Or take her to the ground and make love to her.
He ran a hand over his face. “Please,” he whispered.
“You’re not going to scare me off, Kane Rogan. I know you. I’ve known you since I was a teenager. I’ve loved you half my life. You are impossible, you can be a bully, you are more stubborn than anyone I’ve met in my life—”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black,” he muttered.
“—but you’re a hero. You’re loyal. Dedicated. You have more compassion than you would ever admit to anyone.”
“I don’t have compassion.”
She laughed. She laughed at him. “Oh, Kane. Don’t even start with me. I know you. You can try to scare me or intimidate me, but it’s an act. Because I see the real you. I always have. And that is what truly terrifies you.” She walked around to the passenger side of the car, opened the door, and looked at him over the top. “We’d better get back to Sean’s house. I’m worried about him, and you need to talk to him.”
“He doesn’t want to hear anything right now.”
“So make him listen.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lucy had the odd sensation of floating, as if on a raft in water. A soft up and down, ripples in a lake, lightly splashing water on the sides of a metal boat.
Then she jolted into full consciousness, the memories of being restrained in the hull of a small boat flooding her. She reached out, almost expecting her hands to be bound, her mouth to be gagged.
They weren’t. She opened her eyes. Everything was still blurry, unfocused. She saw light and dark, but that was it. Her arm hurt and she rubbed it. She blinked a few times, but her vision stayed cloudy. Did she have a concussion? Her head hurt, but she didn’t feel any lumps or specific points of pain.
Her breathing was too fast, her heart still pounding, and she recognized the signs of panic. She hadn’t had a panic attack in months—in nearly a year. But the fringes were there, and if she had been restrained she didn’t know if she’d be able to control it. She breathed in and out, slowly, deeply, forcing her heart to slow down. Methodically. In. Out.
Focus, Lucy.
She put her head between her knees and squeezed her eyes closed. Every limb felt stiff, unused. How long had she been unconscious? She was on a couch, she thought, a soft and comfortable cushion, at any rate, that didn’t feel like a bed. She thought back to what had happened earlier … she’d caught Eden at Sean’s desk. She’d been talking to someone on the phone … Lucy couldn’t remember exactly what Eden said, but it was about Sean. And bonds.
Tampico. What was Tampico? A person? A place? Lucy couldn’t remember the conversation verbatim, but she knew it would come to her.
She’d told Eden to leave the office, but she hadn’t wanted to turn her back on her. She didn’t really know or understand what Eden was doing, and until she could talk to Sean she didn’t want to leave her alone.
Dammit, Lucy, why did you let her into the house at all?
Sean had security, but looking back, this had a Trojan horse feel. Eden wanted to be left alone. Had she been able to break into his computer? Or was she looking for something? Why?
Why keep setting off the alarm and calling Lucy? Why had Eden wanted her to come home?
It had that feeling of a setup.
“No, Lucy, don’t come home for me. I’ll manage…”
Yes, definitely felt like a plot. Now, at any rate. Why couldn’t she see it before?
You didn’t want to.
What happened after Eden hung up the phone? She had tried to explain herself … Lucy sensed something was wrong, didn’t want to turn her back to Eden. But Lucy had sensed something … someone. Reached for her gun. A cold mist hit her face. She heard Siobhan calling for her …
Run, Siobhan!
The spray again, then something in her arm. A prick.
Nothing.
She didn’t remember anything. No dreams, no sounds, nothing. Not being transported, taken here—wherever here was. What had they done with Siobhan?
“Siobhan?”
No answer. Where had they taken her friend?
Lucy listened carefully. She didn’t hear any breathing. Didn’t sense anyone in the room, anyone watching her. Her vision was still clouded. Only light and dark. Whatever they’d drugged her with had taken away her sight. Was that even possible?
Of course it’s possible because you can’t see anything!
Panic clawed inside her. She didn’t know where she was, why Eden and whoever she was working with had drugged her, what they wanted. It was quiet. The smells were unfamiliar. She wasn’t home. She wasn’t home and no one knew where she was.
Snap out of it!
Action. She needed to act. Her vision would return. It had to. Right? Already she thought she saw more. Not just light and dark but fuzzy images.
She willed herself to get up. Her entire body was shaking out of heightened fear. She patted down her body; her gun wasn’t on her. She reached for her ankle; they’d removed her ankle holster and the gun that had been in it. No phone. No gun.
And no eyesight.
She put her hand on the couch to steady herself. She was still shaking. It took her several minutes before she could control her fear and move.
She closed her eyes, tried to sense something about the room. She was alone. Though with her heart pounding in her ears she might not be able to hear anyone else.
But you’d know. You know when people are watching you.
A curse, perhaps, after she’d been kidnapped and raped in front of an audience eight years ago. But her sixth sense, the overwhelming sensation of being watched, had saved her many times over the years. And she certainly didn’t rely on her sight for that.
With her left hand on the edge of the couch, she reached out with her right hand. Moved it back and forth in front of her. Not being able to see her hand was unnerving. It was a blur in front of her. She could sort of make it out, but it was fuzzy, a blob. She saw a dark object in front of her, but she couldn’t touch it.
Let go of the couch.
No. The couch was her anchor. She couldn’t see where she was walking, how could she know that there wasn’t something dangerous in front of her?
Let go. You have to let go.
Shaking, she pulled her left arm away from the couch and took one step forward, now both arms in front of her. She moved them back and forth and felt nothing. She had an overwhelming sensation of vertigo and stumbled forward, her knee crashing into a table before her hands landed on it. She fell forward, but the table—like a dining-room table—stopped her from hitting the floor. She stayed prone for a moment, catching her breath.
Okay. Good, Lucy. Now get up.
Using the table as a guide, she pulled herself up. She kept her right hand on the table and shuffled slowly forward, until she reached the corner. She turned the corner and walked, her left arm sweeping in front of her …
It hit something hard. Then next to her something heavy and breakable crashed to the floor. Shattered.
Good job, Kincaid. Now they know you’re awake.
If they were going to hurt her, they would have done it already. Why would they? Eden was Sean’s sister! They might have been estranged, but what reason would she and Liam have to kidnap Lucy?
Liam. Eden was talking to Liam. He was in her house. He’d been the one to drug her. Had Siobhan gotten away? Was she hurt? Worse?
Eden and Liam had kidnapped her from her own home. Drugged her. Taken her eyesight …
It’s temporary. It has to be temporary …
She was still fully dressed in the same clothes she’d worn to work that day. Her shoes were still on her feet, so she carefully walked over the broken glass, heard it crunch beneath her low-heeled ankle boots.
How far do you think you’re going to get without being able to see?
Her hand skimmed a wall and she breathed a sigh of relief. It was stucco, lumpy, but not sharp. Like the outside of a house. Odd. She was cert
ainly not outside. She walked forward and her knee connected with a low-lying piece of furniture.
“Shit!”
She bit her lip. Well, what did she think, that her yelp would attract attention more than the glass she’d broken?
She bent over, saw faintly that there was a waist-high shelf of sorts. She reached down, walked around it, noticed a darker blob against the white walls.
A door.
Three quick steps and she was there. Solid wood. Carved. She scrambled for the knob. Turned it.
It didn’t budge.
She fought with it, but the door wasn’t moving.
She pounded on the wood. It was a solid, thick door, but she pounded and shouted, “Eden Rogan! Damn you, Eden, open this door.”
Nothing. No response. Silence.
Silence.
Lucy had no idea how late or early it was. How long she’d been out. She had an empty stomach and a full bladder. Hours? At least hours. She and Siobhan had arrived at her house just before three. If she didn’t get back to the office by three thirty, four at the latest, someone would have called her. If she didn’t answer, someone would have come to the house, right? She’d left a message for Kane to call her … If she wasn’t reachable, would he know something was wrong?
Too many what-ifs … But the last thing she wanted was for Sean to come home late and find her missing.
Focus on what you can control, Lucia.
You knew you were in a bad way when you called yourself by your full name. Only her mother called her Lucia, and it wasn’t a name Lucy generally liked. It reminded her of getting into trouble—coming home late, being caught by her dad kissing her boyfriend on the front porch when she was sixteen. Reminded her of her youth, which seemed so long ago.
She listened. If she could figure out where she was, she might come up with an escape plan. There was no traffic. No sounds of cars, planes, trains. No voices. Either she was alone or the house she was in was huge. House? Yes, a house. A large house in the middle of nowhere. The lack of sound was fearsome—she didn’t know why.
She pounded on the door again and screamed.
“Eden! Liam! I know you’re here! Open this door, dammit!”
* * *
“She’s awake,” Dante said. He stared from Eden to Liam. “I cannot believe that you kidnapped a US federal agent—one who is a Rogan, no less.”
“She’s not a Rogan yet,” Eden snapped.
She didn’t know why she was still so upset about Sean marrying a Kincaid.
“A Kincaid is even worse. Jack helped Gabriella with her situation last month, she feels like she owes him something.”
“So don’t tell her,” Eden snapped. “Lucy overheard my conversation with you. Didn’t you specifically say that Kane can’t know where we’re going because he’ll figure it out?”
“Point taken, but there were other options.”
Liam said, “Dante, let’s go now.”
“We can’t leave until dawn. You’re not stupid, Liam. We’re in dangerous territory. We leave here at six. We exchange the bonds for the other half of the map. That was the deal, and it will save all of our lives.”
“Our lives wouldn’t have been at risk if Kane hadn’t betrayed us in the first place,” Liam said.
Eden stared at the single bearer bond in front of her. They couldn’t see the map now, but under the black light it showed the location of tens of millions of dollars in gold. Gold that, two centuries ago, was on its way to San Antonio before the Alamo fell. Gold that Dante’s ancestors had believed was cursed.
She’d painstakingly copied the map when it had been under the black light, but this one note among the stack of six hundred ten-thousand-dollar bonds in front of her had ruined their lives. Maybe Dante’s ancestors were right, the treasure was cursed. Because she had lost everything. She’d lost her parents, who were obsessed with this treasure. She’d lost Noah, the one man she truly believed she could love forever. And now she’d kidnapped the love of her brother’s life. Sean would never forgive her.
“Sis?” Liam tugged her hair like he used to do when they were kids. “Don’t go there.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m your twin. I know everything about you.”
She snorted.
“You’re thinking, right now, that we’re cursed. That we’ve lost too much pursuing this treasure. But this is more than the gold. It’s history. What was hidden two hundred years ago is as much to do with wealth as it is to do with the history of our country, of Mexico, of our families. Dad was looking for this treasure for years … and we found it.”
“And Mom and Dad are dead.”
“Not because of the treasure. It was an accident.”
“We don’t know that, do we?”
“Eden, sweetheart, everything is going to work out.”
She slammed her fist on the table. “You always say that! But this time … I don’t know anymore.”
“What do you suggest? Tell Kane why we really were after the bonds in the first place? Remember what he said after Mom and Dad were killed? When I wanted to continue their search?”
Eden nodded. She would never forget.
“Mom and Dad could never grow up and accept that the gold didn’t exist. They wasted their lives pursuing a myth instead of focusing on what was important.”
Kane would never understand.
Dante said, “Kane hasn’t changed. Remember, I’ve seen him more recently than you—if anything, he’s more driven and more volatile than ever.”
“But this was between us and Kane,” Eden said. “And now we’ve brought in Sean and his girlfriend. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Neither do I,” Liam said.
Liam had always been a pacifist at heart, but he often turned his back on the truth. He liked to think that he was more noble than Kane because he’d never taken a human life, but how often had he done a job and turned his back on what most assuredly would be an assassination? Like when she and Liam traced insurance fraud in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union back to the wife of one of the mid-level bureaucrats—they’d both been arrested and were either in prison or dead. Or when Liam seduced the wife of a duke—at the request of her husband—just to see if she would be faithful. She wasn’t, and Eden hadn’t heard from or seen her again.
Still, Liam was always hands-off. He wouldn’t hurt anyone himself. Eden didn’t believe that he would allow Lucy to be hurt, either.
“What do we do with Ms. Kincaid?” Dante asked. “And before you suggest it, we’re not bringing her with us. She’ll draw undue attention.”
“Agreed,” Liam said. “Eden?”
“How safe is this house?” she asked Dante.
“Safeish.”
“Can Gabriella come? Keep an eye on her?”
Dante shook his head. “She can’t leave right now.”
“This is important!” Liam said.
“Brother,” Dante said calmly, “to you and me, this is everything we have dreamed about our entire lives. But when Gabriella lost her fiancé, this quest just wasn’t as important to her. It’s just the three of us now. When we get the final piece of the map in the morning, we’ll be hours away from doing what our parents were never able to do.”
“I don’t know that I feel comfortable leaving Lucy alone here,” Eden said. “I can explain to Gabriella. Surely this is more important. We’re family.”
“It’s complicated.”
“I don’t want to know,” Liam said. “Sometimes, you’re as bad as Kane.”
“Let’s put it this way,” Dante said, sipping his Scotch. “I see the value of both Kane’s approach and your approach. In this case, the man Gabriella killed deserved to be murdered ten times over. He was a filthy human being and I would have gladly pulled the trigger. Some people do not deserve to breathe air on our planet.” He hesitated, thinking.
“What?” Eden asked. “What’s wrong?”
&
nbsp; “I’m not worried about Gabriella, but she does have a sense of loyalty to the Kincaids.”
“This just gets better and better,” she mumbled. She put her head in her hands and willed her growing headache to go away.
“Idea,” Dante said.
“Anything,” Liam said.
“How long does that mist last?”
“She’ll have her eyesight back anytime.” Liam looked at his watch. “It’s been about seven hours. Maximum time I’ve seen is nine hours. I’ve only had to use it twice before.”
“When we leave, we mist her again. That gives us at least eight hours’ head start. She won’t leave the house if she can’t see, right? We’ll convince her that she’s safer here.”
“I don’t understand,” Eden said.
“I get it,” Liam said. “We’ll tell her we’re in the middle of nowhere and she’ll get lost and die in the jungle if she leaves. But if she stays put, once we’re in the clear I’ll tell Sean where she is.”
“Exactly. If the timing works, he’ll be here before she can see again and take her away. We’ll be deep into the ruins by then.”
“I don’t like it,” Eden said. She sighed and rubbed her temples again. “But I don’t have a better idea.”
“Tomorrow I’ll call Sean and explain to him what’s going to happen. He follows my directives, he’ll be with Lucy in twenty-four hours.”
Dante laughed again.
“What?” Liam snapped, growing irritated. Eden had already grown past irritated with their old friend.
“You haven’t seen Sean in a while, have you?”
“What does that mean?”
“You remember him as the handsome nerd genius kid who likes his toys.”
“He does,” Eden said. “All his electronics are state of the art, and most of his investments are in gaming companies. He’s a little boy at heart.”
“Not so much anymore,” Dante said. “I saw him last month. He’s more like Kane than you realize.”
“Sean never went military. He hates authority, doesn’t take orders from people,” Liam said.
“That may be the case,” Dante said, “but do not underestimate him or expect him to do what you want. You grabbed his fiancée. I saw what he did to save his son—a kid he didn’t even know—I can only imagine what lengths he’ll go to to find Lucy Kincaid, and how far he will go to punish those who took her.”
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