He smoothed back her shoulder-length black hair and touched her flushed cheek. Poor kid. She wasn’t Suzette York and whoever she was she probably wasn’t Yvette’s child, but she was somebody’s little girl.
“One of you take over,” Griff called to the agents. “Mitchum is sending in the medics. I have to backtrack to the elephant statues.”
He rose from the pathway and going against his better judgment, he checked the time—11:44. Sixteen minutes till midnight.
Winded, his heart beating ninety-to-nothing, Griff arrived back at the elephant statues at the southeast end of the lake.
A snake slithers near elephants.
At Cupid’s Fountain, the first hostage’s guard had used a bow and arrow to attack Griff and kill the girl. At the memorial fountain area, cyclists had chased their victim and run her down, as the paparazzi had chased Princess Diana. If Griff could figure out the method the third hostage’s guard planned to use, he might be able to stay one step ahead of him. An elephant gun? Snake venom? Both were highly unlikely.
Think outside the box. Don’t think literally. Think figuratively.
He needed to think like a highly intelligent, diabolical madman.
“You’re on your own for now,” Mitchum informed him. “It will take a good ten minutes for my nearest agents to make it across the park from the vicinity of the Speaker’s Corner near the Marble Arch. The ones you left behind at the memorial are handling cleanup and waiting with the victim for our medical team to arrive.”
“Got it,” Griff said. “Any idea about a connection between snakes and elephants and a way to kill?”
“Nothing plausible,” Mitchum admitted. “Then again, our Mr. York could be planning to change the rules mid-game. No way to know.”
“I don’t see a damn thing. No sign of anyone. There are too many blind spots at this time of night. The moonlight helps and the lights from the pathway and here and there around the lake, but with so many trees and bushes, they could be hiding anywhere.”
Mitchum grunted.
“If anything goes wrong ...”
“Positive thinking, old chap.”
Griff chuckled. “Take care of Yvette.”
“Will do.”
As the tension coiled in his gut, tighter and tighter, Griff surveyed the area and found nothing suspicious. Vigilant on his hunt, noting every sound and smell, watching his back, uncertainty at war with duty, he spent the next ten minutes searching, second-guessing his every move.
He reported in to Mitchum after the first five minutes and was told that the second girl—on her way to the hospital—was still alive.
And then he contacted Mitchum again when there were only six minutes left on the clock. “I’m in the wrong place. I’ve wasted too much time here.”
“You’re in the right place,” Mitchum told him.
“Then where are they? Are you sure that there isn’t another place in the park that ‘a snake slithers near elephants’ could describe?”
“I repeat, you are in the right place. He’s making you wait, hoping to confuse you. Think about it.”
“Yeah, okay.” With time running out, Griff suddenly sensed someone approaching. Gun in hand, he eased around and came face-to-face with more of Mitchum’s agents. “A couple of your guys just showed up.”
“Remember that whatever happens, it’s not your fault if you can’t save this girl. York never intended for any of them to live. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess I knew all along. But I had to try. I had no choice other than to give York what he wanted.”
The agents flanked Griff’s position there on the pathway between the lake and the elephant statues as they waited. Two minutes later—Griff checked his watch—at four till midnight, a woman’s voice called out from somewhere nearby.
“Help me, please. It’s Suzette, Dad, your daughter. Please, don’t let me die.”
Dad? Damn! He was not her father.
But what if he was? What if Suzette was Yvette’s long-lost baby?
How much pleasure would York derive out of killing Suzette only days before the DNA results proved she was Griff and Yvette’s daughter?
Emerging out of the darkness from behind a stand of trees, Suzette York walked slowly past the statues and onto the pathway by the lake. When she saw Griff, she stopped and held up both hands in a signal for him to stay where he was.
And that’s when he saw the snakelike device coiled around her waist and across her hips. A metallic serpent decorated with small dots of explosives wired to a detonator. Was it a timed detonator or a remote detonator? In the years he had spent on Amara, Griff had never dealt with explosives. He had no idea how to defuse the bomb wrapped around Suzette.
“He—he’s gone,” she called out to Griff. “I’m going to die if you don’t help me, but you could die if you try to save me.”
Griff turned to Mitchum’s guys. “I don’t suppose either of you knows how to defuse a bomb, do you?”
The taller, older guy, his dark hair streaked with silver and his tanned face rutted with hard-living lines answered, “I do.”
“You do?”
“Fifteen years in the SAS.”
What were the odds? But then again, considering that Mitchum would have chosen the best of the best for this mission, maybe the odds had been in their favor all along.
“You know this is above and beyond the call of duty,” Griff told him.
“It bloody well is, but I can’t just let the girl die, now can I?”
Without further conversation, Griff and the former SAS soldier exchanged a man-to-man look. Griff watched as the agent approached Suzette, spoke softly to her, and then examined the bomb strapped to her trembling body. Griff suspected that timed or remote, the detonator would set off the bomb at midnight.
Three damned minutes!
“You two need to move back,” the agent warned. “There’s nothing either of you can do to help me, and if this thing explodes, there is no need for all four of us to die.”
Suzette whimpered in fear.
Something deep and paternal rose up inside Griff, urging him to comfort this girl. At that moment, it didn’t seem to matter if she was Yvette’s child, possibly his child, too. She was a human being, a young girl on the verge of womanhood, her whole life ahead of her.
Griff and the other agent heeded the warning and took cover a good distance away. With each passing second, the weight of guilt grew heavier and heavier on Griff’s shoulders. If Suzette and Mitchum’s seasoned agent died, it would be because they had been caught in the crossfire between York and him.
The UK Powell agent at his side nudged Griff. When he faced the man, he was handed a pair of compact, high-powered binoculars. “If anyone can do it, Hughes can. I’ve seen him pull off a blooming miracle more than once.”
Griff nodded. “Thanks.” He grasped the binoculars, lifted them into place, and zeroed in on Suzette and the man trying desperately to save her life.
Sweat moistened Griff’s hands and dotted his forehead and upper lip. Thin rivulets of perspiration dampened his sweatshirt. He watched silently, the only sound he could hear the staccato beat of his own heart.
Two minutes.
What would it do to Yvette if Hughes couldn’t save Suzette and the DNA test results proved she was her daughter?
There’s still time. It’s not too late.
“What’s going on?” Mitchum’s voice in Griff’s ear momentarily stunned him.
“Your man Hughes is trying to defuse a bomb strapped around Suzette like a slithering snake. If my guess is right, he has exactly one and a half minutes to get the job done.”
Mitchum grunted. “If anyone can do it—”
“Yeah, I know, if anyone can do it, Hughes can,” Griff said. “By the way, was it just a coincidence that one of your agents is an explosives expert?”
“I made a point of bringing in agents with diverse talents for tonight’s operation. But it was luck that placed him where he needed to be at precisely the right time.”
Lowering the binoculars, Griff stared at his wristwatch.
Sixty seconds.
Chapter 22
Encased in fear, despising his own helplessness, Griff again watched through the binoculars as Hughes worked feverishly to disarm the bomb. Seconds ticked by at the speed of light. Or so it seemed. There just wasn’t enough time. Two more people would be sacrificed on the whim of a madman.
Who the hell are you, Malcolm York?
Why are you impersonating a dead man
?
Why do you hate me so God damn much?
The night closed in around him, a suffocating numbness settling over his body, gluing him to the spot.
How many more people would die because of the pseudo-York’s thirst for revenge? Wasn’t kidnapping Nicole punishment enough? Didn’t York understand that anything else he did, no matter how horrible, would affect Griff in the same way?
You know what he’s doing. He is trying to destroy you by degrees, weaken you, and render you powerless, so that when the final battle comes—the battle to save Nicole—you won’t have the strength to protect what is most precious to you.
Griff’s vision blurred as he stared at Hughes and Suzette. He closed his eyes, opened them, and blinked repeatedly until his vision returned to normal.
Come on, come on. You can do this, Hughes. You can do it.
Instantly switching for silently cheering Hughes on to begging a higher power for assistance, Griff uttered a heartfelt prayer. He wasn’t a man of faith, had cursed God on more than one occasion, had substantial doubts that God even existed. And yet here he was praying.
He figured that in the days to come, he would be doing a lot more praying. What else could a man do when confronted with things beyond his control?
Griff forced himself to watch Hughes and Suzette in those final moments, death only seconds away for both of them.
And then it happened!
The agent at his side slapped Griff on the back. “He did it! Son of a bitch, he did it.”
All at once, with less than thirty seconds to spare, Hughes had performed another
blooming
miracle.
Suzette fell against Hughes as he gave Griff and the other agent a thumbs-up signal. To say Griff was relieved would be a vast understatement. Hughes wrapped his arm around Suzette and led her toward a nearby bench.
“Hughes did it,” Griff informed Mitchum.
“Damn!”
“We’ll meet up with you at the main entrance as soon as we can,” Griff said. “In the meantime, get in touch with Yvette, and let her know that Suzette is safe and I’ll bring her with me to the hotel once your medics check her out.”
“What do you want me to tell Yvette about the other two girls?”
“The truth. One is dead and the other is seriously injured.”
With Mitchum’s agent keeping watch over the situation, prepared to strike if danger threatened, Griff made his way straight to Suzette. While Hughes studied the snakelike coils set with explosives that wrapped around Suzette’s waist and hips, Griff sat down beside her on the bench.
She glanced at Griff, her eyes still wild with fear, her face void of color. “I nearly died. If it hadn’t been for ...” She buried her face against Griff’s chest.
He eased his arm up and around her shivering shoulders. His gaze locked with Hughes’s for a split second before Hughes returned to the task of freeing her from the deactivated bomb strapped around her.
Yvette retreated to the privacy of her bedroom there at the Lancaster, leaving Mitchum’s agent alone in the lounge. She did not know how long it would be before Griffin arrived with Suzette, but she suspected it would be at least another hour. She needed time alone to collect her thoughts.
“Suzette is alive,” Mitchum had told her.
“And the other girls?”
He had cleared his throat before answering. “One is dead and the other in the hospital.”
If any one of the three girls was her child, then Yvette believed it was Suzette. Telling Griff and her that one of the other girls could be their daughter had been nothing more than a cruel trick York had tried to play on them.
York. But not the real Malcolm York.
She knew, without a doubt, that her husband was dead, had been dead for sixteen years. And yet his ghost still haunted her, his memory alive inside her no matter how hard she tried to destroy it.
Yvette sat on the plush tan sofa and stared sightlessly out the window overlooking the vast expanse of the park. Off in the distance, the central London skyline glimmered with nightlife. Like all big cities worldwide, London never slept.
She had first met Malcolm there in London more than two decades ago. He had been a debonair charmer who had swept her off her feet. She had been a girl of twenty, sheltered from the world, struggling to come to terms with her burgeoning empathic powers. She had been so enamored with the sophisticated billionaire that she had dismissed any doubts she had about him. Telling herself the reason he had not even kissed her and seldom touched her was because he was a gentleman, she had fallen victim to a psychopath. In truth, he had feared that any prolonged physical contact would allow her to see inside his evil soul.
After only a month’s acquaintance, he had asked her to marry him.
A soft knock on the bedroom door snapped Yvette out of the past and into the present.
“Dr. Meng?” the guard said.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Powell is en route to the hotel. He should arrive within the next ten minutes.”
“Thank you.”
Yvette couldn’t have known that Malcolm had sought her out for one reason only—because of her empathic abilities. She had been one of six women he had chosen as a potential replacement for the empath he had held captive on Amara for less than a year.
Elora Sanders had died in childbirth.
And Yvette, also, could have died giving birth. Without a doctor, only a midwife in attendance, if there had been any complications ...
Both she and her baby had survived. She had heard the infant’s newborn cries. But she had not been allowed to see her child. The midwife had instructed her to rest, telling her that she could see the baby later. Exhausted from hours of labor, Yvette had fallen asleep.
Later that day, Malcolm had taken great pleasure in informing her that he had arranged to send the child away, that she would never know where her child was or what had happened to it.
In the weeks that followed her child’s birth and disappearance, she had turned to Sanders. If anyone understood the devastating effects of losing a child, Sanders did. He had lost everything that mattered to him. Doing all he could to help her and the others held captive on Amara had become his only reason for living.
Sanders’s wife and child had died on Amara. They were buried together on the island. Sometimes Yvette thought that Elora had been lucky, that it would have been better for her and many others if she, too, had died on Amara. Elora had lived in hell for only seven months, but her death had condemned Sanders to a lifetime in purgatory. Yvette had been Malcolm’s captive, a slave to his every whim, for six agonizing years.
During the months of her pregnancy, she had convinced herself that Griffin was her baby’s father. Even now, all these years later, she still clung to that hope. Not because she was in love with Griffin or ever had been, but because out of the four possible fathers, he was the best man.
The young, naïve Yvette never would have thought it possible for her to take another human life. But on the day Griffin and Sanders had led the captives in a revolt, she had stood with them against Malcolm and helped them kill him. She had no regrets about that day, no guilt, no remorse about her participation in her husband’s brutal murder.
“Yvette?” Griffin called to her before he opened the bedroom door and brought her back to reality.
She rose from the sofa and turned to face him, relief spreading through her when she saw that Suzette was with him.
Unable to control her emotions, tears flooded her eyes. She held open her arms, inviting Suzette to come to her for maternal comfort. Without hesitation, the young girl ran to Yvette.
Wrapping Suzette in her arms, Yvette consoled her with tender affection. “You’re safe now, sweet girl. You’re safe.”
Griffin had showered and shaved and ordered coffee while Suzette slept in Yvette’s arms where they sat on the sofa in Yvette’s bedroom. The guard had taken up his post outside the suite, giving them the privacy they needed. Mitchum had called with an updated report. The hospitalized girl was in surgery, her condition critical.
“What’s the situation with the police?” Griff had asked. “Am I going to be held up here in London because of what happened?”
“Your name has not been mentioned nor has Suzette York’s,” Mitchum had assured him. “I’ve managed to keep things under control. As far as the police know, the agency was hired by an anonymous voice over the phone to rescue two kidnapped girls. The rescue attempts didn’t go off as planned. And I contacted the Benenden School and the local authorities to let them know Suzette has been found.”
“I appreciate your handling everything so discreetly. If there are no further complications, I will be going home tomorrow.”
Griff finished off his third cup of coffee as he paced the length of the lounge. His mind refused to give him any peace, repeatedly recalling every detail of the hour he had spent in Hyde Park. With his eyes wide open, he could see the arrow shooting into the girl’s neck, severing her jugular, killing her before she even knew what had happened. He could hear the roar of the motorbikes as the riders chased the other girl, running her down, almost killing her.
When he saw the door to Yvette’s bedroom open, he stopped pacing.
“Everything all right?” he asked as Yvette entered the lounge, Suzette at her side.
Yvette nodded. “Suzette wants to talk to us.”
Griff glanced from Yvette to the young woman who towered nearly half a foot over her, and then focused on their clasped hands.
“Okay.” Griff motioned for them to come farther into the lounge and to sit on either of the two sofas that formed an L shape in the corner beneath the windows.
When Yvette sat down with Suzette, still holding the girl’s hand, Griff placed his coffee cup on the serving tray and took the chair across from them.
“Go ahead,” Yvette urged. “Tell Griffin what you told me.”
Suzette looked at Griff, then hurriedly glanced away and stared down at her feet. “My name isn’t really Suzette York. And I’m not seventeen. I’m twenty-three.”
Griff wasn’t surprised. His gut instincts had told him something was off about this girl. She was too perfect a fit, as if she had been created for the sole purpose of posing as their child.
“I suppose my real name doesn’t matter, but ... I was born Kimberly Safford. I have no idea who my father was, but my mother was an actress, of sorts. She died when I was fifteen. I ... uh ... I worked as a prostitute until three years ago. That’s when this rich guy offered me a new life, a new identity. All I had to do was pretend to be his ward, a kid who was only fourteen.”
“Who was this rich guy?” Griffin asked, knowing the answer before she replied.
“His name is Malcolm York.”
“What did he look like?”
“Average height and build. Gray hair, actually more silver than gray. And dark eyes. Brown, not black.”
“What age?”
“I’m not sure. He isn’t young, not in his twenties, but he’s not old either. Late thirties, maybe early forties.”
“Then he’s prematurely gray?”
“I—I guess,” Suzette’s voice quivered. “I’m sorry. Honest. I didn’t realize ...” She looked at Yvette. “I thought he was a good man, that he actually cared about me. He set up a bank account for me, bought me a car, pretty clothes, and never once did he ... well, you know—ask me to have sex with him.”
“He treated you almost like a daughter,” Yvette said.
“Yes, I suppose he did. He even asked me to call him Papa when anyone else was around. And he convinced me that pretending I thought I was your daughter wouldn’t backfire on me. He said he’d protect me. He even promised me more money—five thousand pounds.” Suzette pulled her hand from Yvette’s. “I know it was wrong to lie to y’all, but I wanted to please him. I’m sorry, but the things he gave me were important to me. I didn’t want him to take it all away. Besides, he told me that once the DNA test was done, you’d learn the truth.”
“He knew we wouldn’t be convinced without the DNA test,” Griff said.
Still unable to look at Griff, Suzette wrung her hands together as she averted his hard glare.
“Your birth certificate, your adoption papers, every document proving you are Suzette York were all forgeries,” Griffin said. “It would have been only a matter of time before we would have been able to prove that and to prove that you knowingly took part in York’s grand deception.”