“I told you, I don’t have it.”
“You have no idea what you’re up against. Give it to me.”
When she just stared at him, he began walking through her apartment, searching. After just a few seconds, he stopped, realizing it was futile. “Where is it?”
Footsteps brought them both turning. Travis stood inside her apartment, one hand on the doorknob, the other holding a gun at his side. How had he gotten into the building? His eyes shifted from Deet to her, and she had no doubt he’d heard what she’d said.
In that moment, Deet moved behind her. Pressing a gun to her temple, he locked his big, meaty arm around her upper torso.
“The painting. Now.”
Undaunted, Travis moved forward. “Let her go and I won’t kill you.”
“All I want is the painting. Give it to me and I’ll go.”
“He said he mailed it to me,” Raeleen explained to Travis.
“Who took care of your mail while you were away?” Deet asked.
“I always stop it before I travel,” she lied.
He poked her with the gun, hard enough to make her wince and draw Travis one long stride closer. “It was mailed here. Someone in this building signed for it.”
Did he know who? Anxiety soured her stomach.
Deet moved her as Travis neared, a face off that ended with Deet’s back to the front door.
“You won’t kill her,” Travis said.
Raeleen tipped her head a little to see Deet. His gaze met Travis’s uncertainly. Travis had read him accurately. Deet was afraid. He was acting out of fear and desperation.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t pull the trigger. “Deet...”
He looked down at her.
“What are you doing?”
With a low growl, he shoved her hard.
She stumbled against Travis as two gunshots went off. Deet was firing at them. Not feeling any bullets penetrate, she held on to Travis as he took them both to the floor, rolling so that she was underneath him, protecting her from gunfire, aiming his pistol back at the door. No one was there.
Travis looked down at her. “Are you all right?” He began checking her body, his face a contortion of worry.
“Yes. I’m fine! I’m fine!” She pushed off of him, coming to her senses. Deet was getting away!
He seemed to realize what his hesitation had cost them and sprang to his feet, hauling Raeleen up after him. They ran through the apartment door. Neighbors peeked out of their apartments.
The elevator doors were closed. The stairwell was empty. They rode the elevator down to the main level, but the lobby was void of Deet.
Seeing the doorman standing calmly outside the front door, Raeleen elbowed Travis and he slid his gun into the waist of his jeans before anyone noticed.
“Where is the painting?” he asked her.
She headed back for the elevator. “My neighbor’s apartment. I haven’t picked it up yet.” She stepped into the elevator with him.
“The best sex you’ve ever had in your life, huh?”
She fought the heat that climbed up her neck. “He kept saying he loved me.”
Travis chuckled. “That worked to sway him?”
“Yes, it did.”
After a moment, he said, “It was the same for me.”
Was he minimizing it, or did he mean it had been that good for him, too?
The elevator doors opened. People were out in the hallway, peering into her apartment and talking fast about the gunshots they’d heard.
“Raeleen, you’re back!” Her neighbor Marcy approached. “Are you all right? Look at your apartment. No one heard a thing until those gunshots. These walls sure are thick.”
“I’m fine, but I would really like my mail now.”
Marcy looked confused. “Should we call the police?”
“I already did,” her neighbor down the hall said.
“We need to hurry,” Travis said.
And she agreed. No cops. Cops would lead to her father, and she’d already caused enough trouble for him as it was.
“Please, Marcy, can I have my mail?”
“S-sure.” She eyed Travis’s big form, wary of him, but at last she turned and went into her still-open apartment across the hall from Raeleen’s. A moment later, she returned with a moderate stack of mail in one hand and a FedEx tube in the other.
Raeleen took the tube.
“Thanks.” Travis steered her out of the apartment and would have guided her down the hall if she hadn’t stopped to grab her luggage and shut her apartment door.
“The police will be here soon,” Marcy said.
“Tell them it was a false alarm,” Raeleen said, ignoring Marcy and the other neighbors’ perplexed looks and exchanges.
“What about the rest of your mail?” Marcy held up the bundle.
The elevator doors opened. “I’ll be back for it. Thank you, Marcy!”
Travis pushed her into the elevator and rolled her luggage in after him. The doors closed.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked him.
“Your father—”
She held up her hand. “Don’t tell me.”
“Your father asked me to watch you,” he said anyway.
“Wonderful.”
If her father was still worried about her, why hadn’t he brought her home with him? Why couldn’t he invite his own daughter to stay with him for a while? Why put one of his men in charge of it? Because he was more concerned about exposing his damn company than her. His company came first. Always.
“He didn’t know Deet would mail you the painting,” Travis said in her silence. “But he wanted to be sure you were safe.”
“So here you are. Under orders again.” A giant hole expanded in her chest. Not only didn’t her father love her the way a father should, but she had feelings for a man who was just like him.
“Look on the bright side: at least as a pet, I’ll know my place this time.”
His place was hardly that miniscule, but he wasn’t telling her that to reassure her.
“I’m sorry I said it, okay?”
“I’m not.”
He’d also heard her describe their sex. Not a relationship or the potential for one. Sex.
The elevator doors opened and Raeleen saw several policemen entering the building. Travis guided her out into the lobby, rolling her luggage.
One of the policemen saw them and approached. “Did you two hear any gunshots?”
“No. There were gunshots?” Travis answered, a fine performance.
“I suggest you either stay down here or leave the building until we’re finished, then.”
“What happened?”
“We don’t know yet. Someone reported gunshots on the tenth floor.”
“I hope everyone’s okay,” Raeleen interjected, earning a look from Travis.
Once again, he guided Raeleen with his hand on her back.
At his new rental car, he opened the back and put her luggage inside.
“Travis...” She didn’t know how to say it. He wasn’t sorry she’d called him a pet soldier, and something drove her to tell him he wasn’t. Which went against everything she believed about men like him. He worked for her father’s secret organization. He was the kind of man she’d always promised herself never to love.
But what if that thinking was what had led her to avoid marriage altogether?
“We need to get away from here.”
She got into the car. “You aren’t a pet soldier. I was only trying to hurt my father.”
“No explanation necessary.”
No, because he had a job to do and that didn’t include seducing her. “Where are we going?”
“Somew
here we can look at that painting.”
“Back to TES?” Dread filled her.
“No. I have a better idea.”
* * *
Down in Lower Manhattan, Raeleen walked beside Travis along a cobblestone street and followed him into a small antiques store called Harry’s. Not very original, but the building was old and full of charm. Painted yellow with white trim, it was long and narrow and a bell jingled when they entered. The dull wood floor creaked and old crystal chandeliers lit tall shelving cluttered with merchandise—
everything from ancient stuffed animals to trunks of every size and dining sets.
A man sat behind a counter reading a paper and had looked up when the bell jingled. He seemed fixated on Travis. Slowly he stood and moved around the counter. A big man, his white hair was clipped brutally short, and for an older man he was in great shape.
“Travis Todd? Is that you?”
“Harry. How the hell have you been these last few years?”
The two shook hands. “Great. Still not missing military life, that’s for sure.” He glanced at Raeleen as though hesitant of what to say next.
“This is Raeleen Randall, Colonel Roth’s daughter.”
Now Harry would know he could talk freely, and Raeleen began to piece together how Travis knew him.
“Not by choice.” She shook Harry’s hand and he chuckled.
“I imagine being the daughter of a man like Roth wouldn’t be easy.”
“Sure it is. I just had to grow up faster than most kids.” Because her father was never around to guide her, anyway, and her mother hadn’t stepped in to take up the slack, either.
Travis’s head turned to her and his eyes held mocking disagreement.
Did he think she hadn’t grown up yet?
“And you probably didn’t date much in your teens,” Harry said, referring to the almighty Colonel Roth. What a domineering presence he must have been, Raeleen could almost hear him thinking. If only he knew...
She smiled congenially. Her father hadn’t been around enough to scare anyone away. Lucky for him, she developed a phobia of controlling men.
“When did you work for my father?” she asked.
“I retired ten years ago.”
“Harry did private missions for your dad,” Travis explained. “That was before he found Cullen and formed what is now TES.”
“Is that how Cullen found you?” Raeleen asked.
“Cullen doesn’t know Harry and I are friends.”
“Oh, I bet he did. My father probably told him to send you.”
Harry and Travis exchanged a startled look. Harry was the first to shake it off. “What matters is you’re finally here. What brings you here? Are you on vacation? Somehow an excursion to the Statue of Liberty doesn’t seem like your thing.”
Travis chuckled. “Not on vacation. Raeleen stumbled upon a painting that someone is willing to kill to get. We need help figuring out what kind of painting it is. Is your wife still a museum curator?”
“No. Meena retired two years ago. We run this shop together now.”
“Where is she?”
“At home, waiting for me.” He grinned and there was no mistaking his love. At almost six, it must be nearing closing time.
“I guess that means you’re joining us for dinner.”
* * *
Meena, whose full name was Philomena, and Harry lived in an apartment right above the antiques shop. Harry had gotten a laugh over their reaction to that revelation. His wife was waiting for him upstairs.
Though in her early sixties like her husband, Meena wore her dark hair long, dyed to hide the gray, and was in amazing health for a woman her age. Her wrinkled face didn’t change the evidence that in her youth she’d been a beautiful woman.
Raeleen entered the small apartment full of antiques. Decorated in clean color and sea-faring decor, the cozy apartment felt upscale despite its lack of square footage.
“Do you sail?” she asked as Meena and Harry led them into the living room.
“We have a small motor yacht,” Meena said. “We fly to Florida every chance we get.”
“The Caribbean is my favorite destination.” Raeleen put the tube on the coffee table as she sat next to Travis on the sofa.
“Raeleen is the host of a Dining Network show,” Travis said.
“I’ve seen that show!” Meena breathed her fascination. “That’s terrific.”
“I’m not sure it’s as terrific as your home, and sailing... What a dream.”
“Well, thank you. But we’re no celebrity.”
Raeleen admired anyone who could live simply even though they had a lot of money. And she could tell by the style of their apartment that they did have that. Fresh taupe walls and white trim, polished wood floors, the solid red leather sofa and multicolored striped chairs, a big-screen TV—all of it screamed money. She could see the Brooklyn Bridge through the huge, white-framed living room window that was coiffed with a sweeping sheer red scarf and dust-free white blinds.
“So, aside from knowing my father, how did you and Travis meet?” she asked Harry, who instantly shifted his gaze to Travis.
Meena didn’t seem to notice the exchange. “Travis was on an extraction mission when my Harry met him.”
How had their paths crossed? Raeleen turned from Travis to Harry, who reluctantly said, “His sister was in the army and ran into some trouble in Afghanistan.”
Travis reached for the tube and opened one end. “We should take a look at this now.
“Saved his ass from doing something stupid,” Harry continued, studying Travis. “Still don’t like talking about it, do you?”
“Talking about the past doesn’t change it.”
His sister. It had been his sister that he’d lost.
“What happened?” she asked.
At first she didn’t think he’d tell her. With Meena and Harry present, maybe he felt he had to.
“She was in a medical convoy when it was ambushed,” Travis said. “No one could get in to save them in time. She died in a car bombing.” He looked at her in resentment. She’d asked and now he was forced to sit there and participate in this conversation about a sister he couldn’t save, the only mission he’d ever failed. Except no one could really call it a mission.
“She probably died instantly, but Travis here was hell-bent on going in to get her,” Harry said. “Made it all the way to town before the insurgents sniffed him out.”
“But my Harry was there on another mission.” Meena beamed.
“I was working for Roth at the time,” Harry said. “One of my last missions.”
“Harry and his team got me out,” Travis told Raeleen. “They killed the insurgents who’d captured me.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“Every man has a reason for signing on with TES,” Travis said instead of answering. “Mine was that.”
He did what he did because of his sister, because she was the one mission he’d failed, and he couldn’t tolerate that. No wonder he hadn’t failed since.
“My Harry was on his honeymoon with his first wife,” Meena said. “A suicide bomber came into the restaurant where they were having breakfast.”
“I lived. She didn’t.”
“I almost didn’t get the man I love,” Meena said, reaching over to cover his hand with hers on the armrest of his chair, which was close to hers by design, Raeleen surmised. “I didn’t think he’d ever get over her.”
“I just needed time, my love. If you hadn’t been so patient with me, I might never have found love again.”
She smiled with the effect of his words.
The warm, genuine moment showed Raeleen what she was missing by dating men like Deet. She could also equate the sentiment with something she’d fe
lt with Travis. She turned to him. He was looking at her as though the same thought had touched him. They’d had a glimpse of that kind of love their last night on Anguilla.
Travis pulled out the painting.
Yes, enough of that. Ridiculous to be entertaining such sappy sentiments with a man like him. He probably had the same opinion about her. She was wrong for him and he was wrong for her.
“Oh, careful with that.” Meena rose from her chair and hurried to one of the rooms down the hall, reappearing with gloves on her hands and four paperweights and a cloth.
Travis took the weights and gave her the rolled painting.
Raeleen cleared the table and helped spread the cloth. Meena rolled the painting out, placing weights on all corners.
There was nothing striking about the painting. A woman sat on a chair in front of a bedroom window, hands folded on her lap, looking at the painter with a slight curve to her mouth. Her dress indicated the early twentieth-century. Raeleen didn’t recognize the work of art as anything famous. Meena retrieved a magnifying glass from her pocket and began studying the painting.
“I’ve never seen anything written about this one.” She hovered over the signature. “Cyrus Dickenson.” She straightened. “Hmm. There’s something familiar about that name.” She tapped the magnifying glass against her lip.
Then she went back into the office, and long moments passed. Raeleen was the first to venture there, Travis and Harry following.
“Here it is!” Meena exclaimed excitedly, sitting before a website opened to a page titled The Portrait of Sarah.
Raeleen leaned over her shoulder, Travis on the other side, and Harry behind her.
“This painting was done by a Jew before World War II. The woman was his mistress. His wife found out about them and killed him. She was tried and sent to prison, but Sarah still had the painting and passed it down to her son. During the war, the son’s wife had an affair with a Nazi. It was a similar tale to his mother’s. Sarah’s son found out about the affair just about the time his wife decided she loved him and not her lover, the Nazi.
“The Nazi was a collaborator for Hitler. He raided the homes of Jews and stole their valuables. The day he showed up at Sarah’s son’s house, he planned to take more than valuables. He planned to take the woman, too. When she refused, he shot her and Sarah’s son. The painting was never found.”
Seducing the Colonel's Daughter: Seducing the Colonel's DaughterThe Secret Soldier Page 12
