His Only Obsession (Protectors #27)

by Beverly Barton

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “I was beginning to worry.”

  He turned to face her. She gasped. He had a cut on his cheek, a bloody mouth and bruised eye.

  “What happened to you?”

  “After I spoke to the bartender, I got in a little altercation with a couple of your buddy Marco’s pals.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Gwen lifted her hand, but stopped herself short of touching his face. “You fought off two men all by yourself?”

  Will chuckled, then grunted. He wiped his bloody mouth with the back of his hand, then shifted gears and pulled the rental car out into the street. Gwen rummaged in her purse until she found her minibox of tissues. She pulled one out, reached over and wiped the blood from Will’s mouth and then his hand. He tensed at her touch, but didn’t withdraw.

  “Do you need a doctor?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “I’m so sorry about—”

  “You’ve already said that once. Stop apologizing. It’s not your fault.”

  Gwen sat quietly for a few minutes, then realized that he wasn’t taking her back to her hotel. Oh, my God, she hadn’t even told him where she was staying.

  “I’m staying at the Pasada El Paso,” Gwen told him.

  “And I’m staying at the Puerto Nuevo Day’s Inn. If you don’t mind, we need to go by my hotel first so I can make some phone calls, send out a couple of e-mails and clean my cuts and bruises.”

  Gwen sat there silent and uncertain.

  “Look, I’m not trying to pull anything,” he said. “Before Marco’s pals wanted to play rough, the bartender identified my client’s daughter and her girlfriend from photos I showed him. They were there at the Yellow Parrot last night, with this Jordan Elders guy, or at least I’m pretty sure that’s who he was. The bartender said that the young guy and the two girls kept calling this old guy The Professor.”

  “Then my father was there last night?”

  “Yeah, and he was with a younger woman. The bartender said he knew her, that she’d been here in Puerto Nuevo for about six months and was a regular. Her name’s Molly Esteban. It seems he thinks the woman’s bad news.”

  “Poor Daddy. He’s such a damn fool.”

  “The bartender overheard the young guy—Jordan—saying something about their heading out tomorrow, which is now today, leaving the island.”

  “Where were they going?”

  “The bartender didn’t know, didn’t hear them mention where.”

  “Well, if it helps any, sooner or later, my father will have to charter a boat to take him where he wants to go. If he didn’t charter a boat here, then—”

  “When we get to my hotel, I’ll call Dundee’s and have them get us the info on all flights out of Puerto Nuevo today, plus any boat or yacht rentals today.”

  “Your agency can get all that information for us tonight?”

  “They can probably get me the info on plane reservations tonight, but it could take a bit longer to check out all the boat and yacht rentals, because my guess is that there are a few dozen rental places.”

  “Mr. Pierce…Will?”

  “Huh?”

  “I know you’re already assigned to a case, and I probably can’t afford to hire you, but I was wondering if there might be some way I could persuade you to help me find my father and save him from himself. After all, there is a chance that your client’s daughter went off with Jordan, and Jordan is with my father, and…well, what do you think?”

  Will zoomed the rental car along, darting in and out of nighttime traffic, never taking his eyes off the road. “As far as I’m concerned, brown eyes, you and I are in this together all the way.”

  Chapter 3

  Expect the unexpected. Be prepared for anything. Never take a person or a situation at face value. Trust no one. During his years as a CIA operative, Will had learned some valuable lessons. Some of them the hard way and others by observation.

  After brewing a small pot of coffee for him and his guest, he settled her in a chair in the corner of his hotel room, then he went back into the bathroom, closed the door and washed the blood off his face. He checked his bruised eye and the cut on his cheek. Minor wounds. No big deal. He swiped the washcloth over his cheek, removing the dried blood, and tossed the cloth into the nearby shower stall.

  Keeping the water running in the sink to mask his voice, he used his cell phone to call Sawyer’s private number. With a few well-chosen words, he explained what was going on and asked that Dundee’s run a quick check on a woman named Gwen Arnell.

  “From her accent, I’d say she’s from the South,” Will said. “Deep South. Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi.”

  “She claims this man known as The Professor is her father and he’s in some kind of trouble?” Sawyer asked. “And our client’s daughter could be with this man’s assistant, right?”

  “Yeah, and my gut instinct says she’s telling the truth, that she’s on the up and up, but run a check on her and get me as much information on her as quickly as you can.”

  “Give me a physical description and an approximate age. We’ll probably run across more than one Gwen Arnell when we start checking.”

  “Late twenties, early thirties,” Will said. “About five-five, medium build, maybe a little on the plump side. Fairly nondescript. Dark brown hair and brown eyes.” Not beautiful, but she has good features, Will thought, but kept that to himself. There was nothing fancy about Gwen Arnell, no jewelry other than a wristwatch, and she didn’t appear to be wearing much makeup, just the bare minimum. The black slacks and gray linen jacket she wore were practical clothing for travel, nothing fashionable or trendy.

  “I should have something for you in a couple of hours, on your Ms. Arnell and on the plane flights out of Puerto Nuevo today,” Sawyer said. “Checking the boat and yacht rentals could take longer, maybe sometime tomorrow.”

  “One more thing…”

  “What?”

  “Ms. Arnell wants me to help her find her father. I think her search and ours could well turn out to be one and the same, so do you have any objections to—”

  “Do whatever you need to do to find Cheryl Kress.”

  “Okay.”

  End of conversation. Will flipped his cell phone closed and hooked it to his belt.

  When he emerged from the bathroom, Gwen rose to her feet and faced him. Neither smiling nor frowning, she met his gaze head-on, a combination of hope and fear in her coffee-brown eyes. The woman had the most expressive eyes he’d ever seen. She didn’t need to speak for him to understand that she was, perhaps subconsciously, pleading with him for help.

  Her long dark hair, pulled away from her face and twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck, looked disheveled, and her makeup-bare face showed signs of weariness. For the first time in a long time, Will felt a twinge of protectiveness stir to life inside him. It wasn’t that he thought she was some weak, helpless female. On the contrary, it was the fact that she was putting herself at risk to find her father and that she hadn’t cried or tried to use feminine wiles to persuade him to help her. He figured Gwen had never asked a man for help, that it went against her nature to think she might not be able to do the job—whatever that job might be—by herself.

  “I spoke to my boss,” Will said. “He should have some information for us in an hour or so.”

  Gwen nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Did you have dinner tonight? If you didn’t, I can run out and get you—”

  “I ate at the Fiesta, but thank you.”

  “I take it that you were following up a lead when you went to the Fiesta.”

  “Yes, how did you—”

  “Me, too,” he told her. When she eyed him inquiringly, he explained, “Our common denominator, Jordan Elders.”

  “Ah, yes, Jordan.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Not much, just that he’s one of Daddy’s former students, that he’s in his late twenties and he shares my father’s belief in a my
sterious, uncharted island that possesses a miraculous Fountain of Youth serum derived from a plant that grows nowhere else on earth.”

  “What?”

  Gwen rubbed her hands together nervously. “It sounds preposterous, doesn’t it? I know only too well just how outlandish my father’s theory is. His insistence that he once visited this island when he was twenty and knows it exists made him a laughingstock among his colleagues. He’s obsessed with finding this island again and in giving to the world this incredible plant that keeps people healthy and gives them a two-hundred-year lifespan.”

  “Are you telling me that your father actually believes this crap?”

  When Gwen’s cheeks flushed, he realized he’d hit a nerve.

  “Yes, he believes it, with his whole heart and soul.”

  “It must have been tough growing up with a father everybody thought was nuts.” Damn, Pierce. Open mouth, insert foot. “Sorry it came out that way. But you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do. But I didn’t actually grow up with my father. He and my mother divorced when I was ten. He couldn’t be bothered with a wife and a child, not when he had to fulfill his destiny and bring good health and longevity to the world.”

  “So, if he deserted you and your mom, why are you here now, trying to find him, wanting to help him?”

  “Because he is my father, and he has no one else who really cares if he lives or dies.”

  Will shook his head. Not many adult kids would give a damn about a father who had deserted them, let alone go in search of that parent, hoping to save him from himself.

  “You’re a better person than I am,” Will told her. “My old man was no prize, but he was there, working hard to support his wife and three sons. We didn’t get along, didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but I respected him. If he had deserted us, I wouldn’t have cared if he’d rotted in hell.”

  Gwen stared at Will, her eyes round with speculation. It was then that he realized he’d revealed a personal part of himself that he seldom shared with others. Seldom? Hell, make that never.

  Will cleared his throat. “So, where does your father think this island is located?”

  “Somewhere north of the Caribbean Sea, out in the Atlantic between Puerto Rico and Bermuda.”

  “In the Bermuda Triangle?” Will chuckled under his breath. “Get real. Every kook in the world believes some sort of supernatural nonsense about that area of the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “I know it sounds preposterous, but my father swears that when he was twenty, he lived for several weeks on this island. And he’s spent the past fifty years searching for it.”

  “Damn!”

  “He’s an old man, seventy his last birthday, and he’s spent every dime he has on this quest.” Gwen sighed lightly, her expression one of sadness and concern. “He told me that he’d cashed in his life-insurance policy to help fund this latest expedition.”

  “Would he pay for everything by credit card or cash?” Will asked.

  “Huh?”

  “If he uses a credit card, we can trace—”

  “I see. But I have no idea if he’d pay cash or use a credit card. I’m afraid I know very little about my father’s personal life, other than his big dream, which seems to have consumed him completely.”

  “Why don’t you sit down and relax?” Will said, indicating the single chair in the room. “I need to check my e-mail and send off a few while we wait.”

  She nodded and returned to the seat. Will went over to the desk and unzipped his carrying case. As he opened his laptop, he glanced over his shoulder at Gwen. She sat with her hands folded together in her lap, her head against the chair back and her eyes closed.

  Why the hell did he feel so protective toward her? It wasn’t that he was particularly attracted to her. She really wasn’t his type, was she? A little too plain, a little on the plump side and his guess was that her IQ was higher than his. Plain, plump and brainy. Definitely not his type. Besides, he needed to stay focused on the job.

  Gwen hadn’t realized she had dozed off for over an hour until Will’s cell phone rang. Startled awake by the distinct ring, she came to with a jolt. Searching the room for Will, she found him standing near the window, his back to her, his voice low as he mumbled yes and no and then hung up.

  “Was that your boss?” she asked.

  “Yeah, it was.” Will turned to face her. “Sorry the call woke you. I should have put the thing on vibrate instead of ring.”

  “No, no, it’s all right. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. It was rude of me.”

  “Hey, you’re tired. No big deal.”

  “May I ask what information—”

  His gaze locked with hers. “Look, you should know that I asked for Dundee’s to run a check on you.”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth rounded in surprise.

  “I don’t take anyone or anything at face value,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “I see.”

  “If we’re going to work together, Dr. Arnell, we need to be honest with each other. Agreed?”

  She nodded. “Agreed.” Why did she suspect that while he demanded honesty from her, he wouldn’t necessarily always be totally honest with her?

  “So you’re the CEO of the Huntsville Botanical Gardens in Alabama, huh? You’re a botanist, just like your father, the other Dr. Arnell.”

  “My father specialized in education, exploration and history,” she said. “Whereas my interests are horticulture and breeding.”

  “Breeding?”

  “Breeding involves the development of better types of plants. It also involves selecting and crossing plants with desirable traits, such as disease resistance.”

  “Interesting.”

  Gwen smiled, knowing full well that Will found the subject as dull as dishwater. “What else did you find out about me?”

  “Just the basics. Date of birth, job, address, phone number, education background. Mother deceased. Father a genius crackpot. No siblings. And I know you were married at twenty-one, divorced at twenty-two and don’t presently have a significant other. No children. No pets.”

  “If we’re going to be partners, don’t you think I should know the same things about you?” It seemed unfair that he knew the basic facts about her life when he remained a stranger to her.

  Will sat down on the edge of the bed, across from the chair where she sat. “Just the basics, right? Okay, fair enough. I’m thirty-nine. Married and divorced in my late twenties. No children. My father’s been dead five years. My mother remarried last year and moved to Louisiana with her new husband. My older brother still lives on the ranch where we grew up and my younger brother is a doctor in Ft. Worth. I have three nephews, ages two, five and eight.”

  “Hmm…all right, now we’re on an equal footing. So, what about our investigation?”

  “Our investigation?” Will chuckled. “Well, no one using the names Emery Arnell, Jordan Elders, Cheryl Kress or Tori Boyd were booked on flights out of Puerto Nuevo today and none are booked for tomorrow.”

  “Then they’re either still here on the island or they left here by boat.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “When will you have a report about the boat and yacht rental companies?”

  “Probably not until tomorrow sometime, hopefully by midmorning.”

  “Then I guess I should head back to my hotel.” Gwen checked her watch. “Wow, it’s past midnight.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here.” Will indicated one of the two single beds in the room.

  “No, thank you.” This offer was probably on the up-and-up, but she wasn’t about to take any chances. “I left my suitcase back at the other hotel, and I want to speak to the day staff there and see if my father mentioned his travel plans to anyone.”

  “Okay. I’ll drive you back to your hotel, then I’ll come by in the morning and pick you up for breakfast.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem. Like I said, we’re in this together.
Right?”

  Feelings of security and relief welled up inside Gwen. At an early age, she had learned to depend on no one, to take care of herself, so being grateful for having some big, strong man at her side in her search for her father was a new experience for her.

  Just don’t allow yourself to become too dependent on Will Pierce, said an inner voice. He’s a temporary fixture in your life. A means to an end.

  Will picked Gwen up at the Pasada El Paso at nine the next morning. She wore brown slacks and an oversize tan shirt, had pulled her hair up into a loose ponytail and had applied lipstick and a hint of blush. Apparently the woman didn’t own anything colorful. He’d bet her underwear was plain white cotton.

  “The desk clerk at my hotel recommended Pepe’s for breakfast,” Will told her once she was seated in his rental car.

  “Anyplace you choose is fine with me.”

  He grunted, started the car and eased into downtown morning traffic.

  “I spoke to the day staff at the hotel,” Gwen told him. “And unfortunately none of them had any idea where my father intended to go when he left Puerto Nuevo. Ria, one of the maids, did say my father’s lady friend said something about going to Jamaica.”

  “Do you know of any reason your father would go to Jamaica? Why not charter a boat here and sail up toward the Bahamas?”

  “I have no idea.” She shuffled in her seat. “I assume you haven’t had any word from your boss about the rental—”

  “Not yet, but anytime now, I’m sure.”

  “What will we do if they didn’t rent a boat?”

  “We’ll assume they either traveled with someone who had a boat or that they’re still here on the island.”

  An hour later, just as they were topping off their big breakfast with cups of a local speciality, café de ola, Will’s cell phone rang.