by Dana Marton
“Philippe has a turtle hatchery on the tip of the island,” she explained to Reese.
He nodded.
“Other opportunities opened up to me someplace else. I’m simplifying. Returning to core business,” Philippe said.
What? Sam listened, impatient for specific details. Was there some new big deal with Tsernyakov in the works?
“Why me?” The visitor sounded suspicious.
“You know the full potential of the place.”
Reese looked at her. “You know what that means. He is running something illegal here that this guy could continue. And if our mystery man took over, he wouldn’t have to worry about shutting that off and covering his tracks there.”
She was pretty sure he was right. “But why is he pulling out?”
Reese shook his head. “I have a feeling it would be instrumental for our mission to get the answer to that.”
“I have some capital that will be freed up after the end of the year,” the visitor was saying.
“I need to move sooner than that.”
Names. Come on. Say his name, Sam willed the man. They needed an identity, even if assumed, Brant could investigate.
“Why? What’s wrong with the hatchery?” The guy sounded suspicious.
“Hatchery is fine. There is a business opportunity I want to take advantage of. It has a deadline.”
“I need to take a look at the operation. Have to check some figures.”
“Of course.”
“You can hold it for two weeks?”
“Until the end of this week,” Philippe said, “I won’t mention it to anyone else.”
“Give me one full week at least.”
There was a moment of silence. “All right, a full week. But the full purchase price is due on the day of signing the sale agreement.”
“If I decide to buy, I’ll get the money.”
Glasses clinked together.
“You did this place up nice,” the visitor said after a while. “Business been good?”
“Can’t complain,” Cavanaugh said, but there was an odd tinge to his voice.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what this new business is that you’re getting into?”
Cavanaugh laughed. “Not a chance.”
“I thought we were friends,” the guy said with mock hurt.
“Not that good of friends.”
“You know what I like about you? You never change. Greedy bastard to the end.”
Cavanaugh laughed again. “You’ve made some money off me over the years.”
“That I have.”
“Now you’ll make some more.”
Glasses clinked again.
“So,” the guy said after a while. “Where are your throngs of beautiful women? They all figured out the ugliness behind your smarmy charm?”
Cavanaugh tsked. “That’s just green-eyed jealousy talking. They’re out with the boat.”
“You were afraid they’d see me and begin wondering what they were doing with some old French goat?”
“Frenchmen are known for love. What are shady Brazilians known for?” Cavanaugh shot back.
Sam and Reese exchanged a look. At least now they knew this much. The guy was Brazilian.
“How is the new wife, anyway?” Philippe asked.
“Not any better than the first three,” the visitor responded. “I’m an eternal optimist. Maybe I’ll luck out with the next.”
“Cheaper to keep lovers.”
“I want heirs, not bastards.”
“Suit yourself,” Cavanaugh said. “Just remember, heirs have a tendency to become impatient for their inheritance.”
“Sentimental old fool, isn’t he?” Reese said in a voice thick with irony.
“They are done talking business,” Sam stated the obvious.
“He’ll be leaving soon.”
The conversation hadn’t netted nearly as much information as they had hoped for.
“We need a picture of the guy,” she said.
They waited until the men were saying goodbye and made getting-up kind of noises. Sam used the time to wash all vestiges of makeup from her face, making herself look as pale as possible. When she was done, she messed up her hair.
They walked downstairs together. She put a drained expression on her face and looped an arm around Reese’s neck. He supported her with an arm around her back as they stepped out the door.
She made sure the finger that had the camera ring on pointed toward the Cavanaugh mansion at all times as they began a slow trek toward the water’s edge, making sure to leave a clean line of vision between them and the mansion.
First, the security guys appeared.
“Look toward the water,” Reese said into her ear.
She did so, making sure the camera was pointed toward the house still. She worked the tiny button with her thumb, taking pictures blindly.
She risked a glance from the corner of her eye. A guy she hadn’t seen before was getting into a car with tinted windows. Roberto was making a beeline for them. She managed to take another picture, hoping she had aimed right. Then she made a point of closing her eyes and resting her head on Reese’s shoulder.
“Are you okay?” Roberto asked when he was close enough.
She looked at him. “Thought some fresh air might do me good.”
He stood in a way to block the car from her view, but she could hear the engine start up.
“How bad is it?” He sounded genuinely concerned. “Want me to take you to the hospital?”
“I’ll take her if she’s not better in a couple of hours. Thanks,” Reese said.
Roberto hesitated, giving him a hostile look. “Take it easy,” he told Sam before strolling away.
The black sedan that had carried the visitor was nowhere to be seen.
HE MISSED HER. They’d had their “fight” as soon as she “recovered.” She’d barely set foot in their suite since. Reese watched from afar as Sam flirted with Cavanaugh. She was lightening up after having relayed to him their terrible row that had supposedly taken place behind the closed doors of their suite. Cavanaugh had consoled her, naturally. She was now playing the part that it had worked and she was over Reese already. Reese clamped his jaw shut as he watched them. If Cavanaugh put his hands on her one more time—He looked away, disgusted with himself. What? What was he going to do? Nothing. She was doing her job.
Still, he didn’t have to like it.
He hit another golf ball on the sand. He’d been doing that with more and more force, he realized. How had everything gotten here? Complicated. Not that his job was normally simple, but his main objectives used to be more straightforward. Protect the client. Or, if he’d been called in after something bad had happened, retrieve the client.
He never got emotionally involved, not to this level.
Had he lost his edge? If so, he would do everyone a favor if he retired from the business.
There. Two months ago that thought would have been unimaginable. Right now he could actually picture spending some time Stateside. With Sam. That last bit was the most frightening part of all.
He wasn’t what she needed.
Damn. He hit another ball. What did he know about what she needed?
What did he want?
No. He didn’t dare ask that question.
His cell phone rang. Brant Law. He took the call.
“What’s up?”
“We took another look at the turtle hatchery and got some new information. Looks like a good portion of his workforce there is illegal. He ships illegal immigrants in from SouthAmerica, they stop on Grand Cayman and work free for him in payment for the trip, then eventually he moves them on and smuggles them into the U.S. When they get there, most of them are forced to enter some sort of prostitution ring that also has something to do with him.”
“He’s a prince among men. Thanks,” Reese said before he hung up.
Cavanaugh was caressing Sam’s face.
Reese gritted his teeth. Th
e way the guy was touching her bothered him more than the illegal drugs, the human trafficking and his link with Tsernyakov put together. The business with Sam was personal. He could cheerfully have strangled the man.
What were they talking about now? Sam looked amused. She hadn’t looked amused that night when Reese had touched her. At first she’d felt the connection between them, too, he was sure. Then at one point something had shifted. And although she hadn’t protested, she was as scared as the proverbial sacrificial virgin. And yet she was willing to go through with it. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted her to feel what he felt.
Oh, hell. Now he was admitting to feelings?
He kicked the sand.
Damn.
He was falling for her, wasn’t he?
His turn to be scared. Especially when he looked her way again and just caught the last glimpse as Cavanaugh escorted her inside his lair.
“Coming for a ride with us?” A couple of the other guests were going out on WaveRunners.
He shook his head. “Later.”
He moved closer to the house and took inventory of the security guys in sight. Four of them lounged in the shade at various locations.
How many were inside?
What was Cavanaugh doing with Sam in there?
He pushed the unwanted pictures out of his mind. He couldn’t focus on that. No sense in losing his cool. He couldn’t help her that way.
He was doing his part of the job and she was doing hers. She was tough. She had handled a lot in her life already. She could handle this. He kept repeating that in his head. It didn’t make him feel any better.
He managed to hold out for a whole hour before he called her on her cell.
“Everything okay?”
“Don’t call me,” she said, then moved the phone away from her mouth and talked to Cavanaugh. “It’s David. He wants to make up.” Then came back to him. “I’m going to hang out here for tonight. Philippe gave me one of the guest rooms in the main house. You can stay or go. I really don’t care.” With that she hung up.
He drew a deep breath. She brought out his protective instincts in spades, and no wonder, considering her past and his. He was terrified of letting down another woman he should have been protecting. But with Sam, the situation was different. At the moment, facing danger was her job. And it wasn’t altogether bad for her, although he hated to admit that.
Every new success brought self-confidence and a sense of strength, knowing that she could handle other difficult situations in the future. He had worked with plenty of people who’d had bad experiences, had been traumatized in the past. He knew the way to getting over the fear wasn’t to stay in a cocoon. He wanted her to have a full life.
She’d gone a long way toward achieving that since he’d met her. A lot of the skittishness had left her, the prickliness that had surfaced at the beginning as a means of defense.
He’d been a parachuting instructor. Doing tandem jumps with his students had been fine—being there, knowing he was in control, that he could protect them. But eventually he’d had to let them go, had to trust them to jump on their own so they could truly soar.
He wanted that for Sam. She was smart and tough. She knew how to get the job done. He was going to let her. Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t be standing by and watching her back.
He was close enough to the mansion to see the upstairs guest bedroom through which she had gone in before. Was that her room now? He looked at the security camera on the covered porch below it and aimed the next golf ball. It hit its target, moving the camera to the left an inch or so. That should be enough. Just in case he needed to get up there in a hurry.
And he did, not an hour later.
“Philippe is going out. I’m not sure how long he’ll be gone,” Sam said over the phone. “I need help opening the safe.”
He was down by the beach by then, but made his way back to the mansion, lay down in a hammock for a minute until he made sure none of Cavanaugh’s men were around. Then he sauntered over to the patio. The security camera’s angle was hopefully off enough not to give him away. He climbed the column and heaved himself over the edge of the balcony railing, kept low as he made his way to the door.
The room was empty, but Sam’s flip-flops stood next to the bed, a sign letting him know he was in the right place. He opened the door slowly and identified each door in the hallway: gym, cleaning closet, Cavanaugh’s office. Sam had given him descriptions after she’d been up here the first time.
When he got level with the office, he realized the door was open to a nearly imperceptible crack. He paused, heard movement inside.
“Sam?” he whispered.
If it was someone else in there, he would claim he’d come to beg her to come back to him. But he doubted anyone would be allowed in Cavanaugh’s office in his absence.
The door opened and Sam reached out to pull him in.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.” She sounded impatient as she closed the door.
“What are you doing here? I thought the safe was in the bedroom.” He glanced around. The laser beams she’d told him about were nowhere to be seen.
He wanted to grab her and just hold her for a second.
She was already moving away from him. “That one doesn’t have anything in it except his passports and some cash. And some diadem from Marie Antoinette he just got at an auction.” She rolled her eyes. “He wants to make sure I know he’s the richest guy on the block.”
“How did you get in here?”
She led him behind Cavanaugh’s desk where a Caribbean landscape in oil had been pushed away from the wall, revealing a steel plate embedded in concrete. “The bedroom has a security system, too. I saw the code when he punched it in. I took a chance.”
“I don’t suppose the safe uses the same code?” He ran his fingers over the keypad.
She shook her head. “I already tried.” She was looking at him expectantly.
He hated to disappoint her. “I don’t know anything about safes except how to blow one up.” And they had no access to explosives, nor could they afford to use any even if they had. Along with the safe, they would also blow their cover.
He took a picture of the safe with his cell phone and sent it to Brant Law along with a request for information on what they could possibly do with the steel trap. If they were lucky, the information would come in before Cavanaugh got back. If not, they would have to try again later.
“Have you searched the office?” he asked Sam as he turned his attention to Cavanaugh’s desk.
“Roughly. I haven’t been in here that long. I was focused on the safe.”
He riffled through the papers on the edge of the desk. Bills for the house and the grounds, security, power, water. The desk drawers were locked. He grabbed the silver letter opener and went to work with that.
Sam was digging through the paper basket. “I saw this in the movies,” she said.
The first drawer popped open. He dug through the stack of papers—shrunk-down copies of blueprints and old contracts. Nothing he could make anything out of. He tried the second drawer.
She put a handful of wadded-up yellow sticky notes on the table and began to unfold them.
The sound of knocking came from outside.
They both went still.
A second passed before he realized whoever it was, wasn’t knocking on the office door.
“Ma’am.” The voice came from down the hall, followed by more knocking. “Will you come down to the dining room for lunch or would you like your meal to be brought up?”
Sam went to the door.
He could hear another door opening.
“Ma’am?”
She peeked out then stepped outside.
“Looking for me?” he heard after a second. “I went over to check out the gym. I think I’ll hang out there until Philippe comes back. Is that okay?”
“Certainly, ma’am,” came the response. “Where would you like your lunch?”
“I think I’ll wait for Philippe.”
“Of course. Just let me know if you change your mind or if you need anything. The kitchen is extension five on the house phone.”
“Thanks.”
Reese listened for the sound of shoes on the marble stairs and heard it a moment later. Then, in another second or two, Sam was back.
“Well done.” He cupped her face without intending to, then caught himself and let go.
She looked away. “Let’s get to work.”
He popped the second drawer and flipped through the stack of data-storage CDs. No designation on them, except for a single six-digit number on each. “What are these?”
She glanced over and shook her head, opening one sticky note after another. “What’s this?” She held one out for him.
A date, November 27, was written on it in black ink, outlined over and over, circled several times in red.
If they weren’t specifically looking for a date, they wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But from what Eva had said, it was clear that Cavanaugh had some kind of deadline. Was this it?
“What else?” He turned his attention to the paper basket, as well.
What he got were nearly empty papers, with no useful information. Maybe not for Cavanaugh in any case. Reese flipped open his phone and entered the URL at the bottom of the pages.
“Anything?” Sam looked up from what she was doing.
“Bad news.” He took a slow breath, cold spreading in his stomach. “It seems our friend has gained a recent interest in how to survive nuclear contamination.”
Sam went pale.
He wasn’t feeling too well, either.
What was Tsernyakov up to? How much did Cavanaugh know?
“Is his laptop still in his bedroom?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I went back to my room as he was leaving. Didn’t want him to get suspicious that I’m snooping around.”
“Let’s check it out then.” He went to the door and looked out. “All clear.”
Sam went first, in case someone did come up the stairs. She was supposed to be here. Reese wasn’t. After she reached the bedroom door and looked around, she signaled to him that it was okay to follow.