Harlequin Intrigue, Box Set 2 of 2 (35 page)

He took it and came back with a Bailey's on the rocks and nine dollars of change. He set the glass in front of her and she casually moved it to the left, beyond her body. Then she picked up the five, leaving the four ones on the counter. “Tim and I are working different hours right now and haven't seen much of each other. He hasn't been in?”

Joe shook his head. He picked up a knife and began slicing limes into wedges. “No, but there were some people in on...let me think, was it Wednesday? Yes, definitely Wednesday night because we were closed unexpectedly yesterday due to a little water problem. Anyway, they were asking about the both of you. Said they worked with you at Moldaire College. I guess I didn't realize that's where you and Tim were working. You know, I graduated from there.”

“I guess we must not have mentioned it.” People looking for her. It had to be the Mercedes Men. “Was it two men, both with dark hair?”

He shook his head. “No. Man and a woman. He had light brown hair and she was a blonde. Heavy on the makeup.” He paused for effect. “I like the natural look myself,” he said, his tone suggestive. “You do it well.”

She smiled, really grateful that Cal wasn't here. He'd commandeer the knife and Joe would be missing a finger. “Hmm,” she said, her mind whirling. Man and a woman. Coworkers. “You didn't happen to catch their names, did you?”

Joe stopped slicing. “I didn't. I think they left a card, though. Asked me to give it to you if you came in.” He put down his knife. “I'm sure I threw it in the cash register.”

She could feel her heart start to beat fast in her chest. This was it. The break that she'd been waiting for.

He opened the cash register and picked up the drawer in the front, where they stuffed the larger bills. “It was right here,” he said. He kept looking.

Finally, he turned. “Sorry, Jean. Somebody else must have thrown it away.”

She tried to not let the disappoint swamp her. “Well, if there are other consultants in town, I'd really like to look them up. They didn't happen to mention anything else, did they? Like maybe where they were staying?”

“No. But maybe I could take your number and if they come back, give you a call.”

“That would be great.” She held out her hand and he pulled a pen from behind his ear. She wrote Cal's cell phone number on one of the bar napkins. He picked it up and put it in his shirt pocket.

“I'm off next weekend,” he said.

“Give me a call,” she said. She felt bad leading him on but she needed his help if the man and woman came back to the bar looking for her.

“I thought maybe you were with that guy you were having dinner with,” Joe said.

“My stepbrother,” she said. She'd have crossed her fingers if she was the superstitious type. “He's just visiting.”

* * *

W
HEN
SHE
CROSSED
the street, Cal discreetly motioned for her to keep walking and he fell into step next to her. “Well?” he said.

She told him about Jean and Tim and the strangers who were asking about them. He listened carefully. When they got to the car, he opened her door. Once he'd slid behind the wheel and pulled out, he said, “I saw him hand you a pen.”

“I gave him your number,” she said.

“My number?” he asked, turning his head.

“Well, he thinks it's mine,” she said.

There was a pause. “Well, good. He's not my type.”

She punched his arm. “Right now, I just want him thinking that he's Jean's type.”

“So you and Tim have been frequenting this bar. And you've been going by the name of Jean. And you were coworkers.”

“Yes. He referred to our consulting assignment. But why would I be using a false name for a consulting assignment? Why wouldn't Joe have known me as Nalana Akina. That's my name. We know that for a fact.”

“Because maybe it's not your run-of-the-mill consulting assignment. It's something else. You're in this area for some other reason.”

“But at the center of everything is Moldaire College. Joe said that he was surprised that Tim and I never mentioned that we were working at Moldaire. But the brown-haired man and blonde woman said we were coworkers at Moldaire.” She shook her head. “This is impossible. How can I figure out my past when I'm lying to everyone?”

“I don't know. But your disappearance, and Tim's disappearance, have caused other people to start looking for you, to start asking questions. To be bold enough to leave a card. That's good.”

“Maybe. I have two different groups of people looking for me. And I don't know why. And it's seven o'clock on a Friday night and I think something bad is supposed to happen on Saturday.
Good
isn't the adjective I would choose.”

“It's a challenge,” Cal conceded.

“We have to go to the Strawbridge Bay. Joe the bartender said that Tim told one of the servers that he liked their food. Maybe Jean and Tim went there together. Maybe the man and woman that are looking for Jean and Tim will know to check there, too.”

Cal tossed her his phone. “I hope it's close.”

It was six miles away. The traffic was heavy and it took twenty minutes to get there and another ten to find a parking spot. They squeezed into one, between a BMW and a Lexus. They watched the door for a few minutes. “I think we're underdressed,” she said.

“But our money is good,” Cal countered. “I think that's what they care about.” He opened the car door for her. “Are we eating again?” he asked as they walked down the sidewalk.

“How about dessert and coffee?” she whispered.

It was smaller than The Blue Mango. Just one dining room with a service bar at the rear of the restaurant. That was discouraging. There would be no talkative bartender here.

“Table for two?” the young hostess asked. She could not have been much more than sixteen.

“Yes.” She looked directly at the girl and smiled. The girl smiled back but showed no sign of recognition. “We're just interested in your dessert menu.”

“That's fine,” the girl said.

She led them to a table in the middle of the restaurant. Cal sat so that he could see the door.

She looked around. No Mercedes Men. No brown-haired man or made-up blonde. Their server was a young black man who took their order for cheesecake and coffee politely but with no personal exchange.

“I have the craziest urge to stand up on the table and yell, does anybody here know me?”

“It's a bust,” Cal said. “We had to try.” He took a bite of his cheesecake. “And they have really excellent desserts.”

“Thanks for trying to make me feel better,” she said.

Cal finished his coffee. “We should get going. We have a long drive ahead of us.”

“No. I don't want to go back to Ravesville. Let's go to Moldaire College instead. We can get a room in the student union.”

“Did you forget that I wasn't even willing to have lunch there two days ago?”

“Nope. But it's different now. We have to stay close, where we can respond quickly. We aren't going to let G sneak up on us. And maybe they're not even here any longer. He's leaving the country. Maybe he's going to be long gone before whatever bad thing that's supposed to happen on Saturday actually occurs.”

“The student union is a huge building. Difficult to secure even a small space. An attack could come from multiple directions,” he said, still not convinced.

“There's no place better to stay. It's like hiding in plain sight.” She was not going to back down.

He seemed to sense that. “Oh, what the hell,” he said.

It took them forty minutes to drive back to the campus. It was now close to nine o'clock. They parked and walked into the pretty stone building. There was an imposing foyer with marble walls and intricately tiled flooring. Up four steps, to the left, there was a large restaurant that was open but didn't look busy, probably because it was past the dinner hour. In the middle was open space for students and visitors to gather. Lots of small groupings of chairs. The colors were soft in blues and violets, the lighting was good, and the overall effect was warm and comforting. There was a gas fireplace that was lit.

To the right was a big oak registration desk. They headed that direction and waited while the young man behind the desk finished his conversation. His name tag said Devon.

“We'd like a room,” Cal told him once he'd hung up.

Devon started laughing. “You guys should buy some lottery tickets.”

Huh?

Devon held up a hand. “Sorry. It's just that we've been sold out of rooms for a month. I've personally turned away at least thirty people today. But that call was to cancel a room. So I guess you guys can have it. I just need a name and a credit card.”

“Mary Smith,” she said. “And we'd like to pay with cash.”

Devon nodded. “I guess that's okay. Hardly anyone does that anymore.”

It took him another couple minutes of clicking computer keys before he picked up a plastic key card, ran it through a machine to activate it and handed it to them.

“Why is the student union so busy?” Cal asked.

“The game.” The young man looked at them as if they were stupid.

“What game?”

Devon reached out an arm and pulled a newspaper off the stack at the end of the counter. It was the college newspaper. The headline read Secretary of State to Attend End of Season Game.

Her pulse started to race and she felt very warm.

She scanned the article quickly. Secretary of State Dane Morgan, who was an alumnus of Moldaire College and a fraternity brother to President LaTrope, would be the honored guest at Saturday's end-of-season game between Moldaire and rival Rollston College of Omaha, Nebraska. Following the game was a $200-a-plate, invitation-only dinner, emceed by Morgan to raise money for the college. LaTrope had promised that the dollars would go toward long-overdue repairs needed on the school's infrastructure.

“Cal,” she said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears.

He leaned over her shoulder so that he could see what she was looking at. “Sounds like fun,” he said nonchalantly. “Thanks,” he said to Devon. Then he put his hand on her elbow and propelled her toward the elevator.

“Breathe,” he whispered.

She wished it was that easy. She was dizzy and nauseous and her head felt as if it was going to split open. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She was going to pass out.

When the elevator door closed, she sagged against the wall.

“Hey,” Cal said, putting his arm around her to support her. “What's going on?”

She gulped for air but it wasn't enough. Gulped again.

“Honey, you're hyperventilating,” he said. With one arm around her, he cupped his other hand around her mouth. “Slow down.”

“This is it,” she managed. “Something bad...going to happen...secretary of state...at game.”

The elevator dinged, indicating they'd reached the fourth floor. The door opened.

And in walked the Mercedes Men.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cal did his best. But he'd lost a valuable second because his arms had been full of Stormy. But still he managed to take out two of them with quick sharp blows and he was going after the third one, Bad Knee, when the odds shifted quickly. He saw that G had Stormy's arms wrenched behind her back with the barrel of his gun resting against her neck.

“Don't hurt her,” he said, putting his own hands in the air.

G said something in another language to the two men on the floor and they managed to get themselves up. Then, with one on each side of him, holding him tight, Bad Knee punched Cal in the face. It was a good swing.

As his head whipped back, he heard Stormy's cry. G barked out another order and they were moving fast down the hallway. Cal saw that one of the men had picked up the key card. He used it to unlock the room that had been assigned to Cal and Stormy.

He was pushed up against the wall and roughly searched. They tossed his phone to the floor and stepped on it, destroying it. Then they found his gun and they tossed it across the room before he took a hard hit to the right kidney. They flipped him back around and Bad Knee got two more punches in, one to the face and one to the gut.

Then one of them, who was pretty good with a rope, yanked his arms back and tied his wrists together. Once he was tied, they shoved his head back, cracking it against the wall.

His two attackers took their positions, one on each side. They were being smart. Not taking it for granted that he'd be out of commission with his arms tied behind his back.

G still had his gun up against Stormy's neck. She looked frightened but he was grateful to see that she wasn't hysterical. She had pulled it together.

G leaned his face close to Stormy's. “You have caused me a great deal of trouble,” he said. “I am not happy. And in my country, when a husband is not happy with his wife, he disciplines her.” He motioned Bad Knee to approach. “Not her face,” G said.

Bad Knee hit Stormy in the stomach, hard enough that he could have broken some ribs. Stormy's knees gave out but G held her up, until she managed to catch her breath.

Then G nodded and Bad Knee hit her again.

“That was for embarrassing me in front of my friends,” G said. “They were expecting a wedding.”

Fury, blind naked fury, swept through Cal. He was going to kill them all. Rip them apart with his bare hands.

Stay alive. Just stay alive until I can get us out of this.
He willed the thought to her as finally Bad Knee stepped out of the way and he could make eye contact with her.

She gave him a weak smile then turned to G. “You're not my husband.”

He pushed the barrel of the gun harder into her delicate neck. Using his free hand, he pulled at a chain around his neck. There was a silver ring with a wide band hanging on the chain. “I already wear your ring, my sweet. And soon you will wear mine.”

Cal saw Stormy flinch and it was as if she could not take her eyes off the ring that G wore around his neck. She looked across the room to Cal. “That was Mia's. My grandmother gave it to her before she died. I got it when Mia died.”

“Silence,” G ordered. “You need to learn, even if it's the hard way, that I'm nobody's fool. Your partner already learned that lesson.”

At first, Cal thought G was talking about him. But then he saw something cross Stormy's face and realized that he was wrong. G was talking about someone else. Stormy's partner.

It had to be the person that Stormy had said she couldn't remember but the emotion connected to the person made her sad. He could tell that Stormy was remembering exactly what had happened and it was something horrible.

G either wasn't as perceptive or he didn't care. He yanked on Stormy's arm and dragged her to the bed in the middle of the room. Then shoved her hard so that she fell upon the mattress.

She quickly scooted up, so that she was sitting with her back against the headboard.

Cal could tell the movement hurt her newly injured ribs. They would pay for that. Slowly.

There were tears in her eyes but he didn't think it was because of her injuries. She was remembering and it was painful.

“Your plan is full of holes,” she said.

G laughed. “I don't think so. Our bomb is already in place. The timer is ticking. What's the line?” he paused for effect. “That's right. Bombs bursting in air. Right about the time they're singing your disgusting national anthem, they'll get to experience the real thing.”

The men in the room giggled as if they were thirteen-year-old girls.

Cal was confident that Stormy hadn't remembered or hadn't ever known about the bomb. Her comment about the plan had been a trick to get G to reveal more. She was brilliant.

“I will admit that you and your partner were an unexpected complication. Bad timing,” he said, “on your part.”

“Very,” she said. “But we were able to get word to others. They know.”

“Oh, I don't think so, my dear. As I expected, your people came nosing around, with some crazy story that that were trying to find you because an elderly relative had died. It was obvious that they were looking because you and your partner hadn't checked in as expected. I had to play the role of the trusted yet perplexed supervisor who didn't have a clue why you hadn't shown up for your job on the office cleaning crew. While all the time, I wanted to strangle every single person who asked a question about you and say, I want her just as badly as you do.”

With his gun still pointed at Stormy, he motioned toward the remaining rope that was on the floor. Bad Knee picked it up, then roughly jerked first one arm, then the other, tying them to the headboard corner posts. Then he yanked on her legs, pulling her onto her back. He frowned at the boots she wore. He unzipped them and tossed them both aside. Then he tied each ankle to a footboard post.

She was spread-eagle on the bed. Fully clothed still but in the most vulnerable position a woman could be in. They wanted to humiliate her.

But damn her, she kept her chin in the air.
Take your best shot.
That was what her attitude said.

He'd never loved her more.

“I'll admit,” G said, “you were more difficult to find than I expected. A woman in a wedding dress is easy to remember but no one seemed to know.” He turned to Cal. “You were quite convincing, Mr. Hollister. You might have had a future in the movies that you Americans love so much.”

Cal was rapidly clicking through the information that G was spewing out.
Your people came nosing around.
He'd been right. Stormy was in some kind of law enforcement, probably working undercover.
I had to play the role of the trusted yet perplexed supervisor who didn't have a clue why you hadn't shown up for your job on the office cleaning crew.
Stormy's disjointed memories made perfect sense. She'd been dressed in blue pants and a blue polo shirt. That was likely the uniform that the cleaning crew wore. But she'd remembered working on the computer for hours every night. She'd probably been documenting a case file or reporting information back to a superior.

But why had she been on the Moldaire College campus? Who had she been investigating? And how did that person figure into all of this?

Was it G that she'd been investigating? Somehow, Cal didn't think so. G had said something earlier that it had been bad timing on her part. Had she stumbled into something and before she could report it up the food chain, she and her partner had been captured?

He needed G to keep talking so that he could piece it together but G was evidently done with that. He motioned at Cal's two guards and suddenly they were pulling him toward the small bathroom. The student union had been built many years before and while the bathrooms might have been remodeled, some of its original
charm
, in the form of old fixtures, still existed. They pushed him onto the floor, tied his ankles together and then tied him to the thick steel leg of the pedestal sink.

He was sure they intended to kill him before it was all over. But for whatever reason, they were waiting. He suspected that G was still hoping for some cooperation from Stormy and if he killed Cal now, that wasn't likely to happen.

He was surprised they hadn't gagged him.

But then he understood why when Bad Knee came up behind him and he felt the sharp prick of a needle in his arm. “I gave him enough to knock a horse out,” Bad Knee said to someone.

He heard G laughing.

Damn
was his last thought.

* * *

S
HE
WOKE
UP
feeling sick, just like before, and the memory of what had happened swamped her. She hurt and it was difficult to take a deep breath. The room was dark and she wondered if it was nighttime but then realized that the shades had been pulled down and the curtains closed tight.

“Cal,” she called out. Her voice was weak, barely a whisper. She swallowed hard. “Cal,” she said louder.

Had they killed him? The thought paralyzed her. She loved him. It was like losing Mia all over again but this time with the knowledge that it was her fault. She'd dragged Cal into this mess.

She was going to make G and his friends pay.

For Cal. For Bolton, the best partner she'd ever had.

“Help,” she yelled. “Help.” Over and over again, until her voice was hoarse. But no one came. She cursed the century-old plaster walls and thick wood door that kept sound in.

She had to get free. And keep the secretary of state from getting blown up along with twenty-five thousand other football fans.

She pressed her rear into the mattress. There it was. In her pocket. The knife that Cal had given her.

They'd searched Cal but hadn't thought to search her. Now she needed to figure out how to get it out of her pocket and use it to free herself.

She pushed her rear against the mattress, trying to push the knife up. Again and again. It was painstakingly slow progress and she was sweating with the effort by the time the knife was finally free.

Now came the hard part. If she could get the knife up to one of her hands, she had a chance of gripping it in her fingers and sawing through the rope.

But how the hell was she going to get the knife anywhere near her fingers? And then she thought of Cal. She could not let him have died in vain.

She pulled again at all of her ropes. She twisted her wrists and her ankles, testing to see if there was any give. Nothing with her wrists. But maybe, the right ankle. She had good flexibility and strength in her ankles and feet. She needed to use that to her advantage.

She twisted her foot, back and forth, desperately trying to stretch the rope around her ankle. The braiding dug into her skin, cutting into her. It hurt but she kept going. It was her only chance.

It seemed to take forever but finally, the rope seemed loose enough. She flexed her foot downward, pushing it to an angle that it wasn't ever meant to go. But when she smoothly pulled her knee up, her foot slipped through the rope.

One leg was free. She lifted her head off the pillow. The skin around her ankle was bloody and raw but none of that mattered. With the use of a leg, she could do a lot.

“Cal,” she said again, her poor voice spent. There was no answer, not even a rustle from the bathroom.

She had never felt so alone. It was even worse than the first time the Mercedes Men had taken her.

But Cal would not expect her to give up. He'd expect her to keep going. To be optimistic. “Half-full,” she whispered. “My damn glass is half-full,” she said.

She used her rear to push the knife down, toward the foot of the bed. When she got it as far as it would go, she bent her knee, bringing her foot as close to her rear as possible, and picked up the knife with her toes.

The sweet rush of success fueled her. She had a ways to go but she'd come further than the Mercedes Men could have ever contemplated.

Now came the tough part. She raised her leg, the knife clenched between her toes. She was going to have to toss it across her body and have it land close enough that her fingers could grab it.

It was going to have to be a perfect throw.

If she overshot, the knife would be on the floor. Might as well be on the moon. If she undershot, it would be just as frustrating. She'd be able to see it but it would be in a spot that she wouldn't be able to reach, even with one free leg. There was a limit to the amount of flexibility she had.

She judged the angle, the distance, took a deep breath and tossed it. It bounced off her hand and would have clattered to the floor if she hadn't been able to snag it at the last second. She turned it in order to get to the button. She pushed it and the blade extended.

She bent her hand at more than a ninety-degree angle at the wrist and set about the business of sawing through one of the ropes. It was tedious and her fingers cramped but she hung on to the knife and kept going.

And finally, one wrist was free. She pulled it down, wincing at the pain in her shoulder from having her hands pinned above her head for hours.

How many hours she had no idea. She didn't have a watch and there was no clock in the room, not even an alarm clock on the bedside table.

She needed to untie her other wrist. This was easier and in just minutes both wrists were free. Then she cut the final rope on her left foot. She was groggy, sick to her stomach, bleeding, and felt as if she'd been run over by a truck.

But there was no time to waste.

She stumbled her way into the bathroom. Cal was on the floor. Tied.

She knelt down. Felt for a pulse. It was there. Slow but steady. He was alive. Her heart soared with the knowledge.

The two of them needed to get out of there before the Mercedes Men came back.

She shook him. Hard. No response.

“Cal,” she pleaded. “You have to help me.”

Wildly, she looked around the bathroom. The bathtub was an old one, with claw feet and a shower curtain that wrapped all the way around it. She pulled it back. Saw the pipe for the shower and the showerhead on the hose.