The Favor

by Cara Summers

  At the door she paused. “Wait. I got so caught up in how I’d tricked that bartender into telling me that I forgot the most important thing. The man Mark Anderson met in the bar was Vice President Gracie.”

  “I figured,” he said. “It all seems to circle back to him.”

  “Do you really think he could be behind all this?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question, but my guess is that Brian James McElroy is the key to solving this whole puzzle.”

  16

  “OKAY,” Rory said as she made a selection from a cheese tray. “What’s Ryder like?”

  “I…he’s…” Sierra shot a glance to where Ryder was seated with the other men in the kitchen of his apartment. How in the world was she supposed to describe a man like Ryder Kane? “Smart. And sweet,” she finished lamely.

  “Forget the broad generalizations,” Rory said. “We want details.”

  “Don’t let yourself be pressured by the investigative reporter. Take your time,” Natalie said. “But we do want details.”

  That was the problem. She’d been so bombarded by new information about Ryder since he’d ushered her into the apartment he lived in above the offices of Kane Management that she hadn’t had time to sort through them.

  First of all, she’d thought that Favors for a Fee was his only business, but it turned out that he also ran a very high-tech security business that serviced both corporate and government clients. And then there was his apartment.

  The best word to describe the place Ryder called home was plush. And he seemed to have a butler of sorts—a man named Jensen. He’d given her a quick tour before Natalie and Rory had arrived with their respective significant others in tow. Chance Mitchell and Hunter Marks had hit it off with Ryder from the get-go and were presently seated around the kitchen counter, drinking beer while they waited for Jed Calhoun and Zoë to arrive. Matt Ramsey had remained at Mark Anderson’s bedside since the reporter was showing signs of coming out of the coma.

  “Hunter really likes Ryder. And he’s usually very reserved with strangers,” Rory said. “You really ought to try this brie. It’s wonderful.”

  “Chance likes him too,” Natalie said as she spread cheese on a cracker.

  “He’s got a sort of a butler,” Sierra blurted out. Not that Ryder had introduced the tall broad-shouldered Jensen as his butler. No. He’d introduced Jensen as an old friend and business colleague. Then he’d added, “Jensen takes care of this place for me.”

  “You have something against butlers?” Rory asked.

  Sierra shook her head. She was pretty sure that Jensen wasn’t to blame for her sudden attack of nerves. But she still wasn’t sure what was.

  “Jensen is more than a butler, I’d wager,” Natalie said.

  Sierra agreed. The tall, broad-shouldered man looked more like a bodyguard. At first glance there was a toughness about him that was formidable, but when he smiled, all of his features softened, and his eyes crinkled at the corners.

  A sudden thought occurred to her. Was he yet another man that Ryder was doing a favor for? But he certainly performed a butler’s duties. First, he’d ushered her into a room where she could freshen up; second, he’d served drinks as her sisters and the men had arrived, and right now he was cooking a pot of chili in the kitchen.

  Chili. Ryder had asked Jensen to make the chili and he’d guaranteed that she’d prefer it to her favorite takeout version from the Blue Pepper. And then there was the Beatles music that was seeping softly into the room from some kind of invisible sound system. And the collection of movies that were stacked in a helter-skelter fashion beneath the large-screen TV. All of those details had her chest tightening. But there was more.

  “There’s a Degas hanging in a room off the foyer,” she said. “I think it’s an original.”

  “A Degas?” Rory jumped up from her seat. “I’ve got to see it.”

  Sierra thought she’d be able to organize her thoughts and pinpoint the cause of her nerves when Natalie rose and followed Rory out of the living area. But the reprieve was short-lived. Jensen was crossing to her with a wine bottle in his hand.

  “May I refill your glass?” he asked.

  “Thank you.” As he poured, she drew in a deep breath. In any study, the more details one had, the easier the analysis became. “Have you known Ryder long?”

  “We go back a ways,” Jensen said. “I served with him on several operations when we worked for the government. He saved my life on the last one. My leg got messed up pretty good so I had to retire. When Ryder left government work and went into the security business, he looked me up and offered me a job.”

  “As a butler?”

  He smiled and his eyes twinkled. “Not exactly. He asked me to live here and take care of the place for him. He likes to keep a place in town for convenience. But he spends as much time as he can on that houseboat. My main job here is to oversee the office and do the odd job now and again when he’s involved in doing favors. He’s a good man.”

  “There’s a Degas hanging in the room off the foyer.” The moment she’d blurted that out, she could have bitten her tongue.

  Jensen winked at her. “There’s a Monet on the wall in his bedroom. I helped him select it myself.”

  Ryder was rich. Sierra reached for her glass of wine and took a swallow as Jensen walked away. Why did that have the nerves dancing in her stomach?

  “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” began playing softly, and Ryder turned just then to send her one long, searing look. Everything else emptied out of her mind, and what filled it was a sudden flash of insight.

  It wasn’t the Degas or the Monet or that Ryder was rich that was bothering her. It was that she’d felt at home from the moment Ryder had ushered her into the apartment—just as she’d felt oddly at home on his houseboat. And she’d felt at home in the bushes, in a utility closet, in hotel rooms, in taxis. Wherever Ryder was, she felt as though she belonged.

  That had been the connection she’d felt the first time she’d looked into his eyes at the Blue Pepper. Sierra took in a shaky breath and let it out. She didn’t need a degree in psychology to know that she’d fallen in love with Ryder Kane. The question was—what was she going to do about it?

  “THEY’RE QUITE a trio, aren’t they?”

  Ryder dragged his eyes away from Sierra and turned his attention back to Chance and Hunter. Chance was the one who’d asked the question. Of the two men, he was the most outgoing, and he was engaged to Natalie, the cop. Hunter was much more reserved, and he was engaged to the most effervescent of the sisters, Rory.

  “Yes,” he said simply. The truth was he hadn’t taken time to study the three sisters together. He’d been so focused on Sierra and how his campaign was working. He’d formulated his own little list while he’d been changing. Odd thing was, he’d pictured it in his mind on one of Sierra’s blue note cards.

  Step one, he was going to give her some romance. There hadn’t been much of that in their relationship so far. He might have to wait until they apprehended a killer before he told her how he felt, but in the meantime, he could play Beatles music and feed her chili.

  “You know, of course, that Natalie will kill you if you hurt Sierra.”

  “Yeah.” Ryder sent Chance a rueful smile. “I got that during my first meeting with her.”

  “She’s a tough lady,” Chance said.

  “Rory’s small, but she’s tough too,” Hunter said.

  “When it comes to toughness, I’ll place my money on Sierra.”

  The two men studied him for a minute, and then they exchanged a brief knowing look before raising their glasses in a toast. “Welcome to the club.”

  “Passed the test, did I?” Ryder asked as he set down his glass after the toast.

  Chance grinned at him. “Yeah. It’s clear you’re hooked. And we know exactly how you feel.”

  “Have you told her yet?” Hunter asked.

  Ryder shook his head. “I won’t until we eliminate the threat.”

>   “Good plan,” Chance murmured as Natalie and Rory reentered the room with a tall man and a mousy-looking bit of a woman in tow. Once they’d all gathered in the living area on the two oversized couches that faced each other, Sierra introduced Jed and Zoë.

  So the mouse was Zoë McNamara, Sierra’s research assistant. Ryder noted that she was all business as she sat down on the edge of the couch next to Sierra and placed her manila folder on the coffee table in front of her. Chance and Hunter chose seats directly across from Natalie and Rory. Ryder slid into the spot opposite Sierra, leaving Jed a seat across from Zoë.

  “Jensen’s going to serve the chili, so we can eat and work at the same time. I have a theory about food stimulating creative thinking,” Ryder said.

  “Have you ever conducted a study on that?” asked Zoë.

  “No,” Ryder replied. It occurred to him that except for two things—she was short and had brown hair—Zoë reminded him very much of the Sierra he’d first spotted through the glass windows at the Blue Pepper.

  Not anymore, he thought. When he shifted his gaze to Sierra, he saw that she was looking at Zoë, too. Was she thinking the same thing?

  “Ryder’s theory about food is more intuitive than logical,” Sierra said.

  Jed snorted, muttering something about intuition as he pulled a notebook out of his pocket. While Jensen set wide-rimmed mugs of chili in front of them, Ryder said, “To bring you up to date, I’ll start off by sharing what we have so far.”

  AS RYDER SUMMARIZED what they’d discovered, Sierra sampled the chili. It was mouth-searingly hot. Perfect. As she took a second bite, she listed in her head the salient points Ryder was making. Mark Anderson calls Ryder and asks to meet with him at the Blue Pepper at five o’clock. He has something hot and political that he needs Ryder’s perspective on. At five-thirty, he calls to postpone. The cell-phone connection fades in and out, but the word delayed comes through, and he seems worried his phone is tapped. On Wednesday, before his rescheduled appointment with Ryder, he plays a game of racket ball with the vice president’s son and stashes his notes on Brian James McElroy in his locker at the Esquire Club. Later he meets one on one with Vice President Gracie at Le Printemps. When Mark arrives at the Blue Pepper, he tells Sierra he’s being followed and he leaves a book, Vietnam: the Unsung Heroes. The book is marked with one of Ryder’s business cards on a page that mentions John Gracie, and also tucked inside is a key to a locker at the Esquire Health and Fitness Club. Mark tells Sierra that Ryder will know what to do.

  “Have I left anything out, Sierra?” Ryder asked.

  “No.” She pictured the list in her mind. Everything was on it.

  “I brought the book,” Natalie said. “And I checked into it. One of my sources says that the book is being promoted by a powerful conservative group that’s supporting Gracie’s run for the presidency in 2008.”

  “This whole thing has somehow got to go back to John Gracie,” Ryder said. “His name is popping up everywhere. We need to know what he’s got in his past that would motivate murder.”

  “You seriously think the vice president is behind this?” Chance asked.

  “Politics is a dirty business at best,” Ryder said. “Gracie may not be personally involved, but he’s got the kind of name recognition and reputation that could attract people with power, people who might have a vested interest in getting him elected.”

  “Why don’t I start the ball rolling?” Jed pulled a notebook out of his pocket. “It’s public knowledge that John Gracie was a stellar athlete and valedictorian of his class at Jefferson High School in Kansas City. He came from middle-class parents. He was shipped out to Nam in 1968, right after graduating from Yale Law School. While he was there, he won a medal of honor for saving the life of his captain and several fellow officers during an air raid. Shortly after that, his parents were killed in a plane crash. Lots of coverage of that in the local papers. War Hero Suffers Loss at Home. His tour of duty ended when he was seriously injured in an attack that wiped out the rest of his platoon.” Jed paused to flip a page of his notebook over.

  “He spent a year at Walter Reed and underwent several plastic surgery procedures before he went back to Kansas City,” Zoë said. “He also worked there in rehab getting used to his fake leg.”

  Jed sent her a surprised look. “Are you sure about the plastic surgery? None of my sources at the Pentagon had that piece of information.”

  “There was nothing about that in the recent article that appeared in Vanity Fair,” Rory said. “Though everyone knows about the missing leg. Gracie won two elections as governor of Missouri, based on his popularity as a war hero. He married while he was in office and had one son, Jack. After that he went on to campaign for U.S. Senator.”

  Zoë shrugged. “I have some contacts at the CIA. One of them knew about the plastic surgery.”

  “Did either of you dig up any hint of scandal?” Ryder asked.

  “No.” Zoë and Jed spoke in unison, and then met each other’s eyes across the table.

  “Not on Gracie,” Zoë said, opening her folder. “Brian James McElroy is a slightly different matter.”

  “His academic career is less distinguished,” Jed said. “He got through college on a baseball scholarship and he was a much better pitcher than a student. But he managed to string out his educational deferment until 1968.”

  “I tracked down a teacher who actually had both of them in a class,” Zoë said. “She remembered that although the two men came from different backgrounds, they were rivals of a sort. She remembers McElroy as one of those brilliant students who seldom chose to apply himself to class work, but when it came to the athletic field, he often bested Gracie. McElroy was shipped out at the same time as Gracie and served in Gracie’s unit,” Zoë added.

  “No medal of honor for McElroy,” Jed said. “In Vietnam, he ran a profitable black-market business. And there was a rumor that he tried deserting, but when he was caught, he claimed he’d been taken prisoner by the Cong. My source at the Pentagon said that he had a reputation for being able to talk his way out of anything.”

  “Evidently, his luck ran out,” Zoë said. “My source at the CIA said that he would have been facing a court martial if he hadn’t been killed.”

  Jed gave a low whistle. “I didn’t get that. Just who do you know at the CIA? Or are you so good that you can hack into their files?”

  Zoë’s chin lifted. “I used to work there.”

  For two beats everyone at the table stared at Zoë. Sierra knew that her work at the CIA was a sore spot with Zoë. She never talked about it. She shifted her gaze to Jed Calhoun. The man must really be rubbing Zoë the wrong way to make her blurt it out like that.

  “Obviously, you’ve both got excellent sources,” Ryder said, “but the fact remains, we still don’t know why McElroy poses a threat to Gracie.” He swept the table with his gaze. “Any ideas?”

  “There’s something that we’re missing,” Sierra said. “I need something to write on.”

  “I need to pace,” Natalie said, rising.

  “Brain food,” Rory said, taking a bite of her chili. Sierra glanced up in surprise when Ryder shoved one of her blue note cards across the table. He was being so sweet to her. First the music, then the chili and now he was providing her with blue note cards. She recalled Rory’s stories about ex-boyfriends who’d always given her a “dumping” gift. Was Ryder being nice because he was close to finishing the favors?

  Even as her heart sank, she pushed the worry out of her mind. She had to concentrate on the case. Quickly, she listed all of the things that Ryder had mentioned in his summary.

  “Sierra’s right. We’re missing something,” Ryder said.

  The room grew silent for a few minutes. Natalie was pacing, Rory was eating, and Ryder was staring at the ceiling, thinking. Chance and Hunter were both frowning thoughtfully. Jed and Zoë were eyeing each other warily.

  Finally Ryder said, “This is a brainstorming session. No idea is too sil
ly. Just lay it out there.”

  Sierra had no idea how the idea popped into her head. It didn’t follow from anything on her list. “What if Brian McElroy is still alive?”

  Everyone turned to stare at her.

  “He’s a con man of sorts, and he’s facing a court martial. He’s tried to desert once. What if he survived the attack? Everyone else is either dead or badly wounded. So he sees his opportunity and takes it. He switches dog tags with someone else and slips away. It would be the perfect opportunity to disappear.”

  Hunter nodded. “She raises a good point. I know something about disappearing and creating a new life. With the kind of black-market contacts McElroy had, he could easily have gotten a new identity. And he would also have had the money from his black-market dealings.”

  “Why resurface now?” asked Natalie. “And why would it threaten Gracie…unless…”

  “He’s got something on Gracie that we haven’t dug up yet,” Ryder finished.

  “Blackmail,” Chance said. “Gracie’s building a coalition of powerful people to back him for the presidency. Ryder’s right. They might be willing to pay a lot to silence a man like McElroy.”

  “Then even if McElroy did survive Vietnam, there’s a good chance he’s already been silenced permanently,” Sierra said.

  Once again, everyone turned to stare at her.

  “I was just thinking. They tried to kill Mark, and then me—just because he talked briefly with me at the Blue Pepper. There’s a good chance that Brian McElroy has already been eliminated.”

  “You may be right,” Ryder said. “All the more reason why we have to find out what Mark knew. And fast.” Turning to Natalie, he said, “You’ve got contacts through that special unit you work in. Can you call in any favors and get us a meeting with Vice President Gracie?”

  “It would help if I had some leverage,” Natalie said.

  “Tell him that Sierra Gibbs wants to meet with him to discuss the notebook that Mark Anderson gave her at the Blue Pepper on Wednesday night,” Sierra said.