Heartbreaker (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Simone Sinna

“It’s okay. She’s here with me.”

  Pause.

  “Not sure. She sure as hell doesn’t have a clue.”

  Savannah froze.

  “Yeah, just a photo. Corey got everything else.”

  Savannah was still trying to stop herself panicking, fighting to come up with an innocent explanation, when she looked across the road in the car park. Right out front and two spaces along was a white truck. On it was a logo she recognized. She could just make out the words “air conditioners.” Corey. Shit, that must be balaclava-man.

  Ben was winding up the call. She raced back to the bed.

  “Hi, honey,” Ben said as he came in. “Did I wake you? Sorry, just a work thing.”

  Savannah forced herself to smile. “No, I was thirsty.” She held up the mineral water. “But what I’m really desperate for is a coffee. They only have instant rubbish here.”

  Ben leant down and kissed her. She forced herself not to wince, not to hit him, not to scream you lied, I trusted you, I’ll never forgive you. “There’s a place across the street. Black?”

  She nodded. After he shut the door she counted to ten then dressed in less than a minute, grabbed her bag of clothes and ran.

  * * * *

  When Ben had woken he’d been feeling better than he had in years. He didn’t have to wonder why. The angel sleeping next to him had taken him to heaven and left him there. He almost wanted to pinch her to see if she was real, but he enjoyed watching her instead, pulling a black curl back on her forehead and thinking she was just about perfect in every way. Turning, he checked his phone. He’d missed some calls and there was a message. His South Carolina man presumably, returning his call from last night.

  He dressed quietly and went outside. The message said call him and given the time difference he could do it before she even woke.

  But something about the call felt wrong. Why was a man who had hired him to investigate a right-wing militia group that had abducted his daughter be so interested in Savannah? Did he think they would abduct her too? He stood after the call ended for a moment and thought. No, it was that the man was interested in the photo. Why? Did he think the man, Savannah’s father, was PLO or ANO or whatever the acronyms were? Hard to see how an Arab group could in any way be tied up with a Right Wing Christian one, unless… Shit, did he think Hezekiah was about to attack them or vice versa? No, that made no sense either, because as far as he was aware PLO wasn’t active any more. Hadn’t been considered a terrorist organization for years. Sure they would have been back then, but a long time had passed, and Savannah was too young to have had anything to do with it. She’d never even met her father.

  On the way to get coffee he figured he’d need his stepbrother. When he saw the white truck as he crossed the car park, he knew he needed his stepbrother.

  * * * *

  Corey watched the girl running from the motel room and grinned. His uncle would be pleased. This time he’d be sure not to mess up. Pity he wouldn’t be able to get the cop as well, but his uncle was clear. He needed the girl. Alive. He threw his cigarette out the window and turned on the car engine.

  * * * *

  Savannah had no idea where she was but what she figured she needed was a policeman. A real one. She cursed herself when she realized she’d never asked for any identification from Ben. Probably wasn’t even his real name. How could she have been so stupid? It made it worse that she had let her instinct rule her behavior and it had let her down. She wouldn’t ever be able to trust it again. The one time she let her guard down with a man and he was a crook.

  She dashed across the road over the median strip, half-aware of the white truck rolling out of the car park behind her. Before she saw any signs of anyone that could help her, she saw a bus drawing into a stop. She didn’t care where it was going. She got on. Watching out the back, she saw the white truck take off in the wrong direction and do a U-turn. Heart racing, she had a quick conversation with the bus driver who assured her the terminal didn’t allow cars into it. Several hours and a bus change later she was back in San Francisco, no sign of the truck, talking to a new but equally uninterested police sergeant.

  “So let’s get this straight,” he said, talking to her through a small, barred window. “You didn’t actually tell us everything yesterday. You think they are after a photo but it’s so damaged no one could identify anyone from it anyway. But now you are being truthful, and the guy who told you to say nothing about him to us, is after all, the bad guy?”

  “Look I know it sounds strange, but some guy called Corey attacked me. His truck was there in San Jose, it has an air conditioning logo, AirconAdded, by the way. And the only way he could have known I was there was Ben.”

  “And where was it that you and this Ben were?”

  Shit. This was not going to look good. “He said his name was Ben Masterton.”

  The sergeant put his pen down and narrowed his eyes. “Big guy? Fair?”

  “Yes, with”—she looked away as her eyes watered thinking about how gorgeous he had looked naked—“a scar on his lower chest and another on his right thigh.”

  “Okay, very funny Miss James.” The sergeant was a long way off looking amused. “I don’t know what your scam is, but you think I’m going to pick up Ben Masterton on this bullshit story, then think again.” He pulled himself out of his chair, hitched up his pants and came through the door, pointing to a plaque on the wall. “That there is our hall of fame. Officers died in course of duty, those injured, those who saved lives. Now get out of here before I forget to be polite.”

  Savannah stared at the wall. The most recently added name, last year, was Ben Masterton’s. He’d been given a police bravery award.

  In the end she still couldn’t trust him. Maybe he had gone bad after leaving the force. That’s what they did in books and the movies. She’d have to do it alone. But how? Sleeping on the problem hadn’t helped. She looked around nervously and thought there might have been a white truck about a hundred yards or so up the road.

  Savannah looked around her, calculated the distances and where balaclava-man might be able to catch her either on foot or in the car. In the end she elected for a coffee shop up a one-way street, full of flyers and rooms to rent notices, and sat and drank a succession of flavored beverages masquerading as coffee. She was staring at one of the notices when she had an idea. The notice said, “College students seek extra housemate.” College was the same as university in America wasn’t it? Rachel had said Todd had taken them to the University Club. Didn’t you have to be a member to go to a club like that? The ballet dancers certainly wouldn’t have been members, so it had to be Todd. She could ring local numbers on her phone, so with fingers trembling she rang Rachel.

  “Which club? Oh it was San Francisco University I think, but he didn’t work there or anything.”

  Savannah buried her head in her hands. This had been her last hope.

  “He was too smart,” Rachel continued, but Savannah wasn’t following her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was a man going places. You can always tell.”

  “Not an academic, you mean?”

  “Definitely not the boffin type,” said Rachel. “He was the type that would have gone to university, but an Ivy League I should think.”

  “Don’t suppose you know which one?”

  There was a pause. “The host at the club didn’t know him, he only got in because he had been to…I’m not sure, Harvard or Yale I should think. Stanford maybe.”

  “You don’t recall what course he had done? If he was a doctor? Lawyer? Accountant?” They had asked this yesterday, but Savannah figured something else might have surfaced from her memory.

  “No, I’m afraid not. We were very, well, self-important. It’s such a short life on the stage…you are focused only on yourself.”

  Even shorter for her mother, thanks to Sal. A picture of Audrey dancing in the house, of her rapture when they went to the Royal Ballet once, out in Australia from
Britain, flashed through Savannah’s mind.

  “I do remember thinking though he could have been a dancer.”

  Savannah frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “How he held himself. Not so much the grace of a ballet dancer, but he walked tall, your Todd Wilson.”

  Sounded arrogant enough to be a lawyer. But Savannah was pretty sure all the Ivory League universities had law schools so that didn’t help.

  “He didn’t mention his home town? Or Boston? Or Connecticut?”

  “Not that I recall. I’m sorry.”

  Savannah was about to hang up when she suddenly took in the shirts the students at the next table were wearing. Two had “SF Dons” written on their windbreakers, the third a picture of a Gopher with “U of M” written over the top. American Universities had mascots. Shit, what were Harvard’s and Yale’s?

  “Hold on a sec will you?” In the absence of internet access she turned to the students and asked.

  “Harvard thinks it’s too good to have one,” said the gopher man. “Has some bullshit red man or something.”

  “And Yale is a bulldog,” said one of the SF Dons.

  “Rachel,” said Savannah, willing the ballet dancer to recall, “did Todd ever refer to a Bulldog? Maybe at the Uni club?”

  There was a long pause. “Maybe,” said Rachel. “I’m trying to recall the conversation because I found it puzzling. Something about a bulldog for the moment but I have always had a soft spot for donkeys? Does that make any sense?”

  No, but bulldog was good enough.

  She had the coffee shop call a cab and was on the next flight to New York.

  * * * *

  When Ben had found Savannah missing he had felt worse than when Laura had left. There was the agony of a loss of a dream, but in addition he was a professional and he been working when he had been with Savannah. He’d fucked up, and worse still she was in danger. He figured immediately what had happened, and was straight on the phone to Zac. Zac listened as he poured the story out and paused.

  “Who did you say is paying your bills?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Time to share, kid.”

  Ben figured that. Something smelled rotten and this was where the stench began. “Guy called Manfred Channing. Big businessman from North Carolina. His little girl—I’m talking twenty-five okay—hitched up with a loser from Hezekiah’s group and thumbed her nose at her dad. He couldn’t do anything legally so has been running tabs on the group, seeing if he can get them on something else.”

  “Can he?”

  “A lot of shit but none of it has hit the fan. Corey, the nephew, turns up in San Fran, hence how I got employed. Manny seemed to think it was part of a US-wide gathering of something. I’m thinking weapons. He knows stuff he doesn’t feel the need to share with me.”

  “Checked this guy out?”

  “Sure,” said Ben, but he was sweating. He knew where this was going. “Father of three, one a druggie, one gone to the right-wing crazies and one with cerebral palsy. Wife drinks and he has a mistress. Made millions out of some obscure engine part that is needed in big machinery. Sells to oil rigs and mines all over the world.”

  “And?” Zac could always pick it when he was covering up a weakness. He had helped Ben minimize damage more than once as a teenager, which was why he still referred to him as “kid.”

  “And…well I have never actually met him.”

  Zac reflected on this. “Can you call him at his office and check?”

  Ben hung up. He knew he should have done this right at the beginning. The amount of money had dazzled him, and he’d been a sucker for the cause. Who wouldn’t want to help a guy whose three kids were causing him grief? Instead of ringing the number Manny had given him he Googled the man, found his office number.

  “This is Detective Masterton,” he said. Stretching the truth a little, but it helped get the attention of the operator. “It’s urgent I speak with Manfred Channing.”

  “Can I say what it’s about?”

  Good, that meant he was in, as the earlier phone call had suggested. “His daughter,” Ben answered.

  There was a click and less than a second later a voice asked, “What about my daughter, Detective Masterton?”

  Trouble was, this cool voice with a Boston accent was not that of the man Ben had been talking to for the last three weeks.

  * * * *

  Corey was seriously pissed. When he got this bitch he was really going to make her sorry. She always seemed to have people around her. At least she’d lost the cop and he’d been able to see what plane she’d gotten onto. Hezekiah had been happy about that. But instead of offering to pay for a ticket, Corey’s punishment was he had to drive. Did his uncle know how far it damn well was?

  * * * *

  If ever Zac was in a fight, if he had a choice, his stepbrother Ben would be there at his side. That was how they had grown up, as a team. After his mother died he’d tried to take care of his dad, but when Ben’s mother had turned out to do that pretty well, he’d started taking care of Ben instead. That’s how it was in his head, even if these days they worked on opposite sides of the country. Ben had only gone west because of Laura and then she’d dumped him because living with a cop was too tough. Zac had known she was all wrong for Ben but there was no telling him. Some things you had to work out for yourself.

  Zac liked women well enough, but none had ever turned his head enough to consider putting them ahead of his career. Short, casual affairs were the result. After three weeks they got territorial, by three months they were getting the handcuffs out. These days he kept it to two months. Better for everyone. Right now, because for the last year he had been focusing on a promotion, there had only been one backseat romp with a junior FBI agent that they’d both regretted. So he was feeling a little kinder about Ben’s anxiety. It seemed like this woman was pushing all his buttons, and had then gone and disappeared. Time for Zac to go to the rescue. Particularly as, like Ben, his sixth sense was screaming. Too many things that didn’t fit and too many things that led down paths with dangerous possibilities.

  Zac knew all about PLO, and the ANO had been a particularly nasty little group named for their leader Abu Nidal who had been dead a good number of years. Hezekiah’s group was smaller, and had some loose cannons like Corey that made them look less a global worry, but Hezekiah was deceptive. He was good at playing dumb, and dumb he most certainly was not. If Hezekiah was interested in Savannah James then so was Zac, even if his database was coming up with nothing on her. Well, not quite nothing. He looked at his watch. She was currently somewhere between San Francisco and New York. He’d already organized his own flight and had half an hour to get there in order to beat her into JFK.

  Chapter Six

  Savannah’s first impression of New York was that it was cold. A blast of Atlantic air hit her as she stepped out of the heated terminal and found herself changing between the air-train and subway at Jamaica. The denim jacket she had been wearing had been enough for October on the west coast but clearly wasn’t going to cut it here. She shivered, and started to worry about the cost of accommodation and a coat. New Haven, she figured, would be cheaper than New York and student accommodation accessible, so she planned to go straight to Grand Central and take a train north. Not exactly a sightseeing trip.

  She was feeling edgy. She was sure she wasn’t being followed but had to rely on the people following her, whoever they were, not being able to access air-travel databases. She’d had to book in her real name because her passport photo was the only identification she had. But someone had known she had arrived in the USA, so she wasn’t confident her assumption about what databases they could access was correct. She had also been using her card to make cash withdrawals. Surely only the good guys could get these records? Or rather, would any bad guy with that sort of money and scope be interested in her?

  Using the free airport Wi-Fi she’d checked out the ANO, and while they may well have had links like that,
Abu Nidal had died in 2002. The “patriot turned psychopath” reference made her shudder, but for all she read making it clear that there were ongoing tensions between the Middle East and the USA, this group was defunct. Her mother had just been unlucky. Or rather, very lucky. As had her father. Scary to have been there in Rome when the bombs went off, but they had survived.

  Whatever the balaclava man wanted, it couldn’t be her. Mistaken identity was the easiest explanation. But there was another thought niggling at the back of her mind. Her father didn’t know she existed. But when she had come into the USA she had had to complete data on her parents. Maybe her father had an alert on Audrey James’s name. Or Salvatore Mazzola’s, who because he had adopted her, was, technically, for official forms at least, her father. Worse, maybe her real father was the behind whatever was going on with the balaclava guy…and maybe paying Ben.

  When the train arrived, the edginess turned to watchfulness. She didn’t know what she was up against and had probably watched too many movies, but she was determined to be ready should another Corey turn up. Or another Ben for that matter. Thinking about him was too hard. She couldn’t believe she’d fallen for his American apple pie charm, but she guessed she’d recover. Eventually. Her plan was to go to Grand Central and take out just enough time to buy a coat and maybe some mace spray if she could find any. Then head north.

  There were several dozen other people who boarded the train with her. Several couples, one family in her carriage. They juggled large suitcases or backpacks, arriving on holidays. But there were also three men without suitcases. One was in a dark suit preoccupied with his iPhone. Lean, brown hair neatly cut. Serious Clive Owen–type, and she rather imagined that if he smiled he’d have been good-looking. Coming in for business, she assumed, but he would have to be returning home from a meeting that day because he didn’t have a bag. Or a briefcase. She frowned. Why no briefcase?