Desperado

by Diana Palmer

  “I know, I’m a tourist at heart,” Maggie confided. “But I can’t go home without taking something for my friends. I wonder how Gretchen is doing in my job?”

  Cord grinned. “I know, but I’m not saying,” he murmured. “They’ve had their own little disturbances lately. But very soon, you’re going to see your friend Gretchen in a way that will shock you.”

  “We’re going to Qawi?” she exclaimed.

  “Not yet.”

  “Tell me!” she insisted.

  But he wouldn’t. When they got back to the hotel room, he suggested that she have a nap. While she slept, he plugged in his laptop and went to work, sneaking inside protected files with an ease that would have sent cold chills up Maggie’s soft arms.

  Three hours later, she woke up. Cord was already dressed in a suit. He looked strange, remote, and his eyes were very dark and shadowed.

  “Did I oversleep?” she asked worriedly.

  He shook his head, a mere jerk. “You need to put on something nice,” he said in a neutral tone. “It’s a five-star restaurant and it will be full. I made reservations for eight.”

  “Eight! I’ll never get used to the time people eat in Africa and Europe,” she murmured as she slid her long legs off the bed and sat up.

  “It grows on you,” he said. “I’ll wait in the sitting room. I’ve got a few more contacts to make.”

  “Cord?”

  He paused with his hand on the doorknob. He wouldn’t look at her.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked, concerned. “Has something happened?”

  “Something.” His voice was oddly choked. “Come out when you’re ready.” He closed the door.

  It was as if all the teasing and delight in each other’s company had gone in a puff of smoke. Cord was good company, pleasant and courteous, and as remote as if he were living on another planet. He barely looked straight at Maggie, and he was unusually tense. He ordered whiskey as well—something she’d never known him to do. He didn’t drink.

  After the second highball, he ordered a seafood dish for himself and a special salad that Maggie wanted. They ate in silence. She finally got up to help herself at the dessert counter mainly to get away from his brooding countenance. She couldn’t imagine what had upset him like that. She knew instinctively that he’d had an emotional blow of some sort. She wondered if there was another woman in his life, if he’d had second thoughts about their sudden intimacy, if he had cold feet about committing himself to her. Maybe he’d satisfied his hunger and his curiosity about her body, and he was already tired of it. That thought was depressing, so she picked up a flan and a piece of cake and devoured both with after-dinner coffee. Cord sat nursing a third highball and didn’t eat half his seafood. He had no dessert at all.

  The worst surprise came when they were back in the room. He took off his dark glasses and suggested quietly that she might want to go to bed, because they had a long day ahead of them. She asked wasn’t he coming, and noted that he stiffened as if the question was actually offensive to him.

  She swallowed a choking misery of lost confidence, smiled forcibly and went into the bedroom alone.

  He didn’t come to bed. When she woke the next morning, she found him sprawled on the sofa, still in his suit, with disheveled hair and smelling of whiskey. She noted four empty little bottles of it stacked on the coffee table along with two empty Coke cans and a glass. On top of what he’d had in the restaurant, that was enough to render even a strong man like Cord unconscious. It bothered her that he drank like that. Something had to have gone wrong. She didn’t know what.

  But what upset her most was something she found in the fax machine, a message that had come from Houston, from Lassiter’s detective agency. It contained only a couple of sentences, but they were enough to make her wish she was dead. The message gave the date of a trial, and she knew whose. There was one other brief sentence. “Hard copy confiscated and destroyed, no negatives. Information available when you return, if you insist on seeing it.”

  She didn’t wake him. She went down alone to breakfast, feeling numb. Lassiter had somehow managed to get the information about her away from Stillwell, but he still had it. Cord knew there was something, and wanted to see it. Lassiter was going to let him, unless she intervened. She could tell Cord herself. Or she could play for time and simply vanish when this was all over and they went back to the States. She had her memories. Perhaps they would be enough.

  She knew why Lassiter hadn’t included particulars of the case in a fax. It was too explosive, and Gruber would be around. Her face paled as she wondered if Gruber, too, knew what was in those files? He must, because he’d been in the office with Adams and Stillwell when Lassiter said he’d heard about the information on the tape. All three men knew, whether or not they could prove it. If they’d obtained hard copy once, what was to stop them from duplicating it again?

  Her life seemed less valuable now. She was going to be prey for the rest of her life if she didn’t find a secure hiding place. It would take her away from Cord, because he was going to see the truth for himself when they got back to Houston. Once he knew—damn Lassiter for offering to tell him!—she’d be alone for the rest of her life. Tears of frustrated fury stung her eyes. Lassiter could have found some excuse not to tell him! He sold her out. Every single human being she’d ever known had done that. Why would she never learn that she couldn’t trust people?

  She sipped hot coffee, infused with warm cream, and stared fixedly at her untouched breakfast. She must make an effort to eat something, she told herself. Starving would solve no problems. She picked up her fork and made small inroads into bacon and eggs and a buttery croissant. Idly her eyes went to the abundant greenery in the huge structure, which was like an indoor greenhouse. Ordinarily she would have delighted in her surroundings. Now she just felt sick.

  She was aware of movement, and looked up into Cord’s quiet, lifeless eyes.

  “Care for company?” he asked with narrowed eyes.

  She shrugged, and wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  He knew then, without a doubt, that she’d seen what was in the fax machine before he took out the sheet of paper and destroyed it.

  He put down his own breakfast and coffee and pulled out the chair next to hers.

  “Secrets are dangerous, Maggie,” he said curtly.

  She lifted her eyes to his. She looked like a cornered cat. “If you read that file about me that Lassiter has, when you get back to Houston,” she said, her voice trembling as she chose her words carefully, “you’ll never see me again in your lifetime.”

  His hand hesitated on the thick china coffee mug. He studied her, frowning. “Is it really that important?” he asked warily.

  She swallowed. Her hands trembled as she picked up her own coffee mug. “Can’t you just have somebody burn it?” she asked on a cold laugh.

  “Can’t you tell me what’s in it?” he countered.

  She spilled coffee, hot coffee, on her slender hands. She managed to set the cup down without doing further damage. Cord cursed under his breath and got a napkin around her stinging fingers, wiping them gently.

  “You don’t share anything,” he said in a slow, cautious tone. “I had to find out about the miscarriage and your husband’s abuse the hard way. Now here’s one more secret that you’re not going to tell me. You don’t trust me at all.”

  “That’s right.” She looked straight into his eyes. “You’re already suspicious of me,” she said, nodding when he reacted to the remark. “Lassiter told you just enough to make you wonder, to question what you think you know about me, about my life. You want to see the file. You want to know everything. But there are secrets that should stay buried, Cord. There are things about me that you should never have to know.”

  “That’s rather an odd wording, isn’t it?” he asked curiously.

  She lowered her eyes quickly to her stale breakfast. “I hate my life,” she said huskily.

  “Maggie!”

&n
bsp; “I do!” She put down her napkin and pushed back her chair. “I never should have gone back to Houston,” she said wildly. “I should have stayed in Tangier, found a job doing something, anything, so that I would never have had to see you again!”

  His face hardened. “You haven’t been acting as if you felt that way,” he said at once, and then could have bitten off his tongue when he saw her reaction. “Certainly not in bed with me!”

  She felt the accusing words like a body blow. “No, I haven’t acted that way,” she said in a thready whisper. “I’ve been behaving…just as people always expected that I would, when I…grew up!”

  She whirled and took off, right out the door of the hotel into the street, with her purse clutched close against her body. Cord couldn’t chase her, at least, not without giving up the pretense of blindness, and why would he risk that? She didn’t know where she was going, anyway. She had her purse, but not her passport, it was locked up, with her airline tickets and Cord’s passport, in the safe in the hotel room. But she could get away from Cord for a while, and she was going to.

  She made her way to a shop that sold tickets for the canal boat ride, a two-hour tour of the city by water. She doubted that Cord could find her in the throngs of people, and she didn’t care. If Gruber or his people had followed them, if he was watching her, so much the better. Maybe he’d shoot her and put her out of her misery!

  That was great thinking for a strong, adult woman, she thought, chiding herself for her cowardice. But she was losing Cord already and it hurt so much that she wasn’t thinking clearly. What he’d said before was exactly what he was going to say when he knew the truth about her. He thought she was a tramp. Maybe she was. Maybe she always had been. With the ticket in hand, she followed the clerk’s directions down the long street to where the tour boat was docked.

  Cord was furious. He’d already made one serious error of judgment, and at the worst possible time. He had agents here in Amsterdam who were processing the information he’d given them from Gruber’s safe, and they were even now questioning his business associates over a thriving child pornography network. In fact, there was a studio within a stone’s throw of the hotel where Interpol agents, aided by Dutch police, were serving a warrant at that very moment. Gruber was securely linked to Global Enterprises, where surprise raids in Africa, South America and the United States were taking place this very day. Stillwell was already in custody, along with Adams, and both men were so intimidated by a contact of Lassiter’s that they’d sworn never to reveal a word about Maggie to anyone.

  Gruber, however, was a different story. He’d blow Maggie’s cover if he could, any way he could, to the international press if he could get them on the story. By now, he knew that Cord had unmasked his illegal operation, and he would be out for revenge.

  Cord was going to tell Maggie at breakfast that she had to stay close to him, in the hotel, where she’d be safe while Gruber was being taken into custody. But he’d made stupid mistakes, blurting out things he should never have voiced. The fax had been a really stupid one. He could have asked Lassiter to e-mail him the message, but he’d been busy on the Internet at the time and Lassiter needed to reach him at once. It made him furious that he’d been careless enough to let Maggie see that fax. He’d done collateral damage already, and then he’d made that defensive remark about her going to bed with him, which put the knife into her with a vengeance. She’d never forget. He could understand how she felt, too. The information he’d seen had been…traumatic.

  He hadn’t been wearing his dark glasses, and he’d come into the restaurant alone, without the pretense of being guided, and Maggie had been too preoccupied to notice. He was trailing her now, certain of the one place he was likely to find her. She’d be on a boat somewhere. He knew it. All he had to do was find her, but he had to do it quickly. He whipped out his cell phone, dialed a number, and spoke into it briefly.

  He found out that Gruber’s studio had been raided, and two employees were now in custody. Several small children were also in custody, protective custody, while agents fanned out in all directions trying to locate Gruber, who had fled the scene.

  The man was armed and would be comfortable killing Maggie, if he could find her, and Cord as well, if it were possible. Cord’s heart stilled in his chest as he imagined how hurt Maggie had been by his remoteness last night, and his verbal cruelty this morning. She had no idea that he was trying to deal with his own actions in the face of what he’d learned. He was heartsick, heartbroken, at the way he’d treated her for so many years in his ignorance of her real background. He was paying for that in ways she couldn’t imagine, and not dealing with it well at all.

  Now he’d apparently given her the idea that he felt distaste for her. She, not knowing what he’d already ferreted out, was afraid of their return to Houston and his discovery of the truth. She expected censure, disgust, distaste—and with his reactions of the night before to go by, she was certain of the outcome. But she didn’t know. She couldn’t know how he felt!

  He broke into a fast pace as he neared the canal with its boat docks at its edge. His heart was hammering. Amsterdam was a big city, but Gruber knew it intimately, and he had spies who could find anybody. Cord had his own contacts, but they weren’t helping him. He had to find Maggie before Gruber did!

  There were plenty of tour boats, and they covered a lot of area on this stretch of the canal. Cord had no idea which one Maggie would have taken without searching them. He had one photograph of her, however, a dog-eared, crumpled one of her at Christmas when she was sixteen, that he’d carried around with him most of his adult life. She didn’t look much different even now.

  He pulled it out and started showing it to employees of the various tour boats all along the canal.

  Just as he reached the last boat in line, which was pulling out into the canal, a woman recognized the face he showed her and pointed to the boat, which would clear the dock in another few seconds.

  He handed the employee a large bill and made a flying jump at the boat while she was shouting to him that he had to buy a ticket in one of the shops, that she couldn’t sell him one.

  It was no use. He was limber and athletic, and used to taking chances. He went flying along the dock and jumped right out over the canal, landing hard and rolling on the deck in the nick of time to avoid diving into the dark brown, smelly waters of the canal.

  Maggie was seated at a table with two couples and an elderly woman. One of the couples, newlyweds the old woman said complacently, were passionately immersed in each other while the boat pulled out into the canal.

  She felt alone and betrayed and utterly miserable. She didn’t have a camera, which was just as well, because there was nobody to take a photo of. She stared blankly out at the water as the boat rocked and turned and started out into the water. There was yelling outside on the pier, but she couldn’t see above the level of the poles that held it out of the water. There was a hard thump and raised voices up ahead in the cabin where the pilot was sitting.

  She stared at the aisle, barely hearing an offer of refreshments from a young woman going down the other way. Seconds later, a disheveled Cord Romero strode down the aisle toward her, looking furious.

  Her heart bounced into her throat. He took a seat beside her, watching all around for signs of danger.

  “Go away,” she choked.

  “The only way back to port is to swim,” he muttered under his breath, “and it would take an act of God to get me into that water voluntarily.”

  She wouldn’t look at him. She folded her arms across her breasts defensively. She felt eight years old again.

  He leaned back, not touching her, and studied her averted face. “Gruber escaped,” he said at her ear. “We’ve got enough evidence to send him up for years, but we have to catch him first. Meanwhile,” he added darkly, “he’ll be looking for us, and it won’t be to wish us a pleasant holiday!”

  She swallowed. They were in a very public place. She turned and f
orced her shamed eyes to look up at Cord, who wasn’t even trying to disguise his anger and frustration.

  Her lower lip trembled as she tried to find something to say to him. She’d never been so unsettled, so terrified of the future.

  His big hand caught in the hair at her nape and pulled her face under his. He kissed her very gently, aware that she trembled. His mouth moved to her eyelids, her cheeks.

  “Ah, you are newlyweds, too, ja?” the elderly lady asked with a chuckle.

  Cord glanced at her. “Not yet. But very soon, we will be,” he agreed huskily, and the look he gave Maggie was smoldering.

  She didn’t even have a protest. She stared at him with her heart in her eyes and wished with all her soul that he meant it. But she was remembering what she’d found in the fax machine.

  “Don’t look back, Maggie,” he said softly. “We’ve both done too much of that already. We have a future, together. I promise you, we do!”

  His eyes were punctuating that promise. She gave in to temptation with a shaky little sigh. Without another peep, she moved close to him and laid her cheek against his broad chest. Odd, she thought, he’d jerked when she did that, as if the action surprised him. But she felt safe close to him. It was the only place she’d ever felt safe.

  His arm contracted protectively and his cheek rested against her dark hair. “You haven’t been thinking straight for the past couple of weeks, have you?” he asked.

  She blinked. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know.” He kissed her dark hair and sighed heavily. “We’re closer right now than we’ve ever been.” His arm tightened again, and his mouth eased down to her ear. “I want to marry you, Maggie. I want it more than anything in the world.”

  Her indrawn breath was so audible that the others at the table glanced at her curiously.

  She looked up at him, confused, thrilled, afraid. She couldn’t agree, she couldn’t…