Whirlpool

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Swann turned his daughter toward him and tipped her chin up with his left hand.

  She stared at her father. His face was partially hidden in shadows, his features cold and hard. He carried a cocked pistol at belt level. Its muzzle was pointed past her, at the house.

  At Cruz.

  “Dad?” she whispered, suddenly uncertain, almost afraid.

  “Who the hell did you expect? Santa Claus?”

  She simply shook her head. His voice was low, carrying no farther than her ears, yet deadly for all its softness. She’d never seen her father like this. Cruel, dangerous, bluntly predatory.

  For the first time, she understood why Cruz was so wary of Jamie Swann.

  For the first time, she was truly afraid for Cruz’s life.

  Cold horror bled through Laurel’s soul as she realized what she’d done, restraining Cruz when her father had no restraints.

  Silently Swann searched his daughter’s eyes. Whatever he was looking for wasn’t there.

  “That bastard has really gotten to you, hasn’t he?” Swann asked in the same low, deadly voice.

  “What?”

  “That easy-moving gorilla who was all over you a minute ago. You damn near crawled into his pants.”

  She was too stunned to say anything.

  Carefully Swann edged into the light, keeping an eye on the French doors like he expected a squad of armed men to burst out of the house at any moment.

  “Who is he?” Swann demanded, heading toward the house. “Is he armed?”

  Without stopping to think, Laurel stepped squarely in front of her father’s pistol.

  “Cruz Rowan isn’t your enemy,” she said in a low voice. “Please, Dad. Slow down and listen to me. It isn’t what you think.”

  Swann looked at his daughter like she was a stranger threatening him. For a horrible moment, she thought he was going to keep his pistol on her.

  Finally, slowly, he lowered the gun.

  “Jesus,” Swann said, looking at Laurel like he’d never seen her before. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

  “Smarter than what? Smarter than to get in your way?”

  The words shocked Swann. “You really bought that lovey-dovey crap, didn’t you? Rowan’s a user. He’s using you to get to me. It’s the oldest trick in the book. Hell, I’ve done it a hundred times. Grow up, baby.”

  She felt a flush of anger and anguish, but her voice stayed level. “I’m all grown up. I’m older than you know. But then, you haven’t been around me often enough to know much about me, have you?”

  It was the second time Laurel had shocked her father. This time, the pain that followed the shock was also visible to her. He looked like she’d hit him.

  Instantly she regretted her words. She tried again, knowing only that somehow she must reach into this cruel hunter and find the father who loved her.

  “Cruz isn’t after you.”

  “Yeah? Then why the hell is he hanging around you?”

  “To keep me alive,” she shot back.

  “What?”

  “Just after I called you from Cambria, two men broke into the house. They tried to kill me.”

  Swann opened his mouth. No sound came out, but the stark horror on his face said more than words.

  “Cruz was wearing body armor,” she said. “That’s why we’re both alive. He knocked me to the floor, covered me with his body, and took the bullets meant for me. Then he drove the assassins away before they could do any more damage.”

  Emotions washed across Swann’s face. Disbelief first, then comprehension, then a rage that consumed everything.

  “That lying bitch,” he said through clenched teeth. “She’s dead.”

  “Who?”

  Instead of answering, he drew a deep breath, trying to reel in his temper. It took more than one breath to get the job done. Gently he touched Laurel’s cheek. His hand wasn’t quite steady.

  “I didn’t know about this, Laurie,” he said in a low voice. “So help me God, I didn’t know.”

  “I never thought you did. Who was it? What’s happening, Dad? Who wants me dead?”

  “Never mind. I’ll take care of it.”

  “How?”

  Swann’s face was dark and set. Rage gave his eyes a feral sheen. “That’s a question you should know better than to ask. I sure as hell know better than to answer.”

  “I have to ask anyway,” she said flatly. “The only way you can fix this mess is to turn the egg over to Cruz. He’ll see that it gets returned to the Russians.”

  Slowly Swann’s expression became less wild, but no less dark. He shook his head.

  Laurel’s eyelids flinched in pain. He wasn’t going to listen to her.

  “It’s not that easy,” he said. “Not that easy at all. The egg is only part of it. Even if I gave it back, there would still be hell to pay.”

  “From the police? Cruz said the Russians don’t want any official notice at all. They just want the Ruby Surprise back.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet they do.”

  Swann’s smile didn’t make her feel better about what her father might do next.

  “But Rowan is right,” Swann added. “The local cops won’t be a problem. If the Russians are smart—and they are—they won’t bother the feds with it either.”

  He fixed Laurel with eyes the color of her own, yet so different, a dark mirror of a shadowed life.

  “Did you bring your work stuff with you?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Get me the satchel and go back into the house. Two minutes later I’ll be gone.”

  “It would be easier just to bring the stone, wouldn’t it?” she asked coolly.

  Swann’s mouth flattened. “Shit, Laurie. You weren’t supposed to find it.”

  “A lot of things weren’t supposed to happen. But they did anyway.”

  “Who else knows about the stone?”

  “Cruz and his boss, Cassandra Redpath.”

  “Have they figured out what it is?”

  Laurel stared at her father. “It’s a ruby. But there’s something odd about it.”

  Unhappily Swann studied his daughter, trying to read her expression, to know what she knew without having to question her. The problem with questions was that they often revealed as much as the answers.

  “Odd?” he said. “How so?”

  “I can’t tell without running some more tests, but the stone probably is synthetic.”

  “Not likely. They couldn’t make rubies back before the Revolution.”

  “I could be wrong. The specific gravity is a hair off, but my scale could be off too.”

  “It must be,” Swann said quickly, certainly.

  “On the other hand, the stone is too clear, too perfect, too uniform. I’ve never seen anything like it in a natural gem.”

  “Baby, leave it alone.” Swann’s voice was soft, but there was an unmistakable threat in it.

  “That’s the problem, Dad. I’m not your baby anymore.”

  “You’re Cruz’s baby, is that it? He has your loyalty now and to hell with your old man?”

  “If it weren’t for Cruz, I’d be dead. If it weren’t for you, I’d never have been born. I’d say the honors are about even when it comes to my loyalty.” Her voice roughened. “I love both of you, and both of you are tearing me apart.”

  There was a long silence. Then Swann blew out a slow breath. “Mother of God. What a cocked-up mess this is.”

  “What’s going on? What’s gone wrong? I have a right to know. I damn near died because of it.”

  “The more you know, the more dangerous it is for you. Leave it be. I never should have involved you. That son of a bitch Rowan never should have dragged you in deeper. Where’s the stone?”

  Automatically Laurel glanced toward the house. Cruz was still nowhere in sight, but it wouldn’t be like that for long. His conversations with Karroo rarely ran longer than five or six minutes.

  “Can you get the stone without Rowan knowing i
t?” Swann asked.

  “Don’t ask me to do that.”

  “Get it, Laurel. It’s the only way you’ll be clear of this mess.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t get it, or you won’t?”

  “I won’t,” she said starkly. “I don’t understand what’s going on, but as of now I’m out of the game. If you won’t cooperate with Cruz and Risk Limited, I won’t help you.”

  Swann looked at his daughter for a long time. Slowly his disbelief turned to anger.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said finally. “You really believe you’re in love with the bastard. He must be a hell of a cocksman.”

  Swann started to brush past Laurel, heading for the house. His pistol was ready and there was a cold intent in his eyes.

  Laurel grabbed her father’s arm. The muscles beneath were like metal cable, drawn tight by rage and adrenaline.

  “No,” she said harshly. “If you take another step, I’ll scream. You might be able to catch Cruz unaware, but if he knows you’re coming you won’t have a chance in hell. He’s good, Dad. Very good. And I don’t mean just in bed.”

  Slowly Swann let the hunting readiness drain out of his system. Laurel had blunted his attack as surely as if she’d drawn a gun on him. When he realized that, he looked at his daughter with new eyes.

  “You’d really do it,” he said, more of a statement than a question.

  “Yes.”

  He knew the answer before she spoke. It was written in her body language, a keyed-up readiness that was very like his own. Slowly he shook his head in reluctant appreciation of his own offspring.

  “You’re a real handful when you set your mind on something,” Swann said. “Wish your mother had had that kind of cold steel in her soul.”

  “Would you really have wanted her that way?”

  “Not when we first met. I was too young to appreciate a strong woman. Hope the bastard you chose is worth the grief he’ll give you, Laurie. I sure as hell wasn’t.”

  “Cruz is the first one I’ve ever met who makes the risk look worth taking.”

  Smiling sadly, Swann touched his daughter’s hair.

  “Okay, if that’s the way it is, that’s the way it will be. I’ll straighten out what I can for you.”

  “Let Cruz—”

  “No,” Swann cut in. “Too late, baby. Too many debts to pay. But no matter how desperate I am, I promise not to drag you down into my slimy little world again.”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed her father’s cheek just above the edge of his beard. He touched her cheek with his lips and then stepped back, turning away from her, walking soundlessly toward the waiting night.

  “No matter what, I love you,” Laurel called after him in a low voice. “Just like Mother loved you. Your name was the last word she said.”

  Swann’s voice drifted back out of the darkness. “I loved her as much as I could love anything except you. So I’m going to do for you what I did for her—get the hell out of your life.”

  A man-sized shadow moved against darkness, merged with the brush, and vanished.

  Cruz stepped out of the shadows at the far side of the house.

  Laurel stared at him in shock. “You were here all the time.”

  “Some of the time.”

  “You could have stopped him!”

  “He didn’t have the egg. Not in his hands. Not in the car parked down the block. It’s a bloody shame there isn’t someone from Risk Limited here to follow him.”

  “No one is keeping you here.”

  “I’m your bodyguard.” Cruz stared up the brushy hillside as if tracking Swann’s retreat. “When did you decide the ruby was synthetic?”

  Laurel stared at him. She swallowed hard, trying to settle her nerves and at the same time understand where his question was going.

  “Tonight,” she said slowly. “I thought Dad might have been taken in by a counterfeit and all of this was for nothing.”

  Staring into the brush, Cruz waited and listened, making sure that Swann wasn’t out there somewhere, waiting and listening, circling back to the stone he must have.

  There were no sounds but those of the night itself.

  Cruz reached into his pocket and pulled out the blood-red stone Swann had wanted so badly.

  “Your father wasn’t taken in by a counterfeit,” Cruz said softly. “He already knew.”

  “I left the ruby in the valise,” she said in a clipped voice. “You didn’t trust me not to give the stone to my father, did you?”

  “I didn’t trust the methods your father might use to persuade you.”

  “He would never hurt me, not like that.”

  “I know that. Now.”

  What Cruz didn’t say was that he’d stood in the shadows with a pistol pointed at Jamie Swann’s head until it became clear that Laurel was in no physical danger. Then Cruz had done a fast reconnoiter until he found Swann’s car.

  “Oh, God, what a mess.” She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in the aftermath of adrenaline. “None of it makes sense. Why would anyone kill for a fake ruby?”

  Cruz stared at the stone in his hand. Night had drained the ruby of color, leaving only its oddly cut facets to gleam coldly in the uncertain light.

  “If the ruby is phony, and if Aleksy Novikov knows it,” Cruz said, “this might be one of the most valuable pieces of crystal in the world. If we can get it to talk. If your father was telling the truth. Big ifs.”

  “What do you think?” she asked painfully.

  “Go inside, honey. It’s their move now.”

  50

  Los Angeles

  Wednesday night

  Jamie Swann tried to keep a lid on the rage that was seething through him, but he wasn’t entirely successful. Only one person knew that he’d sent the egg to his daughter. Only one person knew that Risk Ltd. had been in touch with his daughter. Only one person would have a motive for sending assassins after his daughter.

  Swann’s long, hard fingers clenched around the steering wheel. He wished it was Claire Toth’s elegant neck.

  The lying, double-crossing bitch, he raged silently. She was having sex with me at the very moment she thought my kid was being murdered.

  And, God, she was enjoying it. It really got her off like nothing else ever has.

  Swann blew out a harsh breath, trying to calm himself. It was nearly impossible. He’d known psychotics in his line of work, but Toth was beyond even that pale. She was in a bizarre category by herself.

  But not for long. Soon Toth would be like a lot of other people Swann had known.

  Stone-cold dead.

  Until tonight, he’d never enjoyed the prospect of killing. It simply was part of the job, like lying and cheating and living on the slimy edge of what passed for civilization.

  Tonight was different.

  Tonight he was looking forward to killing someone.

  Swann parked his car a block from the Beverly Wilshire. He entered the hotel through a side door. There was some kind of convention banquet that night. The hotel’s public places were crowded with fancy ladies wearing cocktail dresses and lavish jewelry, and fat men wearing tuxedos and lavish toupees.

  On the surface, none of the people looked worth a second glance from Swann. Even so, he spent ten minutes watching people flow back and forth through the lobby. Nobody looked like a threat. More important, nobody looked like he was working hard to avoid looking like a threat.

  Satisfied, Swann casually checked that his loose, lightweight jacket still covered the butt of his gun. He headed for the elevator, walking like a man who knew just where he was going. The elevator stopped on every floor, losing people, gaining people. None of the hallways were empty.

  He decided to go straight to Toth’s floor rather than get off below or above and take the stairwell. There were too many people milling around for anyone to remember him.

  Toth’s room was at the end of a long, quiet hall. It was the last room before the emergency stairway.
Outside the door, Swann paused for a moment, listening. The door was thick, but he could make out two voices. One female. One male.

  Swann had heard Damon Hudson speak only a few words in the limousine, but the resonances coming through the door were right for Hudson’s age and voice. So was the situation.

  It would be like Toth to plot a double-cross while Swann was in the front seat of the limousine and she was in the backseat with Hudson. It would be a rare triple. She’d betray her partner. She’d betray Hudson. Then she’d get Hudson to betray himself by being seduced by his blackmailer.

  Quietly Swann slid the key into the door lock. Before he could turn the key, he felt the cold steel circle of a gun barrel press against the warm skin behind his ear.

  Instinctively he froze, all rage forgotten.

  For the first time since he’d left Laurel, Swann started thinking clearly. None of the thoughts comforted him. He’d lost control of the game at a time when losing and dying were the same thing.

  Grimly Swann hoped that Cruz Rowan was better at protecting Laurel than her father had been.

  “Finish what you were doing,” a man’s voice said from behind Swann. “Open the door and walk on in.”

  From the corner of his eye, Swann saw a white shirt, muted red tie, and a dark suit coat. Bill Cahill.

  “Nice clothes,” Swann said softly. “How did I miss you?”

  “Never mind, asshole. Just go on in.”

  “You don’t want to cause the kind of trouble that would come if you shot me.”

  “Don’t worry. It’d be no trouble at all.”

  The muzzle bored into Swann’s skull. He hesitated, weighing his chances. They weren’t bad. His captor was standing too close. Every time he prodded Swann with the gun, it put the gun within Swann’s reach.

  Sooner or later Cahill would get truly careless. Then Swann would take the gun and teach Cahill the kind of lesson he’d be lucky to survive.

  But first there was Claire Toth.

  Swann turned the key and pushed the hotel room door open. Toth and Damon Hudson were sitting together on a couch facing the door. The Ruby Surprise was on the table in front of them.

  When Swann and Cahill came in like Siamese twins, Hudson and Toth looked up. Their expressions were only mildly interested.