Tag, You're It!

by Penny McCall

  The car pulled up in front of the Brown Palace, no surprise since it was arguably the best hotel in Denver. The place had been built in the nineteenth century, and it was everything a shallow, appearance-conscious, greedy son-of-a-bitch could want. Old, exclusive, and expensive.

  Still fuming, Tag got out of the car, following Mick inside and through the lobby. Mick would have made a satisfying target, too, but he was no more than a loaded gun, and Tag already knew whose finger was on that trigger. He wanted the fist around the knife handle.

  “You coming?” Mick was holding the elevator when Tag looked up. “He don’t like to be kept waiting.”

  Tag hopped on, no choice but to care what “he” liked. If he wanted to clear this case, he had to stop focusing on what might have happened to Alex. She was alive, and if he was going to stay that way long enough to see what kind of hangover chocolate left behind, he needed to pull back into the moment, to focus on what would face him when he got off the elevator.

  There were three Presidential Suites in the Brown Palace. Mick led Tag to one of them, knocked politely, then opened the door. For a snake’s den, it looked pretty harmless. Including the man seated at the table, having breakfast.

  He was decked out in what he probably thought was a rich man’s morning attire—if the rich man was Tony Curtis forty years ago. A crisp white ascot was tucked between the lapels of his dark blue paisley silk robe, which was belted over silk pajamas and fleece-lined leather slippers. A square jaw, blue eyes, and thick blond hair, swept dramatically back from a high forehead, completed the Hollywood looks.

  Women would find him attractive, at least any woman who didn’t look close enough to see his perpetual sneer of superiority. Anyone who wasted the time getting to know him would find him vain, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing, petty, and vindictive. For starters.

  Tag had known Bennet Harper all of five minutes before he’d pegged him as the kind of man it would be easy to write off as all talk. That would be a mistake, because Harper was just smart enough to cause real trouble. Tag was barely-living proof of that.

  Harper sat at a table set with fine china, silver-domed dishes, and a single red rosebud in a crystal vase. He didn’t offer Tag a seat or a cup of coffee; he barely flicked him a glance, just shifted his gaze long enough to let Tag know he’d been noticed so he’d understand that he was being kept standing there like the hireling Harper thought he was.

  After a few moments Harper folded his paper and laid it precisely next to his coffee cup. He smoothed the lapels of his robe and took a sip of coffee, making a face. He held the cup out in Mick’s direction, but he looked at Tag.

  Mick jumped to refill the cup. Tag just stared back.

  Harper gave it another thirty seconds, tried a scowl that still didn’t produce instantaneous groveling, and finally said, “I’m waiting for a progress report.”

  It might be the wrong approach to take, and it was definitely petty, but Tag wasn’t going to be toady. “What makes you think I’m still working for you after you threw me out of that plane?”

  “It was necessary to create an… illusion. For Alexandra’s sake.”

  “You almost created a corpse,” Tag pointed out, not missing the way he called Alex by her full name.

  Harper waved the notion off, his diamond pinkie ring— yet another affectation—sparkling in the sunlight streaming in the window. “You were perfectly safe, and I imagine she felt a great deal of sympathy toward you.”

  “She felt a great deal of suspicion,” Tag said, careful to keep his tone just on the respectful side of mockery. Not wise to forget he needed Harper, at least until he found out what this treasure hunt was really all about. “She still doesn’t entirely trust me. Even after the plane came back and shot at me a second time. And the firebombing, and the snowmobile attack.”

  “As you said, Alexandra takes a lot of convincing.”

  She took a hell of a toll, too, Tag thought, glancing over at Mick. “Who took the tranquilizer dart, you or Franky?”

  Mick didn’t have anything to say—until Harper looked at him. “Franky,” Mick said, adding for his boss’s benefit, “when we came at her on the snowmobiles she shot at us with a tranq gun.”

  “And you chose not to tell me.”

  “You didn’t want us getting too close anyway, and it gave us an excuse to let them go, so I thought—”

  “I don’t pay you to think.”

  Mick snapped his mouth shut, jaw knotted, not liking his boss very much.

  “Then there was the kidnap attempt in Casteel,” Tag said, deliberately inflaming the situation.

  “My spies told me she was still refusing to guide you,” Harper said.

  “She was, and being shoved into an alley and threatened by two men helped change her mind, but I think the knife attack was overkill.”

  Harper whipped around, pinned Mick with another look.

  “That wasn’t us, Mr. Harper. We threatened to kidnap her, just like you wanted, and then we let her go. It must’ve been that little French twerp. I told Donovan that in the car.”

  And Tag had believed Mick. What he’d really wanted to see was Harper’s reaction to the news, and it was pretty telling.

  “She’s all right?” he asked, sitting forward, hands clenched around the arms of his chair. He wasn’t a good enough actor to convincingly simulate breathing, let alone this kind of shock and anger. And the concern was definitely genuine.

  “Yeah,” Tag bit off, not as immune to the memory as he would’ve liked to be. “I tackled him and Alex wound up with a gash on her leg. Not serious though.”

  Harper straightened his robe, his eyes going cold again. “That was clumsy of you, Mr. Donovan,” he said.

  “It could’ve been a whole lot worse if the person holding the knife was serious.” It still didn’t follow that it was one of Junior’s men, but the assumption fit Tag’s purposes. “It was stupid of Dussaud, and since you hired him you need to call him off. It’ll be hard enough to find the treasure as it is. You keep throwing roadblocks up in front of me and you can kiss it good-bye.”

  “That sounds like a threat.”

  “I’ve got the map.”

  Harper sat back in his chair, hands steepled, the picture of calm and deliberation—if you didn’t know there was a spoiled little boy underneath the slick exterior. A spoiled, game-playing little boy. “I heard Dussaud had managed to lose the map in that sorry little town… what was it called?”

  “Casteel,” Tag said. “Alex and I stole it, right after your two geniuses failed.”

  Harper sent Mick a look, clearly not happy.

  “What I don’t get,” Tag continued, “is why you gave it to him in the first place if you were going to have your men steal it back.”

  “I have my reasons, just as you had your reasons for robbing Dussaud.”

  “I told Alex there was a map,” Tag said slowly, trying to figure out what he was missing. Why, he asked himself, would Harper go to such lengths to bring Alex into this idiocy and then make it more difficult for her to find the treasure? “She wouldn’t hook up with me without it.”

  “And no doubt she insisted you come to Denver to re-search it. I expected as much—just as I expected you to give in to her.”

  “You made it clear she’s a necessary participant, and she won’t do this unless we do it her way. She’s pretty stubborn.”

  “Stubborn doesn’t begin to cover it,” Harper said. But there was indulgence layered under the exasperation. Tag knew exactly how Harper felt, and he didn’t like having that particular common ground.

  “She’s necessary. The map isn’t.”

  “Okay, what’s going on?”

  Harper looked at his yes man, grinning. “Shall I tell him, Mick?”

  “You’re in charge, Mr. Harper.”

  “Yes, I am in charge, aren’t I? And you’re just a tool, Donovan, and tools don’t get to ask questions. Your job is to get Alexandra out in the field looking for that treasur
e, and so far I’ve had to do most of the work. She has no choice but to help you, so get your ass, and hers, out of Denver and do what I hired you to do.”

  “Call off Dussaud. I contracted to find the treasure and I’ll find it.”

  Harper smiled his I-know-something-you-don’t-know smile again.

  “Dussaud and his goons don’t have a clue what they’re doing in this kind of territory,” Tag said, “and now they don’t have the map. He’s only going to get in my way, and there are enough people wandering around out there already.”

  “That’s your fault,” Harper said. “You let the cat out of the bag.”

  “A guy with three SUVs and five men wouldn’t have done that?”

  “Dussaud has his purpose.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My concern. He’s already been paid, and I understand he doesn’t give up. Even if I called him off, and he went, what guarantee do I have that you’ll turn the treasure over to me if you find it?”

  “Besides the ten percent finder’s fee? I don’t double-cross my employers,” Tag said. Of course, the U.S. government had first dibs on his loyalty.

  “It’s best for us both if you don’t,” Harper said. “My investors are getting impatient, and I’m… eager to keep them happy. And so should you be, Mr. Donovan. I dislike violence, and I would never stoop to murder.”

  “But at least one of your investors would,” Tag interpreted.

  “Let’s just say I’ve heard stories more than one law enforcement agency—including the highest in the land— would be very interested to hear.”

  ———

  BENNET HARPER WAS NOT A MAN WHO LIKED TO wait for things, and when it came to getting rich, impatience was an understatement. If the world had worked the way it was supposed to, he’d have been born into money. But fate had a sick sense of humor, dropping him into the lap of a poor, if affectionate, single mother who’d never had two nickels to rub together. True, she’d spent every spare penny on her only son, but she’d never had a real appreciation for nuance.

  Community college had been in her budget; Ivy League had been in Bennet’s sights. He’d won that battle, but even if Jean Harper had owned anything worth mortgaging, her credit status would have failed them, so he’d been saddled with loans. He’d long since paid them off, but he’d never forgiven her. He hadn’t, in fact, seen her in years. But then he wouldn’t have anyway. A bargain basement childhood didn’t fit into his hand-tailored life.

  Neither did working for a living. He’d tried the Wall Street route, started at the bottom of the heap, spent endless days with a phone glued to his ear, and come off the cold call desk with an investor list anyone in his field would envy. He could read people better than any broker Wall Street had ever turned loose on the unsuspecting public. Problem was he couldn’t read the market. And rich men didn’t give second chances to brokers who lost their money. Or to ones who’d run afoul of their own class.

  To be truthful, it was a toss-up as to what had done him in, bad investments or being dumped by Alex Scott. He’d decided to blame it on Alex, for breaking off their engagement just when he was at his lowest. And all because he’d used her connections. Wasn’t that a wife’s duty, he asked himself? To put aside her own selfish opinions and family affiliations, to support her husband. Fine, they hadn’t actually been married, but she’d had his ring on her finger, hadn’t she? And yet at the first sign of trouble she’d taken it off with barely a second thought for him. The others had pulled their money and made sure his inadequacy was well known, but that had been business. Alex was personal. She’d pay for doubting him, Bennet had promised himself. For hurting and humiliating him. When the time was right, she’d pay. Just as soon as he was back in a position where he could make her suffer.

  For a while he’d limped along with the two or three investors too old or too stupid to dump him. Until he’d lost their money as well. That final disaster had goaded him into one last desperate investment. And that investment had been a stroke of luck, a lottery win.

  He’d bought a share of a shipwreck, one that was supposed to pay off big. He’d known going in it was nothing more than a gamble, no different that placing his last dollar on the spin of a roulette wheel. And yet, investors had begged and pleaded for a stake in that treasure, smiling and patting each other on the back just to be allowed a single share. They’d been blinded by the glory of it, the tiny hope of success shining so bright they couldn’t see the bottomless pit they were throwing their money into.

  It still amazed him that the shipwreck had paid off. Of course, the owners of the diving company had been stupid enough to declare every last doubloon they’d found—for which Bennet was eternally grateful, since he’d used that stake to fund his own treasure hunt.

  He might not have been handy with the stock market, but he could sell water to a drowning man. What he sold now was excitement, adventure, the chance for men and women with more money than God to buy something money couldn’t buy. Something priceless.

  It was laughingly easy. All it took was a convincing artifact—an ancient map or a historical journal—and an equally convincing Indiana Jones type to follow said map or journal to the amazing treasure at its end. Not so simple, Bennet had soon discovered. But since failure on his first treasure hunt would have provided a poor track record, he’d “found” a small hoard, compliments of the Internet and anonymous auction purchases.

  The investors weren’t entirely happy about the small return, but as they’d been guaranteed nothing, what could they do? And anyway, it hadn’t stopped most of them from investing in his next venture. The total failure of that second treasure hunt had cost him one or two of the choosier investors but he’d had no trouble replacing them, and in replacing them Bennet had learned a very valuable lesson. It paid to know whose money he took. He hadn’t been careful there, and this third game had changed on him. The time had come to change it back, to put himself in control again.

  His regular treasure hunter had gone off and gotten himself a broken leg, and he’d found another, hadn’t he? He’d hired Tag Donovan to look for the treasure, figuring when Donovan didn’t find anything he’d put together a nice, tidy, convincing report to placate the losers. Well, a report wasn’t going to be enough anymore. That’s where Alex came into the picture.

  And since Donovan was going to be squeamish where she was concerned, Bennet had no choice but to adapt again. “There’s a change of plans, Mick,” he said, knowing he could trust Mick and Franky to follow his instructions to the letter. No matter what the instructions were.

  “Just tell me what you want me to do, Mr. Harper.”

  Bennet never got tired of hearing those words. It was amazing what you could get people to do for you. When you had enough money.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE ROOM WAS EMPTY WHEN ALEX WOKE UP.

  Thank god. The bad part about getting buzzed on chocolate and sugar, aside from being completely out of control and making a fool of herself, was that she remembered every second of it. Including the part where she’d jumped Tag Donovan.

  What she’d needed, after a shower and a pot of coffee, was fresh air. She left the hotel, picked a direction at random, and walked aimlessly. It wasn’t all she could have asked for, seeing the sky around stone and steel and glass, but at least the sky was blue, the air cool, and the sun warm on her face.

  And Tag Donovan was nowhere in sight.

  So why did she feel like she was being watched? Probably she was just paranoid, but after being accosted twice in Casteel, she wasn’t taking any chances.

  She stopped at the next corner, trapped with a handful of city dwellers at the mercy of the little red Do Not Walk man. She casually turned her head to see who was behind her. A couple of women window shopping, a family, a man walking along, comparing the slip of paper in his hand with the building addresses. Various other pedestrians crowded the sidewalks, no one in the least alarming. But she didn’t relax.

  The light change
d, she crossed the street, and the pesky tingle between her shoulder blades started up again. So she ducked into a lingerie boutique and picked up the first thing that came to hand. She lifted the thong and push-up bra high enough so she could look between the swatches of red lace and out the front window. At the guy looking back in at her.

  His eyes widened, then he gave her a smile and a thumbs-up and sauntered off, looking for all the world like he was on his way someplace else. She might even have blown off the chance encounter, except for one thing. The guy getting his jollies by leering at lingerie was the same guy who’d been trying to match addresses on the last street.

  Alex hung the panty set back up, then really looked at it. Tasteful but sexy. Once upon a time she’d worn lingerie like that on a regular basis. Thongs weren’t very practical for horseback, and lace chafed when you hiked a few dozen miles and got sweaty. She’d left all that behind when she quit the circuit a decade before, and she was surprised to find that she kind of missed it—not the circuit. She missed wearing pretty things and feeling feminine. There was strength in bringing a man to his knees with just a look. But it wasn’t the kind of strength she needed at the moment.

  She took a deep breath and left the store, turning back toward the hotel because it was the only course of action that made sense. The cops wouldn’t believe she was being followed, so Tag was her only hope. And Tag, damn him, would probably tell her she was just imagining things. They’d argue about it for a few minutes and then he might admit it, by which time they’d both be in trouble. Okay, so maybe it was better that Tag wasn’t around.

  She looked over her shoulder a couple of times, trying to be casual but getting more and more pissed off when she saw the same guy keeping pace behind her. By the time she sighted the hotel at the end of the next block she’d had enough.