’t a soft feminine squeak of surprise, but a loud shriek of startlement as adrenaline shot into her system telling her to flee. She leapt to her feet, turned to face the threat only to catch her foot on the leg of her chair. She lost her balance, falling against the man and found herself clutching the fabric of a grey suit jacket as she stared up into the beefy face of the man she knew as Ernest, the butler. Only now, in the darkest hours of the night, Ernest looked nothing like the innocuous butler she’d met during the daylight hours.
His blue eyes looked cold and infinitely suspicious as he stared down into her face. Hastily, Heather pushed away from him as she tried to right herself. Oh, Lord! Was that a gun she’d felt under his jacket? What kind of butler carried a gun in a shoulder holster?
All the terror she’d been feeling in the past few days coalesced into a cold, hard knot of nausea in the pit of her stomach. The lump of fear rose in her throat, and she swallowed. She couldn’t afford to let the tiniest bit of apprehension show. Gaining the security of her own feet, shaky though her stance might be, Heather forced a smile to her lips. “Ernest! My goodness, you startled me. Wh-what did you say?”
The butler regarded her in silence for a long moment, then said, “I asked if I could help you find something?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. I was just—” Heather waved toward the computer and sought inspiration “—um, just going to use the computer to write a letter. It’s all right, isn’t it?”
Once again, Ernest considered her before responding. Finally he said, “I’m sure it is, ma’am, although the software on that computer will probably be somewhat outdated.”
“Oh. Is there another computer that you’d prefer me to use.”
Ernest shrugged. “Mr. Gabriele has one of those laptop computers, miss. But no one else uses it.”
DiMona had been right. Heather nodded. “Of course. Well, I’m sure this one will do just fine.” She waited for the butler to leave, but he showed no sign of departing. “I’ll just get back to my letter.”
“Isn’t it kind of late to be writing a letter?”
Heather shook her head and lied. “I tend to be a bit of an insomniac. I find it’s better to get up and accomplish something than it is to lie in bed wishing for sleep.”
Ernest nodded. “I know just what you mean, miss. Well, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call.” He turned toward the door, and Heather caught sight of the butt of a weapon beneath his jacket. It was definitely a gun.
As Ernest exited the room, Heather’s thoughts turned once again to Dr. Shaw. She wondered what he was doing now. She’d stopped seeing him years ago when it became apparent that she had healed as much as she was going to. She was scarred, but she’d become harder, stronger and certainly less deluded about the rosiness of life. Perhaps everything she’d faced so long ago had been fate, or divine will, preparation for the trials that confronted her now.
It was another of Seattle’s grey, overcast days. Heather had been in Court’s household over a week. Now, she stood in front of the monkeys’ cage, barely noticing the creatures cavorting within, as she waited for DiMona to show. She had almost nothing to give him. A list of the people that she had seen Court receive in his home office. As much concerning the comings and goings of Court’s staff as she’d been able to monitor. And, she’d recorded the fragment of an overheard telephone conversation—one side only, of course. That was about it.
She was under no illusion that what she had to give to DiMona amounted to anything. Where did that leave her in her attempt to protect Des?
Peripherally she noted the approach of a man wearing a beige trench coat, but she couldn’t discern any other details. She was about to turn to look at him when he spoke, growling the words in an undertone beneath his breath. “Don’t look at me!”
The voice was DiMona’s. Heather froze as her heart trembled in her chest. “Wh-why?” she whispered. “Is something wrong?”
“Were you followed?”
Followed! Questions rampaged through her mind. By whom? Why? She stared sightlessly at the monkeys swinging around the cage before her. “Wh-why would anyone follow me?”
DiMona swore foully beneath his breath and muttered something about amateur idiots. “Never mind. What have you got for me?”
Reflexively, Heather reached for the folded piece of paper in her pocket. “I wrote it down.”
“Don’t!” DiMona snapped in an undertone. “You can’t give it to me here. Meet me in the reptile house in five minutes.” Before Heather could respond, he was gone.
Closing her eyes, she drew a deep, shaky breath and resisted the urge to see if she could spot someone following her.
Slowly she turned and began to walk along the path leading toward the reptilian area of the zoo. Surreptitiously she looked around. But, if there ever had been someone following her, he seemed to be gone now.
She didn’t see the man standing in the shadow of a nearby exhibit. As Heather disappeared along the path, Court stepped from the shade. If he’d had any remaining doubt that Heather was working for the Colombians, that doubt was now laid to rest.
He trailed after her slowly—not a problem with his leg still uncertain—and stayed out of sight. When she entered the reptile house, he didn’t bother following. It would have been too easy to be spotted. For now, it was enough to know that she was meeting DiMona and, undoubtedly, passing on information concerning Court and his activities.
The question he desperately needed to have answered now was why were the Colombians watching him? If they had truly suspected him of crossing them, he had little doubt that he would have been killed. They weren’t known for taking chances on people.
Automatically taking note of his surroundings and the people he passed, an ability that had become innate after years of undercover work, Court made his way back to the parking lot where Dave waited in an unobtrusive car. Continuing to ponder the very strange situation he found himself in, he decided he was going to have to confront Heather about her association with DiMona soon.
Damn! Some small part of him had still harbored the hope that Heather’s apparent involvement would prove to be a series of coincidences and circumstantial evidence. That hope had just been shattered. He ignored the tightening sensation in his chest that told him that information had come in too late to keep him from getting hurt. Better hurt than dead at any rate.
Chapter 10
“Heather, c-could you come home? Please?” Des’s ten-year-old voice was choked with suppressed tears.
Heather was dreaming. Even in the grip of reliving the most horrific day of her life, she recognized that fact. But she couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t wake up to escape. She could only twist and turn, fighting the spidery strands of the dream even as they gripped her more tightly.
The noise of the diner faded into the background as Heather gripped the telephone receiver more tightly. Des rarely cried. At ten, he considered himself much too mature for such behavior. “What’s the matter, Des? Did you hurt yourself?”
“No.” He choked back a sob. “S-something’s wrong with Dad. He’s got a g-gun.”
Shock paralysed her. A gun! Where had her father gotten a gun?
“Heather, please come home. I’m scared.”
“I’ll be right there, Des. Don’t worry, okay.” She heard her father shout something in the background, and then another choked sob from Des. “I’m coming,” she yelled, hoping to reassure him, to distract him. Then, slamming the receiver down she ripped off her apron and raced out of the restaurant without a word to anyone.
The dream shifted.
Suddenly she was home, although she had no idea how she had gotten there. It was untidy, like it had been since the day her mother, Moira, had passed away almost a year earlier. Heather did what she could, but she just didn’t have the skill for homemaking that her mother had had. And her father was little help.
Duncan Buchanan seemed to have lost a very important part of himself on the day her mother had finally given in to the cancer that had attacked her. He trailed through each day like the ghost of the man he’d been.
Today though, her father was more animated than she had seen him in a long while. He was pacing back and forth in the living room waving a gun and ranting while Des sat curled up into a tight ball on the corner of the sofa with silent tears tracking down his cheeks.
At first Heather wasn’t afraid. Her father had always had a blustery temper, but he’d never been violent. It was when she tried to talk to him that fear blossomed. “Dad, what’s wrong? What’s the matter?”
“Get away from me,” he shouted, gesturing crazily with the gun. “Just shut up and sit down.” Although Heather complied, sitting gingerly on the edge of the sofa, his rage and frustration only seemed to intensify. “Do you know what they did?”
“Who, Dad?” she asked in as calm a tone as she could manage.
He didn’t seem to hear her. “After twenty years the bastards. Twenty years! How am I supposed to support my family?”
It was then that Heather realized that he must have been fired. “You can find another job, Dad. It’s not the end of the world. We’ll manage. We always do.” He whirled to face her. Continuing to talk to him, she rose and moved slowly toward him. “Please…just give me the gun.”
“Gun…” His eyes tracked to the weapon in his hand as though he’d forgotten he held it. And then his expression hardened. “No. The bastards are gonna pay. I can’t let anybody else take care of my family.”
Heather felt tears of fear of hurt and a thousand other emotions burn in her eyes. No! She couldn’t cry. She had to be strong, for all of them. Just as her mother had been. And as she often did in times of stress, Heather heard her mother’s voice. You will always have the strength to do what needs to be done, child. The good Lord made you strong. And, of course, the fact that you are my daughter helps, as well, she’d added with an impish grin.
“Daddy, please stop and think. What will happen to us, to your family, if you do something and get sent to jail? You won’t be helping us.” Despite her resolve, the tears overflowed and trickled down her cheeks.
As though her tears were shards of glass that cut him to the quick, his face crumpled. “Oh, baby. Don’t cry. You know your mama would hate me for makin’ you cry. Oh, God, what am I doin’? I’m just no good without her.”
And then, before Heather’s horrified eyes, Duncan Buchanan lifted the gun to his own head. “Daddy, no!” Instinctively, she leapt forward to stop him, grabbing the gun in an effort to tug it from his hands. There was an explosive noise. A white-hot pain pierced her shoulder above her left breast. And then…nothing. Only the sensation of being wrapped in white, shut off from the world.
But deep in her dream, she knew what came next and she fought to escape it. To deny it. “No! No! No!” She repeated the word in an endless litany until finally the strands of the dream lost their power.
Heather sat bolt upright in bed, dashing the tears from her face in an angry motion. Damn it! A sob caught in her throat. Ten years! Ten years and still she remembered every small detail as though it were yesterday. The nightmare would let her forget none of it.
Reaching over, she turned on the bedside lamp. And that was when she saw him. A startled squeak of surprise escaped her even as she recognized Court silhouetted in the bedroom doorway.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I was passing by when I heard you cry out.” Clad only in a pair of jeans, he carried a steaming cup in his hand. Barefoot and shirtless, Court Gabriele was breathtakingly male.
Heather flushed, wishing she’d locked her door and saved herself the embarrassment of having her employer see her in the depths of a nightmare. “It—it’s all right. I’m sorry I disturbed you.” In the next instant, she remembered that she couldn’t have locked her door even if she’d thought of it. Most of the doors in the house had those old-fashioned skeleton key type of locks set just below nonlocking doorknobs. And, since she didn’t have a key…
“You didn’t disturb me.” He continued to watch her with those predatory and too perceptive golden eyes of his. “Are you all right?”
Heather nodded. “Just an old recurring dream.”
“Sounded more like a nightmare.”
Heather cleared her throat and tugged the blankets higher. It felt awkward to be sitting in bed looking up at him. “Yes…well, I’m used to it.”
He left his position in the doorway and strolled into the room. Picking up the chair that sat before the vanity, he swung it around to face the bed and sat down. “Tell me about it.”
Heather’s eyes widened. “Oh, I don’t think that would be a good idea. It’s not something I talk about.”
“Why?”
“It’s…difficult.”
He nodded his understanding. “When nightmares hold us hostage, sometimes the only thing that will break their hold is talking about them.”
Why did other people always assume they knew what was best for her? She doubted that he’d ever had a nightmare in his life. “Oh, and you know all about nightmares, no doubt.”
For an instant the expression in his eyes grew cold and bleak. Then, to her surprise, he nodded. “Nightmares. Guilt. Fear. Yeah, I know about them.” Suddenly he looked at her with a tenderness that she found touching and a bit disconcerting. “Now,” he said. “Tell me about the dream. It will make you feel better and I promise I’ll never tell a soul.”
Still, Heather hesitated. “I don’t want sympathy. Sympathy makes me cry, and I hate that.”
He held up his right hand. “Scout’s honor. No sympathy.”
She nipped the inside of her bottom lip in indecision, but something in his gaze reassured her. So finally, for the first time in years she began to try to put her personal horror into words. Her tale was slow at first, stumbling. But gradually as she saw that he was simply listening, not judging, not commenting, the words began to flow more smoothly and she told him about the dream. When she reached the end, she fell silent. Plucking at a piece of fuzz on the bedding, she avoided Court’s eyes.
“And you woke up in the hospital?”
She nodded. She and Des had survived that horrible day. Forever scarred perhaps, but they had survived.
“What about your father?”
Heather swallowed and then slowly forced herself to form the words. “He killed himself,” she whispered.
Unable to live with the enormity of what he’d done, unable to cope with what he viewed as his failure to find the means to support his family, Duncan Buchanan had placed a call for help and then, leaving the line open, had put the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
In those few hours, Heather’s life changed forever. At eighteen she suddenly had the responsibility of raising her brother. There was some insurance, thankfully, but not enough to make the years that followed easy ones. Heather had worked and paid for the training she’d needed to become a physical therapist. She’d supplemented her training with any other courses that might help her advance and garner a better salary—things like aromatherapy and therapeutic massage.
And, with the assi
stance of counseling, she had been able to cope with the tragedy and move on.
“How did your brother take it?” Court asked. He didn’t bother pointing out that, in her upset, Heather had let slip her brother’s existence.
“Desmond didn’t adjust as easily as I did,” Heather said. “He was younger.” She paused, frowning thoughtfully. “He seemed to forget the details, or perhaps he just buried them deep in his mind, but he was never himself again.”
“And you blame yourself, don’t you?” Court knew about guilt. He knew all about it.
Heather closed her eyes tightly for a moment as though to block out the pain of that acknowledgement. Finally she said, “He called me for help, and I failed him.”
“Did you?” Court paused, considering his words. “Did you stop to think that perhaps, in going home, in doing what you did, that you may have saved your brother’s life? There’s no way to know what might have happened.”
Heather shook her head. “I don’t believe that. Dad would never have hurt him.”
“He would never have hurt you either, would he?”
“That was an accident!”
“Exactly, Heather. Accidents happen. And the rest of us go on as best we can. There’s no shame in that.” He rose from the chair and stood staring down at her. “I’m going to go and make you some hot chocolate. I’ll be right back.”
Heather threw back the blankets, reaching simultaneously for the housecoat she’d left lying across the foot of the bed. “Hot chocolate sounds wonderful, but there’s no need for you to bother. I can make it myself.”
Court considered her for a moment, taking in the rumpled russet curls surrounding her beautiful face as she belted her conservative but somehow very sexy peach satin wrap. “We’ll both make it,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Come on.”
Court sat sipping his hot chocolate and studying Heather over the rim of his cup. She looked delectable sitting there across from him trying to avoid his gaze. But delectable or not, she had met with the enemy today and he needed to find out why.
Undercover with the Enemy Page 10
