And he’d never met one he wanted to spend more than a weekend with.
Joshua turned on the water, moving the lever toward the hot side. It was his day off, but there was no reason to spend it with the scent of Miranda still clinging to his body.
Not unless Miranda was close at hand, he added silently.
When he was on assignment, he could work round the clock. Adrenaline pounding, he needed little to no sleep to keep him going. But on his days off, he changed completely, sleeping in, allowing the sun to rise without him.
He supposed it could be called recharging his batteries. Or viewed as being the sloth he could so easily revert to had his uncle not seen something in him and turned him into a crusader.
Not that they were associated with any specific higher power or world government. The agents who comprised the Lazlo Group were essentially freelancers. It gave his uncle the privilege of being able to turn down whatever work he didn’t choose to do.
When all was said and done, the causes they took up, the people they aided, could all be found on the side of freedom and democracy.
With the possible exception of the time eighteen months ago when he’d had to save the wife and son of the Chinese ambassador from a radical fringe group of would-be terrorists. It had been touch and go for a harrowing thirty-six hours before he brought them both to safety. Since then an expensive bottle of vintage wine had arrived at his door the first of every month like clockwork.
He liked to think that he had accomplished a bit of détente in rescuing the ambassador’s family. Not to mention sending up the price of vintage wine.
“Maybe you’re not as worthless as the old man says you are,” he murmured under his breath, sticking his head under the steady stream of water and removing the shampoo from his hair.
The old man, of course, was his father, who had never had a good word to say to him from the time when such things had actually mattered. Now, all his father’s disdain meant to Joshua was that he was doing something right with his life. He knew that his father found it particularly galling that he was working with his uncle and that he quietly admired the man. There was no denying that Edward Lazlo was a jealous man, jealous of any attention not sent directly his way.
The pulsating noise slowly wove its way through the sound of the shower’s running water.
Joshua stopped, listening. Shutting off the water, he angled his head to hear better.
Ringing.
It was his cell phone.
The next second, Joshua swiftly left the confines of his shower, marking his path with splotches of water that dripped off his body as he retrieved his phone from the nightstand where he’d left it. Day off or not, he knew better than to ignore the phone when it rang.
He’d had the presence of mind, just before falling into bed last night, to plug the phone in. It was still tethered to his charger.
Joshua didn’t bother disconnecting the device as he picked it up. Flipping the phone open, he pressed it to his ear.
“Lazlo.”
“Where are you?”
The sound of his uncle’s voice took him aback for a second. Ordinarily, the man had one of his people do his calling.
Joshua disconnected the phone from its charger and walked back into the bathroom.
“My place.” Taking a towel from the rack, he began drying himself with one hand. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be climbing back into the shower. “It’s my day off,” he added needlessly. His uncle was on top of everything that happened or didn’t happen at the agency, but it didn’t hurt to add that little fact in.
“Not anymore.”
The finality of the tone was familiar. Something was up. His uncle didn’t pull strings just to watch people jump.
“I’m listening.”
“If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be working for me,” Corbett replied crisply. “The British prime minister’s daughter is missing. She was apparently kidnapped sometime this morning.”
“Why?”
The question was a spontaneous response to the information. He could think of a lot of other people who would have been easier to kidnap than Prudence Hill. The kidnappers obviously hadn’t realized what they were in for when they took the young woman. The tabloids, who loved to hound people of prominence, to build up and then tear down the same person within the space of a few paragraphs, had dubbed Prime Minister Jeremy Hill’s older daughter “Pru the Shrew.”
According to so-called “friends”—most likely disgruntled hangers-on that she’d had no patience with—Prudence Hill had a waspish disposition and never minced words. Word, among people who supposedly would know about such things, had it that the diplomatic corps would not be calling the prime minister’s daughter any time soon with an invitation to join their ranks.
“You’ll be briefed when you arrive.” Joshua knew that his uncle didn’t believe in saying any more than absolutely necessary over the telephone, even if the lines were secured and tested on a daily basis. “The rest you will find out and cover in the report that you will give to me after you bring the young woman back.”
Complete faith, that was what he liked about his uncle. The man did not waste words, did not heap accolades of any kind for a job well done. Nonetheless, you knew what he thought, knew where you stood with him. In Corbett Lazlo’s case, a simple nod spoke volumes and was all but euphoric for the recipient.
“Yes, sir,” Joshua responded. He finished drying himself and draped the towel haphazardly over the rack then padded back to his bedroom. Time was ticking away.
“There’s a jet waiting for you at the airport. Be there in forty minutes. Murphy is compiling a dossier on the woman for you. It’ll be waiting for you when you get to the airfield.” There was an infinitesimal pause. “I don’t have to tell you to be discreet.”
“No,” Joshua agreed amicably, opening his closet, “you don’t.”
He knew the rules. He was to get in and out without leaving a mark, retrieve the girl and bring her home—alive—as swiftly as possible. To aid him he had complete access to all the latest electronic gadgets and available technology, not to mention the considerable standard resources of the Lazlo Group, both human and otherwise, the caliber of which would have made James Bond salivate had the character actually existed.
In exchange for the faith placed in him and the arsenal at his disposal, he could never protest that an assignment found him at an inconvenient moment, nor that he might need more than the allotted amount of time to arrive at the appointed place. Corbett expected loyalty, compliance and agents who were as close to perfection as humanly possible. For this he paid extremely well. But there were rewards beyond money to garner.
He was just now beginning to find that out, Joshua thought, taking out a casual pair of cream-colored slacks and a navy jacket. A light blue shirt followed, along with whisper small briefs and dark, thin socks. All his clothes were aerodynamically light. You never knew when you had to flee and maximum speed was always good if your vehicle was “accidentally” destroyed.
The satisfaction of a job well done was nothing compared to the slight glimmer of approval occasionally seen in Corbett Lazlo’s eyes. And because he’d found himself such a student of his uncle, Joshua had become acutely attuned to the various nuances in the older man’s voice.
There was something more there now, something that Corbett Lazlo was not saying. Had he been the perfect agent, he would have refrained from asking. But Joshua had not yet completely morphed into a junior version of his uncle and so allowed himself to press the issue a little.
“Is something wrong, Uncle?”
He heard annoyance when his uncle answered. “Other than the fact that the older daughter of one of the most influential men in the entire free world has been kidnapped?”
His uncle made it sound as if that was more than enough reason for him to be troubled and distracted, but Joshua knew better. Very little ruffled Corbett Lazlo and they were in the business of thwarting international k
idnappers among other things. There was something more, he’d bet his life on it.
“Other than the fact that the older daughter of one of the most influential men in the entire free world has been kidnapped,” Joshua parroted back, then waited to be filled in.
The pause on the other end of the line made him uneasy. It stretched out until it was as thin as a piano wire.
The feeling did not leave once his uncle began speaking again.
“Jane Kiley’s dead.”
He knew Jane. A small, thin woman with lightning-fast hands, a sharp mind and a smile that rivaled a sunrise. She knew her way around horses and tanks, an odd combination that came in handy. He felt an instant sense of loss. He also sensed that there was more.
“I’m guessing not from natural causes.” It was said for form’s sake. They wouldn’t be talking about it if the causes had been natural.
“There was a car bomb.”
Joshua could feel his gut tightening in sympathetic response. “Part of the case?”
“The case was closed,” Corbett said flatly.
Joshua could hear his uncle weighing his words in the silence that followed. Corbett was known to be closemouthed about almost everything. Information—any information—was released on a need-to-know basis. Even about something like this. Joshua didn’t have to be told that Corbett already had the right people working on this.
“Be careful, Joshua.”
The warning took him aback. That was a first, Joshua thought. His uncle never troubled himself with the risk factors. An assignment was gone over, assessed, then left up to the chosen agent to successfully execute. No mention was ever made of being careful.
Until now.
This was serious, Joshua thought to himself. Really serious.
“Not to worry,” Joshua told him buoyantly. “Today is not a good day to die,” he said, paraphrasing an ancient Cheyenne saying. “I’m on my way.”
“Of course you are.”
The connection terminated after Corbett’s last uttered syllable. Joshua was on his own.
He hurried into his clothes, into his holster and weapon and out the front door as if the devil was after him.
Because he very well might be.
Forty minutes later found Joshua Lazlo sprinting across the private airfield to one of his uncle’s private jets. The moment the pilot saw him approaching, he began to go through the necessary checklist, the end of which would allow him to take to the air. They had only a short transatlantic hop ahead of them, since the first destination would be London. He was to meet with the prime minister and the man’s chief advisor and oldest friend, George Montgomery, to personally obtain all the information that was available.
Clarence Murphy stood just within the plane’s entrance, waiting as Joshua took the steps up to the plane two at a time. The carryall that he kept perpetually packed and ready to go in his closet was slung over his shoulder.
Taking the carryall from him, Murphy stepped back, waited until he was on board and then closed and latched the door.
“No need to get a stitch from running,” Murphy told him. He gestured toward a seat, then took the one opposite it, buckling up. “It’s not like we can leave without you, seeing as you’re the reason for this quick hop.”
The dossier that Corbett had promised was on the seat, waiting for him. Joshua picked it up before sitting down. Buckled into his seat, he crossed his leg over his thigh and rested the folder on it.
“No,” Joshua contradicted as he opened up the dossier and scanned the pages within the black folder. There was a wealth of information waiting for him, all neatly cataloged and arranged by year. “The prime minister’s daughter is.”
Chapter 3
The first thing he noticed was how vivid her hair was, even through a telescope at this distance.
Joshua wiped away another large, fat raindrop that seemed to fall on him in slow motion, and refocused on his target. Prudence Hill was a redhead and the tabloids really must have had it in for her, he thought, trying to ignore the pregnant promise of a downpour. He gazed intently into the back window of the run-down farmhouse from his vantage point some one hundred yards away.
The pictures he’d seen on the covers of the same rags that had given her infamy of a sort made her look austere, frightening, with definite wicked-witch-of-the-west attributes. The headlines screamed as much, as did the nickname the magazines had all summarily bestowed on her: Pru the Shrew.
But if the woman he was looking at actually was the British prime minister’s headstrong, outspoken daughter, then somewhere along the line, someone had made a big mistake. Not only that, but someone definitely needed to spring for better cameras for their photographers, because the only resemblance the gagged, bound young woman in the cluttered back bedroom of the isolated, dilapidated building had to the woman in the tabloid photographs that had been taken was that they both had red hair.
Beyond that, the difference between the two was like that between a butterfly and a moth. They both had wings and they both flew, but one was beautiful and graceful while the other plain and shunned. The woman he’d sometimes seen portrayed on the tabloid covers beneath unflattering adjectives had dull, lifeless hair, dowdy clothing and a body that wouldn’t give a person the slightest pause or merit even a first glance, much less a second. That wasn’t true of the woman in the white jogging shorts and baggy but clingy T-shirt. And from what he could see, she had unconditionally killer legs.
Her profile was to him and, despite the duct tape, he could see that her face, though flushed, was more than passingly attractive. He couldn’t see her eyes, which to him had always been one of the most important weapons in a woman’s arsenal, but he suspected that there was fire in them.
Which would make her beautiful, not school-marmish. The tabloids loved her for her sensational comments and hated her for her attitude toward them, which was pure contempt. As to the discrepancy in appearance, he had a feeling that whoever was in charge of reviewing the final copy probably did what had been covertly done in the past: taken her head and pasted it onto someone else’s body, making sure they used the most unflattering photo of Prudence they could find.
If he’d been armed with nothing more than their photos, he’d never have found her.
But it had taken more than just flashing around her photograph, obtained from the prime minister’s assistant, to locate the missing young woman. It had taken the combined backing of a crack team in Paris, Lucia with her almost magical capabilities with the computer, and luck.
He never underestimated the power of luck. Because luck had Mr. Merriweather Wilson walking up to the guard at 10 Downing Street ten minutes after he, Joshua, had been ushered into the prime minister’s presence. Wilson, he was told, began innocently enough by saying that he had something he believed belonged to the prime minister’s older daughter.
The moment the words were out of his mouth, Wilson had instantly been taken into a basement room within the historical residence and thoroughly, repeatedly, questioned.
The prime minister’s people had thought, at first, that Wilson was part of the kidnapping plot, sent to up the ante that had initially been set. But the poor, clueless man protested over and over again that his son Derek had found the MP3 player that morning near the park. Intending to keep his newfound prize, Derek could have easily done so if Wilson had not been running late that morning, not having yet departed for his very important position at the West End Bank.
Wilson had actually been on his way out when he’d taken note of the MP3 player clipped like a newly captured trophy to his sixteen-year-old’s belt. He stopped to question his son, who’d recently entered a rather shady period of his life. Thinking the player to be stolen, he’d been left unmoved by his son’s impassioned protestations of innocence. But Derek remained steadfast, firmly maintaining that he had found the MP3 player, not stolen it from someone.
Employing as much drama as he could, Wilson told his former interrogators that his ja
w had practically dropped to the floor when he read the inscription on the back of the player. He’d lost no time in bringing it to Number 10 because he was a patriot—and because, he added more quietly, he was hoping that there might be some small reward for the player’s recovery.
Joshua had left that part up to the other men in the room, the prime minister’s personal bodyguards and his best friend, Montgomery, a kindly faced man who towered over the others. Joshua remained focused. He’d asked Wilson exactly where the player had been located. Wilson had to defer to his son. The latter was summoned. Derek was quick to pick up that something had to be amiss and made an attempt to barter.
But there was to be no exchange of information, on that the prime minister was absolutely clear. No one, except a very select few, was to even know that his daughter was missing.
On that Joshua and the prime minister had been in agreement.
Taken to the exact spot where Derek Wilson had first been united with the MP3 player, Joshua had the prime minister’s people fan out and locate every security camera in the area. After the London subway bombings of two years past, local small businesses, not to mention the government, had installed security cameras in as many available nooks and crannies as possible.
They got luckier. A grainy film of the abduction was recovered.
From that came a poor photograph of the van used and a much magnified partial license plate. Turning everything over to Lucia via the capabilities of his highly advanced cell phone, Joshua was rewarded in short order with the name of the van’s owner.
The prime minister sent two of his people to the owner’s house. He wasn’t there. But a hit on one of his credit cards at a distant gas station, also thanks to Lucia, showed them the path that the van had taken. Away from London and into the countryside, the land of the sisters Brontë, haystacks and needles. In other words, it appeared that they were headed north, in the general vicinity of Haworth.
It was an easy place to get lost. Or to hold a hostage.
Eager, distraught, the prime minister wanted to send some of his people along when he’d discovered that Joshua had come alone. But he’d respectfully declined the offer, saying he worked best on his own and unimpeded. If the cavalry was sent in, Prudence would be dead before they made it to the front door.
My Spy Page 2