Ah, yes . . . one of Aunt Candy’s weddings in Connecticut. Way back in the days when she handled every detail herself and had asked Mom and me to help out. Maybe Candy had known it was a Mafia—the genuine, original Cosa Nostra—wedding, but Mom hadn’t, until she saw the men in dark suits and fedoras guarding the parking lot. No crew of high school kids working this wedding, but men right out of The Godfather. I remember Mom sucking in her breath, exchanging a look with Candy, her face settling into grim lines. Even at twelve, I had no trouble figuring out what was going on. Any child raised along the Connecticut shoreline knew the drill, including the law of omerta. My interest in the day perked up considerably. When inside the church, I studied every man there, wondering which ones held the power. It was the closest I’d ever come to organized crime . . . until maybe, perhaps, possibly . . . Viktor.
I greeted Sheriff Purvis and his wife, closely followed by the mayor of Sarasota and our district’s representative to the State Legislature, all three wives glowing in dresses and jewels suitable for their lofty positions. Our representative to Congress was of the wrong political persuasion for this wedding, and Senator Tyler would arrive at Crest House in his private limo, so, politically speaking, these were my biggest fish of the day. I did a quick glance around and noted with satisfaction that the Gerries had moved into highest-alert mode. Fantascapes was looking good.
Smug gets you dead—isn’t that what Dad always said? But everything today was moving like clockwork. No kamikaze airplanes, no lethal cigarette boats speeding toward us, loaded with explosives. Not a glimpse of an AK-47 or an MP-5, although I knew each of the Gerries was armed with a semi-automatic pistol. Except one, who insisted on sticking with his trusty .38 revolver.
After the tour boat captain set off on his fourth round trip, I checked my guest list with those of the Hummer drivers. Definitely one of our good days—not a single guest missing. We could all relax. My job done, I could actually go home, relying on the Gerries to see that the guests’ return was as efficient as their departure. I could only pray next Saturday’s wedding would go as smoothly.
So easy to fall into complacency. To reject Interpol’s warnings as fanciful nonsense from men who were so far away they couldn’t possibly second guess what might happen in Florida.
Lainie Halliday, you know damn well Viktor Kirichenko is a mobster. Stubborn, thick-headed idiot that you are, you just won’t admit it.
So? He had a right to get married, didn’t he?
I pulled the Lexus into a parking space behind our building, slammed the door behind me, and stalked to the elevator. I’d been standing outside on three-inch heels with the thermometer at eighty-five for two solid hours, putting on my best Fantascapes show until my face felt cracked. I wasn’t usually so washed out after one of these events, but the inner conflict was beginning to get to me. I didn’t want to believe anything could go wrong with Viktor’s wedding, but I’d be a fool if it didn’t nag like a splinter in my foot that refused to be ousted.
I marched down the hall, stuck my key in the lock, kicked off my heels, and started for the bedroom to change into shorts and a comfortable tee-top.
“Tough day?” said a sympathetic voice from the vicinity of my sofa. “Sorry to startle you, love, but I flashed my badge at your cousin, and he very kindly let me in.”
Chapter Sixteen
Rhys unfolded from my sofa, all lean six-feet of him, his dark hair gleaming in the brilliant Florida sunshine pouring through my southern windows. He was casually dressed, his short-sleeved shirt reflecting a hint of blue in gray eyes that were radiating almost scorching warmth. In short, a delicious yet masculine bon-bon, ripe for consumption, but the words that flew out of my mouth were, “What’re you doing here? Are you crazy?”
“Well, bloody hell, Ms. Halliday. I had to toss my resignation on Peiper’s desk before he’d let me come, and this is the welcome I get.”
“Rhys”—I faltered, tried again— “you didn’t . . . you couldn’t . . .”
Fists clenched, he glared at me. “I bloody well did, but Peiper wouldn’t accept it. Big conference, the upshot of which I was allowed to slip my leash, the consensus being that the worst had happened, you and I had compared notes, and the Bad Guys’ world was still intact. We weren’t the danger they thought we were, so they called off the dogs. Hence, Viktor’s enigmatic phone call to you in Paris.”
Rhys’s rigid stance softened into a tight conciliatory smile. “I’m here to visit a friend,” he said. “And maybe have a word or two with the police, just in case. That’s mostly all Interpol does, Laine—pass along information. We know your Viktor is Aleksei Tatarkin—the prints you got confirmed it—yet no country has accumulated enough evidence to ask for his arrest. Our hands are tied, but”—I could see Rhys’s anger draining away as he glanced down, uncomfortable with admitting his emotions. “I have a bad feeling about the wedding, Laine. I had to be here. For you.”
For all of two seconds I tried to tell myself Rhys was only here because he owed me far more than money. But my toes curled, my body flashed fire, his aristocratic Brit face wavered before my eyes, and I swear I heard full choir and orchestra belting out the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
I don’t think I leaped over the coffee table, but I might have. Somehow we were teetering together in the narrow few inches between couch and table, bodies writhing, elbows flying as we tore at each other’s clothes. Rhys won, but I was way past caring. Gloriously, triumphantly naked, I grabbed his briefs, stripped them down around his ankles. Obligingly, he kicked them off, and I was free to work my way back up. But foreplay lasted about as long as a drop of water in a hot skillet. Suddenly, I was in his lap, and he was inside me, our arms wrapped around each other like mating boa constrictors. Churning hips, a few good thrusts, and we exploded into oblivion, finally toppling over with Rhys underneath and me sprawled over him, my head sagging onto his heaving chest.
“Good God, woman,” he murmured, “no wonder so many die young from heart attacks. Sex like that is a lethal weapon.”
“I think we’re going to have to spend the night here. I can’t move.”
And, naturally, while lying there skin to skin with Rhys, with even my bones softened to jelly, I realized I was in serious trouble. I’d been in lust before, and whatever I had going with Rhys didn’t qualify. And yet . . . was my role as Rhys’s protector coloring my vision, telling me our relationship was something more than hot sex?
Did it matter? Enjoy the here and now, Laine. Revel in it while it lasts.
I snuggled into Rhys’s chest, floating in some perfect place where nothing could ever go wrong. Eventually, we made it as far as the bedroom, where we settled down to making love with considerably more finesse and attention to details. We ordered Chinese, flipping a coin to see who had to put on enough clothes to answer the door. We told each other we’d talk seriously later, but it didn’t happen. At what was seven in the morning Lyon time, I finally let him sleep. And just before I joined him, I wondered what the family was going to think when I brought my man from Interpol to Sunday night supper.
We were, at least, spared Doug at the Halliday table, as he and his team were tied up providing security for some Brazilian tycoon and his family on a tour of the Disney theme parks and Universal Studios, a task that stretched his small security company’s resources to the limit.
“I liked your brother Logan,” Rhys said when I explained why I’d issued a whoosh of relief as I ended the phone call to Mom, warning her to set an extra place. “So what’s the problem with Doug?”
“Nothing. It’s just that Dad, Jeff, and Doug all at once might be enough to intimidate even an arrogant Brit like you.”
“Laine, I’ve spent the last twelve years of my life surrounded by cops. I’m used to it.”
Uh-huh. I made some sort of skeptical grunt and let it go. Since it was unlikely the Slavic American Club would be open on a Sunday, Rhys and I spent the afternoon on a lazy tour of Golden Beach, from sandy beaches to b
road sheltered harbor, from an introduction to Bella at the airport to the idiosyncracies of drawbridges. We even spent some time gazing at the twelve-foot alligator who likes to sun himself not more than thirty feet off the Tamiami Trail, stretched out on the bank of the aptly named Alligator Creek.
Late in the afternoon, we drove back to my place to get cleaned up for supper, only, well, the rush of shower water acted like an aphrodisiac. One thing led to another and we were twenty minutes late to Sunday night supper. With the entire family zeroing in as we entered, devouring Rhys with their eyes, undoubtedly thinking, We know what you’ve been doing.
This was one of those rare occasions I wished I was an orphan.
A glance down the table showed Dad, Jeff, and Grady in cool mode, their body language stiff and wary. But Mom, Candy, and Gramma Blaine were openly speculative, checking Rhys out, no doubt wondering if this was the one, the right man for Lainie.
And there was absolutely no way Rhys wasn’t going to notice.
Fortunately, Mom announced that supper was ready and waiting, and we didn’t get down to serious conversation until after Rhys declared his first taste of Key Lime Pie to be ambrosia and drained the last drop of his coffee, made from freshly ground beans. We cleared the dishes and left them to the hopefully tender mercies of the high school student Mom hired to help out each Sunday night.
“So, Tarrant,” Dad said after we’d settled in the living room, “you specialize in human trafficking?”
Rhys proffered the slow smile of a man well-fed, well-rested, and well-satisfied with who and what he was. On Arlan Trevellyan such self-satisfaction would be appalling. Somehow, on Rhys Tarrant, it looked . . . well, right.
“I’ve done stints in drugs, counterfeiting, and art theft, sir, but I got hooked on human trafficking a few years ago when I saw what was happening with the tsunami victims. Thousands of homeless children being whisked away by traffickers instead of reunited with their families.”
“Oh, no!” Mom breathed.
“God!” Jeff echoed, his blue eyes wide with shock.
“I don’t imagine it got much publicity here,” Rhys said, “but helping to identify disaster victims has become one of Interpol’s major projects. The earthquake in Pakistan just added to the toll. In the chaos traffickers move in and grab up kids and women who lost their husbands or can’t find them. The helpless, the vulnerable. It’s bad, really bad. What with Iraq, Afghanistan, and your own hurricane and tornado disasters, I suppose the American media figures you’ve heard enough, so there’s not much news time for other people’s problems.”
“But what do these traffickers do with the children?” Gramma asked.
Silence, as most of us squirmed, and Rhys struggled for his choice of words. Finally, he gave up all hope of subtlety. “Mostly, ma’am, they’re sold into slavery. Some into jobs no one else wants to do, many as–um–sex objects.”
Gramma blinked, one blue-veined hand flying up to cover her mouth.
“The same with the women,” Rhys continued quietly. “The best-looking are sold into prostitution, the rest into jobs for which they receive no pay and bare subsistence food. All are kept locked up, stuck in a foreign countries for which they have no passports, no ability to speak the language. Even if they could escape, most are convinced the outside world is worse than the life they have. They’re lost and terrified.”
“But that’s horrible,” Candy said. “Why isn’t this a big scandal?”
“It is. But in the States you hear about human trafficking only when a truckload of Mexican immigrants gets fried in the desert heat or someone opens a cargo container of Chinese so crammed in they suffocated before they made it to shore. Yes, it’s a problem in the States, but the worst of the trafficking in women and children is too far away for most Americans to be interested.”
If you’re thinking my heart was swelling with pride over my man from Interpol, you’re right. Guess he was worth saving five times.
“So how does all that tie in with Lainie’s egg guy?” Jeff asked.
Rhys drew a deep breath. “The Russians have been into trafficking in women practically since the day the Iron Curtain dropped. Have you ever googled ‘Russian brides’? Amazing stuff, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the women actually put themselves on the Net—to get a husband, to get out of Russia, etcetera—but many are tricked by seemingly legitimate job offers, others are just plain kidnapped and sold. If they cause trouble, their families are threatened. And sometimes, to make the point, the threats are carried out. A few years ago, when a girl from Poland led a revolt against the traffickers, they beheaded her parents.”
“Dear God,” Mom murmured.
I wasn’t surprised. Since meeting Rhys, I’d done a lot of research, reading my way through trafficking articles posted on the Net, and some pretty startling stuff from the local library as well. “But Viktor’s bride must be willing,” I said, because he asked me to accompany him to the airport to pick her up. She has to be legit.”
“The trouble is,” Dad said, “it could all be a set-up. The girl could be part of the plot.”
“What plot?” Candy demanded.
“Who knows?” Jeff said, “but something’s got someone’s panties in a twist. These guys aren’t after Tarrant just because they don’t like his face.”
“Something, someone,” I taunted. “Just listen to yourselves. Talk about pie in the sky!”
“Laine!” Dad’s tone was about as sharp as it gets. “Were you, or were you not, almost drowned less than a week ago?”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled, almost too softly to be heard.
Rhys stepped in to explain Interpol’s take on the subject, that the traffickers—if that’s who was involved—had called off the hit. But he made no mention of the shock tactics it had taken at Interpol to get him to Florida. “Laine is going to take me to the Slavic American Club tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll be able to write it off as a possible disaster site. Worst case, I’ll be able to talk more intelligently to the Sheriff’s Department about what could happen.”
“Club’s not in county jurisdiction,” Jeff offered.
Oh, shit! I’d missed it. I should have known, but . . .
“It’s inside Three Rivers boundaries,”Jeff added in voice-of-doom mode. “Local cops. Not good.”
“They’ve had problems,” Dad explained to Rhys. “Enough so they’ve got an interim chief and very few applicants for top cop.”
“Our Sheriff’s Department’s way on the ball,” Jeff asserted, obviously embarrassed as well as frustrated by the intrusion of the Florida hick town image, “but the Slavic Club is just inside the Three Rivers city line. County can warn them, ask them to work with you, but we can’t control the situation. No SWAT team, no major fire power, no fast computer connections.”
“No smarts,” I added into the general gloom.
“You mean, like I’m dealing with village constables?” Rhys inquired on a sigh.
“Right.” Jeff and I responded in unison.
I could almost see the profanities flitting through Rhys’s mind. Bad enough, he was a foreign intruder in an area rarely touched by Interpol, but now he had to function in a city where even Calusa County deputies weren’t wanted.
“I’ll make some phone calls,” Dad said. “I think I can smooth the way, though it’s tough in a town where the Chief of Police keeps changing like they’re playing musical chairs. But Charlie Purvis—that’s the county sheriff, Tarrant—has a mighty clout. They can’t ignore him, no matter how much they might want to.”
“Thanks,” Rhys said. “If we’re lucky, this whole thing will turn out to be a mirage or something I dreamed up after that crack on the head in Peru.” He turned a broad smile on my mother. “And if I’ve been too busy eating to express myself properly, Mrs. Halliday, may I say to all of you that I truly appreciate Laine’s expertise and am well aware she acquired it from being raised in your remarkable family. I’m here not only because trafficking may be in
volved—not only because I owe Laine my life five times over—but because I’m rather fond of her and am anxious to return the favor.”
I squirmed, but I glowed while I did it. Talk about smooth!
“Hear, hear!” Jeff grinned. Grady slapped Rhys on the back.
I had a horrible feeling Dad was going to say something like, Welcome to the family. Instead, Rhys’s gallant speech was allowed to linger, without comment other than a variety of beaming smiles, while I turned my red face to the tile floor and repeated firmly, It’s not love, it’s not love. He’s too good to be true. It’s not love.
We finally agreed to discuss the whole thing again on Monday night when, hopefully, we’d be more sure of our options. Talk switched to yesterday’s wedding at Crest House, mostly congratulations on a job well done.
On the long dark drive back to the center of town, by silent agreement we shoved all thoughts of trafficking and possible disaster aside, and kept them there ’til morning. This was our time, Rhys’s and mine. Time to keep the wolves at bay, the Russian bear out of sight, out of mind.
But with the relentless Florida sun bursting through the draperies after another semi-sleepless night, reality flooded back. By ten o’clock Monday morning the Sheriff’s Department had sent a copy of Interpol’s warning notice to the acting Chief of Police in Three Rivers, and by shortly after noon, Rhys had an appointment to meet with him at three.
“Wonderful,” I groaned when Rhys told me. “You’re just going to waltz into the Three Rivers police station in broad daylight.”
“Laine . . .” For a moment there I thought he was going to pat me on the head. Fortunately, he thought better of it. “I think Interpol’s right; they’ve called off the hit. I may be sniffing around, but I’m the man in the European suit who doesn’t even carry a gun, trying to communicate with a local cop who’s attempting to hold his department together until some hero willing to fight the mob comes along. And what am I going to say anyway? If it weren’t for that warning bulletin from Interpol, I’d sound like a nut case.
Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) Page 20