He wasn’t worried about Katherine straying. Even the thought of causing a scandal made her break out in a rash. But it didn’t stop men from trying to gain her attention.
“Maybe she and Harv ran off together.” Barb smiled her snarky smile, but it looked strained. She’d followed him in his search, and usually he enjoyed her company and her pithy attitude. She flirted with him, and he wanted his wife to know other women found him attractive. Barb was fun and energetic, but right now he wished she were somewhere else.
Like making sure her own husband didn’t stray.
“Did you call Harvey?” he asked Barb.
She shrugged a delicate shoulder, the lines on her neck revealing her age. “I left him a voice mail. I expect he chartered a helicopter and went up some mountain somewhere. We had a tiff.”
The back of Ed’s neck grew hot. Harvey was rich as Crusoe, which Barb loved to remind everyone within shouting distance. Well, he’d better not have taken Ed’s damn wife with him. Anger and resentment grated at him. What had Harvey Montgomery ever done to deserve his cash? Not a damn thing. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Suddenly a wave of jealousy hit him. What if Katherine was with him? What if she was having an affair and he was too dumb to realize it?
Christ. He felt dizzy and his knees went from under him and he collapsed to the bed, sinking his face into his hands.
He felt fingers in his hair. “Don’t worry Ed, darling. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”
He thrust her hand away. His phone rang and he snatched it up. It was Harvey fucking Montgomery. “Where the hell are you and where is my wife?”
A stranger replied, “Funny you should ask that, Mr. Plantain.”
Ed pulled back for a moment in surprise, then he put the phone back to his ear. “Who is this?” he demanded.
“Shut up and listen. I have Katherine.” The voice was low and calm. Unease hit Ed dead center in the chest. “If you want to see your wife alive again, you need to do the following. Get Anna Silver to Vancouver Island by 1400 hours tomorrow. If you fail to produce your wife’s daughter, I will kill Katherine.” No inflection, no emotion. “If the cops find out, I’ll kill Katherine. If for a moment I think you’re trying to screw with me, I will kill Katherine.”
Who the hell was this? Were they serious? Was it a joke? “Can’t you just go to Anna’s house?”
“Yeah, I think I might have already tried that, Einstein.”
Oh, my God. “Is Harvey there too?”
A small huff of amusement. “I’ll call you again with instructions of where to take Anna when you get her, alone. And I suggest you keep this to yourself, Ed, because I’d sure hate for you to make a mistake you can’t fix.”
The man hung up and Ed stared at the phone, shaking, wondering if it was a sick joke. Then he got another incoming message with a photo attached. He opened it and flinched as he saw Katherine and Harvey lying next to one another, bound hand and foot.
Barb looked over his shoulder. “Dear God. We need to call the police.”
“No cops.”
She stuck her hands on her hips. “Look, Ed. Harvey and I are probably getting a divorce. In fact, I’d be far better off financially if I pretended I never saw that photograph. But they’ve been kidnapped—you can’t just run around thinking you know how to handle this.”
Her sharp features were locked on his, showing more compassion and understanding than he’d ever imagined her capable of. He nodded. He knew exactly what he had to do.
Fire radiated across Jack Panetti’s back, but what he noticed first was that god-awful smell. Antiseptic and sick people. His stomach rebelled. There was a constant irritating beep. Where the hell was he? He squinted at pale blue walls.
“He’s coming around,” someone yelled. Too damn loud.
He turned his head away from the noise and closed his eyes. Damn. His insides felt like jelly and his brain so drugged he could barely lift his eyelids. He tried again. Saw a stranger leaning over him. He knew the guy was a cop from the cheap suit and excess baggage under his eyes.
“How you feeling, Mr. Panetti?”
“Like I’ve been shot. Again.” He lifted his head long enough to wriggle his toes. Thank God. Being paralyzed was what he’d most feared when he’d slipped in and out of consciousness in the ambulance and his lower body had gone numb. The fact his legs worked made him want to dance, though he wasn’t quite up to that yet.
A half smile tugged on the detective’s lips. “Third time according to the docs.”
Jack nodded and then held still, waiting for the world to stop exploding. “Twice as a cop.” Probably the unluckiest cop alive. Or maybe the luckiest, depending on your perspective. Jack had always been a glass-half-full kind of guy. He saw his secretary and the Denver office’s computer guru, hanging around the doorway. He shot them a concerned look, and tried to mutely apologize for causing them grief.
“What happened?” he asked. His tongue was thick with the taste of anesthetic.
“We’re hoping you can tell us.”
A swift image of a uniformed police officer jerking on his feet flashed through his brain. Oh, God. All of a sudden he was grateful for the pain in his back because it meant he wasn’t dead. Jack closed his eyes. “The cop?” he asked. The heaviness in his brain wasn’t all drug related.
“Dead.” The detective’s voice was quiet with the knowledge that he could have been that cop. Jack could have been that cop too. The guy had never stood a chance. “What can you tell us?”
He sucked in a deep breath, but maybe he had a punctured lung because it didn’t seem to be helping. “I was staking out the home of the head of security for the Holladay Foundation.” He reeled off the address. The cop exchanged a look with someone across the bed standing behind Jack. He didn’t have the energy to turn and look. “I was about to call it quits when some guy climbed in the backseat, put a gun to my head, and told me to drive.” Shame welled through him. “I couldn’t believe how lucky I was when that patrol car came up on the highway. I sideswiped him to get his attention.”
He’d gotten the man killed and every person in the room knew it.
The detective was writing in his notebook. “You see a face?”
Jack frowned. “Maybe. It was dark.” He needed to get in touch with his client. Brent Carver was up against something bigger than either of them had imagined. Hell, he hoped the guy was still alive.
“Why were you watching these guys?”
Jack’s face distorted as he tried to smile. “It was just a hunch. A guy died under mysterious circumstances on the subway last week—”
“The guy who claimed he was stealing their money?” The detective perked up.
Jack nodded. “I was just trying to make sure it was an accident, is all. You need to talk to their security people.”
“The death was deemed accidental, if I remember right.”
It hurt to talk but Jack was grateful to be alive. That cop was dead. “You need to look harder.”
“Yeah, try telling that to the state attorney’s office,” the young detective muttered under his breath. “Did you see the shooter come out of that house?”
Jack shook his head. “Did he have a family? The uniform?”
The detective stared at the white sheets of Jack’s bed. “Wife and two boys.”
A sharp clawing pain was reflected on the heart monitor.
“Who’s your client?” This voice was harder, condemnation in every word. It was always the quiet ones you had to watch. He turned his head carefully. A female detective stood by the window. A tall woman with short-cropped copper-colored hair. All angles rather than curves.
“Can’t tell you that.”
The woman leaned over him and Jack got a face full of bitter disapproval. “We’ve got a dead cop—”
“And your client could be in danger,” the younger guy said with more tact.
Jack pressed the call button for the nurse. He never revealed a client. “If I think it’ll f
ind the bastard who murdered that cop, I’ll tell you. In the meantime I’ll see what my team can dig up.”
The witch’s eye twitched. “Interfering with a police investigation is a criminal offense—”
Jack’s temper spiked. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t want that bastard more than you do?”
“Keep us informed if you get any solid leads, OK?” The younger guy was obviously the peacemaker and the brains of the organization.
“Sure.” Jack held the redhead’s glare as she backed to the door. “Have a nice day, Detectives.”
From the way her eyes shot daggers at him, he figured it was a good thing he was already flat on his ass. When they were gone, his secretary, Ramona Stone, and his technology guru, Trace Maddox, came into the room. “Thanks for rescuing me from the ballbuster.”
“Hey, you should have stayed asleep. That detective is a bitch on wheels.” Trace’s fervent words suggested they’d shared some quality time.
Ramona put her hand on his forehead and then kissed his cheek. “Glad you decided to rejoin the living.”
“Me too.” He leaned his head against the pillow and smiled at the nurse who approached. Then he faced Ramona and asked, “Did you speak to the client?”
“He called a few times, but…” Ramona held up a newspaper, and there was Davis Silver’s daughter on the front page. Shit. “Her boyfriend was found dead in her house. Cops are asking for any information on her whereabouts.”
She was supposed to be with his client.
“See if you can contact the client. We need to keep working his case.”
“No work for you,” the nurse told him sternly.
“We’re on it,” Ramona told him softly. He caught her hand.
“Low profile. No following these cowboys around.” He glanced at Trace. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Trace tipped his cowboy hat.
“These people must have left some kind of online trail.”
Trace smiled. “I’m on it, boss. Relax.” He winked at the nurse. “Enjoy the view.”
Her hair wasn’t so much blonde as honey brown. The shade made her dark eyes and brows stand out, and it suited her. Brent had just grunted.
Since that burst of desire in the shower, they’d managed to find a place to coexist between the scorching attraction and blind fear. An unspoken time-out, detached from the reality that had become so terrifying over the last forty-eight hours. But Anna wasn’t finished with Brent Carver. Not by a long shot.
They wandered down to the campsite shop and Brent found cheap watercolors and a sketch pad. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning, but she doubted he’d ever had a real Christmas. She remembered the boys in that photograph in Brent’s home and compared it to her own idyllic childhood. The memories seemed far away, but still inspired a wistful sense of longing.
She found a paperback and they picked up sunscreen and a cheap bathing suit for her and a couple of beach towels. She also grabbed a big floppy hat and plastered a smile on her face, because she didn’t want anyone to recognize her from the grim portrait on the front of the newspaper.
They strolled slowly to the beach, not holding hands but in step and almost touching. They headed through the woods by their site and found a quiet spot on the warm sand. There were people around, loads of kids, and the occasional dog, but no one paid them any attention.
“Do you think we’re safe?” She spread her towel and dropped to the sand with her book.
“This is the last place a bad guy is going to expect to find us. Hell, I can’t believe it myself.”
He went down to the water and filled a small plastic cup. Then he sat beside her and started sketching. She watched him doing a wash of the sky. Even a few brush strokes revealed his incredible talent. He wore those same board shorts and a T-shirt they’d picked up yesterday with a zebra on the front. Didn’t matter what he wore, he always looked good. The muscles in his arms flexed as he painted. He set one picture to dry while he started another, almost feverish in his intensity.
“You’ve missed it.”
He caught her eye briefly. “It’s my drug of choice.” The calming satisfaction of getting a fix relaxed the tired lines of his face.
Anna felt bad. She taken him from his home, put him in danger, and deprived him of his passion. A lucrative passion. His livelihood. What would happen if he ended up back inside? The thought squeezed her lungs so tight she could barely breathe.
It wasn’t a game. This was life and death and years in prison.
She buried her nose in her book and tried to read, but as the sun rose she drifted off to sleep. When she woke, Brent was standing next to the water’s edge throwing a stick for a chocolate Lab that danced around his legs, making the water splash and both of them grin happily.
She wandered down to join him, the sand hot against the soles of her feet.
He launched the stick and the dog leaped into the water.
“Who’s your new friend?”
“Just some mutt.” But he didn’t fool her.
“Why don’t you get a dog? You obviously love them.”
One mile-wide shoulder curled up.
Then she got it. “You deny yourself all the things that make you happy. And you’re scared you’ll have to abandon it if anything happens to you.”
He shot her a scowl, but kept his mouth shut.
The sound of excited children’s voices bounced around the lake and a bunch of them ran out of the trees.
“There he is! Boomer. Boomer!” one kid called.
Anna noticed Brent’s mouth tighten with disappointment, though he tried to hide it.
“You’re denying yourself some basic companionship in the unlikely event—”
“It’s not that unlikely.”
Because of her. Her stomach cramped and she folded her arms over her waist as the kids and dog converged.
“This your dog?” Brent asked the kids. He held the stick hostage as the dog danced around.
“Yes, sir, we’ve been searching for him all over the camp,” the eldest, a boy about twelve, piped up. The dog kept wagging his tail, mouth open, eyes hopeful as he eyed the stick. The boy wrestled the dog into its collar and started jerking the leash.
Anna winced.
“Next time he escapes, check out the beach first,” Brent called. “He’s a water dog.” His voice trailed off as they dragged the poor animal away.
Anna reached a hand around Brent’s elbow. “You should get a dog. Finn would watch it for you if anything happened—”
“I don’t want a damn dog,” he snarled, back to being the bitter man she’d first encountered.
She searched for something to say, but Brent had withdrawn and locked himself behind those big stone walls. He jerked off his T-shirt. “I’m going for a swim. Want to come?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t swum in years. Not since the night I almost drowned.”
He stared at her for a long moment but didn’t say anything. She’d made the mistake of reminding him of the person he usually showed the world and he was rebuilding his armor. He handed her the car keys from his pockets. “I’ll be back in an hour. Don’t go anywhere,” he warned.
Anna watched him walk away and then dive into the gentle lapping water. This was how he got all those muscles, she realized. Swimming. He cut across the surface of the lake, never seeming to tire. After a few minutes of standing there gawking at him, she went back to her towel. His sketch pad was closed but she saw a page edged in blue sticking out. Eyeing the distant swimming figure, she eased the paint box off the top and opened the pad.
The first four paintings were of the lake, each similar but different. The fifth picture was of her, dozing beneath her oversized hat. It shocked her. He’d drawn someone tranquil, serene. Soft lines, long slender legs that belied her short stature. His view of her was unsettling. It wasn’t how she saw herself—uptight, meticulous. His painting showed someone she wanted to be: relaxed, beautiful.
That body made her realize she’d always dated boys. Boys who did as they were told. Boys she could control.
Brent Carver was no boy.
And he was determined to hold her at arm’s length even though they both knew the time they had together was short. She doubted she’d ever meet another man like Brent. The question was, what was she going to do about it?
CHAPTER 13
Katherine groggily opened her eyes and rolled her head to see where she was. Ugh. On a hard concrete floor that made her feel every one of her fifty years. A curved tin roof arched overhead and someone watched TV about thirty feet from where she’d been dumped.
She tried to move her arms, but they were tied behind her back and her ankles cinched close together. The position and lack of blood flow was excruciating.
“Katherine,” someone whispered.
Harvey.
She twisted the other way, trying to ignore the pain in her bound wrists.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered back. “Are you?”
He nodded, but he sported a ripped shirt and a bloodstained swollen nose where someone had either punched him or introduced him face-first to a wall.
“Why are they doing this? What do they want?” Hysteria crept into her voice and her heart lunged.
He shook his head, but made the movement small as he kept one eye on the guy watching TV. “I don’t know.”
“I’m not rich,” she hissed, and it came out like an accusation.
He raised one brow. “You’re the one they stuffed in the van. They just grabbed me because I was drawing too much attention to them.”
She frowned. It didn’t make any sense.
“I told Barb I wanted a divorce last night.” He looked around the warehouse. “But I don’t think she had time to organize this.”
Katherine opened her mouth in shock. He’d actually done it. Left his wife. And thought she might kidnap him for money. That was not a happy marriage. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. She knew she’d had something to do with his decision, although she didn’t know exactly what.
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