Whirlpool

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Is that what happened to you, old man?” she asked savagely. “Scars and wrinkles?”

  He smiled. “Come closer and see for yourself.”

  “No thanks. I’ve seen naked pricks before.”

  She looked away and wondered how the hell she’d gotten herself into a place that was too much like the hospital she’d sworn never to enter again.

  Hudson watched Toth’s unease grow the longer she stared at the muscular nurse massaging fluids and resilience into Hudson’s body. He knew exactly what Toth was feeling. He’d counted on it. It was the healthy young animal’s reaction to seeing someone apparently at the mercy of tubes and needles.

  But no one stayed healthy and young forever.

  “I hadn’t thought you a coward.” Hiding his smile, he turned his face away from her. “My mistake.”

  Toth walked until she was within reach of the man on the table. The masseuse kept kneading Hudson like nothing and no one else was in the room.

  He turned toward Toth. “Go ahead,” he said, watching her with shrewd, ancient eyes. “Touch me. I’m real.”

  She fought her revulsion and moved closer to Hudson because she knew he was right. Someday she would lose the only weapon she had to gain power. Someday men would look at her and see an old woman rather than a red-hot piece of ass.

  When that day came, she’d be better off dead.

  Slowly she stroked Hudson’s side from his shoulder to his knee. He had a remarkable body, very firm and supple, with the muscular definition of a fit man in his forties.

  And the sexual stamina of a teenager. She’d discovered that for herself on his airplane, while she stroked his crotch and whispered blackmail in his ear.

  Again she stroked him from shoulder to knee, probing lightly for anything weak or brittle. All she found was muscle and sinew and health.

  “What you’re admiring is the result of a combination of anabolic steroids and something called prednisteran,” he said.

  “What does it do?” she asked, fascinated despite her horror of all things medical.

  “It’s a compound that suppresses the human growth hormone, which also controls the aging process. The Romanians stumbled across it while trying to develop wonder drugs in sports medicine. They wanted something to retard the maturation of their young female gymnasts. What they found was the Fountain of Youth.”

  “Except for the white hair, huh?” Toth said, ruffling his hair with her fingertips.

  “The hair is my choice. I bleach it. It gives me an edge with all the people who think that gray hair means you’re a stupid old fool.”

  “How long did it take?” she asked.

  “For the treatments to become effective?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It happened very quickly. It’s an unusual sensation to watch your own body grow younger. Having wet dreams again was particularly amusing.”

  She laughed and released his hair.

  The masseuse plunged her fingers into the muscle tissue of Hudson’s shoulders again. She’d showed no expression as they talked. It was like she didn’t hear or see Toth.

  “Who’s the woman?” Toth asked. “One of your uglier whores?”

  Toth thought she detected a flicker of emotion in the woman’s dead, flat eyes, but it vanished almost instantly.

  “She’s a member of the Romanian secret service,” he said. “Her permanent assignment is to administer the medication and to monitor the results to make sure I’m not overstimulating my system. Don’t worry, she doesn’t understand English.”

  “So you figure you can go on riding this bubble for, what, another twenty years?” Toth asked.

  “Easily. I’ll be the most amazing hundred-year-old man this world has ever seen. I expect to be vigorous and potent long enough to bury my firstborn and only son.”

  “You sound like you’re looking forward to burying him.”

  “My son is a worthless little putz. He has a death wish he feeds with drugs and alcohol.”

  The Romanian nurse noticed that the bag of fluid was empty. With practiced skill she removed the tube and the catheter and cleaned the entry site with alcohol. Then she gently massaged the muscles of Hudson’s leg and thigh.

  For a time he was quiet. Then he grunted irritably and rose up on his elbows. The nurse nodded quickly to show she understood his complaint. She went back to work on the leg with more force.

  “The prednisteran can be quite corrosive if it isn’t moved around in the circulatory system,” Hudson explained. “It’s the only real drawback to the treatments.”

  “That’s it? A little burning?”

  “A minor price to pay for physical, sexual, and mental longevity, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yeah, babe. Amen.”

  Toth ran her hand over Hudson’s body again, like he was an animal she was thinking of buying and wanted to be certain of his health.

  “Would you like to try some?” he asked, turning his head toward her. “The first treatment is often the most pleasant and exhilarating experience imaginable.”

  She lifted her hand. “Sounds addictive.”

  “So is life.”

  44

  Karroo

  Wednesday morning

  Laurel forced herself to shower and dress, trying not to think how desperate her father must be, trying not to be hurt that he’d used her.

  Was still using her.

  Suddenly she picked up her leather valise and walked barefoot out into the hall, heading for the great room that was the focus of life at Karroo.

  Cruz was already there. The light cotton shirt he wore was open to the waist, revealing his bound ribs. A pair of lightweight drawstring trousers fit him as if made for him by loving hands. The window was open, allowing the rising desert wind to fill the silence with a cry that was distant, wounded, ghostly.

  For a moment Laurel was afraid she’d keen in bitter harmony with the wind.

  If Cruz knew she’d entered the room, he didn’t show it. He lay motionless on a leather couch, listening to the wind and watching the light spread out across the desert. His face was hard, remote. Beside him, on a table in front of the couch, was his pistol and a cleaning kit. The weapon was spotless, silent, lethal.

  Like its owner.

  Cruz turned his head. His eyes were hooded, unreadable. They went over Laurel like hands. When he saw the valise, his eyes narrowed dangerously.

  “Leaving without saying goodbye?” he asked softly.

  She knew him too well to be fooled by the softness of his voice. He was furious. She looked out to the desert, preferring its stark, unforgiving lines to what she saw in his eyes.

  His pain and rage and distance were too much like her own.

  “We’re adults,” she said. “Let’s not make more of it than it was.”

  “Is that how you really feel?”

  “There are more important things in the world right now than how I really feel.” She looked at the gun lying close to his hand and said bitterly, “You have a job to do and I have a life to live. Let’s just get on with it.”

  He came off the couch in a single lithe movement and stalked toward her. She held her ground, but she couldn’t meet his eyes. When he was so close to her that she could feel the heat of his body, he stopped. Slowly he reached out to touch her cheek.

  At the last instant, she forced herself to turn away.

  “Laurel,” he said huskily. “Honey, I’m sorry.”

  She simply shook her head, not trusting her voice.

  “Am I intruding?” Cassandra Redpath asked.

  The ambassador was standing in the doorway, looking delicate and far too shrewd.

  “Yes,” Cruz said quickly, sharply.

  “No.” Laurel’s answer was equally quick, but her voice was raw with suppressed emotion.

  “Shit,” he said beneath his breath.

  Laurel still hadn’t met his eyes.

  “We were just comparing bags of tricks,” she said, forcing her lips into a grim s
mile. “Cruz has quite a few in his. I’m less inventive. All I have is a handful of pretty stones.”

  With that she turned and went to an overstuffed chair. She was afraid if she sat down on the couch, he would sit close to her. Too close. Forcing her to choose between her father and her lover when the only possible choice was neither.

  She wouldn’t trust either man.

  Wouldn’t love either man.

  Wouldn’t choose either man.

  “Do come in, Ambassador,” Cruz said coldly. “Join our little tea party. And don’t forget the strychnine.”

  “Charming,” Redpath said. Her voice said the opposite.

  He turned and looked at his boss for the first time. Adrenaline shot through him, bringing him to full alert in an instant. “What happened?”

  “Addison had some company up in Cambria.”

  The mention of her hometown brought Laurel to the edge of her chair. “Who’s Addison?”

  “One of our best operatives,” Redpath said. “Cruz called him in from San Francisco to watch your house after the two of you left.”

  Laurel looked shocked. “Why?”

  “I figured the assassins would come back,” he said without looking away from Redpath. “How many?”

  “At least three.”

  The leather valise settled with a thump on the table next to Laurel, as if she was too numb to hold its weight any longer.

  “Very competent, too,” Redpath continued. “It took Addison two hours to spot them.”

  “What—” Laurel cleared her throat. “What were they doing?”

  “Lying back in the bushes, waiting for you to return,” Redpath said calmly.

  Laurel opened her mouth. No words came from her pale lips.

  “Early this morning,” Redpath said, “when it became clear that you weren’t coming back, they broke in and searched the place.”

  Cruz’s fingers flexed, hungry to have something to squeeze. Jamie Swann’s neck came immediately to mind.

  “They made a mess,” Redpath said. “Whatever they were looking for, they didn’t find.”

  “How do you know?” Cruz asked.

  “They turned every room, every cupboard, every drawer upside down and inside out. If they’d found what they wanted, they would have left some part of the house untouched.”

  Laurel made an unhappy sound. She had a sick certainty that she knew what the men had been looking for.

  “What did Addison do?” Cruz asked, angry at the thought of Laurel’s home being trashed.

  “Nothing,” Redpath said.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Those were my orders. Addison is following the men now, discreetly, to see if he can identify them or their contacts.”

  “And?” Cruz asked.

  Redpath shrugged. “So far he has just about as much information as you did. They are male and ruthless. Thoroughly professional. The sergeant-major is taking a scout around Karroo right now, just to make sure we don’t have visitors.”

  “Say the word and I’ll neutralize them myself.” Cruz’s voice was rich with the promise of violence.

  Laurel’s nails dug into the leather valise until her fingers were white.

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Redpath said dryly.

  “Who are they?” Cruz asked. “Does Addison know?”

  “Possibly police.”

  Cruz grunted.

  “Ranulph didn’t think so either,” Redpath said. “It’s possible they’re private and civilian, like us. But I think, and Addison agrees, that the men are probably Jamie Swann’s confederates.”

  “Then they haven’t given up,” Laurel said.

  “You really thought they would?” Cruz asked. “They were sent to murder you.”

  “How can the egg be worth those kinds of risks?” Laurel demanded. “From what the ambassador said, it could very well be a counterfeit Fabergé.”

  “Laurel,” Cruz said through his teeth, “people will murder for a sack of shit or the sheer bloody hell of it. Money is just an excuse.”

  Blindly, she began unbuckling the valise.

  “There is always the chance,” Redpath said calmly, “that the egg’s real value is greater than its apparent one.”

  “Is that what Novikov says?” Cruz asked sharply.

  “Aleksy has little useful to say. He’s been on the phone every two hours, but he’s still playing the innocent victim.”

  “I could have a go at twisting him by his short hairs, provided he doesn’t shave down there.”

  “You and the sergeant-major had the same impulse,” Redpath said. “Both of you are too fond of force.”

  “We’re not fond of it,” Cruz shot back. “We use it because it works better than saying pretty please.”

  Laurel made a sharp, involuntary sound as one of the satchel’s buckles raked her hand.

  He spun toward the sound and toward the woman who had been the lover of his dreams last night, a woman who so disliked him and his job this morning that she wouldn’t even meet his eyes.

  “Does violence bother you so much, even when it’s your best chance for survival?” he asked roughly. “I’d have thought a woman who drives fast and carries a blow-your-head-off gun would understand the value of applied force.”

  “That’s not—” she began.

  “Like it or die ignoring it, we don’t live in a nice world,” he said, talking over her, “and I’m damn tired of being savaged by holier-than-thou types who don’t have the guts to protect themselves from the results of their own stupid choices.”

  Silence stretched while Laurel stared at the open valise and at her clenched hands. Her face went pale, then flushed.

  “Cruz,” Redpath said, “you have a uniquely male gift for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

  “No,” Laurel said in a raw voice, “let him have his say. God knows he’s spent too much of his life doing jobs that other people were too squeamish or too frightened to do. God only knows what Cruz has paid for it. And what my father has paid.”

  The room was silent for a long time except for the thin keening of the desert wind around Karroo’s stone walls.

  Finally Laurel turned and looked at Cruz. The darkness in her eyes reminded him of what it had been like for him until she’d come and taught him to laugh.

  And all he’d taught her in return was pain.

  “Laurel,” he whispered, walking to her. “Honey, I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  She stood, one hand clenched by her side, watching him. “Not your problem. It’s way past time I grew a harder shell.”

  He lifted his hand and touched her cheek.

  “No.” She flinched away. “Not while I’m betraying him.”

  Before Cruz could move, she turned to Redpath.

  “I know where my father wants to meet me,” Laurel said. “I’ll take you there.”

  “No,” Cruz said instantly. “Too dangerous. Just tell me where and wait here.”

  “No.” Laurel’s voice was soft, utterly certain.

  Looking at him, she said no more. She didn’t have to. Anyone with eyes could see she wasn’t going to be budged from her position.

  “Cassandra,” Cruz said urgently, “tell her how dangerous it will be.”

  “Don’t bother,” Laurel said, without looking away from him. “I was with you in Cambria, remember?”

  “You damn near died there, remember?” he shot back.

  “I remember. You saved my life.”

  “But you’re still going to stick your neck out again.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “To see him again.” She swallowed. “I have to know whether he’s desperate or simply…corrupt.”

  “You can’t be certain he’ll even be there. Hell, it could just be a trap.”

  “He’ll be there.”

  “What makes you so certain?” Cruz asked savagely. “He knows it could be a trap too. What makes you think he’d walk across the street to see you, m
uch less put himself in danger?”

  “I have something he wants very much. I just found it in my valise.”

  She held out her hand. On her palm a huge red crystal glowed like it was plugged into some cosmic power source.

  “What is it?” Redpath asked.

  “The stone from the Ruby Surprise.”

  45

  Malibu

  Wednesday morning

  Silently Claire Toth prowled around the hot, muggy solarium, inspecting the equipment and studying the medical instruments that had been laid out. She’d made the same lap around the room many times. Nothing changed. Not even the pace of her lithe walk.

  Damon Hudson watched her with hidden amusement. He’d already anticipated her initial reaction. It was hard for a person in the rich bloom of health to understand the attraction of everlasting vigor.

  But give her a few years.

  Let her feel the first crawling certainty of her own vulnerability to age and ugliness. Then she would be on her knees in front of him, begging for whatever crumbs he wanted to share with her.

  “Why did you call me?” he asked softly. “Do you have the egg?”

  “I’m still working on it. What about the money?”

  “I’m still working on it,” he said, mocking her.

  Toth picked up a bottle of medicine and frowned at the foreign words on the label.

  “Better hurry,” she said. “You’re not the only one in the bidding anymore. The former owner caught up with me.”

  He straightened around and sat up on the table. He dismissed the masseuse with a single look. She didn’t want to go. He jerked his head toward the door. The woman stalked away, her shoulders straight and square, looking like a soldier on the parade ground.

  “I thought she didn’t understand English,” Toth said acidly.

  “I’m a careful man.”

  He swung his legs around on the table, stood up, and reached for a white robe on a chair. He was unself-conscious about his nakedness. Even in relaxation, his prick was surprisingly full and proud. To Toth, it was a more convincing proof of the success of his disgusting medical regimen than anything he’d said.

  “Aleksy Novikov is after you?” Hudson asked, tying the robe around his lean hips. “He’s not much of a threat.”