Millions To Spare

by Barbara Dunlop

  Jamal was fourteen now, his father, Hanif, only a few years older than Harrison. On the sidelines, Hanif’s face shone with pride as he watched his son gallop off the field to switch horses between chukkers. The lad was limping from an earlier fall, but he gamely leaped up on the new mount.

  “Impressive,” said Harrison, speculating, probably for the first time, on the pride of fatherhood.

  “Kareem is the same,” Hanif offered, his chest puffing as he referred to his twelve-year-old son. “Both of them. Robust like me.”

  “That they are,” Harrison agreed, toying with the image of Brittany’s face. There was no denying she was attractive. She had a sweet smile, crystal-blue eyes and a crown of golden hair. She was also kind and gentle, a preschool teacher. There’s wasn’t a single doubt she’d make a wonderful mother.

  The match started up again, hooves thudding, divots flying, the crowd shouting encouragement.

  Testing the idea further, Harrison conjured up a picture of Brittany in a veil and a white dress, walking the nave at St. Paul’s. He could see his grandmother’s smile and his mother’s joy.

  Then he imagined the two of them making babies. He’d have to be careful not to hurt her. Unlike Hanif’s sons, nobody would describe Brittany as robust. It would be sweet, gentle sex, under a lace canopy, beneath billowing white sheets, Brittany’s fresh face smiling up at him-for the rest of his natural life.

  Which wouldn’t be so bad.

  A man could certainly do worse.

  And there was a lot Harrison could teach sons or daughters, not to mention the perfectly good title he had to pass on.

  Jamal scored, and Hanif whooped with delight.

  Harrison clapped Hanif’s shoulder in congratulations. Making up his mind, he pulled out his cell phone and pressed number one on his speed dial.

  “Cadair Racing,” came the immediate answer.

  “Darla please.”

  “Right away, Lord Rochester.”

  A moment later, his assistant Darla’s voice came through the speaker amidst the lingering cheers of the crowd. “Can I help you, sir?”

  “I’d like to add a couple of names to the guest list.”

  “Of course.”

  Harrison’s stomach tightened almost imperceptibly. But it was time. And, fundamentally, Brittany was a good choice. “My grandmother and Brittany Livingston. There shouldn’t be any security concerns.”

  “Certainly. I’ll send out the invitations right away. By the way, the French ambassador accepted this morning, and so did Colonel Varisco.”

  “That’s great. So are they back?”

  “The horses are en route now. Ilithyia placed and Millions to Spare won.”

  “Not bad,” said Harrison, nodding to himself.

  “Brittany Livingston?” asked Darla, the lilt of her voice seeking confirmation, even though she knew full well what the invitation had to mean. In her midthirties, single, yet hopelessly romantic, Darla made no bones about the fact she thought Harrison should find a suitable wife.

  “You think it’s a bad idea?” he asked, remembering Darla singing the praises of Yvette Gaston from the French embassy only last week.

  “I think it’s an excellent idea,” said Darla with clear enthusiasm.

  “Yes. Well. So will Grandmother.”

  “And you?” Darla probed.

  “How could I go wrong?”

  “How, indeed. A beautiful hostess improves any party.”

  Harrison’s stomach protested once again. But he supposed being his hostess was exactly what he was asking Brittany to do. “Millions to Spare won, you say?” He redirected Darla.

  There was a trace of laughter in her voice when she answered. “The purse was six figures.”

  “Tell Nuri to give that boy some oats.”

  “Mr. Nuri!” The teenager’s round dark eyes fixed disbelievingly on Julia where she stood frozen in the corner of the horse trailer.

  Sweat prickled her skin, and her heart threatened to beat its way out of her chest. With her back pressed against the warm metal wall, she attempted to swallow her fear, telling herself she should have made a run for it when they first arrived.

  “Quiet down,” came a harsh, heavily accented voice from outside the near-empty horse trailer. Stern footsteps clomped up the ramp.

  A tall, brawny, dark-haired man appeared. He wore a turban and a black robe, and he carried a riding crop. His piercing eyes took in Julia, and then shifted to the teenager. Then he was back to Julia before rattling something off in Arabic.

  The teenage boy scuttled from the trailer.

  “I’m sorry,” Julia rasped, straightening away from the wall, moving toward him, frantically scrambling for a cover story. “It’s just. Well. I was-”

  The butt of his crop landed square in her chest, forcing a cry from her lips and sending her stumbling back.

  “Save it for the authorities,” he grated.

  Chapter Two

  “An intruder?” From behind the desk in his study at Cadair Racing, Harrison stared at Alex Lindley-lawyer and senior vice president of Cadair International.

  “An American,” said Lindley, dropping down into the diamond-tuft leather chair, next to the potted palm trees and the bay window that looked out across Harrison’s lighted lawn. “The police have arrested her.”

  “And she was hiding in my horse trailer?” The pieces of Alex’s story weren’t coming together in any sort of coherent order inside Harrison’s head.

  The only thing certain was that he had trouble.

  The United Nations International Economic Summit was only four days away, and Harrison was hosting the secretary-general’s reception here at Cadair. Surprises couldn’t happen at this stage of the game.

  “Nuri thought she was stealing a horse,” said Alex. “But she insisted she was a reporter.”

  “What? Was she interviewing Ilithyia?”

  Alex choked out a laugh. “Didn’t seem likely. That’s why Nuri called the police.”

  Good move on Nuri’s part. Reporters knocked on the front door. They didn’t sneak onto the estate in the back of a horse trailer. Unless they were from a tabloid. And since Harrison wasn’t a movie star, and there was nothing remotely salacious going on at Cadair Racing, this could hardly be an exposé.

  Then Harrison’s brain hit on a worst-case scenario.

  “Son of a bitch,” he all but shouted.

  “She can’t be,” said Alex, correctly interpreting the outburst.

  “Sure she can,” said Harrison.

  There was no reason in the world the woman couldn’t be attached to a foreign spy agency or black-ops organization.

  “A covert operative in a horse trailer?”

  “It got her past security.”

  “She’s an American,” Alex pointed out. “The CIA doesn’t have anything against the UN.”

  “Yeah? Well, they’ve got something against the Syrians and the Iranians.”

  “That’s a stretch.”

  “Maybe. But that’s bizarre behavior for a horse thief, and she’s certainly not here to do a feature on my love life for the National Inquisitor.”

  The grandfather clock ticked three times before Alex spoke. “You want me to head down to the lockup and sleuth around?”

  Harrison pushed back on his chair and came to his feet. “No. I’ll get her. If she is an assassin, it’s my neck on the line.”

  “We could leave her locked up until the reception’s over. She can’t hurt anyone from jail.”

  “That only works if she’s acting alone.”

  Alex went silent as Harrison stood up, pressing a hidden button to reveal a wall safe.

  “Jobar’s on duty,” Alex warned.

  “It figures,” Harrison grumbled. He spun the dial back and forth then clunked the lever. He pulled out three stacks of bills.

  Jobar was usually expensive. If the woman was CIA, Harrison hoped the American government would consider reimbursing his bribe.

  Julia had
to get out of jail.

  She had to get out of this cell, and then she had to pee.

  Okay. Not necessarily in that order.

  The need had been growing steadily worse for the past two hours, but neither of the hijab-clad women spoke English, Spanish or French, and her sign-language repertoire didn’t extend to urination.

  There was a drain in the middle of the sloping stone floor. Crude. But it was looking better and better all the time.

  She could be discreet.

  She was alone in the cell. And it wasn’t as if she still had her underwear. And the voluminous gray dress they’d forced on her was essentially a tent with sleeves. It was drab and scratchy, with a musky smell that made her gag. But it would certainly hide her activities.

  Of course, the drain might not be the toilet. In which case, she might be committing some horrible faux pas. She might even be breaking another law. They’d already added immodest dress to her charges of break-in and attempted theft.

  And they hadn’t let her make a phone call. In fact, they’d confiscated her cell phone along with every other one of her possessions. She’d repeated the words American and embassy until she was nearly hoarse. She could only hope someone had called them.

  If not…

  She glanced around at the stained cement walls and the iron-barred door, shivering despite the close air. Voices shouted down the narrow hallway, and metal clanked in the distance. A centipede wriggled out from under the bare mattress laid across the floor.

  Julia shuddered, swallowing a shriek.

  Why had she thought she could be a real reporter? Why had she ever left Seattle? She should have taken that promotion to night-shift supervisor at Econo Foods instead of the scholarship to Cal State and the road that brought her to this.

  She had to keep it together, she told herself firmly. Melanie and Robbie must be looking for her. They’d have talked to the authorities by now. Eventually, hopefully within the next few hours, they’d find her and contact the embassy. Surely getting trapped in a horse trailer wasn’t a heinous crime even in Dubai.

  Oh, God. She had to pee.

  She gritted her teeth, lowering herself onto one corner of the mattress then bending over to keep her muscles tight.

  Footfalls sounded in the corridor. An Arabic voice again. But this time a man’s.

  “Ms. Nash?”

  She jerked her head up to see a tall man standing outside her cell door. He was Caucasian. And he spoke English. Thank goodness.

  “Are you from the embassy?” she rasped.

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

  Her need was humiliating. But she was past caring. She couldn’t even think about anything else for the moment. “Is there a bathroom?”

  He searched her expression then said something in rapid Arabic to the matron beside him.

  The matron unlocked the door, and Julia rushed to the opening. The woman then escorted Julia down the hall.

  The restroom was a cramped, dingy stall with cracked porcelain and corrosion-encrusted plumbing that was a relic of the fifties. There was no seat, and toilet paper didn’t appear to be one of the amenities. But Julia had never seen anything so beautiful in her life.

  Afterward, she thanked the stern, cold-eyed woman then walked back down the hall, pulling together the few shreds of dignity she could muster.

  The man still stood outside her cell.

  Her feet froze at the doorway, everything inside her screaming to break and run. But she knew that would only make matters worse. She forced her rational mind to override her primal instincts.

  “You speak English,” she said, still hovering at the open doorway.

  “I’m British,” he responded.

  Of course. The accent was obvious. And there was a definite aristocratic look about him. He had a straight nose, a slight cleft to his square chin, and dark eyes that matched his neatly trimmed hair. His suit was Armani, the shirt and tie likely Richard James. Whoever he was, he had money and style.

  She shifted, more conscious than ever of her drab dress. They’d scrubbed off all her makeup, and her hair had definitely suffered from the wind whipping through the openings in the horse trailer.

  “The British embassy?” she asked. Perhaps the Americans were busy.

  “Harrison Rochester.” His pause was definitely for effect, and he watched her closely as he delivered the next sentence. “I own Cadair Racing.”

  For the first time in several hours, a spurt of anger overtook her despair. It was this man’s fault she’d been manhandled, humiliated and strip-searched. “You had me arrested?”

  He considered her for a short second. “You broke into my stable.”

  “It was an accident.” She sure hadn’t meant to travel halfway across the United Arab Emirates pinned to the side of a horse trailer.

  He eyed her with suspicion. “You mistook my trailer for the loo?”

  She could feel her face flush, and she tried not to squirm under his intent scrutiny.

  She had only a split second to decide how much to tell him. The truth might give her the best chance of getting out of jail. Then again, if she told him she was trying to discredit his racehorse in advance of the Sandstone Derby, he might be tempted to leave her right where she was.

  “I was after a story,” she told him. She could always elaborate later.

  His slate gaze locked with her blue one. “In my horse trailer?”

  “I liked your horses.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Check my credentials,” she countered, her confidence growing, since everything she was about to tell him was the truth. “I work for Equine Earth Magazine.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I will.”

  “Good.”

  He glanced back into her cell, and it was all she could do not to beg him to help her, to please call Equine Earth right here and now. Or, better still, take her with him while he checked out her credentials. Just don’t, please don’t let them put her back with the rank air and the centipedes.

  She knew they’d turn off the lights soon. And she wouldn’t be able to see the bugs. And, the truth was, she was kind of wimpy for an investigative reporter-especially when it came to creepy-crawly things.

  She swallowed and waited.

  His broad hand reached out and latched on to one of the iron bars, bracing him beside her. He stared down for a moment. Then he took a breath. “They’ve agreed to release you into my custody.”

  Relief burst through her, along with an urge to throw herself into his arms. Her elation must have shown, because his frown deepened.

  “You’re not out of the woods yet,” he warned. “You’re in my custody. I’m keeping your passport, and you’ll not be permitted to leave Cadair until I figure out who you are and what you’re about.”

  Julia quickly nodded her agreement.

  Her story would check out. Harrison would discover she was a bona fide reporter, and he’d have no reason to suspect she was after anything other than a human-interest story.

  Meanwhile, if they gave her back her purse, she’d still have the DNA sample and a chance of getting it to the lab. Plus, the Cadair staff might know something about Millions to Spare’s history. Hanging around and talking to them for a few hours could be a blessing in disguise.

  Besides-she glanced around at the mottled white walls while resisting the urge to rip the gray dress from her body-whatever conditions they kept her in at Cadair Racing, it had to be a damn sight better than this.

  As it turned out, the palace at Cadair Racing was about as far from a prison cell as a person could get. Harrison was definitely one of the superrich. He easily surpassed the Prestons and pretty much anybody else Julia had ever met in the horse world.

  A huge, multistoried, marble-pillared rotunda served as his entryway. It was decorated with gilt mirrors, antique statues and hand-carved mahogany settees. A painted mural dominated the domed ceiling, while chandeliers, suspended on gold chains, fairly dripped with glow
ing crystal.

  Past a center table that boasted a massive fresh flower arrangement, the tiled mosaic floor opened into a wide hallway. The hallway itself was an oil painting gallery, inviting guests to browse their way through the center of the palace. Doorways to the left and the right revealed a library, several sitting rooms, an office and an arboretum.

  Growing up with her widowed father in a Seattle suburb, Julia hadn’t crossed paths with the wealthy. She knew they lived on the lakefront and went to private schools in Bellevue. Other than that, she’d always assumed they were just like her, but with pools and chauffeurs.

  Not true.

  When she’d started hanging out with the Thoroughbred racing crowd, she’d learned the rich were closed-minded and paranoid. One racehorse owner refused to eat anything that wasn’t from France. Another put an armed guard on his poodle. Yet another was rumored to carry a briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills, in case he wanted to make an untraceable purchase.

  It seemed to Julia that the richer people were, the stranger they became. Given this house and its furnishings, along with the extensive grounds and security, Harrison was saddled with a lot of eccentricities.

  The end of the wide passage opened into a great hall. The room boasted sweeping staircases, along with banks of windows and glass doors that led to a veranda overlooking a lighted, emerald lawn. Scattered palm trees waved their way to a white sand beach that met the rolling azure waters of the Persian Gulf.

  “I really need to make a phone call,” Julia told him, feeling more than a little self-conscious in her stained skirt and wrinkled white blouse as the crisply dressed, ubiquitous staff members moved silently through the rooms.

  “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” Harrison responded as they made their way toward the veranda.

  Julia kept her voice even, determined not to let her nervousness show. “I don’t understand. Why not?”

  He stopped and turned to look down at her. “Because I don’t know who you are, or what you’re after or who you’ll call.”

  She glanced pointedly to where her small purse was tucked under his arm. “You’ve seen my passport, my driver’s license, my Lexington library card.”