Curled up on an old vinyl kitchen chair, her head on her arm, was Angel. She was dressed in a sarong and flip-flops and a Billabong pro tee shirt, her hair in two pigtails. She was completely asleep.
“Bloody ’ell,” Celia said. Her expression was one of awe.
Tiffany shook Angel’s arm and she woke instantly. She saw Sahara and her face lit up in a way that made Sahara’s heart leap. “Sandy!” She threw herself at Sahara, wrapping her arms around and holding tight. She was trembling.
Sahara sank onto the chair Angel had been on and pulled the girl into her lap. Tears pricked hard at her eyes, as she looked up at Tiffany. “Angel found you in Newquay?”
“Yeah, how’d you guess?”
“I mentioned your name…in passing.” Sahara hugged Angel even harder. “Angel, did someone come for you at the school?”
Angel nodded.
“So you skipped out and went looking for Tiffany?”
“She was the only one I could think of who wasn’t part of Daddy’s business,” Angel said, speaking into Sahara’s throat. “Where is he, Sahara? Can you take me to him?”
Celia rubbed hard at her mouth and cleared her throat but didn’t speak.
Sahara looked up at her. “I’m calling in my favour.”
Celia nodded. “I think I can go you one better ’n that.” She pulled a cell phone out of her pocket. “I ’ave to call this in, Sahara. I won’t risk bringin’ ’er in without massive ’elp.” She shook her head as she dialled. “They ain’t goin’ ta believe me.”
* * * * *
Once Tiffany and Angel had been safety escorted into the high-security headquarters for the Seurat, Celia pulled Sahara to one side and slid her out another door. “’urry,” she said. “’e won’t be there much longer.”
She led her down into a basement level, where it was cool and dim. The room she entered was glass at one end, showing another room beyond. There was a single light glowing on the other side of the glass and Elias stood with his back to the window, looking down at something on the table.
Celia pointed to a door next to the windows. “I’ll stay ‘ere.” She moved over to the desk that sat under the window, sat on it, hooked a metal chair closer with the toe of her sneakers and parked her feet on the seat.
Sahara stepped through the door to confront Elias and finally get some answers.
Elias had been part of a panel interview she had endured two days before but he had not been the Elias she knew. He had become one of the officials—distant, cool and cynical. Even though he had not been friendly before, there had been a large degree of empathy in his dealings with her and most especially with Logan. During the interview he had shown her no compassion at all.
Sahara was braced, now. He would not find her the bewildered, cooperative subject this time. She moved around to the other side of the table Elias was leaning over and he looked up at her approach. “You have to tell me what has happened to Logan,” she said.
“Well, that’s interesting,” he said, his deep voice echoing in the chilly room.
“What is?”
“The last time I was standing over one of Zaram’s victims, Logan was on the other side of the table.”
Sahara looked down at the table. There was a half-unzipped body bag on it and she took another step closer to the table and saw Micky’s body. It has been autopsied, the black zigzag stitches vivid against the bloodless flesh. She stepped back again, uneasy. “Are you going to tell me where he is?”
Elias shook his head. “That’s not something you need to know.”
“Are you going to tell his daughter, then?”
Surprise scrambled across his face. “His daughter?”
“Angel’s here, at headquarters. Are you going to at least tell her if he’s alive, or are you too monstrous for that?”
“You can think of me as a monster if you want. It’s of no mind to me. But you should know that everything I’ve done is for a very good reason.”
“You have to let Logan go, after this. You know that, don’t you?”
Elias started to laugh. It was a silent thing that shook his chest and shoulders and made him smile. “Lady, you don’t seem to get it. It’s not me who’s holding Logan to his goddam job. It’s him. He thinks he wants to quit but he never will, because he knows he’s nothing without it. I just give him the excuses he needs to stay.”
It was far too close to some of the accusations that Sahara had thrown at Logan about his dedication to his work. Sahara shifted her feet awkwardly. “You’re wrong.”
“You so sure of that?” Elias crossed his arms and smiled at her. “Zaram just killed his wife. Oh, Logan may have pulled the trigger but Zaram was the one who put her there and Logan knows that. Logan has been chasing the guy for a decade. Now it’s personal. He’ll never quit. Especially not for a little beach bum piece of grunge like you, so just give up trying to fix things for everyone, okay? You’ve got no idea what’s going on here.”
“Are you going to tell me, then?”
“Your inclusion in this operation was by virtue of your similarity to Micky. The need for your services has passed now and so has your need to know any more details about this operation. That includes Logan’s condition. The less you know, the more comfortable I’ll be.”
“Why? Why?” This sort of ruthlessness defied logic, as far as she was concerned. It defied sensibility.
“You think I’m not aware of the relationship Logan had with you? Logan is one of my best operatives.” He scratched his chin, looking into midair. “No, I’d have to say he’s my best. Period.” Again, he looked back at Sahara. “I can’t afford to have one of my best running off to shack up on the beach with a pretty girl whenever his mood is down.”
She gasped. “How dare you! You were listening to us!”
He waved a hand at her. “Of course I wasn’t. But I’m not stupid. I can see what’s going on in front of me and I know Logan too well. He does this on a regular basis. Goes into a funk about the toilet bowl his personal life is circling and decides to do something about it. But you know what? He comes back. Every time.”
She was shaking so badly she knew she would be unable to hide it from him, so she didn’t bother. “You are a slime ball virus of a human being, Elias. How do you sleep at night?”
“I sleep just fine, thank you,” he said, completely unmoved. “I do lose sleep, though, when a man like Logan wants to walk away from the job. We invest millions of dollars training and coaching people like him to bring them to this level—the point where they finally become useful to an organization like ours. I have no intention of waving you under his nose and coaxing him into doing another bunk. He’ll just come back to us sooner or later. Why go through the hassle?”
She bit her lip. “Then he’s alive,” she concluded. “Or you would not be giving me this brush off.”
“Even if he died on the operating table, I’d still be telling you this. I’m doing you a favour, Sahara. I’m trying to explain that it doesn’t matter what you think of this relationship—for Logan it was just a fling. Go home. Don’t look back and don’t screw up the rest of your life mourning over what might have been, because it would never have worked out the same way as your fantasies paint it. Logan would have left you and come back to us. He always does.”
“You’re wrong,” Sahara said flatly. “You think you know Logan? You haven’t got a teeny little clue. I have no idea if Logan wants to be with me but that’s not the point. He wouldn’t leave this team to go to something better. Logan doesn’t work that way at all. If he was going to leave you and your team, Elias, it’s because you’ve screwed him over one time too many and you’ve lost his loyalty. You think I don’t know how you’ve been playing him for the last…for years? Making him think you can’t operate without him? Making him think he must stay, regardless of the cost to his personal life?”
The flesh below Elias’ eye began to tick. But his arms remained crossed and still. “Doesn’t matter, sweetheart. I’
ve got control here. You’re going back to the States and if Logan pulls through, he stays with me and you’re never going to see him again.”
Sahara let go of her temper then. She indulged herself, knowing that Elias wasn’t going to do anything but march her out of the room and back to Ocean Beach. Over the years, her globetrotting friends had brought back to her store some of the choicest curses and she used all of them, giving Elias some of the vilest and most demeaning names and descriptions in her collection. She didn’t hesitate to pepper her language with the worst words she knew. Surfers rarely bothered controlling their tongues, so she knew them all and Elias deserved every one of them.
Finally, she stopped, her chest heaving and tears stinging her eyes. But she would not cry. Not in front of this man.
“I’ll see myself out,” she finished and left the room.
Celia was still sitting on the desk but she was flipping through a magazine. “’ey,” she said. “Done for the day, then?”
“Yes, I’m done,” Sahara told her, “and not just for the day.” She turned, intending to head for the room where she was being kept but turned back to Celia. “How do I check out of this place? And how to do I get to Heathrow from here?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Whoever had been taking care of her store while she was gone had been thorough. Even Sahara’s plants had been watered and cared for and her mail was stacked up on the middle of the table, when she arrived home two days later.
Pippin twirled around her ankles, purring happily, as she pulled the rolling suitcase into the apartment and dropped her keys on the table. The suitcase contained the more casual of Micky’s clothes, the ones that didn’t make Sahara feel self-conscious. As she’d left San Francisco wearing nothing but a tee shirt and sarong, she’d been forced to take the clothes for her return home.
There was a Fed-Ex box on the table, put to one side, like it was a last minute arrival. Sahara examined it curiously. It was for her, not the store and the return address was for the Retail Financing Corporation Ltd.
Puzzled, she opened the end of the box and tipped the contents onto the table. Silks, satin crepe and brushed cottons slithered onto the table in a glowing heap. Sahara picked up the pale green dress she had worn to Thessaly’s and held it up so the diamantes sparkled in the light from the full moon shining through her kitchen window.
She sorted through the pile. Five designer dresses. That left five more somewhere else.
“Good luck with your business, Jacqui,” Sahara whispered.
* * * * *
It took her a couple of weeks to find a date when Joy-May and Howard could both meet with her at once. As she had never before contemplated selling her business, she wanted both legal and accounting advice at once.
Plus, she wanted to know what to do with the check that had arrived a few days before.
Sahara hadn’t realized that she would be paid for what she had done in Seville. A week after arriving back in Ocean Beach and trying to pick up the strings of her life again, she had opened her mail to find a very large check in her name, from the United States government.
For a week she had kept the check, unable to deposit it. It felt like blood money. A payoff. She wanted to check with Howard and Joy-May on what her options were, now she had this enormous amount of cash.
Then there was the sale of the dresses too. Even on the second-hand market, they would raise a substantial amount of money and Joy-May knew far more about the fashion industry than Sahara did.
The next morning, Sahara headed for Raphael’s diner for her breakfast meeting with Howard and Joy-May. It would be the first time she had eaten there since her return. She had not been ready to face her friends and provide the painful explanations they would demand of her. Even now, she knew she would have difficulty getting through this meeting with any calmness.
The restaurant was busy, as usual and Joy-May and Howard were both sitting at Sahara’s customary table, each sipping their tea and coffee and watching the door for her arrival. She took off her sunglasses and walked up to the table. “Hi, guys.”
Howard’s mouth opened and his eyes got very large. Joy-May put down her cup of tea. “Sahara?”
“Holy shit,” Howard breathed. He jumped up, or tried to. His thighs connected solidly with the edge of the table and he sat down again with a heavy thud, thrusting his arms out for balance, pin-wheeling madly, while the people sitting closest to him at the next tables dodged his flailing hands.
Joy-May stood up and pulled out the other chair. “Now I understand why you want to sell your shop. It isn’t yours any longer.”
Sahara sat with a sigh. “No. It’s not.”
Howard gripped the edges of the table and readjusted his seating. “You look like a million dollars. Jesus. It’s amazing.”
“You’re drooling, Howard,” Joy-May said. She studied Sahara again. “It isn’t simply the clothes, is it?”
Sahara considered the designer jeans and stiletto sandals she was wearing. She had put them on this morning with barely a thought and had applied make-up and arranged her hair on autopilot, while thinking through the coming meeting. “The clothes don’t even begin to cover it,” she confessed.
Joy-May reached for her briefcase. “Then let’s get down to business. Howard, you’re still drooling.”
* * * * *
When Howard had left, Joy-May slowly packed up her papers while Sahara sipped her coffee.
“What will you do, once the store is sold?” Joy-May asked.
“To be honest, I have no idea,” Sahara told her. “I’m leaving the old life behind, because it no longer fits. But I don’t know what the new life will be. I can afford to take a bit of time to figure that out, though. That’s something I’ve never had before. Time to think.”
Joy-May rested her hand on Sahara’s. “You’ll be fine.”
“Thanks.”
Something heavy hit the window next to Sahara’s shoulder, making both Joy-May and her jump. Sahara looked over her shoulder and her heart came to a thundering, groaning halt, while the earth dropped out from under her.
Angel was leaning against the window, her hands around her face so that she could see inside. She saw Sahara and banged on the window with the flat of her hand, capturing the attention of everyone in the store. “Sandy, come out! Quick!” Her voice was filtered through the glass but quite distinct.
“Sandy?” Joy-May repeated and giggled. “That’s cute.”
Angel was looking to her left, further along the sidewalk and beckoned furiously. “She’s here!” she called. She looked at Sahara once more and beckoned again.
Sahara began to shake. There was only one other person Angel could be speaking to.
“Sahara, are you all right? You’ve gone completely white,” Joy-May asked.
“I have to…. I have to go outside.” Sahara got to her feet and moved through the restaurant to the front door. She could hear the silence that spread as she moved through the tables. Everyone was watching her.
She couldn’t have cared less.
Angel met her just outside the door, throwing her arms around her and jumping up and down.
Sahara looked down the sidewalk. Logan was walking toward her. Rather, he was limping, leaning heavily on a cane. Angel skipped back to him and tugged on his sleeve, pulling him along, then ran back to Sahara.
“It’s totally wicked!” Angel declared. “You’re going back to red!”
“Strawberry blonde,” Logan amended, reaching her side. He sounded winded. He was very pale and had lost weight.
But he’s here, Sahara told herself. Warmth was building inside her, spreading to her extremities. She thought she may have lost the ability to speak.
Logan’s piercing gaze pinned her to the spot, destroying the oxygen in her lungs and leaving her breathless.
He let Angel pull him right next to her.
“My dad has something to ask you,” Angel said, tugging on his sleeve with excitement.
&nbs
p; He cleared his throat. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she returned, suddenly shy.
“You should know….” He took a breath. “There is a bootleg sound file circling the company. It’s a recording of you telling Elias what you thought of him, the night you left.”
She felt a little giddy. “Celia,” she gasped. “But how?”
“It was the morgue, Sahara. They record autopsies. There was a mike hanging over the table.”
Sahara rubbed her temple. “I didn’t think of that. I really wasn’t thinking straight that night.”
“You’ve won a small army of fans. When I got to hear it, it made me curious to know what would cause you to mouth off that way, so I managed to talk Celia into letting me hear the rest of it.”
She rubbed her temple harder. “Oh, hell.”
“But that’s not why I’m here,” Logan added quickly. “It got me here faster than I intended or the doctors liked but it’s not why I’m here. You should know that up front.”
“It’s not? Then….”
“I love you, Sahara Taylor-Hughes. I’ve loved you ever since I saw you standing up to Seoc, to draw his aim away from your friend.”
“Oh, Logan….”
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” he said, pushing past her breathless reaction. “I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get you into my life and make you stay there, seeing that my life was such a miserable circuit around hell.” He moved restlessly, easing his weight on the cane. “Well, you fixed that for me, didn’t you?” He smiled.
“You left the company?” Sahara said, holding her breath.
“In Technicolor,” Logan assured her. “I think there’s probably a second bootleg file floating around preserving my last conversation with Elias.”
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