Authors: Julie Leto
With a vehement curse, Claire turned to her cutting board and proceeded to hack at the sausage, which he was pretty sure would be nothing but mush soon. For a moment, he allowed himself to be envious of her. As a private investigator, she wasn’t bound by laws or procedures or dictates from superiors. If not for him, she could do whatever she wanted, within the confines of the law. And sometimes, she could even skirt that.
But Michael didn’t have that freedom. Even his father’s ring, glinting at him with mocking brightness, couldn’t give him carte blanche to go off half-cocked and put Josslyn in more danger than she might already be in.
The only advantage they had at this point was that the Bandit might not know that a federal agency was on his trail. Michael had ordered the agents working with him to be discreet. Even the interview at the florist shop had been conducted by a female agent dressed casually, as if she’d only gone into the store to order flowers. Michael was keenly aware that if the unsub got spooked, he might kill Josslyn, dump her where they’d never find her and then move on to another victim—another woman distantly related to one of Joaquin Murrieta’s lovers.
And then, later, when Michael wasn’t here to protect her, the Bandit would come back for Claire.
Unlike the serial criminals he’d chased for years, this unsub wasn’t programmed into a single modus operandi. Any part of his ritual that put his seductions at risk would be discarded. And if he stopped sending scarves, they might not find him again until it was too late.
After what seemed like an endless silence, broken only by the scrapes and clanks of cooking, Claire slid a pan sized, inch-thick omelet onto his plate. The aroma of egg, potato, onions, peas and chorizo steamed enticingly beneath his nose and he wasted no time in taking a large and ravenous bite.
“This is good,” he said.
“It’s comfort food. The freezer was nicely stocked and Ruby arranged for some staples.”
He gestured for her to sit across from him, and since she hadn’t made any food for herself, he cut off a chunk of his tortilla with his fork and aimed it in her direction.
She waved it away.
He frowned, but didn’t push her. He’d bossed her around more than enough today. She’d eat when she was hungry.
“You could be comfortable here,” he said.
“Don’t you mean
we?
”
He chewed and swallowed the bite she’d refused. “Neither one of us will be here long, Claire. No one wants this to drag out. No one wants Josslyn to get hurt. No one wants you to get hurt.”
Least of all, me.
“It’s too late for that,” she shot back. “And you know it.”
T
HE POWERFUL SCENT
of the tortilla stirred the emptiness in Claire’s stomach, but she couldn’t bear the thought of eating. How could she when Josslyn was missing? The woman might not be a great mother or a responsible wife, but she did not deserve to be held against her will and possibly abused.
No one deserved that.
No one.
She would have to force her worn-out body into remaining upright long enough to help find Josslyn. Her cell phone, retrieved from her aunt and now sitting in front of Ruby, had not rung. No texts. No nothing.
With his silence, the Bandit was killing Claire.
Was that his intention?
“How did he even know about her? About
Nouvelle Placage?
” she asked, needing to force her thoughts in another direction. His mental cruelty would only affect her if she allowed it to.
“Listening device aimed at your office? Tap on your phone? Hack of your email? The possibilities are endless.”
“Josslyn didn’t arrive in New Orleans until the day before yesterday. That’s not enough time for him to have ingratiated himself enough that she’d tell him about our arrangment to meet at the cemetery. She specifically said she didn’t want anyone from Nouvelle Placage to know about her past.”
He nodded. He hadn’t worked that out so succinctly himself. She’d come up with a strong argument against the theory that Josslyn was cooperating with the Bandit willingly. Not that it mattered. Accomplice or not, the woman was at risk as long as she was in the man’s company.
“So if she didn’t tell him, how did he know about the meeting at the cemetery? No one else was around.”
“We don’t
think
anyone else was around. We can’t be sure.”
We were distracted.
He didn’t say the words out loud—he didn’t need to. She knew as well as he did that they’d been so caught up in each other, they had not sufficiently scoped out the area around the secret garden.
In other words, they’d screwed up.
And Josslyn was going to pay the price.
“We have to find her,” Claire insisted.
“We will.”
“When? You know that in kidnappings, time is the enemy. We can’t wait around for him to contact us. We have to lure him out. I have to lure him out.”
Michael finished his omelet, washed it down with coffee and met her gaze straight on. With his shoulders squared and his jaw tight, he looked implacable.
Infallible.
But he wasn’t—and neither was she.
“As we speak, I have agents scoping out positions around your house, sweeping for listening devices inside and reprogramming another cell phone with your number so we can better triangulate calls made to it. The only advantage we have is that there’s a small possibility that the Bandit doesn’t know that I’m FBI. Until he snatched Josslyn, we were a half step ahead of him. We have to use that advantage.”
“And what the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
“Eat,” he said, leaning across the counter and retrieving her plate. “Then get some rest. You’re going to need it.”
“I can’t,” she said, looking down at the plate as if the egg and potato mixture was crawling with maggots, when, in fact, the scent of chorizo and onion tantalized her tastebuds into watering.
He picked up the plate. She might have resisted, but he speared a chunk of potato and egg onto her fork and waved it under her nose. She’d made this dish about a thousand times over the course of her life and knew how delicious, rich and comforting it was. She took the bite, chewed and swallowed.
Despite her frown, he had another bite ready.
“You don’t need to feed me,” she protested.
He raised an eyebrow. “Eat.”
She did as he asked, and when her hunger took over, she retrieved the fork from him and finished off the meal on her own. She should have drawn the line at letting him hold the water bottle up to her mouth, but she didn’t.
On orders from the agents outside to keep the house dim, she’d cooked with only the light above the stove and the occasional flash from the open refrigerator. The semidarkness had been annoying at the time, but now it rendered the room intimate. When her lips met the rigid edge of the water bottle, she closed her eyes and sipped.
As soon as she swallowed, he kissed her. The sensation was not unlike a puff of warm air, gone before her lids fluttered open and her eyes read the regret on his face. Kissing her, touching her, wanting her when they were in a different world—a make-believe world—was one thing. But doing it here, now, in the presence of his colleagues and in the midst of a major screw up was both technically against the rules and ethically unwise.
So why did she feel so instantly pissed off that he’d stopped?
“I’ve had enough,” she said when he moved to stab another piece of food with the fork. “I’m going to bed.”
She didn’t give him a chance to argue. She marched out of the kitchen and said good-night to Ruby without breaking her stride. The little bedroom they’d assigned to her, the one that had seemed so tiny when she’d first dumped her stuff onto the twin bed earlier, now echoed with the click from her firmly shut door.
The emptiness only lasted a second. Even before she’d completely turned around, she felt a presence behind her. She swung her fist around, hammerlike, toward the intruder, but he caught her wrist in a powerful grip and smacked his hand tight over her mouth. “Don’t scream.”
M
ICHAEL STOOD IN
the kitchen, twisting the ring on his finger, when a spike of electricity seared up his spine. His brain registered the sound of a muffled scream, kicking his body into a sprint across the cottage. He kicked open Claire’s door, gun drawn.
Somewhere behind him, Ruby shouted, but he wasn’t fully aware of anything except Claire’s wide green eyes and the male hand clamped over her mouth.
One that immediately released her, then joined the other in high surrender.
“Hey, now everyone calm down here. I’m not your big bad kidnapper.”
Michael’s eyes refocused from the center of the man’s forehead so he could take in the whole face. A familiar face. Dark, like his father’s. Like Alejandro’s. A couple of days’ stubble softened his square jaw, but his eyes gave him away. Bright green and alight with humor, even with two weapons pointed in his direction, thanks to Ruby, who now stood directly to his right.
Danny Burnett, Michael’s middle brother, managed a roguish grin.
Almost in unison, Michael and Ruby said, “You!”
Michael dropped his weapon.
Ruby did not.
Danny had the sense to leave his hands in the air—which might have been a bad choice when Claire spun around and coldcocked him directly on the chin.
While she winced in pain, Michael’s brother staggered, but remained standing.
“How the hell did you get in here?” Michael snapped.
Claire cursed, shaking her hand. “Who is he?”
“No one dangerous,” Michael groused, shoving his firearm into its holster. “Not unless you have something valuable around here you’d like to keep in your possession.”
“My life isn’t valuable enough?”
“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” Danny insisted, making quite the show of rubbing his jaw. A trickle of blood marred his lip. When he caught the flash of red on his thumb, he’d seemed impressed. “Probably couldn’t have even if I wanted to. That’s one hell of a right hook you’ve got there, sweetheart.”
She charged forward, but Michael caught her around the elbow. He wasn’t sure why his brother was here—or even if it was legal. Thanks to Alejandro, the trumped up murder charges against Danny had been dropped. While Michael had a few niggling doubts about his brother’s innocence, which had been verified in a jailhouse confession by one of the men who’d conspired to set him up, he was fairly certain Danny was still facing a theft charge and had been ordered not to leave California.
“Don’t bother bruising your knuckles on him, Claire. He’s no threat to you.”
“How the hell do you know?”
She’d been pissed off before she’d left the kitchen and Danny’s unexpected appearance in her bedroom had her adrenaline pumping so hard, he could practically smell it oozing out of her skin.
The scent was hypnotic and erotic. It took every ounce of his professionalism to keep from dragging her close and inhaling deeply.
“Claire Lécuyer, please meet Daniel Murrieta Burnett. My brother.”
Though his jaw was red and swollen, Danny smiled and politely extended his hand. “The pleasure’s all mine.”
No, the pleasure’s all mine.
Michael bit back the territorial growl. The way things stood between him and Claire right now, neither one of them was going to experience any type of pleasure in the near future. Not until she no longer needed his protection.
And judging by her deepening scowl in his direction, not after that, either.
Michael turned toward Ruby. She still had her gun drawn, though admittedly, she’d lowered her aim. A shot from her gun right now might not kill Danny, but it would sure as hell hit him where it counted.
“You followed me,” she said, grinding her words through tight teeth.
“Sorry,” Danny said, though Michael didn’t think he sounded the least bit repentant.
Apparently, neither did Ruby. She raised her gun barrel so that she now had a straight shot at his torso.
“I don’t like being lied to.”
“And believe it or not, I don’t like lying. It’s an occupational must, of course, but it’s not my favorite past time, especially when I’m sharing a drink and oysters with a smoking-hot babe who could probably maim me with her little finger.”
Danny hooked his pinky, wiggling the digit until Ruby’s chin quivered with the strain of containing a grin. Michael rolled his eyes. Women found this act charming? Really?
Apparently so, because a split second later, Ruby holstered her gun. “You could have just asked me where your brother was.”
“And you would have told me?”
“No,” Ruby said. “At the time, I didn’t know. And besides, you’re a criminal and we don’t need you poking around in our case.”
“Which is why I opted to don a disguise and follow you from San Francisco until your paths converged. The fact that I’m a criminal is precisely why you need me. Who better to help you catch this joker?”
Michael had not thought it possible to dislike Danny any more than he had the first time they’d met. He was wrong. His blood seethed and it took every ounce of self-control not to use Claire’s method of dealing with his brother—though he’d probably aim a little more to the left so he could break his nose.
“We’ve solved a fair share of cases without your involvement, Daniel. I don’t need your help.”
“You let Alex front you the money to get into that sex club, but you won’t let me contribute my personal expertise to your case?”
“You’re a thief,” he tossed back. “You steal things. I don’t see how your expertise is of any relevance to our situation.”
“Well, if what I overheard is correct,” Danny said, “you had someone stolen out from under you. I don’t usually deal with human contraband, but the principles are the same. The guy has something you want, and with my help, you can steal her back.”
C
LAIRE CURLED INTO
a chair in the cottage’s tiny sitting room, an ice pack on her hand while she glanced back and forth between Michael and Danny, trying to figure out how these two men could possibly be related.
Physically, they couldn’t be more different. Though Danny had apparently dyed his hair a couple of shades lighter than Michael’s as part of his disguise, she could tell from his unshaven face that he was naturally a lot darker. They were about the same height, she supposed, but where Michael was like a stone wall, imposing and insurmountable, Danny was agile and smooth. If she hadn’t already learned that he was an internationally renowned thief, she might have pegged him for a dancer.
Not ballet or a Twyla Tharp-type. He was like Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. Old school.
Suave—and more than a little full of himself.
Michael, on the other hand, was deceptive. In FBI mode, he was serious and driven. He possessed a single-minded focus that never wavered, despite the residual sensuality of the man he’d portrayed at the plantation, the man who’d made love to her so wildly in the shower, the man who’d stolen a sweet and secret kiss in the kitchen when he’d known she was frustrated and angry at the impotence of her situation.
Danny wore his personality all over his body, but Michael—Michael was a man with two faces. And she yearned for both of them and neither at the same time.
Bottom line? Michael Murrieta and Daniel Burnett had absolutely nothing in common, except for their dual ability to totally piss her off.
Danny continued to manipulate his jaw, as if checking to see if she’d done any permanent damage. Her hand numb, she silently offered him the ice pack Ruby had fetched from the freezer.
He waved it away. “No, thank you, darling. I’ll wear this bruise like a badge of honor. There’s nothing more valuable to a guy like me than being knocked down a peg by a beautiful woman.”
Yeah, he was a charmer.
Michael, standing sentry in the middle of the room, groaned. Ruby, who had not stopped glowering at Danny from the doorway, remained deathly quiet.
“If you don’t need medical attention, then why don’t you clear out?” Michael asked.
“You think I traveled all this way to be sidetracked by a love tap to the chin?”
Claire sat up straighter, but Danny winked at her. He was just using her to bait his brother.
The least she could do for Michael was not fall for it.
“So why did you come here?” she asked.
“My area of expertise is unique. Why not use it to outsmart your…what’s that word you FBI guys use…your unsub? Or do you prefer the Bandit.”
“Unsub will do,” Michael snapped. “But I fail to see how the tricks of the thievery trade will help us deal with a man who kidnaps women for kicks.”
“He’s not doing it for kicks,” Danny replied. “He takes the women to fulfill a fantasy—a fantasy based on our ancestry. But whatever his reasons, the fact remains—he’s a thief. Instead of focusing on baubles and trinkets, he steals women. And a thief is a thief. And you know the saying,
set a thief to catch a thief.
”
Claire glanced at Michael, who was staring up at the ceiling as if pleading with God for help, or patience, or a little of both. Ordinarily, Claire would have thought Danny’s reasoning a stretch at best, but with no leads, they could at least hear him out. Ruby, still pissed off that she’d been tailed by Michael’s ne’er-do-well brother without her knowledge, remained silent and sullen. Michael was probably battling with too many demons—old and new, personal and professional—to make a judgment call.
It was up to her.
“Okay, then what’s your take on the situation?” she asked.
Michael shot her a warning glare, but she ignored him. At this point, she was willing to listen to the garbage man assigned to her street if it meant coming up with a plan for rescuing Josslyn that didn’t include sitting around and waiting.
Danny rewarded her with a smile that was probably worth as much as some of the jewels he’d stolen. “I’m glad you asked. Strip away the black scarves and sicko seductions, and you still have a man who is taking things that don’t belong to him.”
“How do you know about the scarves?” Ruby asked.
“As much as he’d like to deny it, Michael has two brothers, Special Agent Dawson. He shared with Alejandro and Alejandro—”
“Shared with you?” Michael asked, incredulous. “He may have saved your ass from a trumped up murder rap, but he would not tell you about my case.”
Danny’s mouth curved into an expression that was halfway between a regretful frown and an admiring smile. “True, but he also doesn’t pay a lot of attention to who might be eavesdropping on his calls. The manner in which I gained my insight notwithstanding, it seems to me that the unsub is, at his heart, a thief. As I said, he’s taken something you want and he’s holding onto it on his terms. He’s throwing you off your game and putting you on the defensive.”
He aimed that last insight directly at Michael, who had indeed retreated into protective mode. Claire sat up straighter, realizing that as much as she might not like Michael’s brother’s method of entry into their lives—or his chosen profession—she might just have found an ally.
“What do you propose we do, then?”
“Claire.” Michael spun, glaring at her.
She stared right back. If he didn’t want to have this conversation with his brother, he could see the door from where he was standing. She, on the other hand, wanted to hear what the bad guy had to say.
“I’d play him right back,” Danny said, his tone light and jovial, as if he hadn’t just cut into a moment so full of tension, it might have snapped. “He’s playing you by taking what you wanted—Josslyn. Now you have to take what he wants.”
“I have what he wants,” Michael said. “I have Claire.”
Danny grinned. “Precisely.”
“If he wanted to trade Josslyn for me, wouldn’t he have contacted us by now and proposed a trade?” Claire asked.
“Not if he doesn’t know how to find you. You haven’t gone home.”
“He has my cell number,” she argued. “He can call.”
“He’s called that number once already. He’s not going to take a chance of being traced. He wants a face-to-face. My brother knows it. That’s why he’s keeping you so tightly under wraps.”
Michael, who’d turned again to face Danny, didn’t move. He didn’t deny Danny’s accusation, nor did he acknowledge it. He didn’t have to.
“So how do I contact him?” Claire asked.
“Go home.”
Michael bolted forward and grabbed his brother by the collar. Danny didn’t tense up. He might have been a rag doll for all the resistance he gave. But Claire shot to her feet and demanded Michael release Danny immediately.
“Let him go, Michael, or I swear to God, I’m walking out that door and you won’t be able to stop me.”
Michael threw his brother back, and though he fumbled a bit when he hit the chair, Danny made quite the show of straightening his dark shirt and pants before sliding back into his seat. “Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of way, I say we move on to formulating a plan.”
“We’re not discussing any more of this with you,” Michael hissed. “I’m calling Alejandro so he can get you the hell out of here.”
Danny laughed, unperturbed. “Damned shame we missed out on sharing our childhoods. No opportunities to tattle on each other. I guess we can blame Ramon for that. Or, what did you call him? Pop?”
Claire watched Michael’s shoulders bunch. He clenched his fists and took a menacing step forward.
This time, even Danny flinched.
“Leave him out of this.”
Claire darted forward and grabbed Michael’s arm. “Stop it,” she ordered. “Both of you. The only family relative that matters right now is the one the Bandit is emulating to satisfy his sick fantasies. The rest can wait until after we’ve rescued Josslyn.”
“The lady makes an excellent point,” Danny said with a sycophantic tone that made Claire frown. He cleared his throat, sat up straighter and folded his hands as if he’d morphed into, well, into Michael. “Pops isn’t the issue. Neither is Alex, who did indeed arrange for my release from jail, but the charges were completely dropped. I’m a free man, no longer tethered to the justice system of California or any other state. So, let’s focus on the matter at hand, shall we?”