Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2016 Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  He frowned at the open bedroom door and darkened attached bath. Huh. Where was she? He backtracked into the main hall, and that was when he noticed Lola’s keys were missing. His frown deepened. Last night she’d expressed nervousness at the idea of driving a vehicle like the Ferrari. Surely she hadn’t just gone out to make a quick grocery run. Besides, there was a place on the corner she could have walked to.

  He headed for his bedroom and his cell phone and dialed her number. It went straight to voice mail. “Hey, Lissa. Where are you? Did you have someplace to be this morning that I didn’t know about? I miss you. Last night was really special, and I’m looking forward to spending more time with you. Call me.”

  He waited ten minutes, and when she didn’t call back, he called her again. Still no answer. Cold fear took root in his gut then. Something was wrong.

  He finished dressing and jogged to his next-door neighbor’s garage. He rented the space to park his pickup truck. He used the vehicle in his antique business to haul large pieces of furniture and art. Fury beginning to tickle his gut, he steered the truck toward Lissa’s place.

  He breathed a sigh of relief to see his Ferrari parked in front of the curiosity shop and still in one piece. But hard on the heels of that came more unfolding anger. Why had she ditched him like that?

  The shop door was locked, but he still had a spare key from when they’d installed the locks. He let himself into the shop.

  “Lissa!” he shouted up the stairs.

  She appeared at the top of the staircase swimming in a pair of his sweats and looking about twelve years old. “What are you doing here?” she demanded truculently.

  He reached for reason and managed to reply relatively calmly. “Getting my car back for one thing. And worrying about your safety for another. Why did you take off like that without saying anything to me?”

  She glared down at him and planted both fists on her hips. “How come you didn’t tell me your real name?”

  Her question froze his burgeoning anger like a blast of liquid nitrogen. “I beg your pardon?” he finally managed to choke out.

  “You heard me. What’s your name?”

  “Max. Max Smith—”

  She made a buzzer noise. “Wrong answer. I was wandering around your place looking at the paintings again, and I saw a letter on your desk.”

  He closed his eyes. An acidic wash of chagrin passed through him. “It’s complicated, Lissa—” he started.

  Again she cut him off. “No, it’s not. Every human being has one first and one last name. Their real one. What’s yours?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  That stopped her head of steam a little. “Why not?” she asked.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Try me.”

  “Can we not do this shouting up and down a flight of stairs?” He pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on.

  “No. I like having the high ground. And you deserve to be shouted at. You lied to me. I can’t believe I made love with a man whose name I don’t even know!”

  It sounded as though she’d found her mad mojo again. She reached out of sight with one hand and when it came back into sight, she threw something down the stairs at him.

  Surprised, he snagged something fuzzy and fist-size. He stared down at the wad of fake fur in his hand. “Earmuffs?” he asked incredulously.

  “I’m from Vermont, you idiot! It was December when I left there to come down here.”

  Something else sailed down the stairs at him. This time a small folding umbrella. He started up the stairs toward her. Lissa’s arm was cocked back to throw some other piece of weather gear at him when she froze. Based on long years of threat training, he froze, as well. He listened hard but heard nothing in the sudden and deafening silence.

  When she didn’t say anything and remained motionless, he finally asked, low and urgent, “What?”

  She snapped out of her reverie and shocked him by whispering, “If I told you we have to leave the building right this minute, would you just take me at my word and go with me?”

  He frowned, glancing around the interior of the shop, looking for any threats. He saw none. But then she was rushing down the stairs toward him so quickly she nearly knocked him off his feet.

  “I’m serious,” she bit out as she brushed past him like a gust front. “C’mon.”

  Perplexed and alarmed, he followed her down the steps to the main floor. She surprised him by veering away from the front door. “Hurry!” she whispered frantically.

  Okay, what the hell was going on? She sounded as if armed killers were about to burst in on them. He glanced out into the quiet street in front of her store and saw no movement. What had happened to her tantrum about him lying about his name?

  She raced into the hallway housing the customer restroom and a small storeroom, and he followed swiftly. No way was she getting away from him this easily. She burst out of the building’s back door into a narrow alley with him close on her heels.

  “We have to get out of here!” she gasped.

  “Why?”

  “No time for explanations. They’re almost here!”

  His alert level went from alarmed to full combat mode. He grabbed her arm and pulled her into the shade next to a brick wall. First order of business was to get out of this alley. They were fish in a barrel there. He asked her urgently, “Do you know what direction this threat is approaching from?”

  She pointed off to their right.

  He took off running to their left, never releasing her arm. She kept up with him reasonably well, considering she was wearing only fuzzy socks on her feet. They reached a side street, and he pressed her back behind him as he peered around the wall to clear the thoroughfare. Nothing moved, no cars or pedestrians.

  If, in fact, some terrible threat was coming to the shop, the two of them needed to get out of sight and fast. Ideally, they’d get in a car and drive away, but Lola was parked directly in front of her shop, and his truck was parked right behind it.

  A squeal of tires nearby caught his attention. It came from around the corner...holy crap...in the direction of the curiosity shop.

  “Stay here,” he ordered.

  He crept out into the side street and raced silently on the balls of his feet to the corner. Very carefully, he peered around the brick wall into the street housing the curiosity shop.

  A windowless white delivery van was double-parked next to Lola, and four masked men were pouring out of the back of it. The first guy used a lock gun to pick the lock on the front door. The man then disappeared into the store.

  Max listened in satisfaction as the newly installed security alarm screamed like a banshee. Two of the men carried small black nylon duffel bags, and the last man carried another semiautomatic weapon.

  He’d love to move in closer and figure out who these guys were, but first he had to secure Lissa’s safety. He glanced back over his shoulder to gesture for her to join him and jumped to find her not three feet behind him. So much for her following instructions and staying back.

  He waited until the last masked man disappeared into the store, then eyed the driver of the van warily. Ha. The driver climbed out of his seat and headed for the back of the van—probably closing the rear doors in preparation for a quick getaway.

  “C’mon.” He grabbed Lissa’s hand and they darted across the street, keeping the side street and staying out of sight of the van. He took off running with her.

  “Where are we going?” Lissa panted.

  “I’ve got to get you someplace safe. Off the street where you could be spotted.” The place he had in mind to take her was going to make her anger at not knowing his name pale by comparison to her anger when she saw it, but he really had no choice. He had to get her under cover and away from the arm
ed intruders in her home. Her safety was much more important than his being in hot water with her.

  The shop’s security alarm went silent and he winced. Sixty seconds tops to disable the state-of-the-art system he’d just had installed? Yikes. These guys were top-of-the-line professionals. So much for this being another hit from Julio G.’s boys. Not unless street gangs in New Orleans had upgraded into world-class paramilitary professionals.

  He rounded the next corner and raced to the alley behind his secret apartment. He hustled Lissa up the stairs and unlocked the door as quietly as he could. Thankfully, her socks made no noise, and he knew how to be silent while running no matter what the surface might be. He dialed in the combination on the padlock protecting his hidey-hole and popped it free. He opened the door and gestured with his free arm.

  “Inside,” he ordered quietly.

  She slipped past him, and he eased the door shut, throwing its dead bolts quickly.

  He looked up, and Lissa stood in the middle of the bare living room, staring at the cameras and computer monitors. “What is this place?”

  “A surveillance blind,” he answered shortly, moving to one side of the window. He swung a camera lens in front of the lower left-hand corner of the window and clicked on the recording button.

  She headed for the other window. “We should close the blinds so they won’t see—”

  “No!” he said sharply. “Stay back. Any movement at all in a window, be it you or the blinds going down, will catch the attention of the driver, who’s also acting as a lookout. You’re safer over here by me,” he told her as he moved over to the table tucked back in a corner by the kitchenette. He clicked on the twin computer monitors, and the front of the curiosity shop jumped into view.

  “What is this equipment for?” she asked ominously. A look of dawning comprehension had come over her face.

  Crap. She’d figured out that this whole setup was aimed at her shop. The woman was too damned quick on the uptake for her own good.

  “Does your Spidey sense say that we’re safe here?” he asked her in clipped tones, hoping to distract her and hold off the explosion until after this crisis had passed.

  She frowned and paused, as if to listen to a voice only she could hear. “We’re safe here as long as we stay out of sight from the men out there. They don’t know about this place.”

  “Does the voice in your head know who those guys are?” Max gestured at the computer monitor in front of him.

  She paused again, no doubt to give the powers that be a second to share anything they cared to with her. She shrugged, announcing, “I’ve got nothing.”

  “Lemme see if I can pull a license plate off that van.” Using a joystick, he maneuvered the second camera in the far window—the one that normally pointed into Lissa’s living room—to capture the back bumper of the van.

  “Got it,” he muttered, jotting the plate number down on a pad of paper. He readjusted the camera and captured an image of two gunmen moving quickly around Lissa’s apartment.

  “What the hell are they doing in my home?” Lissa demanded indignantly from over his shoulder.

  He caught occasional glimpses of a figure moving past an upstairs window. “They appear to be searching your place. Any idea what they’re looking for?”

  “None. I don’t have anything particularly valuable. Well, some items in the shop are pretty valuable, but there’s nothing upstairs worthy of armed robbers. It’s not like my house is a bank or a jewelry store.”

  She stood so close behind him he could feel the heat of her body against the back of his neck. He’d give anything to be able to put his arm around her and draw her against his side for comfort, but he expected she was still too mad about the false name thing to accept comfort from him, let alone the whole spying on her home thing that was just dawning on her.

  They watched in grim silence as the gunmen left the shop and piled in the side of the van. Max glanced at his watch. “Three minutes on the nose that they were inside. Professional discipline.”

  “Which means what?”

  “I can say with certainty that those aren’t Julio G.’s cronies. Nor are they random amateur thugs looking to rob your place. They’re a highly trained crew of some kind.”

  “Trained to do what?”

  The van pulled away from the curb, and he stared down at Lola, still sitting exactly where she’d been parked before, with not a scratch on her. If those guys had been in the shop to vandalize it, surely they would have put a rifle butt through the Ferrari’s windshield. Why leave a four-hundred-thousand-dollar car completely untouched unless they were following specific orders that did not include random vandalism?

  Lissa started to ask questions, but he held up a finger and made a fast call to Bastien. “Hey, buddy. Lissa’s place just had some visitors..We barely made it out the back before they barged in through the front... I pulled a license plate number off a creepy, unmarked van with no windows... They didn’t look like Julio G.’s friends. These guys were pros... Nah, no need to send over a patrol. They didn’t appear to take anything or bust her place up... I’ve got the whole thing on film on my surveillance setup of the shop. I’ll let you know if I find anything that will help ID the intruders.”

  Speaking of which, he couldn’t wait to watch a slow-motion playback of exactly what the men did inside the shop and apartment.

  He ended the call and looked up into the face of wrath incarnate. “You were watching me?” Lissa asked, her voice low and intense.

  “Not exactly. I was watching your shop.”

  “Why? And before you answer this, consider carefully. This explanation had better be good, or else I’m calling the police and reporting you.”

  He sighed. So much for a perfect emotional connection with the woman of his dreams. “I was just on the phone with a cop and mentioned my surveillance equipment. What makes you think they’d do anything? As a matter of fact, nothing I’m doing here is illegal.”

  “Quit dodging my question. Why were—are—you watching me?”

  “I have reason to believe your shop is being used as a dead drop site.”

  “As in spies leaving messages for each other?”

  “Spies aren’t the only people who leave dead drop messages for each other. Criminals also use the technique.”

  “Why not just text each other, or send an email?”

  “The internet isn’t as secure as most people seem to think it is. Given the right technology, most electronic communications can be intercepted. Dead drops are still one of the most secure forms of secret communication.”

  “Who, exactly, is using my shop as a dead drop site?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “And?”

  He realized he’d clenched his jaw and had to consciously unclench it. “And I’d rather not get into specifics with you. Suffice it to say they’re bad people, and I’m trying to figure out who they are so I can stop them.”

  She stared at him a long time, weighing his words. “Is this why my aunt was killed?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “What makes you so certain she met with foul play?”

  “She called me two days before she died and told me she was about to die. I got the distinct impression she expected foul play. Not to mention the woman was completely healthy.”

  His jaw dropped. He knew that Lissa didn’t believe her aunt had died of natural causes. But the woman had known it was coming? That meant Callista had likely known her killer. Which considerably narrowed the list of suspects. “She told you that? Why didn’t you call the police?”

  Lissa huffed. “Because everyone in my family thought she was crazy. They thought her psychic powers were bogus and credited drug use in her youth for her visions and intuitions.”

  “And you? Did you think she was crazy?”
>
  “No. She was the real deal.”

  He tilted his head to one side. “So you think psychic phenomena are real?”

  “I’d really rather not debate that at the moment.”

  This from the woman who’d listened to a voice in her head that had warned her about a van full of armed men on their way to attack her? He had to admit, though, that the accuracy of her prediction did give him pause.

  He asked her abruptly, “How did you know those men were coming to raid your home?”

  She shoved the curls off her face in exasperation. “I just did, okay?”

  They stared at each other in a frustrated standoff. Apparently, neither of them was willing to give up their secrets to the other one. Which left them exactly nowhere. Loss and the old loneliness stabbed his gut. The darkness that descended around him now was much worse for his having glimpsed a tiny burst of light with her last night.

  He grimly pushed all his feelings into a mental drawer and slammed it shut. Men like him did not get hampered by pesky things like feelings.

  “Are these things turned on all the time?” Lissa asked, gesturing toward the cameras.

  “Yes,” he answered shortly.

  “And you’re recording everything they film?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember that man I told you about? The one who asked about an African fertility statue. Took a long, hard look at it but didn’t buy.”

  He leaned back in the folding chair and stared up at her, waiting to see where she was going with this line of reasoning.

  “That statue was hollow and too ugly for any normal human being to purchase. It was a good bet the thing would sit in the store forever. If I were going to make a dead drop in the curiosity shop, that’s where I would have put a message.”

  “What time of day did he come into the shop?” Max asked, pulling up the digital record of that day.

  “Late afternoon.”

  It took him a few minutes of fast-forwarding, but eventually a man in a business suit, which was atypical of her usual clientele, speed walked into the shop. He stopped the tape and backed it up at a more moderate pace. “Have a look at this. Is that the man who made the possible drop?”