Sidney Sheldon's Reckless

by Sidney Sheldon

  “Ah, Mr. Stevens, there you are.” Jane, the hugely overweight receptionist, smiled at Jeff warmly. “I’m so sorry, but the young lady just left. She waited more than an hour but I think she had to get to work in the end. I would have called you but I didn’t have a number and—”

  “What young lady?” Jeff interrupted her.

  Jane blushed. “Oh Lord. How stupid of me. All this time she was here and I never got her name. She was young. Blond. Very attractive.”

  Karen.

  “She left you this.”

  The receptionist picked up a sealed brown paper envelope in her pudgy hands and passed it to Jeff.

  His heart rate shot up. He could feel immediately that there was a USB chip inside.

  Bounding up the hotel stairs two at a time, Jeff hurried into his room, locking the door behind him. Drawing the curtains, he sat down at his computer and loaded in the chip.

  The footage was time-stamped. There was a little under two hours’ worth in all. Thank you, Karen! Images were streamed from the Yampa Valley Medical Center’s car park, front entrance, reception desk and waiting room, and from three corridors inside the building. One clearly led to a surgery suite of some kind. The others looked like regular corridors on a ward, with patients’ rooms to the right and left.

  Jeff settled back to watch, not sure what he was looking for exactly, but hoping it would jump out at him when he saw it.

  Minutes rolled by. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. An hour.

  When he finally saw the figure, sauntering confidently up to the reception desk, he had to pause the footage and rewind.

  It can’t be. Jeff leaned forward, staring at the screen as if he’d seen a ghost. It can’t possibly be.

  Jumping up, he pulled open the bedside drawer and started reassembling his phone, sliding in the sim card and battery.

  I have to call Tracy. Right now.

  Waiting impatiently for the home screen to load, Jeff tried to think of what he was going to say exactly. What words would he use to break this news? To tell Tracy she was wrong. To tell her . . .

  The phone rang loudly, startling him.

  “Hello?” He answered without thinking.

  Frank Dorrien’s voice boomed in his ear, angry and doom-laden. “Stevens! Where in Christ’s name have you been?”

  “I can’t talk now,” Jeff said dismissively. “I need to speak to Tracy.”

  “Jeff . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Frank. This can’t wait.”

  “Well, it’ll have to,” Dorrien shot back hurriedly, before Jeff could hang up. “Tracy’s in a coma, Jeff.”

  Jeff froze. The room had started to spin.

  “What?”

  “She was attacked the night you left Paris. Bludgeoned from behind.”

  Jeff held on to the desk for support. He felt terribly light-headed suddenly. Dark spots swam before his eyes. When he spoke his voice sounded strangled. “I don’t understand. Who attacked her?”

  “We’re not sure. Various witnesses—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “We tried,” said Frank. “Repeatedly. None of us could reach you.”

  “Well, what have the doctors said? I mean, she’s in a coma. But she’s going to recover, right? She’s going to be OK?”

  “She hasn’t woken up since it happened,” Frank said bluntly, although not without compassion. “I’m sorry, Jeff, truly I am. But it doesn’t look good.”

  CHAPTER 23

  TRACY HEARD BLAKE CARTER’S voice first, out in the corridor.

  “Where is she? I need to see her. I need to explain.”

  And the doctor. “She’s not up to visitors yet, Mr. Carter.”

  I am up to visitors!

  Blake’s alive? He’s been alive all this time? And now he’s here to see me?

  Blake! She sat up in bed, tried to call out his name, but no sound came out. Then the pain came back, the agony, like a herd of elephants stampeding across her skull, pulverizing her bones into dust one after the other. Blake, I’m here! Don’t leave!

  She passed out.

  FRANK DORRIEN WAS IN the room.

  Tracy couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t move, or speak, or do anything except breathe. And listen.

  “Who’s her next of kin?” the doctor was asking.

  General Dorrien’s voice. “She doesn’t have one.”

  “Is there no one we can notify? A friend?”

  “No. We’ll take care of it.”

  “But there must be . . .”

  Frank’s voice again, more hard-edged this time. “There isn’t. Come on, Doctor. Let’s be honest. We both know she isn’t going to wake up. So it’s all a moot point anyway.”

  Tracy thought, I’m not going to wake up.

  Profound peace overwhelmed her.

  She would be with Nick at last.

  “WAKE UP!”

  Someone was shaking her. Shining a light in her eyes.

  She’d been having the most wonderful dream. She and Nick were playing chess, back in the kitchen at Steamboat. Blake wasn’t there—he’d gone out riding—but Jeff was, whispering in Nick’s ear, teaching him how to cheat, or at least how to outsmart his mother. They were both laughing. Tracy didn’t approve but she was laughing too.

  Until Althea walked in, her long dark hair billowing behind her, her face a mask of death. Sitting down at the table, she swept away the chess pieces. Tracy watched, frozen, as they clattered to the floor. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

  “I hate chess. Let’s play poker.”

  And then the kitchen was gone, Nick too, and they were at a table in a casino—the Bellagio?—and Hunter Drexel was dealing. But the cards weren’t playing cards, they were Tarot cards, and Tracy turned over the Lovers and Althea looked at Jeff and started laughing and laughing and then Hunter Drexel grabbed Tracy by the shoulders and shouted:

  “WAKE UP! Look at the light! The truth’s right in front of you, Tracy! Wake up!”

  Tracy opened her eyes.

  Loving, familiar eyes stared back at her.

  “It’s you!” she smiled.

  And sank back into the darkness.

  IT WAS THE LONGEST night of Cameron Crewe’s life. Longer, even, than the night he lost Marcus. He’d been numb then, too shocked to process fully what was happening. He remembered Charlotte sitting beside him at Marcus’s bedside, the two of them holding hands. If someone had taken a photograph then and given it a title, they would probably have called it United in Grief. Except, of course, that grief didn’t unite anything. All it did was destroy. Dismantle. Unravel.

  Cameron Crewe hadn’t known that then but he knew it now, watching Tracy fight for her life. Seeing her struggle up into the light, only to lose her footing and tumble back down, helpless, into the darkness.

  It was Greg Walton who called him, a full twenty-four hours after Tracy was attacked. Cameron was furious.

  “Why the hell didn’t anyone contact me sooner?”

  “We didn’t know ourselves,” Greg Walton insisted. “Agent Buck’s in Paris but the FBI have been running their own investigation, separate from what Tracy’s been doing for us. It was the Brits who alerted us. MI6.”

  “General Dorrien?” Cameron practically spat out the name.

  “Yes.” Walton sounded surprised. “Do you two know each other?”

  “No. But Tracy knows him. And she doesn’t trust him an inch.”

  “The British think it may have been Hunter Drexel who attacked her. Despite my express instructions it appears Tracy’s been trying to track Drexel alone, off-book. You wouldn’t know anything about that, I suppose?”

  But Cameron wasn’t interested in CIA guessing games. Instead he flew his G650 directly into Le Bourget airport, making it from his New York apartment to Tracy’s bedside in under ten hours. Once there, he pulled every string in the book to make sure that Frank Dorrien and any other intelligence officers were refused all further access. Luckily Don Pete
rs, the new U.S. ambassador to France, was a close personal friend. So was Guillaume Henri, the hospital’s largest donor.

  “Tracy Whitney’s a friend of mine. I’m the closest thing she has to family,” Cameron insisted to Guillaume. “Nobody sees her but me.”

  “Your wish is my command, old friend. She must be quite a woman.”

  “She is,” Cameron said.

  Within hours of his arrival, Tracy had opened her eyes and spoken for the first time.

  “It’s you!” she said when she saw him. And then she smiled, that bewitching, sad, intelligent smile that danced on her lips but always started with her moss-green eyes. The smile that had conquered Cameron Crewe from the very beginning.

  But seconds later the smile had faded and Tracy’s eyes had closed once again.

  That was two days ago.

  Now, according to Greg Walton, Jeff Stevens was on his way. The British government was up in arms, demanding to be allowed to see Tracy and assess her condition.

  “They’re pissed. MI6 are saying she’s compromised their operation against Drexel, that it’s our fault for failing to control her. And they want your head on a plate.”

  “Too bad.”

  “They’re claiming Stevens is her next of kin,” Greg Walton said. “If that’s true you won’t be able to stop him seeing her. And he’ll bring Frank Dorrien and anyone else Dorrien wants in with him.”

  Cameron Crewe was distraught.

  He couldn’t let that happen. He had to get Tracy to wake up.

  He’d been on the point of giving up when suddenly, in the early hours of this morning, he’d woken suddenly in the chair by Tracy’s bed to hear her moaning loudly, asking for water and complaining about her head. She’d been confused at first. Delirious. But within a few short hours she was sitting up, sipping sweetened tea and holding his hand, talking to him quite normally.

  “Do you know what happened to you?” Cameron asked her. “Do you remember anything?”

  Tracy looked away guiltily.

  “I know you had dinner with Jeff Stevens,” Cameron said. “It’s OK.”

  He was trying to reassure her, but Tracy’s eyes instantly narrowed with suspicion.

  “How do you know?”

  “Greg Walton mentioned it,” Cameron said, a little too breezily. The last thing he wanted was to alienate Tracy now. He’d let her out of his sight once, against his better judgment, and he was in no hurry to repeat the experience. “Do you have any idea who did this to you?” he asked, changing tack.

  Tracy shook her head. “Do you?”

  “I have a couple of theories.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You won’t like them.”

  “Try me.”

  “OK. Jeff Stevens.”

  “Jeff?” Tracy started to laugh, but it made her head hurt. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” Cameron looked at her intently. “I don’t see why. He knew where you were. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to follow you that night. He’d already pumped you for information over dinner. Found out what his paymasters wanted to know. He didn’t need you anymore.”

  “Jeff would never hurt me.” Tracy was unequivocal.

  “Are you sure? What if he felt he’d told you too much that night at dinner? What if he regretted it? Maybe he was scared?”

  Tracy shook her head. “You’re way off base.”

  But Cameron wasn’t giving up. “Maybe he was jealous. Angry. Lashing out in a blind fit of rage.”

  “About what?”

  “You and me,” Cameron said. “Being together. That can’t be easy for him.”

  Tracy blushed scarlet. She wanted to say, We’re not together! Who said we were together? But this didn’t feel like the right time. Besides which, she really didn’t know what her romantic feelings were at this moment, for Cameron, or Jeff, or anyone.

  “You told me yourself he has a temper,” Cameron went on. “It makes sense, Tracy.”

  “It doesn’t. Move on. What’s your other theory?”

  “General Frank Dorrien.”

  Tracy’s ears pricked up. “Go on.”

  Cameron outlined his theory. Like Jeff, Dorrien knew where Tracy had been that night and could easily have followed her after dinner. Perhaps he knew about the harddrive Tracy had stolen from his house in England, the evidence tying him to Prince Achileas’s death? That alone would be motive enough for him to try to kill her. He’d made no secret of his dislike of Tracy from the beginning. Now, according to Greg Walton, Dorrien’s MI6 bosses were equally displeased with her efforts to corner Hunter Drexel privately, not to mention her failure to make progress on Althea.

  “No one in Whitehall would be crying into their Earl Grey tea if you met an untimely end, Tracy,” Cameron said bluntly. “They want to catch Drexel first. They want the glory. That’s why they brought Jeff Stevens in in the first place, to cut you off at the knees.”

  Tracy thought, It’s possible. Jeff basically admitted as much over dinner.

  “What if Dorrien saw his chance and he took it?” Cameron warmed to his theme. “But he screwed up. You didn’t die right away. There was a witness. So he swoops in as a ‘bystander,’ has you brought here, controls all access to you. He didn’t even tell the CIA you’d been attacked until a day and a half after the fact. That doesn’t strike you as suspicious?”

  The problem was, everything struck Tracy as suspicious. She was more than prepared to believe that Frank Dorrien had attacked her. She knew for a fact he was capable of it, especially if he felt impelled by some warped sense of duty. Or even just to save his own skin. And yet something was niggling at her. Something that didn’t quite ring true.

  “What about Hunter Drexel?” she asked Cameron.

  “What about him?”

  “He could have attacked me. If he thought I was close to finding him. Close to finding out the truth.”

  “It’s possible, I suppose.” Cameron sounded unconvinced.

  “Or Althea?” Tracy mused.

  “No. That makes no sense. Why would she go to so much trouble to get you involved in this in the first place if all she wanted was to kill you? Besides, the witnesses described a man.”

  “It was dark. A tall woman with her hair up could easily look like a man.”

  Cameron shook his head. “I think it was the British, Tracy. Either Dorrien or Stevens. They’re on the same team now, after all. And it’s not our team. All this talk of ‘cooperation,’ it’s total bullshit.”

  That much Tracy agreed with. “I know.”

  She squeezed Cameron’s hand.

  “You can’t trust Jeff Stevens, Tracy.”

  “I know that too. I was planning on working with him, not trusting him.”

  Cameron looked confused.

  “Jeff would never hurt me,” Tracy explained. “But if he sees finding Hunter and Althea as a competition between us—and I think he does—then he’ll stop at nothing to win.”

  “So why work with him?”

  Tracy smiled weakly. “Because I’ll stop at nothing to win, either. And I usually do. In the end.”

  They talked for a few more minutes. Then Tracy started to feel tired. Kissing her tenderly on the top of her head, above the bandages, Cameron left, double-checking on his way out that no one was to be allowed past security.

  HEADING BACK TO HIS hotel, Cameron couldn’t help smiling to himself, thinking about the first time Tracy had woken up.

  “The way you smiled at me,” he told her today. “The look in your eyes when you said ‘it’s you.’ I can’t tell you what that meant to me.”

  Tracy had been affected by it too. “I don’t remember,” she told him. But her blushes told a different story.

  She loves me, Cameron thought. She’s too scared to admit it yet. But she does.

  AFTER CAMERON LEFT, TRACY stared at the ceiling above her bed for a long time.

  Stop feeling guilty, she told herself sternly. It’s ridiculous to feel gu
ilty.

  You can’t control your dreams, Tracy.

  No one can.

  She did remember smiling. She remembered looking into those loving, familiar eyes and saying “it’s you!” and feeling profoundly happy.

  But the eyes weren’t Cameron’s.

  They were Jeff’s.

  And yet Jeff hadn’t visited her in the hospital. Cameron had.

  Jeff hadn’t checked up on her and flown thousands of miles to keep a constant vigil by her bedside.

  Cameron had.

  What Cameron offered her was something real. Something she could touch and hold on to and rely on. Something she could trust.

  Jeff, on the other hand . . .

  Jeff was just a beautiful dream.

  JEFF LANDED AT CHARLES de Gaulle red-eyed and exhausted. He’d had to change planes in New York, but he barely remembered being at JFK. Everything that had happened since Frank Dorrien called him was a blur.

  Getting to Tracy. That was all that mattered now.

  The rest of the world had faded to gray.

  “Jeff.”

  Frank Dorrien was waiting as soon as Jeff stepped into the arrivals hall. Clean-shaven, apparently well rested, and sporting his usual civilian uniform of dark blue corduroy trousers, a perfectly pressed cotton shirt, tweed sports jacket and brogues, the General was like a creature from another planet.

  “How is she?” Jeff blurted, pushing past him. “I have to get to the hospital.”

  Frank Dorrien grabbed his arm. “She’s not there.” Seeing Jeff’s eyes widen in horror, he quickly explained, “She’s not dead. Don’t worry. About an hour after I spoke to you, she woke up.”

  Jeff felt his knees begin to buckle beneath him. The relief was so overpowering, he thought he might be sick.

  “I have to see her.”

  Frank said stiffly, “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  Jeff turned on him. “What are you talking about?” Shrugging off the general’s hand he began walking towards the taxi rank. The general followed.