“Oh, man,” Ben moaned. “Don’t tell me this has to do with your vanishing girl.”
“Okay, I won’t. Just let me know when you find out anything. I really appreciate this, Ben.”
“I know, but this doesn’t sound like you. I hope you’ve got a good handle on her. Nothing is worth screwing up with the agency. You may hear back from me pretty soon. I’m heading in when we hang up.”
“Thanks.”
Zane dropped the phone on the stand. He was still reeling. Last night had gone beyond his fantasies, but that wasn’t the problem.
Someone dangerous searched for Angel or the gold coins, or both. She’d been carrying coins that looked as if they belonged in a collection somewhere then stashed them in his boat curtains. She worked fervently to keep her identity hidden, but from whom? Nothing indicated she knew he worked with the DEA task force.
Disaster was stamped across her future in bold print. Everything he’d discovered pointed to criminal activities.
So, what was his problem?
There was no way he could let her go.
He couldn’t imagine life without her. She couldn’t be a criminal. Maybe the events surrounding her were tainted, but in his heart he didn’t accept that she was breaking the law.
Angel stepped out of the bathroom smiling, dressed in her jog bra and shorts. “I washed them out last night so I’d have clean clothes.”
He grinned back at her until he saw the purple and black bruise on her rib cage. “If someone puts another bruise on you they may not live to their next birthday.”
Embarrassment in her eyes, she covered it with her hand. “It’s not so bad.”
“Speaking of that, it’s time to talk about what’s going on,” Zane started, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Don’t you want to get a shower first? Can’t we talk over breakfast?”
No. He wanted answers, but she probably had eaten little in the last twenty-four hours.
He sighed. “Okay, I’ll take a shower and we’ll order room service.” Zane climbed out of bed and walked over to her. “Don’t go anywhere. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she said. “Go shower. I’ll be here when you come out.”
Zane cupped the back of her head and kissed her forehead. “Last night was terrific. We have something very special and it’s not just for one night. Understand?”
Tears pooled in her eyes. She turned her face up to him. “You’re terrific and last night was wonderful, but I have to take it one day at a time.”
His stomach twisted. She still didn’t believe she would live through her ordeal. He planned to make a believer out of her.
“We’ll talk. Don’t order room service until I get out of the bathroom and don’t answer the door to anyone. I want whoever comes in here to see me first.”
She nodded.
C.K. dialed Mason’s cell number.
“Lorde.”
“We found the truck. They didn’t go back to his apartment or out to the airplane,” C.K. said.
“Do you know where they are?” Mason asked calmly.
“Not yet. We’ve got a transmitter on the truck and followed it to an apartment complex, but they were gone by the time my men arrived. Could be anywhere. Hard to pry in this tight little area, but soon, very soon,” C.K. promised.
“And she never said a word about the coins?”
“No,” C.K. answered. “I’ve got two men following the truck and his apartment’s covered.”
“Don’t take him out until we have her in hand, but I want that pilot when this is done,” Mason warned.
“You got it.”
Angel slipped her feet into the garish sneakers the night manager had given her and snagged another apple from the basket. She munched on it as she opened the sliding glass door to the small balcony and stepped out into the balmy morning air. The clouds were dissipating, leaving a crystal-blue sky in their place.
What was she going to tell Zane? He deserved the truth after everything he’d done for her. She thought back on last night’s events. The fact that he’d found her was amazing. Then he’d rescued her, no simple task there. Zane handled a gun proficiently. A lot of guys can handle a gun, but he’d been in his element.
She finished the apple, feeling much improved with the simple nourishment.
“Angel!” Zane called sharply from behind her.
“I’m right here. Don’t panic,” she joked, then spun around and stopped short at the sight of him next to the bathroom door. He was naked from the khaki pants up.
She ran her tongue over her dry lips.
His gaze darkened.
Her breathing stuttered. How could she want him again so soon? If she let him touch her now, they’d never get out of here.
“Where are we?” she asked, hoping to divert his attention. She dropped the apple core in a wastebasket.
A smile kicked up on one side of his mouth. “Changing the subject?”
“There was no subject,” she clarified.
“Yes, there was. It just wasn’t being spoken.”
She suppressed a smile, refusing to concede that her mind had traveled along the same path as his. “In that case, yes, I’m changing the subject. Where are we?”
He strolled over to her as he spoke. “This is part of greater Ft. Lauderdale. It’s a small upscale community. The canal down below is the main channel for large yachts, so this is home to the local rich and shameless.”
“What makes this canal so good for big boats?” Angel asked, wanting to confirm her guess.
“The smaller canals are shallower. The channel in this one is fifty feet deep.”
She followed him over to the thick rail. They were three floors up. A green chain-link fence sprouted from the seawall running alongside the canal. She assumed that was to deter anyone from walking along the top of the seawall since only about two feet of landscape separated it from the hotel.
“Before we order breakfast, I want you to tell me what’s going on,” Zane said, his tone no longer teasing.
She shifted around and leaned back against the concrete railing. A balmy wind lifted tendrils of hair across her face for the heartbeat it took to form her answer. “I got involved with the wrong group of people, but it wasn’t my fault,” she started.
“I need a few more details than that. What do you have that they want?”
His tone didn’t change. She couldn’t read him, his face had blanked into an inscrutable mask. How much could she say without going too far?
“I have some…items that someone else stole.”
“So you stole it from him?” His eyebrow lifted slightly.
“No. I don’t consider taking these items from him stealing,” she stated.
“Why?”
“Because I intend to return them to the rightful owners,” she said and watched his face relax until she added, “Eventually.”
His mouth compressed into a stern line.
“What do you mean by eventually, Angel?”
“I need them for just a little while. Considering no one knew who had them and I’m going to return them, the owners should be considerate enough to let me borrow them,” she reasoned.
He opened his mouth, shut it, then asked incredulously, “Just what do you have in mind?”
“I can’t tell you everything.”
“Oh, yes you can. Someone is trying to kill you. Starting right now, I want the whole truth,” he demanded.
“No.”
Anger banked across his dark gaze. “Angel, I hate that word. Say anything you want, but don’t use that damn word again,” he ordered.
“Fine!” she snapped, arms crossed. “I’m not telling you anything else. How’s that?” She slapped a hand on each hip and leaned forward. “And, by the way, how did you find me last night?”
“Don’t change the subject. We’re talking about what you have that belongs to someone else.”
“It’s no big deal,” she dismissed.
“No b
ig deal?” he shouted. “Stolen gold coins are no big deal?”
They both stared at each other in silence.
“You have them,” she accused. “Where are they?”
A muscle in his clenched jaw flexed. He obviously hadn’t intended to share that little tidbit of information.
“They’re safe,” he said.
“Where? I need those coins,” she stressed.
“For what? If you’re innocent, why don’t you just turn them over to the police?”
Her shoulders fell. Hearing Zane say if she was innocent hurt more than she’d ever let him know.
She stomped her foot. “Okay, here’s the deal. Once I can confirm my alibi for when they were taken, I plan to use them to prove that my employer stole the coins.”
But before she could elaborate further, Zane’s cell phone rang.
They stared at each other for a nanosecond before Zane stepped over to the nightstand and snatched up the phone. “Zane, here.”
“Hey, bud, this is Ben. Man, have you got a hot one.”
Zane didn’t think he was going to like the news, from the level of Ben’s excitement.
“What have you got?”
The sound of papers rustling came across the lines and then Ben’s voice. “Her name is Angelina Farentino. She’s got a record.”
A lead ball landed in the pit of Zane’s stomach.
“Go on.”
“She works for Mason Lorde, or she did work for him. Left under questionable circumstances is all I could find out without saying too much. He’s listed as one of the top twenty wealthiest men in the country.” More papers shuffled and Ben mumbled to himself before he continued.
“Lorde Industries is one of the largest import-export businesses on the East Coast, but he also deals in rare art and collectibles.”
Oh, yeah, the hits just keep on coming. Zane never took his eyes off Angel. Watching her and listening to the rundown was tearing his insides apart.
“What’s on her record?” He knew by the way Angel straightened away from the railing she’d caught that comment.
“She did a year in a New York county jail at eighteen for transporting drugs. Her father went down for the charge of dealing and she was busted as the mule.”
Drugs. Of all the things she could have done, drugs fell way down on Zane’s forgive list. He worked day in and day out trying to keep drugs off the streets.
He was sure it couldn’t get any worse until Ben remembered one more thing.
“Zane, buddy, you listening?”
“I’m here.”
“Don’t get too close to her. She’s hot. The feds are in serious pursuit of her, too. Hang on.” Ben’s phone rattled against something solid, as if he’d laid it down.
Zane stared at Angel. The color had drained from her face on that one question about her record.
Ben was back on the line. “Her fingerprint turned up on a photograph in the pocket of the guy with the bullet hole in his forehead they found in the Dumpster near Raleigh. Turns out he was one of Mason Lorde’s employees. Worked for him for the last ten years.”
Zane didn’t think he could take any more, but Ben hadn’t mentioned the coin.
“Did you run the coin?”
“Yeah. Those are Saint-Gauden’s Double Eagle gold coins. They aren’t easy to come by, so I’m betting the coin came from that heist in Boston last month. I’m not sure yet, because a set of eight were stolen. Anyone paying seven figures wouldn’t want the set broken up.”
The other seven coins hidden on his boat confirmed Angel had been transporting stolen property.
“Thanks, Ben. I’ll get back with you. Got to go right now.”
Zane closed the phone. He was at a loss for words. Did he start with “Why did you do it?” or go straight to “You’re under arrest.”
Angel moved inside the glass doors. “Who are you, Zane?”
There was no point in continuing the pretense. He’d have to blow his cover to take her in.
“Zane Jackson. I work with a special task force under the DEA.”
“You lied to me!” Didn’t it fit? A man. A lie. Hand in hand, just as she’d always believed. Until Zane. She’d been so sure he was different.
“I’ve been undercover. I had no choice,” Zane said. “You lied as well.”
“No I didn’t. I told you I had something that belonged to someone else.” Could she have been an even bigger fool? He was with the law, to boot. She’d been disappointed a lot in her life, most of her life, but this was worse than all of it together. She’d come to believe Zane, to believe in Zane.
“Omission of information is the same as lying. Time to come clean.”
Sure, when it came to her. “You know who I am and what my background is, or at least you think you know. What else do you want?”
“I don’t know anything anymore,” he said, despair wrapping his words. “So, maybe the question is, just who are you?”
Her chin lifted. “I’m not a thief and I never dealt drugs. No matter what that person just told you, I’m not lying to you. The gold coins were stolen from a gallery in Boston by someone working for Mason Lorde.”
But she was an employee of Mason Lorde’s, he reasoned. Or she had been until she stole the coins from the prominent head of Lorde Industries seen on the covers of a half-dozen business magazines.
“I worked for Mason,” she continued. “In his warehouse as a legitimate employee, and found a couple stolen paintings, small ones hidden inside the lining of a shipping crate. They had been all over the news the week before. I recognized one of them and thought someone in the company was the thief, so I brought the paintings to Mason’s attention.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Zane asked.
She held up her finger for him to wait. “He’d given me a position in his organization in spite of my record. At least that’s what I thought. What I didn’t know was he’d hired me because I had a record. Silly me, I thought I’d gotten a break, no more cleaning outhouses and working at the dump. Decent companies don’t hire people with a record. I finally had a real job.” Her voice shook. A tear leaked down her cheek.
Zane started to move.
She halted him again with a raised finger.
“So, when Mason realized I wasn’t going to cooperate he locked me away in his private compound near the airport where I met you. Mason had a second…more personal interest in me. The night I stowed away on your airplane was my second attempt at escaping. The first—” Her voice broke, but she swallowed and continued.
“The first time I only made it to the house garage. While the man who guarded me, Jeff, took an extra-long smoke break, I slipped through the house and made it outside before another guard caught me.”
She sniffled and whispered, “Mason shot Jeff for his lapse in duty. I have to live with that.”
Fire flashed in her eyes when she glared at him. “But I didn’t commit any of the other sins. I’ve had to live with what was forced on me.”
Muscles tightened across Zane’s chest like a vise grip. Did he go with black-and-white evidence or what his gut told him? Would one of the most prominent men in the country steal art? How could she convince anyone she was forced to mule drugs? Had her father made her do it at gunpoint?
“Angel.” His throat constricted. “Turn yourself in and I’ll help you any way I can.”
The disappointment in her face rocked him to the core.
“You don’t believe me.” Her pained laugh was full of hurt and anger. “Oh, God, how could I have been such a fool,” she raged. “I can see it written on your face. You, the one person I trust to know the real me, believes I’m guilty of everything.”
He took that one to the midsection. Zane made another step forward.
“Stop. Don’t touch me. Don’t come near me,” she warned.
“Angel, please. Don’t make this any worse.”
Behind him the cell phone rang again.
Neither moved.
The insistent chirping pierced the vacuum between them.
Zane finally twisted around for the phone, but Angel’s movement in his peripheral vision spun him back around.
She’d climbed up on the railing, facing out to nothing.
“Angel, nooooo,” he yelled, running to the balcony.
She’d leaped off the edge before he reached the glass doors.
He slammed into the railing and stared in horror as she fell to the canal. Blood rushed through his head, he couldn’t hear past the roaring in his ears, couldn’t think.
Her slender frame disappeared into the water.
A lifetime dragged by until she popped up, yards out from where she’d entered the canal clean as a knife.
Zane clutched his chest. His heart pounded against his breastbone as if it wanted out. His breathing slowed as he watched her stroke across the canal.
Angel climbed out on the other side, kneeled on the grass, her body heaving.
She stared up at him and shook her head.
He understood. Angel still contended he was wrong. When she stood up and jogged away, Zane wondered if he might be.
All the bones in his body had turned to rubber. He staggered back into the room trying to absorb what had happened.
Then it dawned on him where she was headed.
The boat.
He snatched up his bag and phone, running to the door.
Mason was out there. The beast who’d kidnapped her was out there. And the feds had a bead on her.
He had to get to Angel first.
Chapter 19
Zane hopped into his truck, gunned the engine and slid a corner leaving the apartment complex where he’d parked the night before. An old couple, literally on a Sunday drive, in a powder-blue mid-1980s land yacht, slowed him. Unable to pass, he ground his teeth.
Making the turn onto Sunrise Boulevard, he drove toward the bridge he had to cross to reach the beach highway. He whipped through traffic, heedless of getting pulled over.
Cars slowed to a stop just as he started up the bridge incline. Sirens screamed in the distance.
Ah, hell, a wreck.
“Dammit,” he swore in disbelief.
This would take forever.
Worth Every Risk Page 21