by Dianna Love
Climbing out that window and down the side of this building to get out of here won’t be no picnic either.
When he reached the room, his stomach flipped over.
It was Bergman.
The snitch’s lungs were playing a familiar tune, the death rattle. Kung Fu had gutted Bergman with a quick X across his soft abdomen. Bergman was trying to whisper something.
Dingo dropped onto his knees to get close enough to hear, because they both knew calling an ambulance wouldn’t save him. “Why’d you come back, Berg?”
“Had ... no ... choice.”
Before Dingo could press him on that, Bergman said, “Three targets.” Wheeze, rattle. “Part of … big plan.”
“Where are the targets?” Dingo asked.
“L ...” Gurgle. “They ...” Bergman’s eyes rolled up.
Dingo shook him. “Stay with me. L what? Who are the targets? They what?”
Bergman gasped and wheezed, sounding wet. His eyes focused for a moment. “Initials. F.E.P. O... N. C.” More wheezing. “P.G ... C. He ... found me. Want you.”
Dingo’s blood ran cold at the only he that could have sent Bergman back here, but that wasn’t possible. “Who are you talking about?”
“Satan’s ... Garden ... C–”
Bergman gave one last heave and air slipped past his lips in a whistle, then he stopped moving.
Dingo stared at him in disbelief.
Bergman had to be wrong.
Dingo had sacrificed eleven months of his life and most of his soul to destroy Satan’s Garden Club. He’d killed Santori Garcia, the head of that murdering group, and made sure he was dead. No rising from the grave for that one to threaten Valene again.
She was safe. He refused to believe otherwise.
This intel had nothing to do with her.
Someone had to be using the Satan’s Garden Club name again, because the only person still left from Garcia’s crew was a nasty buggar who’d been fourth in command. That one had another eighty years in prison, plus he’d never been high enough in the ranks to have been fully in Garcia’s confidence—not enough to know about Valene.
Tanner’s voice cut into Dingo’s thoughts. “You better get down here.”
“Why? What’s up?” Dingo finished searching for any information on Bergman. Wasted effort.
“Your guy’s gone.”
“What?” Dingo stood up.
“I did find something odd.”
“Hold on. I’m coming to the window.” Dingo found his Sig where it had landed in a pile of debris, then limped his way back down the hall. When he got there, the damn body had disappeared. “What you got, mate?”
Tanner had a golf bag slung over his shoulder–a way to stash the rifle so it wouldn’t attract attention–and his monocular flipped up on his forehead since the streetlight at the corner of the building gave enough light to see the weed-infested pavement. He looked up at where Dingo stood at the open window and said, “I doubt this shiny gold coin has been here very long.”
Dingo cursed. “Can you read anything on it?”
Tanner held the coin to catch the light. “S. G. C.”
Satan’s Garden Club’s calling card. The impossible had happened. Garcia’s people were back in business.
Whoever had found Bergman would come for Dingo next.
Or Valene.
Chapter 2
Valene argued, “Everyone is dying and has been since the day they were born, but that doesn’t mean they gave up by first grade.” She gripped the leather-covered arm of the chair where she sat in Dr. Bowen’s Los Angeles office.
She needed to hold on to something to weather this new storm. Without her father to stand by her, this chair was as much of an anchor as anything else in her life right now.
Dr. Bowen’s gray eyes were underlined with the soft wrinkles of a man who had recently seen fifty. His gaze implored her to join him in Logic Land. “We’re talking about Ronaldo, not the rest of the world.”
“I didn’t come here to be reminded of how sick my dad is. I get confirmation every time I walk into the assisted living facility and see him shrinking before my eyes.” She stood and leaned forward, dropping her hands flat on the desk. It was that or lunge across the wide mahogany surface to throttle the man who had been her dad’s savior.
Until now.
She kept her voice calm, but determined. “I just need to know how much the treatment will cost.”
Dr. Bowen’s silver hair never seemed to grow, always trim and neat as if he’d just stepped out of the hair salon, because LA doctors didn’t frequent barber shops. He placed his gentle fingers on top of her chilled ones and said, “I’ve gotten to know Ronaldo, and you, over the past seventeen months. Your father made one thing clear to me during our last meeting. When it came time to call it quits, he did not want me to drag this out–his words, not mine–and he did not want you sacrificing any more than you have. Your dad’s health has spiraled down faster than I would have expected over the past two weeks. He doesn’t want you doing this. He wants you to ... let him go.”
Her throat muscles locked at the idea of being left behind once more. She couldn’t face tomorrow without her dad.
She would not cry.
Crying about things out of your control is wasted tears, Hot Stuff, her dad had told her the day her mother drove away from Los Angeles, taking Valene’s brother and only sibling to live with their maternal grandparents in Syracuse, New York.
Her mother had hurt her father deeply, much as Dingo had hurt Valene when he vanished seven years ago. But Dingo had never said vows and very likely never would to anyone.
Certainly not her.
Did she really need this reminder of the unbearable pain she’d suffered when he left without a word? Sure, she’d shed this room full of tears at the time. But she’d bucked up and taken her father’s rule to heart once she realized keeping Dingo in her life had never been in her control.
She’d dried her eyes and pushed on at that point.
There would be no tears today either, because she was not about to give up on her dad.
Getting him into an experimental treatment plan was in her control.
She hoped.
Valene stood straight and crossed her arms, prepared to do battle. “It’s my father’s right to have a say over his medical treatment, just as it’s my right to spend my money any way I choose. He was improving until four weeks ago. Before I do anything final, I’ll talk to him myself and respect his wishes, but right now all I want to know is do you, or do you not, have a treatment option for my dad?”
Dr. Bowen sat back and scratched his forehead, sighing with a disgruntled rumble. “Yes, my assistant found an experimental program that has a test running for mediastinal tumors, but the tumors in your father’s lungs are unlike any other mediastinal studied so far.”
“I understand that it’s a rare form of lung cancer.”
“Yes, you do, but my point is that this is really a long shot. They have an opening in five days, but the treatment is so risky and–” He lowered his hand. The sucky news to follow was written in his sad face. “Expensive. It will cost thirty-seven thousand to cover everything he’ll need. This requires a ten thousand deposit by the day before the opening.”
She sat down hard.
Thirty-seven thousand. As in dollars.
She had almost eight thousand in her checking account, but she needed that to keep her dad in the assisted living facility and a roof over her own head, meager as her home was these days. “Uh, okay... I’ll–”
What?
Whip out a magic wand and conjure up thirty-seven thousand dollars in gold? That was as realistic as coming up with money any other way. At one time, she would have had triple that amount sitting in a stock account where she could put her hands on it quickly.
No more.
“Valene, don’t. This is why I was trying to tell you what your dad wanted if we got to this point. He’s seventy-eight–”
&
nbsp; “Not for another week.”
“Still. He’s lived a good life.”
She didn’t deal well with desperation, but anger? Oh, she had plenty of practice at handling rage. “He’s old and has had a good life so what? It’s time to put him down? Is that it?”
“I’m not saying that, Valene.”
“You are saying it’s a bad investment.” Just like when Mom decided she couldn’t invest any more of her youth in a man with one arm, once he was no longer a gorgeous bauble she could dangle in front of two sisters who had married rich, but dumpy, men. It hadn’t been enough that her dad had loved her mother, or that he’d been a highly respected associate professor of history at the time of the accident.
Against her mother’s wishes, her dad had gone off on an archeological excavation in Europe where a former associate had arranged for her dad to have an active role. He’d spent months setting it up, but Valene’s mother had criticized him the whole time, claiming his dream was nothing more than grunt work or manual labor. Yes, he’d lost his arm on that trip, but her dad had never uttered a word of regret.
He’d still been a very attractive man when her mother bailed on their marriage, but he’d lost a lot of his athletic physique over the eighteen months of healing from the accident.
A few months before getting injured, he’d taken a new teaching position, and since he wasn’t tenured the new university had replaced him. Life went downhill for a while, but her dad had planted two feet and stood up, determined to raise Valene.
Dr. Bowen pulled out a hard-eyed gaze he probably held in reserve for difficult cases like her. “Do you have that kind of money?”
“I can get it.” She had a new client who wanted a specific seventeenth- century artifact located. A small one. That’s all the message had said besides asking her to meet the guy at a restaurant two hours from now.
Seventeenth century could be big money, especially if it was an extremely rare book. Ancient inscriptions were her first love, but the written word up through the Renaissance was her area of specialty.
On the other hand, anything that rare would not just appear out of thin air in one week.
Her expertise had grown out of a natural gift for uncovering obscure details from history, a bulldog attitude when it came to digging up information, and a tenacious drive for tracking something down when others quit. Or rather, that had been her reputation before she’d allowed so many contracts to slide. She’d been tough competition when she was at the top of her game and she could do it again.
She knew of only two other people who specialized in the same areas and who could be considered her equals. Artifact hunters were all over the place, but she was more of a bounty hunter when dealing with the Renaissance and mapping the journey of a specific item from person to person.
It was one thing to know the value of an object, but much more valuable to uncover the hands that had touched it. The other two comparable experts were on the US Eastern Seaboard.
Luck had fallen her way to have this client on the West Coast.
“What if your father doesn’t want to do the experimental treatment, Valene?”
Her dad once told her he never would have survived the early cancer treatments without her being his advocate when all he'd wanted to do most days was curl up and sleep. Cancer could suck the drive out of a strong person. Her dad was a fighter and a survivor who trusted her to have his back. Even so, she’d never push him to do anything against his will.
Pushing back up to her feet, she felt the first wave of confidence roll through her, something she hadn’t experienced in a while.
“I told you, the final decision is his. You mean well, and for that I thank you, but you don’t really know my father, Dr. Bowen. I’m sure he thought if anyone had a chance at swaying me from this path it would be you, because there is no one else who would try. The few people I consider friends know my father and I are cut from the same cloth.”
“Then why aren’t you going along with his wishes?”
“You miss my point. Anyone familiar with both of us would have no doubt that I’d fight until my last breath to save my father and if ...” She paused to clear her throat. “When I have the full payment for this treatment, Dad will face that treatment the same way he’s faced every battle in his life. He’s still alive because he doesn’t want to let go of me any more than I want to let go of him.” She took a breath and let it out, allowing that cleansing to flow through her before she continued.
If her dad convinced her otherwise, then she wouldn’t push.
But her father was not a man to give in this easily.
She went on. “Don’t take this wrong, but you should be asking yourself why I’m fighting so hard for your patient and you aren’t.”
His eyebrows tucked close to the bridge of his nose. “I do care about my patients.”
“I’m not saying you don’t, but not everyone has a champion, so it falls to you to give them a fighting chance.” She didn’t want to argue. This man had been a good doctor. She’d hoped he wouldn’t be like the others wanting to rubber stamp her father through the system. “Please make the arrangements to start the treatment next week. I’ll be back in time with the ten grand for deposit and my father’s blessing.” She hoped, on both accounts.
But she believed every word she’d given Bowen. Valene and her dad had made a pact when her mom left, that neither one of them would ever give up on the other.
Years later, she realized he’d done that to convince her he would never leave Valene, but she’d taken that pact to heart and it was her turn to be his rock.
She carried her head up and shoulders back as she left, the way her father would expect. No one had to know that her legs trembled like overdone noodles hanging in the breeze. When she got to the street, she turned toward the parking deck.
She had to get at least ten thousand up front from the client she was meeting today at lunch. That would only happen if she picked up body language at their meeting that convinced her of how much he wanted the artifact. If she hit him with too large an amount of money up front he might back off, which would leave her completely empty-handed.
On the other hand, high-dollar clients would be wary of someone who charged too little.
Going into a negotiation desperate for the money screwed her ability to rely on her instincts.
Instead, she played out scenario after scenario in her mind. Not one of them would be worth a flip until she knew exactly what she was searching for and what resources she’d need.
After riding the elevator up to the third floor parking deck, she hurried to her 1965 frost-turquoise convertible T-bird. It was the third car she’d owned, and she hadn’t wanted another one since. Her dad had praised her for the investment.
Her baby was the perfect ride for June along the LA coast.
If only she had time to indulge in a relaxing drive.
She slowed her steps, taking note of the white van that had pulled in next to her car. A “Gonzalez Brothers Electricians” vinyl sign was stuck across the back.
Vans weren’t specifically threatening, but this one had a sliding door on the passenger side that faced her car. The self-defense classes she’d taken at nineteen had left her with a healthy dose of respect for what if?
What if someone hid in the van, waiting to grab an unsuspecting, vulnerable woman?
He’d get the surprise of his life when she turned out not to be quite so vulnerable. At twenty-nine, she had a few new moves to boot.
But no ninja jumped out of the van to attack her before she unlocked her door and slid behind the steering wheel, where a folded note was propped up.
Seven words raised chill bumps along her arms.
Don’t look around. Just read the note.
She glanced around without moving her head and slowly reached for the paper.
Chapter 3
Dingo held his breath, counting the seconds until ...
The passenger door on his van opened and Valene
climbed in. “What the hell is going on?”
“I needed to talk to you.”
“Lose your phone?”
“This was better said in person.”
“You scared the crap out of me with that note,” she said, her hands stabbing her hair and flicking around. “If you need another favor, the answer is no.” The words held enough edge to cut through the tension crowding the air. “I’m a busy person who doesn’t have time for any of this, this ... whatever it is you’re here for.”
“I know you’re busy and I just need to talk to you,” he repeated gently. He couldn’t get past just taking her in. How many days and long nights had he imagined being this close to her again?
But not this way. Not when he was about to turn her world upside down.
On long nights spent alone, he’d recall watching all that wild blonde hair blowing around her sweet face as she drove her muscle car along the coast highway with him riding shotgun.
She was the sexiest thing he’d ever known.
One of her smiles would be worth the punishment he’d put his body through by not sleeping since he’d found Bergman yesterday and going nonstop to get here, just to see her alive and safe. He knew every inch of the beautiful body hidden inside that black-on-black mandarin style suit.
Damn. If he didn’t stop thinking about her sans the suit, he wouldn’t be able to walk.
“Well?” Valene snapped. “You got what you wanted. I’m sitting here.”
If he had what he wanted, she’d be in his arms and he’d be kissing the lips he missed more than he’d thought possible. That was never going to happen again, especially now when he had to open a wound that had never healed.
He asked, “Remember back when I was looking for information on a man named Giuseppe?”
Her gaze sizzled with fury. She crossed her arms. Yes, she remembered.
Shaking her head, she laughed and it came out as a dark sound. “Seven years. You disappear for years, then show up a month ago needing help again, and now you want to talk about the last time I saw you before you walked away without a word?”