by Amelia Autin
“Where are the packages now?” This was something Terrell hadn’t planned on—keeping Summers’s daughters in Hong Kong—and it suddenly occurred to him to ask.
“We found temporary storage, but safety is a concern.” Terrell knew the man wasn’t concerned with the safety of the little girls; he was concerned they might be discovered somehow, putting the kidnappers at risk. “We might have to shift locations.” The voice grew colder. “Or dump the packages.”
“That is not an option.” Terrell’s conscience was nudging him. Kidnapping Summers’s daughters, selling them on the baby black market in the United States—he could do that without a qualm. Killing them? He couldn’t quite bring himself to go that far. Even though Summers deserved the worst, Terrell wasn’t a monster. Besides, he rationalized, no way am I going to let the bodies of those little girls be found and give Summers closure.
“Understood. We will do our best.”
“See that you do.”
* * *
Dirk paced the suite’s expansive living room like a caged lion, while Mei-li sat on the sofa, shoes off, her feet curled up beneath her, watching him pace. Finally she said, “Pacing, like refusing to eat, accomplishes nothing.”
“They’re not your daughters,” he snapped at her, then had the grace to apologize. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled-for.”
“Yes, but perfectly understandable.” She understood. How she understood. The desire to do something—especially for a man of action like him—had to be unbearable when there wasn’t much he could do. Not yet.
She pulled her notebook out of her purse, intending to go back through her notes, when she realized she’d never debriefed Dirk on his two phone conversations with the kidnapper who’d contacted him. She patted the sofa next to her and said, “Please tell me about the phone calls—the one yesterday and the one this morning. I should have asked you for every detail as soon as possible, but I didn’t. I heard everything you said this morning, of course, but...”
Dirk sat, but in the chair nearest the window, not on the sofa, and she wondered about that. Last night Dirk had seemed so open, so vulnerable. Now he’d closed himself off again, shutting her out.
Shutting you out? she asked herself, shocked at where her thoughts were leading. He’s a client. Don’t blur the lines.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Let’s start with yesterday. Tell me everything you remember, beginning with the kidnapper’s first sentence.”
He started slow, as if he wanted to relay everything exactly as it happened, but then the pace picked up. Mei-li had no trouble keeping up with him, however. Her own shorthand was a handy tool she’d developed over the years. Some private investigators used recording devices, but she didn’t—too often the people she interrogated were inhibited by the recorder. So she took detailed notes instead, but not verbatim. She’d found that her impressions of what was said were often more accurate in the long run than what was actually said.
She kept her eyes on her notepad for the most part, listening to Dirk’s deep, mellifluous voice recounting everything he could remember. But occasionally she raised her eyes to his face, especially when his voice changed...which it did every time he referred to his daughters.
“That’s it,” he told her, coming to an abrupt halt. “He said, ‘Terrell Blackwood sends his regards,’ and hung up.”
She quickly perused the notes she’d just taken. Sometimes if you picked at a thread, it became a string, but she didn’t see any threads to pick at. “So tell me about today’s phone call.”
“Not much different,” Dirk told her. “Except for the ransom demand. And the fact that this time he knew I hadn’t called the police.”
“Humor me.” She smiled faintly. “Close your eyes. That really does help sometimes—I wasn’t just spinning Vanessa a line yesterday. Start at the top and go through everything you remember.”
Dirk had reached the point in the conversation where he’d demanded proof his daughters were still alive, when he said, “That’s when I heard a sound in the background on his end of the phone. It seemed familiar but I couldn’t place it. Then he said, ‘Very well. You arrange for the money. I’ll arrange for proof of life.’ I asked him how much, and he—”
“Stop right there,” Mei-li said, her voice urgent, and Dirk’s eyes flew open to focus on her face. “What sound did you hear?”
He frowned. “I’d forgotten about it until just now. At the time I was sure I knew what the sound was, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it slipped away because I was focusing on the next thing the kidnapper said.”
“So what was the sound?”
Dirk closed his eyes again. His brow furrowed in concentration for one minute, then two. Finally he shook his head, frustration evident. “It’s there. I can almost touch it, but not quite.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Then Mei-li said, “Have you ever been hypnotized, Dirk?” At his skeptical look, she laughed softly. “It’s not as impossible as you seem to think. It doesn’t work for everyone, but they say imaginative people are particularly susceptible.” She paused, then said, “Wouldn’t you say an actor is an imaginative person?”
Dirk made a sound of dismissal. “Yeah, I’m an actor. But I’m no more imaginative than the next guy.”
She deliberately made her smile a challenge. “Then you wouldn’t mind if I tried to hypnotize you?” She let that hang there for a second before adding, “I am a trained hypnotist, by the way. Since you’re not susceptible, and all that, what can it hurt?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it, words unsaid. She had him and she knew it, but she didn’t let her triumph show. “Just on the off chance you can be hypnotized, I promise I won’t ask you about anything except the sound you heard.” A flash of something in his eyes made her add, “Your secrets are safe, Dirk, I swear.” Softly. Reassuringly. Because he did have secrets. It was there in his face—deeper, darker secrets than the ones he’d shared with her last night.
“So, how does this work? You dangle a pocket watch and say in a spooky voice, ‘Look into my eyes’?” He finally acceded, but she knew he was still nervous from his joke and the way he held himself so tightly her muscles ached.
She gurgled with laughter. She couldn’t help it. “I don’t have a pocket watch,” she told him, holding her hand over her mouth to contain her mirth. “And I don’t do spooky.”
Her laughter forced a smile out of him, the first real smile she’d seen from him since that night two weeks ago, and she caught her breath. This was the man named “sexiest man alive” by the tabloids—and now she knew why. But there was so much more to him than just sexy. So much more than just a handsome hunk on the silver screen.
Why had she taken an immediate dislike to him that first night? It wasn’t like her at all—she was usually at least mildly tolerant of men who admired her physical appearance and showed it. She was indifferent to her own beauty—beautiful parents and good genes accounted for that. It didn’t have anything to do with her, and she was realistic to know it. She did her best to play down her looks, especially when she was working, and she wore very little makeup. But she loved beautiful clothes and had a weakness for silk, like the red dress she’d worn the night she’d met Dirk. And most men had a thing for red on a woman—everyone knew that. So it hardly seemed fair to judge Dirk because he’d been attracted to her.
Far worse than the men who pursued her because she was beautiful were the men who pursued her because of who her father was—shallow, narcissistic actors who wanted to use her to get to her powerful father to further their careers. But that hadn’t been Dirk’s motivation—he’s already a superstar, she thought. He didn’t need her father to advance his career; the shoe was actually on the other foot. Her father had mentioned after Dirk left the jazz club that it was a feather in his cap having landed D
irk to star in his current project.
And the way her father had talked about Dirk—about what a consummate professional he was on the set—had told Mei-li she’d badly misjudged him...the same way he’d misjudged her by assuming she was her father’s mistress. Was that what had given her a distaste for the admiration in his eyes, for the compliment he’d given her? Because she’d been ticked off by his assumption? Or had it been something more troubling?
The moment she saw him standing at the bar, her body had responded to him instinctively in ways she’d almost forgotten—nipples tightening, a sudden throbbing in her loins, a breathless catch in her throat—and she’d been forced to look away from him and keep her focus on the stage. Had she been afraid that here was a man who could tear down the walls she’d built around herself after Sean died?
All at once she realized they’d been staring at each other for several minutes without saying a word. The smile had faded from Dirk’s face, and now something else was reflected there, an expression that tugged at her heart. Not desire. Not exactly. More like a need. A yearning. For warmth. For companionship. For the touch of a woman’s gentle hand.
She breathed suddenly and tore her gaze away. When she turned back the expression was gone, as if it had never been there. As if she’d imagined it. But deep in her heart she knew she hadn’t imagined it at all. And she hadn’t imagined her response, either.
“So, if you don’t use a pocket watch, how do you plan to hypnotize me?” Dirk asked. Most women would have taken his matter-of-fact tone at face value. Most women would have convinced themselves he was unmoved by the brief exchange of glances moments before. But Mei-li wasn’t most women, and she heard the slight shading to his voice that told her he wasn’t unmoved.
But if he could put that exchange behind him and act naturally, so could she. “It’s just a matter of concentration,” she explained.
“If you say so.”
“You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain, so just humor me.”
“Okay. Let me know when you’re ready to start.”
Mei-li smiled. “Close your eyes, please. That’s step one.”
Dirk closed his eyes, but she knew the tense way he held himself was the first barrier she had to surmount. So she began talking about herself, about growing up in Hong Kong and on location with the various movies her father had produced and directed over the years. And as she talked about these seemingly unimportant things, she saw the strain drain away from Dirk’s body, saw him relax in the chair.
He hadn’t had a lot of sleep the night before—she’d slept in his arms, so she knew. Which meant he was physically as well as emotionally exhausted. And that meant she could put him into a trance without much effort now that he’d let down his barriers.
Almost without a pause she moved to her life’s work, about the different cases she’d worked on. About the happy outcomes. “It’s always difficult for me to maintain an emotional distance from my clients,” she explained, keeping her voice low and mesmerizing. “Because I know better than most what they’re suffering. And that means I suffer along with them...every time. But it also means I rejoice with them when their loved ones are returned safe and sound.” Setting the stage. Gaining Dirk’s trust.
“I want to rejoice this time, too,” she continued, still in that same hypnotic cadence. “But I need your help. You’re the only one who can do this, Dirk, the only one who can solve the mystery by remembering what you heard. So I want you to go back to this morning, to the phone call. Walk me through it, step by step. Every word he said. Every word you said. Everything you thought. Everything you felt.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Tell me, Dirk.”
He told her. She only had to prompt him a couple of times, but for the most part he recounted the conversation nearly verbatim. At least his memory of the conversation matched almost exactly what she remembered hearing him say, so she assumed the other side was also nearly word-for-word.
“‘Before I deliver the ransom, I need proof my daughters are alive,’” Dirk said in a trancelike tone. Then his face contracted as if he were puzzled by something.
“What is it, Dirk?” Mei-li asked, forcing herself to speak calmly. “What’s wrong?”
“I hear something in the background,” he said in the same monotone voice.
Mei-li’s heart skipped a beat. “What sound?”
“It’s the Star Ferry,” he replied. “You can’t mistake that boat whistle.”
Chapter 7
“Dirk!”
The sound of his name came from very far away, distorted as if he were underwater. But then he heard, “Wake up, Dirk!” spoken with urgency, louder than before, and he knew he had to wake up now. He swam toward the surface, but it was like swimming through molasses, although he had no trouble breathing.
Then he opened his eyes and saw Mei-li on her knees beside his chair. She was grasping his hands in hers, and her eyes were alight. “What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. You remembered, that’s all. You remembered the sound you heard on the phone.”
And when she said that, he remembered. “The Star Ferry. The boat whistle.” He turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows facing Hong Kong Island, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Sweet mother of God, that’s what I heard.”
“That means when he called you this morning, he was within hearing distance of the Star Ferry—Hong Kong side or Kowloon side, we don’t know, but not that far away.”
Dirk abruptly stood and strode toward the double doors leading out to the balcony, then opened them and walked out, all the way to the railing. “You can see it from here,” he called to Mei-li. She joined him on the balcony, and he pointed out the Star Ferry, inbound toward Tsim Sha Tsui from Hong Kong Island’s Pier No. 7.
He watched the ferry for a moment as it steamed its way across the harbor, until an unbearable realization swept over him. He crashed his fists onto the metal railing without even knowing he was going to do it. In a primal frenzy he grabbed the trunk of the potted tree standing next to him on the balcony. “But it doesn’t mean a thing,” he raged, hurling the tree, pot and all, back toward the glass doors. Wanting to break something. Wanting to hurt himself. “Not a damned thing!” He fell to his knees and pounded his fists on the balcony floor, as if he could pummel the savage pain in his heart that way. As if the physical pain could eradicate the emotional devastation. Then he threw back his head as one harsh word was torn from his throat. “Why?” he demanded of heaven.
“Stop!” Mei-li crouched next to Dirk and threw her arms around him like a vise, valiantly struggling to hang on to him despite his instinctive move to pry her arms off, to pull away, to continue to rage against the futility of it all. He could have done it, too—she was no match for him physically. But his uncontrolled outburst had released just enough ferocious anger that he didn’t fight her off.
Then he realized she was crying.
“Don’t,” she whispered, tears trickling down her cheeks. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
Dirk couldn’t have spoken even if he’d wanted to, because a hot, tight swarm of emotions seethed in his chest, preventing him from breathing. Pent-up frustration yielded to desolate despair, and he wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t cried when Bree died—he couldn’t cry now, either. That emotional outlet was denied him, as if God himself refused to allow him the physical release tears would bring.
“Don’t,” Mei-li repeated, pressing her tearstained face against his shoulder.
He finally found his voice—rough as sandpaper—and said brokenly, “I remembered...but it doesn’t mean anything.”
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Then she nodded and said, “Not this time. But you can’t let yourself give up like this, because next time...next time it just might.”
* * *
/> All vestiges of Dirk’s rage had been eradicated an hour later. The glass doors hadn’t shattered because the tree’s metal pot had fortunately not reached them. Mei-li had tried to replace the tree in its pot, but Dirk had taken it from her. “Go wash your face,” he’d told her gently. “I’ll clean up my own mess.”
Afterward he’d washed his bruised and bloody hands in the kitchen sink, watching with almost detached interest as dirt and blood and soap swirled down the drain.
“When was your last tetanus shot?” Mei-li asked from the door.
Dirk swung around. She’d washed the tear stains away, but he could still see them in his mind’s eye. And he knew he would never forget she’d cried for him when he couldn’t cry for himself.
He wiped his hands on the kitchen towel, grimacing when a slight trace of pink transferred itself from his hands to the terry cloth. Then he leaned one hip against the kitchen counter and answered her question. “Not quite two years ago. I had a slight mishap with a sword on the set of King’s Ransom, and the doctor thought I’d better have a tetanus shot, just in case.” The slight mishap had involved eleven stitches and a scar in an interesting place—but he wasn’t going to share that bit of info.
“That’s good,” she told him. “It’s not likely, but anytime you have dirt and an open wound...” She came over to where Dirk stood, took his hands in hers and inspected them. The grazes weren’t bleeding anymore, but bruises were already forming. “They’re starting to pile up,” she told him when she raised her face to his.
“What’s starting to pile up?”
A tiny smile touched the corners of her mouth. “Things you do that accomplish nothing. Refusing to eat,” she reminded him. “Pacing. And now this.”
He couldn’t help it—he grinned like a repentant little boy. “I’ll keep that in mind. Or maybe I should just keep you around to remind me.” Then his grin faded as all at once it came over him that he wanted to keep her around...and not as his conscience. It was crazy, but he wanted to keep her around...because she’d cried for him.