Operation: Reunited

by Linda O. Johnston

  Cole got off, stood and aimed the Smith & Wesson at his beaten adversary. But Minos had no intention of admitting defeat. He leapt toward Cole.

  Cole shot him, point-blank. Minos’s massive chest muffled the sound of the shot even better than the silencer had.

  He fell to the ground, bleeding. Beaten at last. Dying.

  Cole waited for just a minute, then checked Minos’s pulse.

  One down, Cole thought. Two more to go.

  He looked up again toward the inn. He definitely had some unfinished business.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Alexa paced back and forth between the window and the door more times than she could count, along the same straight line at the edge of the floral area rug.

  If only Minos had locked her in her own room. There, she could have gotten out onto the balcony and escaped, something Minos had obviously considered. Of course all guest rooms at the inn could be locked from the outside, but each also unlocked from the inside, too, for the customers’ convenience and safety. All but this one. Had the locks on this one been changed by Vane and Minos to make it a prison for her or for some recalcitrant guest? Whatever the reason, she could not unlock it now.

  She tried everything she could think of, but the lock was a dead bolt, and she had no tools in this room to remove the thick oak door from its hinges.

  She could open the window, but she was on the second floor, nowhere near a balcony. The flower garden was beneath. There would be nothing to break her fall. And the bed had been stripped; she couldn’t even try to plait sheets together for a ladder.

  She was stuck.

  Vane had gone down toward the water, away from the direction Cole had taken. But from the window she had seen Minos head for the wooded area next door. Had Cole gotten away?

  She prayed so. She grasped the doorknob and turned it, then rattled the door again. It wouldn’t budge. She sank down onto the floor beside it, resting her face against its hardness, ignoring the tears that ran down her face. She had to get out of here. She had to.

  She heard a noise outside. Footsteps, coming up the stairs.

  Cole’s? No, he had to be far away by now. Minos’s? Maybe. She braced herself as the footsteps drew nearer.

  A key rattled in the lock of her door. Now she wondered if she should have hidden. Too late. Not that it mattered. There was no place worth hiding in this small room and its adjoining tiny bath. Nor could she find anything to use as a weapon. Alexa braced herself behind the door, giving herself an extra second.

  “Come on out, Alexa,” Vane’s voice commanded. He pushed open the door so hard that it struck her shoulder. And then he reached behind it and grabbed her.

  “Did you find him?” she asked, not bothering to complain about how Vane had hurt her shoulder, how his grip now caused her pain. He pulled her with him along the upstairs hallway toward the stairs.

  “No,” he said, “I didn’t. But I talked to Minos on the cell phone. He found Cole. That’s why I gave up my search and slipped in around the front. By now, I’d imagine, your sweetheart is fish food.”

  Alexa swallowed hard. She wanted to scream, to hit this man who had created so much havoc, so much despair, in her life. But he was stronger than she. And she knew he’d have no compunction about hitting her back, might even throw her down the stairs they now descended.

  Besides, he didn’t know for certain that Cole was dead, or he would have told her so. Gloated about it.

  “So what are we going to do now?” Alexa asked, although part of her didn’t want to know.

  “I am going to get rid of a lot of evidence,” Vane said. “You are part of that evidence.”

  “What do you mean?” Alexa’s voice was hardly more than a choked whisper. They had reached the bottom of the stairs, and Vane towed her toward the kitchen. She looked around for Phantom but didn’t see him. Had Minos killed him?

  No, thank heaven. The pup paced in the pantry behind the closed gate. He whined anxiously when he spotted Alexa. She managed to break away from Vane and run toward the gate, then pulled it open and knelt beside Phantom, who licked her cheek.

  “What a loving scene. You and your dog together in life…and death.”

  Alexa stood, terror gripping her. “Vane, please—I can’t do anything to hurt you. I’ve helped you, in fact, and—”

  “Not because you wanted to. And I can’t take the chance on your getting in the way now.”

  “But— But what is this big plot, if it isn’t what we discovered on your computer? Will you at least tell me that?” Alexa was stalling for time. But all the time in the world wasn’t going to get her out of this.

  Vane grabbed her again. She fought him, but he was too strong. How could he look so boyish and innocent while tying her to a high-backed chair? He still was dressed in a white shirt and khaki trousers, the outfit he had worn to meet with the guests before they left that morning. Phantom growled at him, and he shoved the angry dog back into the pantry, fastening the gate.

  “Oh, Alexa, my darling, you did learn exactly what the plot is—although I suspect you didn’t find the additional file that tells its true intent. We are planting our agents—the delightful guests you met here—as well as some others, all over the country near key military posts. There are other groups, too, doing the same thing. When the signal is given, they’ll blow up some strategic installations. That’ll direct attention from our nation’s capital, where a coup will be undertaken.”

  “That’s what we learned,” Alexa admitted hoarsely. “But that’s not all? Isn’t that enough?”

  “It’s merely a decoy from our true intent,” Vane said. He was doing something near the gas stove, though she couldn’t quite tell what.

  “Which is…?”

  “Which is none of your business,” he said with an evil rictus of a smile, “for you won’t be around to enjoy it. Or revile it, for that matter.” He drew some wire from his pocket, along with something that appeared to be a clock.

  “What are you doing?”

  “This is a timer,” he explained. “And that is gas. When the timer reaches the time I set, it’ll emit a spark. If you happen to be alive despite all the gas that’ll fill this room and your lungs, you will go up in a ball of flame, you and your cute little puppy dog and this inn you find so wonderful. Along with my computer and fingerprints from all our guests and any other possible evidence.”

  “But, Vane, you put up a lot of the money for this place.” Alexa was desperate for something to get him to change his mind. Anything.

  “Ah, but when everything is finished, I will have more money than you can dream of.”

  “But—”

  “Enough questions. I need to finish up here and go look for Minos. I expect he’s already disposed of your friend Cole. I had hoped to blow Cole up with you, you know. Poetic justice and all, since he escaped from the last explosion I rigged, due to some unfortunate twists of fate.”

  He cut off some of the wire, then turned back toward Alexa. “In any event, in the remote chance that he survives, he’ll know what happened to you. Maybe he’ll even be happy about it, since he believes you turned on him, betrayed him from the beginning—”

  “No, actually I don’t.”

  Alexa drew in her breath at the sound of the beloved voice. She turned her head.

  Cole stood in the doorway that led from the kitchen to the rest of the inn. How had he gotten there? His jeans, T-shirt and jacket were dirty and torn, his dark hair unruly. There was dried blood on the side of his face, contrasting with a shadow of beard visible beneath his skin. He had never looked more forbidding—or more handsome.

  “How the hell—?” Vane began. He reached behind him—for a gun, Alexa figured—but Cole already had a weapon pointed at him.

  “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” Cole said. “And by the way, I’ve been listening for a while. I gather that the information Alexa and I found is real, though possibly not complete. And Alexa’s pretense at even liking you, let alone
loving you enough to run off to marry you—well, I figured even before that it was false.”

  Alexa sagged in relief. She’d wanted him, for his own sake, to believe her pretense of siding with Vane. Otherwise, Vane would have killed him on sight, when he’d come in after finding his fellow agent’s body. But for her own sake, she had felt the depths of despair to think that, after all she had revealed to Cole, all they had been to one another—again—he could accept their lies as true.

  “Where is Minos?” Vane growled. He had stopped moving.

  “In hell, I expect,” Cole said cheerfully. “He’s dead, at least.”

  “Damn! I should have listened to him. He was under orders to kill you immediately, but I wanted you alive. I wanted you to suffer for a while, watch Alexa with me as my fiancée.”

  “You got that wish, at least at first,” Cole acknowledged. “I hated the idea that she was with you, had been with you two years ago. But it didn’t take me long to realize she was as much a victim as I was, and that she continued to be one. You nearly had me convinced otherwise a little while ago. But I’d gotten to know Alexa again. When I’d a moment to think, after that blow to my head, I suspected she was under duress. And I don’t like having people I love in bad situations. I’d some unfinished business here—getting her out of your control. So here I am.”

  People I love? He loved her? Thank God, Alexa thought. But Cole still hadn’t looked toward her. She realized he had to keep his attention on Vane, but she wished she could let her own love, and her gratitude, show.

  But that would come. First, they had to get out of this situation.

  “Cole, he’s rigged that timer to blow up the entire inn. There’s already gas flowing from the stove.”

  “You don’t think I’d do something as foolish as blow myself up, do you?” Vane grumbled.

  “Only if that were the only way to exact your revenge. But I won’t allow that to happen. I want you to pay for what you did to my father and even to Warren Geari. And for what you’ve put Alexa through. Most of all, I want you to watch while this scheme of yours fizzles.”

  Vane lunged at him then. Cole seemed to expect it. He didn’t fire the gun. Instead, he turned sideways, which caused Vane to fly off balance. As Vane caught himself, Cole grabbed at his immaculate shirt, tearing it. He wrested Vane upright and clipped him hard under the chin. Vane sagged and fell to the floor.

  “Are you all right, Alexa?” Cole said. He strode toward her, that wonderful, familiar stride that suggested he had the whole world under control. But he didn’t—

  “Look out behind you!” she screamed as she saw Vane rise and lunge toward Cole’s back.

  Cole turned. Very calmly, he raised the hand that still held the gun.

  Vane stopped. He looked at Cole. His breathing was heavy and ragged, and the expression on his face was that of a trapped and ferocious wild animal. “Do it, you bastard. Kill me.”

  “I don’t think so,” Cole said.

  Vane turned and grabbed the timing device he’d left on the stove. “You’ll be sorry,” he said with a cackle.

  But before he could push the button, Cole fired. Vane’s eyes widened as if he truly hadn’t expected Cole to shoot. The timer fell from his hand as he slid to the floor, a red flower blooming in the center of his chest.

  Quickly, Cole hurried over and turned off the gas. He opened the door to the outside, as well as the windows beside it. He picked up the timer from where it had fallen and tossed it out the door. “I’d better get you out of here, just in case,” he said. As Alexa had done for him earlier, he took a knife from the butcher block and slit the rope binding her to the chair.

  “Phantom,” she managed to remind him. The pup was leaping at the gate from inside the pantry.

  “Can’t forget my good friend,” Cole agreed. He opened the gate, then laughed as Phantom leapt toward him with a bark.

  Taking Alexa’s hand, he led her out the door.

  FORTUNATELY, A BRISK breeze was blowing from the lake. Alexa went around to the front door and unlocked it, propping it open for ventilation through the inn’s first floor. Dusk painted the street outside in shades of gray.

  While they waited a safe distance from the kitchen door, Cole made a call on his cell phone. She gathered it was to his boss.

  “He’ll be here soon,” Cole said when he hung up. “I caught him on his cell phone. He’d already started up the mountain and should arrive at any minute.”

  “Shouldn’t we call the local authorities?” Alexa asked. Vane was still inside. From what she had gathered, Minos’s body was somewhere in the thicket next door. Then there were Cole’s co-agents…

  “Do we know where Allen Maygran is?” she asked hesitantly.

  “No, but I can guess.” Cole’s voice was grim. “In a few minutes, I’ll take Phantom in to look for him.”

  “But—”

  Her objections were stifled by a kiss that made her even more wobbly than the events of the day. Cole held her tightly in his arms, and she clung to him for support and comfort. And because he was Cole.

  No matter what he had seen, what she had enacted with Vane, he had believed in her.

  “How did you know Vane had coerced me to pretend to care for him that way?” she asked, nestling her cheek beneath his chin. The stubble of his beard scratched a bit, but she reveled in the masculine feel of him that reminded her he was still alive. They both were alive.

  “Does it matter?” He bent his head, and his lips nibbled at hers, making her crazy. She had an urge to tear their clothes off right there, for she needed to feel him closer yet.

  “No,” she replied. “I’m just glad you did.”

  “You were pretty convincing, you know.”

  “I had to be,” she said, not permitting her lips to leave his. “He’d have shot you the second you appeared otherwise.”

  “I figured.” The kiss Cole gave her then made her heartbeat race. He reached up beneath her shirt and gently rubbed her sensitive, yearning breasts. But he drew away. His sexy laugh, coming from deep in his throat, drove her nearly crazy. “This isn’t exactly the time or place.”

  “I know.” Alexa turned to look around them. “But at least the backyard is secluded. Otherwise, the neighbors might be concerned about the bodies littering this place.” She shuddered.

  “Bradford’s body is in a neighbor’s boathouse,” Cole said.

  “Poor Bradford,” Alexa whispered.

  Cole nodded grimly. “I’d imagine any residual gas in the house has dissipated by now,” he said. “Come on, Phantom.”

  Alexa didn’t want to wait outside, but could not bring herself to go in—not with Vane’s body in the kitchen, and Allen Maygran’s probably there, too, in some unknown location.

  She watched her boat floating gently at the side of the dock. She noticed a few other boats glide by in the middle of the lake. She avoided looking at the boathouse several docks down, where Cole said he had found the body of Jessie Bradford, and the stand of trees next door where he had had his confrontation with Minos.

  She tried to look beyond the hedge of bougainvillea that separated her yard from her other neighbor’s, but saw no activity there. Good. She didn’t want to have to deal with any questions she couldn’t answer.

  A large black sedan pulled into her driveway. It appeared to be some kind of official car. Could it be the police? If so, she would simply have to deal with it.

  She went around the side of the house. A husky man with gray hair emerged from the car. He wore a blue buttoned shirt and black slacks that looked like a uniform.

  Alexa guessed then that this was Cole’s boss. But what if it wasn’t? What if this was someone from Vane’s plot come to check up on him?

  She hurried into the kitchen and sped through the room, not looking toward where Vane had died—though she couldn’t help glimpsing the spot from the corner of her eye.

  Vane wasn’t there, thank goodness. Cole must have moved him.

  She allowe
d herself to breathe again, smelling just a hint of the odor of gas.

  She went down the hallway toward the reception area and called up the stairs, “Cole? There’s someone here.”

  Before she heard any reply, a strange, brusque voice sounded from behind her. “Are you Alexa Kenner?”

  She turned slowly, with trepidation. She had left the front door wide open, of course, for they had been airing out the inn. The person from the car had just walked right inside. “Yes, I am,” she admitted, half expecting the man to do something violent.

  “I’m—”

  “Forbes!” Cole came quickly down the stairs, Phantom at his heels. He held out his hand, which was quickly grasped in the other man’s.

  Alexa noted that Cole had changed clothes. He now wore the loose green shirt in which she had first seen him in the store at Skytop Lake Village—the shirt that had made him appear like an old-fashioned swashbuckler. And now she knew that the man who wore it was a hero.

  He turned to her. “Alexa, I’d like to introduce my boss and friend, Forbes Bowman.”

  “I’m delighted to meet you,” Alexa said in relief. She studied him. This must be the man who had saved Cole’s life after the explosion two years earlier. She owed him a lot.

  Forbes Bowman appeared to be in his early sixties. He was thick-waisted, and had a chin or two to spare. His shaggy brows were as silvery as his shock of white hair. He looked like a kindly grandfather, but she knew he was the head of a military Special Forces Unit, the secret counterterrorist outfit to which Cole belonged.

  “And I’m pleased to meet you, Ms. Kenner. I’ve wanted to get to know you for a long time.”

  She smiled at him, then said, “I’m sure Cole and you have got lots of arrangements to make.” She turned to Cole. “Does he know—?”

  “—about Vane and the others?” Forbes interrupted. “Yes, I do. It’s a shame, of course. But these things sometimes happen in war.”

  “War?”

  “Anything in which our national interests are involved can be considered war,” Cole explained. His look turned grim. “Phantom and I found Allen’s body upstairs in a closet.”