by Amelia Autin
“So what did Miss Richardson tell the police?”
His sister laughed unexpectedly. “Based on her description, you’re about ten feet tall, have the strength of a gorilla and can scale walls like a superhero from a comic book.”
He chuckled. “I guess I’m safe, then. The police won’t be searching for me, even though I didn’t break the law. Much.” But he couldn’t help the little thrill of ego-stoking male pride that shot through him at the description. So Alana saw him as a superhero, did she? He liked that idea. No, he loved that idea. Because while the opinions of those he rescued had never been important to him before, Alana’s opinion of him mattered. A lot.
* * *
The High Tiger of the Eight Tigers triad organization—although it had far more than eight members—sat in a hastily called conference with the seven other leaders of the triad. Each of the seven was an enforcer, overseeing a cadre of men. Each cadre was responsible for a different aspect of the criminal endeavors that constituted the backbone of the Eight Tigers: drugs, gun-running, prostitution, kidnapping, extortion, money laundering and pornography. And they all answered to the High Tiger—chairman of the board, as it were.
The Eight Tigers was a radical departure from most Hong Kong triads. Except when it came to women, it was an equal opportunity employer—if they cared about such things, which they didn’t. All they cared about was whether a man had it in him to carry out the dicta of the ruling tribunal...and could keep his mouth shut in the unfortunate event he was arrested. Of the eight men seated around the conference table, three were Chinese, two were British, two were American and one was Australian. And they’d had a secret stranglehold on crime in Hong Kong and Macau for years.
The High Tiger turned to the enforcer in charge of prostitution and demanded, “How did it happen?”
The man on the hot seat nervously cleared his throat. “Unclear.”
“What do the men say?”
“All they know is she was gone when they went to move her to the boat. Then they got the hell out of there.”
The High Tiger’s voice was soft, yet his tone was threatening, when he asked, “Are you aware this was an RMM rescue?”
The other man blanched. Every man at the table knew of RMM. Knew it was more to be feared than the Hong Kong Police Force or the Public Security Police Force of Macau for three reasons: it was a highly secret organization, more secret than their own; its members were impervious to bribes, unlike many on the police forces in the jurisdictions in which the Eight Tigers operated; and it was bankrolled by a man who seemed to have an unending supply of money...even greater than theirs.
“No, I...I was not aware,” the man finally admitted.
The High Tiger then asked the question that held the most importance to the men assembled there. “What trail might lead RMM...or authorities...to us?”
“Nothing.” The man being questioned glanced around the table, reassuring the assemblage. “Nothing at all.”
* * *
Alana woke at her normal time. Dirk had told her as they’d left the hospital last night to take it easy, to sleep in and recuperate from her ordeal, but she wasn’t going to act like an invalid. Okay, her arm and shoulder muscles were stiff and sore from being bound. And yes, her wrists were raw and chafed from the rope she’d tried to wriggle out of. And...
She tentatively touched the back of her head where she’d been hit. Ouch! she thought. It was still tender to the touch. There was a little swelling, too, but her nausea was gone and she felt fine. Energized to jump right back into her job. She didn’t want to lie in bed and remember her close brush with all the bad things that could have happened to her—including rape and death. She needed the distraction of work to take her mind off what had nearly occurred.
She dressed quickly and was brushing her teeth when a good memory surfaced...her miraculous rescue. That was immediately followed by memories of the man who’d rescued her. The way he’d held her so securely she hadn’t been afraid, even dangling from a harness hooked to a cable, with terra firma far below. The incredible hardness of his body plastered against hers. Not to mention the arousal that had intrigued her to the point where she’d almost said something about it.
She wished she knew who he was. Wished she at least had a first name she could use when she thought of him, instead of the slightly blasphemous “savior” that came to mind.
Okay, so maybe she’d exaggerated his physical characteristics when she’d described him to the police last night. And he probably couldn’t walk on water, either, although she had a feeling he would try if it was necessary to save someone. He would have done whatever was necessary to save her, even though he didn’t know her. She couldn’t have said how she knew, but she was absolutely certain that from the minute he’d entered the room where she was imprisoned, he wouldn’t have left without her. Even if her abductors had surprised them, he would have done whatever was necessary to effect their escape. And that was such an incredibly glorious, albeit humbling, feeling, knowing there were still heroes in the world willing to risk their lives for others.
But darn it, she needed a name!
Then she remembered what Mei-li had told her last night, that he worked for an organization called RMM. If Dirk’s wife knew that much, she just might know him. It was worth a shot anyway.
On that thought she made her way downstairs to the kitchen.
Hannah, the DeWinters’ housekeeper, was at the stove, but she turned the fire off and bustled over to Alana when she entered the room, enveloping her in an encouraging hug. “I’m so glad you’re safe!”
“Thanks, Hannah.” She stepped back and looked around. “Where is everyone?”
“The twins are still sleeping, and so is their nanny. Mr. DeWinter had an early call on the set. He said to tell you there’s some fan mail to go through in his office...but only if you feel up to it. Mrs. DeWinter also went out early. She said she might be back for lunch, but she’d let me know.”
“Darn it!” Alana said out loud. “I was hoping to catch her before she left.”
Hannah resumed her cooking. Oatmeal, Alana saw, which both she and the DeWinters’ daughters loved. “Was it something urgent? You could always call or text her.”
“Important to me. But not urgent enough to interrupt whatever she’s doing. If she went out this early, she must be working on a case. I’ll see her at lunch or dinner.”
Hannah took down a bowl from one of the cabinets and served Alana from the pot on the stove. “Here you go, Miss Richardson. Put yourself on the outside of this.”
Alana smiled and accepted the bowl. She’d only been living with the DeWinters for a month, but she adored Hannah almost as much as the twins did. Not just for her quaint expressions and her insistence on addressing Alana with old-fashioned formality, but for the heart of gold that was obvious within minutes of meeting her.
She sprinkled a spoonful of brown sugar on her oatmeal and stirred, then seated herself at the kitchen table with a despondent sigh. She’d tried to love her own mother; she really had. But except for the residual attachment left over from her childhood, it wasn’t possible. How could she love a woman whose outlook on life was totally alien to her? Who judged people by their social status...and more?
She couldn’t help wishing her mother was more like Hannah. For that matter, she couldn’t help wishing her father was different, too. Not like Hannah so much, but like her uncle Julian. She’d never envied Juliana anything except the close relationship she had with her father, a father she could be proud of. If only Uncle Julian had been her father, too, instead of—
Don’t go there, she warned herself. No pity parties. That never does any good. Think of all the people in the world who would change places with you, she reminded herself as she ate her porridge, enumerating all the positives in her life. Your parents never abused you. You never wen
t hungry. You always had a roof over your head and decent clothes to wear.
But...those weren’t the only things that mattered when raising a child.
The fact that her parents were the way they were wasn’t something she could change, either, although she’d tried. Repeatedly. But she’d never made a dent in their prejudices. Wasn’t that one of the reasons she’d run across the world to escape? So she could live her life free from the entitled, superior mentality they’d tried to impose on her?
They would never understand that Alana didn’t see the world the way they did, no matter what she said. So all she could do was distance herself from them, even if it meant taking a job they saw as beneath her.
Living with Dirk and Mei-li had been an eye-opener. Watching them together. So loving. So supportive. So accepting of their differences. No, not just accepting, rejoicing in their differences.
Then seeing how Dirk’s daughters looked upon Mei-li as their mother without question, even though both Mei-li and Dirk made sure the twins knew how much their birth mother had loved them and sacrificed for them before they were born.
Alana knew one thing for sure now. The way she’d been raised wasn’t the way she’d raise her own children...if she was fortunate enough to have any.
And just like that her memory winged to last night and the man who’d rescued her. A man who, as Mei-li had put it, did what he had to do to rescue the innocent, without looking for thanks.
She hadn’t really put a lot of thought into it before, because she was only twenty-six and her biological clock hadn’t yet sounded the warning alarm. But she was deeply attached to the children she knew—Juliana’s little boy, Raoul, and Dirk’s daughters, Linden and Laurel. And she’d always known that when she found the right man she wanted children. Children, plural. Two, maybe three. Not the lonely only child she’d been.
No, she hadn’t given it a lot of thought before. But she was thinking of it now. She was definitely thinking of it now...because that was the kind of man she wanted as the father of her children.
And she didn’t even know his name or what he did for a living.
Chapter 3
“Dirk was right,” Alana muttered to herself. Her boss’s fan mail—the real kind, not email—went to a PO box address, and the accumulation was delivered bright and early every Monday morning. Dirk had a social media presence she maintained for him, too—website, Twitter, Facebook. He couldn’t possibly have managed it all on his own, which was why Juliana had recommended Dirk to Alana and Alana to Dirk.
And she loved her job. Unlike the glorified but meaningless position she’d had working for her father’s company ever since she graduated from college, she never felt superfluous. She never felt as if no one would miss her if she didn’t show up. Dirk needed her to keep him organized, to keep his fan base happy.
Not that Dirk didn’t take an interest. He did. He set the tone, gave her the parameters to work from to maintain his public persona. He also read the more interesting posts, tweets and emails she filtered for him. And he reviewed anything that went out under his name, of course. But only once had he firmly put his foot down on Alana’s suggested response, one that would have capitalized on a touching photo of Dirk with his family that had just recently been published, a picture that had been taken without his knowledge or consent. After which she’d gotten the message—his wife and children were never to be used.
That didn’t mean photos of the DeWinters didn’t circulate. The paparazzi stalked Dirk relentlessly, and Mei-li was incredibly photogenic. But Dirk tried to minimize public access to his twin daughters, including a state-of-the-art security system surrounding his estate on Victoria Peak here on Hong Kong Island, and bodyguards who fiercely protected his little girls whenever they went out anywhere. Nevertheless, pictures surfaced occasionally. That was one of Alana’s more esoteric duties, too. To track the photos and figure out how, when and where they were taken, so Dirk could do his best to prevent others from being snapped in the future.
Even though Juliana had lived her entire adult life in the public eye, attention that had become even more rabid when she married the King of Zakhar, Alana had never understood just how little privacy celebrities had these days until she’d gone to work for Dirk. Until she’d experienced firsthand what almost amounted to harassment when a photographer had lain in wait and snapped pictures of Alana, the twins and their nanny outside the ladies’ room of the restaurant Dirk had taken them to her first week on the job. And she’d quickly realized the steep price Dirk and his family paid—would always pay—for his superstardom.
The morning passed in a busy blur. When she’d first started her new job she’d been overwhelmed by the barrage of incoming data. But she had a system now, so she quickly dealt with the backlog of fan communication, divvying them up into her little “buckets.” Adoring. Begging. Threatening. And the category that always made her laugh at how creative people could be: investment “opportunities.” Not a single one was anything other than a scam, but she’d shown a couple of them to Dirk to make him laugh, too.
Mostly the scam emails were deleted after reading the first couple of sentences, but not the threats. Dirk would have had Alana just delete them, too, but Mei-li had shaken her head, saying in her soft voice, “Don’t respond, but don’t delete. We need to keep a record, just in case...” And when the eyes of the two women had met, Alana had understood without another word being spoken.
Mei-li was a highly regarded private investigator and a ransom negotiator, and was unwaveringly protective of her beloved husband. She read every threatening communication, ranking them on a scale of one to five, with one being “no threat,” three being “credible threat,” and five being “imminent threat.” The “imminent threat” communications were turned over to the Hong Kong Police for investigation.
The begging requests were more problematic, because Dirk, Alana had soon learned, had a tender heart. Which meant another of Alana’s duties revolved around investigating the legitimacy of whatever the senders were asking Dirk to do. And on three separate occasions in the past month Dirk had quietly and without fanfare fulfilled a request—including sending money to the parents of a child with a severe form of spina bifida whose dying wish was to visit the Eiffel Tower, and a personal visit to the bedside of a longtime fan dying from cancer.
But the vast majority of the emails, tweets and posts were of the adoring variety. And Alana had a stock response she sent out on Dirk’s behalf, thanking the sender and promoting his latest movie, including links to positive reviews.
She’d just replied to the last email when Mei-li walked into the office. “Hannah said you needed to talk with me?”
It took Alana a moment to come out of the zone she’d been in. “Oh,” she said. “I wanted to ask you...” Her cheeks felt suddenly warm. “The man who rescued me last night. Do you know who he is?” When Mei-li didn’t immediately respond, Alana rushed to add, “You said he and the other men are with a group called RMM. I know you said they don’t look for thanks, but I...” She faltered. “I just wondered.”
An enigmatic expression crossed Mei-li’s face. “I know, but I can’t tell you.” She sat down in the chair in front of Alana’s desk. “I contacted RMM because they’re my last resort. But they operate in the shadows. And some of the things they do are illegal. Not bad, just illegal. So...”
Alana nodded. She wasn’t naive...not in that way anyway. She knew the difference. “Last night the driver and the man riding shotgun said I was abducted by members of a triad gang. That other women had disappeared in the same way, and they—RMM, I guess is what he meant—they’ve been after this gang for a couple of months. But...” She trailed off as another thought occurred to her, and she frowned. “How did they know where I was? I mean, I’m incredibly grateful someone figured it out and RMM rescued me, but...”
Mei-li’s lips quirked into a ti
ny smile. “Modern technology is wonderful...most of the time. You know those little lockets the twins wear, the ones with a picture of their mother?”
She wasn’t sure where the other woman was going with this. “Of course.”
“You probably thought they were a tad young for jewelry.”
“Well...yes,” she admitted. “But I just figured Dirk wanted the girls to know their mother loves them, even though she died when they were born.”
“You’re right, of course, but it’s more symbolic than you know. In Dirk’s mind Bree is protecting them from harm...but so is he. Those lockets contain tiny transmitters. Little beacons that can be remotely activated. The girls have worn them ever since they were rescued from their kidnappers. We were fortunate last time that they were sending Dirk pictures of his daughters that had been geotagged, but we can’t rely on that happening again.”
When Alana raised her brows in a question, Mei-li explained, “Geotagging just means the pictures have GPS coordinates embedded in them. Most people don’t realize this is enabled in their smartphones, and neither did the twins’ kidnappers. But that was a fluke. Dirk wanted to be sure we could track the girls if they’re kidnapped again, and the locket beacons were the best thing he and—that is, the best thing he could come up with.”
Alana wondered why Mei-li had hesitated, then said, “Okay, I get that. But...”
“But how did we know where you were?”