by Lorna Tedder
But how would a bodyguard for a child know anything about my life?
“It beats not having a plan,” I said lamely.
“Just an illusion. To make you feel in control. Because you can’t just let go and live. Can’t you see where it’s gotten you? You had a destiny and you’ve failed it. You haven’t taken your power.You’re the descendant of some of the most powerful women who ever lived, and look at you. Nothing but a common thief.”
“A thief? Yes. Common? No.”
“Okay, yeah, you’re good.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the driver’s door. “Maybe one of the best as far as art thieves are concerned. But for how long?”
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“As long as I have to be. I don’t have any choice but to be the best at what I do.”
“Then change what you do.”
“If I had any choice, I already would have.”
Then, as if reading my mind again, he added, “You always have a choice. I’m asking you to make a choice to help me. To help me to help you and to help me to help that little boy. That’s all I’m asking for now.”
“And if I say no, you’ll kill me.”
Frowning at an imaginary spot on the street, he nodded. “I was going to say that I have no choice in the matter, but I do. If I can’t save you, I’m to kill you—
and rather than let the Adrianos catch you, I will choose to kill you myself.”
“Oh, yes,” I spat back. “And you’d do me the favor of ‘making it quick.’”
He caught my gaze. “Because of who you are—
what you are—it would be an honor to cheat the Adrianos of your death.” He swallowed. “And because there are many more lives at stake here than yours and mine.”
“Like whose?”
He nodded toward Benny, oblivious and innocent in the backseat. “That little boy, for one. Sometimes you can’t do anything for your own future, so you have to do things for the children.”
Eric and I stared at each other for a moment. I caught a brief glimpse of pain beneath the steely exterior and wondered if it was his or merely a reflection of my own that I was looking at.
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He wrenched his head in the direction of a sleek yellow motorcycle parked down the street. “I can’t take the boy home on that. Besides, I’m sure it’s wired with a tracker. I just can’t find it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay. But I’m driving.” Besides, he wasn’t bad to look at. Maybe if I tried really hard, I mused, I could tolerate having a firm-bodied man riding shotgun.
He ducked into the passenger’s seat while I buckled myself behind the steering wheel, checking once in the mirror to see that Benny was still entertained. I made a three-point turn in the narrow street and headed back the way I’d come.
“How long has Simon been tracking me?” I asked as we sped down a narrow street devoid of pedestrians and vendors.
“I don’t know. Longer than I’ve been with them. A few years maybe. Every time you came to the compound and Simon’s security staff searched your car for bombs? That was more than enough time to plant a tracking device.”
Damn them. Always making a big deal about security, when I was the one being violated. Was I ever truly off the grid where the Adrianos were concerned?
I had to believe I was, especially since they’d lost me for the six weeks it had taken to return with the Joan of Arc artifact. So it was possible to hide even when they knew my identity and most of my aliases.
Eric caught me eyeing the boy in the backseat.
“You’ve a motherly streak in you,” he observed. “That surprises me.”
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I felt my cheeks grow warm. Motherhood was something I didn’t discuss. “He’s a great kid,” I managed to say. “You…you have children of your own?” I wanted to take the microscope off me.
Eric squared his jaw and said nothing for a few seconds. Then finally he answered, “Benny’s my life.
At least until he’s a little older. Who knows? Maybe forever. Josh doesn’t trust him with anyone else, especially when he’s away on business.”
“I didn’t kidnap him. I swear. I don’t steal children, not even from raving lunatics like Pauline.”
Eric snorted. “Pauline doesn’t deserve that kid.”
I nodded my agreement. “I had no idea that he was even in the car until—”
“I know.” Eric twisted sideways in the seat to look at me. “Stop straining yourself. I know how Benny got into the backseat of your car.”
“You do? Because there’s no way he lugged that blanket all the way from the main house to the parking area by himself. He’s too little to even walk that far, let alone—”
“I put him there.”
“You what? ” I slowed the car to avoid hitting a businessman with a cell phone glued to his ear. An Adriano phone, no doubt.
“I know where the cameras are and where they aren’t.
It was easy to get him to your car, even before I saw Myrddin. Or you.”
“But why?” I braked too hard at an intersection, and automatically my hand shot out protectively to brace my passenger. My palm landed squarely on his chest. I Lorna Tedder
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blushingly noted the muscles underneath and pulled back. Eric shifted uncomfortably in his seat, equally surprised by my reflexes…or by my touch.
“You were leaving last night and I couldn’t,” he explained. “I knew you’d leave the compound sooner or later. I didn’t think Simon would have you executed last night. He still has use for you. Or did.” Eric took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Benny was safer with you. At least for last night. You know what they say.
Adrianos don’t die of natural causes. They live into ripe old age…if somebody doesn’t kill them first.”
“What about Max Adriano? The Duke’s father?
Simon said the old man had been hospitalized and wasn’t expected to live much longer.”
Eric stifled a chuckle. “That’s what Simon is telling everyone, isn’t it? The truth of the matter is that yes, Max Adriano was recently hospitalized—after an assassination attempt.”
I’d heard that. From Therese, one of Max’s secretaries, as well as from several other sources of mine. “I’ve heard, too, that he was dead.”
Eric nodded as I braked at another intersection and he braced himself discreetly. I fought the reflex and kept both hands on the wheel. I didn’t remember being quite as protective of the old man.
“Is it true? That Max Adriano died?” I frowned into the rearview mirror. The gray BMW I’d barely noticed earlier had reappeared. Were we being followed?
“I understand he was technically dead for a few seconds before they revived him. As for Simon, you 162
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shouldn’t believe everything he tells you.” Eric shrugged. “Obviously.”
“And the boy? You think someone would try to—” I glanced at Benny in the mirror, headphones over his ears as he stared out the automobile window, and I mouthed the words assassinate him?
Somberly Eric nodded. “It’s already been attempted.
I’m the only one who knows it. That’s why I had to get him out of there. I can’t tell Josh. Not yet. I have to do it face-to-face. And he won’t be back from Alexandria until tomorrow.”
“Why face-to-face?”
“Josh carries an Adriano phone. And though it’s forbidden for security to activate a family member’s cell phone, I can’t take the risk and hope it doesn’t really happen. I’d never make it back alive for a face-to-face conversation with my employer.”
Activate Josh’s phone. The words sank in. “Who would spy on Josh?”
Eric shot me a look and said nothing. Ah. He didn’t have to. Caleb.
I glanced again in the rearview mirror and sighed.
Good. The gray BMW was gone.
“For weeks now, Ca
leb has been enticing Benny to dangerous activities. Caleb knows he has to get past me to get to Benny, and I won’t let him get past me.”
From the tone of his voice, I didn’t doubt it for a minute.
“You’re saying Caleb’s been trying to, um…” I cut myself off in case Benny could hear us beyond the insulation of the headphones.
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“Yes. But Josh has been gone, and I can’t exactly go to the Duke with that kind of information, can I? I can go to Josh and only Josh. He trusts me.”
“And can he trust you?”
“Of course.” He gritted his teeth. “I’ve paid for the privilege. In blood.”
I desperately wanted to ask what he meant, but my intuition warned me not to. He was on thin ice, and I had the impression that if he cracked, I’d go down with him. I’d made my own sacrifices for the Adriano family.
I guessed I wasn’t the only one.
“You love the boy,” I said. A statement of fact, not a question.
“Yes.”
“Bodyguards shouldn’t become attached to their clients. It’s deadly for both of you.”
“Agreed, but I didn’t plan it. I thought my heart had been closed, but he got through, you know? I would lay down my life for that child. It’s not just my job. It’s my duty.” He turned away and stared out the window for at least a whole block. “If any of the Adrianos are ever going to live up to their public image as philanthropists, I’ll see to it that it’s that little boy. I won’t let them turn him into another Adriano clone.”
I smiled to myself. Nice sentiments. But what could one man do? I wondered as I pressed the accelerator a little harder. I strained for a glimpse in the mirror of the gray BMW. For a moment I thought I’d spotted it, but then I lost it.
“Why me?” I asked. “Why my car? Why last night?”
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He didn’t speak for several minutes. I thought he’d not heard me. Just as I started to rephrase my question, he cleared his throat.
“Last night, after I took Benny out to play hide-and-seek, I brought him to his mother for the evening. Most of the time, she doesn’t want to be bothered with him.
Benny cramps her style. Last night was one of those nights. Caleb offered to play with the boy instead. That in itself was unusual. He’s had nothing to do with Benny until this new girlfriend caught his attention.” He raised an eyebrow. “Scarlet Rubashka.”
“You don’t like Scarlet.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I don’t like or dislike her. She gets on my nerves, though, always asking questions about where and when I was born.”
I laughed. “Delving into your personality via your as-trological chart, was she?Yes, I’ve seen Scarlet in action.”
Eric curled his upper lip. “She said I was a Scorpio rising, whatever the hell that means. And that that explained everything. She never said what it explained, but I didn’t care for it.”
I shrugged. I liked Scarlet. She was vibrant and playful and intense with a hell of a sense of fashion. And too good for Caleb. There was something familiar about her that reminded me a little of Lilah, enough that I’d tried to take her under my wing, tried to warn her to be careful of Caleb. Instead she’d given me a cool shoulder.
She seemed friendly to everyone but me. But then, I’d told her some rather unbelievable details about her Lorna Tedder
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suitor. My own sexual preferences aren’t exactly vanilla, but Caleb’s habits could be deadly. Obviously he was keeping his kinkier side hidden from Scarlet.
That could mean only one thing: he really wanted to impress her.
“So Caleb’s found a potential wife. Is that it?” He wanted to get rid of Benny and replace him with an heir of his own?
“Possibly. But his affection for her does seem genuine. It’s Simon who doesn’t like her. Not a conversation passes between father and son that doesn’t include an argument over his focus on Scarlet Rubashka.”
“Last night,” I said, “I saw you leave with Benny to play a game. Later I saw Benny’s handprint on Caleb’s shirt.”
“Caleb had me dismissed for the evening.”
Hmm. Eric didn’t seem easily dismissed. He was hard to set aside in my mind, even under the current circumstances.
“Can Caleb do that? Dismiss you?”
“He can’t, no. But Pauline does have the authority to dismiss me for the evening so she can spend time with her son. Josh gave her that authority in his absence. But only because she’s the boy’s mother. While you were at the palazzo, all attention was on you and on the artifact you’d brought back. No one was watching Caleb. He took advantage of that. He played a game with his nephew, all right. I found the boy up on the scaffolding boards of the tower ruins. Not even within the walls of the tower. Just balanced up there with his blanket.”
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“On top of the tower? My God, that’s dangerous! He could have fallen.” Then it struck me, even before Eric could confirm it.
“More than dangerous. It’s intentional. Benny’s not allowed to play anywhere near there.”
I remembered the four ruined towers of the old castle that formed the foundation of the palazzo. In places, the stone had crumbled, so the Adrianos were having it refurbished in an attempt to buck it up to last another century or two, but the recent earthquakes had played havoc with the repairs. The towers were always in the distance, high above the other buildings in the compound. Caleb had taken me up onto one of the towers for a private dinner one night, when he’d been courting me. The view was stunning, with the Bay of Naples visible in one direction and Mount Vesuvius in another.
A fall from there would be deadly.
I glanced again in the backseat at the boy, then checked the mirror again for gray BMWs and found none. “How could anyone do that to a child? Especially…his own uncle?”
“It would have been deemed an accident. They would have said the boy had been playing hide-and-seek and fallen. Even his own mother would have believed it. But not me. Benny’s terrified of heights.”
“Then how did Caleb get him up there if he’s that scared?”
“He drugged him with cough syrup. With Pauline’s permission, of course, to give him a single dose to help Lorna Tedder
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a nonexistent case of the sniffles.” Eric’s upper lip curled in disgust. “Pauline doesn’t spend enough time with him to know if he’s sick or not.”
So that’s why Benny had slept through last night’s escape and the storm. I glanced in the rearview mirror again at Benny and then beyond to the street behind me.
“What’s wrong?” Eric asked.
I kept my eyes on the road ahead, made a quick right turn, sped up and then another right. The road behind me was clear.
I shook my head. “Nothing. I thought for a minute there that we were being followed.”
“We weren’t. I was watching, too.”
I smiled. Glad to know somebody had my back. That was a different feeling. I was used to doing it on my own.
“What are you smiling about?”
I shook my head. I didn’t smile much anymore. Not genuinely. Most of the time I went through life with a poker face, even when my knee wasn’t killing me.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”
Again a movement in my rearview mirror caught my attention. A gray BMW. Three men. “Yours?”
Eric discreetly checked out the side mirror. “No.
Yours?”
“Not unless Interpol just sent a whole entourage to pick me up. Which, I supposed, given my reputation, was entirely possible.”
“You want me to drive?”
Jeez. What was with all these men? They thought they were the only ones who could drive? First Myrddin 168
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and now Eric. Give Benny half a chance and he’d want to take over next!
; “I think I can handle it,” I said drily.
I watched for the next street to the right and spun the steering wheel, barely clearing the corner of an old stone church that was probably three hundred years old.
I fishtailed to the left, down an alley, and then threw the gears in Reverse, backing into a second alley. We waited a few seconds and the gray BMW passed. The men hadn’t seen us.
“Made it!” I grinned and reached playfully to squeeze Eric’s knee. “We made it.”
Eric gingerly lifted my hand from his leg and squashed it back onto the steering wheel. “Please don’t do that.”
“If you’re going to get persnickety about my driving—”
“No. Don’t use sex as a weapon with me.”
I stared. “Use sex as… What?” Had I heard him right?
He was a great-looking guy. Sexy and determined, if not a little too reserved. My attraction to him was natural.
“I didn’t touch you because I had a hidden agenda!”
“No?” He raised a single eyebrow. “All I know is that you’ve left a trail of men all over Europe and the States, each one of them a victim of your, er, feminine wiles.
To my knowledge, it’s all flirtation to get what you want, whatever artifact you’re after.” He squared his jaw and peered out the window at the garbage in the deserted alley. “And, after all, you were Caleb’s whore.
A woman with so much potential, and you sank so low.”
My jaw dropped. “Is…is that what you think I am?”
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He turned back to me, his gaze burning condemna-tion into my flesh. “Weren’t you?”
I shook my head and tried to speak, but nothing came out at first. “No! No. I…” Squeezing my eyes shut, I took a deep breath and found myself telling him the whole story, all about how Caleb had courted me and then nearly killed me for kicks. I don’t know what com-pelled me. I’d never told anyone else but Scarlet, and only then because I’d thought I could save her the same humiliation and danger. But I told him everything.
Every detail. I didn’t open my eyes until I’d finished. I couldn’t look at him.
“Aubrey.”
I scowled at the steering wheel and then above it at the entrance to the alley. I couldn’t face him.