by Diana Palmer
“As you might notice,” Lassiter said dryly, “I’ve had my own share of physical trauma. I let my attention wander during a shoot-out when I was a Texas Ranger and got shot to pieces. I lost my job, but I ended up with something almost as good.” He indicated the office with a bland smile. “An infrequent limp isn’t a bad trade-off.”
Cord smiled and removed his dark glasses. At least here on this floor, there was no need to pretend. “You can see my latest mishap in my face. I’m damned lucky to be alive and still have my sight.”
Lassiter noted the scars around the other man’s eyes and nodded slowly. “Defusing bombs is suicide. Why do you do it?” he asked with customary bluntness.
Cord shrugged. “My wife committed suicide and I felt responsible. I guess I’ve been punishing myself for it.”
Lassiter gave him a meaningful look and moved back around the desk. On it were photos of a blond woman and a son of about eight, along with a blond girl not much younger. He noted Cord’s curiosity and smiled as they sat down.
“Our son and daughter,” he said with noticeable pride. “Tess and I didn’t think children were even a remote possibility.” His face tautened. “She almost lost her life with our first one. You never know how you feel about a woman until you’re faced with losing her forever. I got my priorities straight in about ten seconds flat.”
Cord wondered at the emotion in the other man’s deep voice. He had a feeling Lassiter’s road to fatherhood hadn’t been an easy one, but he certainly looked like a happy man now.
“They both want to be detectives,” Lassiter added with a look of absolute disgust. “And my wife,” he added with muted outrage, “is out right now with one of my own damned operatives—who won’t be an operative very much longer, I promise you!—trying to get tape of Gruber and Adams in the JobFair office!” He threw up his hands. “They bugged it and staked it out without even bothering to tell me, and Tess is supposed to be at a staff meeting here in two hours.” He stared at Cord, who was struggling not to laugh. “They say marriage and motherhood settles women. Hell!”
Cord gave it up and burst out laughing. So much for his illusions.
8
It was all Cord could do not to roll on the floor laughing at Lassiter’s expression. “How did they bug the office?” Cord asked the older man.
Lassiter sat back heavily. “Posing as exterminators,” he said with barely concealed irritability.
Cord grinned. “Should I ask why an exterminator was called in?”
“Why the hell not?” Lassiter exclaimed. “Tess and Morrow went to a pet shop and bought thirty hissing cockroaches, put them in a box, and shot them into JobFair during lunch when the office was closed! That’s when they spliced into the telephone line. When the call went out for an exterminator, they intercepted it, moved in, and planted bugs everywhere. Apparently Gruber and Adams didn’t even suspect them, because they haven’t swept the office today. I expect them to, any minute,” he added icily.
Cord grinned. “Well, it’s innovative.”
Lassiter shrugged. “Hissing cockroaches.” He thought about it for a minute and chuckled. “I suppose it is. Tess isn’t bad at detective work. But she’s setting a bad example for our kids,” he added. “They put a listening device in the teacher’s desk and had tape of her making a steamy cell phone call to her boyfriend during lunch. God knows what they planned to do with it. Fortunately we caught them before they had time to make plans! We grounded them for two weeks, and laughed into our hats for days afterward,” he confessed amusedly.
“What a formidable duo they’ll make later on.”
Lassiter nodded. He leaned forward then, solemn. “I’d like to know what you have on Gruber.”
Cord pulled a thick padded envelope out of the inner pocket of his suit and pushed it across the desk. “Documents, photos, background information on both Gruber and a man named Stillwell, the figurehead president of Global Enterprises, Limited, which is the multinational corporation founded, we believe, for the express purpose of exploiting child labor in developing countries,” he said, explaining the contents.
“There’s a CD in there as well, with what I downloaded from the CIA and Interpol files,” he continued. “We suspect that JobFair and Global Enterprises are connected, and that both have a direct link to Gruber, but nobody’s been able to prove it so far. The photo Kit Deverell took is the first break we’ve had. But it won’t be enough without hard evidence that Gruber is the real head of Global Enterprises. That would give us an airtight case if we could. The corporation is known to deal in child exploitation for profit, with JobFair as its supplier, and it’s recently been under fire in Africa. I was investigating JobFair when Gruber caught me off guard and damned near blew my head off with a planted bomb in Miami.”
“How about the corporation’s board of directors?” Lassiter asked.
“That’s a possible back door,” Cord told him. “I’ve got somebody working on it right now. One of the directors lives in Amsterdam and has been accused, but not convicted, of heading a child pornography and prostitution ring. Another is Spanish but lives in Morocco. He deals in prostitution, as well. Pity we don’t have somebody who could go overseas and ferret these guys out. We might make a connection to Gruber if we dug hard enough.”
“How did you get CIA and Interpol files, if I might ask?” Lassiter murmured with admiration as he examined the papers.
“Don’t,” came the dry reply.
Lassiter gave him a curious glance. “It’s only illegal if we’re helping the bad guys,” he rationalized.
“Now, that’s just what I tell myself every time I do it,” Cord agreed.
Lassiter’s gaze went back to the papers on his desk. He was scowling. “This is interesting. Alvarez Adams has financial ties to Global Enterprises, Ltd., although JobFair doesn’t—at least on paper. Do you know much about it?”
Cord shook his head. “Only what’s there. It’s hard to research, even for specialists. They cover their tracks very well electronically.”
“I wouldn’t know either, except that a former agent of mine works for the FBI out of Washington, and a friend of his is with a—” he hesitated “—shall we say covert organization with underworld connections. Global Enterprises runs a huge cocoa plantation on the Ivory Coast, as well as mining operations and cattle ranches in South America. We know that thousands of children are employed without pay in these enterprises. The problem is that, even though the countries where they’re located are willing to help, they don’t have the financial resources to combat a multinational corporation worth billions.”
“That’s the crux of the situation,” Cord agreed. “Money. It always comes down to money.”
“Sad commentary on the world, isn’t it?” Lassiter replied. “But while we’re feeling sorry for those poor kids, how about the Hispanic women who are brought into this country illegally to work in sweatshops or prostitution? They lure them in with promises of money, and when they get them here, they threaten them with disclosure and prison.
“I never knew how widespread the problem was until I started investigating Adams,” Lassiter concluded with a heavy sigh. “It turns my stomach. Even if I weren’t getting paid for the investigation, I’d take it on. These people need to be stopped.”
“They do,” Cord agreed. “But you can’t go at an organization with this sort of money and power head-on. You have to slide in the back door when they’re not looking. It’s going to take a lot of manpower, and help from some powerful government agencies.”
Lassiter grinned. He pulled a file out of his desk drawer and slid it across to Cord. “You didn’t see this,” he added.
Intrigued, Cord opened it. He whistled under his breath. “And I thought I had connections,” he murmured as he went through the list of contacts.
“They’re not all contacts, just yet. That’s where I thought you’d come in handy. See the one at the very bottom?”
Cord did. He chuckled. “That’s right. I�
��d forgotten that I had a cousin who works in imports and exports in Tangier. Until recent years, when I started searching for family,” he confessed on a more somber note, “I didn’t know there was any left except an elderly cousin in Andalusia, not too far from Málaga.”
“You lost your parents here, didn’t you?” Lassiter said.
Cord nodded. “In a hotel fire. I had no close relatives, although I had American citizenship through my mother,” he added. “But if Amy Barton hadn’t come along, I don’t know what I’d have done.”
“I don’t remember the hotel fire personally, but I read about it. There wasn’t a lot about it in the newspapers because of a high-profile sex scandal here in Houston about the same time,” he added. “Two men were arrested for trafficking in child pornography. It was a heartbreaking case, and there was a lot of public outrage. They were sentenced to life in prison, but one of them was killed in a prison riot not much later.” He shook his head. “We live in a perverse world.”
“We do, from time to time, but…”
Before he could get the sentence out, the door opened, and a young woman with long blond hair and dark eyes burst in with a tape in her hand.
“Dane, guess what we got…?” she burst out.
The change in Lassiter was sudden and stark. His genial expression eclipsed into one of tormented relief. He jerked out of his chair and came around the desk with hardly any evidence of a limp.
“You crazy, half-witted, stubborn…!” Before he got all the words out, he had the woman up in his arms and he was kissing her with a violence and passion that knocked the breath out of Cord. He’d never seen such stark emotion erupt out of a man, especially one who seemed as cool and self-possessed as Lassiter.
The woman kissed him back just as hungrily and then seemed to notice Cord, and pulled away a little with a self-conscious smile.
Lassiter didn’t let her go. His face slid into her throat and he still held her close. “Hissing cockroaches, for God’s sake, telephone repairmen…!” He cursed once, harshly.
“Now, now, darling, I’m fine,” Tess Lassiter said gently, smoothing his dark, dark hair. “I had Morrow with me. You stole him from the FBI. He’s very good.”
“Damn Morrow! I’ll have him for breakfast!” Lassiter raged, and Cord noted with some amusement that the older man looked perfectly capable at that moment of roasting his erst-while employee over a slow fire.
Tess grinned. “I was never in danger. Dane,” she added, patting him on one shoulder, “we’re not alone.”
The man seemed only then to realize where he was and what he was doing. With a groan he pulled back from her, but his dark eyes couldn’t let go. Cord felt like a voyeur just looking at the two of them. What they felt for each other was so tangible that it filled the room. And they’d been married almost nine years, he recalled with faint shock. Imagine an emotion so powerful that it still burst its bonds like that after nine years! It unsettled him.
Lassiter went back around his desk, leading Tess by the hand. He sat down, with her beside his chair, her hand on his shoulder.
“Sorry,” he said stiffly. “She takes chances. Morrow won’t, anymore, by God, when I’m through with him!” he added tersely.
“Morrow’s nice, and I talked him into it. He said you’d shoot him, but I promised you wouldn’t. Here,” she added, placing the tape on the desk. “We got good tape. You’re going to love the information you get from this. Hello,” she added shyly, glancing at Cord. “I’m Tess, Dane’s wife.”
“The source of my only ulcer,” her husband replied dryly, a little calmer now.
“Us and the kids,” she added with a proud smile. “But we try not to get on his nerves too much.”
“This is Cord Romero,” Lassiter introduced.
“Oh,” Tess exclaimed. “You’re Maggie’s brother!”
His face tautened. “We were foster children together,” he corrected. “We’re no relation to each other.”
“Sorry!” Tess said at once, and blushed as she smiled. “Maggie didn’t explain.”
That was damned irritating, and he was going to have something to say to Maggie about it later.
“That’s it, walk in and start trouble,” Lassiter told his wife when he noted Cord’s expression. “Never mind, what’s on this famous tape that you think would have compensated me if something had happened to you?”
Tess grinned proudly. “A clue that may tie Gruber to that multinational corporation Adams is working with. It’s right there, on tape, in his voice. The corporation’s president is a man named Stillwell, and he’s on the tape, too!”
Lassiter burst out laughing. “You little torment,” he murmured, but when he looked up at her, his face was beaming.
She bent and kissed his forehead. “I love you, too. Now I’m going to have breakfast. Don’t be hard on Morrow, okay? He’s really sorry already.”
“We’ll talk about it later. Bring me back a bear claw, will you? Want anything?” he asked Cord.
“Thanks, but Maggie and I had a big breakfast.”
Lassiter stood up and dug into his pocket for a bill. He handed it to Tess, smiled faintly and nudged her toward the door. “Don’t get into any more trouble today,” he instructed.
“And I was going to stand outside the bank with a pocket full of twenties and fish for pickpockets!” she scoffed.
“Out!”
She wrinkled her nose at him, exchanged a look that could have heated cold water, and left. Lassiter sat back down when the door closed, and it took him a minute to get his mind back on business.
“You’ve really been married nine years?” Cord had to ask.
“Almost.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t seem like even a year. Okay. Let’s listen to this tape!”
He put it into the player and Cord sat back, his mind troubled with images of Lassiter and his wife in that unexpected, furious embrace. It had never occurred to him that marriage wouldn’t take the edge off passion, leave the relationship lukewarm and complacent. He was having to mentally rewrite all his former opinions of it.
He had to force himself to concentrate on the tape when it began. He listened absently until something caught his attention. There was a new voice on the tape, identified by Adams’s voice as someone called Stillwell.
Lassiter stopped the tape. “Stillwell is the visible president and chief stockholder of Global Enterprises, Ltd.,” he told Cord. “If it had offices in this country, every government agency we have would be investigating it. Its headquarters are in Morocco, in North Africa, and all efforts by the West African governments on the Ivory Coast to prosecute it for exploitation of children, and women, have failed. Money and power give immunity on a continent where the annual wage is less than $300 per household.
“Some parents sell their children without even realizing they’ve done it. The company gives them money in advance of a child’s wages, being told that the children will earn a fortune in jobs abroad. By the time they realize that the child isn’t coming back, it’s too late to do anything. Most children can’t even be traced,” he added with disgust. Before he started the tape again, he added, “The corporation lies low in Morocco, out of reach of legislators in the poorer countries.”
On the tape, Adams was telling other people in the office that he’d looked into the identity of a young woman who came up and spoke to him and his companion outside a restaurant the day before, that she was the foster sister of an old enemy, a man named Cord Romero.
Cord exchanged a worried glance with Lassiter.
The tape continued. A voice quickly identified by Lassiter as corporation president Stillwell informed the others that he was certain that he was under investigation by the Interpol, but that he was certain they hadn’t been able to connect him to anything illegal. He’d made certain of it, he added in a dark, ominous tone.
Gruber spoke now. Cord recognized his voice and told Lassiter who it was. Gruber mentioned an investigation by the Lassiter Detective Agency being
conducted against Adams. He said that he’d observed a second dark-haired woman in the doorway of the restaurant taking his photo with Adams while the first woman detained them by pretending to recognize Gruber. He described the photographer and Adams identified her as Kit Deverell, an agent with Lassiter’s agency. There was a profane curse.
Gruber said that he’d assigned a man to get rid of Cord Romero because he was helping a friend in a government agency investigate an illegal immigrant smuggling operation in Miami that could link Gruber to Global Enterprises. A bomb had been planted and Cord had been diverted to defuse it. Sadly it hadn’t killed him. Now they had to take care of Romero before he came at them again. Even blind, he was formidable and he never gave up. It wouldn’t be a bad idea, Gruber added, to take out Maggie Barton, as well. The Lassiter Agency was too high-profile to target, it would get the Texas Rangers involved as well as the Houston police if they tried. But Romero was a different proposition, and accidents did happen. They could target his foster sister and make Romero think twice about opposing them. He knew a man who could assist them, a professional.
Cord almost flew out of his chair as he registered the threat. Lassiter turned off the recording and the men exchanged glances.
“I hadn’t anticipated that,” Lassiter said darkly.
“It was his next logical step,” Cord replied. “Damn the luck! If Gruber calls in a professional hit man, all the mercs I can hire won’t guarantee Maggie’s safety.” He sighed heavily and ran a hand through his dark hair while he brooded. He glanced at Lassiter. “Suppose I get her out of the country?” he said, thinking aloud. “And you back off your investigation of Adams at the same time. They’ll be confused. Adams might think he was wrong about being targeted. He might even get careless.”
Cord began to nod, his eyes glittering. “Maybe I can do some investigating. We know Gruber has connections in Tangier and Amsterdam, as well as Madrid.” He pursed his lips, thinking fast. “He thinks I’m blind. Maybe he’ll assume that I’m getting myself out of the line of fire because he tried to have me assassinated in Miami. He might also assume that Maggie was going along to nurse me. He obviously thinks I’m blind, thank God.” He nodded slowly. “It just might work. If it does, Gruber might even give up his assassination plot. Suppose I go to visit my elderly cousin in Spain, with Maggie?”