by Abby Gaines
Dave grabbed at her and she yelped. “What the hell are you—”
He dragged off her jacket, the pink jean jacket she’d worn to church in Kechowa, and ran his hands over the pockets.
“I knew it.” Triumphant, he pulled her voice-activated tape recorder out of the breast pocket. “You never go to an important meeting without this thing.”
Holly watched it disappear into his pocket. Damn. Through gritted teeth she said, “The money.”
“It’s gone.” He added with an infuriating smile, “Most of it.”
“Gone? You spent it?”
“I invested it,” he corrected her. “As you know, all investments involve risk. The higher the risk, the higher the potential return.”
And the bigger the fall if things didn’t work out. Holly steeled herself. “What was the investment?”
Dave scooped up his cell phone off the coffee table and moved to put it on the sideboard behind the sofa. “I had a surefire tip that the stocks in a power company were about to go through the roof—they were an acquisition target.”
“Insider trading.”
“Smart trading,” Dave amended. “Through a series of offshore accounts that’ll take the authorities some time to unravel, if they ever do. But the acquisition never happened, the company declared major losses and the stock price dropped like a stone a week later. There was no way I could sell, no way of getting the money back before you noticed it was missing.”
Appalled, Holly sank into the room’s single armchair. A sharp spring stabbed her backside through the thin cushion and she got up again quickly. “Stock market trading is a gamble even when you know what you’re doing. Why would you even go into it? And why use our clients’ money?”
Dave’s mouth turned down in a sneer. “You were always so superior, always thinking you were better than I was. Every time I suggested a high-return investment for our clients’ funds you refused. You had no imagination.”
“I was looking after their money during a time of fiscal uncertainty,” she said. “I would have been happy to consider something slightly higher risk when the market settled down.”
Dave kicked at the sideboard. “You were always creaming off the best projects and giving me the stuff any new graduate could do.”
Holly couldn’t deny that. “It was my reputation that brought the good clients in, and they wanted me doing the work.”
“If that stock hadn’t gone sour, right now I’d be handing our clients a return on their money they never dreamed of. Plus taking a hefty commission for myself.” He paused. “Actually I took part of the commission before I made the investment. Ten percent.”
“Six hundred thousand dollars,” Holly said slowly.
He shrugged. “Not worth going to prison for, but enough to start over. I’ll have to find something else to do.”
“Something other than stealing?” she asked. “Or something other than hiding out in a hovel, leaving me to take the rap for your crime.”
“I knew you’d notice it missing right away,” he said. “Setting the Feds on you gave me more time to get out. Anyway, you won’t be found guilty. You’re so squeaky-clean you’ll be back in business in no time. The clients will get paid out by the insurers and I’ll be a low priority on the Wanted list.”
“The FBI thinks I killed you,” Holly blurted.
She could tell that shook him. “What?”
“They found your rental car burned out in Mexico. With your wallet and your…remains. At least, what they think are your remains.”
Dave frowned. “As soon as I got my fake passport I abandoned the car. I left my wallet with my ID in it.”
“So the body isn’t the woman you argued with?”
“What woman?” His puzzled expression cleared. “Oh, her. She was just a girl I met at the beach. An Australian tourist. Stupid cow wanted to borrow money for her airfare home.”
“So you don’t know whose body was in the car?”
“I just told you, didn’t I?”
Satisfied Dave hadn’t killed anyone, Holly turned to the next most important matter. “How did you get my PIN?”
“Easy. I concealed a video camera in the ceiling above your desk. It only took a day to catch you checking the bank account.” Dave’s voice cooled. “Now get out of here, Holly.”
“Not until you agree to turn yourself in.”
Dave sighed, opened a drawer in the sideboard he was leaning on, and casually pulled out a gun.
Holly’s eyes widened, but she made no sound.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he assured her. “I’ll just injure you so you don’t try to stop me leaving.” He looked her up and down as if trying to decide where best to put a bullet into her. He aimed at her knee, steadied his gun hand with his other hand.
“You don’t have to shoot me.” Fear made her voice breathy. “I’ll go.”
“You’ll go to the cops,” Dave said.
He wouldn’t believe her if she denied it. “Yes.”
Dave thought for a moment, his gun still trained on Holly’s knee. “I’m ready to leave,” he said, more to himself than her. “I’ll be out of here before the police arrive.” He lowered the gun, looking just about as relieved as Holly was that he didn’t have to shoot her. She could almost see his struggle to think of a next step.
“Get out now,” he said. “Cross the street and head to the bus shelter on the other side. Sit there and don’t move, don’t speak to anyone, for thirty minutes. I’ll be watching you from the window. If I see you talk to anyone…”
“But you’re leaving,” Holly said.
Dave’s face darkened. “Don’t get smart, Holly. You won’t know exactly when I’ve left, I’ll go out the back way. Just do as you’re told for once.”
Holly walked down the stairs and out of the apartment, praying Jared wouldn’t rush to her side and demand to know what had happened. How far could a bullet from that gun travel? She kept her focus directly in front of her, rather than looking to the left, where she knew Jared was. She crossed right there, because walking down to the lights would have meant turning in the opposite direction from the bus shelter, and she didn’t want Dave to think she was going against his orders.
She sat away from the other waiting people and looked across the road. She could see the windows of the apartment, and she thought she saw Dave looking out at her around the edge of the drapes.
Jared was watching her but thankfully making no move to cross the street toward her. He was leaning against the window of a strip club. At first glance the pose appeared indolent, but even from this distance Holly sensed the alertness coiled within him. He must have figured that sitting in the bus shelter wasn’t her idea, and he was waiting to see what happened.
Holly wished desperately that she could signal him to go around the back of the building to catch Dave as he left. She shut her eyes and tried to send the thought to him. Then immediately opened them again. She didn’t want Jared confronting a nervous, gun-toting Dave Fletcher. The terror inspired by the thought of a bullet entering Jared’s firm, perfect male flesh exceeded any fears she had for herself.
Stay right where you are. Don’t move. Whether he got her thoughts or not, he did as she wanted. Keeping one eye on the minute hand of her watch and one on Jared, Holly didn’t notice the youth who approached her until his voice startled her.
“Excuse me, do you have the time?” He was maybe sixteen, a dark wisp of mustache gracing his upper lip.
Holly stared at him, terrified. What if Dave thought this guy was working with her? She clamped her lips together and looked straight ahead.
“Hey, do you have the time?” Not so polite this time. How ironic if he stabbed her in a fit of bus-shelter rage. Still she said nothing. The boy cursed and moved along, and she heard him asking someone else.
When the longest half hour of her life was finished, Holly looked up at the window. No sign of Dave. She jumped to her feet and ran across K Road, ignoring the angry horn of
a bus and the yell of a taxi driver.
Jared raced forward to meet her and hauled her onto the sidewalk. “Are you nuts, running out into the traffic?”
“He’s gone, he got away. He said I couldn’t move for thirty minutes. He had a gun.” Holly babbled the words, clinging to Jared like a limpet.
When she finished, he pressed kisses into her hair. “It’s okay,” he soothed. “You’re safe, my brave girl.”
It was true. In the arms of one of the most dangerous men she’d ever met—she felt safe. She twisted out of Jared’s hold. “Did you hear me? He got away.”
Jared stayed infuriatingly calm. “We’ll find him.”
“How?”
“I’ve got the Colonel watching the back door. He’ll follow Fletcher wherever he’s going. I knew that for you to be jaywalking, something must be badly wrong. I figured I wasn’t meant to approach you.”
She gave thanks that she’d sent him such a clear message. But her foray into danger had solved nothing. “Dave’s never going to give that money back.”
“Didn’t I tell you that?” Jared stuffed his hands into his pockets and stepped back from her. “We tried this your way, Holly, and now it’s time for you to let me take over.”
“But we’re both—”
“No,” he said. “From now on I’m responsible for getting Dave Fletcher. Do you understand?”
She understood, all right. He was asking her to hand over total control. Even now, when she’d barely escaped being shot, the thought terrified Holly. She frowned as she looked up at Jared, ready to argue that she knew Dave better than he did and it was her business, anyway.
Standing here on this sordid road, in this far-off country, in this fantastic mess she was in, Jared was solid, real. Holly let out the breath she’d been holding and nodded. “You’re in charge.”
DAVE FLETCHER was on an island called Waiheke in the middle of Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf. It figured. It wasn’t enough that Jared should have endured fifteen hours of flying. Now he had to get on a boat.
Holly, of course, noticed the tightness of his grip on the catamaran ferry’s handrail. “You’re feeling sick again?”
He nodded, unable to speak. She clucked impatiently and, mercifully, disappeared into the main cabin, leaving him and his heaving stomach in peace. The waters of the Waitemata Harbor sparkled in the early spring sunshine. With a fresh wind blowing in his face, Jared could almost appreciate the beauty of the scene.
The ferry trip took half an hour, then they disembarked on the wharf at Waiheke’s tiny port, Matiatia.
The Colonel met them and drove them to an exclusive hotel at Palm Beach, where half a dozen guest suites sprawled down a foliage-encrusted hill overlooking white sands and an azure sea. Their suite was the bottommost, set halfway down the hill.
From its balcony the Colonel pointed out the house Dave had fled to, one of the many properties in the area available for vacation rentals, just fifty yards below and to the left of them.
Because of the steep terrain, the front of Dave’s single-story dwelling was on poles, while the rear nestled into the hillside. The house had decking around two sides, which helped distract the eye from the fact that the side facing the beach was painted lilac, while the other side’s white paint was flaking off.
When the Colonel departed, Holly looked around the suite. It was one room, big enough to hold a couch and a small dining table and chairs, as well as the king-size bed with its pale blue-and-green duvet and matching pillows. Behind a pair of folding doors she found a kitchenette where someone, presumably the Colonel, had stocked the refrigerator. Through a doorway behind the bed, she discovered a white-tiled bathroom with a shower big enough for two. She looked at Jared, who held a pair of binoculars trained on the house where Dave was hiding. “There’s only one bed.”
“You do surprise me.”
She bristled at his laconic tone. “I’m not sharing a bed with you.”
He kept his gaze fixed on whatever he could see through the binoculars. “Afraid you’ll lose control and ravish me?”
“I do not lose control.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot.” He turned to face her. “So you’re afraid I’ll lose control?” His tone was mild, but she wasn’t fooled. Nor could she picture him losing control. Any “ravishing” Jared might undertake would be a deliberate, purposeful seduction….
“That’s not the point,” she said.
“Seems to me you don’t have a point. We should have no trouble sharing a bed.” Jared turned back to the window. “Not that we will be, anyway.”
“We won’t?”
“Nope. You and I will be taking two-hour shifts watching Fletcher through these binoculars. All night.”
“It’ll be dark,” she reminded him sweetly. “We won’t be able to see.”
“Gee, I never thought of that. Maybe it’ll help if we turn on this night sight.” He fingered a button on the top of the binoculars.
She huffed. “You can turn on every light on the island if it means I don’t have to sleep in the same bed as you.”
HOLLY HAD RELUCTANTLY agreed not to leave their suite for the duration of their stay. The risk of being seen by Dave wasn’t worth taking. In fact, as soon as they were sure they could get Dave back to the U.S.A., she would fly home, leaving Jared to do the dirty work. Until then, Jared could go out, and he would, just as soon as Dave made an appearance.
At six o’clock, halfway through Holly’s first watch and just as she was thinking about turning on the binoculars’ night sight, Dave walked out the back door of his cottage and down the uneven pathway to the road. Jared was out the door within seconds, and Holly saw him join the road about twenty yards behind Dave. Both men were in view for maybe half a minute, heading parallel to the beach away from the resort. Following Jared’s instructions, she phoned the Colonel. If Dave went anywhere in a car, the older man would follow him.
FLETCHER’S DESTINATION turned out to be nowhere more exciting than the small café at the far end of the beach, a five-minute walk from the resort. Jared didn’t go in after him. Instead he bought fish and chips from the takeout next door and ate them sitting on a bench that afforded a view of the café door but wasn’t directly facing it.
So when Dave came out an hour later, he didn’t see Jared in the near darkness. Jared trailed him back to his cottage, then called Holly from his cell phone to tell her he would head back to the café to find out what Dave had been up to.
The café had nothing to commend it except that it was the only one in the area. Jared took in the spindle-backed chairs of knotted pine at almost-matching tables, and decided in favor of a stool at the expanse of scuffed, water-ringed timber that could loosely be called a bar.
He ordered a beer from a man he guessed was the proprietor, and made idle conversation while the man poured the drink. Soon, he brought the talk around to the subject of visitors to Waiheke Island.
“You’re the second American I’ve had in here tonight,” the waiter said. “The other guy just left.”
“A regular customer?”
“Not yet.” The man grinned. “But we’re the only café at Palm Beach and most people get lazy on vacation. They eat here every night. Can I get you some food?”
“I’ve eaten, thanks. But maybe tomorrow.”
HOLLY TOOK HER two-hour shifts during the night without complaint. That Jared did the same was not a surprise—once the man committed to something, he stuck with it—but it still puzzled her that he was getting so involved. She could see why he wanted to help her beat the Transom lawsuit, but to have spent all that money finding Dave… She would pay him back, of course, but he hadn’t made that a condition. And now to have flown all this way, feeling so sick, and to stay up half the night…
Holly didn’t know anyone else who would do that for her.
The thought warmed her as she lay in bed, unable to sleep despite jet lag and having taken two shifts at the window. In the light of the half moon that shone through th
e ranch-slider, Jared’s silhouette was a dark distraction from slumber.
He wore a T-shirt and boxer shorts. She’d seen him pull the shirt on when he got out of bed to relieve her. Lying in a bed that had recently held Jared—almost naked—made it very hard to sleep.
From the sudden heat that flushed her body, Holly knew her thoughts had gone too far in the wrong direction. And they weren’t going to right themselves while she could see Jared’s muscular shoulders and arms sculpted by the moonlight.
She slipped out of the bed and retrieved one of the terry robes from the back of the bathroom door. “Put this on,” she said.
Jared stiffened, as if she’d startled him, but didn’t turn from his scrutiny of the cottage below. “What is it?”
“Just a robe. You’ll catch cold.”
“You’re not my mother.” She might have predicted the dismissive words. But he shrugged into the robe, leaving it open so that now, up close, she could still see the taut outline of his torso, and if she lowered her gaze just a little—
“You should be asleep.” The sharpness of his tone jerked her eyes back to his.
“I’m too tense,” she said, and saw the flash of his teeth as he smiled. “I’ll take your shift, if you like. There’s no point both of us being awake.”
“Uh-uh. You’ll be a wreck tomorrow.” He shifted along the couch toward her, then patted the space he’d vacated. “Sit here a minute.”
She did, and was surprised when he handed her the binoculars. “But you said—”
“Keep an eye on Fletcher’s place for me. You won’t be able to sleep until you get rid of that tension.” He put his hands on her shoulders and began to massage her with slow, firm, deliberate movements.
“What are you doing?”
His chuckle told her what a dumb question it was. Holly clapped the binoculars to her eyes and focused on Dave’s cottage, on the shadows cast by the moonlight on the hillside below. On anything but her hyperawareness of Jared’s fingers.