We were halfway through the public tour when a bone exploded right next to my head. I turned in time to see a female figure duck behind a stone protrusion. Then Brock was pulling me forward, dragging me through the sea of tourists into another passageway, one that wasn’t as brightly lit, one that was not meant for those on the regular tour. We ran forward, him pulling me, me stumbling over the rocky floor.
“Where are we going?”
“Shh,” he said, pushing me in front of him so that I was the first going deeper and deeper into the dark corridor. Fear was eating at my insides, making me grateful I hadn’t had a chance to eat anything this morning. I thought I saw another bone explode, but couldn’t be quite sure. Then Brock was grabbing me, dragging me in a new direction, then another and another until we somehow found ourselves emerging into light again.
He took my hand and pulled me onto the street, running down the center of the cobblestone lane even though there were cars coming and going all around us. I felt almost as though I’d somehow landed in the middle of a movie—or a really bad dream. And then we were crossing the street and rushing up some brick steps and into a house I’d never seen in my whole life.
I couldn’t even ask.
“Go upstairs. There’s an attic access in the ceiling of the upstairs hallway. Climb up there and wait for me. Understand?”
“How do you know? Where are we?”
“Just do what I said.”
I did, climbing the stairs quickly and pulling the ladder down with some bit of struggle. It was hard to reach, and heavy to pull. I tried to imagine how he thought I was supposed to do it alone, but then it suddenly just fell. I climbed the rungs quickly and pulled the ladder back up after me, crawling backward and crouching in the dark.
I felt like a wanted criminal hiding from the police.
I wished it was the police I was hiding from.
I strained to hear what was happening downstairs. I thought I heard footsteps, thought I could hear voices, but it could have all just been sounds coming from the streets. I didn’t know what was happening and I didn’t wear a watch, so I had no idea how much time passed. I was scared, so afraid that I soon couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of my heart in my ears.
And then the ladder popped open.
“It’s me,” Brock’s deep voice called up to me. “We’re okay.”
Chapter 20
Brock
The house proved to be well stocked and secure, just as Ox had promised.
We stayed two days, alone in the center of Paris, listening to reports about the car explosions—a leaky gas cap set off by a carelessly thrown cigarette, they said—and the brief investigation that lasted only long enough for the wrecks to be taken away. The drivers of each of the three cars, plus the passengers of the third car who were coming back from breakfast had suffered burns and concussion injuries, but were all expected to live. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
I thought that must have been intentional.
It was a distraction. Someone wanted Luna out of that hotel and they wanted her on foot. The gunman—gunwoman, really—who’d followed us was proof of that. But they had underestimated Caballo’s resources. They wouldn’t find us here.
The next trick would be getting Luna out of the country.
Using Luna’s private jet as we had done when we came to France was out of the question. Its type, style, and location were all public knowledge. It wouldn’t take much for someone to sabotage it.
A commercial flight would be marginally safer, but tickets could be traced.
Caballo had access to private planes, but all planes had to register flight plans. Anyone with a computer and a little knowledge could hack an airport’s computer systems and figure out who was flying where.
There were other options: Driving to another country, then flying. Taking a boat. Taking the chance of filing multiple flight plans, hoping the real one would be buried in all the paperwork. But nothing seemed quite right.
In the meantime, we had a lot of time on our hands.
“Tell me about this woman you were in love with who ended up with your brother.”
“Which one?” I pushed down the edge of the pillow so I could see her face across the bed. “The first one, or the second?”
“The first.”
I sighed. “We were fifteen. Do you really need to know more?”
She giggled. “Fifteen is a terrible age. I think we should all get a medal for surviving it.”
“Tell that to my niece. That’s how old she is now.”
“That makes you thirty. Countless years older than me.”
I groaned. “That means you were only fourteen when I was…” I shook my head. “I don’t even want to think about it!”
“You should be excited by the idea of being with a much younger woman.”
“Most men would be. But I’m not most men.”
“Are you embarrassed by the idea?”
“No. It’s just… I don’t normally think about age.”
“Good for you. That makes you very unusual in the world I live in.”
I reached over and kissed her. “Beauty has always been a numbers game, hasn’t it?”
She rolled over and scooted closer to me. “Tell me about the other one. The one you were with before the fire.”
The word fire tended to set off a tingle of alarms inside of me, warning me that we were walking a very sensitive line. I touched my face, remembering once again that my mask was no longer there. It was tucked into the pocket of my tux slacks, hanging inside a suit bag back at the hotel. I thought I would feel naked without it, but I actually felt free.
It was a nice feeling.
“She was seventeen, a senior in high school when we met, so I guess she was a younger woman, too.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty. I was just about to graduate from college.”
“Three years. Not bad.”
I smiled. “I guess not.”
“Did you love her?”
“I did. We had just moved in together. She went to Los Angeles on a job and I was supposed to join her after my final exams were concluded. I was in my third year of law school—I took a lot of classes in the summer to shave a year off—and I was nearly due to start an internship. I was applying to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office. We were going to make a life together out there, but then the fire happened.”
“What caused it?”
I shook my head a little. “They never really determined. They thought it was a gas leak in my apartment. That’s where it started, anyway. There was a blast as I was returning from picking up some beer—it was my turn, you know—and I was thrown back. I heard screams and without thinking ran back up to the apartments, pulling my neighbor out of the flames. If I’d known my friend, Ian, was stuck under my kitchen table…”
I’d grilled the firemen afterward, begged for the truth. They eventually admitted that if I’d gone to my apartment first, I might have been able to save Ian. Unfortunately, by the time the first fire trucks arrived, he had already been overcome by smoke inhalation.
“If I’d gone to him first… I should have gone to him first.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I knew he was there. I knew I hadn’t seen him on the lawn. I knew the flames were coming from my apartment. What more did I need to know?”
“That your neighbor was screaming.”
“She was old. Ian was only twenty-two.”
“Sometimes things happen for reasons we’ll never understand.”
I closed my eyes. “I was going to leave him. I was going to Los Angeles, going to leave everything behind in Texas. I was going to make a life with Eva and pretend I had nothing left in San Antonio. This was God’s way of punishing me.”
“God doesn’t punish individuals for small decisions. He has too much to do to pay that kind of minute attention.”
“Maybe.”
We were both quiet for a wh
ile, each lost in our own thoughts. Then her head came up and she looked at me for a long moment. “Did you say your girl’s name was Eva?”
“Yes.”
“Eva Rae? The supermodel from San Antonio? The one that was in the news last month after those people tried to kidnap her out of her hotel room?”
“The one and only.”
Luna’s face grew dark, but she didn’t say anything else. She lay back down against the pillows, her back to me. I stared up at the ceiling, still lost in my own thoughts. I don’t know how much time passed while I thought about that dark time—the months in the hospital, the grief I saw in Constance whenever she came to visit, which wasn’t often. I should have tried harder to see her when I got out, but… then I was off with the mercenaries. It was hard to make time for anyone. The only reason Akker and I stayed in touch was because he put up most of the effort.
The burner phone that had been left in the house rang. It was the first time I’d heard it ring, so it made me jump a little. I got up and pulled it out of the dresser drawer where it was hidden, some relief at the familiarity of the number on the screen rushing through me.
“Akker. I was just thinking about you.”
“Yeah? Well, we’ve all been thinking about you, trying to figure out how to get the two of you out of there.”
“Any solutions yet?”
“We think we’ve found someone who can make fake IDs that even our parents would believe.”
“Our parents probably wouldn’t recognize me in a crowd, anyway.”
“True.” Akker cleared his throat. “But the reason I called is we’ve got someone named Vivian insisting that she must speak to Luna this moment. We’ve got her on a secure line and we’re going to patch her through.”
“Vivian?” I turned to Luna. “Do you know someone named Vivian?”
“She’s my father’s neighbor.”
“Do you want to speak to her?”
Luna frowned. “She wants to speak to me? There must be something going on with my dad.” She got up and crossed the room, naked as the day she was born. She looked like a heavenly vision, her full breasts and soft curves a sight I could never grow immune to. Add to that her hair falling in waves around her face and her perfect gray eyes, and I wanted nothing more than to toss her back onto that bed and show her how her beauty made me feel.
“Luna’s here,” I said to Akker. “Put Vivian on.”
I handed the phone to Luna and watched as she waited for the other woman’s voice. A second later, a smile touched her lips, but it only touched her lips. “What’s going on?” she asked. Then her face crumbled and her eyes shot to mine. “Are you sure?” she asked, then, “When did this happen?” After that, there were a few okays, and I understands, then she handed the phone back to me.
“I have to go home!”
She marched around the room, picking up the jeans and T-shirt we’d found in a closet that fit her. She tugged them on, her hands shaking so hard that she couldn’t snap the buttons. And then she just stopped and began to cry.
“What is it?” I asked, going to her, resting my hand on her shoulder.
“She said my father fell. He’s in the hospital with a head injury and they don’t think he’s going to live.”
“Oh, hell!”
“I need to go to him. I need to see him.”
“I’ll talk to Akker. We’ll get on a plane tonight.”
She buried her face against my shoulder. “Thank you.”
Chapter 21
Luna
The face on the driver’s license looked like mine in a way. The eyes were the same, and the curve of the chin. But not much else. The hair was darker, the cut more severe. And there was a mole on the cheek.
Who thought that a mole would make me look different?
But it worked. We were on a United Airlines flight from New York to Dallas and would soon be back in San Antonio. I stared out the window, willing the plane to move faster, to get me home yesterday instead of today.
How had he fallen? Why was he out walking around? Why didn’t they call me sooner?
I was so afraid my father would be dead when I arrived home and I wouldn’t be able to say to him all the things I should have said years ago, before it was too late. Now it was too late and all those things would never be said. It wasn’t right!
I closed my eyes, remembering the night he told me my mother had died. I’d stared at his gun, remembering all the good times he and I had had with it. I never thought about my mother because, even then, he was both mother and father to me. He was my whole world. Nothing else mattered.
But I let other things come between us. I let the mess Heather dumped on me come between us. I let the shame of prom night come between us. I let it all ruin us.
It was my fault and I was about to lose my chance to make it right.
Brock took my hand and when I looked at him, all I could think about was the fact that he’d had one of the most beautiful women in the world and he’d let her go because of his perceived failings. What if he woke up one morning and realized what a joke that was? What if he decided one day that someone like me would never be good enough for him because he’d once had someone like her? Why was he even here with me?
All the pain and the uncertainty rushing around in my head was just… I just needed to get there!
The plane landed, ten minutes late, and we were among the last to deplane because we were traveling economy. I’d never flown economy, not even before I made my first million. It was annoying. We had to rush between terminals, running to catch the flight that would take us to San Antonio. They were closing the gate when we arrived, deciding in a split second to go ahead and let us on.
I slid into the seat closest to the window, once again staring out into the hot afternoon sun while we waited for the plane to take off. Brock wore a baseball cap that he had pulled down over his face, his scars partially hidden under some makeup I’d applied myself in a bathroom in the Paris airport. It’d been a long day—and night—traveling more than fourteen hours from Paris to Texas. This was the last leg, less than an hour long, but it already seemed like the longest.
I crossed my arms over my chest, keeping my hands where Brock couldn’t touch them. I was cold and tired, sleep having become this elusive thing I couldn’t grasp no matter how hard I tried. All I could see when I closed my eyes was this image of my dad in a hospital bed, like after the riot that had left him so badly injured. All I could think about when I was awake was how unfair it would be for him to die without me.
I needed to be home.
The plane took off and I settled back, urging it to fly faster and faster, urging the plane to get to its destination as quickly as possible. I closed my eyes, thinking how good it felt to finally be underway, when suddenly Brock was shaking me awake.
I guess sleep wasn’t quite as elusive as I’d assumed.
We threaded our way off the plane and found two police officers from San Antonio Police Department waiting for us at the gate. My heart sank. Was my father already gone?
“Brock Mills?” one cop asked.
Brock looked at the man, one hand pulling me behind him as he addressed him. “Can I see your badge, officer?”
They were in uniform. I didn’t understand why he would ask such a question, but then I was still half asleep.
“You are Brock Mills—correct?”
“What can I do for you?”
“We have a warrant for your arrest. If you’d please turn around and present your wrists.”
“What is this about?”
“We have a warrant.”
“Let me see it.”
The taller cop moved into Brock’s personal space and stared down his nose at him. “We have the authority here, sir. You will do as you’ve been asked.”
“Technically this airport is under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security. Only they have the authority to arrest me.”
The cop hesitated, and Brock grabbed my arm, pushing me
backward. We were running before I realized what had happened, running through an airport with two armed cops chasing after us. I could hear them yelling, warning Brock to stop, but he didn’t. He kept going.
What the hell?
“How did they know we were here?” he asked me through gasps for breath as he paused behind a pillar in front of the airport. “How did they know we’d be on that plane?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a setup.” He grabbed my hand and we were running again, flagging down a taxi and taking off the second we were inside. “They knew we would come the moment you heard your father was hurt.”
“Are you saying he’s not hurt?”
“I’m saying it’s a very good possibility. We need to get to a phone.”
Finding a public phone in this day and age of cell phones was nearly impossible. We ended up stopping at a restaurant downtown, not far from the River Walk, and asking to borrow their landline. I stood beside Brock as he called Caballo, asking someone named Cheryl to verify with the hospital that my father had been admitted. As he talked, I realized we hadn’t eaten in nearly twenty-four hours. The smells wafting from the kitchen were almost overwhelming.
“My office isn’t far from here,” I said, leaning into Brock. “We could hide out there.”
“Whoever’s doing this would be watching your office and your house. Your dad’s house, too, maybe.”
“Then where?”
Instead of answering, Brock responded to something that was said to him on the phone. He hung up and pulled my hand, drawing me out of the restaurant.
“What did she say?”
“No one using your father’s name has checked into the hospital in the last three weeks. It’s not him.”
“Why didn’t we think to clarify this earlier?”
“They did, but we were already on the plane and unable to communicate. Cheryl said Ox left several messages for us at the safe house.”
“Lot of good they did us.”
He glanced at me. “You don’t seem relieved.”
“I am relieved, I’m just… hungry.”
He smiled, the first genuine smile I’d seen on his face since I’d asked him about his relationship with Eva Rae. He pulled me down the street and into a parking garage on the corner, leading the way up the ramp. We walked about halfway down the first row of cars when he stopped and walked up the side of a Nissan Altima. It looked almost brand new.
Caballo Security Box Set Page 43