Molten Gold (2 page)

No matter what the other girls and boys say, Addy, good
manners trumps almost any other social skill. If you can be polite, offer your
guests a cool drink and something to eat, doors you’d never believe will open
and people will be receptive to almost anything you have to say. Manners are
the cornerstone of society, and in this household being rude is unacceptable.

Adelaide had heard various renditions of this speech from
her mother for most of her life.

“I’m not questioning your hospitality, ma’am,” Jared assured
her. “You’ve been more than generous. But I assume you work from home, and
entertaining an unsolicited visitor probably wasn’t on your to-do list this
morning.”

Adelaide relaxed in her seat. What he said was true, and he
was being kind enough to give her a face-saving excuse not to drag this out for
too long. Though having him around, on hand to glance at, was not a hardship at
all. The man was drop-dead sexy, and that uniform made her tingling pussy
tighten in wet need. She had to make the conscious effort not to shift in her
seat and show just how hot his presence made her.

“Well, Jared,” she said. “How can I be of assistance to
you?”

The manner in which he paused, his gaze flicking down her
body, had Adelaide’s temperature skyrocketing. She felt relief that the
attraction wasn’t one-sided and wasn’t just in her imagination. He licked his
lips and she smiled. Adelaide had to resist the impulse to remove the tie
holding her hair back and fluff it out a little.

She usually wasn’t particularly fussy about her appearance,
but such naked appraisal made her inner instinct to preen come forth. Instead
she crossed her legs and studied him in return.

“I, ah, believe you mentioned that this was your parents’
home?” Jared asked.

Adelaide nodded. “Yes.”

“And your Uncle Mark lived in a bachelor flat in an
apartment block farther across town?”

“Why yes, he did,” she confirmed. Frowning, she wondered
where this was going. Was she in trouble?

“Ms. Baker, did your uncle have anything…strange in his
personal effects?”

It didn’t escape Adelaide’s notice that Jared had addressed
her more formally, by her title. Nor had she missed his slight hesitation
before describing whatever he sought so vaguely as “strange”.

Her instincts were roused. Something was going on here. She
didn’t know whether it would be worth a story, or just a curious, interesting
tale to gossip about with her girlfriends later, but there was
something
interesting afoot. Uncrossing her legs, she scooted forward to sit at the edge
of her easy chair.

“Well now, you’d need to clarify for me what would be
classified as strange,” she said in a sweet tone. Sugar had always gotten her
further in any conversation than pressing questions or hard truths delivered in
a blunt manner. “I mean, are we talking about the fact that Uncle Mark kept
every copy of
Time
magazine dating back to the early 1990s? Or the fact that
he had a box full of marbles and bottle caps that I assume was a cherished
relic from his and my father’s childhood? Strange is in the eye of the
beholder, sir.”

“That’s a fair point,” he conceded. “Is there anything
you’ve found, then, that you feel should be turned over to the Army or other
relevant authorities?”

For the first time since she’d seen him at her front door,
Adelaide wondered if Jared was mentally stable. He didn’t look like an axe
murderer—indeed she couldn’t see a weapon of any sort on him.

“Uh, is there someone from your unit I could call?” she
asked in a low tone. “To check your credentials?”

“I know I sound vague,” Jared apologized. “But I can’t be
too specific—this is classified information. If you wish to call my superiors I
can give you the captain’s number. He’ll confirm what I’m telling you.”

Still a little on edge, but no longer really worried about
her safety, Adelaide felt her curiosity about the situation rise. Jared sounded
logical and sane, and he was clearly in control of himself. He was being
secretive, sure, but that wasn’t uncommon in the military.

Besides, now she sensed that there could be a lot more to
this than idle curiosity on Jared’s part. If the Army really was searching for
something her uncle had had in his possession when he died, there could
definitely be a story in that. An interesting one.

“Let’s shelve that for now,” Adelaide said. “Why don’t you
let me know what you’re after and why? My uncle passed away eighteen months ago
from a heart attack. He wasn’t rich and he certainly didn’t have anything that
I know of that would interest anyone except family—certainly nothing that could
have worth to the Army.”

“Well, what sorts of things did he leave behind?” Jared
asked.

She felt sure he was fishing and decided to respond in kind.

“Well, he lived in a small bachelor flat. Having spent most
of his working years in the Army, he hadn’t accumulated a lot of the regular
junk people tend to.” Adelaide thought back to that miserable week when she’d
boxed up his things, moved them, and then scrubbed every inch of the four-room
apartment. “I donated his clothes to charity, and many of his books, though
some that I recall from my youth and that I felt held special meaning to him I
brought back here to keep. He had a filing cabinet that was very neatly kept.
All his taxes and finances pretty much went either to his lawyer—the same man
who handled my parents’ affairs—or to his accountant.”

“And who is this accountant?” Jared asked as he leaned
forward.

Adelaide felt he was very interested in her answer. She
replied with a sad smile, knowing it would burst his bubble.

“Actually, his accountant is an old Army buddy,” she said.
“Aaron Goethe. I don’t think Uncle Mark served with him, but I’m pretty sure
they had a number of friends in common and that’s where their initial
connection came from. If there’d been anything irregular with my uncle’s
finances, I feel sure I’d know about it, and that Aaron wouldn’t have kept it
from the authorities.”

“Aaron Goethe,” Jared repeated. Adelaide had the impression that
he’d memorized the name, and felt sure Jared would check up on the man later.
“What else was in his personal effects?”

Adelaide sighed and waved a hand, feeling somewhat
exasperated.

“Nothing really.” She tried to think. “There was a box with
a small number of photos of our family. A collection of the letters that had
been written to him, mostly from myself, Mama and Daddy. Regular things people
own. Nothing that I can think of that would warrant questions like this.”

“You’re certain there was nothing else?”

Adelaide stared at Jared. His dark hair fell onto his
forehead, though it wasn’t long enough to reach his eyes. She had the impulse
to run her hand through it, but kept herself in check. He was determined, the
edge of his jaw hard and unyielding. She could well believe he was a man who
never let up. Who would doggedly pursue each and every line of inquiry until he
received the answers he sought.

And a man who would go back to the beginning and start all
over again from scratch if he came up empty-handed. She decided to give him one
last chance. Thinking back over the boxes of items she’d donated, then the
cupboards and drawers she’d spent so long carefully emptying, she tried to
think of anything that could possibly be of use.

About to respond for a final time in the negative, she
suddenly had a thought.

“Oh. You aren’t interested in his gun, are you?”

Jared wasn’t certain that the blonde bombshell sitting
across the coffee table from him was being completely honest, but neither did
he honestly feel she was lying. She was an interesting conundrum, a true Southern
beauty, all sun-kissed blonde hair, big brown eyes, tiny waist and round, pert
breasts. Put her in a dozen petticoats and a voluminous gown with a tiny, lacy
parasol and she could have walked off the set of
Gone with the Wind
.

But she was sharp. After the first few minutes of their
conversation, he knew she had a clever brain tucked away in that pretty head.
And as a journalist she’d have a keen eye, a sharp instinct and likely more
curiosity than was healthy for either of them.

Jared had known before he rang her doorbell that he’d need
to be careful around her, but he hadn’t been expecting such a strong, elemental
sexual reaction to her. When she mentioned the gun, it was the first hint he’d
gotten that maybe his instincts weren’t so far off the mark after all.

“His service pistol?” Jared confirmed. “Yes. That would be
interesting, thank you.”

“I put the ammunition, the gun and its license in my safe.
I’ve also got a carry permit myself—a girl can never be too careful.” The smile
she gave him was almost devastating. Her pink lips and polished white teeth
gleamed. Jared had to force himself to focus. “But I can’t imagine you came all
the way over here just to see my uncle’s old gun. What’s this really all
about?”

Damn, the woman could talk. He didn’t have any trouble
seeing her in journalism. Indeed, if she’d still had that pen behind her ear,
he could imagine she’d have scrounged up one of the napkins and started jotting
notes on it. And the way she could jump across three different trains of
thought and have them all linked somehow in her brain was astonishing.

Jared felt as if he were constantly striving just to keep up
with her. And he was not a stupid man. Far from it.

“I’ll tell you something about myself,” he said, not dodging
the question but instead circling around it. “I prefer a slow, methodical
approach to most things in life. I’ve found that dotting every ‘I’ and being
painstaking with the details almost always leads me exactly where I want to go.
It’s not the fastest method from A to B, but at least I arrive and don’t miss
anything in the middle.”

He was pleased that Adelaide furrowed her brow, clearly
thinking about exactly what he’d just said and not running on. She might be a
chatterbox, but he’d bet she didn’t miss much either. Adelaide wasn’t a woman
to talk just to fill the silence. She was a smart and curious woman who also
simply liked to chatter.

“So that wasn’t a confirmation, but considering you’ve not
denied it, I think that’s as much of an answer as I’ll get,” she said. She
stood, and Jared made his gaze follow her face and not those long, slender,
lovely legs. He knew wearing short-shorts was a pastime in the Southern States,
but damn, Adelaide looked fine in them.

“I’ll go get that gun,” she said.

“And the licenses and ammunition, if you would,” he added.

She turned back to look at him and nodded. The manner in
which she tossed her head had that straight curtain of soft-looking, gorgeous
blonde hair swaying around her slender neck. And damn, he was positive she put
a bit of extra wriggle into that luscious ass of hers as she walked away.

This woman was trouble, he just knew it. His libido,
however, didn’t give a shit. He wanted her. Badly.

She returned with the items and handed them to Jared. He
took a cursory look at the gun, mostly to see for himself that it was old, Army-issue.
Placing it beside him on the couch—it would seem uncouth of him to put it on
the coffee table with such a pleasant array of cookies and glasses—and studied
the certificates. He memorized the issue numbers to check them later on the
database.

Still, everything looked aboveboard. Nothing about this
investigation of his seemed to be what he’d originally thought. The room
Adelaide had brought him into was tastefully but not expensively furnished. It
was bright and cheerful but not frilly or cluttered. It was an airy, neat,
middle-class living room that could be one of hundreds.

There was no indication of surreptitious funds or illegal
gains.

He was stumped.

Adelaide poured him another glass of lemonade. His first had
been delicious, cool and tart with just a hint of sweetness lying below the
surface. He took the glass and drank another sip.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry to harp on the same thing,
but is there anything else, anything at all, that you can think of in relation
to your uncle’s effects or younger years that would be of interest?”

Adelaide sighed. “You’ve already asked me this,” she pointed
out reasonably. “And for the dozenth time, no. I don’t think there’s anything
dodgy in my uncle’s possessions. What’s this really about? It can’t possibly be
his gun.”

Frustration had crept into her tone. She gesticulated,
seeming to be near the end of her patience with his vagueness.

Jared took another swallow of his drink as an excuse for
silence. He thought quickly. One major thing his training had given him was the
ability to sum up a situation in a few moments and make the best judgment call
he could, given his intel. He put aside his physical attraction to Adelaide and
the natural instinct he had to believe that women were innocent and beyond
subterfuge. He analyzed the situation critically.

Adelaide had a clean record—only a few speeding tickets and
nothing else in her entire thirty-two years. Her parents had had similar
spotless reputations and had passed on. Adelaide was living well within her
means—her finances and home showed that. More importantly, she’d shown no
guile, no hint of guilt or defensiveness. Indeed she’d been the epitome of
hospitality until just now, when it seemed he’d strained her patience with his
constant albeit subtle probing.

She didn’t act like a person with secrets or any knowledge
of what he sought.

Making his decision quickly, Jared finished his drink and
set the glass down. He moved forward so he was sitting on the edge of the couch
cushion. He leaned his elbows on his knees, ducked his head and tried to find
the most concise manner of telling his story without breaching any confidential
aspects of the case.

“Ms. Baker…Adelaide…what I’m about to tell you is not for
publication. I can only give you the gist of the story, and I’m hoping my trust
in you won’t be misplaced. Can we agree that this is to be kept secret, at
least for now?”

He lifted his head and met her gaze. He nearly lost himself
in the warm brown depths of her eyes. She seemed to seriously consider his
suggestion. When she nodded, he knew her curiosity had won out over her innate
journalistic desire to write a good story.

“Back in 2003, Saddam Hussein was clever enough to see the
writing on the wall,” he began. “He started organizing his effects and ferrying
people and possessions into hiding for safety. From scraps of intel we’ve
collected, and logic, many of the most highly placed, powerful people in his
government were doing a similar thing. This wasn’t some hasty, under-cover-of-darkness
flight with a bag thrown over their backs. This was a well-organized, well-prepared
plan that spanned weeks or perhaps even months.”

“Okay,” Adelaide said, frowning.

“I’m sure you’ve heard bits and pieces of this?” Jared
probed. He was relieved when Adelaide nodded.

“Not much. Uncle Mark didn’t like to talk about his time
overseas with the Army,” she said. “But I don’t see how this relates to
anything. My uncle might have been over there during the war, but he was based on
outposts. He had nothing to do with hunting down or stopping the regime.”

“Oh I know,” Jared assured her. He resumed his story,
speaking slowly as he mentally processed what he could and couldn’t reveal. “So
Saddam and likely much of his government were squirreling away their funds.
Jewelry, artwork, everything that could be sold for profit or that held meaning
for them. We’re both a bit too young to have followed Saddam’s real power years
with true understanding, but he was one of the greediest, most charismatic
leaders the Middle East had ever seen. Did you know much of his wealth came
from donations from his own people?”

Adelaide nodded, but he could see confusion in her furrowed
brow and the hesitation in her body language.

“Looting was prolific in those areas,” Jared said. “Almost
every Iraqi bank was not just cleaned out, but gutted. Sixty of the seventy
state-run Rafideen banks were decimated by the end of the war. And it’s not as
if those places were like Fort Knox. While there were obviously valuables and
money, these were depositories for poor people in a poor nation. Saddam had
bled the nation dry—rich, poor and everyone in between.”

“Okay,” Adelaide said. “But I still don’t understand the
connection.”

Jared got to his point carefully. “In 2003 the American Army
had set up checkpoints. This was a time of great unrest. Many people on both
sides of the border were angry, and there was fear and resentment from the
locals. Plenty of them knew we only wanted to help, and appreciated our
efforts, but for every one of them there were two or more who wanted us gone,
for things to return to normal. Even as Saddam’s reign collapsed, he had plenty
of supporters.”

Adelaide nodded. From her silence and the manner in which
she sat on the edge of her seat, focused entirely on him, he knew she
understood that he was coming to his point now. He had trouble suppressing the
lust that threatened to roll over him. Her entire attention was on him, and he
loved that feeling. He wanted to sit her on his lap, brush his hand through her
silky blonde hair and press kisses down that long, slender neck. He could
imagine telling her many a tale just like this, and how she’d drink it all up.

He forced his mind back to reality and away from the fantasy
of bending her over the couch and fucking her hard from behind when he’d
finished his story. Swallowing, he licked his lips and continued.

“It’s not commonly known, but a matter of public record,”
Jared began carefully, “that in mid-2003 a few significant trucks were stopped
for routine checks. Gold bars were found.”

“Gold?” Adelaide repeated, her attention clearly riveted.

Jared nodded. “Gold.” He studied her carefully.

Relief crashed through him as he realized she genuinely had
no clue or forewarning about this. She had widened her eyes and was perched
precariously on her chair. If she moved any farther forward she’d end up on the
floor. She twined her fingers together but he could still see them twitching.
He could tell she longed to start taking notes, the journalist in her obviously
roused.

That and her undivided attention was enough to convince him that
she was eager, interested, but this was completely fresh and new for her. Until
the second the word “gold” had fallen from his lips, she’d been in the dark.
She wasn’t part of the conspiracy.

“Well, go on,” she urged him. “Trust me, I want to hear the
rest of this story and I’ll hound you until you finish. I love a good story,
and this sounds like a brilliant one.”

“Who could possibly imagine you might be a journalist?”
Jared mused with a smile.

Impatience snapped in those warm brown eyes and, as much as
he’d love to tease her, to draw the moment out and see how far he could push
her, his gentlemanly instincts won out.

“Since this is clearly new to you,” Jared said, “I should
probably point out when I say gold, I don’t mean a few bars here or a treasure
chest of coins there. I’m talking about entire trucks packed floor to ceiling
with gold bars. A billion dollars or more would be the estimate today.”

Adelaide’s jaw dropped.

Jared nodded. “Astonished” didn’t even cover how shocked the
woman was. Yeah, she definitely didn’t have any knowledge of this—no one could
fake surprise like that. Even her fingers had stopped twitching, though he had
the feeling that if he gave her many more juicy pieces of the story, wild
horses couldn’t stop her from writing it all down while it was fresh. Some
instincts were too strong to deny. And giving a reporter a story like this and
expecting her not to make notes, at least for herself, might not be possible.

He recognized the instant her mind snapped back into gear.
She stood, then hesitated.

“We didn’t mention a time limit,” she said.

Jared raised an eyebrow. “A time limit? Excuse me?”

“You said I couldn’t write this story,” she said. “And I
agree to that, but you can’t expect me never to write about this in my life.
When can I write about it?”

“If you truly expect to go back on your word, then I’ll
thank you for the lemonade and be on my way,” Jared said coolly, and stood. He
wasn’t disappointed—it must be like if someone were to threaten a woman or
child in front of him and not expect a response. There are base instincts
inside everyone, and not to act on them would break the very self.

“I’m not going back on my word,” Adelaide replied hotly.

Jared could tell there were more angry words on the tip of
her tongue, but she caught herself and gave him a penetrating stare.

“There’s more,” she worked out. “Everything so far is just
you gauging my responses. Background information. You said it was public
record, so it can’t be your true purpose for being here. What on earth could
you possibly know that’s more outlandish than this?”

Jared remained silent. Adelaide searched his face with her
gaze. Jared didn’t know what she saw there—though he desperately wished he
knew—but whatever it was, it seemed to calm her down and convince her to see it
through. He hoped she wouldn’t regret that decision later.

She sat. “Please excuse my manners,” Adelaide said in her
rich, thick accent. Her well-bred social training was clearly a natural default
when she tried to control herself. “Please continue your story, Jared. I
apologize for my outburst.”