“Not now. The whole damn force is looking for you. For Cara,” he added, pulling her from the door. “Everyone needs to know you’re safe.”
“No, wait. We don’t want anyone to know about this breach. More importantly, if someone pushed me, Pakpao wasn’t working alone. Someone could still be on this island right now.”
“Or got off by boat. We found the ATV near a dock at the western edge of the property, by the water.”
“Don’t stop that search, then. If someone pushed me, they might still be in the area. We could catch them.”
He considered that, and nodded. “Show me, fast.”
“Follow me.” Behind the door was a small landing, then steps that led down to the tunnel. “My phone’s just about dead. You have yours?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny halogen flashlight. “Yes, but I also have this.”
“Remind me never to make fun of former Boy Scouts again.” She guided him down the stairs. “There’s another door down here—I saw it. But I couldn’t get it open, so I just kept going until I found the kitchen.”
He peered down the narrow tunnel. “This is a heck of a way to avoid cameras.”
“Plus I’m pretty sure Cara Ferrari doesn’t brave spiders and rats to avoid the glare of the spotlight.”
He slowed his step. “You braved spiders and rats?”
The tiniest note of admiration in his voice almost buckled her. “Don’t sound surprised. I’m tough.”
“No kidding.” He put his hand on her back as though to guide her, but it felt far more like protection—and affection. Nah. He was just relieved he didn’t have a dead backup on his hands. L.A. wouldn’t like that.
“We can easily go through this part of the tunnel, although you’ll have to crouch down a little—it’s barely five feet high. But at the other side, where it connects to the bog house, it’s no more than a drainage pipe, which yours truly traversed just to come back and torment you.”
“You shouldn’t have left my side.”
She stopped, letting her jaw drop. He was going to make this her fault? “You told me to wait outside.”
“Don’t you carry a weapon?”
“Don’t worry, I’m never leaving home without it again. Come on.” She led him deeper into the tunnel. “But I want to know where that other door leads.”
“I really thought you took off on the ATV,” he said, sounding like that was about the closest thing to forgiving her without actually saying it.
“I know you did, and the need to set you straight was the only thing that kept me going down there with the hungry rats.”
He gave her a gentle hug, bent over to fit under the tunnel’s low ceiling, making them eye to eye. The light, even pointed downward, cast a shadow on his face. She reached up, half wanting to reassure him she was fine, half just wanting to touch him. His skin was rough, his jaw set.
“Are those whiskers, Lang? You were worried. You put off the afternoon shave.”
His lips tipped with a smile she could tell he didn’t want to give in to. “I was more pissed than worried.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
“I was.”
Pissed enough to kiss the holy hell out of her—for the second time today. “I’m starting to think you like me now that I look all glamorous. Wouldn’t that be just like a man?”
“I hate to break it to you, but you don’t look anything near glamorous right now. Where are we going?”
“C’mon.” She marched forward, brushing an imaginary spider from her face. “You know, after being involved with the building of a skate park, I can appreciate what a marvelous engineering feat this is.”
“Like a residential version of the Big Dig,” he agreed. “Why would someone go to this much trouble just to have a secret way into the house?”
“I don’t know, but I really want to know where this door leads.” She stopped at an alcove with a simple wooden door.
“This is probably how Pakpao got in and out, or he came through the drainage pipes like you did.”
Vivi froze, grabbing his arms. “Oh my God, Lang. Roman’s alley!”
“What?”
“Pakpao said…” She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to remember his exact words. “Roman’s alleys. That’s how he got in. This tunnel must be Roman’s alley. Maybe this is what he needs the key for. To get into this room!”
Lang pushed at the door with his shoulder as Vivi started feeling along the walls for another way to open the door. In a few seconds she found it, a small latch on the wooden jamb.
Working in unison, Lang pushed as Vivi pulled the latch until the lock clicked, and the door opened.
“Looks like we don’t need a key,” she said. The opening led to a small, dark area, then deeper into… a closet.
“We’re back in the house,” he said. “You’re right. The tunnel is an underground passage from one part of the house to another.”
They inched farther past two rows of clothes and shoes. On closer inspection, she knew. “This is Mercedes’s basement apartment,” she whispered.
He nudged the hinge of folding slatted-wood doors and peeked through the tiny opening. “Yep.”
The sound of footsteps made them both back up, but not before Lang quickly replaced the door in its original position. Through the slats they could hear her the soft beeps of a cell phone being dialed.
“Now she’s missing,” Mercedes said softly. “I need to know what to do about that.”
Who was she talking to? Vivi looked up at Lang, who gave her a tiny head shake, neither one of them moving during a long pause.
“She’s doing exactly what she’s supposed to do and that’s what we want, isn’t it? It’s certainly what the FBI wants her to do. Don’t you wonder why?”
Who would wonder why? Mercedes moved away a few steps, and Vivi held her breath, praying the woman didn’t leave her room so they could continue to listen. If she was talking to Cara, maybe she’d reveal the star’s location. If she wasn’t talking to Cara, then Vivi wanted to know who was on the other end of that phone.
“I doubt that.” The wry words were followed by a laugh, a sound so out of character for the stiff housekeeper that Vivi blinked in surprise. Lang’s eyes widened with the same response. “I promise you no one is going to find that key.”
They heard the phone snap shut and both of them eased back, Vivi’s heart kicking up at the possibility that Mercedes would suddenly yearn for a change of clothes. But the woman left the room, her low, sensible heels clapping on hardwood, the sound of her apartment door slamming a few seconds later.
“Let’s go,” Vivi said, moving forward instead of back.
“What are you doing?” Lang asked in a harsh whisper.
“That woman knows where the key is, I’m going—”
“Exactly! Don’t show your cards yet.”
Annoyingly, he was right. “So what do we do?”
“We don’t let on that we know about any of this,” he said. “I’ll handle the FBI, call off the search, and say you made your way back up through the grounds. In the meantime, I’m putting an agent on her twenty-four/seven.”
“She won’t tell an agent anything,” Vivi said as they tiptoed out the secret closet door, back into the tunnel. “Maybe I can get a little closer to her.”
“Doubtful. She’ll know what you’re up to.”
“We need someone she can relate to, someone she doesn’t know is digging for information. Someone she’d never expect—” Vivi stopped dead, a slow smile forming. “I have the perfect Guardian Angelino for the job. When he’s done, that una tedesca won’t know what hit her.”
“You are not bringing Uncle Nino into this. Just forget it.”
“Then what do we do with this newfound discovery?”
“Knowledge is power. We use this little tidbit to our advantage.”
It was hardly a little tidbit. “But, Lang, Nino would totally infiltrate her kitchen and find out every—”
/> “No!” He slowed his step, maybe as surprised by his vehemence as she was. “No,” he repeated, softer this time. “Not after today. Thinking that something happened to you damn near killed me.”
It had?
Even in the dim light she saw him close his eyes, like he wanted to take back what he’d just said, but couldn’t.
A foreign, thrilling sensation wended through her, pleasurable enough to make her drop the Uncle Nino argument. Lang cared about her. She knew it.
And as he’d just said, knowledge was power. That must be true because this little tidbit made her feel… powerful.
CHAPTER 10
Even with a hallway and a few walls separating them, Colt could hear her whimper in the quiet of the house at midnight. A throaty, plaintive whine that he instantly identified as a plea for his company.
How could he ignore that?
Pulling on sleep pants to cover his nakedness, he slipped out the door, stepped into the hall, and listened. The pitch grew a little higher, a little more desperate. Damn, she wanted him.
When he got to the guest room where Vivi was sleeping, he tapped once, and the whining stopped.
And then Stella let out a full-fledged bark, and Vivi whisked open the door. “She’s pathetic.”
“Why didn’t you just bring her to me?” He easily one-handed the dog up to his chest, getting a torrent of face licks in response. “All women should be so grateful to be saved,” he said dryly.
“You didn’t save me today, Lang, or I might…” She didn’t finish, but gave in to a smile and nodded to invite him in, her gaze flicking over his bare chest. His eyes did the same, over Vivi’s thin tank top and men’s baggy boxer shorts with happy faces on them.
He’d be smiling if his face was down there, too.
Damn, he knew what he should do, knew exactly what the procedure was for this situation: Ignore the invitation, say good night, take the whiny pup, and leave.
He walked right in.
“What are you doing?” he asked, seeing the laptop open on the bed, the screen casting the only light in the suite she’d chosen on the east wing’s first floor since Cara’s room remained a crime scene.
“E-mail, research.” She reached to pet the dog’s head, but Stella ducked and Vivi’s fingers brushed his bare skin. She jerked back like she’d been burned. “I tried to sleep but she was relentless in her desire for you.”
The way she said it sent a kick low in his stomach, the subtle implication drawing him in as she walked toward the bed, giving him the back view of two giant happy faces on each of her cheeks.
As helpless as the dog in his arms, he followed. “What’re you researching?”
She gave him a funny look, pointed to the walls, then her ears.
“You have nothing to worry about,” he assured her. “While we were out today, every inch of this house was inspected for bugs. Cara lied about monitoring you, except for the old lady, of course.”
“All right. I’m researching human trafficking.” She curled onto the bed with a laptop, which, unfortunately, cast a soft light right on the damn-near-see-through fabric of her tank top, highlighting her breasts and creating a sexy shadow of cleavage. “Which is going to give me nightmares.”
Where had he ever gotten it into his head that Vivi wasn’t feminine?
Colt dropped onto the chair facing her, letting the dog curl quietly in his lap. “What are you learning?”
“It’s a shockingly big business, the single most lucrative business on earth.”
He nodded, sadly knowing these facts just from FBI cases he’d read or heard about. “Fastest-growing crime in the world,” he confirmed.
“They make it look legal, which is the scary thing, and these people think they are part of some federal guest worker program. They get here and their visas are confiscated and they’re put in these horrible houses and”—she gave in to a full-body shiver—“and the girls, Lang. It’s just horrific. We have to get this guy.”
“I’ve had a few cases, much smaller than this, of course, and the stuff I’ve seen would curl your hair. Listen, why don’t you give it up for tonight?”
“Actually, I’m on to another subject, namely our housekeeper. Much less stomach turning, but still a little creepy.” She gave him a funny look, as if she expected him not to like what she was about to say. “I had my cousin Chessie do some cyber digging on Mercedes Graff.”
“Yeah? Good call.” He’d put the same order into his office, but he knew from experience that twenty-something Francesca Rossi could outhack the FBI. Another reason he liked working with the Guardian Angelinos: He liked their results, if not always their approach. “What’d she find?”
Vivi leaned forward to tap the keyboard, her long hair falling over one shoulder.
“Damn, that reminds me, Vivi. We gotta cut that hair.”
She looked up, surprised. “You don’t like my pretty fake hair?”
“Doesn’t matter if I do or not,” he said. “I need to send a sample to the lab. Remember, the clue that got me here was a match of some chemical in human hair from a wig they found in vic number one’s car and vic number two’s house.”
She flipped a strand of her hair. “This came from Cara, or at least her stylist.”
“What if someone in her circle killed the first two and managed to get close to the third?”
She gave him a raised eyebrow of interest, then ran her fingers through the hair, tugging. “It doesn’t pull out easy. I’ll cut a few hairs for you.”
“We need the top business, where it connects to your hair.”
“ ’kay,” she agreed, scrolling some more through the computer. “In a sec. Listen to this. Mercedes hasn’t lived here her whole life, certainly not since Cara and Joellen were children. She showed up after they moved away with their mother, who died. Then they came back, barely teenagers, and lived with her. That’s the first real record Chessie could find of her. But since then, she’s never been on a plane, train, or owned her own automobile.”
“Confirming your agoraphobic theory.”
“Especially since she’s seen four shrinks in the last ten years, two of whom are specialists in that very disease.”
He choked a soft laugh. “Do I want to know how your little cousin found that out?”
“No, Mr. Do-Right, you do not.” She grinned, sneaky and sweet at the same time. Enough to make his stomach tighten up. No, lower.
“Any family?”
“Nothing yet, but Chessie will send more when she gets it.” With a sigh, she pushed the computer away and corralled her mane up, then stretched, folding her torso over her leg with amazing flexibility. “I’m wiped.”
“How can you bend like that?”
“I used to be a ballet dancer.”
He snorted. “Right.”
She hid her face in the stretch. “Scoff all you want, Lang. It’s true. I danced from the time I was three until…” Her voice faded. “I quit at sixteen.”
“Why?”
She waved her hand, dismissing the question, then flattened her body over the other leg, denying him the chance to interpret her expression.
“Gave up the tutus for ill-fitting painter pants, huh?”
She looked up through her hair. “No one calls them painter pants anymore, Mr. Stuck-in-the-Seventies. And I’m aware you don’t like my style.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Oh, please.” She sat up a little. “I’m also aware that since I’ve grown long hair, started wearing makeup and high heels, you’ve been doing a helluva lot of kissing. Shame you’d be so shallow.”
“Shallow?” Was he?
“Falling for all that girlie shit. Just like a man.” She walked her hands over to her other foot, her back table-flat, her legs wide, like human origami. “I don’t like it.”
His brain short-circuited just imagining what she could do with that body. “You don’t like what?”
She straightened to stare him down. “All those month
s we worked together and you never kissed me. You never even looked like you might kiss me. You never even thought about kissing me—”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” So, so wrong.
Her next words got stuck, but so did her jaw in an open position.
“I just didn’t kiss you because”—I’d never stop—“it was inappropriate.”
She still didn’t reply, just looked at him, the seconds dragging as the admission hung in the air.
“I figured the Guardian Angelinos must have a rule against kissing clients,” he finally said.
“We’re not real big on rules,” she said with a wink. “In case you haven’t noticed.”
“I noticed.” Just like he noticed his heart rate was inexplicably high. Well, not totally inexplicable. The laptop was still beaming light on her breasts. And now her nipples were hard.
And so was he.
For a long, long moment—too long—they just looked at each other. He knew what he wanted, but did she? He started to say her name, but she bolted off the bed in one effortless roll.
“I guess we should get that hair for you.” She disappeared into the bathroom, leaving the door open.
He didn’t follow. His arousal would be obvious as soon as she saw him, and… and if he got one inch closer he wouldn’t stop himself from kissing her for a third time that day.
“How much do you want, Lang?”
I want it all.
The kisses, the touching, the loss of sanity for a few seconds. That’s what he wanted with Vivi, wasn’t it? Would she consider that?
Of course she’d consider it. This was Vivi. The same Vivi who, on a private plane, had climbed on him and sucked him senseless with what was, in retrospect, a pretty flimsy excuse for reckless behavior.
Maybe she wanted the same thing? Just an old-fashioned get-it-out-of-your-system screw.
“I actually need more than two hands here,” she said.
He stood, adjusting his sleep pants around his erection, and drew in a deep breath that quivered his nostrils. “She needs my hands,” he mouthed to Stella. And his hands needed her. “Stay, kid.”
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