Mission: Irresistible

by Lori Wilde

  “Please forgive me for leaving you down there. Sometimes I get so caught up in my mind, I forget what my body is doing.”

  “Gee, way to make a girl feel special, Einstein. Explains why you’re not married.”

  “I suppose I deserved that.”

  She felt safer now, less haunted, more like her cocky self. The farther she got away from the cellar, the faster the past receded. She shouldn’t have freaked out on him. It wasn’t Harry’s fault. He didn’t know about Duane and the cellar.

  Taking a deep breath, she opened her mouth to tell him about Duane, but got no further because a man darted out of Clyde’s back door.

  “Harry!” she cried as the man in Nike sneakers slammed into her and knocked her to the ground.

  Immediately, Harry took after the guy. Cassie struggled to her knees. The guy was holding something in his hand that looked sort of like the keyless entry remote from a set of car keys. The man had a small head start, but Harry was closing the gap.

  “Stop!” Harry hollered.

  And to Cassie’s amazement, the guy did.

  But no one could have predicted what he would do next. The man pressed the button on the remote in his hand, and Clyde’s house exploded.

  The force of the blast blew out the windows and knocked Harrison sprawling to the ground.

  “Cassie!” He crawled back across the lawn.

  “I’m here; I’m okay.”

  He reached for her and tucked her body under his, protecting her from the debris raining down around them. His heart was thumping madly and his mouth was bone dry.

  Harrison had trained his mind not to react to his body’s emotions so well that he was able to feel the spurt of adrenaline rushing through his system but still process his thoughts rationally. They’d checked every inch of the house, and it had been empty. The man had clearly slipped in the back door while they’d been in the cellar and set the bomb.

  But who was he, and why had he blown up Clyde’s house? What did all of this have to do with Adam and the missing amulet?

  He didn’t know, but he was determined to find out.

  First, they had to get out of here. The police would be arriving soon, and they’d be hard-pressed to explain their presence here. They had no time for police questioning.

  “Sweetheart,” he said, the strength and clarity of his voice surprising even him. His chest was pressed into her back. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. He clambered to his feet. She rolled over and looked up at him, her eyes dazed. He held out a hand to help her up, but she scooted away from him on her butt.

  “Stay away from me.”

  What was the matter? Was she shell-shocked? Had something hit her on the head? She appeared to be okay. He took a step toward her.

  “Don’t come any closer.”

  “Cassie, I’m not the enemy.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  The look in her eyes rattled him to the bone. She was scared of him.

  “You were going to lock me in the cellar so your accomplice could blow me up in the house.”

  “No!” He said it more vehemently than he intended because her fear of him tore a hole in his heart. When she cringed, he dropped his voice. “How can you even think that about me?”

  “There was a Minotaur mask in Clyde’s cedar chest and other things that looked like they could belong to the Minoan Order.”

  “There is no Minoan Order.” Had she hit her head? Did she have a concussion? Was that why she was accusing him of such crazy things?

  “Oh yeah? Then who detonated the house?” She stared at him as if he’d sprouted a pitchfork and devil horns.

  “That guy in the Nikes—you just saw him.”

  “How do I know it wasn’t staged for my benefit?”

  “Look around. I think the bomb was real.”

  She blinked. “I’m so confused.”

  “Please believe me. I didn’t try to hurt you. I’m on your side.”

  Siren screams. The emergency vehicles would be here soon.

  “Let’s get out of here. I’ll take you somewhere quiet and safe. We don’t need to get tangled up with the police.”

  “I don’t know what to believe.” She drew her knees to her chest. She looked so lost sitting on Clyde’s debris-strewn lawn with bits of grass in her hair.

  He kept his hand extended. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “I’m not good at that.” She shivered and rubbed her hands over her upper arms.

  He squatted in front of her, took her chin in his palm, and forced her to look him in the eyes. “Cassie, I swear, I would never, ever hurt you.”

  Poor kid. She was shell-shocked. He couldn’t blame her for jumping to ridiculous conclusions. He had left her alone in the cellar after she’d told him she was claustrophobic. He had been caught up in his own agenda, and he hadn’t paid attention when the cellar door swung shut behind him.

  He’d treated her like an afterthought.

  When he thought about it from her point of view, he could understand why she’d come uncorked. A woman never wanted to feel trapped by a man. Had he learned nothing from having a mother like Diana? If she knew what he’d done, she would give him hell.

  And then it hit him like a kick to the gut. Cassie had almost died in that house.

  So how are you going to make it up to her? He had to do something to gain back her trust. He had to apologize. Big-time.

  “I’m an ass,” he said. “An A-number-one dillhole for being so insensitive, but we’ve got to get out of here before the police show up. Are you coming with me?”

  He held his breath, waiting. The sirens screamed nearer.

  Cassie reached out and took his hand.

  *

  A crowd had gathered on the lawn, but everyone was so intent on staring at the devastation that no one really took note of them as Harry gently escorted her toward the Volvo parked on the street by the Taco Bell. The first fire truck arrived just as Harry started the engine. By the time the second truck pulled to a stop, they were turning the corner onto a main thoroughfare.

  “I feel like we’ve done something wrong, sneaking off like this,” she fretted

  “We don’t have a choice. The police would question us for hours, and we simply don’t have the time. We have to find Adam. Besides, how would we explain being in Clyde’s house?”

  He was right and she knew it. She did her best to throw off her anxiety. She’d never been much of a worrier. That was Maddie’s job. Everything would turn out all right. She had to believe that, and since she’d chosen to go with him, she had to trust her instincts and believe in Harrison, no matter what Ahmose suspected him of.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “I’m not really in the mood for any more surprises,” she said. She’d had enough of the unexpected for one day, thank you very much.

  “It’s nearby. Just a short detour. I want to go somewhere we can relax and catch our breath for a minute.” He took University Drive to the Fort Worth Zoo.

  “We’re going to the zoo?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He parked the car, paid the entry fee, and they went inside. Cassie kept glancing at him, torn in two conflicting directions. Part of her wanted to break down and tell him everything Phyllis and Ahmose had sprung on her, but her ears still rang from the echo of the explosion, and she didn’t know what to believe.

  It was just before noon on Thursday. The crowd was light and consisted mainly of mothers with strollers, waving juice boxes and Lunchables.

  “It’s this way.” Harrison took her elbow, guided her down the narrow asphalt path toward the rear of the grounds.

  “There’s nothing out here.” She hadn’t been to the zoo in a long time, but she was pretty sure they were walking away from the animal attractions.

  “Special exhibit,” he said.

  A howler monkey screamed, and an eerie coldness blasted down Cassie’s spine.
She was still high-strung from what had just happened at Clyde’s and still feeling mistrustful.

  She glanced over at Harrison.

  He was sprouting a five o’clock shadow and his hair was scruffy, but he looked kinda good. And he smelled even better. Like soap and sunshine. She caught the aroma of cigar smoke on him. She liked cigar smoke. Her daddy smoked cigars when she was little.

  Duane had smoked cigars too.

  Well, hell, Duane had smoked a lot of things.

  They had to circle around the construction zone, and just when Cassie was certain they’d reached the end of zoo property, she saw a temporary building constructed out of a tentlike material and mesh wire.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  He pointed at the sign that she’d failed to notice in her paranoia, and then she remembered reading about the two-week exhibit. In fact, there were banners up all over town advertising it. She’d just forgotten.

  The building was a butterfly hatchery.

  Harrison opened the screen door and they scooted into a small area, where they paid a small extra fee for the attraction and were greeted by a butterfly expert who gave them a short lecture.

  “Go right on through.” The perky lady guide handed them a color brochure. “Pick out a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, watch it hatch, and you get to name it. After that, walk on through to the butterfly garden. Please make sure the doors close securely behind you.”

  They walked into the hatchery area where another tour guide, this one a lanky male, greeted them. The humidity was high in this area. Cassie could just feel her hair frizzing, but she soon forgot about her hair as they watched the butterflies hatch.

  “Which one do you want to claim?” Harrison asked.

  Cassie heard the excitement in his voice and she was surprised to discover she was excited too, watching new life uncurl into the world.

  “That one.” She pointed.

  “You’ve chosen Lepidoptera Danaus plexippus. The monarch.” The guide grinned. “You’ve made an excellent choice.”

  A few minutes later, their butterfly was born.

  “She’s beautiful,” Cassie breathed.

  “She’ll sit on that twig for a while to pump up her wings. What would you like to name her?” the guide asked.

  Cassie looked at Harrison. “What do you think?”

  “There’s only one name for her.” Harrison’s eyes met and held hers. “She’s a vibrant beauty who’s only in your life for a short while. We’ll have to call her Cassie.”

  “Cassie it is,” the tour guide said and entered the name in his log.

  Cassie’s throat felt full and scratchy. She blinked and had to drop Harrison’s gaze.

  “Step on through into the butterfly garden,” the guide said. “We’ll bring Cassie in as soon as her wings have fully opened.”

  They moved into the garden ripe with lush fruit and vegetation. The climate was tropical, warm and damp, and the air was filled with all manner of butterflies.

  Cassie had never seen so many of the lovely creatures. They were every color under the rainbow. Small, medium, large. Everywhere she looked she saw butterflies.

  She glanced over at Harrison. Butterflies fluttered above his shoulders, landed on his head. One was even walking along the top of his ear.

  “Look at you.” His eyes crinkled.

  Butterflies were all over her as well. Lightly kissing her skin with their spindly legs. She giggled and then pressed a hand to her heart. “It’s so breathtaking. Thank you for bringing me here.”

  “My gift to you,” he said. “To apologize for being such an inconsiderate ass.”

  “You weren’t an ass. I went schizo.”

  “No. You had every right to be upset with me. In my single-mindedness I did let the cellar door close on you, and I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Harry.”

  “Please, forgive me. I hate to think you’re mad at me.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  “You folks want a picture with Cassie?” The tour guide came in from the other room with Cassie the monarch perched on his finger.

  “Yes.” Harrison nodded. “We do.”

  “Give me your hand,” the butterfly wrangler tour guide instructed.

  Cassie held out her hand, and he transferred the monarch onto her finger. Cassie the butterfly flexed her wings.

  “Hurry,” Harry said. “She’s about to fly.”

  The tour guide snapped the Polaroid picture just as Cassie the monarch took flight. Harry was smiling and the tour guide was smiling and, aw hell, Cassie the woman was gonna cry.

  CHAPTER 17

  Harrison had wanted to do something nice for her, to apologize for being such a lunkhead and scaring her. But he hadn’t expected this simple trip to the butterfly hatchery to affect her, or himself, so profoundly.

  “That’s the sweetest, most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me,” Cassie said for the fifth time and stared down at the Polaroid in her hand. She’d kicked off her sandals and propped her feet on his dashboard. She had such adorable feet.

  They had left the zoo and were headed down University toward I-30 in search of lunch. He wanted to find a quiet place where they could talk. They needed to hash out the significance of what had happened at Clyde’s, but Cassie still had that goofy, sentimental expression on her face, and it was starting to unnerve him. He’d wanted to make her happy. He just wasn’t sure he’d wanted to make her that happy.

  “Obviously that creep who blew up Clyde’s house was the same one who ransacked yours. Surely there aren’t two Nike-wearing criminals causing us problems,” he said. “What I can’t figure out is why he blew up Clyde’s place.”

  Cassie said nothing.

  “Unless he was trying to kill us. What do you think?”

  “Harry, I can’t hide my secret anymore,” Cassie said. “There’s something important I have to tell you.”

  “What?” He jerked his head around to stare at her. “What secret?”

  “I can’t keep this up. Suspecting you is killing me, so I’m putting my cards on the table.”

  “Suspecting me? Of what? What are you talking about?”

  She took a photograph from her pocket and laid it on the console between them. “I know about you and Clyde, so you can stop lying to me.”

  “What?” he said for the third time, and momentarily took his eyes off the road to glance down at the picture.

  It was the snapshot of him and his brother and Tom at Adam’s college graduation in Crete.

  “Where did you get this?” he demanded.

  “Don’t make this about me. That’s Clyde Petalonus in the background, and you denied ever knowing him before you came to the Kimbell.”

  Harrison picked up the photograph and squinted at it. By gosh, she was right. It was Clyde. “I swear to you, I had no idea Clyde was in the picture.”

  “And you expect me to believe that?”

  “You were snooping through my apartment,” he accused. “You got this photo out of my office.”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  He stared at her, stunned. He couldn’t fathom that she would violate his privacy. He clenched his jaw. “Why?”

  “I’m going out on a limb by telling you this,” she said. “You don’t know how much it’s costing me to trust you.”

  “No more than what it cost me to trust you.” He waved the photograph at her. “And you betrayed me.”

  “Harry, I’m sorry.”

  “My name is Harrison.”

  She flinched. “I can understand your anger, but I had no choice. Ahmose Akvar and Phyllis told me I’d go to prison for stealing the amulet if I didn’t spy on you. There were only two sets of fingerprints on Kiya’s display case. Mine and Clyde’s. So I spied and I found the photograph.”

  “And you impulsively jumped to conclusions about me.”

  “It wasn’t a big leap.”

  “Why did Ahmose recruit you to spy on me? What does he susp
ect me of?”

  Cassie’s gulp was audible. “He speculates that you’re a member of the Minoan Order.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know,” she said miserably.

  “We’re going to get this straightened out,” he said. “We’re going to confront Ahmose.”

  At just that moment, a customized chrome Harley zipped around them.

  Harrison did a double take, unable to believe what he was seeing. “There he is! There’s Adam!”

  “Where? Where?”

  “On that Harley.”

  “How can you tell? It zoomed by so fast, and the guy is wearing a helmet.”

  “It’s the same motorcycle I saw outside the museum last night. I would bet my doctorate on it.” Harrison made an erratic U-turn. Car horns blared. He tromped the gas pedal and followed the Harley out onto the freeway.

  “Hey, slow down. I like adventure, but there’s adventure and then there’s foolhardiness.”

  “I’m not letting him get out of my sight.” He gritted his teeth determinedly.

  They were too far away for him to get a good glimpse of the rider to see if it was indeed his brother, but Harrison knew that was the motorcycle. He changed lanes, edging out a U-Haul with New Jersey plates.

  “Get back over,” Cassie shouted. “The Harley’s taking the Rosedale exit.”

  Harrison obeyed, turning on his blinker and cutting sharply in front of the U-Haul, earning himself a double-whammy middle-finger flip from the driver and his passenger. Cassie blithely waved at them, smiled broadly, and called out, “Thanks for letting us in.”

  “When in doubt,” she told Harrison, “assume that getting flipped the bird is just the way people say howdy wherever they’re from.”

  Ah, the sunny, illogical philosophy of Cassie Cooper.

  The street they drove down was littered with potholes. Vagrants squatted outside liquor stores. Many buildings were boarded up, vacant. Women in very skimpy outfits sauntered up and down the sidewalk, waving at passing vehicles.

  “Don’t worry,” Cassie said, apparently not even noticing they’d entered an unsavory neighborhood. “We’ll catch up to Adam. I can still see the Harley. Wait, wait, he’s pulling into the parking lot of that bar. Lemme see.” She rolled down the window and craned her neck out of the Volvo. “The place is called ‘Bodacious Booties.’ Hmm, is your brother into seedy strip clubs?”