“Did I have an affair with Judd Fremont?” Lucky held her breath, praying he would say no.
Sebastian smiled, shaking his head. “No. The creep was crazy about you and you knew it. You flirted with him, mercilessly teasing him. That’s all. But if you would have given him half a chance, he would have hopped in the sack with you.”
She gazed at her friend for a moment. “Do you think Judd and Brad would try to kill me?”
All the color leached from his tanned face. “What would make you think that?”
“One of the disks is a shipping report or something on orchids. They import them. Judd collects rare, endangered orchids, which are probably stolen. Someone tried to kill me. The orchids must be the key.”
“I don’t know. Judd and Brad are creepy and strange. The two of them are so close. You all lived in one house until you insisted on building your own.” Sebastian shrugged. “But would they try to kill you? I wouldn’t put anything past Judd.”
The phone rang and Lucky picked it up. Ned Adams was on the line. Sebastian slipped out of the room, leaving her alone.
“You said this was urgent.” Five time zones away, Ned Adams sounded exhausted and short-tempered.
“Don’t you know me? I must have contacted you before.”
“About what?”
“I don’t remember,” Lucky responded without thinking. Oh, boy, she sounded like a total nut. “Your address was on a package I was sending you.”
“Look, lady, I’m tired. When you remember what it was—”
“
I have two computer disks here. One is some sort of record of orchid shipments from Singapore—”
“Hey, wait a minute. You called me before, but you refused to tell me your name. You said you’d been in prison once and had no intention of going to jail again. You claimed to have information on a credit card scam.”
She didn’t remember anything about this. “How are orchids and credit cards related? I don’t get it.”
Four beats of silence, then, “You just left Maui, didn’t
you?”
“Yes, I—”
“
Son of a bitch!
You're
the woman in the car they pushed off a cliff, aren’t you?”
“You know about my case? Hasn’t the FBI been investigating it for some time?” Lucky asked, remembering that Cody had contacted them when he couldn’t identify her.
“Damn straight, I’ve been in on this case. You were wearing the shoe that matched the one on the agent from American Express. She’d been investigating a credit card scam in Singapore.” He let out a long sigh. “I had no idea you were the woman who contacted me about the credit card scheme.”
Lucky’s blood coursed through her veins, chilling every inch of her body and leaving her feeling weak. Singapore. Orchids. Her worst fears confirmed. Brad had tried to kill her. Oh, please, no, not Julie’s father.
“Tell me again what you’ve got on those disks.” Now Ned Adams sounded totally awake.
“
I don’t know. It’s a lot of routing information or something, showing shipments out of Singapore.”
“Great! It will tell us who is distributing the counterfeit credit cards.”
“Really? Are they shipping them in boxes of orchids?”
“Absolutely. The boxes probably have a false bottom, which conceals the cards. We could shut down the operation right now, but without the distribution list, the scam will just go on.”
Lucky could almost see the smile on his face, but she was so heartsick she could hardly speak. The father of her child. A cold-blooded killer.
“What’s on the other disk?”
“I have no idea. It’s a jumble of numbers—”
“And strange-looking symbols?”
“Exactly. Have you seen it?”
“Holy shit! You’ve got an encryption breaker.”
Realizing the man who’d fathered her child had tried to kill her had hit her like a knockout punch. Lucky could barely ask, “What’s that?”
“It’s a software program designed by a sophisticated hacker—who’s nothing more than a common criminal—to crack the intricate codes banks use to protect their computer systems. Crack the code the way these counterfeiters have, and you’re into the bank’s confidential records. You know their credit card sequence numbers and all sorts of technical information, which allows you to manufacture phony cards.”
“Oh,” she whispered into the receiver, wishing Greg were at her side. He’d seen her through the worst. He could help her now.
“Do you have those disks in your possession?” Ned asked.
“Yes. Should I send them to you?”
“Hell, no! I want you to call our field office in Honolulu. One of our agents will meet you. Give him the disks, then get out of there.”
Lucky listened while he explained the blow that had nearly killed her matched the wound on the American Express agent.
As he filled her in on other details, anger coursed through her. White-hot fury, a remnant of the woman in the mirror.
Julie’s earliest years, the memories other mothers had to treasure, had been stolen from her. While some people might say Lucky had been blessed not to remember the terrible times in her life, she didn’t agree. She wanted to remember so she could understand herself. But thanks to Judd and Brad, she would never have the chance.
Blind anger obliterated everything else. She barely heard what Ned was telling her. She wanted revenge with a savage intensity that made her tremble.
“They tried to kill you once,” Ned insisted. “This time you’re a dead woman. Get out of there.”
34
G
reg managed to squeeze a bit of information out of Lucky’s housekeeper. He learned Lu
cky had received an emergency
phone call from Sebastian at the Cache salon in the pricey Ala Moana district. Greg drove there, Dodger at his side, using Claude Winston’s car.
Lucky wasn’t at the swank salon, but she’d told Sebastian about Greg and the hairdresser willingly talked about her. With growing alarm, Greg listened to the ponytailed man with diamonds twinkling from his ear and left nostril explain how he found the disks Lucky had entrusted to him—finally. Greg balled his fists to resist the urge to deck him. If Sebastian spent less time mincing around in patent leather sandals and more time paying attention to important things, he would have contacted the FBI and Lucky wouldn’t be in danger.
“
What do you mean you found a gun for her?
”
Greg asked Sebastian.
“After Lucky spoke with the FBI, she sat there”—Sebastian pointed to the chair at the desk—“and asked if I had a gun. I knew she was afraid. Who wouldn’t be? Judd and Brad had
tried to kill her. So I went next door and borrowed Dixon’s gun for her.”
Sebastian shook his head as he told Greg all
about the credit card scam. “
Ned Adams told her to contact the local FBI office. I wanted her to go to them right away, but she ran out without saying exactly what she was doing. I think she went home to get Julie.”
Greg raced back to the Gold Coast but Lucky wasn’t there. He called the FBI field office and found out that they were expecting her call but hadn’t heard from her yet.
Lucky had asked for a gun.
Greg remembered the way Lucky’s temper would flare. With pride, he recalled her determination to save Rudy. Lucky hadn’t wanted a gun because she was afraid. She’d gone to confront Brad and Judd.
Would she do something that foolish? You bet. This was the woman who jumped in the pool with the type of shark famous for attacking people.
Greg got the address of the warehouse from the maid and climbed into the borrowed car, talking to Dodger. “Damn it! Don’t let her do anything stupid. Let’s hope we’re not too late.”
L
ucky paused outside the Chinatown warehouse and told herself to calm down, but the anger simmering inside her refused to listen. Instead, it intensified, telling her that she knew how to use the gun in her purse. Where or when she’d learned, she couldn’t be sure. Lucky touched Rudy’s tooth for luck, then slipped inside the warehouse.
It was dimly lit, but she could see crates lining the wall. Each was stamped FLOWERS—FRAGILE. Orchids and phony credit cards. At least the woman in the mirror had learned her lesson. She hadn’t wanted to be sent back to jail. Obviously, she had planned on turning in Judd and Brad when she discovered they were crooks.
At the rear of the building was a brightly lit office where Brad and Judd were working on computers, their backs to her. Brad had told her that all he needed was a computer to do his work. He didn’t even have a secretary. It had seemed odd at the time, but now she knew why. They didn’t want to risk anyone discovering what they were doing.
Next to the glassed-in office was a strange-looking metal chamber with a thermostat on the door and a ventilation switch. Judd’s deadly orchids, Lucky thought as she passed the unit.
Brad jumped up the second she opened the door. “Lucky, what are you doing here?"
“I wanted to ask you both a few questions,” she said, her tone reflecting the fury that nothing could temper.
“Hey, you sound upset,” Judd remarked, rising from his chair.
Upset? Get real. She was mad as hell, ready to kill.
“Honey, what’s the matter?” Brad asked, coming closer.
Lucky pulled the gun out of her purse, stopping him dead in his tracks. He took a step backward and looked at Judd.
Judd’s stance was casual as he leaned back against the desk and surveyed Lucky as if she were an interesting, rare orchid, not a woman with a loaded gun in her hand. “I think the lady wants some answers.”
She aimed the gun at Brad, saying, “Did you hit me over the head? Did you really want to murder the mother of your child?”
“Hey, I don’t know where you got such a crazy idea,” Brad protested.
“Oh, please, don’t insult me. As soon as I get my answers, I’m calling the police. After all I’ve been through, I want to have the pleasure of seeing you both hauled away in handcuffs.”
Brad whirled around to face Judd. “I told you we should have left her with Braxton.”
“Shut up! She can’t kill us both before we get the gun away from her.”
“Yeah? Right!” Brad gripped the edge of the desk, his knuckles white.
“I won’t hesitate to kill you unless I get the answers I want. Which one of you actually hit me over the head? He gets the first bullet.”
“Judd did it.” Brad sank into the chair. “You stumbled upon our counterfeiting scheme. You’d been living with us for years and never knew how we really made our money.”
“Then you got nosy.” Judd studied Lucky, canting one eyebrow in that irritating way of his. “I had no choice but to kill you.”
“Why was I wearing a dead woman’s shoe?”
“It was a mistake. We lured you to a shack in the rain forest by pretending to be after some exotic orchids. There we drugged you and forced you to bleach and perm your hair.”
Lucky listened to Brad, who willingly gave the details, hoping to save his own hide. She imagined herself in those final hours. A hard, self-centered person, but a woman who did love her child and was struggling to be a good mother despite her past. A woman who had been to prison once and had learned her lesson.
What had it been like, knowing she was going to die? Even though she’d been drugged, if she had enough presence of mind to give herself a home permanent and bleach her hair, Lucky had known death was only hours away.
She must have been panicked, struggling to think of a way of escaping, a way to save her life. And Julie, oh, Julie. She must have been terrified that this monster, who looked so meek, was going to raise her daughter.
“You were out cold when we dressed you,” Judd told her without even a hint of remorse in his voice. “We made you up to look like a dollar-a-trick whore, then we each put on a shoe. Brad’s so stupid. He hadn’t thrown away Thelma’s shoe. It was still in the closet. Brad got so rattled that he put it on you by mistake.”
So she’d been out cold when they’d put her into the trunk
of the car. Lucky imagined the night of terror—death just minutes away. At least she hadn’t been awake when she was in the trunk.
“The woman you killed in Singapore had a family, a right to a life. Maybe she had a child she loved as dearly as I love Julie. Did you ever think of that?”
Suddenly, a grin split Judd’s face and he lifted one brow. The chill of fear prickled across her scalp. Julie. The chink in her emotional armor. The woman in the mirror would have killed them, but Lucky would not. She was a different person now. She was bluffing and Judd realized it when she spoke about Julie.
“You know, Brad,” Judd said, his tone so casual they might have been discussing the latest in PC software, “I think we should put Lucky in the vault with the deadly orchids, switch off the ventilator, and let her die.”
“She’s going to kill us,” Brad said, a distinct quaver in his voice.
“No, she’s not.” Judd grinned. “She’s thinking of Julie. How would she explain killing Julie’s father?”
“Self-defense,” Lucky said quickly, but her tone wasn’t as forceful as it had been a moment ago.
She opened her mouth to tell them to put their hands in the air. Judd pounced, grabbing her arm and yanking hard. The gun fell to the floor, and he shoved her down on top of it.
“You bitch! To think I loved you and brought you home again.”
Judd planted his knee in the small of her back. Beneath her stomach she felt the sharp edges of the gun. Her fingers clutched at Rudy’s tooth and prayed for luck.
G
reg used the car phone to call the FBI. He spoke with the field agent who was expecting Lucky’s call. Greg gave him the address of the warehouse just as he drove into Chinatown, and the agent promised to get there as quickly as possible.
“Why not call the police?” Greg asked him.
“They’re a little iffy. I don’t want anyone to tip off the credit card crooks. They’re pretty slick. They may have an informant on the police force.”
Greg drove down a narrow street flanked by tall, narrow buildings. Chinatown had sprung up overnight—built with the cheapest materials—to accommodate the Chinese who’d been shanghaied to work in the sugar cane fields during the last century. The buildings had Chinese characters instead of names or numbers. He hoped the FBI agent was familiar with the area, Greg thought, thankful that Search and Rescue had trained here.
“That must be her car,” he told Dodger. “It still has the dealer’s paper license plates on it.”
Greg double-parked beside Lucky’s Suburban. Jumping out of the car, Dodger at his heels, he inhaled the foul odor of garbage baking in the afternoon sun. Dodger’s nose quivered, and Greg knew he detected a trace of opium drifting in the air, blowing their direction from the red-light district two blocks away. This was just about as far from the tourists’ vision of paradise as anyone could get.
And the perfect place to hide an illegal operation.
This could have been Hong Kong or San Francisco’s Chinatown. A jumble of buildings with laundry hanging from the balconies and the sing-song cadence of Asians yelling to each other through the warren of alleylike streets dominated this world. A place where no questions were asked.
Greg couldn’t read the Chinese characters and couldn’t decide which of the several large buildings might be International Orchid Importing. There were no shops on this particular stretch of the street, and he had no time to waste asking questions. Even if he did, he doubted many of the people spoke anything but Chinese.
“Okay, boy,” he told Dodger, whirling one finger in the air. “Find Lucky.”
Dodger wasn’t trained to follow a scent like a bloodhound, but the dog had become so attached to Lucky and knew her
scent so well that Dodger understood. Taking measured steps,
nose in the air, the dog pranced down the street.
There were no parking places. Cars were parked against the sides of the ramshackle buildings. He figured Lucky had parked as close as she could get to the warehouse. They were almost to the end of the block now. Dodger stopped, pointed with one paw raised, and whined.
Greg patted him on the head. “Good work, Dodger.”
The building didn’t look large enough to be a warehouse, but in Chinatown looks could be deceiving. He eased the door open, then glanced over his shoulder, hoping to see the FBI. The only car in sight was an ancient Toyota belching smoke from its exhaust. Hell if he was waiting. Minutes could make the difference between life and death for Lucky.
Inside the warehouse was pitch dark except for two flares of blue-white light coming from the back. He hesitated a moment, putting his hand down to pet Dodger while his eyes became accustomed to the dark. Slowly, he began to see that the warehouse was larger than it appeared. Crates like coffins lined the sides of the building.
Greg dropped to his knees, the hot, tight vise of fear cinching around his chest. Why weren’t there any lights on? What had they done to her this time?
“Find Lucky,” he whispered to Dodger.
He gripped Dodger’s collar and let the dog slowly lead him to the back of the warehouse. As they came closer, he realized that the small flares of light were actually computer screens, but the rest of the office was in total darkness. Dodger veered away from the office area toward what appeared to be a workstation. He ventured around a tall stack of cartons.
And ran into the barrel of a gun.