by Kay Hooper
Josh nodded slowly, his eyes now fixed on her lips. “He told Serena and me the same thing from the time we were very young.”
Raven remembered something else then, and her breath caught in her throat. “His wife … she was killed by accident, because someone was trying to get to him.”
His eyes darkening, Josh nodded again. “My mother.”
She was scarcely aware that he’d released her wrists, and wasn’t conscious of her action when she lifted her arms and slid them around his waist. Her heart was aching suddenly. “Your mother … Josh, I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” Still, there was a thread of grief in his voice. “But I haven’t forgotten Stuart’s lessons. You see, Raven, when I realized what I’d done, and what you were involved in, those years of lessons took control. I saw so clearly what Travers could do to you. All the ways he could hurt you.” He drew a deep breath unsteadily.
“I didn’t realize …”
In a peculiarly conversational tone far more chilling than any outburst would have been, Josh said, “I would have killed him, you know. If you hadn’t walked in, I would have gone after him. I just couldn’t take the chance he wouldn’t turn on you.”
“Josh—”
His hand tangled in her long hair, and Josh bent his head, taking her mouth fiercely. Raven’s lips parted instantly, allowing the slow probing of his tongue, feeling that stark caress ignite a curl of fire deep inside her.
And there was something else deep inside her, something both excited and astonished. Never in her life had a man’s touch affected her like this, ignited fire so swiftly and completely. She had known she loved him, but not even that knowledge had prepared her for this instantaneous explosion of all her senses, this mindless need to belong to him.
The past years had been filled with too much reality for Raven to indulge in fantasies, but her mind conjured images now, inspired by the demands of her body. She could see him naked and powerful in his desire, his muscled body sleek and strong and primitive. And her own body ached hollowly, insistently, demanding his strength to fill the emptiness.
Her soft moan was lost in his mouth as she felt him move against her, the thin barriers of her silk dress and his clothing flimsy things easily penetrated by the heat and demand of their bodies. The curl of fire in her belly became molten, flowing through her veins until she was burning from head to foot.
The restless heat made her move unconsciously against him, instinctively seeking relief from the growing tension, her nails digging into his back. And even though a distant, constantly guarded part of her mind was aware of voices and activity in the room around them, she was gloriously unconcerned by it.
“Uh … Josh?”
Josh lifted his head, staring down into her dazed eyes. “Get out of here, Zach,” he murmured hoarsely, his fixed gaze drifting downward to absorb the faintly swollen red lips that were parted and seemed mutely to beg for another kiss. And he wanted to oblige. Dear Lord, how he wanted to oblige.
“I’d love to,” Zach muttered, apparently having some trouble with his voice. “Believe me, I’d love to. But we have a visitor, and he seems determined to talk to you.”
“Tell him to go to hell,” Josh said absently, still staring at Raven’s upturned face. The eye shadow that was a part of her role, he thought, certainly gave her the enigmatic gaze of a feline. But a woman looked out of those violet eyes, and every male instinct he could lay claim to urged him to carry her away somewhere and lock out the world.
“Mind if I get there in my own good time?” a new voice inquired dryly.
Josh felt Raven stiffen slowly in his arms, her eyes clearing of desire as though a cool breeze had blown through her, and he was surprised to see her wince slightly as she turned her head to look at the visitor, her expression rueful. She didn’t disentangle herself from the embrace, but it was obvious that something had distracted her from passion.
Josh didn’t bother to look; it was enough that someone had disturbed his Raven. “Whoever you are, leave.”
“No,” the visitor returned with wonderful simplicity.
In a giddy moment, torn between the demands of his body and an innate sense of humor, Josh was tempted to roar, “Off with his head!” Not that he did, of course. Raven’s talk of princes and his own of kingdoms—not to mention the frustrated throbbing of his desire—had merely addled his wits, he decided.
“Hello, Hagen,” Raven said in a soft, depressed tone.
“Raven. Fancy meeting you here.” The man’s voice was very gentle.
She cleared her throat rather oddly, an absurdly guilty expression flickering in her eyes. Josh, annoyed, decided that the visitor had better say what he’d come for and then leave promptly since he was so clearly upsetting Raven.
Accordingly, Josh prepared to deal with the situation. And in his state of mind, he dealt wonderfully. He kept an arm around Raven while he retreated behind his desk, then sat down and pulled her onto his lap.
“Josh …” she said in a voice hovering somewhere between amusement and horror. Though he didn’t know it, she was remembering an inebriated suitor who had courted her cheerfully and humorously in a crowded tavern without giving a damn that he was wearing his heart on his sleeve. And she thought she loved him more in this moment than ever before.
With a lap full of Raven, it was difficult for Josh to glare at anyone at all, but he gave it his best shot and turned an irritated gaze to the visitor. What he saw gained the visitor no points at all.
“Hagen” was a rotund little man dwarfed by all three of Josh’s lieutenants as they stood around him in a semicircle. He couldn’t have been much more than five four, and the three-piece business suit he wore could have used the services of a good tailor; it was straining at the seams and stretched almost indecently over an unashamed paunch. The man had the face of a cherub, complete with fat rosy cheeks and small twinkling eyes. And on his round head reposed a battered fedora that a skid-row bum would have chucked into the garbage.
Appalled by this image, Josh closed his eyes briefly and drew Raven a reassuring inch closer. “Out with it,” he directed impatiently. “What do you want?”
Hagen removed his hat and twirled it between his pudgy hands in a ridiculous gesture. “Just a moment of your time, Mr. Long.”
“Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any.” Josh was mildly disappointed in his security chief because this character had somehow managed to hoodwink Zach into letting him enter the suite. “Out.”
Raven made an oddly choked little sound and whispered, “Josh, you don’t understand—”
Rafferty unintentionally cut her off. “Josh, I think you’d better listen to him. He said he was—”
It was Hagen’s turn to interrupt. And he did, in a suddenly soft and steely voice. “Call your stepfather, Mr. Long. Tell him my name.”
Josh’s gaze sharpened as he stared at Hagen. Those twinkling little eyes, he realized, were so vivid not because of humor but because of keen intelligence. And he also realized belatedly that Raven knew this man, and respected him.
“Call Stuart Jameson,” Hagen said, and it was not—quite—a command.
Josh reached out a hand to pull the phone nearer, taking his eyes off Hagen only when it became necessary to punch out the number. Then he returned his unreadable gaze to the strange visitor.
Raven, sitting still and silent in his lap, listened to his end of the conversation only vaguely. Her present position, not to mention the embrace Hagen had walked in on, left her at something of a disadvantage, but she couldn’t seem to summon the strength to defend herself. Not that any defense would have sufficed for Hagen.
Josh had reached his stepfather quickly and just as quickly named Hagen and described him somewhat unflatteringly. Then he fell silent, and only Raven could hear the long and steady response from the receiver; to her it was little more than sound, and she didn’t bother to try to listen harder. She knew what was being said.
When Josh fin
ally cradled the receiver, he hadn’t changed expression. But his eyes were speculative, and his voice was, if not friendly, then certainly more polite than before. “All right, Mr. Hagen, now I know who you are. Have a seat and tell me what you’re doing here.”
Hagen accepted the brusque invitation, making his way to a chair near the desk. “You’re cleared to hear what I have to say,” he said. “What about your men?”
“Them too. I don’t keep secrets from them.” Josh glanced at Raven, and sudden humor lit his eyes. “None at all, in fact.”
Raven, abruptly aware of what he meant, glanced at the three big men now arranging themselves on the couch and chairs, and her gaze skittered away. Precious few secrets, she thought wryly, conscious of just how much these men knew.
Hagen accepted Josh’s assurances and glanced at each of his three men briefly before focusing those bright little eyes on Josh. He splendidly ignored Raven’s position. “Since you now know who I am, you must also realize that I’m Raven’s, uh, boss.”
“Yes.”
“I trust,” Hagen said gently, “you didn’t know that before you blundered in and possibly ruined months of work, Mr. Long.”
Josh’s eyes hardened. “No.”
Hagen sighed a bit, apparently at the vagaries of fate. “No, of course not. And Raven, professional though she certainly is, had no idea that in one half of her double life she was becoming involved with a man who could destroy the other half.” He brooded on that for a moment, adding to himself, “I must make certain that never happens again. Operatives should be familiar with important people outside their own circle of interest.”
Josh looked at Raven. “Your circle of interest?”
Since her chief’s presence here was tacit permission to speak, Raven did. “I specialize in kidnappings and the white slave trade,” she explained, trying very hard to forget she was sitting in his lap. “The kidnappings are usually much simpler, because ransom demands are made; in white slavery, the girls just disappear.”
Josh had removed his interest from Hagen, and was in no hurry to return it. He continued to gaze at Raven, and tried to forget she was in his lap; it had, he remembered, seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was infinitely distracting now. “I see. How long have you been involved in this kind of work?”
“Actively, five years. Training before that.”
Five years on the dark side of life … Josh shook his head. “Why?” he asked her.
Raven didn’t need the question elaborated; she’d asked it herself often enough. “The usual reasons, I guess. Excitement, danger, adventure. And … I wanted to do something to help.”
Very quietly, Hagen said, “Tell him, Raven.”
She turned her head to look at the deceptively foolish-looking man, then back at Josh. Her expression was strained. “I had a sister,” she said simply. “An older sister. My senior year in college, my sister went on a vacation with some friends. She never came back.”
Josh felt a slow, heavy pain roll inside him. For the first time, he saw a faint shadow in her eyes, and her hurt was his. “Was she …”
“I found her.” Raven’s voice was soft and toneless. “When she disappeared, I spent a year searching for her. That was when Hagen contacted me, and offered to train me; I was having no luck at all in finding my sister, but I was making a lot of noise.”
“And I heard it,” Hagen interjected.
Josh kept his eyes on Raven’s immobile face, waiting for the blow, very sure it would be just that.
“I took the training, and learned where to look and what to look for. But she’d been missing so long. It was sheer luck that I found her.” Raven’s soft voice was the only sound in the room. “She … hadn’t been as lucky as some girls are. The first man to … to buy her had tired of her quickly and sold her. It was downhill after that. I found her in the Middle East. In a whorehouse.”
Josh gritted his teeth to keep from groaning aloud, and his arms instinctively drew her closer. Painted in neon in his mind was the accusation he had all but made, and her soft, toneless response. “I’m not a whore.” No wonder she had looked so shattered.
Raven was going on. “They’d kept her strung out on drugs, and she was sick.… She never recognized me. And didn’t live long enough to come home.”
“Raven …” It was no more than a whisper.
She looked at him for a moment, her eyes clearing slowly of shadows, then managed a smile. “I guess that’s the real reason I kept the job.”
Hagen began talking quietly, obviously deciding that it was time to reveal exactly what Raven was involved in now. “We’ve known for years that Leon Travers was involved in white slavery, but couldn’t trace it to him personally. He’s protected by layers and layers of blind, deaf, and mute employees who know only too well that to betray him means death.”
Josh, still hurting for Raven, forced himself to pay attention. “Then what makes you think you can pin it on him now?”
“He made a mistake. Or, perhaps, to put it more accurately, someone in his organization did. A few weeks ago, two young girls were abducted three blocks away from their home in Virginia. They are seventeen, and extraordinarily beautiful. Twins. A novelty … a novelty that would command a high price from some.”
Josh nodded, and made a guess. “And special in another way?”
Hagen looked approving. “Stuart always said you were sharp. Yes, indeed, they are special girls. They were raised quietly, out of public view to allow them privacy, but they happen to be the daughters of a very important man. Within hours, he had notified the proper authority—me—that his daughters were missing. And because of his quickness, we were able to get a lead almost immediately.
“We allowed no publicity of the disappearance, and worked very quietly. Within days we had traced the girls to California, and then the general area of Los Angeles. There had been no ransom demand, so we felt strongly that whoever had taken the girls meant to make their money in another way. But we didn’t know who had planned the snatch. There are far more of these prostitution rings than the average person would believe existed.
“It was at that point, when, admittedly, we had lost the girls, that we had a stroke of sheer luck. One of my operatives was conducting some strictly routine surveillance on Travers and saw him briefly visit a very respectable house in a suburban neighborhood. The operative was only mildly suspicious, until one of those bright girls managed to toss her expensive gold bracelet out a window. He caught no more than a glimpse of the girl, but that bracelet was as good as a signature.”
Josh felt a slow anger building within him. It was fueled by his extensive experience with covert operations. He hated the practice of delaying the rescue of victims in order to capture “important” criminals. “Why didn’t you move?” he demanded. “Get them out of there?”
Hagen smiled thinly, understanding the source of the younger man’s anger. “We did move, Mr. Long. Within two hours, which was how long it took us to get a team out there to deal with the armed guards my operative saw. But the girls were gone. And the operative left there had disappeared as well.”
Josh nodded, half in apology. “I see. The trail was cold again. Except for Travers.”
“Except for Travers.” If Hagen accepted the tacit apology, he didn’t say so. “By that time, we had accumulated a considerable file on Travers. And we had evidence to support our belief that he had a network of safe houses so that his girls could be moved frequently. Never the same house twice, and never for more than a day or so in any place. We were also certain that the girls were kept in the area for at least two months while the details of their sale were being worked out. So we had that long to find them.”
Josh, thinking of what the girls were probably going through, stirred restlessly. “Those poor kids. Held prisoner, guarded, abused—” He broke off as he realized that Hagen was looking steadily at Raven. He followed the other man’s gaze, and she responded to his worry.
“No, not abused
. Decent food, no drugs except for mild sedatives. And no rape.” Wryly, she explained, “High-priced slavery rings don’t damage their merchandise. Virginity also commands a high price, and some customers demand a doctor’s certificate to attest to it.”
She sounded so certain, and Josh felt a chill. “Raven … how do you know?” Her gaze avoided his, moving instead to Hagen and looking at him in what seemed a pleading manner. Clearly, she didn’t want to answer Josh’s question.
Hagen did. “Twice in the past three years,” he said quietly, “Raven has been ‘kidnapped’ into white slavery. She went the entire route, from the initial snatch to the customer who … bought her.” He must have seen the savagery in the stare Josh sent his way, because he explained probably more than he wanted to or meant to. “We were with her every step of the way, of course. She was never in any more danger than she would have been in crossing a street.”
For the first time, one of Josh’s lieutenants spoke. It was Zach, and his voice was harsh. “Right. And the sun rises in the west. Why don’t you tell us a few fairy tales?”
Raven looked at the big security chief in surprise at the suppressed violence of his reaction, but Hagen smiled. “It was her decision—her request, in fact. And she wasn’t harmed. Thanks to her work, we were able to break both slavery rings; before, we couldn’t touch them.”
Josh didn’t want to think of Raven in such situations, even if they had apparently ended safely. He got the conversation back on track. “Okay, so the girls are reasonably safe. Travers was your only lead. Then what?”
Hagen nodded. “We had spent a considerable amount of time and gone to a lot of trouble to fabricate a foolproof background for an international ‘buyer’ in the event of need. And this was the situation we had planned for. I brought Raven back—”
“From where?” Josh interrupted, distracted again.
Hagen grimaced faintly at the digression, but answered. “Hong Kong.”
Josh looked at Raven, who showed the first flash of humor in quite some time. In what seemed like magic, and by merely lowering her eyelids and apparently thinking Oriental, she suddenly looked distinctly Oriental. “It’s amazing what you can get away with if you’re wearing a kimono,” she murmured.