by Cherry Adair
“Okay, what am I missing?”
“Loida knows we can’t leave the country without papers. We filed for new papers—our names went out to cyberspace, where she apparently looked for and found them.” Zak sucked in a furious breath. “Okay. New plan. We go to the airport; I hire a plane and pilot to take you home. No middleman. Keep your eyes peeled for anyone following us.” He reached into his breast pocket and handed her his phone. “Dial Buck.”
Acadia put the phone on speaker and clicked on Buck’s name. He answered before the third ring. “Zakary, my men will meet you at the airport in an hour. I chartered a helicopter to take you as far into the jungle as they can. The men are equipped to walk in the rest of the way. Can you get there in that time frame?”
“On my way now.”
“Good. Listen, Zak, I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I’d really like you to reconsider your position on this. Leave the extraction to my people. They’re trained professionals. I can pull some strings, get you on the next flight out. Hell, you can be home waiting when the men bring Gideon home. “
“First, a commercial flight isn’t going to cut it,” Zak said tensely. “I don’t have a passport and neither does Acadia. I saw one of the kidnappers at the embassy. No idea if she’s in cahoots with someone there, but my gut tells me she was our welcoming committee. I’m going to hire a charter. Get Acadia on it, then meet your guys as soon as I see her safely on board. I know exactly where Gideon is, Buck. I’m gonna get him, and bring him home.”
“You know—Thank God. Wait! How do you know exactly where he is?” Buck blew out a breath. “The kidnappers made contact? Where do we drop the m—?”
“No, they haven’t. It’s complicated. Just leave it as I know where he is.”
“If you know, you know. Who’s this woman, Zakary? This Arcadia?” Acadia flinched at the exasperated derision in the man’s tone. “For God’s sake, man. This is not the time to think with your dick. Gideon must be shitting bricks and wondering where the fuck you are. Does he even know you made it out? These bastards aren’t above torture just for the sport of it. God only knows what he’s enduring. Zak, can you really afford to have your attention diverted right now?”
“Her name’s Acadia, and she’s—” The tires squealed as he stomped on the brakes. Acadia shot out her arm to brace herself before she kissed the dash just as Zak shouted, “Fuckit!”
“Christ!” Buck yelled. “You just scared ten years off me. What’s going on?”
“The entire airport is crawling with National Guard. I’ll call you back.”
Acadia disconnected the phone as Zak peeled a U-turn into oncoming traffic and drove out of the airport lot at the same speed as other motorists. “They knew we were coming,” he said, his voice strained and tight.
Acadia gave an uneasy laugh. “I know you’re a big deal, Zak, but I seriously doubt an entire police force would be waiting at the airport to rekidnap us.”
“Check out the JumboTron over the door.”
She looked through the rearview window. Her Junction City driver’s license was up there with a Wanted, Armed, and Dangerous notice beneath it. Zak’s was scrolling up next. The police were expecting them.
“Get out that map,” Zak ordered tightly. “You’re going to enjoy Caracas hospitality a little longer.”
“I’d rather not. There must be another wa—”
“There isn’t.”
Stomach in a knot, Acadia refastened her seat belt. It didn’t matter what the hell she wanted. She had to stay. “Should we call Buck back and have him send those security guys to meet us?”
“No,” Zak said grimly. “I don’t want anyone knowing where we are until we figure this thing out.” Everything about this entire situation smelled bad. From the kidnapping, to their escape, to the hotel bomb, to the—hell, all of it.
“Do you have something in mind, or are we just driving around until we run out of gas?” Acadia asked after she’d been quiet for a good fifteen minutes.
Zak saw trees up ahead and pulled into the lot of a city park. “Let’s take a walk while we think this through.”
She crawled over the console and climbed out on his side. Zak took her hand to help her and, because it felt so perfect in his, kept hold as they started along a winding path that circled a small duck pond. A few young mothers wheeled kids in strollers, a shabbily dressed bum slept with a magazine over his face on a bench, and farther along, two old men played a lively game of chess in the shade of a gnarled broad-leafed tree. Several other old men stood around watching every play.
“Gideon’s being moved,” Zak said as the silence was broken by a kid’s loud wailing on the other side of the pond, his paper sailboat sinking like a rock.
Acadia looked up at him with a frown. “The numbers are changing?”
“Yeah, slightly. I have to get to him, Acadia, and I don’t know—” Fuckit. He ran his left hand over his face, and his shoulder ached like hell. God. He didn’t even want to vocalize what he’d thought of in the early hours of the morning. But once the idea had taken hold he couldn’t forget it.
Her fingers tightened in his. “Tell me. Let me help.”
“Something about this last week seemed … off. I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
“I take it you’re talking beyond the obvious? Zak, you think whoever is behind the kidnapping was targeting you. But what if they were targeting me?” She pulled him to a stop. “Hear me out for a moment. If they were after you, they wouldn’t have brought a strange woman along for the ride. They would have gone to your room. Not mine. I would’ve been redundant. They had you and Gideon, and you’re insanely wealthy and powerful. Why’d they drag me with you?”
“Because I was in your room, and you’d seen their faces.”
She waved that away. “They could’ve shot me at any time.”
“Do you have powerful enemies, sweetheart? Anyone want you dead?”
“I hope not. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a possibility. We have to think of everything if we hope to get away from them.”
“I don’t for a second think that you were the target,” he said with a firm shake of his head. “Yeah, it’s possible, but probable? No. It’s more likely that they followed me to your room from the cantina that night, and when they went to get me and Gideon in the morning, and I wasn’t in my own room, they just went where they’d seen me last.”
Acadia nodded grudgingly, but wasn’t done making her case.
“If someone wanted to get my five hundred thousand dollars, and didn’t know you and Gideon were ZAG Search … that’s a lot of money to just about everyone who isn’t a multigazillionaire.”
“It isn’t you they’re after.”
“That guy said ‘make sure the wife is dead.’ Clearly he wasn’t aware that you don’t have a wife.” She swept her hair back over her shoulder and blew out an irritated breath. “So let’s follow that thread for a minute. The guy didn’t say ‘make sure the woman is dead.’ Or ‘make sure Acadia Gray is dead.’ He said ‘wife.’ The point was wife. And as far as I know, only two people believe we’re married, right?”
“Sister Clemencia and the police chief you swindled.”
“Yes, and a good thing neither of us is Catholic, or we’d probably go straight to hell for lying to a nun. And I didn’t swindle him, I played him fair and square.”
His lips twitched. “And I told Carina we were married to expedite matters. So someone from one or both of those sources believes we are in fact married.”
“Exactly,” Acadia said, sliding her hand through his arm as they walked. How very normal, she thought; normal, not death-defying. Her lips twitched, although this was no laughing matter. “I don’t believe a nun posse is trying to kill us. And I don’t think ninety-eight-pounds-soaking-wet-Carina-the-Concierge is trying to kill us either, do you?”
“Right, that’s a no. But one of them did tell someone. Someone who’d kidnapped you and didn’t care if you died.”
&nbs
p; Zak walked in silence, his fingers tightening around hers as the puzzle bits floated around in his mind like so much flotsam and jetsam. Between the numbers and the jigsaw and the warm, silken smooth texture of her palm against his, he couldn’t think straight.
No. He really, really didn’t want to think straight.
“Guerrilla Girl didn’t refer to me as your wife,” Acadia mused, matching her steps to his as they strolled casually through the park. “That only started after the mission and after we arrived in Caracas, right?”
“But they’d care if that wife was eligible to inherit my estate.” Shit. He didn’t want to go down this detour.
“Zak …” She hesitated. “What if this wasn’t about a kidnapping at all? What if it’s some sort of murder for hire? Who inherits if you die?”
He’d been thinking the same thing after the men had broken in the night before. The knot in his gut had been sure of what his brain didn’t want to admit, and Zak didn’t want to go there.
Going there meant he’d have to rethink every conversation he’d ever had with everyone he’d ever known. With his friends, with his business partner, with their associates—it was a long fucking list.
He blew out a hard breath. There had to be another explanation. A reason, somewhere. He’d find it. “Of course, it could be a murder plot,” he admitted. “As a company, we’ve bought out failing businesses. People have lost their jobs when we’ve mashed businesses together for efficiency. Christ, we’ve done dozens of hostile takeovers in the last ten years alone. It’s all business. Not personal …”
Her eyebrows rose, and he caught himself with a grim smile. “Yeah, to some of them, it must’ve been personal as hell.”
Acadia nibbled at her thumbnail. She glanced around the park, studying every person around them with suspicion. He held on to her hand—just a normal couple out for a normal walk in the park—although he couldn’t tell if it was to reassure her or himself. She shot him a smile, which didn’t quite reach her beautiful, thoughtful smokey eyes. “How about a disgruntled employee? A business associate who feels …” She let go of his hand to gesticulate wildly in the air. “Who knows? But they’re mad at you for whatever reason.” Zak almost laughed as she slanted him a speculative sideways glance. “Okay, how about a spurned lover?”
He shook his head. “Don’t you think I’ve considered all of this? I’d hate to think I pissed someone—anyone—off enough that they’d go to such elaborate lengths to kill me. And that would mean killing me, not my brother or a faux wife.” Zak threaded his hands through his hair and cupped the back of his skull.
“Unless someone wanted what you have. Wealth. Power. A great lifestyle. My guess is that Gideon is your heir.”
“The bulk of my estate and assets goes to Gideon, yeah. But he’s already got all that, same as me.” Click. Even as he said it, the knot in his gut tightened. “We’re equal partners with Buck; we each own a third of the business. In the event of my death, my third would be split between Gid and Buck.”
“But if you were married, wouldn’t your third go to your wife? And say you inherited Gideon’s share, then you died—then if you had a wife it would all go to her, and she’d have controlling interest in the company, right? But if she died, Buck would inherit everything.”
Zak pressed his lips together firmly until they formed a flat line. “But I don’t have a wife.”
“Yeah, well, apparently people around here think that you do,” she pointed out as she walked beside him. “We never let them in on the joke. So, for all intents and purposes, they want to kill you and your wife, because if you died, your money would go to your lovely bride, and if she were also dead, it would all go to your brother.”
“Not all,” he corrected quietly, “but certainly the bulk of it. So you think the plan was to kill either Gid or me—they didn’t seem to care. That way, one brother inherited everything. Then the kidnappers hear that I’m married, which would trump my brother’s inheriting. So, first they have to get rid of you, then either brother. The last brother standing gets everything? Except, that would imply that the person behind this elaborate plan is—”
“Not your brother,” she finished quietly, sidestepping before a girl on an old pedal bike ran them down. The cheery ring-ring of the bell seemed harsh and grating. “It doesn’t make sense to give himself a couple of broken ribs when he could just as easily push you off a mountain somewhere.”
Zak’s fists clenched, and she winced in apology.
“Sorry. But I do think it’s the work of someone who wants something from you badly enough that they’d kidnap you, and set two bombs. One of you was supposed to die out in the jungle.” She tilted her head and looked up at him, her expression earnest.
“And as butch and in charge as Loida Piñero is,” Zak mused, his fingers shoved into his front pockets, “I seriously doubt she has the resources to pull all this off. Even here, bomb materials are expensive, not to mention the manpower it took to kidnap and transport us.”
Acadia nodded. “There’ve been only a small handful of people who think we’re really married. The crooked police chief—oh, and his three scummy friends—the nun, your friendly concierge, and your friend at the bank, right?”
Zak stopped on the path. The sun felt illogically chilly on his face, and his jaw ached as he said out loud what he didn’t want to hear. “One other.”
“Who?”
“My partner, Anthony Buckner,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. Buck, the holder of 33 percent of ZAG Search, and the man who waved the Stark brothers off on adventure after dangerous adventure with a smile.
The man who stood to inherit it all.
SEVENTEEN
Acadia’s soft, sympathetic gaze almost did him in. “There must be other possibilities.”
No. No other possibilities. A ball of disbelief lodged tightly in Zak’s gut, and he heard the derision in his tone as he asked, “Why, you think there’s a long line of people who’d like to see me dead?”
He lived his life to the hilt, sure, but with conscious, scrupulous integrity. Hell, even when they did hostile takeovers, they made sure the owners were compensated far above what anyone else would have offered, and that people were taken care of fairly. There’d been a few glitches and a couple lawsuits along the way, but nothing that would warrant this kind of payback.
He couldn’t think of one person who hated him enough to want him dead. There were plenty greedy enough to want him dead, but this didn’t smell like a money grab. They wanted to make him hurt. This felt personal. All rational signs pointed to this being a plan enacted by someone close. Close enough to know where to find the brothers and be on top of them when they called. So close Zak had eaten in the man’s kitchen.
Buck.
Fuckit. Zak had the who in the equation, he was sure of it; now he needed the why. It didn’t make sense for Anthony Buckner to go to such elaborate lengths to dispose of the Stark brothers. Money couldn’t be his motive. Buck was financially conservative by nature. He had more than he could spend in a lifetime, even with a shopaholic wife and a couple of great, but indulged and spoiled, kids.
“No, of course not,” Acadia assured him, rubbing his upper arm in an absent gesture. “But I trust your judgment.” She left her hand on him, light, but so strong and capable. Her touch helped more than she could possibly know.
“Let’s move into the shade,” she told him briskly, tugging on his arm. “We need to rethink this.” Her brow furrowed in concentration as she walked a few yards to a patch of shade under a nearby tree. “What about that Savin guy? You say he tried to recruit you for his black-ops thing when you were at MIT? He’d certainly have the contacts and resources to pull off something of this magnitude, wouldn’t he? Did anything happen between you that he might’ve misconstrued?” She shrugged helplessly. “Sometimes people perceive a slight when none was intended. Did you guys ever go on some bender where he told you something and now he has to kill you?”
Savin w
ould certainly have the contacts and the resources. On the other hand, Buck had the resources to make the contacts. He appreciated her effort, but Jesus, he knew he was right. “Haven’t seen or even spoken to Marc in—hell, must be ten or twelve years now. I was damned surprised that he even remembered telling me to call him if I ever needed help. It’s not him, sweetheart.”
Christ. Zak wished with everything in him that he had a more logical suspect than Buck. But things were starting to click in his brain, and as much as he didn’t want to go down this road, there wasn’t anyone else who fit the bill. Then again, Buck didn’t fit the bill.
“It was Buck who suggested the Angel Falls trip,” he told her, leaning against a tree trunk. BASE-jumping the falls hadn’t been that high on their daredevil scale, not by a long shot. He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “Why else would he do it?”
“Because he thought you’d enjoy it?” Acadia suggested.
“Maybe.” Zak considered it briefly, then shook his head. “But I doubt it. Within hours of my calling him, two people tried to kill us at the Gran Meliá. Within hours of that, the company jet blew up, right after I told Buck we were headed to the airport. And this whole thing started with someone knowing that Gid and I were in that small hotel; that info wasn’t exactly available on Page Six.”
“What about back home? Can you remember anything that might strike a chord?”
“Nothing big. Buck keeps the business running like clockwork. You and he would get on great.”
“Not if he wants to kill you, Zak.” She brushed her hair off her shoulder. “So, he runs the business. Was there something major he wanted to do? Something new he wanted to try, that you were arguing about?”
