by Kay Hooper
“I want a sense of continuity,” he explained, his expression intense. “Make sure the developing relationship works. And follow the stage directions, please; I want to see how well you two move together.”
Lara was vaguely aware that the work onstage had halted, and that cast and crew alike were watching silently from various points, but she didn’t really notice. Nick had ordered the tower room spotlighted, leaving the remainder of the stage in shadows.
They were virtually in a world of their own, surrounded by stone walls and darkness. The tower room was draped with bright, colorful silk hangings, and the furniture was dressed up to look opulent. There was a wide bed with tall posts topped with a canopy, a battered piano with a splash of gilded paint here and there as evidence that it was in the process of being converted into something much grander, a dressing table without a mirror, curved walls without a door.
There was a narrow plush couch strewn with colorful tasseled pillows like those on the bed, and that was where Nick’s stage direction placed the lovers. Ching, uninvited at the moment but nonetheless in his assigned position, had leapt onto the bed and watched silently.
Devon and Lara hadn’t memorized their lines yet, but since they had been rehearsing only a few days, Nick hadn’t expected them to. They held their scripts and read the lines, following the stage directions closely—at least at first.
But as the scene progressed, Lara forgot that she was obeying instructions to move this way or that. The emotions Nick had written into his play were so intense, and so intensely felt by her, that the actions flowed naturally from that wellspring of deep feeling. The prince with Devon’s haunting voice and bottomless eyes held her captive more surely than any stone tower could have done.
And that was no prison.
Her longing for him was her own, shining through Rapunzel’s innocent trust; her desire glowed in her eyes and in the shy expression of Rapunzel; her love was a husky, wordless need in Rapunzel’s sweet voice.
Devon knew that the intensity between them now would never be reproduced on a stage before an audience. Because it wasn’t a play they were performing. Though their director couldn’t know it, what he was seeing was a fervor born of an awareness he would likely never understand.
They had staked everything on a gamble that risked their very lives, and now they shared the knowledge that they were committed…and that they could lose.
The first kiss between Rapunzel and her prince was infinitely tender, yet beneath the gentleness was the raging of a storm trapped under glass. And on each succeeding visit by the prince, with each touch, that storm grew wilder and wilder, until it could no longer be contained.
“Hold it! Lights!”
The abrupt interruption should have been jarring, but it wasn’t. Somehow, in that intense awareness between them, both Lara and Devon had found something that insulated them and left them incredibly alive as only those who have faced their own mortality can be.
The prince had lifted Rapunzel into his arms and taken a step toward the bed, and now Devon lowered Lara gently to her feet and spoke to the director with utter calm.
“Ching’s embarrassed, Nick. You didn’t tell him when he was supposed to give up the bed to us.”
“Yah!” Ching said, sending the director an annoyed glare.
“Never embarrass a cat,” Lara murmured, wondering vaguely what she had done with her script. And what Devon had done with his. “You won’t be forgiven for it quickly.”
Nick gave the cat a somewhat blank look, then drew a shaken breath and said, “Lord, you two won’t bring the house down—you’ll burn it down!”
Lara sat on the bed and reached to pet her cat. “You wrote the play, Nick,” she reminded him with a tranquil calm that matched Devon’s.
“I didn’t write what I just saw—and felt. Nobody could write that.” Somewhat wistfully, he added, “I’d give ten years of my life if I could, though.”
“Never wish your life away,” Lara said in a light tone. She didn’t look at Devon because that glance would have betrayed them both.
—
Much later, Lara snuggled closer to Devon and smiled as his arms tightened around her. They were in her bed, alone together in the darkness. Outside, his men used all their professional experience to make certain their close observation of the building went unnoticed by another watcher. Ching, still embarrassed about his missing cue, since he shared the feline trait of having a high opinion of his own dignity, had finally given up his muttering and sulking, and had gone to sleep in the living room.
“Think we pulled it off?” she murmured.
“I don’t know,” Devon said quietly. “You were certainly convincing.”
“Who left the stage after I did?”
He sighed. “I lost sight of most of them at one time or another.”
“Luke?”
“Yes.”
“Who didn’t leave the stage?”
“Nick. I don’t think Sonia did, but I’m not sure.”
It was Lara’s turn to sigh. “And we can’t be certain that the bait was taken at all. It could be any of them, couldn’t it?”
“Realistically, yes. But in fairness to them, it could also be someone neither of us has seen.”
“I’d rather it were that.”
Devon rubbed his cheek gently against her soft hair. “I know. But until we’re sure…”
She was silent for a moment, but very much awake. “Why did you become an agent?”
“I don’t think it was ever a conscious choice. I was recruited out of school, and even though I had a law degree, I hadn’t really decided what to do with it.”
“No desire to be an attorney?”
“There are too many in this country now. I studied law just because it interested me. When the bureau made me an offer, I decided to try it.”
“Regrets?”
“No, not for that decision.” He hesitated, then went on quietly. “I was on the brink of quitting when I was given this assignment.”
“Why?” she asked softly.
“I was beginning to lose myself. There was one role after another, and the line between right and wrong was harder and harder to see. Sometimes I’ve looked at someone I had deliberately gotten close to and then betrayed, and I haven’t known who was worse—my enemy or me.”
Lara listened to his haunting voice and knew now where his pain came from. It was a pain she could only dimly understand, but it explained the struggle she had felt in him from the beginning.
She lifted her head from his chest and gazed at him. Even in the darkness of the bedroom, his eyes were vivid. Softly, she said, “You once said to me that platitudes couldn’t ease pain. You were right, and I won’t offer them. But, Devon, if you were as bad as your enemies, or worse than them, betrayal would be easy. It wouldn’t hurt.”
He slid a hand under the warm weight of her hair and kissed her gently, then guided her back to her resting place. “I hope you’re right,” he murmured almost inaudibly.
Chapter 8
“His background checks out,” the caller said flatly.
“What about the other one?”
“Clean too. You must have been jumping at shadows. From what you heard, it looks like the girl hates the feds and hasn’t told them she thinks someone’s after her. The bit with Shane was apparently just common sense; they’re in bed together, so she wanted him checked out. But the feds don’t know we’ve found her.”
“Sure about that?”
“Aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they were rough on her when her father died. Maybe she’s got no love for them. And maybe she figures the constant presence of the boyfriend will keep her safe, at least for a few days.”
“A few days?” The caller’s voice sharpened.
“Yeah. She needs at least a few days to be certain we’ve gotten the message.”
“What message?”
“It’s in today’s Pinewood newspaper. A classified ad.”
The call’s recipient didn’t read from the newspaper folded on the ledge beneath the phone, even though the bright morning light would have made it easy. Instead, Lara’s message was recited coolly from memory.
There was a long silence, then the speaker continued: “It begins to look as if we’ve all missed something.”
“You’re sure her apartment was clean?”
“Of course. I could have missed a piece of microfilm, I suppose, but nothing else, and her father hardly had the time to get that fancy. Look, she was in shock when the FBI took her into protective custody; they let her pack a small bag, and you can bet an agent was standing over her when she did. She didn’t take anything out of there that night, and she hasn’t been back to the house.”
Slowly, the caller said, “A bluff?”
“Could be. And it could be that either she’s remembered something about that night or else she knew where the evidence was all along.”
“Then why keep quiet about it?” The caller caught his breath suddenly. “Blackmail?”
“She’s bright enough to think of it. She’s also bright enough to figure out that she’s fairly safe as long as we know the evidence could be used against us. I don’t think she’s the blackmail type. But if that conversation with the agent was genuine, she might well prefer to deal with us rather than with them.”
The caller thought that over. “But does she have the evidence?”
“You told me that your people had to search the house quickly; maybe they missed it.”
“The FBI searched, and they had the time to do it right.”
“It’s still possible they missed it. You told me that you had reason to believe she was more of a threat than was originally thought. Why?”
The caller hesitated, then said briefly, “Shortly after Dr.—shortly after her father’s death, we discovered a number of items missing. The trail strongly indicated that her father had taken them; he had the means to blow our organization to splinters. The FBI wouldn’t have hesitated to use that immediately, if they had found it.”
“So you were certain the evidence did exist. And certain she was a possible threat from the beginning. Why was I told only after I arrived here?”
“Even then, there was a remote possibility that the viper was in our own house. However, we’re now certain that only the doctor could have gotten the evidence. And the only remaining link to the doctor is his daughter.”
“I see. Well, do I go after her, or wait and let her lead me to the evidence?”
“Do you think she will?”
“I think that if she does know where it is, she also knows it’s no damn good to her. It might be in the house. Or her father may have hidden at least part of it somewhere else and told her where. In any case, as you said, she’s the only link. Unless she protects herself by getting the evidence to someone who’ll use it if anything happens to her, she’s running a colossal bluff. She has to protect herself.”
After a moment, the caller said, “So she warns us that the evidence exists, hoping we’ll back off long enough for her to make the bluff real.”
“It would be the smart move. She gives us a couple of days to get the message, then shakes the boyfriend, slips out, and goes after the evidence while we’re deciding what to do about her.”
“Amateur.”
“Of course. But not a fool.”
“There’s no sign she’s under FBI surveillance?”
“Not that I’ve been able to find. There’s no tap on her phone, no vehicles parked suspiciously close to her building, no unscheduled work being done in the area. The agent who came in last night caught a plane back to D.C. as soon as he’d talked to her.”
“What about her car?”
“Still at the theater. She’s been riding with Shane, and may not know it’s been tampered with.”
“If she does go after the evidence, what about her car?”
“I don’t think she’ll drive her own car; she knows she’s being watched; that’s obvious. If I were in her place, I’d take a bus, then hire a car in D.C. Safer.”
“If she goes back to the house.”
“Right.”
“Would she assume someone was following her?”
“Certainly. And probably lead me on a wild goose chase in D.C. in order to lose me. Most amateurs believe a tail isn’t that hard to lose.”
“She’d feel safe?”
“I’d make sure of it.”
The caller said, “Hold on,” and there was a soft hiss of static on the line for a few moments. When he came back on, it was clear there had been a discussion. “Keep an eye on her. A very close eye. We’ll give her a few days.”
“You want the evidence?”
“Yes. If she leaves Pinewood, don’t lose her.”
“And if she leads me to the evidence?”
“Get it. Then kill her.”
—
“It won’t do any good,” Lara said flatly. “I can’t remember anything else about that night, because I didn’t see or hear anything.”
Devon watched her moving restlessly around the living room of her apartment. It was early on Saturday, and both would be expected at the theater within a few hours to rehearse. He knew Lara was tense, jittery because they could only wait blindly with no certainty that their plan would work; he was tense himself, and he had much more experience than she at this sort of thing.
But he was still convinced that Lara knew more than she realized, and he wanted that knowledge desperately. If he could only get the evidence into his hands, he could stop this madness without risking Lara’s life.
“We can try,” he said now, quietly.
“I’m not ready.”
Devon hesitated, and only his determination to keep her safe made him press her. “Honey, you’re never going to be ready. No one is ever ready to face something like this. But you have to try.”
“It hurts! Don’t you understand?”
“Yes,” he said. “I understand.”
Lara looked at him, and her tense face softened. “I know. I know you do.”
“Then you know I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t believe it could help us.”
After a moment, she went to the couch and sat down beside him. “All right,” she said steadily. “If you really think so, I’ll try.”
Devon took one of her hands in his, holding it firmly. “Close your eyes,” he instructed, and when she obeyed, he went on in a soft voice, “I want you to think about returning to your house that night. Imagine every step, see everything you saw that night. Start at the beginning. Were you driving yourself?”
“No. Some friends drove me home. They let me out in front of the house. At the sidewalk.” Lara was determined to really try, because Devon wanted her to. So she concentrated intently. “It was chilly, so I hurried to the front door.”
“Was the house dark?”
“Yes. But that isn’t unusual. There’s a redwood fence, so you can only see the front windows. Dad’s study is on the side, and he never remembers to leave the porch light on. Or the foyer light.” She was unconscious of having shifted to the present tense, and Devon held her there so smoothly that she didn’t notice it.
“You have your key?”
“Yes. I unlock the door and go in. As soon as I shut it behind me, I reach for the light switch. Ching howls. He—he sounds funny. I’ve never heard him sound like that.”
Devon glanced at the cat, who was sprawled on his side under the coffee table and snoring almost inaudibly. “Do you think something’s wrong with him?” he asked her.
“No. He sounds angry. Afraid.”
“All right. Turn the light on. What do you see?”
“The foyer. Someone’s knocked the magazines and newspapers off the table. It’s a mess.” A frown flitted suddenly across her still face.
“What are you looking at?” Devon asked softly, watching her face.
“Ching. He’s at the top of the stairs. Upset. I don’t think he wants to come
down. The house is very quiet. I feel cold. I call out for Dad, but he doesn’t answer. I walk across the foyer and knock on his study door.”
“Do you hear anything from inside?”
“No. But Dad gets so deeply involved in his work that he often doesn’t answer. So it’s still all right.”
Devon felt a pang of hurt for her. She’d already guessed something was wrong, maybe even knew what she’d find when she opened the door; it was in her voice. But she was trying to convince herself that nothing was wrong. He wished he didn’t have to ask this of her.
But he had no choice. “Open the door,” he told her gently.
“I don’t want to,” she whispered.
“I know. But you have to. Open the door.”
Lara caught her breath. “Oh, dear God…”
The hand he was holding was cold, the fingers tightening almost convulsively around his. “Look at the room, Lara,” he ordered firmly. “Just the room. Tell me what you see. Start at the door, and look clockwise around the room.”
Her breathing was shallow, and her voice emerged so strained, it was little more than a whisper. “There’s a chair by the door; the cushions have been ripped and torn. There are books scattered on the floor. Dad’s reading lamp is lying on its side with the shade gone. Just past that is the big prayer plant, uprooted from its pot.” A quiver disturbed her face. “Dad likes plants.”
“Keep looking, Lara,” Devon told her gently. “What else do you see?”
“The window. The drapes have been ripped down and—and shredded. Why would someone do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“There was too much to hide in the drapes,” she murmured in a puzzled tone. “Dad said it was a lot. Diagrams and photographs, and all the computer records.”
Devon almost held his breath. “That sounds like a lot.”
“Yes. And he had something with fingerprints. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, but he said it was safe. He said it would hold up in court.” She fell silent.
