Lethal Lover
“Are you trying to drown the kid, Gertie?” a male voice teased from the bathroom door.
“You go on and mind your own business, Jake. Me and little Miss Crissy is having us a great time.”
Jake stuck his bald head in the doorway, and enjoyed the sight of his wife of forty-plus years sitting on the floor, seemingly oblivious to the puddle of water around her or the blouse that stuck to her like a second skin.
“Who’s giving who the bath?” he asked mischievously.
Gertie shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Listen to him, will you, Crissy? The man’s a certified comic, ain’t he?”
The little girl with the big blue eyes and honey gold ringlets tossed her head and giggled at a joke she couldn’t possibly understand. Gertie opened a towel and lifted Crissy out of the tub.
The sight of the child in Gertie’s arms caused Jake’s heart to constrict. The poor little thing had no idea she was being used as a pawn in a game where the rules were being made up as they went along.
“Gertie,” Jake said, his voice low as he edged over to the toilet and sat down on the lid, “do you think we did right by agreeing to do this?”
Gertie wrapped the plush white towel snugly around the child’s chubby middle and swept Crissy into her arms. “Of course we did the right thing. What’s the matter with you, old man?” When the child reached for her glasses, Gertie had to arch her neck to save them. “Besides, how could we have turned him down? After all he’s done for us, and never once asked for anything in return.”
Jake hung his head. “You’re right, hon. It’s just that—”
“It’s just nothing,” Gertie cut him off. “Reed McKenna asked us to take care of this little gal for a few days and that’s what we’re going to do.”
“You’re right, Gert,” Jake said as he stood up and followed her into the bedroom. “I just hope he knows what he’s doing. It don’t seem right for a child to be separated from her—”
Gertie interrupted him again. “Don’t say it,” she snapped, turning on him, “or else you’ll get her to crying all over again.”
Jake sighed and paced to the window to look out at the beach. “Reckon we could take her outside to play when she wakes up? The little thing is so pale. She needs some fresh air.” And so did Jake.
“Probably. Now, go take a walk, will you? You’re making me and the baby nervous with all your pacing.”
Jake Patterson started for the door. “Bring us back some sandwiches and chips,” his wife called after him. “And remember to get a carton of milk and some fruit for Crissy and a couple of them punch drinks for us. We’ll save them for later, and after this little dolly goes to bed, we’ll sit out on the balcony and have us a picnic.”
Jake forced a smile and walked out of his third-floor hotel room, making sure the door closed and locked behind him.
* * *
“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!” Tess gasped. “Selena could never be involved in something like this. She just couldn’t! For heaven’s sake, Reed, you’re talking about organized crime!”
Reed merely shrugged, but the burning in his gut belied his show of nonchalance. “Whether you believe me or not, your cousin was Edward Morrell’s bookkeeper for almost four years. And that position has put her in deep trouble. You must know this wasn’t her first trip to Grand Cayman.”
She hesitated before she admitted, “Selena did mention that she’d been here before, but that’s hardly an admission of guilt.”
“Oh, she’s been here, all right. Seven different trips in two years. Although no one will ever find any documentation to prove it, she was probably hauling Morrell’s dirty money to the island’s various banks and opening accounts in every one of them.”
He hated the stricken look on her face. He remembered how Tess had always placed a high premium on loyalty, especially when she was championing the cause of an underdog. Unfortunately for her, this time she was attempting to defend someone unworthy of her loyalty, and something in her eyes—the sadness and disillusionment—told Reed she knew it.
“Do you know where she is?” he asked her again.
“No,” she said softly. “I haven’t seen her since she left our table.” She glanced at her watch. “That was almost two hours ago.”
Her face was too pretty to be so drawn with worry, and Reed couldn’t help feeling responsible. “I hope I can count on you to help me convince her to do the right thing. She has to go back, Tess. The only way I can help her is if she agrees to cooperate.”
She walked over to the window and with her back to him she said, “Why didn’t she tell me? How could she be in this much trouble and not tell me?”
Reed felt his heart go out to the woman he’d once loved. There were a dozen good reasons why Selena Elliot hadn’t confided in her cousin, and all of them were life threatening. “She couldn’t tell you,” he explained. “She would have been putting you at risk.”
She spun around to face him. “But if what you’re telling me is true, I’m already at risk, aren’t I?”
Reed didn’t try to dispute her logic, because he couldn’t.
When she strode past him to the door, he caught up with her in two strides and covered her hand with his on the doorknob. They were standing so close he could almost taste her.
“Get out of my way,” she said.
“Not until you tell me where you’re going.”
“I’m going to find my cousin,” she informed him as she jerked her hand from beneath his. “Just as you should be trying to do if you were really interested in helping her.”
He stood in front of the door, blocking her path, his feet braced and his arms folded over his chest. “No way, Tess. I can’t have you poking around in something you know nothing about. There’s too much at stake.”
She scowled at him and flipped her hair over one shoulder with an indignant toss. It was a familiar gesture that sent him into a time warp of remembering.
“I’m not asking your permission, Reed.”
God, but she was sexy. “Sit down, Tessa—”
“And will you please stop calling me that!”
“Sit down,” he repeated firmly, his tone unyielding.
It came as no surprise that she ignored him and remained standing. “Will you please just listen,” he said, working to sound more conciliatory. “Selena probably saw something or someone who spooked her. She’s obviously hiding, and more than likely you’ll be the one she’ll contact when she feels it’s safe.”
He watched her silent and grudging acceptance of his logic.
“Think about it, Tess. If I found Selena, anyone else can.”
He hadn’t meant to scare her, but the alarm he saw spark in her pretty eyes told him he’d made his point.
“Stay here in case she tries to call you. I’ll go take another look around the hotel grounds.”
She sank down on the edge of the bed again, her shoulders slumped with the weight of the load he’d placed there. “If you find her, please call me. I have to talk to her.”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“And after you find her, then what?”
“It’s my job to take her back to testify.” He hoped she wouldn’t ask him again if he was a cop. The thread of trust he’d just established was pathetically thin. If she pushed him to reveal the fact that he was a paid tracker—a bounty hunter—that fragile beginning would disintegrate like smoke in the wind.
“And what if she refuses to go back? What if she won’t go with you?” she pressed him.
The eyes that met his were intelligent and assessing and he knew better than to try and lie. “Well, then I’ll just have to convince her it’s the best thing for her to do, won’t I?”
“Stay here, Tess,” he ordered at the door. “Don’t make me have to go looking for you, as well.”
“Go to hell, McKenna,” she snapped. “And be forewarned that if Selena calls before you get back, I’m not making any promises or waiting around for your approval to talk to her about any of this.”
He nodded, conceding her right to make both declarations.
Chapter Four
At sunset, the island sky became a canvas for an indescribable work of multicolored art, the likes of which Tess had never seen duplicated by man. But troubling thoughts robbed her of the joy nature’s spectacle should have inspired this evening. As she stood on the balcony, gazing out over the water, Tess wondered how a dream vacation could have turned into a nightmare so quickly.
Below, dozens of people roamed the beach, couples walked hand in hand, kids frolicked in and out of the gentle surf and built fortresses in the wet sand. Among the other tourists enjoying the evening splendor was an older couple with a toddler in the shallow beach area cordoned off for small children. She would never have noticed them from this distance had Tess not been so be sure that the tall, dark, imposing figure standing over them was Reed. He seemed especially engrossed in conversation with the gray-haired couple, which seemed odd to Tess.
Was he questioning them about Selena? Had they seen her? Talked to her? Her glance swept the beach again and stopped when it found the tourist, whose stares she’d scorned this afternoon in the lobby, standing on the ground-floor patio outside the bar, staring up at her.
When he saw her looking down at him, he turned and walked purposefully back into the bar. Tess rubbed her arms, feeling suddenly vulnerable and inexplicably chilled, despite the seventy-plus temperature and the gentle southern breeze that warmed the evening air. When she looked back to the cordoned area where the older couple and the toddler were still sitting, Reed was gone.
As she continued to scan the area below for Selena, and now for Reed, the faint strains of reggae music rode the breeze around her. The jaunty rhythms that had welcomed and invigorated Tess hours earlier, now seemed teasing and cruel, a mocking reminder that while the rest of the island—at least that part of it vacationing here at West Palm—was spending a carefree evening, laughing, dancing and building memories beneath the Grand Cayman sunset, she was trapped in a frightening situation that she could neither control nor completely understand.
“Where are you, Selena?” she whispered. “And what in God’s name have you done?”
Accepting that for now there would be no answers, Tess told herself to be patient, to maintain her faith in Selena until all the facts were known. But despite her best resolve to maintain a positive attitude, the smattering of details Reed had given her swirled around in her mind and tested that faith severely.
The grim fact that the government had sent him to bring Selena back to testify was deeply disturbing, as was Reed’s determination to find her. If the prosecution wanted Selena’s testimony that badly, it seemed reasonable to Tess to assume that the defense would be just as desperate to keep her from giving it.
The dangerous scenarios that crept into her imagination made Tess curse every legal thriller she’d ever read. She cursed the quiet life she’d carved out for herself in Evergreen, the life that had kept her so preoccupied running her own business that she’d left little time for anything or anyone else. Despite the blood ties that bound them, Tess had to admit that she and Selena were little more than strangers. As Selena had so grimly pointed out earlier, it was true that they only saw each other at funerals. Since college, they’d done little more than exchange Christmas cards, Tess realized guiltily.
But even if she had made more of an effort to remain close, would Selena have confided in her? Tess wondered. And even if she had, how could Tess have helped?
When the phone rang, Tess jumped from the chair so quickly she knocked it over as she lunged back inside the room to grab the receiver before the second ring.
Her “hello” was clipped.
“T-Tess.” Selena’s strangled sob and a jumble of other incomprehensible words crackled through the receiver.
Tess’s heart froze at the sound of her cousin’s whimpers. “Selena! Where are you? What’s happened?” Her own voice was shaky and her hand trembled as it gripped the phone.
A rustling sound coming across the line told Tess the phone had switched hands. “Your cousin is just fine, Ms. Elliot,” a cool, calm, distinctly Caribbean male voice informed her. “Now listen carefully. In Selena’s suitcase, hidden in the lining, is a book, a bound journal. Find it. Show it to no one. Do not attempt to copy or memorize any part of it. Tonight at ten o’clock bring it with you to this address.”
Tess’s knees bent involuntarily as she folded numbly to sit on the edge of the bed. This isn’t happening! her mind whispered as she reached for a notepad and pen. This isn’t real. It can’t be!
“Are you still there?” The dispassionate caller seemed strangely polite.
“Yes—yes, go on,” Tess managed to say.
“I will give you directions and instructions only once,” the voice informed her, forcing Tess to concentrate on the situation that her hammering heart confirmed was all too terrifyingly real. “You will do exactly as I say, telling no one of our conversation, involving no one.”
“Just tell me what you want me to do,” she pleaded. “I’ll do anything, but please, please don’t hurt her.” She hadn’t realized she was crying until she felt the tears drip onto the phone and seep between her fingers.
As the anonymous caller listed his demands and dictated a series of strange directions, Tess scribbled wildly. Although she hardly recognized the scrawl her trembling hand had produced as her own, she repeated the directions when Selena’s abductor ordered her to do so.
“Ten o’clock sharp,” he reminded her.
“Ten o’clock,” Tess repeated as though hypnotized.
“Your cousin’s life depends entirely upon you. We don’t want to hurt anyone, but we will do what we have to do to get what we want. No doubt you’ll be tempted to call the police, or maybe even go to your embassy. Do not consider doing either of those things, Ms. Elliot. If anyone accompanies you tonight, you will never see your cousin alive again.”
Before Tess could respond to the horrifying warning, the line went dead. And for a long moment she could only sit with the receiver still in her hand, too numb and shaken and frightened to move.
Finally she hung up the phone, choking back the irrational fear that somehow by just disconnecting the line she’d severed her last tie to Selena.
Alone in the room that had grown murky with shadows, she felt utter despair. Her tears had ceased and in their place a cold, dry fear stung her eyes and burned her throat.
The numbers on the clock radio beside the bed glowed an eerie green. Seven forty-five. Selena’s abductor had said Tess was to meet with him at ten. Ten sharp. The numbers changed: seven forty-six and with that change, the reality of precious time passing hit Tess with deadly meaning, jolting her into frantic action.
Once on her feet, she switched on the lamp beside the bed and dragged Selena’s suitcases out of the closet and into the middle of the room.
Dropping to the floor beside the largest one, she jerked it open and sat staring, momentarily overwhelmed by the empty space staring back at her. She began searching. The stark fear that drove her caused her stomach to roil and her hands to shake as she felt the onset of a throbbing headache.
Although Tess was a frequent climber and had scaled some of the roughest terrain in Colorado, the obstacle she faced now was even more daunting than those lofty peaks. For Selena’s sake, Tess prayed she was equal to the challenge.
* * *
MINUTES LATER, after patting the sides and the back of all three suitcases, Tess sat back on her heels, a feeling of defeat pressing down on her. She turned to the smaller carryon that Selena had brought with her, scolding herself for being so slow to think of it.
The journal had to be in the carryon, she told herself. Certainly if Selena had been carrying something valuable or incriminating, Tess reasoned, she wouldn’t have checked it at the airport.
But after a thorough search failed to turn up anything concealed in the lining of Selena’s smaller bag, Tess’s heart sank again. In desperation, she searched all three suitcases again, ending with the largest one. She shook it, patted it and turned it upside down, but only after she’d kicked it angrily across the room and then stooped to retrieve it, did she feel the irregular outline on the bottom of the bag.
Her hands groped along the hard vinyl casing with trembling anticipation. Finally, she felt it: the outline of something firm and square and distinctly booklike lodged between the lining and the small, black plastic wheels on the bottom of the case.
Frantically she searched the room for something sharp to slit the lining, jerking open dresser drawers and rummaging through her own belongings. Finally, in the bathroom, her fingers closed around a metal nail file in the bottom of her cosmetic bag and a second later she was sawing away at the lining inside the suitcase.
When at last she withdrew the notebook from between the bag’s cloth lining and the frame, her heart beat double time as she stared down at the object that verified so much of what Reed had told her.
Gingerly, she opened it and sat staring uncomprehending at row after row of handwritten figures and dates, all recorded in Selena’s distinctive left-hand style. Reed had said she’d probably made numerous deposits for Edward Morrell and, by the list of figures—many of them seven digits long—Tess realized her cousin had been dealing with a substantial fortune.
Were the notations that stared back at her from Selena’s journal the only documentation of Edward Morrell’s dirty money? Where had all that money come from? And at what cost had this fortune been amassed?
“Oh, Selena,” she murmured, feeling heartsick and hollow. “What have you done?”
When the figures began to swim before her eyes, Tess swallowed and took a deep breath and told herself to prepare for the next step: the exchange of the notebook for her cousin.
Panic rose inside her when it suddenly dawned that she had no idea how she was going to find the rendezvous point Selena’s abductor had described. She might have given in to that panic, had she not glanced at the clock radio and realized that time was slipping by. It was already 8:15, which meant she had a little more than an hour and a half to find the appointed meeting place, along streets she’d never traveled before, in a country where everyone drove on the opposite side of the road!
But as any good climber knew, when stuck in a tight spot, looking down was the first mistake. On the side of a mountain or in Grand Cayman, the only way out was up, Tess reminded herself with grim resolve.
Hastily she changed into a pair of jeans, a navy blue T-shirt and sneakers. With a last look around the room, she grabbed her purse, the scribbled directions for the ominous meeting place and Selena’s journal, or the ransom, as she’d already come to think of it.
As she hurried toward the door, she shoved the journal into her purse and zipped the bag closed. The clock informed her that she now had little more than an hour to find the rendezvous point. Having no idea where the abductor’s instructions would lead her, or how long it would take her to get there, made her mission all the more nerve-racking.
Right now all she could allow herself to think about was getting away from her room, away from West Palm and into the winding streets of Georgetown, where somewhere her cousin was being held against her will.
A knock on the door scattered her thoughts like buckshot. “Tess, open the door. It’s me.”
Reed! Tess’s mind shrieked. Damn him! He would never let her get past him without an explanation of where she was going. And knowing him, if she ignored his pounding, he’d pick the lock or break down the door.
While she hesitated, wondering what to do, he banged on the door again, with more authority. “Tess. Open up. I know you’re in there.”
For one crazy moment Tess was seized with a bizarre impulse to fling open the door and throw herself into his arms and beg him to help her. But the bizarre and impossible impulse died when the ominous words of Selena’s abductor came back to haunt her: Your cousin’s life depends entirely upon you.
“Tess, let me in,” Reed demanded.
“Just a minute,” she stalled. “I’m—I’m not decent,” she lied as she switched on the light and shoved Selena’s suitcases under one of the queen-size beds.
“Tess. Open the door.” It was the voice of a man unused to being kept waiting.
“All right. All right. I’m coming.” She swallowed two huge gulps of air, willing her heart rate steady and pausing at the door just long enough to smooth her hair and whisper a silent prayer for courage.
“What’s wrong?” he said before the door even closed behind him.
“You mean, other than the fact that my cousin is missing and you keep charging into my room?”
His shook his head and allowed himself a slow smile. “Never one to mince words, were you, Tessa?” The smile faded. “Has she contacted you?”
“Would I be here if she had?”
His curt nod was the only indication that he’d accepted her hedge. For the first time she noticed he carried a small canvas bag, which he tossed onto the bed before unzipping it.
When Tess realized that the bag was filled with his personal belongings she gasped, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I need a shave.”
When he reached inside the duffel bag and withdrew a shaving kit, she blurted, “Well, go get one someplace else!”
He tucked the small shaving bag in one hand and turned to face her. “Listen, I’ve been up for thirty-six hours straight, I haven’t had anything to eat or drink but airplane food and warm beer and I need a shower and a shave.”
Tess was flabbergasted. “Surely you don’t expect me to stand by and—and—”
“Watch?” He shot her a wicked smile and shrugged. “Suit yourself, Tessa.”
“Oh! You are insufferable!”
“Hey, I’m not any happier about all of this than you are, babe. I’d hoped to fly in, snag Selena and be back in Miami by tomorrow morning. But sometimes we don’t always get what we want, you know?”
“If you’re so tired and so dirty, then why don’t you go to your own room to bathe and take your stupid shower?” she demanded. “Give me your room number and I’ll call you if I hear from her.”
His laugh was short, dry and brittle. “You always were a lousy liar, Tessa. And as for the room, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s the height of tourist season. There’s not a spare room anywhere along Seven Mile Beach. Face it. You’re stuck with me until your cousin turns up or you tell me where she is.”
“But...you can’t stay here!”
“Too late. I’ve already moved in.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he interrupted again.
“I promise I’ll be out of here the moment I catch up to Selena. In the meantime, I’m part of the furniture.”
The man was not only insufferable, but infuriating, as well, and Tess would have loved nothing better than to tell him exactly what she thought of his boorish behavior. Right now, however, delivering the notebook still stuffed inside her purse took precedence over her anger and her desire to tell him off—now and over the past eight years.
The more pressing problem was how to get away from him to make the exchange with Selena’s abductors. “Whatever you say, Reed,” she agreed suddenly, obviously astonishing him with her unexpected capitulation. “There are plenty of towels in the cupboard above the john.”
The suspicion in his eyes was undisguised and she added a terse, “And please, put the lid down when you’re finished in there.”
He laughed. “I’ll be the perfect guest,” he assured her with a mocking bow. “I’m glad to see you acting so reasonably. You always were the practical one, weren’t you, Tessa.”
“I thought I asked you to stop calling me that,” she shot back. “And I’ll thank you to stop telling me what ‘I always was.’” As if you ever really knew, she added bitterly to herself.