by Meryl Sawyer
It was only a few blocks to Romero’s house. If he would give her some money and lend her his car, she could drive to Phoenix. There she could call WITSEC or the FBI field office. The hit team would expect her to head for the airport, but she wouldn’t be that stupid.
What would she tell Romero?
Camino de las Animas—the soul’s way—was an unpaved narrow street with sprawling haciendas. Romero’s house was at the far end. She spotted the wrought-iron lantern shining at his front door. Like a beacon the light sent a burst of adrenaline through her. Somehow she broke into a sprint.
She charged through the arched adobe gateway and up the steps of the hacienda built almost two hundred years earlier. Cringing with pain, a wild story for Romero forming in her brain, her world suddenly pitched from side to side, then halted with a mind-numbing jolt.
The front door was wide-open.
“Romero,” she cried out before she could stop herself.
What if the woman was inside? It had been a man with the flashlight. He couldn’t have beaten her here. More important, how did they know about Romero?
Zachary bounded out of the house. The soft lantern light revealed fresh red blood on the retriever’s paws. A suffocating wave of terror enveloped her like a vision of hell.
“Please, please,” she whispered, “don’t let them have hurt Romero.”
Common sense said to run, but she refused to desert her friend. She tiptoed into the house and was met with dead silence. A single lamp was on in the living room Romero had so meticulously decorated with furnishings from the Spanish Colonial period.
The only sound was the click-click of Zachary’s nails against the tile floor. The aroma of blue corn enchiladas filled the air. She inched forward. Each ragged breath brought white-hot pain from her ribs.
In the dining room, she called out, “Romero, are you there?”
No answer.
She rounded the corner into the kitchen. Sprawled on the floor in a puddle of blood and bloody pawprints, Romero’s dark eyes stared up at the ceiling.
“Oh, God, no!”
She staggered forward and fell to her knees, scraping them on the tile. Someone—it had to be the woman—had slit Romero’s throat. Anger like invisible lightning arced through her.
Why? Why? Why?
Why kill an innocent man? It was incomprehensible. She knew Rutherford and Ames were responsible. Corporate piranhas, they let nothing and no one get in their way.
In a heartbeat the anger drained from her. They had more money, more resources than she did. They were able to get around WITSEC. What could she possibly do?
“Come and get me,” she called out. “I’m ready to die.”
It was true. She’d been living in hell for over a year. Tyler had married another woman. She couldn’t see her sister or niece, her only family. The way things were going her purgatory seemed endless.
Now this.
A kind, wonderful man had befriended her. He’d paid for his trouble with his life. She hoped the woman hadn’t tortured him somehow before she put the blade to his throat.
Tears sparkled on her lashes, and then blurred her vision as she waited to die. Seconds passed. The house was eerily still except for the low hum of the refrigerator. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. With a broad swipe of his tongue, Zach licked her face.
This could mean only one thing. The woman was searching for her elsewhere. They may have thought she had car keys in her pocket or had gotten a ride or that she had gone to the police station.
Hang on, she thought. Those bastards had money and would kill anyone who got in their way, but she had something more important. Truth was on her side. She had to get away and live to testify.
She reached over to close Romero’s eyes. To his left, hidden by the shadow from the kitchen table was a message scrawled on the cabinet in blood.
Lindsey
Kill
me
“What?”
The woman must have dipped Romero’s finger in his own blood. The bile rose up in the back of her throat. She prayed the poor man had been dead by then.
There was a purpose to his death, she decided. They’d slit his throat to frame her for his murder. Why, when they wanted to kill her? It took a second for her to realize the killers hadn’t a clue where she was, and they wanted more manpower in finding her. What better way than to have the police after her, as well?
“I’m sorry,” she told Romero’s lifeless body. “I knew better than to make a friend. Forgive me.”
With her fingertip she gently closed Romero’s eyes. She kneeled beside him and said the Irish Blessing just as she had when each of her parents had been lowered into their graves.
May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind always be at your back
May the sun shine upon your face
The rains fall soft upon your fields
And, until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
CHAPTER FIVE
Provo, Turks and Caicos Islands
THE THATCHED ROOF BAR sloped downward, supported at the four corners by bamboo poles. The open-air bar had no walls and overlooked the beach a few feet away.
Chad wished he were with a babe. There were plenty of them around, wearing skimpy suits that would have given a statue an erection, but there you go. He was spending his time with a nerd and the sophisticated piece of equipment Danson wanted him to test.
Chad accessed the Department of Defense satellite, inputting his SAP/SAR code into a device that reminded him of a handheld GPS.
Scan Retina appeared on the screen.
“What in hell am I supposed to do?” he asked Danson.
“Hold it up to your eye,” Danson replied. “The satellite will receive an image of your retina and relay it to the scanner in the DOD database.”
“Won’t work. I had my iris scanned when I was testing for you guys but not my retina.”
Danson chuckled, obviously pleased with himself. “A scan of your iris photographs your retina, as well.”
Chad held up the device to his right eye. He knew only too well that biometric sensors like fingerprint scans, voice recognition, and iris scans were popular at high-security facilities.
“What was wrong with an iris scan?” he asked.
“Too many guys work with saws or welding equipment. One tiny piece of sawdust you don’t even feel gets embedded in the iris. Next thing you know that guy’s scan comes up invalid. You’ll only have to do this iris thing once to put yourself into the system to do the testing. In the field, it’s too tricky.”
“Gotcha.” Too-sensitive equipment was a nuisance, especially in the field. The device now read Access Granted.
“Zoom down on us.”
Chad punched in their lat/long coordinates. The satellite camera rotated, moving from central Africa to Turks and Caicos. He pressed the zoom button and two small splashes of infrared appeared on the blue screen. It was impossible to tell what the blotches were but the screen read Humans.
“I’ll be damned. Seems to work.” He tapped in new coordinates so the satellite’s camera focused on the dog sleeping near a beach cabana.
A second later the screen read Canine.
“This will revolutionize satellite surveillance,” Danson whispered.
“If it doesn’t have any bugs.”
“True, true. We thought the iris scan was the answer until we discovered that one tiny flaw. Test this in every situation. Let’s make sure it’s perfect before we go into production.”
The refrigerator behind the talapa bar was now on the screen. Small Machinery.
“Okay, so where’s the leak?” asked Chad.
“I might have known you’d figure it out.” Danson shrugged. “If we knew, I wouldn’t be here.”
Honolulu
Three months later.
CHAD LANGSTON pulled a chair up beside Eddie Kukana’s desk. “Any luck replacing Lori?”
“Shelby can’t handle it?”
“No way.”
They were in Eddie’s office in the Crockett Building overlooking the Ala Wai Boat Harbor. Chad had his office just across from Eddie’s. A stately banyan tree in the center of the courtyard blocked their view of each other’s offices. They were in the habit of dropping in to chat at least once a day, when Chad was in town.
They had grown up together in Turtle Bay on the North Shore of Oahu where they’d surfed the Banzai Pipeline every chance they had. Best friends since the third grade, they were what islanders called calabash cousins. They were so close they should have been related. Each had chosen very unusual professions, but both of their careers evolved from their love of the water.
After Chad left the military, he bought a scuba diving company whose main base was in Honolulu but had locations on the other islands, as well. His managers were so good that Chad devoted much of his time to his real passion, underwater forensics.
Eddie had begun his business by taking tourists on sunset catamaran cruises. He’d saved his money and bought “party” boats that were usually rented for conventions held on the island. Several years ago, he’d branched out and began having weddings onboard his boats.
It quickly became the most lucrative part of his business. Thanks to a flashy Web site, many mainlanders contacted him. They expected him to coordinate everything. Knowing little about wedding planning, Eddie had hired Lori, but she’d recently moved to Kauai. Apparently her assistant Shelby didn’t have enough skills to take over.
Eddie glanced at his watch. “I have another gal coming for an interview in a few minutes. A haole from Chicago. She has experience.”
“Sounds good.”
Eddie arched one dark busy eyebrow the way he often did when he was upset. His almond eyes narrowed. “You know malihini. They always think they want to live in paradise. Mainlanders head home in six months.”
Chad nodded. His managers were all from the islands. He encouraged them to hire divers who had been raised in Hawaii. Too many mainlanders came to the islands and took jobs away from the locals. No sooner were the malihinis trained than they went home.
“Look at it this way,” Chad told his friend. “If this woman stays a few months, maybe Shelby will be able to take over.”
Eddie snorted and slapped his thigh. “Yeah, right.”
Shelby was Eddie’s niece. To say the girl was a flake would be a gross understatement, but the woman who’d previously held Shelby’s position had managed to embezzle a ton of money before an auditor caught her. At least Shelby was family. While she was a few beans shy of a full burrito, she could be trusted.
Trust was a real issue with Eddie, Chad realized and not for the first time. His friend trusted everyone and kept sloppy records. Anyone could take advantage of him without half trying. Aloha Yachts and Weddings would be a lot more profitable if everyone from the vendors to the deckhands didn’t exploit Eddie’s generosity.
Chad had offered to take care of Eddie’s books in his office, but Eddie’s pride wouldn’t permit him to admit he needed help. In time, Eddie’s son, Andy would come into the business. The kid seemed to have a knack for finance even though right now Andy was obsessed with computers and was responsible for the Web site.
BEFORE DEVON ARRIVED for her interview, she’d already checked out Aloha Yachts and Weddings. The offices were on the ground floor and had a back exit—just in case. The rear door led to two different streets, depending on which way you turned. She’d been offered dozens of jobs, but none of them suited her requirements.
The setup was as near perfect as she was going to find. The firm was small and low-profile, the type of place her new handler, Warren Martin, had told her to work. It was in the part of town that saw only a few tourists—not that WITSEC expected anyone to recognize her.
She’d escaped Santa Fe by taking the cash out of Romero’s wallet and the keys to his SUV. She drove the back roads north until she and Zach were in Denver. Once there, she contacted the FBI field office.
Within the hour WITSEC had her on Con Air, the private federal airline that usually shuttled prisoners. They flew her back to the WITSEC safe site and orientation center in a secret Washington suburb. She’d arrived there with Zach in an armored vehicle with blackout windows.
This time she had been prepared for what was going to happen. Movement within the center was as controlled as it is in prison. Doors automatically bolted and could only be opened by the Federal Marshals on duty. Hallways were monitored by motion detectors and video cameras.
The compound, she’d been informed the first time she was there, could hold six families without any of them seeing each other. The typical orientation lasted two weeks, including a formal risk assessment of each witness. Her cover blown meant her risk assessment this time was sky high.
They’d spent an entire day debriefing her and trying to find out how she’d been compromised. Even Curt Masterson, head of WITSEC couldn’t decide what had happened. They had wiretaps on Rutherford’s and Ames’s telephones, and they were under surveillance. As far as the FBI could tell neither of the men had contacted a hit team.
She suspected there was an internal leak within WITSEC. After all, Derek had warned her that someone had tried to access her file. Federal Marshals had their price, and no doubt, the ruthless executives would pay any amount of money to have her killed rather than to allow her to testify.
She had a dislocated shoulder and cracked ribs, but she had managed to outsmart the hit team. Masterson decided she needed some minor cosmetic surgery to change her appearance and green contacts to conceal her blue eyes before he was willing to relocate her.
Curt Masterson had listened to how the WITSEC 800 number and the Santa Fe FBI Field office both had busy signals. He decided whoever Rutherford and Ames had hired wasn’t an ordinary hit team. They could be checking various states’ DMV databanks. With sophisticated high definition computer imaging, they could compare recent drivers’ license photographs to pictures of Devon when she’d been Samantha Robbins.
Armed with a new face, another name, a new birth certificate and a Social Security card, she was flown to Honolulu. Witnesses were rarely relocated in paradise, Masterson reasoned. This would be the last place her enemies would think to look for her.
It had taken a lot to convince Masterson to allow her to keep Zach. Her new handler, Warren Martin, certainly hadn’t wanted to help her find accommodations that would accept a dog.
CHAD AND EDDIE were discussing how to set up an Exel spreadsheet. Chad couldn’t help think that part of the reason his friend had been bilked by an employee was that Eddie didn’t have a good grasp of his income and expenses. Spreadsheets were easy enough, but Eddie was resisting the change.
“Hello,” called a willowy blonde from the door to the office, her figure silhouetted by the sunlight from the courtyard. She stepped forward into the office, and they could see her better. “I’m looking for Eddie Kukana.”
Chad’s eyes roved over her slowly. Her high full breasts flared above a narrow waist and long showgirl legs. She turned her head slightly and shoulder-length blond hair rippled seductively across her shoulders. He clenched his teeth so he wouldn’t be staring at her slack-jawed.
Devon gazed at both men, but it was the taller, powerfully-built man who caught her attention. Glossy chestnut hair hung across his forehead, a little longer than was currently stylish. Blue eyes filled with sparkling humor stared at her with undisguised sexual interest.
The man had a commanding presence, a way of holding himself. She instantly knew he would not be easy to manipulate. He continued to gaze at her, taking in her entire body with assessing eyes that missed nothing.
Her throat constricted and for a moment it felt as if someone were strangling her. The feeling passed—thankful
ly—and she drew in a deep hitching breath.
What was wrong with her? The man hadn’t said a word, yet her pulse was thundering in her temples, and she suddenly felt light-headed. She must have the jitters over this interview. She pulled her eyes away from his.
For a second neither of the men said anything. Chad wasn’t sure who they were expecting to arrive for the interview, but it wasn’t a knockout with a mane of tawny blond hair, cat-green eyes and a killer bod. She could stop a guy’s heart from a block away.
“I’m Devon Summers. I have an interview for the wedding coordinator position.”
Chad found his voice first. “This is Edward. Everyone calls him Eddie.”
She walked toward them, not smiling, her eyes intent. “I hope the position hasn’t been filled.”
“It hasn’t,” Eddie said, his tone gruff, a sure sign he was nervous.
Chad stood up. “You have experience as a wedding planner?”
“Coordinator,” she corrected him.
Unusual green eyes, he thought. Hypnotic. Seductive.
“Ms. Summers e-mailed me her résumé.” Eddie picked up a piece of paper from the top of a desk littered with brochures for his various party boat services, faxes and letters. “Impressive. Five years at the Cress Creek Country Club in Chicago.”
“Napierville, actually. It’s one of the more upscale suburbs.” Devon wondered if her voice reflected her nervousness.
“Right. Napierville.” The other man responded, grinning boyishly, his arresting blue eyes sparkling with humor.
Uh-oh, Devon thought. This man is way too sure of his own charm. Like Tyler, she thought with a pang. He’s accustomed to women falling all over him. Well, not this woman.
Chad decided Devon was a total babe, but not in the way Chad might have expected had he merely seen her from afar. When she spoke she had the glint of intelligence in her eyes and a very direct manner.
What would she be like in bed?
He’d bet the ranch that she liked physical sex. She probably would insist on being on top. Worked for him. He imagined her tawny hair brushing his face, her nipples tight and swaying slightly as she rode him hard.