“What is happening?” she asked. “Jane, she is okay?”
He pulled both of them into his arms, hating that this kind of ugliness had touched them again.
“Jane’s going to be just fine. But I need you and Charlie to stay with Pam for a while, okay? I’m going to drop you off at her house while I take care of some business.”
“Will you bring Jane back?”
“Oh, honey. I’m going to do my best.”
* * *
“Would you mind telling me where you’re taking me?”
She might as well be talking to the ceiling, for all the notice the two men in the front seat gave her. This was the third time she had tried to engage them in conversation and each time they ignored her as if she were nothing more than a package to be delivered.
She had to admit, she found their total lack of acknowledgement more terrifying than if they had treated her to threats and intimidation. At least then she would have had something concrete to fear.
This vague, amorphous dread made her want to cower in the back seat, to curl into the fetal position and pretend none of this was happening. She hated being afraid—and she hated more that she had no idea what to do with her fear.
Courage, Janie-girl.
Harry’s voice sounded in her head again—and if he’d actually been there instead of a being a figment of her over-heated imagination, she would have liked to box his ears.
Where the devil had he been for three days while she’d been rusticating at the Bittercreek ranch with Mason and the children? She certainly could have used a little paternal advice to caution her against tumbling in love with someone completely inappropriate.
She was in love with a spy, someone so like her father it would have been laughable if she didn’t find it so terribly sad. While she might have nurtured a soft place in her heart for the handsome American soldier who had helped rescue her from her kidnappers, she had been smart enough even at fifteen to know he was only the kind of man for dreams, not reality.
She had seen what her mother went through every time Harry popped in for his rare visits and then popped out again on his way to save the world. Oh, Harry had ostensibly been in Her Majesty’s diplomatic corps, but in his case that had simply been a front for some of his more clandestine activities. He’d never told her about any of them but she had known, even before her mother died, and Jane had joined his world.
When Harry wasn’t there, all the light would go out of Claire. She would jump every time the phone rang and panic every time a stranger knocked on the door.
Not for Jane. A kind, quiet man. That’s the type she needed. Not a hard, dangerous man with ice in his veins.
Harry probably would have adored Mason. She frowned at the thought even as she acknowledged the truth of it. Harry would have slapped him on the back, handed him a pint and pulled up a chair so they could have a nice chat about the places they had both seen, the people they had known, the things they had done.
And she had to admit that Mason didn’t exactly fit her father’s mold. When her mother had died, Harry had simply collected her from Buckinghamshire and dragged her along with him, without allowing her presence to appreciably change his life in the slightest.
Mason, on the other hand, had returned to his family’s ranch with Charlie and Miriam to make a new home for them. Had he quit the spy business then?
He must have, if he was devoting his energies to the breeding and training of horses, but she would probably never have the chance to ask him. She shivered and swallowed her frightened sob just before it sneaked free.
For all she knew, these could indeed be FBI agents, she reminded herself, transporting her to whatever holding facility they might take suspected terrorists.
She had to cling to a little hope, anyway, though she found it quite frightening that she found jail the best scenario she could come up with.
It was a hollow hope, she had to admit. With every passing mile, the days she spent with Mason and the children seemed from another world.
She hated that her last words to him had been cruel and cutting, and she suddenly would have given anything to take them back. He didn’t deserve her animosity.
How could she blame him for not helping her escape? He would be risking everything for someone he had only known for a few days and he had two children to think about. Two sweet, wonderful children Jane dearly wanted to see once more, to at least kiss goodbye before she returned to England and her colorless life.
Of course, right now, England and that colorless life seemed an impossible dream.
Courage. You can get out of this mess as you’ve done the others.
She glared as Harry’s hearty voice sounded in her ears again. Unless you have something a little more helpful to offer, stick a sock in it, she muttered to her imagination, and could swear she heard chuckling.
This unrelenting terror was turning her into a certified nutcase. She let out a breath and straightened her shoulders. Charlie and Miriam. Thinking of them would give her courage.
“Excuse me,” she said in a voice surely pitched too loud for the men in the front seat to ignore. “I really must insist you tell me where you’re taking me.”
She thought for a moment they would ignore her but then the man in the passenger seat—older than the other by perhaps a decade, with salt-and-pepper hair and blue eyes that seemed to bore through skin and bones—turned toward her.
“For questioning,” he answered, then turned around again.
“Can you tell me where?”
Apparently that was an answer she was doomed to discover only when they arrived at their destination because he turned back around and said nothing.
Really, these men could take her anywhere, do anything to her, and no one would know. Mason was the only person who knew she had been taken into custody by two men claiming to be FBI agents.
She could only hope that if she turned up missing, he would be interested enough in the woman who had lived in his house for three days to investigate what might have happened to her.
She clutched her fingers tightly in her lap and watched the passing scenery. In only a few moments they took an exit off the thoroughfare and she started to recognize the resort town of Park City.
Would the FBI have offices here? she wondered but she couldn’t begin to guess.
Like many ski resorts in the West, Park City had started life as a mining town, wild and raucous, she had learned in her two days in town before that fateful restaurant encounter. In the Old Town area, the streets were steep and narrow, and that was the direction the two FBI agents took.
With every passing moment as they left the stores and restaurants behind, her hope that they were taking her to some kind of holding area dissipated. This area appeared residential, with large vacation homes mostly built of logs, their outside walls decorated with skis and snowshoes and other outdoorsy icons.
Where were they going?
At last, when her tension had reached fever pitch, the younger agent pulled the automobile to a stop in front of a massive log-and-stone structure with soaring windows in front and a series of steeply pitched gables.
They pulled open the door and waited for her. She had one wild rebellious moment where she wondered what they would do if she stayed where she was. Would they yank her out of the automobile, kicking and screaming, and drag her into the house?
She could always take off running. The idea flitted across her mind. Would they dare shoot her in a residential area at the time of day when families were coming home to dinner?
Maybe not, but they would no doubt catch her. She had never been much of an athlete, and the younger agent, at least, looked in prime physical condition.
She sighed, wondering when Harry Withington’s little girl would ever get a spine.
One of the agents made an impatient sound and Jane unfolded tight muscles and slid from the car.
The flanked her as they walked up wide steps and into the house, after punching a code in
a box cleverly concealed by a false rock in the facade.
The interior was decorated in an American-West style—Navajo blankets on the wall, a chandelier fashioned of entwined antlers, even a mounted buffalo head above a stone fireplace. Under other circumstances, she might have enjoyed its rustic elegance, but she could scarcely breathe with the nerves scrambling through her.
The house appeared empty—at least no one came out to greet them. She wasn’t sure whether to take that as a good sign.
Her armed escorts ushered her into a small chamber off the main gathering room, still without saying anything to her. The room had no windows and only the single door, though it was comfortably appointed.
She was tired and hungry and scared and she needed to use the loo but she decided she would rather burst then have to ask these men directions.
Not that they gave her much chance to ask anything. They all but shoved her into the room and slammed the door behind her. An instant later she heard a lock click.
She was well and truly trapped.
“Now what, Harry?” she said aloud, but her capricious father didn’t answer this time. Maybe he expected her to get herself out. Or maybe he had finally given up on his chicken-livered offspring.
“I’m sorry I’ve been a disappointment to you,” she said softly. “I’m weak and cowardly. Afraid to die but more terrified to live. You’re partly to blame, you know. I was never like you. I just wasn’t.”
As she spoke aloud to the father who could no longer hear her—and who never listened even when he could—she wandered the room, looking in vain for something she might use as a weapon. There were no lamps, no handy fireplace pokers. Nothing but a massive carved chest in the corner that no amount of effort could unlock.
“I tried to be brave because I loved you and wanted to be with you, but I hated our life,” she went on, gritting her teeth as she tried without success to pry the lock. “You should have seen that, Harry. If you had, I might not have grown up in hotel rooms with angry crowds out on the streets and the sound of distant gunfire to put me to sleep at night. That was no way to raise a child. Mason has it right. Children need peace and safety, room to stretch and grow, to spread out roots.”
If she’d had that, what kind of woman might she have become? she wondered.
“Strong and beautiful, just as you are now,” her father’s voice whispered in her head.
Ah, so there was the proof that that voice was just a figment of her imagination: she was strong and beautiful only in her deepest dreams.
Before she could answer, she heard a key in the lock, then the door swung open.
Panic fluttered through her on wild wings. She caught her breath, then turned toward the door, dreading who she would find there.
* * *
Mason had just reached the foothills of Park City when his cell phone finally rang.
He picked it up and saw the caller was Cale. “Where am I going?” he asked.
“Guantanamo, if you’re wrong about this,” the FBI agent growled.
“I’m not wrong. I can feel it in my gut. Djami has her. I know it.”
“And you think he’s just going to hand her over to you for the hell of it?”
Not without a fight, but Mason was prepared to give the bastard one.
“Where is he staying?”
“The man likes his privacy, I’ll give him that much. It took some arm-twisting but I finally have an address. He’s rented an entire block of vacation homes in the Deer Valley area for him and his staff.”
“Just tell me where.”
Cale gave him the address and Mason pulled over just long enough to punch it into his truck’s navigation system. A detailed map flashed on the small screen.
“I’ve got it. Thanks. I owe you.”
“You’re not going on your own, Keller. One of the reasons I took so long was so I could dig around into Djami’s background a little.”
“And?”
“He’s got a sterling record on the surface. Forward-thinking, very pro-West. An ideal trade minister. But if you go down a few levels, the picture gets a little more complicated, a little more shaded. Djami has more than a few acquaintances on several countries’ watch lists and his reported income doesn’t quite match his lifestyle.”
“What else?” Mason knew those few details might be enough to launch an investigation but not the kind of raid that would be needed to rescue Jane in time.
“An hour ago, fishermen at Jordanelle Reservoir pulled out the decomposing body of a man who appears to be of Southeast Asian descent. The man had no identification on him but he did have a slip of paper in his pocket with a single phone number—which, if you happened to dial, would connect you to Simon Djami’s cell phone.”
“Still flimsy.”
“Patriot Act, man. Doesn’t take much for a search warrant when you’re talking suspected terrorism. The Homeland Security team is preparing to serve the search warrant within the hour.”
“I can’t wait that long. She could be dead in an hour!”
Cale was silent for maybe ten seconds. When he spoke, his voice was compassionate and Mason realized how much he must have revealed through his outburst.
“I’m sorry, Mason,” the FBI agent said quietly. “It’s the best I can do right now.”
Mason drew in a breath and ordered himself to maintain. “I know. I appreciate the address.”
“Don’t do anything crazy. It’s going to be hard enough to explain how you obtained that information.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep you out of it.”
“You know that’s not what I’m concerned about. Be careful.”
Mason made some noncommittal sound and ended the call, then put his truck back in gear and started driving.
* * *
Jane had perhaps five seconds for sheer, unadulterated fear to jab at her before Simon Djami walked into the room in the brilliant white, flowing ceremonial robes she remembered from her time in Vandelusia. Two other men who looked Vandish joined him and stood just inside the door. They were short, probably no taller than she, but heavily muscled and she thought she saw ominous bulges under their suit jackets.
With a grim sense of inevitability, she watched Djami move closer. She had known it would come to this. Oh, she might have tried to cling to some foolish hope about the FBI, but in her heart she had always known what awaited her.
He stopped five feet away from her and studied her out of intense dark eyes for a long drawn-out moment, until she began to squirm, feeling underdressed and rather exposed in her borrowed clothes, the low-cut jeans and the brilliant T-shirt. She would have given anything right then for the psychological armor of one of her boring, conservative business suits.
“Ms. Withington,” he said in Vandish. “I am afraid you have caused me a great deal of trouble.”
For an instant, part of her urged obsequiousness—to grovel, to bow and scrape and apologize for having the effrontery to inconvenience him. She let out a breath. No. It wouldn’t make a difference to this cold, conscienceless man and would leave her debased and humiliated.
She had lived a coward. She wasn’t prepared to die one.
“Good,” she answered in English, hoping the smirk she pasted on her lips came through for all the trembling.
His eyes darkened and he raised an arm. She thought he might strike her but instead he gestured to one of his henchmen, who stepped forward and without even blinking, slapped her with the back of his hand so hard it knocked her to the floor.
She gasped in pain and surprise, tears burning her eyes. She blinked hard to force them back and dropped her hand from the terrible ache in her cheek, unwilling to give these brutal men the satisfaction of knowing they had hurt her.
With a wary eye toward the thug who had struck her, she climbed to her knees then rose to her feet, praying her unsteady legs would hold her.
The man with the mean backhand looked at his boss with a question in his eyes but Djami shook his head.
<
br /> When he spoke, Jane found his voice the more chilling for its complete control, with no trace of the fury she could see in his eyes. “You are one stupid woman. One insignificant whore. Look at you, with your infidel clothes and your uncovered hair. You are nothing. You should have been a minor inconvenience. How have you managed single-handedly to destroy something that has been months in the planning?”
“Sheer dumb luck?” She lifted her chin, bracing for another blow, but it didn’t come. Instead he laughed, a chilling sound that crawled down her spine like a nasty furry spider.
“Indeed. Indeed.”
He circled her, studying her from all angles. She forced herself to remain perfectly still, chin lifted and her back perfectly straight, even though she wanted to huddle into a ball and disappear into the carpet.
“The question now is, what am I to do with you?” Djami asked.
She thought of Harry’s insouciance, his complete aplomb in all circumstances. This one’s for you, Daddy.
“You could always let me go,” she suggested.
He laughed again and Jane could swear she now had a dozen spiders crawling up and down her vertebrae.
“Oh, I think not. I’m afraid you’re rather more than an inconvenience now.”
CHAPTER 16
Jane didn’t know how to respond to that so she decided to keep her mouth shut.
“You see,” Djami went on, “I have worked very hard to maintain secrecy around my efforts to see Vandelusia shed western influence and return to her glorious past. I am viewed as a friend to your country and to the United States. I have a position of trust and responsibility and therefore have a unique opportunity to foment change. Should my connection to certain rebel groups become widely known, those opportunities would be in jeopardy.”
“Yes. I can see why some in your country and mine might take exception to your involvement with vicious terrorists.”
His smile froze her insides another degree. “Just so. Which is why I must ask if you told anyone what you heard in that restaurant.”
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