Ring of Truth (Devlin Security Force Book 2)

by Vaughan, Susan

  To his amazement, Mara’d been the one to quote his demand for casual, no-involvement sex. So why the hell did that bug him? He’d gotten what he wanted. More than once. His body was singing hallelujah. But casual? Not hardly. So he spent the rest of the night in this bed alone, wanting her and wondering why she’d fought her orgasm in the shower. Afterward she hadn’t held back. He ought to decide if he really wanted to know what the hell was going on.

  He swung out of bed, lowering his feet to the plush dark red carpet. He pulled on jeans and a Henley and hit the bathroom. No sounds throughout the condo, only the distant intrusion of a jet overhead and a car horn below. If Mara was still sleeping, he should wake her. Time to plan strategy.

  He padded barefoot down the hall. Rounding the corner to the master suite’s door, he skidded to a halt. The door stood ajar. Was it open before? The suite contained its own bath so no need to use the hall one.

  “Mara?”

  No answer.

  He pushed the door inward and entered the room. Bedcovers tossed back on the king-size bed, suitcase open on a luggage rack, bathroom door wide, toiletries lined up on the vanity. He called her name again.

  Silence.

  No reason to panic. Yeah, she’d backed off after dinner but she hadn’t split. Not without her clothing. Without the code, nobody could’ve gotten in here and carted her off. So where the hell did the woman go? She knew running around out there was dangerous. His gut started a slow freeze.

  He dashed to the other bedroom and jammed on his boots before stomping down the stairs. Where he was going to look for her, he wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t just pace the floor. He opened the door to see—her.

  “Thanks,” Mara said brightly, a big smile on her face. “I was having trouble managing everything.”

  He shoved the door, barely caught it before it slammed. Was about to ream her out for scaring the bejesus out of him when he spied what she was carrying—a fiberboard coffee holder containing two humongous Starbucks cups and a paper bag marked José’s Bagels. He closed his mouth with an audible click of teeth.

  “The kitchen has no food, nothing except state-of-the-art equipment. DSF’s people must order supplies delivered when they plan to be here.” She handed him the coffee and bagels before depositing her bag and jacket on a nearby chair.

  He gripped the breakfast. Otherwise he’d drag her into his arms to reassure himself she was okay. Judging from the speed at which she’d run away from him after dinner last night, she wouldn’t welcome an embrace. If ever again. Smarter for both of them.

  “Going out alone here is dangerous,” he instructed. “Those two scumbags know we saw them yesterday. They might think we can identify them. And what if the colonel’s men found a way to follow us?”

  When she angled her head at his harsh tone, he tried to relax his features. But she merely smiled indulgently, no more frightened by the Murder One scowl than if he’d launched into a lullaby. Although his singing might make her run screaming.

  “You were worried about me. I’m sorry,” she said gently, as if to a child. “I didn’t want to wake you until I could offer coffee. Everything bagels and cream cheese. Toasted. Still warm.” Her beaming smile disarmed his ire. She looked good enough to eat, in slim jeans and a scoop-necked red top and with her ebony hair draped forward over her shoulders.

  Immediately he felt the tension drain from his gut. “Don’t go off alone again, okay?”

  “Only to see my mom.” She pried the food containers from his death grip and whipped to the kitchen. “Although I can’t imagine how any of those guys would be able to find us at this address. And I went out the rear of the building.”

  His gut knotted again. Then her thoughtful gesture hit him and he followed her to the kitchen. “Hey, thanks for the breakfast. I need the coffee.”

  Mara sighed her relief as she set down the containers on the dining table. “Colombian, black, the way you like it.” She gathered napkins—no paper ones in this kitchen, only dark-blue cloth—knives, and two square blue plates and arranged them on the table.

  She’d managed to keep her cool in spite of wanting to throw herself at him as soon as he opened the door. She flipped the lids off both venti paper cups and inhaled the chocolate steam of her non-fat, no-whip, no-foam mocha before she drank a bracing swallow. Totally sweet he’d been worried about her. She grinned.

  His lovemaking had banished the horrors of yesterday and replaced fear with pleasure. He was tender and sexy, forceful and demanding, and she yielded to what her body and soul wanted. Needed. She could fight this tangling of her mind and heart. Sure.

  “Mara, you can’t play ignorant,” he said. “At least some of the bad guys have known our every move so far. Why not now?”

  “That same question haunts me. That and the sight of Danita Inglish bleeding on her kitchen floor.” She slid his coffee toward him.

  He lifted the cup and took a healthy drink. “Idiotic pretentious name. Why venti and not extra large?”

  “Venti is Italian for twenty, as in twenty ounces.”

  “Pretentious.” He glared at the cup. “Like I said.”

  No argument from her on that. She returned to his other question. “Only that detective knows where we are.”

  “And Thomas Devlin.” Shaking his head, he slathered cream cheese on his bagel.

  They needed a distraction. He’d never been to San Francisco before so... “We shouldn’t bother Danita’s daughter until tomorrow. We have the day until I meet Mom for dinner. How’d you like to see the city?”

  ***

  Seeing the city suited Cort just fine. Spending the day with this beautiful woman walking by his side and putting their quest on hold was strategy of a sort. Mara had phoned to arrange a meeting tomorrow with Inglish’s daughter. To their surprise, Ellen Plante didn’t slam down the phone. She sounded eager to talk to them.

  The day was theirs. If Mara wanted to pretend nothing odd happened between them last night, he’d go with it. For now. But he had questions.

  She set a mean pace in green sneakers that amazingly matched her jacket. She carried another of those big-ass bags she favored, this one somehow strapped onto her back as a backpack. About nine o’clock, they’d set out on foot toward public transit. As the morning wore on, the heavy blanket of fog retreated to the bay but a cloud cover kept the day cool.

  “We’ll hit the highlights if it’s okay with you,” she said. “I haven’t done this since Mom moved here six years ago.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The glass window of a Chinese noodle restaurant reflected nobody paying them undue attention. No sign of the Clone Brothers. Or anybody with a military demeanor. As they passed the Starbucks where Mara bought their coffees, he checked a man watching the crowd from beneath the small awning. Nondescript, well dressed, not somebody he’d seen before, but Centaur could afford to pay local thugs. When a blonde woman ran up to the man, the two embraced and set off together across the street.

  “We clear? No bad guys?” Mara said.

  Reading his mind again or had he sighed in relief? He didn’t know. Her intuition ought to bother him but for some reason he liked it. “So far.”

  She laughed.

  “I keep thinking about the bad guys, who they are, how many, what they know.”

  “What do we know so far?”

  “Spoken like a true research geek,” he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. He liked the way her mind worked. “We know this shadowy Centaur syndicate wants the jewels. Centaur could have sent dozens of agents for all we know. The Gramornia royal family sent an agent into the country to retrieve them. And the rival prime minister sent security police to stop me from retrieving them.”

  “We don’t know which group killed Danita Inglish or if it’s the same people who killed Dante Falco.” When he started to comment on her change of heart, she continued, “Yes, I do think he was murdered. Definitely. After yesterday, how could I not?” Her shoulders moved in a shudder of rev
ulsion.

  “I’m betting the violence is on Centaur. Devlin said the group is ruthless,” Cort said. “Although Colonel Yerik would have no qualms about murder, he has more reason to leave our suspects alone than he does to attack them. The royals might have their spy investigate, even tail us, but murder? I doubt it. But it’s all speculation.”

  “So it boils down to we don’t know much at all. Two possible accomplices are dead. We haven’t found any ring pieces. Or any proof of my dad’s innocence.”

  He shook his head. No, they had zip. And so did the FBI. But the domino he’d set in action should take down one set of bad guys before too long. If all went according to plan. If not, the downside yanked on that frozen knot in his gut.

  They turned left on the wide boulevard of Market Street and continued to the cable-car turntable at the foot of Powell, where one of the tram-like cars was just making its rotation. The brown uniformed gripman maneuvered a tall handle to walk the wooden turntable around, turning the cable car with it. A crowd of tourists snapped pictures of the operation.

  “We taking that?” He nodded toward the red-and-wood-toned vehicle with San Francisco Municipal Railway on the side.

  At the small-boy excitement he couldn’t keep from his tone, she gave him a knowing smile. “A great way to see the city, nice and slow, up and down the hills. We can get off at the edge of Chinatown, board again later, and ride it the rest of the way.”

  They paid the three-dollar each fare and climbed aboard. They grabbed places at the end of a wooden bench facing outward. When a family of four wedged onto the seat, Cort scooted close to Mara and curved his arm around her shoulders.

  No rumble of an internal-combustion engine, only clatter and click as the cable car rolled along its metal rails. The climb up the steep incline of Powell Street offered a spectacular view of the city.

  “An Englishman who made wire cable for mines came up with the idea for the cable cars,” she said. “When a horse-drawn streetcar slipped on a wet hillside, he saw the horses killed and wanted to prevent more accidents. The first cable-car line went into service in 1873. At one time there were cable car lines all over the city but the 1906 earthquake destroyed many. Now the city has only two lines. There’s a museum farther along the route if you want to see how they work.”

  “You know I would.” Her eagerness to show him exactly what he’d enjoy warmed him more than the rays of sunlight peeking through the cloud cover.

  Casual? Hardly. Shit.

  ***

  Rousso buried his nose in his guide book and pulled the baseball cap he had just purchased lower over his face. Pretending to plan his afternoon, he backed deeper into the shade of a restaurant awning from where he could see his targets watching the lazy antics of sea lions.

  He could not find their hotel but tracking credit-card purchases led him to the street. Luckily he spotted them this morning. Crowds made it easy to follow at a distance. He did not find Inglish’s ring piece in her tawdry apartment, which meant Jones and Marton did not have it either. So what were they doing? Was this sightseeing day a ploy to fool him into thinking they had given up?

  His cell phone buzzed. When he saw the caller’s number, his blood chilled. His boss, the head of Centaur. The man known only as Z had created the sprawling network in only a few short years, with contacts in many countries. Some said his family used to have money but lost everything in a scandal. Others said he was ex U.S. military. Whatever the truth, Rousso feared the man more than he admired him.

  Before the phone could ring again, he punched the button. “Rousso here.”

  “You’ve called attention to yourself,” the Centaur boss said without preamble. The gruff quality of his voice put Rousso in mind of a knife being sharpened. “I don’t like publicity of any sort but witnesses? News broadcasts?”

  “I can explain, Mr. Z. No one—”

  “Fuck the explanation! Your attack on the ambulance was on television. CNN, Fox, all the networks. No more publicity. Do you fucking understand?”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed painfully as he swallowed the bile creeping up his throat. He nodded automatically. “Yes, sir. No more fallout. I promise you.”

  “Where are Jones and the woman now?”

  He glanced from his shade to where they had their heads together. “They are standing on the dock at Fisherman’s Wharf.”

  “Fisherman’s Wharf? Details.”

  “I followed them to Chinatown, where Jones bought trinkets, souvenirs, and she bought a bag. My taxi followed their cable car back down the hill to here, where they strolled the shops of Pier 39 and ate Dungeness crab at one of the seaside restaurants. Now they watch sea lions. Sir.” He braced himself for Z’s reaction.

  “Sightseeing?” Z’s voice boomed, the commanding voice according to rumor he’d perfected during his military career. “What about Inglish’s ring piece?”

  “They do not seem to be searching. But I do not believe they possess it already,” he hastened to add.

  Silence. Rousso wiped a palm on his trouser leg. Wished he knew more about Z.

  “You have two ring pieces, correct?” Z asked.

  “Yes, sir. I obtained the thief Falco’s and I have access to another.”

  “Then quit dicking around and get the one Jones has. He has the Jeweler’s or his own. Three should be enough to lead us to the treasure. I need those crown jewels. I have five bidders who are on the phone to me hourly. Are you able to do what I ask?”

  Rousso fervently hoped so. His future depended on it. He had not attempted to accost Jones, except when he and Willy needed to escape yesterday. Jones had the hard look of prison, was big and strong. Judging from yesterday, he knew how to fight. “Obtaining Jones’s ring piece will mean eliminating him. Maybe the woman.”

  “She works for Devlin, right?”

  Rousso frowned, perplexed by the non sequitur and more so by the smile he heard in Z’s voice. “She does.”

  “Then do her.”

  Chapter 19

  Mara looked up from the crowded floats and inhaled the sea air redolent with salt and seaweed. In the distance was the Golden Gate Bridge, a ray of afternoon sunlight through the clouds glinting rusty red off its girders.

  “Too long since I came to enjoy this view.” So far they’d laughed and enjoyed the day without anything more serious than his occasional check for someone tailing them.

  Sightseeing and talking about the city’s history kept things light, the way she wanted it. Even with her slight slip when he’d fingered a silk scarf in one of the Chinatown shops.

  “For someone special back in Maine?” she’d said.

  “Office manager at the woodworking school.”

  “Ah,” she said. The gorgeous design featured a dragon in brilliant blues and reds and would look fabulous with her black suit. Not that she’d let on. She had no cause to be possessive, no right to care. “Any woman would like that scarf.”

  He tossed her the dimpled grin that always weakened her knees. “Jealous?”

  His blatant male satisfaction at her obvious attitude further prickled. Her own fault. She’d been too transparent, but she pasted on a sunny smile. “Just curious.”

  “The woman runs everything, a good woman to keep happy. She’s also married and has five kids ages five to sixteen.”

  Relief doused her ire. Dammit, no cause to feel relief either. “Then by all means, buy her that scarf.”

  In the end he’d also selected key chains depicting the Chinatown Gate and other city landmarks for the kids while Mara bought a handbag. They’d spent an hour in the Cable Car Museum before continuing their ride downhill.

  She pointed across the water. “Over there is Ghirardelli Square, where the chocolate factory used to be. Now it’s mostly shops. Beyond it is Pacific Heights.”

  “There to our left, Telegraph Hill?” Cort asked. “What’s the tower?”

  She nodded, pleased he was as interested in the historical surroundings as she was. “Coit Tower, bui
lt in the 1930’s to honor the fire brigades, as they used to call them. The top is rumored to be shaped like a fire hose nozzle but I don’t see the resemblance.”

  “Guess you’d have to be closer. Or be a fire fighter.” He pointed to where one of the smaller sea lions tried to push its way into the crush of animals on a float. The youngster flopped into the water with a big splash. It swam to another float, more crowded than the last. Sea lions piled on top of each other, their massive weight nearly sinking the floats.

  “These guys disappeared for a while but came back and are again a nuisance,” she said. “Too many of them but killing them is illegal. They climb on boats and private docks as well as here where they’re welcome.”

  “A twist on that old joke about where a gorilla sleeps.” Cort slung his arm around her and kissed her temple.

  Tucked close to him, she felt protected and at peace, a moment of calm in their dangerous quest.

  “Can’t see Chinatown from here,” he said.

  “No, it’s back the other way.”

  “Your mom must not live in Chinatown or you’d have mentioned it earlier.”

  “Of course not,” she said, arching away to gape up at him. “Mom’s Korean.”

  “Sorry. Dumb mistake.” He held up his hands in surrender.

  “No, my fault for being overly sensitive.” She returned to his embrace. “The ethnic separations are ancient. Chinatown is exclusively Chinese. Not many other Asians live or work there. LA has a Koreatown but not San Francisco. The main Korean enclaves are out in the Avenues, near Golden Gate Park. That’s where Mom lives with my aunt and uncle.”

  The breeze blew her hair into her face and she brushed it away. Too long. Since they’d begun their search, she hadn’t taken time for a cut or styling.

  He released her and turned to lean against the railing. A tress fell across her breast, and he rubbed the strands between his fingers. “Beautiful. Bouncy and alive.”

  She met his eyes and felt herself falling into their gray depths, like losing herself in an impenetrable fog. He made her feel too much. He bent forward and their mouths touched and fitted together for a greedy moment. She gripped his shoulders and clung to him, diving into his addictive taste.