Blind Instinct (19 page)

S
aunders's men moved like dark shadows around her, taking up positions, two on a mezzanine floor of a warehouse, the other four fanned out on the ground floor, covering both doors and her.

Sara was pushed into the center of the dusty space. The entry door was directly in front of her. If anyone busted in, she would be in the line of fire.

“Sit down. There.”

“You're working for Reichmann?”

“With her, not for.”

“Oil?”

Saunders looked briefly amused. “The oil angle did work until Marc found the shares.”

A blond woman Sara recognized as one of Helene's security detail strolled across the floor, wearing dark jeans and a black shirt, a large black handgun held loosely in one hand. A sharp sting at her throat and the diamond necklace dangled from the blond woman's fingers. “Guess again.”

“The de Vernay diamonds.”

Her gaze was icy. “What do you know about de Vernay?”

“Reichmann stole from de Vernay in France, then sent him and his family to Auschwitz.”

“Now tell me
how
you knew that?” she demanded softly. “No one, except a handful of the upper echelon, even knew the diamonds existed. Since Hartley died, only Helene—and my father.”

Sara studied Marisa's face. For her father to share any knowledge with Helene, he had to be part of the upper echelon. Four members had died last year: Onslow, Parker, Seaton and Ritter. All four stories, complete with photos, had made the front pages of the national tabloids. “Stephen Ritter?”

Marisa glanced at Saunders. “I thought you said she was just a librarian.”

Sara recalled a news report on Ritter's death. “Ritter never married.”

Marisa's expression was remote. “My father was a clever man. He kept us a secret.”

Sara glanced at Saunders. “So that's how you found out Helene's identity.” When Ritter had died Saunders would have had access to her private papers. He had discovered the existence of Marisa then cut a deal with her.

Ritter, a mathematical and financial genius, had been the most brilliant of all of the exposed cabal members, and the one most likely to take leadership from Helene. Helene was supposed to have murdered him. It made a twisted kind of sense that Ritter would leave behind a daughter who had the potential to destroy Helene and take control of the cabal's assets.

Sara glanced at Saunders. “So, who are we waiting for? Helene?”

His mouth curved with cold amusement. “Lopez.”

She briefly closed her eyes. “This is the meeting Reichmann arranged.”

“At my behest.”

Saunders's motives were as clear as an icy pool. His reputation—and his career prospects—had been damaged by the discovery of the mass grave at Juarez, but bringing in Lopez would
provide an instant career fix. “You want Lopez.” And, at a guess, the director's job.

He checked his wristwatch. “Lopez should be here sometime in the next half hour.”

Her stomach tightened. “And when he gets here, let me guess—I have a nasty accident.”

“Correct again. With your family's connection to Lopez and the cabal, no one will question Lopez's motive for shooting you, or the fact that—” he bent down and brushed the transmitter earring in her lobe, which he had turned off at the same time he had removed her microphone “—I was able to find you and shoot Lopez.”

“It's too late to keep a lid on Helene's identity. It was radioed in just before the explosion.”

He shrugged. “Helene will have to take care of that little problem herself.”

And now that Helene was exposed as Ambassador Cohen and on the run, her face would be splashed over newspapers and television screens. That would suit Saunders. With his power, he could easily arrange safe passage out of the country and name his price. With the death of Lopez and his public profile taken care of, that price would be the de Vernay diamonds.

“What makes you think Lopez will show?”

The answer came from Marisa. “He needs the diamonds to survive. Helene has promised him a share.”

Saunders produced a handful of cotton wadding and a roll of tape, signaling that the conversation was over, and expertly gagged her.

Time crawled by. Her shoulders and back ached from holding herself in a sitting position and she was shivering convulsively. Her wrists and hands were numb. Her head periodically dipped forward on her chest as she slipped in and out of a dozing state, although she never quite lost consciousness.

The vibration of a cell phone jerked her fully awake. The toneless conversation, followed by a flurry of movement as Saunders's men shifted position, sent adrenaline pumping through her veins.

Glass shattered. Simultaneously, light flashed, temporarily blinding her, and an explosion made her ears ring for the second time that night. The door burst open, the sound of gunfire deafening. Saunders jerked her in front of him, using her as a human shield, one arm locked across her throat.

Her head swam. Acrid smoke burned her nostrils and throat as Saunders dragged her backward.
Something whined close to her ear, the sound uncannily like a kitten mewling. A bullet.

A second shot and Saunders's grip loosened and she was rolling. Then Bayard was leaning over her, his eyes like chips of black ice. His hands swept over her stomach, her rib cage.

“I'm not hurt. You got Saunders.” She sucked in air, adjusting to the fact that it was over and that Bayard was all right. “You
know
you got Saunders.”

Aside from bruising and a stitched cut over one cheekbone where a piece of debris had sliced him, Bayard was none the worse for wear after the explosion. As soon as the area was secure, he bundled her out onto the street and into the back of a van with tinted windows. Bridges watched over her, his face grim, while Bayard dealt with the mop-up.

Thirty minutes later, a “caretaker” team of Bayard's people was in place, the jurisdictions sorted, and the paperwork in process. Bayard moved her from the van into a company car.

In grim silence he peeled out of his body armor and thigh holster, dropped both on the backseat, then shrugged into a shoulder rig and transferred
the gun. He slid behind the wheel, dug in his pocket and handed her the diamond necklace Marisa had taken.

Her fingers closed around the stones. She was glad he had retrieved a family heirloom, but in that moment the diamonds and their value was utterly unimportant. Bayard was alive and so was she; that was all that mattered.

She had seen Marisa cuffed and pushed into the back of another van, along with two of Saunders's men. The rest had been loaded into ambulances on stretchers or in body bags.

Bayard stopped for lights. He checked the rearview mirror and Sara realized the reason he had been driving slowly was that Bridges and another agent were following them in the van.

Bayard parked outside the apartment. Bridges pulled in behind. The second agent, Hudson, she realized, got out and took the car keys from Bayard.

Bridges saw them to the door of Bayard's apartment, his eyes watchful. When the door closed behind them, Sara stared at the warm lamp-lit room. They had only left hours before, but it felt like weeks. “What about Helene and Lopez?”

Bayard shrugged out of his shoulder rig, and dropped it on a couch. “Marisa's talking. According to her, Saunders was too late making his play. Helene and Lopez have cut a deal.”

“You knew it was going to happen.”

“It was a safe bet. A few weeks ago, one of my researchers uncovered an interesting fact. On the day Alex Lopez was born in Bogotá, his mother, Maria Chavez, a hemophiliac, was admitted to a hospital for a blood transfusion. But not in Bogotá. She was in San Jose del Guaviare, a tiny clinic in the interior of Colombia.”

“So there's no way she could be Lopez's mother.”

Bayard collected a first aid kit from the kitchen. He made her sit on one of the stools at the kitchen counter while he cleaned the myriad nicks and abrasions she'd sustained at the embassy party, mostly on the back of her neck and arms.

“As far as we can ascertain, Maria Chavez had a number of miscarriages, but she never gave birth to a live child. There's no way to prove it, but given that Marco was desperate for a son, and Helene needed his backing to retain control of the cabal after her father died, it seems clear that they struck a bargain.”

The puzzling, volatile relationship between Lopez and Helene Reichmann suddenly made crazy sense.

Alex Lopez was Helene's son.

“So Helene set Saunders and Marisa up?”

Bayard unscrewed a tube of antiseptic cream. “Saunders made the mistake of believing that he had the sole tools required to manipulate her. As soon as his demands became too great, she was always going to cut a deal with Lopez.”

“But if you had informed him about the relationship, he would never have made that mistake.”

Bayard smeared a thin layer of cream over the cuts. “Like I said, you're wasted on that library.”

“How long have you known about Saunders?”

“Not long. I transferred to National Intelligence at the request of the director. He suspected he had a leak, and he wanted someone from out of department coordinating the investigations into Lopez and the cabal. I've had Saunders under surveillance for months, although, with the amount of traveling he does, it wasn't possible to watch him all the time. A few weeks ago he had a series of after-hours visits with Marisa. We had it logged as an affair.”

“So you restricted information to him and watched—”

“And still made mistakes.” He pulled her to her feet.

Her arms closed around his waist and he winced. Not so invulnerable, then. “So who set the bomb?”

“An explosives team is checking out the site. They think it was set by Reichmann's head of security, Hendricks, which means she was two steps ahead. The bomb was inserted into the floor cavity upstairs. She planned her exit—and Saunders's death.”

Two days later, Portland, Maine

M
idnight. An empty stretch of beach.

Helene Reichmann checked the luminous dial of her wristwatch as she studied the blank canvas of damp sand left by a retreating tide. The cold drift of the breeze raised gooseflesh on her arms as she tried to penetrate the thick darkness.

The cold, ceaseless rhythm of the Atlantic Ocean sweeping the coast spun her back. Lubek, 1944. Juarez, just a few weeks later. Costa Rica, 1984.

A dim shadow was briefly silhouetted by moonlight. Not Lopez; he was too elusive to show himself like that. But it was most certainly one of his men.

Concealed in the rocks behind her, Hendricks talked tonelessly into a radio, repositioning his men.

Silence, broken by the ceaseless rush of waves. More memories.

Marco Chavez hadn't wanted marriage—he'd already had the blue-blooded wife he'd ordered from Spain. All he had wanted from her was a son. She had agreed to give him the child in exchange for his backing. And the backing had been imperative. Despite the fact that she had held power by virtue of holding the money, without the brutal tactics of Marco's enforcers, the network her father had built would have disintegrated. She would have ended up exposed, imprisoned—more than likely dead.

She had slept with Marco because he had insisted on it. She had stayed in Bogotá, isolated from everyone but Marco and an old crone of a nurse, who had looked after her and made sure no other man came near her for almost a
year
. Long enough for her to get pregnant, bear the child—which, to her relief, was male—and hand him over to Marco.

When she'd handed the baby over, she hadn't expected to feel anything more than revulsion
and relief. In her mind he had been a part of Marco, not her—the seal to a bargain.

A whisper of sound, shifting shadows. A hand clamped around her throat. A dark, flat gaze locked with hers, and any idea that there was a bond dissolved. Gunfire sounded, to the left, then another shot, higher up.

The choking pressure on her throat eased.

The cold gleam of a gun in Lopez's hand was outlined by moonlight. “That's Larson and Hendricks down.”

She stared down the barrel of the gun. He could shoot, but he wouldn't. Not until he had gotten what he wanted. “You didn't need to shoot them, they were holding fire.”

His list of demands was succinct and predictable. She could keep her shares and business interests; thanks to Bayard they were traceable, and the alliance with Riyad was now useless. What was left of the gold bullion and the artwork was too bulky; he would never get them out of the country.

He would take the Cayman Island accounts.

His mouth curved in a smile, and for the first time she saw herself in his features. “And the diamonds.”

“You knew that I was your mother. Knew and used it.”

“Are we dealing, or do I kill you now?”

“You won't kill me, so don't bother with the bluff. You can have twenty-five percent now, the rest when we reach the Caymans. Who told you about the diamonds?”

Over the years she had added to the original cache of diamonds, but always in secret, steadily converting cash reserves into cut and polished stones. They were small, portable and, thanks to the tight grip the South Africans had on the diamond market, more than held their value.

Abruptly, she was free. Something chill swirled at her back. Choking fear held her immobile for long seconds.

She whirled and stared at…blankness.

Hendricks stepped out of the shadows, his eyes empty. One arm hung limp and bloodied at his side. His Kevlar vest was punctured where he had taken multiple hits across the chest. A handgun was held loosely in his good hand. “Where did he go?”

She suppressed a shiver. “He's in the rocks somewhere. Be careful.”

Hendricks edged between the rocks, staying
flat. Something dark flickered at the edge of her vision. The detonation of a handgun split the air. Hendricks grunted and stumbled back. He was dead before he hit the sand.

The cold breeze continued to flow across Helene's face, tugging at her hair and making her feel every one of her seventy-two years. But her mind was clearer and sharper than it had ever been. Lopez and the sniper he had up in the hills, could see her, probably as plain as day, but neither would shoot.

Not until Lopez had what he wanted.

Bayard took the call at one in the morning. Hendricks and Larson had been found on a beach in Portland, Maine. They also had a lead on Helene. Courtesy of information from Marisa, they had been monitoring a shipping firm. The trucks had just rolled up to a warehouse in an industrial area just outside of Baltimore. According to their source, there was a ship on standby.

Sara climbed out of bed and made coffee while he made calls and dressed. Bayard added milk to cool it down, then drank the coffee in steady gulps.

When he kissed her, she clung, briefly. He had
to go; it was his job. She discovered that she hated his job. “Be careful. I want you back.”

When he was gone, she sipped coffee and turned on the TV, then, too restless to watch anything, turned it off. She walked through to the laundry, pulled clothes from the dryer and began folding them into piles. The T-shirt and pants Bayard had worn when he had rescued her for a moment brought back the darkness and confusion of the warehouse and Saunders's prone body.

She put the clothes away. The fake diamond studs she had worn to the reception were still sitting in a small dish on Bayard's dresser. Another reminder of how badly things had gone wrong at the reception, because they simply weren't dealing with people who had the usual criminal agendas.

Something was wrong
.

She walked back to the sitting room and found her phone.

The warehouse had to be a setup, a diversion. With all the publicity, and Reichmann/Cohen's photograph being circulated amongst security and border agencies—not to mention the fact that the press were having a field day with the story—neither Helene nor Lopez would touch it. If they
hadn't already left the country, they should be solely concerned with getting out.

If
they had a normal, criminal agenda.

She remembered the conversation in Rousseau's office. Bayard had said Lopez was working on two levels; two of his men had been shot, his phone had been tapped.

Just days ago Bayard had been an acknowledged target—and the warehouse was a location that guaranteed his attendance.

Her heart slammed hard in her chest. She picked up her cell phone and speed dialed Bayard. When he didn't answer, probably because he was using the phone, she tried Lissa's number. Lissa picked up on the second ring. When Sara explained that she needed to get a message to Bayard and why, Lissa offered to try. “I'll call you back in a few minutes.”

Lissa hung up and Sara dialed Bayard again. When she was shunted through to his answering service, she left a message. “The warehouse is a setup, and so is the beach.”

A whisper of sound made her stiffen. Cold metal gouged into the side of her neck.

“Clever girl.”

She stared into Stein's—Lopez's—eyes. There
was no recognition. Nothing personal. For him she was a complication, nothing more. Killing her would just be business as usual.

“You're not frightened. Now that surprises me.”

“If you were going to shoot, you would have done it by now.”

Something changed in his gaze, although she didn't make the mistake of assuming Lopez harbored any kind of human emotion. He was a coldly brilliant, clinically organized, psychopathic killer. When she had fulfilled whatever role he had assigned to her, he would execute her. “You're right, I'm not going to kill you…yet. You're my passport out of this country.”

“He won't stop until he finds you.”

Lopez jerked his head in the direction of the door. At that second her cell phone rang.

Bayard.

The preprogrammed number of rings completed and the phone lapsed into silence. A message appeared on the screen. She had voice mail.

“Put the phone down on the table.”

He gestured with the gun and she moved back a step and watched as he listened to the message, then pocketed the phone.

“Time to leave. Hold your hands out.”

He produced a pair of cuffs.

“You won't get me out of the building wearing those.”

He snapped the cuffs on, then slid a flat black case out of his coat pocket.

A ripple of unease slid through her as he extracted a syringe and a small vial of colorless fluid from the case. “What is
that?
”

His expression was peculiarly absorbed as he broke the seal on the vial and filled the syringe.

When his gaze fixed on hers she realized he had heard her question, he just hadn't bothered to respond. She was cuffed and under his control. He had neutralized the threat of the phone and now he was proceeding with the next step in his plan. If she registered at all, it was as a logistical problem, not a human being.

She watched as he tested the syringe, the moment surreal. Within a short time she would be unconscious. When it suited him, he would kill her.

She took a deep breath and waited. When his gloved fingers closed over her arm, she jerked her cuffed hands up in a two-handed punch. As a blow, it wasn't that effective. She was too close, and she couldn't get much swing, but it was
enough to throw him off balance and release his hold. Shoving a chair in his path, she lunged for the hall and the front door. One step away from the door, he caught her arm and swung her in a short arc. She slammed into the wall hard enough that she saw stars. His weight pinned her and she felt the sting of the needle.

He stepped back and she stumbled. Her head was throbbing and her mouth tasted of blood. Whatever it was he'd injected her with, it was already working. “You won't get out of the building. Bayard has his people in place.”

Lopez tossed Hudson's and Glover's IDs on the hall table. “Had. Past tense.”

“You won't get out of the country. The borders are being watched.”

“Even Bayard can't watch every part of every border.”

Her stomach sank. He wouldn't risk sea or air travel; he would be a sitting duck. A land crossing meant Mexico or, more likely… “Canada.”

He said something in Spanish. She didn't understand every word, but she understood enough. She was female, barely human. Of no importance.

Which meant they were going to Canada.

It made sense. The border was huge and difficult to control. People crossed back and forth on day trips and not every road had a checkpoint. There were plenty of wilderness places where anyone could simply walk across without being either seen or stopped. Added to that, the places that were checked were often flooded with tourists.

“If we're driving and you want to get me over the border, I'm going to need clothes.”

The logic was unassailable. She was dressed for bed in a camisole and cotton drawstring pants. If he tried to haul her outside, they could get noticed. En route, the fact that she was dressed for bed
would
make her noticeable, which Lopez wouldn't want.

He jerked his head in the direction of the bedrooms. “Two minutes, no more.”

He followed her through to Bayard's bedroom, where most of her things were now stored. She collected socks, sneakers and track pants and quickly pulled them on. She no longer had Todd's gun. Bayard had taken it along with all the other items she had retrieved from the attic. She glanced at the earring with the transmitter and GPS device on the dresser and gauged her
chances of getting it. Opening Bayard's drawer, she took out one of his sweatshirts, then feigned a dizzy spell and dropped it over the earring. Sliding her hand beneath the sweatshirt, she palmed both earrings as she straightened.

Lopez muttered a hard, flat phrase in Spanish. Her two minutes were up.

She turned to face Lopez, supporting herself with one hand on the chest because already she was beginning to feel woozy. “You'll need to take the cuffs off so I can pull the clothes on.”

Lopez unlocked the cuffs and replaced them in his pocket, keeping the gun trained on her the entire time.

Her fingers clumsy, and keeping the hand with the earrings closed, she dragged the sweatshirt over her head and shoved her arms through the sleeves. The faint scents of laundry powder and Bayard registered, and fierce emotion swamped her. The sweatshirt was large. Thick folds fell to just below her bottom, and the sleeves were long enough that they sagged down over her wrists, hiding the fact that she was holding something.

While she'd pulled on the clothing, Lopez had found her handbag, upended it onto the bed, and
pocketed her passport. He jerked the gun in the direction of the door, indicating that it was time to leave. When he didn't make any comment about the fact that she was wearing a garment that was obviously too large for her, relief made her head swim. He had been focused on finding her passport, and hadn't noticed anything suspicious about the clothing she had chosen. Even if Lopez suspected the sweater had originally belonged to Bayard, he probably thought she was frightened enough to need the comfort of her boyfriend's clothing.

Fighting waves of dizziness, she preceded him out of the apartment and into the corridor. As they waited for the lift, it registered that this time he hadn't bothered with the cuffs, but that made sense. He had needed them to keep her under control while he had injected her, but she was now in no condition to fight him and they would be a liability while trying to move her out of the apartment and into a vehicle. With the drug taking effect, he could project the fiction that she was drunk and no one would take much notice.

The elevator doors slid open. Lopez, gun held against one thigh so that it was almost invisible, gripped her arm and shoved her inside.