Harlequin Intrigue November 2013 - Bundle 2 of 2

by Carla Cassidy

  Beau broke the silence. “That guy was my replacement.”

  “Where do you know him from?”

  “Security circles. Coburn didn’t waste any time. He may have already had the guy lined up before he even spoke to me. Who knows? He could’ve even traced my cell phone.”

  “How’d he figure we’d be at Herndon’s house?”

  “Coburn had already put two and two together. I told him you were in the Boston area and then Dr. Herndon winds up dead in the Boston area. The guy was probably just staking out Herndon’s house.”

  “Jack’s going to know you’re helping me.” She pulled the black cap from her head and the static electricity made her hair stand out at the sides.

  “Yep.” He squeezed her thigh because he just couldn’t help himself despite his hands-off policy. “I’m sorry, Deb.”

  “Sorry? What for?”

  “I’m sorry we got interrupted in our search. Sorry we won’t be able to give Zendaris what he wants—for now. But we’ll get another chance. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Oh, yeah, that.” She reached inside her jacket and pulled out a sheaf of papers. A few photos fell into her lap.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  She waved the papers in the air. “I have the anti-drone plans.”

  * * *

  BACK IN THE hotel room, they sat across from each other on the bed, passing the papers back and forth. Beau was no scientist or engineer, but he trusted Deb when she told him this is what she’d been briefed on to look for.

  “I can’t believe he had these plans underneath his bed. Maybe that’s where we should hide them until we get them into secure hands.”

  She tapped the edge of one of the photos on a piece of paper. “How are we going to get these into secure hands and get Bobby back from Zendaris?”

  “We’ll wait and see how he wants to do the exchange before we come up with a plan.”

  “Bobby needs to get back home to start his treatment. The doctor indicated he’d be at risk for all kinds of viruses if we don’t.”

  “I promise you, we will.” He toyed with one of the pictures Deb had found with the plans. “I guess Dr. Herndon liked to keep all his dirty little secrets in one place.”

  “I told you he was kind of a perv.” She peered at one of the photos. “But it looks like everyone is a consenting adult and thoroughly enjoying himself or herself.”

  “Especially her.” He flicked a photo in Deb’s direction.

  She pinched it between two fingers, her eyes widening. “Oh, my God.”

  “What?” He rose to his knees and took another look at the picture. “This one is no more extreme than the others. It just looks like she’s really getting into her dominatrix role.”

  “I know her.” Deb tapped the photo.

  “You’re kidding. What are the chances of that?”

  “No, I know her. She sold or gave the plans to Herndon.”

  “This woman in black leather and thigh-high boots is the one who stole the plans from Stark?”

  “Abby Warren—turns out she was a psycho, not just a garden variety traitor.”

  “Uh-oh, you don’t want a woman holding a whip to be a psycho.”

  Deb dropped the picture. “She led Zendaris on—promised to give the plans back to him when she’d probably already sold them to Herndon.”

  “Somehow I find it hard to muster up much sympathy for Zendaris. Someone cheated him at his own game—good for Mistress Abby. Someone’s about to cheat him again.”

  “I hope he calls soon.” She plugged the Zendaris phone into the charger and rolled up the plans. “We can’t stash these under a hotel bed. Where should we hide them?”

  “Can’t we just burn them?” He snapped a rubber band around the tube.

  “I have to turn them over to Prospero. It would be a feather in Jack’s cap to produce these plans for the Department of Defense. Weapons experts can study them to find out how to fortify the drone missile against deactivation.”

  “You care that much about Prospero and Jack? He just sent a guy to capture you.”

  “He’s just doing his job.” She uncrossed her legs and dangled them off the side of the bed. “He sent you to me, too, and for that I’ll forever be grateful to him.”

  “I think you would’ve figured a lot of this out on your own, Deb. In the end, you’re the one who found the plans under Herndon’s bed.”

  She folded her hands in her lap and kicked her legs. “I wasn’t referring to the assignment. He sent you to me and you couldn’t have been a more perfect person at a more perfect time. You offered to help me and help Bobby without even knowing he was yours.”

  “I could see how torn up you were about his kidnapping. A man would have to have a heart of stone to turn away from you.” He traced the straight line of her spine.

  “It was fate that Jack hired you before he hired that man back at Herndon’s house. If he’d been the one tracking me from the jewelry store heist, Bobby would be dead. Bobby got his father when he needed his father most.”

  “I’d like to think that amateur would’ve never pinpointed your location like I did.”

  “He’s not going to call tonight. It’s almost midnight.”

  Deb scrambled to her feet and jumped up and down on top of the bed, scattering the kinky pictures. “I don’t know about you, but I’m wound up so tightly I can’t sleep.”

  Adrenaline pumped through Beau’s system, fast and hot and unwanted. Was this Deb’s invitation to a repeat performance of last night? As much as he’d enjoyed that performance, they needed to settle a few things first.

  He grabbed her ankle. “You’ve got surplus energy? How about telling me about my son? Show me that picture again and any others you might have on your phone. Let me in on the phone call tomorrow morning with his pediatrician, so I can learn about this illness, too, and what I need to do to make it better for him.”

  Her cheeks flushed a pretty pink, whether from her trampoline jumping or his request, he couldn’t tell. She bounced to her knees and grabbed her purse off the floor.

  “Do I have pictures.”

  She started at the beginning with the same picture she’d shown him in her wallet with her holding a newborn Bobby in the hospital.

  She talked his ear off the rest of the night and into the morning, regaling him with stories of Bobby’s first smile, first step, first word—all the things he’d missed.

  He soaked it all in now, feeling as proud of all of Bobby’s accomplishments as if he were...his father.

  Deb’s manic pace slowed. She’d shown him every picture she had of Bobby. The stories got sillier and sillier as her lashes drooped over her green eyes.

  When the phone slipped from her hand and her head slumped to one side, Beau tugged the covers down and helped her crawl underneath. He joined her, fully clothed as she was.

  He slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close until her head bobbed to his chest. As he stared into the face of this mom who’d gone to hell and back for her son and had managed to recover the plans to the anti-drone, he realized he was looking at Superwoman.

  And even Superwoman made mistakes sometimes.

  The next morning, Deb had already slipped out of bed and showered by the time he opened even one eye. He watched her stuffing her dirty clothes into a hotel laundry bag.

  “Are you still running on adrenaline?”

  She dropped the bag. “You were sound asleep a minute ago. It was the first time I’d been awake before you, so I thought I’d take advantage of it.”

  “If you’re sending stuff to the hotel laundry, I’d like to include the clothes I wore last night.” He yanked up the bedsheets and peered underneath. “The maid is going to wonder what the heck we were doing in here with all this
dirt.”

  She kicked something on the floor. “We’d better pick up these, too, or we’ll really have her wondering.”

  He leaned over the bed to find Herndon’s private pics littering the floor. “You’d better save the one of Abby Warren. It shows how Herndon possibly got his hands on the plans.”

  “What do you think he was going to do with them?” She dropped to her hands and knees and started gathering the photos.

  “I don’t think his intentions were good or he would’ve immediately turned them over to the U.S. government. Maybe he was trying to sell them back to Zendaris and that’s how Zendaris knew he had them.”

  She straightened the stack of pictures by rapping their edges on the nightstand. “If that was his plan, he was naive. You don’t double-cross a man like Nico Zendaris.”

  “A man who takes photos like this—” he tapped the top picture of a woman with her hands secured behind her back and a gag in her mouth “—is not naive.”

  She flicked her fingers in the air. “That’s sex. He was dabbling in high-stakes espionage, and he was in way too deep.”

  “He paid the price.” He lifted the receiver from the hotel phone. “Are you going to call Dr. Nichols now?”

  “Don’t you want to take a shower first?” She wrinkled her nose. “Besides, I don’t think we’re going to get to talk to Dr. Nichols on the first call, especially on a Monday morning. We’ll leave a message, he’ll call back. That’s the way it usually works.”

  He threw back the covers and rolled from the bed. “Okay, put the call in, but don’t start without me. If he calls back while I’m in the shower, drag me out.”

  “You got it.” She placed the call and as she’d predicted, the nurse told her the doctor would call her back as soon as he was finished with his current patient.

  Beau rushed through his shower, and while he was running his hands through his wet hair in front of the mirror, the hotel phone rang.

  He stumbled out of the bathroom, and Deb waited until he’d joined her at the table before picking up the phone on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Deb? It’s Dr. Nichols.”

  Since the hotel phone didn’t have a speaker option, Beau had tilted his head against Deb’s to hear the conversation.

  “I didn’t get back to you sooner because I’ve been out of the country.”

  “How’s Bobby doing?”

  “He has some flu-like symptoms.”

  “That’s to be expected. His defenses are down and he’s susceptible to everything right now.”

  “Can you explain his problem again to me now that I have you on the phone and can ask some questions?”

  “Of course.”

  “Bobby’s father is listening in.”

  Dr. Nichols paused. “I thought he was out of the picture.”

  “He’s back in it now, and he’s going to be Bobby’s donor since he’s also O negative.”

  “That’s good news. I like seeing families come together like this.”

  The doctor explained about the immune system in layman’s terms, and described Bobby’s condition, treatment and prognosis.

  Beau held Deb’s hand through it all. It sounded scary but the doctor assured them Bobby’s disease was treatable and eventually curable.

  “So, when can you come in for a consultation? I want to outline everything for you, there are some forms to sign and we want to test your blood, Mr., ahhh, Mr....”

  “Slater.”

  “Mr. Slater. We want to make sure you’re compatible with Bobby and get all the paperwork done. So call for an appointment within the next week, Deb.”

  “We will.” She held up her crossed fingers.

  When Dr. Nichols ended the call, Deb slumped in her chair. “We have to get him in there.”

  “We have the plans, thanks to you. We should have this wrapped up within a week.”

  “I’m just anxious to know how that’s going to happen. I assume Zendaris is going to designate some meeting place, maybe even where they’ve been holding Bobby all this time.”

  Leaning forward, he gripped both of her knees. “You’re not going into any kind of dangerous situation.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “It’s too late for that, Beau. This whole thing reeks of danger.”

  “I think you should insist on a public place.”

  “You know he’ll never go for that. He’s not going to shoot me...or anyone else in public if things don’t work out his way. He’d be stuck if we were in a public place.”

  “You won’t be going in alone anyway. I’ll be right behind you, one way or the other.”

  “We won’t be able to trick him with the plans. He’s seen them before, and he won’t release Bobby until he gets a look at them. If we give him something fake, he’ll realize it right away.”

  Beau rubbed his jaw. “It would be nice if the plans were a couple of lines or a formula. Then we could rewrite it in disappearing ink or paper that disintegrates.”

  “That would be a great joke, but you’re right, it would take forever to copy those plans.”

  “So, we hand them off and somehow get them back.”

  “Do you really think he’s going to let them out of his sight again after all he’s been through? He thought he had them once when he had one of his minions track down Abby Warren’s former roommate. Turns out Abby tricked him, and us, and had already done her modeling at that point for Dr. Herndon and had turned them over to him. Zendaris is not going down without a fight this time.”

  “I guess we just have to wait until he contacts you before we can figure out how to handle this.”

  “I wish he’d hurry up. You’d think he’d be antsy to find out how the operation went last night.”

  Beau gestured to his phone next to the computer. “Coburn knows how it went.”

  “What do you mean?” Deb grabbed his phone and examined it. “Shouldn’t this thing be turned off? He’ll ping it and track you down.”

  “Not this phone—untraceable.” He held out his hand and she dropped the phone in his palm. He punched a button and held out the phone for her to read Jack’s text message.

  She read it aloud. “‘You’re helping Deb? You turned?’ Followed by two question marks.”

  “Which means he doesn’t really believe it.”

  “Two question marks told you that?”

  “Coburn’s not a man given to excess emotion. Two question marks mean a lot.”

  “He doesn’t believe you turned, but he knows you were with me at Herndon’s house last night? His agent must’ve reported in with the bad news.”

  “Deb, I don’t think he believes you turned.”

  “He sent not one, but two hired guns after me. Even if the second one was pretty useless, that’s still a big commitment on Jack’s part.”

  “He wants to bring you in. At no time did he ever give me any license to harm you.”

  “It doesn’t make a difference. I can’t allow him to bring me in.”

  “We have the plans.”

  “We don’t have Bobby.”

  Her mouth formed into a stubborn line and he knew she wouldn’t listen to his scheme right now. Maybe she’d never be ready to hear it. Maybe he had to set it into motion without her knowledge.

  Hell, it’s not like she hadn’t been deceiving him for almost three years.

  Deb rose from her chair and stretched. “I am so sick of being cooped up in this hotel room. I’d really like some fresh air.”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a great idea. For a minute there last night, I thought we’d come face-to-face with your shadow, the man who’s been taking potshots at you.”

  “Maybe he beat us to the punch. Maybe he’s the one who stole Herndon’s deskt
op computer. He searched the house but got focused on the computer and never looked in the right places.”

  “How did you come to look under the bed?”

  “Robert used to hide things under the bed, too. He was paranoid that way.” She walked to the window and peeked through the drapes.

  “Despite his paranoia, he sure did a good job with you.”

  “He was the only father I ever knew, and he helped me so much with Bobby. He was his father figure and role model.” She held up one hand. “And I’m sorry that wasn’t you, Beau. It should’ve been you.”

  The realization that he’d missed those years with his son punched him in the gut all over again. He’d have to find a way to forgive Deb and make it stick. He’d have to hold the memory of last night, when they’d talked until dawn about Bobby, close to his heart. In that moment he’d forgiven her.

  He blew out a long breath. “If it wasn’t me, then I’m glad it was that grizzled old marine who was there for Bobby.”

  “Robert told me I was wrong.” She threaded her fingers together in front of her. “He told me a man deserved to know he’d fathered a child. Deserved the chance to step up. He’d gotten his wife pregnant before they married, and the day she told him she was pregnant was the day he became a man, according to him.”

  “You didn’t listen to him?” The more he heard about Deb’s surrogate father, the more he respected him.

  “I didn’t always take his good advice.”

  The hotel fire alarm blared in the room, and they both jumped at the same instant.

  “What the hell?”

  Deb pointed to the brightly flashing lights above the door. “This is for real.”

  Beau strode toward the safe in the closet. “Get the plans. I don’t like this.”

  “It’s a fire alarm.”

  “How many times has a fire alarm gone off in a hotel where you’re staying?” He punched in the combination of the safe. “Once, twice in all the times you’ve stayed in a hotel?”

  “You think this is a setup?”

  At least she wasn’t arguing with him. She grabbed the dark jacket she’d worn last night and slipped the rolled-up plans with the photo of Abby Warren inside the breast pocket.