Sidney Sheldon's Reckless (43 page)

Tracy felt at home here too. In this park. In this city.

She had always loved London. Nicholas was conceived here, and although she had fled the city soon afterwards, haunted by her broken marriage to Jeff, she knew now she had left a part of her heart behind. Colorado had been a new start, a new life for her and Nick. Thanks to Blake Carter, that too had been a joyous time in Tracy's life. But with Nick gone and her work with the CIA now at an end, it was time for a new chapter to begin.

Tracy had flirted with the idea of returning to New Orleans, where she grew up. Or Philadelphia, where she'd been happy for a short time as a young woman. Before her mother's suicide. Before prison, and Jeff and Nicholas. Before her real life began. But it was London that spoke to her most strongly, London that seemed to be calling her home.

Climbing up the hill from Kensington High Street, Tracy skirted the palace, making a left along the path that led towards the Princess Diana Memorial playground and Notting Hill beyond. A man in an old-fashioned tweed coat stood up from one of the benches and waved as she approached. Tracy waved back, quickening her pace towards him.

“It's sweet of you to do this.” She greeted him warmly with a smile and a hug. “I'm sure you've got many more important things to be doing today than having lunch with me.”

“More important than lunch with Tracy Whitney?” Major General Frank Dorrien raised a bushy eyebrow. “I don't think so. At any rate, I can't think of anything more fun. Shall we?”

He crooked his elbow, offering Tracy his arm. It was an old-fashioned gesture, chivalrous, and, Tracy now knew, typical of Frank. She was embarrassed to think how completely wrong she'd been about him.

He'd had nothing to do with Prince Achileas's death, although he admitted to disliking the boy.

“It had nothing to do with his being gay. I couldn't give two hoots about that. It was his support for Group 99 I couldn't forgive, especially coming from his background. Even before they turned violent I despised what 99 stood for. Envy and bitterness, dressed up as social justice. But it was after they kidnapped Bob Daley that the gloves really came off, at least as far as I was concerned. Bob was a wonderful man and he'd been a friend to Achileas. How he could continue to flirt with them after that . . .” Frank shook his head angrily.

It was Frank who'd saved Tracy's life at Villa Michele. Frank who'd shot Cameron Crewe and put an end to his reign of terror. Later, he explained to Tracy how he and his bosses at MI6, right up to the prime minister, had come to suspect both the U.S. government and Cameron Crewe of playing a double game when it came to Group 99. He also filled in some of the blanks left by Hunter Drexel, about Kate Evans's motivations for involving Tracy in the first place.

“As you know, Kate was part of the American team charged with tracking you down, back when you and Jeff were still top on everybody's wanted list. She'd always admired your ingenuity, your ability to stay one step ahead of the agency. I think she came to see you as emblematic. Someone who had played the CIA at their own game and won. A sort of antihero, if you like. She admired you.”

“She had a funny way of showing it,” Tracy said.

Frank Dorrien shrugged. “She wasn't mentally well. You mustn't forget that.”

In one way, all this had been good to know. It finally closed a circle. But in another way it left Tracy bereft. Now she might never know who was responsible for Nick's death. Frank Dorrien was quite certain that Kate had done nothing to hurt him.

“There's not a shred of evidence linking her to that accident,” Frank told Tracy. “Indeed we're as sure as we can be that she was in Europe at the time. Greg Walton fabricated all of that nonsense to give you a motive to help him.”

“So if not Kate, then who?” Tracy asked.

Frank took her hands kindly. “Maybe nobody. Maybe it truly was an accident, Tracy.”

That was the hardest part for Tracy now. Living with the maybes.

Today though, life felt bright and the future possible. Tracy and Frank walked on through the park together, slowly. Tracy was officially fully recovered from her ordeal on Lake Maggiore. But her doctors had warned her to take it easy, and for once she was heeding their advice. The strain of the last six months had taken a toll that Tracy hadn't been aware of until it was over.

Now, reluctantly, she'd been forced to admit that she wasn't twenty-three anymore. Stress and exhaustion no longer bounced off her like stones skipped across a river. They hit. And they hurt.

“You look lovely,” Frank said. “Very French.”

Tracy smiled. “It's the scarf.”

“It suits you.”

For a few minutes they walked on in companionable silence, Tracy leaning into Frank like a sapling bending in the wind. Then Tracy said, “You know, I don't think I've ever properly thanked you.”

“For what?”

Tracy laughed. “For saving my life that day. If you hadn't showed up . . . if you hadn't shot Cameron . . .”

“Yes, well,” Frank Dorrien said gruffly. “I should never have allowed things to get that far in the first place. We should never have lost track of you.”

“Jeff should never have lost track of me, you mean,” Tracy said archly.

“No, no,” said Frank. “I can't have that. I was team leader. The buck stopped with me.”

Tracy thought,
He's so British. So clipped and reserved. Heaven forbid he show any emotion, or take any credit for his own heroism.

They'd reached the top of the hill now. Frank led them to an empty bench so that Tracy could get her breath back.

“I take it you've seen this?”

He handed her a copy of today's
Times.

“No!” Tracy took it delightedly. “I mean I've read the piece online, obviously. But I haven't seen a hard copy. All the newsagents I passed on the way here had sold out.”

No one had been more astonished than Tracy to learn that Hunter Drexel was still alive—that he'd survived Cameron's point-blank bullet that night at the villa. After all, she had watched Hunter go down with her own eyes, seen his empty gaze. Had anybody asked her, Tracy would have sworn on oath that Hunter was dead. But apparently he'd been wearing body armor underneath his clothes during dinner. Ironically to protect himself from
her
, not Cameron Crewe. But it had saved his life just the same.

Tracy was relieved to learn Drexel was alive. But she still had mixed feelings about him, and about where his loyalties really lay. He'd refused to tell MI6 anything about Kate Evans location, and seemed determined that she should evade justice for the murder of Bob Daley—supposedly his friend—as well as for the other Group 99 cyberattacks she organized. And though he hadn't been involved in Sally Faiers's death, or Hélène Faubourg's, to Tracy's mind he'd bounced back from both these tragic events in a manner that did not endear him, nor engender trust.

On the other hand, he'd been through hell and risked a lot to bring Crewe Oil to justice and to expose the truth about both the global fracking industry and Group 99.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the whole truth.

Tracy opened the paper eagerly and scanned the first four pages, all of which were devoted to Hunter's article. It contained a great many bombshells, but the most shocking part for Tracy was what it omitted.

No mention was made of President Havers's involvement in corrupt practices, still less was there any allusion to the botched Bratislavan rescue attempt. Instead a false story had been concocted about Hunter escaping while in transit from one Group 99 camp to another. Even worse, he claimed to have been working
alongside
the CIA while on the run from Group 99, helping to lure the group's leader, Alexis Argyros, aka Apollo, into a trap that resulted in his ultimate death via drone strike. Names and locations had all been withheld as “classified,” making the story conveniently impossible to verify. And meanwhile Greg Walton and his team came out of the whole thing smelling of roses while Hunter was hailed as a hero.

Tracy shook her head. “I still can't believe he sold out.”

“Oh, I wouldn't say that exactly,” said Frank. “The Havers administration was never as bad as Drexel painted them. At the end of the day, all they did was arrange a few off book, handshake deals to promote U.S. interests. We were just as bad.”

“I'm sure you were,” said Tracy. “But someone ought to be saying so!”

“Sally Faiers tried,” Frank reminded her. “Look what happened to her.”

Tracy handed him back the paper. They walked on.

“Do you think the Americans killed Sally?” Tracy asked.

Frank shook his head. “No. We're pretty sure Crewe ordered the hit in Bruges. And on Hélène. Hunter had confided in both of them, you see.”

“Kate wasn't mentioned in the article,” said Tracy. “After everything we went through! They don't even talk about Althea.”

“Drexel insisted on keeping her out of it.” For the first time, Dorrien sounded as outraged as Tracy was. “That was his quid pro quo, for keeping his mouth shut about Bratislava and the president. We know he gave her well over a million dollars in poker winnings, presumably to start a new life somewhere. And at the end of the day it was in everyone's interests to let her drop, to focus on Argyros. The drone strike on Apollo was a success. Letting Althea slip through the net was a failure. With Crewe and Argyros both dead, Group 99 have been cut off at the knees. Hunter Drexel's a hero, and so's the President. Everyone's a winner.”

“Tell that to Bob Daley's widow,” Tracy said bitterly. “Or the parents of those poor kids at Camp France.”

“I agree, my dear,” said Frank. “It's not fair. But then life so rarely is, wouldn't you agree? Ah, here we are.
Chez Patrick.
I hope you're hungry.”

They'd turned a corner into a charming cobbled mews. A few yards in front of them stood an extremely pretty French restaurant, with blue and white canvas awnings hanging over outdoor tables, simple wicker bistro chairs and window boxes overflowing with Sweet William perched above the open door. A glorious smell of garlic and white wine wafted down the mews towards them, making Tracy's mouth water.

Inside, Chez Patrick was bustling. An elderly Frenchman took Tracy's coat and scarf. He was reaching for Frank's heavy tweed coat when Frank's phone rang.

“Sorry,” he mouthed to Tracy, darting back into the mews. “You go in. I won't be long.”

Leaving him to his phone call, Tracy followed the maître d' through the restaurant. Weaving her way through gingham-clothed tables and past chattering diners, she arrived at a table tucked away round a corner, in a little alcove all its own.

Jeff Stevens looked up and smiled.

“Hello, Tracy.”

CHAPTER 34

T
RACY TURNED AND BOLTED
out of the restaurant.

She looked up and down the mews in search of Frank Dorrien. But Frank had gone.

He set me up. The bastard set me up.

By the time she turned around, Jeff was standing outside. In a dark suit that off set his gray eyes perfectly, with his curly dark hair ruffled by the wind, he looked as handsome as he had the day Tracy first saw him, in a train compartment en route to St. Louis. Tracy remembered that first meeting as if it were yesterday. She had just pulled off her first ever job, stealing Lois Bellamy's jewels for a crooked New York jeweler named Conrad Morgan. Jeff, posing as FBI Agent Thomas Bowers, had scammed her into handing them over; and Tracy had scammed him right back.

But of course, it wasn't yesterday. Decades had passed since that train journey. Decades of adventure and excitement, of love and loss, of exquisite joy and unbearable pain. Nicholas's life, and death, lay between then and now, an unbridgeable Grand Canyon of grief that Tracy could never cross, no matter how much she might want to.

“Please,” Jeff said reproachfully. “Don't run away. Have lunch with me.”

“I can't believe Frank did this,” Tracy muttered furiously.

“You mustn't blame Frank,” Jeff said. “I begged him. I told him I needed to see you.”

“And I told him, very plainly, that I didn't want to see you,” Tracy said.

Jeff's wounded expression was like a punch in the stomach.

Softening her tone, Tracy said, “It's a bad idea. You know it is.”

“It's only lunch.”

Tracy gave Jeff a knowing look. When it came to the two of them, there was no such thing as “only lunch” and they both knew it.

“We do need to talk,” Jeff pressed her.

Tracy hesitated, just for a second, and Jeff smiled. He knew he had her.

THE FOOD WAS DELICIOUS.
Nothing too rich and creamy, the way French food sometimes could be. Tracy had a langoustine salad that positively exploded with flavor, and Jeff had a fortifying steak frites, washed down with a good Burgundy for courage.

He knew he was going to need it.

For the first half an hour they talked about the case. About Hunter and Kate and the drone strike that had killed Alexis Argyros. About the fracking industry and corruption and the duplicitous nature of politicians.

“If only more people were as honest as us, eh, darling?” Jeff quipped.

Tracy loved his sense of humor and she envied it. She wished she could still laugh at the world the way Jeff could. She used to laugh a lot.

“I love you, Tracy.”

Tracy's head whipped back as if she'd been stung. This was so out of left field, so unexpected. She looked at Jeff almost angrily.

“Stop.”

Jeff's eyes were locked on Tracy's. “Why?”

“You know why. It would never work.”

“Why wouldn't it work?”

“Because we're completely incompatible!”

“That's horseshit. We're totally compatible.”