Flattening a piece of velvet on the table, he placed the dull chunks of rough that would soon be sparkling in jewelry. He showed Lucian, who inspected the pieces with a magnifying glass. When he straightened with a nod, Habib gathered the velvet and began to tie it with a ribbon. Lucian preferred to carry his rough in his pockets.
Handing Lucian the diamonds, he waited for payment. “Have you been able to locate your painting?” He’d rather not ask and only did to be courteous. Lucian had been so captivated by the painting the last time he’d been here.
As he expected, Lucian’s face brightened with enthusiasm, but then something darkened it immediately thereafter. “Unfortunately, there has been a delay.”
“The seller is still reluctant?”
“I have been unable to locate the seller, and his dealer refused to divulge this information.”
“Do you mean the seller has disappeared?”
“I shouldn’t bore you with the drama of it all.” Lucian lifted his eyes with the trouble it gave him.
“I am quite interested. But if you are not comfortable discussing it with me...”
Lucian regarded him for a time. As Habib suspected, he could not resist talk of his precious painting.
“Until now, I have been most patient with this seller’s need for discretion. My men would have persuaded him had it not been for his wife interfering. I would not have had to travel to Anguilla were it not for her.”
“I don’t understand. His wife is against the selling of this painting?”
“Her grandfather was the Nazi who stole it.”
Intriguing. “Ah.”
“And she kidnapped her husband’s lover to stop him from selling.”
“Drastic measures. I see why you call this a drama. What will you do?” Habib slid his gaze to the clock, hoping he’d be able to go home soon. His day was finished here.
“This woman who was kidnapped complicates matters.”
“How so?”
“Her father is someone very powerful. A man I do not wish to learn my identity.”
“Oh?” Habib could not help his interest.
“He controls a secret military operation for the United States government. The man he sent to rescue the woman who was kidnapped works for him. And now they have my painting.”
Habib began to worry that Lucian would no longer have a need for the second half of his purchase. He’d paid him only a deposit so far. “This is serious, then.” He was familiar with how these types of organizations operated.
“I will have my painting.” Lucian’s fist clenched at his side.
Habib hoped he would not forget to pay him for the diamonds that were now in his pocket. “What is this man’s name? The one who rescued the girl?”
Lucian seemed suspicious that Habib wanted to know. Habib needed to be careful.
“I cannot recall.” He reached into his jacket and retrieved his billfold. From inside, he pulled out a photograph, on the back of which he’d written a name, but Habib was transfixed by the photo of a large man walking beside a woman he didn’t recognize. But the man he did recognize.
Very careful. Very careful, indeed...
* * *
Jada heard the hotel room door open. Lucian was finally back from his trip. He hadn’t told her where he was going and had been gone for two days. Yesterday he’d asked her to meet him in New York. He’d booked a room at the Waldorf. Although she wasn’t comfortable with how fast things had turned intimate with him, something about him made her okay with that. Not just the painting. The painting was the only reason she’d gone to his room with him that night in Anguilla. His passion had attracted her to do more.
Lucian walked toward her in the hotel suite, taking in her red dress with building lust. He stopped to just look at her.
It felt like they were meeting for the first time all over again. She was nervous. Uncertain. He’d killed Rorey. She was using him to get her painting. And there was this dark desire between them.
Before he’d left Anguilla on a business trip, they’d spent twenty-four hours having sex. After that first time, they’d had dinner and he’d taken her to bed again. She’d woken the next morning and they didn’t leave the room. They hadn’t even spoken much. Only silent communication passed between them. This inexplicable passion they had, both for the painting and for each other. They’d both simply accepted it.
At last he stepped close to her. “I’m glad you are here.”
“Where else would I be?” She leaned against him, flattening her hands on his chest.
“If you had the painting?”
If she had the painting, she wouldn’t be here. Or would she...? She wasn’t sure anymore. The time in his hotel room had changed things.
“The painting will be yours.”
Wicked satisfaction warmed his eyes before he stepped back and loosened his tie. Then he turned and walked over to the bar.
“We have a problem.” He poured a scotch.
She loved how he said we. “What kind of a problem?”
He drank the scotch and faced her. “The painting is missing.”
Missing? How long had he known this? “Dietrich doesn’t have it?”
“He sent it to the woman his wife arranged to have kidnapped. She lives in New York.”
So that was why Lucian had asked her to meet him here. He’d told her all about the kidnapping the morning after she’d gone to his room, one of the few things they’d talked about. Dietrich’s lover. His wife and brother.
“Why is that a problem?” All he had to do was take it from her.
“The woman is a problem.”
“Who is she?”
“That isn’t important. What’s important is she has help. A man is protecting her. Someone I hoped would not interfere once he freed her and brought her back to the United States.”
Dietrich had sent her the painting and now she was involved, making this man involved. Jada walked over to him, moving to stand in front of him to run her hands over his chest. “Everything’s going to work out.” It had to. “You’ll see.”
“I’m starting to have my doubts.”
“It isn’t like you to fear another man.”
“This man is a professional. Military, and not the traditional kind. He works for a counterterrorism organization. One that operates in secret. The man who runs it is the woman’s father.”
Jada felt chilled. This was not good news. “What organization?”
“That’s all I was able to find out.”
Which was why he was worried. She ran her hands up to his shoulders and tipped her head back, her mouth close to his. “No one can stop you now. You’re too close. You’ll do what you have to do and the painting will be yours.” He had to. For her. This had to work.
Her encouragement worked to ease his tension. He slid his hands around her to grab her butt. “Yours, too, darling.” He bent to kiss her.
The strangeness of seeing him after the hours they’d spent making love in his hotel room began to melt away. The chemistry they’d discovered renewed and exploded into something even more powerful. Jada craved him. She’d missed being away from him, from this.
He kept kissing her, both hands on her butt, kneading her against his hard-on.
“You have all you need to take the painting, baby. No one can stand in your way.” She loved that about him. His danger. His ruthless determination.
Mumbling something passionate in French, he kissed her harder. She needed him to be at the top of his game right now. She’d do anything to see that he was.
Grasping the front of her skintight red dress in his hands, Lucian yanked, jerking her body as the material ripped. Her breasts sprang free.
“When you talk to me so, you drive me mad.” He took one of her nipp
les into his mouth and pulled her ruined dress down until it dropped to the floor.
Just get me that painting, she thought.
Chapter 11
After sending Deet off on one of TES’s private planes a day after he’d tried to chase them, Travis walked beside Raeleen toward their rental car. They’d sent Deet to Kansas, where another TES operative was waiting.
So far there’d been no sign of anyone following them. Travis had made sure of it until Deet was on his way to somewhere safe. The man had done nothing but try to save his restaurant. He hadn’t killed anyone. He hadn’t stolen anything, not really. The painting was just as much his as it had been Vivian’s. He’d even tried to find a private buyer, one who’d keep the painting and never let it out into the open market. He’d at least tried to satisfy his wife’s wishes, even after having an affair. He didn’t deserve to die for his infidelity and attempt to sell a painting that meant something to his wife.
Travis drove away from LaGuardia International Airport, heading back to the hotel where he’d left Deet’s cell phone. He’d registered the room under a false name, using one of several passports he had. Raeleen sat quietly in the passenger seat. Since catching Deet, he hadn’t been alone with her until now and felt the tension thicken.
“Now what are we going to do?” she asked.
“Wait until someone comes after the painting.”
“That doesn’t sound very reassuring.”
“I’m not thrilled about it, either.” But not because he was afraid of the black-market dealer.
By the way she jerked a glance at him, he knew she’d caught his real meaning.
“It won’t be much longer,” he said. “They may even already be at the hotel. And Odie had backup waiting there.”
“Oh, well, good then. I’ll be rid of you sooner than I expected.”
Her snide remark came with a load of emotion. She didn’t really feel that way. Their sexual encounters were bothering her as much as they were him. Last night had crawled a little too far into his heart.
“Yes, and you can go find yourself a nice, nonmilitary man that you can boss around. It’s what you want, anyway.” He couldn’t stop his own emotion.
“At least I know what I’m looking for.”
“You don’t have a clue what you’re looking for.”
Yes, she did. She just didn’t see it yet. “I haven’t stopped anything from happening between us. That was all you.”
His cell phone rang.
“Todd,” he answered sharply.
“Ohh, somebody is grumpy today.”
“Odie.” Figures, she’d call right now.
“You’re getting awfully popular,” she said, thankfully not pressing him, but that was also a bad sign. She had something. Something big.
“Why is that?”
“You’ve got people calling you from Monrovia.”
“Really.” What was she talking about? “Who?” Any mention of Monrovia was a red flag.
“Do you remember Habib Maalouf?”
The name instantly resonated. “How could I ever forget? He was the market owner in Monrovia, the one Haley and I were watching.” And then he was shot. “He called?”
Raeleen turned from her vigilance out the window.
“He called the main numbers of several units, and of course no one there could say they knew you. Finally someone got a message to Roth. I called Maalouf and kindly explained to him that no one by the name of Travis Todd exists, a claim the army will readily support.”
Since he was a TES operative, and TES didn’t exist. “What did Maalouf want?”
“He wouldn’t say. He will only talk to you. You’re the only one he trusts, probably because we helped him get out from under the thumbs of Hezbollah.”
“Interesting.” Why was he calling now? Any why him?
“Call him, then come to Dad’s. Something else has come up that we need to discuss securely. I’ve got a plane waiting for you at LGA.”
They’d just come from there. Travis began to look for a place to turn around. “On our way now.”
Odie gave him Maalouf’s number and they disconnected.
“What’s wrong?” Raeleen asked.
“We’re going to find out.” He drove toward the airport. He wasn’t in the mood to argue with her.
“Where? How?”
He didn’t answer.
“Not Dad’s again.”
The double meaning triggered a grin in him. “Your dad won’t be there.”
She relaxed against the seat. “Who is Maalouf? Why were you and Haley watching him?”
“He was a diamond dealer with ties to Hezbollah in Monrovia, Liberia. Unwanted ties.”
She seemed to digest that a moment. “Is that when you were shot?”
She was quick to piece it all together. “Yes. That’s the mission that went sour and Rem D’Evereau intervened.”
“The mercenary.” She nodded slowly.
Travis pressed the speaker button on his cell and entered Maalouf’s international number. Handing Raeleen the phone, she held it while the connection went through.
“Hello, this is Habib Maalouf.” The voice was heavily accented, a little Middle Eastern and a little West African.
“I hear you’ve been trying to reach me.”
A slight pause carried through as Habib registered who he must be.
“You are no doubt curious as to why.”
“I’m wondering a lot of things.” And he wasn’t going to give anything away.
“This organization you work for is the reason you were in Monrovia that time, is it not? The reason Farid Abi
Salloum and his son were captured?”
Did he need confirmation? Salloum had been a terrorist funneling money through West African diamond mines.
“We were sent there to gather intel, that’s all.” And that’s all he’d tell him.
Another lengthy pause traveled the distance. “I have it from a reliable source that the woman you were sent to rescue is the daughter of the man who runs this organization. She is the daughter of a very powerful man.”
Looking over at Raeleen, seeing apprehension flare in her, Travis replied calmly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I imagine that you do, Mr. Todd. There are not many men like you in the world. I am not mistaken.”
How did Habib know about Raeleen’s rescue? There could be only one way.
“You know about The Portrait of Sarah.” The dealer hunting down the painting must have obtained a photo of Travis, and somehow Habib had recognized him.
He waited through Habib’s stunned silence.
“Then you possess the painting,” he finally said.
“Why are you dealing with someone who is willing to kill to have it?” Travis countered.
“I have a client. A man who frequently purchases diamonds from me.”
So he was still selling diamonds. No longer to Hezbollah, but to the likes of a black-market art dealer.
“He’s a friend of yours? This client?”
“No friend. It is business, you understand.”
“Black-market business.”
“Business, nonetheless. No one holds the heads of my family to force me. I choose my clients now. And there is one client you will be very interested in, because this client has a particular fascination with World War II artifacts. He especially covets paintings stolen from Jews. Nazi thieves stole the art for Hitler. Some of the art has been recovered, but there is much that has not.”
“The Portrait of Sarah being one of them.”
“Yes.”
“Who is this client?”
“Lucian LeFevre. Many in the black-market art world know of him. He is a
very wealthy man with a dangerous agenda. Not only does he dabble in the arts, but he buys diamonds to launder money for various terrorist groups.”
“And you said you choose your clients.”
“I was not aware of this until recently. My business is vulnerable to that sort of controversy. It does not mean that I support what LeFevre is doing.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“LeFevre’s talk of the painting unsettles me. As you have said, he will kill to have it. Your organization saved my life. When I saw a photo of you in LeFevre’s possession, I could not believe our paths had crossed again. But I am also grateful. I mean only to repay a debt and to ensure that LeFevre causes me no trouble.”
He’d been through enough with Hezbollah.
* * *
Raeleen watched Jag go to the front door of Dad’s, turn the lock, switch off the Open sign and pull down the white roller blinds. They weren’t open for dinner. She sat beside Travis at a table near one of the two windows in front. Across from them, Odie spread photos out and what looked like a spec sheet on Lucian LeFevre. She also had something on Rorey Evertszen.
“Lucian LeFevre,” Odie began, pointing to a photo of him. “Four houses, one in the Cayman Islands, all of them mansions. He’s established a name for himself. It wasn’t hard to find someone to talk. Divorced twice. No children. Single for now. Definitely likes to do business. In addition to his diamond and drug dealing, he’s a yacht broker and owns a charter company in Italy. Not much comes up on him about his interest in art, but my contact did say he frequents shows and galleries that feature World War II pieces.”
“Seems harmless so far,” Travis said, looking at the photos Odie had arranged on the table.
“You haven’t let her get to the good part.” Jag came to stand at the table, pulling the chair out beside his wife but not sitting.
Travis turned to Odie, who continued.
Seducing the Colonel's Daughter: Seducing the Colonel's DaughterThe Secret Soldier Page 15
