Rendezvous in Rio

by Danielle Bourdon

  “I forgot we have access to the feed.” Suddenly anxious to see what was on the tapes, she trotted into the upstairs hallway on Cole’s heels. He walked with a brisk, determined stride.

  In one corner of a room he used as his office, two tables angled against the walls, creating an L-shaped work space. Three computer monitors sat dark, waiting for use.

  Madalina stepped up behind Cole’s chair when he sat down, fingers curling into the back cushion. There was another desk and three chairs adjacent to this setup that Cole used for regular business. The three-monitor arrangement he used for things like security, research, and other secretive programs related to his job. Tapping on a keyboard, Cole brought one of the monitors to life. Immediately the screen separated into six sections, each of which depicted a different part of the property or house. Front yard, front door, backyard, back door, garage, and the connecting garage door. Madalina hadn’t wanted cameras all throughout the house for obvious reasons. Sometimes she and Cole got amorous in the kitchen, the hallway, or the living room, and the last thing she wanted to worry about was whether someone at the main security center was casually tuning in. She had compromised with these angles, which flickered across the screen as Cole began rewinding the digital feed to earlier in the day.

  The first camera to show something other than the usual scene was the camera in the garage. At 9:10 a.m., the garage door began to roll up.

  Madalina, prepared to see something at some point, nevertheless experienced a cold chill at the sight. She and Cole had checked out of the hotel by then and had been out gallivanting around town, nowhere near the house.

  A sedan pulled into the first bay. Madalina couldn’t see anything yet, thanks to the glow of the garage light off the sedan’s windshield. The car parked and the door opened.

  “Brave soul to get out with the garage door still up and in plain sight,” Madalina said, gaze riveted to the screen. In the next moment, as the man got out of the vehicle and inadvertently faced the camera, Madalina gasped in surprise.

  There, looking carefree and casual, was Cole’s younger brother Brandon.

  He was the last person Madalina expected to see. Brandon’s cheery face, tawny hair with gold streaks, and gray eyes flashed through her mind’s eye. The colorless video feed did nothing to diminish the vibrant West brother Madalina had come to adore.

  Peering around Cole’s shoulder, she glanced at his face. “Did you know he was in town?”

  “Yeah, I knew he was here. But he never mentioned anything about coming over,” Cole said, eyes still fixed on the screen. His expression grew grim. “This explains how he got past security so easy and how he got into the garage. He knows the numbers on the outside keypad to get in, or he just used the remote control we gave him last time he was in town.”

  But it didn’t explain how or why Brandon got injured inside the home, and there were no cameras to give them a view. Madalina straightened and watched Brandon enter the house through the connecting garage door. What had happened to him in the kitchen? Had he fallen? Cut himself while making something to eat? Then why hadn’t there been any food on the counter?

  Less than fifteen minutes after Brandon entered the home, another car pulled into sight beyond the garage. The black-and-white feed showed a vehicle that looked to be pale in color, perhaps metallic gold or champagne. Another cold chill inched down Madalina’s spine.

  Someone had followed Brandon to the house.

  “What the hell?” Cole muttered. His body tensed anew, shoulders shifting under his clothing.

  Three men disembarked the car, casting surreptitious glances back along the driveway and into the garage itself. They were dressed in suits, sans tie, and one had a weapon in his hand. The video was clear enough to highlight their Asian features and the smooth precision with which they moved.

  “Oh no,” Madalina breathed, pressing her palms against her cheeks. She watched with growing horror as the three men bypassed Brandon’s car and entered the house through the same connecting door.

  Cole pulled a notepad and a pen closer and started writing things down. Madalina understood without being told that he was marking events in order, using the security’s time stamp to glean the length of each event as it happened.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to see what happened next, when the men and Brandon emerged. There was no doubt, of course, that they would, and she was fairly sure that Brandon was the one whose blood had stained her floor.

  He couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t.

  Terrified of the outcome, she covered her lips with her fingertips, tempted to turn away from the monitors. She couldn’t fathom the thought of Brandon being fatally injured. And if she was this wrecked, she had no doubt that Cole was thinking and feeling the same thing, except on deeper, more personal levels.

  That was his brother in there, probably fighting for his life.

  Twenty-one minutes later, the connecting door opened.

  Two of the three men stepped into the garage, propping a limp body between them.

  In the twenty-one-minute gap between when the agents went into the house and came back out, Cole was able to discern a few things. Brandon had either seen the agents pull into the driveway or heard them come in the door, therefore warning him of an impending attack. Had his brother not seen or heard the men, it wouldn’t have taken twenty-one minutes for the situation to come to a conclusion. Brandon had hidden or defended himself before succumbing to his fate, forcing the agents to spend precious more time within the home than they probably wanted to. He also understood that the agents (Cole was sure these were part of the same legion that had tracked him before) had put a watch on the house at some point and likely had been following Brandon. What he also knew was that these men had not been on Brandon’s trail forty-eight hours ago.

  He knew because Brandon had been on the mission with him. They’d both been nowhere near this house and in a desolate location that would have easily exposed spies or followers. Whatever had just happened was a new event, probably tied to the damn letter Madalina had received from Walcot.

  Seeing his typically vivacious, outgoing sibling dragged across the garage to the waiting sedan set his blood on fire. He couldn’t tell if Brandon was alive or dead, which made the situation that much more agonizing.

  He watched the agents settle Brandon into the backseat of their sedan. Two agents got in that car, while the third got in Brandon’s vehicle. Brandon must have left the keys in the ignition because moments later, the car pulled out and the garage door closed, which meant the agent had used Brandon’s remote.

  Nice, neat, planned. The agents knew exactly what they were doing.

  Rising out of the seat, unable to comfort Madalina or address the shock he could feel roiling off her body, he crossed to his regular desk and fished a cell phone from a locked drawer.

  “Cole, my God, they took Brandon,” Madalina said, fingers trembling against her lips.

  It was a rhetorical comment, he knew, and one he did not bother to address despite her obvious upset. He put the phone to his ear, impatiently pacing around the side of his desk. When Thaddeus answered with a familiar, “Hello, brother,” he didn’t waste time on greetings and salutations.

  “Thaddeus, have you heard from Brandon in the last two or three hours? Has he called in?”

  “What? I thought he was with you in Southern California?” Thaddeus asked.

  “He was. Someone abducted him out of my house earlier this morning, and I don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. There’s blood in my kitchen, Thad, and Brandon’s body was . . . they dragged him out. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing on the security feed.” Cole cut straight to the hard details. There wasn’t time to waste. The few seconds of dead silence on Thaddeus’s end suggested he hadn’t been expecting such dire news.

  “Why did you wait so long to call me?” Thaddeus asked first. Then he a
dded, “I haven’t heard from Brandon since before you two went on your mission. I thought everything was fine. He didn’t send me—or anyone else—any kind of distress signal, either. So he wasn’t expecting whatever happened to him.”

  Cole raked a hand through his hair and paced the office. “Clearly he didn’t know someone was targeting him. He would have told me on the mission. And I know for a fact that no one followed us while we were gone. This has to be related to the note Madalina received yesterday.”

  “It does seem like it’s related, yes,” Thaddeus agreed once he had all the details. “Killing Brandon . . .” Thaddeus’s voice cracked over the latter words, until he cleared his throat and went on. “Killing him doesn’t do anyone any good. Unless it’s payback of some kind for your previous involvement, for forcing the agents to agree to terms.”

  Cole knew that the news about Brandon was as hard for Thaddeus to hear as it was for himself. No one wanted to think their brother had been murdered in cold blood. Thad’s suggestion that it might be payback for his own previous actions didn’t sit well with him at all. “They didn’t leave a note, didn’t steal anything, nothing. We had Walcot’s letter on us, so if they knew about it somehow and came to get it, they left empty-handed.” Barring the attack and abduction of his brother.

  “I’m sending Damon and Samuel out there. We need to find out where they’ve taken Brandon.”

  Just as Cole was about to reply, the landline rang. He gestured to Madalina to answer, or to let it go to voice mail, for that matter.

  “Hello?” Madalina said, answering the landline.

  Cole turned his back to concentrate on Thaddeus’s call. “I won’t turn down the help. Anything extra you can do on your end is appreciated.”

  “Oh, I intend to get to the bottom of it. I’ll use whatever means necessary,” Thaddeus said.

  Cole knew their entire family would get involved, use their father’s contacts and resources to get a lead on Brandon.

  “Cole!”

  Madalina’s urgent whisper finally registered. He glanced over his shoulder, frowning. She gestured to the handset with frantic motions, then pushed the speaker button to allow the caller’s voice to flow through the room.

  “. . . peaceful negotiation with your friend—hello?” the man’s accented voice said.

  “Listen close, brother,” Cole said into the cell, giving the only warning to Thaddeus that he could. He approached the landline phone, making sure Thaddeus could hear both sides of the conversation.

  “This is Cole. What negotiation? For my brother?” He took a shot in the dark. There could only be one reason someone was calling to discuss negotiations. Hope surged that Brandon was still alive.

  “Mr. West, glad to have you on the line,” the man said. “We regret the necessity to apprehend your brother, but it’s business, you understand.”

  Cole cut the man off. “It’s an act of war. You’re going to rain hell down on your own head if you don’t explain yourself shortly.”

  “No need for war, Mr. West. We have Brandon here safe and sound—”

  “I want to hear his voice,” Cole insisted. His grip on his cell phone was tight enough to make the device squeak.

  “It’s me,” Brandon said. His voice sounded groggy. “They got me out of your house.”

  Relief surged bright and sharp through Cole. Brandon was alive. “How badly are you injured?”

  “Mr. West, we assure you that Brandon is being well cared for,” the accented man said, interrupting the conversation. “Now that you know he’s safe—”

  “I wouldn’t call his being wounded and abducted ‘safe,’” Cole said. He couldn’t hear Brandon in the background any longer and knew that the short conversation with his brother was all he would be allowed to have. “What is it you want?”

  “I was getting to that. If you would let me finish my sentence—”

  “Just jump straight to the point and cease the condescending platitudes.” Cole’s impatience knew no bounds. He paced the room, agitated and annoyed, already thinking ahead to how he and his brethren might extract Brandon from captivity. With both phones put on speaker, Thaddeus could hear everything and was likely relaying information to their father and brothers.

  “It has come to our attention that you may have information on another dragon. Before you bring up the agreement made between you and my colleagues, understand that we have held up our end of the deal. We have not harassed you or Miss Maitland, we have not been following you—or her—and we certainly have not been intercepting your phone calls or mail,” the man said.

  “Then how is it you think we might have information?” Cole asked. He paused by the desk, a phone in each hand, and glanced at Madalina. She looked better, not as pale as before.

  “We were not watching you, but we were keeping tabs on Brandon. The information you gave to him yesterday makes us believe there could be a lead on another dragon, and all we want you to do, Mr. West, is follow through and find out the truth. Find the dragon and return it to us in exchange for your brother. He will be our guest until we hear from you.”

  Cole cursed under his breath. So the Chinese agents hadn’t given up on them after all. He and Madalina were on their radar, no matter that the agents weren’t actively attempting to kidnap Madalina any longer.

  He ran through a brief replay of his earlier conversation with Brandon, and while he’d done his best to contain certain key words, anyone with knowledge of the dragons would have been able to read between the lines. Now the agents were using him and Madalina to do their dirty work, while holding Brandon as “incentive” to get the job done. The only choices available, as he saw it, were to either give in to the agents’ demands or conduct a raid and free Brandon, possibly resulting in casualties. And that was if they could find where the agents were holding him. If the dragon was sitting in some small abode in Brazil, it wouldn’t be much of a hardship to retrieve it, turn it over, and free his brother.

  Cole loathed giving in to these kinds of demands. He believed it only encouraged similar behavior. The next thing he knew, he would be sent all over creation, looking for this, looking for that, dancing like a puppet on a string. If he gave in, did what the agents wanted, there might be no end to the terror.

  “Mr. West?” the agent said when he took too long to reply.

  “You’ve got thirty minutes to release Brandon into my care, or we’re going to make your life very unpleasant shortly.” Cole delivered his threat and ended the call. He hadn’t hung up from Thaddeus, who’d been listening silently all this time. Cole addressed him next. “You heard that, Thaddeus. Get a location for me; I don’t care what system you have to tap into or what friends Dad has to lean on to make it happen. The agents can’t be too far from here. I’ll go in myself and get Brandon out if I have to.”

  “Just hold tight, Cole. Don’t rush in before I can get backup en route. I’ll call you back in twenty.” Thaddeus rang off.

  Cole pocketed the cell phone and glanced again at Madalina. Her eyes were round, her expression a mask of concern.

  “You’re not really going to go in by yourself, are you?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. Let’s get this house secure. I don’t want to leave here without knowing you’re locked in tight.” Cole wasn’t taking any more chances with the people he loved.

  Madalina rushed from one room to the next, helping or watching Cole batten down the house. Windows weren’t just closed and locked; they were braced with security poles that made them almost impossible to open. A person would have to break the panes and remove the pole to gain entry, which would set off the alarm and make a terrible amount of noise. Every door leading outside was fitted with a brace that jammed up under the knob, creating a serious obstacle to overcome. He pulled shades, moved furniture, and disengaged the automatic button on the garage door. It had to be opened and closed through a manual keypa
d that only four people had the number to.

  Several times Madalina attempted to slow Cole down, but he was on a mission and would not be deterred. She wanted him to pause and think things through, make sure that he wasn’t missing a critical element. The brisk, efficient way he conducted his business between phone calls told her that nothing short of Brandon walking through the front door would alter his course of action.

  After a whirlwind session of rechecking the house, she hurried behind Cole back to the upstairs office, where he answered an incoming call from his brother.

  “What’ve you got?” Cole said straightaway. He walked to a closet, opened the door, and liberated an extra handgun from an inside safe. When he reappeared he was frowning. “There has to be something else, Thaddeus.”

  Madalina had a conversation with Cole, of a sort, while he talked to Thaddeus. Cole’s hand gestures and head nods indicated that he wanted her to check the weapon and keep it close. He’d taken the time to teach her to shoot and familiarize herself with guns during the last few weeks. She could hit a stationary target with decent skill, but all her lessons mainly prepared her for one thing and one thing only: to protect herself in a life-or-death situation. Once she’d given the weapon a cursory examination, made sure the magazine was loaded and the safety on, she set the gun on the desk and returned her attention to Cole.

  The talk with Thaddeus had deteriorated to scowls and grunts and impatience.

  “Well, check again,” Cole was saying. “Everyone leaves some kind of trail. They’re close by; they have to be. People don’t just disappear into thin air.”

  When he stalked past, she set her fingers on his bicep. He glanced down, acknowledging her attempt to soothe him, but continued pacing. Cole was as agitated as she’d ever seen him. He couldn’t stand still and didn’t maintain eye contact for longer than a few seconds. Thaddeus appeared to be having trouble locating the agents, and therefore, Brandon, a fact that made Cole edgier by the moment.