Operation: Reunited

by Linda O. Johnston

  Alexa didn’t believe that for a moment, but who could it have been? One of the guests, practicing for his undisclosed assignment? Vane would certainly cover for him, maybe even encourage the cops—pay the cops—to look the other way.

  The police had certainly seemed very respectful to Vane when they’d been here after the shooting.

  And the one time Alexa had gone to Leopold Salsman about the inn’s odd guests and Vane’s changed, officious attitude toward her, he had treated it as a boring domestic dispute. Alexa had learned then that the chief was in Vane’s hip pocket. That had occurred shortly after Vane began planting his own guests in the inn. Salsman must have contacted Vane immediately, for Vane had confronted Alexa the moment she’d returned. He had warned her never to try that again. He’d told her that going to the feds would be fruitless, too. Who would believe the accusations of a woman whose parents had nearly been put on trial for terrorism against the word of a military hero like him?

  Oh, and by the way, if she ever tried again, he would turn this over to the federal authorities.

  This was a file of correspondence—copies of letters on Kenner Hotels letterhead, signed by her parents, with authentic-looking signatures. Then there were the response letters, originals signed by people whose names she had first heard during the investigation two years earlier: foreign terrorist leaders.

  The letters seemed to be in code, discussed deliveries and receipt of goods that could have referred to the terrorist agents planted in Kenner Hotels. The correspondence indicated that copies were also sent to Warren Geari, manager of the hotel chain who’d been blown up with Cole, and who had been found to have had close terrorist ties.

  Then there were the references to payments made to her parents via Swiss bank accounts. “The accounts actually exist,” Vane had told her. He had access to them, of course, for her parents would never collect the money. But he would never tell the authorities that.

  Sure, Vane had manufactured everything. He might even have gotten real terrorists to sign the letters to her parents. But how could she prove his guilt, her parents’ innocence?

  “I’m glad the shooting wasn’t anything important,” Minos said, drawing Alexa’s attention back to the present.

  Something in the way he looked at Vane as he left the room suggested to Alexa that they shared knowledge of the truth behind the incident. But they obviously weren’t going to reveal it.

  “What’s for breakfast?” Vane asked as he looked over the tomatoes Minos had washed but had not yet begun to chop.

  “Spanish omelettes and homemade biscuits,” Alexa replied. “Can you get the green peppers from the refrigerator, Vane?”

  “Sure thing.” He turned his back on the room while he reached in for the peppers. Alexa caught Cole’s stare. He didn’t look happy. Had he expected a different result from the investigation of the shooting?

  “Here,” Vane said a minute later. He approached Alexa. Rather than handing her the plastic bag containing three peppers, he put them on the counter in front of her. “I nearly forgot something.”

  Alexa didn’t like the way he was smiling. There was a hint of cruelty in it.

  “It’s morning, and I didn’t give my girl her good-morning kiss,” he continued.

  Alexa remembered the last kiss she had shared, not with her fiancé but with Cole. It had rocked her clear through to her unclad toes. Had made her want to strip off her too-confining nightgown, and damn the consequences.

  But it had been a mistake. She had made herself draw away. Cole had had no right to kiss her.

  And Vane had every right. For now.

  She tried to smile in return, and she lifted her chin.

  Vane drew her into his arms, pulled her roughly against him. Looking over his shoulder, she caught Cole’s eyes. She was pierced by their coldness and suspicion.

  Don’t you understand? she wanted to scream at him. She had to play along even more now that she had made her pact with Cole. She didn’t dare do anything that would make Vane suspect anything had changed.

  She had already learned that she had to be good, and available and compliant in all ways—except one. She had drawn the line against anything more physical with Vane than a kiss.

  But with kisses for show in public, she didn’t deny him anything.

  As Vane’s lips captured hers, she wanted to pull away, but she stood still. She even responded.

  Please understand. She tried to will Cole to hear her plea.

  But she felt his stare.

  He would construe Vane’s unrestrained, sensuous kiss as evidence that Alexa was as involved in the conspiracy as he had believed.

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘she knows’?” Forbes Bowman’s raised voice was so loud over the pay phone that Cole instinctively looked around to make certain no one was listening.

  It was early afternoon. The small convenience store’s patrons were a couple of teenagers discussing the merits of brands of soft drinks, and a mother with two children in tow. A different college-age clerk from the one he’d seen before stood behind the checkout stand.

  No one paid attention to Cole, who stood with one shoulder against the dingy wall.

  “We were shot at yesterday,” Cole explained patiently into the phone. “We’d been out sightseeing, though my intent was to subtly grill her.” He didn’t mention how pleasant the outing had been. How it had felt to watch Alexa in her wet, form-fitting bathing suit. How it had felt to be near her…

  “And did she tell you anything?”

  Cole pictured his boss’s bulk leaning forward in his desk chair as he took in Cole’s words, running his large fingers through his white mane of hair to express his exasperation. He did that often in periods of stress, when he was helpless to orchestrate what was happening.

  “No, she didn’t say a thing that was helpful.” Not then, at least. Not while he was still John O’Rourke to her.

  “Who shot at you?”

  “I don’t know for certain,” Cole admitted. “The local police were no help.”

  “Paid off like last time?” Forbes demanded.

  Cole shrugged, though of course his boss couldn’t see it. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “So you told her who you were?”

  Cole pictured what had happened. The shot. His immediate reaction to protect her. His relief that she was all right.

  What he had said to Alexa…

  “She guessed,” he replied to Forbes.

  “I won’t ask how.” His mentor’s voice was dry, as if he could read between the lines.

  Cole felt the hand not grasping the phone clench into a fist. He purposely stretched the fingers of his hand and laid them against his jeans. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve spoken with her since then. She gave the impression that she’s a virtual prisoner there, that Vane has threatened her parents to keep her in line.”

  “And you believe her?”

  Cole considered his answer. “To be frank, Forbes, it’s hard to completely put aside what I thought was between us before.”

  Forbes went ballistic. “Didn’t you learn anything, Rappaport?” he hollered. “Two years ago, the Unit sent you undercover, with your buddy Vane, to uncover a terrorist plot at the Kenner Hotels. You unearthed the infiltrators planted for training at hotels all over the country, but you never learned their planned destinations. Instead of talking, most turned up dead afterward, presumably killed by their charming employers. You convinced an insider, the chain’s general manager, Geari, to talk to you, and you were both blown up in a garage at the time of your scheduled tell-all meeting.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” Cole was struggling to keep his temper in check. “I—”

  But Forbes continued, undeterred. “Before you were blown up, you were playing house with the Kenners’ daughter. The guy who’d been your father’s protégé, Vane Walters, was your partner in the investigation. You were made, warned to butt out or else, and that was when your father was killed. And then came your ow
n explosion. Now, you just learned, through your own sources, that some main members of that cast of characters are starring in a similar scheme, and you even consider that one could be innocent? Come off it, Rappaport. I don’t intend to go up there and drag your sorry hide to safety this time.”

  “You won’t have to,” Cole said coolly. Forbes hadn’t said anything he hadn’t run through his own mind last night, when he’d been unable to sleep. “The thing is, Alexa has said she’ll help me find out what’s going on. Whether it’s to protect herself by turning on her beloved Vane or whether she really is an innocent victim doesn’t matter, as long as I get the information I need. In any event, I have to pretend, for now, that I trust her.”

  And convince himself, he thought, that he didn’t.

  “But I figure Vane had something to do with the shooting yesterday. He might be spooked. I’d like you to get Bradford and Maygran up here as backup in case some of the infiltrators start getting sent into the field. Tell them they’re scouting for a place for a home improvement salesmen’s convention.”

  Forbes laughed. “Right. They’ll love it.” And then he grew serious again. “Be careful, Cole. Whatever Vane is up to, he’s not in it alone. This plot’s bigger than he is, and his controllers won’t be happy that you’re nosing in again.”

  “They won’t know,” Cole reminded his boss. “Cole Rappaport is, after all, dead.”

  “He might be, before all this is over,” Forbes reminded him. “Watch yourself.” He hung up.

  Chapter Nine

  Standing near the sink in her frilly apron over a white shirt and beige slacks, Alexa finished washing the lunch dishes. Thank heaven the mundane task didn’t require conscious thought, for her mind was whirling like a waterspout on the lake.

  It could all be over soon. She might be able to protect her parents, to survive, keep her inn to herself. She felt the edges of her mouth curl tentatively upward at the very thought.

  All it would take was to help Cole learn what was going on.

  And then the man she had loved so deeply, so completely, would disappear from her life once again.

  She sighed. How would things have been, these last two years, if she had known the conniving, mistrustful, lying son of a soldier was alive but was avoiding her? Would they have been any different?

  “Yes,” she said aloud decisively, slapping the edge of the metal sink with her wet dishcloth. She wouldn’t be engaged to Vane, for one thing.

  She would have known better than to be manipulated by any man.

  She let her head drop forward, her eyes close, as she steeled herself against the renewed wave of pain. Cole’s death had hurt her. But somehow it hurt even more to know he had hidden his survival from her.

  He didn’t trust her. Even when they had been together, he must have suspected her complicity in the scheme he’d been investigating. That was why he had stayed so close to her then, had sex with her, hoping she would reveal something important in the afterglow.

  He had never loved her. It had all been a lie.

  She made a small sound of agony.

  At the noise, Phantom stood up in the adjoining pantry. He barked for her attention.

  She lifted her head. She couldn’t dwell on Cole’s deception now. She had to concentrate on survival—hers and her parents’. And that required fulfilling her end of the devil’s bargain with Cole.

  “Okay, boy,” she said to Phantom, making herself smile at the wriggling dog. “Let’s get out of here.” But just as she opened the gate, Vane entered the kitchen.

  “Have you finished in here, Alexa?” His voice was cool and distant, which wasn’t good, if she wanted information from him. But she didn’t dare act too warmly, either, for he would know something was up.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Do you have any preference for dinner tonight?” Phantom wriggled against her leg, and she petted him, encouraging him to quiet down.

  “You know I leave that in your very capable hands.” He drew near to where she stood by the pantry door with Phantom, and lifted her left hand off the dog. He stroked it with forceful fingers, toyed with his damn diamond engagement ring. His dark blond eyebrows were raised mockingly, as if he waited for her to yank her hand back.

  She didn’t, though she had to grit her teeth against the urge. “Thank you,” she said. She hesitated. “I don’t suppose there’s any more information about whoever shot at me yesterday.”

  “It was a stupid, careless hunter, Alexa. No one shot at you. O’Rourke and you just happened to be standing in the direction the fool’s rifle was pointing.”

  Right. That made as much sense as if the mysteriously untraceable hunter mistook Cole or her, standing on the dock in broad daylight, for deer.

  Was it possible that someone suspected “John O’Rourke” wasn’t the innocent salesman he claimed to be—someone aside from her?

  Someone who didn’t want to be investigated by an undercover government agent?

  “You’re probably right.” She tried to pour earnestness into her gaze as she looked into Vane’s deceptively youthful and innocent face. “You know, I really do hate it that we seem to be turning into enemies. I don’t like what you’re doing with our inn, don’t understand it. But we are still partners. Can’t we try to work out our differences?”

  “Just how,” he asked, “do you propose we do that?” The chill was back in his voice, and suspicion darkened his pale brown eyes. “And don’t bother singing that tired old song to me, that it’s your place, too, and you want more say in who the guests are. I just allowed you to bring someone here, after all.” He dropped her hand and folded his arms, leaning one shoulder against the pantry’s door frame.

  “Yes, you did. And I really appreciate your not telling John O’Rourke to leave yet. He hasn’t said when he plans to check out. But he gets along well with the other guests, and he doesn’t seem suspicious that there’s anything different about this inn.”

  “And there isn’t anything different,” Vane said sternly. “We just encourage our guests to come from all over the world.”

  Alexa didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m not stupid, Vane.”

  “We’ve gone over this before, Alexa.”

  She made a noncommittal noise, then looked up at him. “I’ve given up on trying to change things. It hasn’t done any good. Maybe it’s time for me to help instead. That way, perhaps things can move more quickly for you, and then we can go back to running a regular inn. Unless—” The thought she had been trying to keep way at the back of her mind had suddenly intruded.

  “Unless?” he prompted.

  “Unless you’re intending for this to be the usual way of running the Hideaway By The Lake.” She pretended a nonchalance she didn’t feel, turning her back on him to let Phantom out the back door.

  “It depends” was his cryptic and frustrating answer.

  She sighed, watching Phantom sniff the lawn along the upper slope. Then she faced Vane again. “All right. I know you don’t want to talk about it. But this group—is there any chance they’ll leave soon? John O’Rourke has friends who want to stay here to consider the inn as a site for a small sales conference, and I’d like to accommodate them. It would make this place appear more open to the public.”

  “Find out when they’ll want to come,” Vane said. Alexa’s heart leapt. He hadn’t told her no.

  More important, he hadn’t said this group intended to stay much longer. And if they were ready to leave, that would be significant to Cole.

  But then Vane said, “Of course, if they want to come soon, it won’t work. Our current guests are booked for at least another couple of weeks.”

  Alexa’s heart sank. But this, too, would be important for Cole to know. “I’ll ask John what he has in mind,” she said.

  “It’s nice that you’re finally showing an interest in our current business, rather than just criticizing me.” Vane drew near her again. “If you’d like to really be my partner, that can be arranged.” He took her shoulders
and drew her closer. She made herself yield. Soon, she was engulfed in his arms. “Two months, Alexa. In about eight short weeks, we’ll marry.”

  He nuzzled her hair. She closed her eyes tightly, willing herself not to pull away.

  “Right,” she whispered hoarsely, just as footsteps sounded on the kitchen floor behind her. She stepped back, out of Vane’s arms, and turned.

  Cole stood there. For a moment, she thought she saw utter iciness in his gaze. Or was it the chill inside herself, caused by Vane’s touch and his reiterated demand, that made her so cold?

  Had Cole heard? Did he know that Vane was setting their wedding date?

  In less than an instant, Cole changed and it was John O’Rourke standing there, smiling at them. “Sorry to interrupt, folks. I just got back from Skytop Village and I’m about to do some more sightseeing around the mountains, maybe go for a hike in the woods. Is anyone interested in coming along?”

  “Not me,” Alexa said hurriedly, noting how Vane’s shoulders stiffened. Shoulders that were not nearly as broad as Cole’s. Shoulders that would never be offered to cry on. To lean on.

  The shoulders of a man she just might be forced to marry as part of the charade.

  Fix this, Cole, her mind yelled to him. Get your answers quickly. Put this deceitful man in prison—far away from me.

  Aloud she said, “Maybe one of the other guests would be interested in hiking, John. Try Jill Fuller. I saw her out on the upstairs balcony after lunch.”

  “Good idea,” said Cole. He turned back toward the door.

  He might actually get the beautiful and flirtatious woman to reveal something accidentally, Alexa thought.

  But though the rendezvous had been her idea, she wanted to throw something at Cole as he left her alone once more with Vane.

  COLE GOT OUT of that damn kitchen as fast as he could. He’d thought it a nice, restaurant-size room before.

  Just now, it had felt as close as if it were a closet.

  The heat had certainly been on in there, he thought as he headed for the stairway to the inn’s upstairs.