by Amelia Autin
That steadied him. Reminded him that the safety of his daughters wasn’t just his first priority, it was Mei-li’s, too. And though it nearly killed him to do it, he nodded his assent.
“We’re a go, then,” Jason said. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter 20
They motored out into the middle of the harbor before Jason cut the engine. He and his men used paddles to get them closer to their target without waking anyone in the surrounding boats. Then the three men in wet suits slipped nearly soundlessly into the water with a tow rope and swam them into place beside their target, stern to bow. Dirk watched, amazed, at how neatly and quietly they accomplished this. All he could think of was that he knew a few stunt men who could learn a lesson or two from these RMM men.
Then the anchor was lowered without a splash, preventing them from drifting away, and with incredible stealth, guylines were attached between their boat and the target, securing them together. Jason signaled silently from the other side of the stern. Dirk and Mei-li joined him, and Jason tapped Dirk’s chest. “Left,” he mouthed. He tapped his own chest. “Right.”
Dirk nodded, putting himself into a zone where he saw nothing, heard nothing except for his target. He’d started his career in the movies as a stuntman, and he knew how to focus. As steadily as if he were walking on dry land and not a floating boat, he slipped noiselessly from their boat’s stern onto the other’s bow, then held out his hand for Mei-li. She grasped his fingers, and the next thing he knew she was standing beside him.
There was no noise from the interior of the boat. No indication that the sleeping kidnappers had felt anything other than the natural rocking of the waves. Jason joined them with scarcely a sound, his eyes meeting Dirk’s over Mei-li’s head. He held up one finger, silently counting a beat of one. A second finger joined the first. A third finger was added. Then he pointed toward the front opening with a sharp movement, his hand signaling “Go!”
Dirk and Jason burst through the entrance together, Dirk veering left as Jason veered right. They were on the kidnappers before the other men knew what had hit them.
A shadow darted between the bodies of the four men struggling on the floor. Though Dirk’s attention was focused on incapacitating the kidnapper frantically attempting to free one arm and reach for the gun next to his pallet, he knew the shadow was Mei-li. Muffled cries from the back told him she’d found his daughters—alive, he exulted. Alive!
Then he pushed that thought ruthlessly from his mind as a blow rocked his jaw and a desperate fight was on. It was over in seconds. The two men were closely matched in size, but Dirk was fighting for his daughters. The adrenaline coursing through his body gave him nearly superhuman strength, and he managed to flip the other man onto his stomach with one arm twisted sharply behind his back. “Move and it’s broken,” he panted, bending the arm farther.
A cry of pain answered him, but the struggle ceased, and he knew the kidnapper believed him. Dirk scrabbled in the darkness with his left hand and finally came up with the gun. He raised his head and glanced to the right to make sure Jason didn’t need help. When he saw the other kidnapper was similarly immobilized, his gaze moved to the rear of the cabin.
Mei-li was plastered against the far wall, shielding two small bodies with her own. Jason called to her, and she raised her head, then unwrapped herself from Dirk’s daughters. Even in the dim light coming through the front opening, he saw their wrists and mouths were bound with duct tape.
A red mist rose over his eyes. White-hot rage slammed through him, and he turned to the kidnapper beneath him. In a corner of his mind, he realized what he was doing, but it was as if he were some other man. He let go of the arm he was holding, and shifted the gun to his right hand, then thrust the barrel of the gun against the back of the kidnapper’s head. “You son of a bitch.” He didn’t recognize the voice, but realized it was coming from him. “I should kill you.” His breathing was labored. “Those are my babies, you bastard. My babies!”
“DeWinter!”
“Dirk, no!”
The harsh voice belonged to Jason Moore. The soft plea belonged to Mei-li. His finger twitched on the trigger, and he wanted to pull it, honest to God he did. He wanted to kill this piece of filth who’d kidnapped and terrorized his daughters. Wanted to make sure no one else’s children ever suffered what his daughters had suffered.
Then he heard Mei-li’s voice in his mind, clear as a bell. You cannot know what you would have done if he’d dropped the knife!
His chest heaved, and he closed his eyes against the wall of emotion that hit him as other words came back to him. Mei-li’s words, too. You’re a good man, Dirk. You are. Are you perfect? Of course not. No one is. But you’re a good man...
He opened his damp eyes and gazed at Mei-li through the shadowed interior of the cabin. Then he saw his traumatized daughters watching him from the shelter of Mei-li’s embrace. And in that instant he knew he couldn’t do it.
He drew a shuddering breath and pulled the gun away. He flicked the safety on, tucked the gun into his back pocket and quickly undid his belt buckle. His belt hissed as he stripped it off. Then he used it to bind the kidnapper’s hands behind his back. Tight.
He was vaguely aware that Jason was doing the same thing to the other kidnapper, then speaking into some kind of radio transmitter in Cantonese. But the vagueness vanished when he knelt in front of his daughters and removed the duct tape from their mouths as gently as he could. Linden moaned and Laurel sobbed, and tears slid silently down Dirk’s cheeks. The tears he hadn’t been able to cry at Bree’s funeral. The tears he hadn’t been able to cry when his daughters had been kidnapped.
With Mei-li’s help, he unwrapped the tape from his little girls’ wrists, wincing when he saw the raw, red skin beneath. And despite his blackened face they knew him. Tiny arms throttled his neck as his arms closed around both of them, hugging them as if he’d never let them go.
“Daddy!” they cried almost simultaneously. “You came to get us. You did. You did!”
His eyes met Mei-li’s over his daughters’ heads and saw the tears glistening on her cheeks above the black greasepaint. He couldn’t say anything—his heart was too full at that moment—but there was so much he wanted to say.
She reached up and smoothed away the tears from his face. “I know, tim sum,” she said, smiling through her tears. “I know. But now is not the time. Let’s get your daughters out of here.”
* * *
A towel and a jar of cold cream removed most of the blacking from Dirk’s face as the RMM boat slid quietly through the water toward the shore. Mei-li had used them first, then, when Dirk refused to let go of his daughters, she’d used them on him since his hands weren’t free.
“Hold still,” she’d whispered, and he’d done as she asked, letting her rub the cold cream in and massage it off with the towel. “That’s the best I can do,” she admitted finally before dabbing at the backs of her hands with the now-dirty towel.
Dirk held a sleeping daughter cuddled on each knee, smiling a little to himself as he remembered his dream about rescuing them. His daughters didn’t smell like baby powder. In fact, they smelled worse than the harbor around them. But he didn’t give a damn about that.
He never wanted to let them out of his sight again. A part of him knew it was unreasonable—that eventually he’d have to trust someone else to look after them—but that was how he felt at this moment. As he gazed down into his daughters’ faces, he couldn’t help but think of their mother. “I didn’t let you down, Bree,” he whispered under his breath. And in his mind’s eye he saw her smile. The one that said she believed in him and always would. The same way Mei-li smiled at him. A man would dare anything for that smile.
Jason’s men had stayed on the other boat, guarding the kidnappers Dirk and Jason had bound, waiting for the police Jason would contact once they were on s
hore. Dirk had left the gun behind at Jason’s insistence, and he was glad he had when the other man told him, “We’re going to have to be interrogated—no escaping that. And your daughters, too, although I doubt they’ll be able to add much. But we’d better get our stories straight.”
“In what way?”
“I’d just as soon you don’t mention anything about RMM. Mei-li’s a licensed private investigator you hired to help recover your kidnapped daughters. I’m her brother. She asked for my help. I gave it. End of story.”
It wasn’t quite that easy, of course. But by the time they docked at the pier, they had everything worked out except, “What about your men out on the boat?” Dirk asked. “How am I supposed to explain them?”
Jason flashed a smile as he leaped onto the dock and looped the docking rope around a piling. “You don’t. You know nothing about them.”
Dirk laughed under his breath. “Well, that’s true. I don’t.”
“All you know is they’re friends of mine. I’ll take care of it from there.” He laid the plank and held his hand out to his sister. “Come on. The sooner we call the police, the sooner you’ll be able to get some sleep.”
“Let me take her,” Mei-li said, removing Laurel from Dirk’s unresisting grasp.
Jason said, “Watch your step,” to both Mei-li and Dirk. Then, when they were both standing on the pier, he told Dirk, “I need you to do one more thing before we call the police.”
“What’s that?”
“I need you to pose for a picture. With your daughters.”
Dirk shook his head. “No way.”
“It’s important.”
“Why?”
“You’ll have to trust me on that.”
Dirk started to refuse, but Mei-li touched his arm, her eyes pleading for him to do as Jason asked. “You know why he wants this?” he demanded.
“No, but I trust him. If he says it’s important, I believe him.”
Dirk glanced at Jason, who still wore the black greasepaint he’d had Dirk remove. And he realized this had been part of Jason’s plan—he wanted Dirk recognizable for some reason. Something to do with the photo he wanted Dirk to pose for with his daughters.
Then he thought about all the help Jason had given Mei-li and him, almost from the beginning. And he acknowledged he and Mei-li couldn’t have rescued his daughters alone tonight. Not without risking their lives. Jason had earned Dirk’s trust, so if he said this photo was important...
* * *
A Father’s Desperate Rescue! blared the headline at the top of the website Terrell Blackwood was browsing. And beneath the headline was a photo of internationally famous superstar Dirk DeWinter—who would always be Derek Summers to the father of his victim—on his knees on a pier in Aberdeen Harbour, ecstatically embracing his twin daughters. And Terrell knew he’d failed.
The sound of cars coming up the long, curving driveway from the main road to the big house Terrell had been born and raised in jerked him out of his stunned contemplation of the headline and the photo on his computer. He moved sharply to the second-floor library window. Two Minnetonka police cars were just pulling up in the semicircular drive in front of the house. The lights weren’t flashing, but as he watched, four policemen exited the vehicles. Two made their way around the back of the house; two headed for the front door. And Terrell knew why they were there.
The front doorbell rang, and Terrell shook his head. “No,” he told the policemen, who couldn’t possibly hear him. “I’m not going back to jail.”
He walked slowly back to his desk, pulled open the middle drawer and withdrew a loaded Smith & Wesson—the Smith & Wesson that had been his father’s and his father’s before him. Back before guns had to be registered.
Ex-convicts couldn’t legally own guns. But unlike the gun he’d used on Derek Summers and Sabrina Weston, this had never been registered in Terrell’s name, and no one knew he had it. It was his secret insurance policy.
He looked up at the large photo of his son on the wall across from his desk—the last photo taken of him before he’d been murdered. “I’m sorry,” he told Lyon. “I’m so sorry.” Then he raised the Smith & Wesson to his temple.
* * *
When Dirk finally woke, it was almost five in the evening. Which made sense, since he hadn’t left the Aberdeen police station until after six that morning.
His daughters had been examined at the police station by a doctor friend of Mei-li’s—she seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of friends in every occupation, who never seemed upset when called upon to do her a favor no matter the time of day or night. The doctor had pronounced the girls basically fit, although woefully filthy. And he’d given Dirk cream to apply to the chapped and abraded areas on their skin. But he’d confirmed the twins didn’t need to be checked into a hospital for observation. “Rest and tender loving care is all they really need,” the doctor assured him.
By the time Dirk and Mei-li had walked in the front door of his suite with the twins, it had been close to seven. They’d fed the girls and given them a bath—an emotionally trying endeavor for Dirk when he again saw the physical condition his daughters were in—then read them stories and tucked them into their cribs. Dirk had called Vanessa and Chet, who’d promised to be there in half an hour, then had left Mei-li sitting in the rocking chair in the girls’ bedroom, keeping watch—he knew they would be safe with her to guard them—while he had a quick shower.
Mei-li had left as soon as Vanessa arrived to take charge of the girls, with Chet as their bodyguard. “Get some sleep, tim sum,” she’d murmured by the front door, preparatory to walking out. “You’re asleep on your feet.”
“So are you,” he’d told her.
“And I’ll be asleep myself as soon as I possibly can. I need a shower, and...” She’d looked at the backs of her hands, which still bore traces of black. “...a lot of cold cream.”
He’d glanced backward, but neither Vanessa nor Chet was in sight, so he’d kissed Mei-li, long and slow. “Take a cab.”
She’d given him that indulgent smile and left. He’d returned to the girls’ bedroom and watched them sleep for a few minutes, watched their tiny chests rise and fall in slumber. He’d been tempted to stay there forever doing just that, but he acknowledged Mei-li was right. So he’d fallen into his bed just before nine and slept dreamlessly.
Now he was awake and refreshed after eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, and he had only one thing on his mind. He dressed quickly, then hurried into the living room.
“Daddy!” Laurel, who was standing by the picture window, toddled to him as fast as her chubby legs could carry her.
“Daddy!” Linden dropped a Playskool truck, pushed herself unsteadily to her feet and made a beeline for him.
Is there a sweeter word in the whole world? Dirk thought as he first picked up Laurel, swinging her high over his head the way she loved and making her gurgle with laughter, then putting her down and doing the same for Linden.
Safe. That was all Dirk could think of as he settled onto the sofa with a daughter in each arm. He was hard-pressed not to clutch them tightly, as if he could keep them forever safe that way. His heart ached as they haltingly described in their childish terms everything they’d been through from the moment they’d been taken, and he swore no one would ever have the chance to kidnap them again. Even if it meant he went to jail himself, Terrell Blackwood would never be allowed to wreak his vengeance on Dirk via his daughters.
“Mr. DeWinter,” Vanessa said from the doorway to the kitchen. “I never got to tell you this morning, but I’m so happy the girls are safely back.”
“Me, too,” Chet said. Dirk hadn’t noticed him sitting in the living room until he spoke—all Dirk’s attention had been reserved for his daughters. But now that he’d seen Chet, Dirk couldn’t help think about Rafe and Mike. Cou
ldn’t help remembering Mei-li asking, How did the kidnappers get your cell phone number?
It was over—he had his daughters back—but it wasn’t over. Not completely. Rafe or Mike? he wondered. Or Patrick. Which one?
“Rafe and Mike will be here at six,” Vanessa said. “We thought it would be great to have us all together to celebrate. I hope you don’t mind. I called room service, and they’ll deliver at six-thirty.”
“Not a problem,” he said, his mind still worrying the question. How was he going to find the answer? Neither kidnapper had talked, as far as he knew. So which one—Rafe, Mike or Patrick—had sold out his daughters?
Dirk’s iPhone rang, and for a heart-stopping moment he had a flashback of all the times it had been one of the kidnappers calling him. But then he realized it wasn’t the “unknown caller” ringtone, it was the one he’d set up for Mei-li. And only Mei-li.
“Excuse me,” he told Vanessa and Chet, reluctantly letting his daughters go and heading for the study as he answered. “So you’re awake, too?” he asked without preamble, shutting the door behind him.
“For more than an hour,” she replied. “Jason called me.” And there was something in her tone that told him whatever Jason had called her about, it wasn’t good.
* * *
Mei-li, Jason and Patrick arrived together a few minutes before six. Vanessa had already fed the girls their dinner, and when the trio arrived he told her quietly, “Take Linden and Laurel to their bedroom, please. Don’t come out for anything.” He couldn’t explain, but he wanted his daughters safe.
Vanessa cast him a frightened look, and he told her, “Just do it. Take Chet with you. And lock the door.”
When they’d left, he walked over to Patrick and said, “I apologize. I know it might not mean anything under the circumstances, but...I apologize for suspecting you.”
Patrick shook his head. “No apology necessary. Mei-li already explained.” He smiled faintly. “And if they were my daughters, I wouldn’t trust anyone, either. Not knowing what I know now.”