Follow the Sun

by Deborah Smith

  He pointed toward the marina parking lot. Through a haze of disinterest Tess noted that he’d parked the Jaguar in a good spot next to the curb. Brandt was an ultraresponsible teenager, and she didn’t worry about loaning him her pride and joy.

  Brandt held up his new plaything, which resembled a walkie-talkie. “Press a button, and … all right!”

  The Jaguar’s engine purred to life, and the headlights flashed on. “Ignition by remote control!” he announced happily.

  And then the Jaguar exploded.

  JEOPARD CAUGHT THE midmorning news update as he was dressing to leave the hotel. He halted in front of the TV and stared at the screen with cold horror. He saw the Sun Cove Marina sign in the background. In the foreground was a television reporter beside the burned, twisted ruins of a car.

  “… again, Los Angeles city attorney Suzanne Burdett, vacationing in Long Beach, was slightly injured by flying metal when a car exploded in a parking lot where she was jogging early this morning.

  “She was treated and released from a Long Beach hospital. Luckily the car’s owner, Tess Gallatin, wasn’t in the car at the time. She told me that she was testing a remote-control ignition device designed by a friend when the car exploded. Experts from the Long Beach Police bomb squad said evidence indicates that the bombing was the work of a professional.

  “There are no leads in the case. More details at noon. For Eyewitness News, this is Rena Brown, Long Beach.”

  Five seconds later Jeopard was on the phone, calling Tess’s number at her grandparents’ house. Her dulcet voice came to him via the recording on her answering machine.

  “This is Jeopard,” he said calmly. “Check in to a hotel under my name and lock yourself in a room. Don’t come out. I’m in L.A. It’s ten A.M. I’m leaving for Long Beach right now. I’ll find you.”

  He prayed that she’d check the answering machine sometime soon. Next he called Kyle. In Florida it was 1:00 P.M. Kyle was barely awake.

  “What? Jep?”

  “Olafs people may be trying to kill Tess Gallatin.”

  That cleared Kyle’s fog. The mellow jokester snapped to alert. “You got a tip?”

  “Somebody wired her car this morning.”

  “Was she hurt?”

  “No. God help Olaf if she were.”

  Kyle’s stunned silence greeted that remark. Finally he asked, “Personal?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s hiding something else,” Kyle said musingly. “They want her quiet.”

  “Yeah. I know less about her past than I thought. Doesn’t matter. If they want her, they’ll have to kill me first.”

  “What?”

  “I love her. I’m going back to Long Beach and get her out of there.”

  “You love her?”

  “If anything happens to me, make certain she’s protected, Kyle.”

  “You love—all right.”

  “Call Drake. I’ll need him.”

  Kyle whistled softly. “You are serious.”

  Jeopard slammed the phone down, then grabbed his wallet, the keys to his rental car, and the loaded Magnum .44.

  JEOPARD WAS TRYING to kill her.

  Tess sat in her grandparents’ living room, hugging herself. Karl paced. Viktoria sat by the telephone, staring at the answering machine as if Jeopard’s voice were the essence of evil.

  “It’s a trick,” Karl said grimly. “The man must think we’re fools.”

  Tess shuddered. She wanted to curl up and hibernate until the world made sense again. It might take years.

  “He doesn’t know that we learned about his background,” she said wearily. They knew all about Jeopard Surprise now. Karl had gotten in touch with his sources and demanded whatever information they had.

  A dull sense of horror was the only emotion that kept Tess from feeling empty. She’d fallen in love with a cold-blooded assassin.

  Jeopard Surprise was a mercenary in the worst sense of the word. He’d made a career out of killing people for pay. His wholesome businessman’s image was a complete lie.

  Someone wanted the blue diamond and then wanted her dead, and had sent an expert to take care of the job. An expert who knew how to capture her heart and soul to make his task easier. Now Tess realized that the coldness in his eyes had hidden indescribable cruelty.

  “I don’t understand,” she said raggedly. “Why does he have to kill me? He’s got the diamond. What did I do?”

  “No more time for talk,” Karl interjected. “We’ll get out of the country. Mama, go pack. We’ll go home. In Stockholm I’ll find help to fight this monster.”

  “No! It’s all our fault,” Viktoria cried. “We’ll call the police and tell them everything. Then they can protect Tess.”

  Tess rose proudly and looked at her grandparents. “No. You wanted to give me something no one else had—a queen’s diamond. I’ve been struggling to understand how grief over my mother’s death provoked you to steal the diamond from the Queen of Kara. I’m trying to understand your need for revenge after Mother was killed on a poorly designed ski slope in Kara.”

  Tess paused, thinking. “I was married to a retired jewel thief, and I loved him. I love you guys, too, and I won’t let you martyr yourselves. I guess it’s just my destiny to love people who steal diamonds.”

  Oh, Jeopard.

  Tess took a deep breath. “I’m half Cherokee Indian. My father’s people are survivors. Warriors. I’m not leaving without my medallion and my amulet. I’ll go back to the boat and get them right now.”

  “No!” Karl cried. Viktoria clasped her heart.

  “I have time before Jeopard gets here. I’ll take your car—we know it’s safe. This is something I have to do for my great-great-grandmother. Katherine Gallatin wouldn’t be intimidated by anything, and neither will I.”

  Karl and Viktoria looked absolutely stricken. Tess grabbed the keys to their station wagon and left before she could think too much about her fear.

  IF THE GUY was a salesman, then Jeopard was Mr. Rogers.

  As Jeopard got out of the rental car his attention remained riveted to the neatly dressed man who strolled along the marina’s dock carrying a thick satchel with Ask Me About Happy Suds Cleaning Products! stenciled on the side.

  Jeopard’s nerves tingled. Moving gracefully, he walked down a flight of stairs that led from the parking lot to the dock.

  The Happy Suds salesman paused by various boats, casually studied a note in his hand, and moved on. When a voluptuous woman wearing a T-shirt over a bikini waved at him, he waved back but kept walking.

  The guy was no salesman. Jeopard knew without doubt.

  Every muscle poised for action. Jeopard ambled down the dock behind the visitor. A hard, deadly tightness came over him as the man stopped in front of the Lady.

  Jeopard glanced back. Madam Voluptuous had gone into her boat’s cabin. No one else was around on this weekday morning.

  The man lifted his satchel and fiddled with something on the handle. Then he crossed the gangplank and stepped onto the Lady’s bow.

  Tess’s security alarm didn’t make a sound.

  Jeopard realized immediately that the visitor’s satchel held something besides samples. He had just counteracted the Lady’s alarm system. A thorough professional.

  “Hey, pal,” Jeopard yelled. He staggered down the dock, weaving dangerously close to the wooden buffers at the edge. “You got a light?”

  The man, a short, stocky redhead with a wholesome face straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, turned and frowned at Jeopard. “You’re drunk.”

  “Hell, you’re kiddin’. I thought we were having another earthquake.”

  “Beat it. I’m busy.”

  Jeopard reached the Lady’s gangplank and staggered aboard, flapping at his coat pockets. “Damn. No cigarettes. Come on, buddy. If you got ’em, share one.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t—”

  “Too bad,” Jeopard interjected, and rabbit-punched him in the jaw.

 
The skilled upper cut made the ersatz salesman collapse like a bad soufflé, and he tumbled onto the deck. His coat fell open to reveal a small handgun with a silencer.

  Jeopard knelt beside the man, jerked the gun from its holster, and tossed it over the Lady’s railing. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered to the unconscious man. Jeopard propped the satchel on his chest. “You’re lucky I don’t have time to deal with you.”

  He didn’t have any time. Jeopard heard a quick creaking sound and looked down the stairwell just as the cabin door banged open. Tess stood there, staring up at him, an expression of fear and horror on her face.

  Jeopard could imagine how confused she must be, seeing him crouched over an unconscious salesman who had a small billboard on his chest innocently advising the world to ask him about Happy Suds Cleaning Products.

  “Don’t be misled,” Jeopard told her in a soothing voice. “I’m the guy in the white hat. Relax, honey.”

  She raised a tiny pistol and pointed it at his chest.

  “The Cherokees had a title for a female who was good at fighting,” she informed him imperiously. “ ‘War Woman.’ ”

  Jeopard straightened slowly and held up both hands. “Tess. I know you have a lot of doubts, but I’m your only hope.”

  “You’re a hired killer.”

  Faltering at that abrupt charge. Jeopard stared at her in stunned silence.

  “I know about you,” she continued, the lethal little gun trembling in her hands. “You were hired to steal the diamond and get rid of me.”

  The accusation that he was a paid assassin—paid to kill the brightest hope that liad ever come into his life-made him continue to look at her in astonishment.

  “Who told you that?”

  “My grandfather had you checked out. He has friends in American diplomatic circles.”

  Jeopard grimaced inwardly. There were no official government records on former high-level agents such as himself. There were only carefully constructed facades designed to alarm and deceive an enemy.

  The truth about his former line of work was disturbing enough; the lies she’d been given must have terrified her. But maybe he needed that advantage right now.

  “Tess, we haven’t got much time. We have to get out of here.”

  “So you can take care of me without anyone’s seeing you?” Her voice cracked. “Who hired you?”

  The assassin stirred weakly under Jeopard’s feet. Time had run out. Now that this guy had been exposed, someone else would be after her.

  Jeopard watched Tess glance downward at the fallen man. He used that unguarded moment to lunge for her. She yelped, lowered the gun, and tried to shove her cabin door shut. Jeopard plowed through and wrapped both arms around her.

  The momentum carried them both to her bed, where he fell on top of her. The gun sailed out of her hand and struck her computer with a metallic thud.

  Jeopard pinned her arms and legs down. “The gun wasn’t loaded,” he told her gruffly. “I could see the empty chambers.”

  Her silver-blue eyes were as fierce as they were frightened. “You cruel, deceiving bastard. Where were you when you called my answering machine? It would have taken you an hour to get here from Los Angeles.”

  “I came by helicopter.”

  She inhaled harshly. “My grandparents will look for me.”

  “By the time they start, you’ll be gone. And later you’ll call and tell them that you were wrong about me, that you’ve gone into hiding with me until the danger blows over.”

  She wiggled under him. “No.”

  “Yes. I have a recording of your voice. That night we talked at the Zanzi Bar I recorded you for hours. My people can copy your speech patterns and tones from that. Someone will call Karl and Viktoria for you. Your grandparents will hear you say that everything’s just fine between you and me.”

  She groaned and gritted her teeth. “What do you want from me?”

  “I’m trying to save your life.”

  “Tell me the truth!”

  “Neither of us is interested in the truth. You’ve made that clear. You’re hiding something that makes somebody want to kill you. If you’d told me everything about the diamond, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

  “I told you!”

  She writhed under him like a trapped cat. Jeopard knew a dozen different techniques that would subdue her, but none that wouldn’t hurt like hell.

  He squeezed his legs around hers and clasped her wrists in an iron grip above her head. “Stop it. Stop it, Tess, or by God I’ll make you sorry.”

  She froze, then began quivering at the lethal insinuation in his tone. Jeopard gazed down at her coldly, all reconciliation gone from his manner. He watched her eyes widen in alarm at the look on his face. His heart broke.

  He’d pay a price for saving her. He could see it in her disgust and terror.

  Jeopard rolled her onto her stomach, so he wouldn’t have to look at her eyes. He used his belt to bind her hands behind her back, then went to her small dresser and searched until he found two long silk scarves.

  He tied her ankles together with one of them, then knotted the other one snugly around her neck. Jeopard turned her over, winced inside at the wretched look on her face, and lifted her toward the head of the bed.

  He fastened the end of the neck binding to the bedstead.

  “Tied like a dog to a post,” she whispered raggedly. “At least give me a fighting chance.”

  “Be quiet.”

  He left the cabin before he lost all sense of logic, ripped the bindings off of her, and begged her to understand what he was trying to do.

  The hired killer sat up groggily. Jeopard knelt in front of him, grasped him by the collar, and smiled at him.

  “If you’d hurt her, I’d have made you regret it,” he told the man in a soft, pleasant voice. “If I had time and privacy, I’d make you regret even thinking about hurting her. But you’re in luck. As it is, I’ll simply describe you in detail to some very ruthless people who like to take justice into their own hands. Now, get up, walk off this boat, and don’t look back. I’ll be watching.”

  The man took his satchel and left without a word. Jeopard tracked him with a shrewd gaze, memorizing everything about him, until he got into a small sedan and drove away.

  Back in the cabin Tess had turned to lie on her side, and her neck was bent at an awkward angle because of the way she was tied to the bed. “Don’t touch me,” she said in a low, raspy tone as he slid a pillow under her head.

  Her chest moved swiftly. Jeopard groaned with frustration—she was about to attempt screams that a Banshee might envy. He ran to get more scarves, then stuffed one into her mouth and used another to tie it in place. She made muffled protests and tried to twist her head away from him.

  Dull despair washed over Jeopard. She’d never believe his reasons for doing this. He grasped her jaw and forced her to look up at him.

  “I’m taking the boat out to sea. Someone will meet us there. You might as well stop fighting, because you’re trapped.”

  She jerked her head away and shut her eyes, effectively dismissing him. Jeopard touched a fingertip to the medallion that lay on her right breast, then lifted the antler amulet and looked at it.

  A lump rose in his throat. What had she been trying to do, ward him off as though he were an evil spirit? She still had her eyes shut, finding him too loathsome to look at.

  Perhaps he was evil, and it was too late to save himself. But he’d save her, even if it meant putting her through hell to do it.

  Jeopard grimly tossed the amulet back on her chest. “You won’t need any Cherokee magic,” he told her curtly. “As long as you do what I tell you, you won’t get hurt.”

  Feeling sick, he left her to ponder that heartless warning and went above to set sail.

  THE NEXT TWO hours were an endless horror. Wherever Jeopard was taking her, it would be far away from anyone who could help her.

  First they were met by a small power boat piloted by
a middle-aged man who shook Jeopard’s hand but never said a word. They were transferred to the boat, and Tess looked back forlornly at the Swedish Lady, sitting abandoned.

  “The Coast Guard will find her,” Jeopard said brusquely, and pulled her around so that she couldn’t look anymore.

  The power boat took them up the coast to an unused oil platform, where a helicopter waited. There was another man, who shook Jeopard’s hand as if they’d done this sort ofthing many times—which they must have, Tess thought bitterly.

  The helicopter took them inland to a stretch of empty desert, where a small private plane sat alone on a windswept highway. The pilot smiled at her as Jeopard carried her—still bound hand and foot—onto the plane.

  Since Jeopard had long since removed the stuffing from her mouth, she told the pilot that he’d go to prison for aiding a kidnapper. He smiled even more broadly.

  Jeopard spoke to her with a minimum of cool, brusque words. He put her in a window seat and sat beside her, his side pressed tightly to hers. After the plane settled into its cruising altitude he untied her.

  “Rest room is in the back. Now’s your chance.”

  “How kind of you.”

  She rose and swept past him without a backward glance. When she returned he motioned her back to the window seat.

  “Sit down. All right. Hands on your lap.”

  Then he carefully prepared to bind her wrists and ankles with strips of wide, soft tape. She’d be more comfortable but no less a prisoner.

  Tess stared out the window at clouds and blue sky, her teeth clenched. He handled her with a businesslike intimacy that made her face burn with fury and humiliation. Damn the man!

  He rubbed her wrists to make certain they weren’t chafed, then probbed gently at her scraped palms. He ran his hand down her ankle and lifted one sandaled foot to study the big blister on her heel. Then he sat back and scrutinized the wrinkled shorts and old T-shirt she’d worn for the past twenty-four hours. Finally he put two fingers at the base of her throat and checked her pulse.

  “Now I know how a slave girl feels in a harem,” she said between gritted teeth. “Do you intend to molest me later?”