by Penny McCall
“The world is a cold, hard place, darlin’, and people are almost always wearing a mask.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? Even if I hadn’t been making my own way for all of my adult life, I’m a psychologist. Understanding what twists people is my job.”
“But darlin’—”
“I know what I’m doing, Daddy.” She got to her feet and went to hold the door for him. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t.”
Lucius pushed himself out of the chair, walking stiffly to the door. He stopped in front of Norah. He didn’t speak, but his hurt and upset were clear on his face.
“You should trust me,” she said softly.
“Should I?”
“Yes.” But she knew he couldn’t. Trip could see it on her face; it was breaking her heart.
And there was nothing Trip could do to make it easier for her. Just like there would be nothing he could do to spare her when he walked away.
NORAH RATTLED AROUND THE HOUSE THE NEXT morning, doing chores to keep her hands busy, if not her mind. Then there was the part where the house was dirty and laundry needed to be done. She went into the spare room Trip had used briefly and straightened the bed, then she plopped down on it because the room smelled like Trip and she couldn’t shut him out. She could have left the room, but she liked the way Trip smelled. And she had to admit she was weak where he was concerned. Last night had proven that.
She’d wanted a bout of fast, hot, sweaty sex. Mind-numbing sex. Trip had apparently heard that the brain was a sexual organ, because he’d taken his time. Which was what had confused her so much that she’d decided not to think about him at all, she recalled. But avoidance never solved anything.
That’s what she’d been trying to do last night, avoid reality, avoid her feelings. Trip had been insistent on slowing things down, making it emotional as well as physical, and there was only one motivation she could think of—and it was the other reason she’d avoided memories of the night before. Trip didn’t love her. Once the loot was found, he wouldn’t stick around. And yet she refused to believe he’d played on her emotions last night to make sure she stayed on his side rather than her father’s.
There was no doubt they were both jockeying for her support, but Trip wouldn’t use her. Not in that way. And yet . . . She caught sight of the package she’d received a week ago when Law had been there installing her alarm system. It sat on the dresser where Trip must have put it, about the size and shape of a hardcover book, and all but flashing the word distraction.
Norah picked up the package and shook it. It wasn’t heavy enough, and it didn’t have the solid feel of a book, but it didn’t make any noise, either. It was taped up like Fort Knox, which was good since it appeared to have some miles on it. Her address was on a label that looked like it had been typed on an actual typewriter rather than a laser printer.
Taped up like Fort Knox . . . She flashed back to the package she and Trip had retrieved from the zoo, her mind buzzing a little, denial warring with dawning reality.
She took the package into her bathroom and attacked it with her fingernail scissors, managing to cut down the short end even with her hands shaking. When it was open she took it to her bed and upended it. Nothing came out, so she reached inside and pulled out a wad of tissue paper, wrapped around one of those vacuum seal plastic bags people used to preserve steaks on TV.
Except there wasn’t steak inside the bag. There was jewelry. A lot of jewelry. Norah turned it over in her hands for a minute, replaying the conversation they’d had less than twenty-four hours ago. Lucius had assured her his reasons for wanting the loot were altruistic. His body language had sent a different message, but she’d chosen to believe his words. Now, finally, her brain had to wrap itself around the truth.
Trip was right. But he didn’t know the half of it.
“Norah?”
She lifted her head, looked toward her bedroom door.
“Norah, darlin’, are you in there?”
“I’m . . .” She took a deep breath and lifted her chin, her voice stronger this time, loud enough to carry through the closed door. “I’m busy, Lucius. I’ll talk to you later.”
There was silence, but she knew he was still standing there. Finally he said, “All right,” the floor creaking as he walked away.
Trip wouldn’t be far behind. He’d been shadowing Lucius all day, and he’d keep on shadowing, convinced it was the only way to find the loot. Well, she thought with a soft puff of laughter, she’d have to tell him about the package at some point. After she’d had time to digest it herself.
Surprisingly enough she wasn’t aching from her father’s betrayal. It hurt, sure, but she’d expected it on some level. What she had to get over was betraying him back. He deserved it, no doubt about that, but she hated that it was necessary.
She put the jewelry and the tissue back in the package, and stuffed it under her pillow. No point in hiding it since she’d only have to dig it back out to show Trip. Once she found him.
She left her bedroom, closing and locking the door behind her and not feeling a bit guilty about it. She ran into Lucius first, sitting in the parlor facing out the doorway where he could see the stairs. He lowered the paper he’d been reading and smiled at her.
“Are you looking for Trip?”
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
“He went out, darlin’.”
Norah didn’t buy it. He’d said it in an even, believable tone, but there was no way Trip would leave the house without letting her know.
“He said he was just going to the market a couple of blocks over,” Lucius said. “You can probably catch him if you hurry. He hasn’t been gone two minutes. Probably hasn’t made it to the end of the block yet.” And he shook the paper out and lifted it in front of his face.
Norah frowned at it, pretty sure he was grinning behind it. But she didn’t waste any time, going to the front door and punching the alarm code in. She went all the way out to the sidewalk and looked in the direction Trip would have gone if he’d walked to the market. Nothing.
She turned to go back in the house to look for him, but somebody tossed a smelly blanket over her head. She felt a hard shoulder in the pit of her stomach and she was hauled off the ground, kicking and screaming—or trying to—which did her no good. She was carried a short distance and dumped back on her feet, but before she could get rid of the blanket her hands were wrenched behind her back and tied.
Norah twisted around and kicked out with her foot.
“Ouch, sonuvabitch.”
Norah went still. “Bill Simonds?”
The blanket was whipped off her head, and there was her next-door neighbor. They were in his gloomy, ramshackle house. She knew that because she could see her neighbors’ houses, just a little off-kilter from the view out her own parlor windows. What was even more shocking was the second man in the room. Or maybe she should have said kid. “Bobby Newcastle?”
He ducked his head, not meeting her eyes. “Hi, Professor MacArthur.”
She shot a glance at Bill, then stepped closer to Bobby. “You have to let me go, Bobby. My dad’s going to be really worried about me.”
“No, he’s not,” Bobby said. “Who do you think told us to kidnap you?”
Okay, Norah thought, stumbling over to the nearest chair and dropping bonelessly into it. Now she felt betrayed.
TRIP HAD BEEN AVOIDING NORAH ALL MORNING, knowing she’d be reading into his behavior last night—probably correctly. He wasn’t really prepared to look her in the eyes and see her drawing conclusions about his feelings. Especially since he wasn’t sure what they were. There was just something wrong with her figuring it out before he did.
They needed to talk about the loot, though. Lucius was playing a waiting game, knowing the FBI wouldn’t strand an agent there forever in the hopes the loot would turn up. Trip wasn’t about to go back to Washington a failure. That left him with two choices, head to St. Louis and follow the rest of the clues, or find a way to
get the truth out of Puff MacArthur. Trip preferred option number two, since he still felt that St. Louis was a wild-goose chase. And since Puff would die before he told Trip anything, option number two required Norah.
Now all he had to do was convince her. She wasn’t upstairs, though. Her bedroom door was locked, and when he knocked all he got was silence, the empty kind of silence. He searched the rest of the house, including the basement, but he couldn’t find her anywhere.
And his gut was talking big-time.
“Where’s Norah?” he asked Lucius as he came into the parlor.
“She went to the market a couple of blocks over,” he said, not even lifting his head from the paper. “We’re out of eggs if you’ve a mind to go after her and add it to the list.”
“I’m not really a fan of eggs,” Trip said, taking a seat where he could see the front door. He got to his feet almost immediately. He should have given it a half hour; it was perfectly plausible that Norah had gone to the store, but his gut was screaming at him now. He couldn’t believe Lucius would do anything to harm Norah, but given a choice between instinct and history, hell, given a choice between anything and his gut, he’d go with his gut.
And, he added, giving it almost as much weight, he trusted Norah. “She would have told me if she was going out,” he said.
“Think you’ve got her under your thumb, eh?” Lucius said.
“Norah isn’t under anyone’s thumb. You might know that if you’d been around her for more than five minutes of the last fifteen years. She won’t be used.”
Lucius got to his feet. “Not by the likes of you.”
“She’s not exactly toeing the line for you, is she?” Trip said, his voice purposely taunting. “You want me gone, but she’s sticking up for me.”
“She’ll come around.”
“Will she? As long as I’m in the picture you can hang it up, Puff.”
“Back off, boy,” Lucius growled.
But Trip wasn’t biting this time. This time he was running the show. “You’ve waited fifteen years to get your hands on all that money and power.” Trip took another step closer, backing Lucius into the chair then resting his hands on the arms and leaning right down into Lucius’s face. “You’ll have to keep on waiting as long as Norah wants me around, and that pisses you off, doesn’t it, Puff?”
Lucius’s hands were white-knuckled on the chair arms, and Trip knew he was getting to him.
“Millions of dollars so close you can smell it,” Trip said, “but you can’t touch it. Diamonds and gold and best of all secrets, all those juicy secrets, and you can’t cash in. I’m standing in your way, a big federal road block that isn’t going anywhere because your daughter, Lucius MacArthur’s daughter, is thinking with her glands—”
“I get it. That’s why—” Lucius clamped a hand over his mouth.
“That’s why what?”
Lucius relaxed, working to look bored, which was how Trip knew he had him. “Where is she?”
“I won’t tell you, and you can’t touch me. If you do anything Norah will have your balls when she gets back.”
“I don’t have to lay a hand on you.” But he was relieved at what Lucius had revealed. Norah was coming back, which meant she hadn’t gone far. “You just admitted to kidnapping. You’re going back to jail.”
Lucius snorted. “My girl won’t stand for that. She won’t let you prosecute me.”
“It’s not up to her.”
“Why don’t we see what she has to say about it? I imagine she’ll tell you she was out running errands or out with another man. That suit from her college, maybe.”
“I guess that depends on how long she’s gone. And what happens to her while she’s with whoever you hired to take her.”
Puff went white, then red. “I wouldn’t harm a hair on her head.”
Trip believed that, at least; he couldn’t do otherwise. So he took a mental step back and refocused his energy into productive thought instead of blind rage. Lucius wouldn’t harm Norah. And she didn’t know where the loot was, which meant there was another reason he wanted her out of the house.
Think, he told himself, pacing away from Puff. The bedroom door was locked. Why would she lock it? She didn’t want to keep him out, that much was clear from last night. And thinking about last night had the panic rising again. He shoved it down. If she didn’t want to keep him out, it must be her father she’d locked out, her father who’d been trying to worm his way into that room since the second they got back. Hell, he’d probably orchestrated the whole damn thing.
“You set this all up,” he said to Lucius.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The beating, the safe house. You weren’t hurt as much as you pretended to be. The second I brought Norah to Marion you started planning your escape.” A miscalculation Trip would have to live with. “Once you slipped out of the safe house you came straight here, knowing this is the first place we’d look. Except we were conveniently tied up three states away, along with all the treasure hunters, because they followed me and Norah out of the city and left the playing field clear for you.”
“Do you hear yourself boy? I’m even impressed with the man who could think that far ahead, and keep the FBI and half the country occupied while I slip in here and grab the loot, which we both know isn’t here.”
It sounded far-fetched, even to Trip, but Lucius was probably the best grifter to walk the face of the earth. His only mistake was reaching too high for the brass ring, and even that he’d managed to work to his favor. In fact, the whole thing made sense in a twisted sort of way.
“There’s something in this house you want bad enough to risk alienating your own daughter.”
“Alienating, bah,” Lucius sneered, but there was a thread of doubt in his voice.
“It’s a big risk,” Trip pushed. “If you can’t get me out of the house—and you can’t—you’ll have to leave her where she is, and I’m willing to bet the whole fifty million and my job that Norah isn’t there willingly. The longer she’s subjected to whatever—or should I say whoever—you got to grab her, the angrier she’s going to become. That’ll work against you, Puff, and you’re going to need her to deal with me, so time is on my side.” And he sat down, arms crossed, willing to put his money where his mouth was.
Lucius picked up his paper, calling Trip’s bluff.
But Trip wasn’t done yet. “There’s one other thing you haven’t considered,” he said. “The man, or men,” he qualified because he couldn’t imagine one man being able to handle a pissed off Norah, “who has her. What are they going to do when they don’t get the word to let her go in the next couple of hours?”
Puff’s hands fisted around the edge of the paper.
“It’s your game, Puff.”
“You’re on the court, too, boyo.”
“Me? What can I do?”
“You can go look for her. Be a cop. Ask the neighbors if they saw anything.”
Trip got up and peered out the window at the deserted street. “Seems to me this is the kind of place where everyone has an honest job to go to, and those who don’t mind their own business.” He turned around. “It’s the kind of place someone would count on being able to abduct a woman in broad daylight and get away with it.”
Puff sighed. “You’re a hard, cold man, Jones. I wonder what Norah will make of you when she finds out.”
“Why don’t we ask her?”
“Is that a challenge, boy?”
“You bet your ass, old man.”
chapter 23
“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU,” NORAH SAID. “MY FATHER wouldn’t have me kidnapped. He knows I have no idea where the loot is. Raymond and Hollie are behind this.” She knew she was grasping at straws, but she’d close her hands over thin air and defy gravity if it meant she didn’t have to believe her own father, the father she’d loved and missed for fifteen long years of felony conviction, would do this to her.
“Who?” Bobby asked.
“Raymond Kline,” Norah said. “I told you to go talk to him because you’re failing your classes.” Still no glimmer of recognition in Bobby’s eyes. “He’s the dean of the Midwest School of Psychology, the college you attend. Remember?”
“Oh, that dude. Never met him in my life.”
“But . . . your mother works with him. She’s an advisor at the college.”
“Not for long. Once we get our hands on that fifty mil, we’re never gonna hafta work again. Except you,” he said to Bill Simonds. “You’re just the hired help.”
“Not as long as I got her,” Bill said, hooking a thumb in her direction.
“Wait a minute,” Norah said.
Bill shot her the proverbial look that could kill, but he settled for being rude. “Shut up.”
“I’ll deal with you later,” she said, turning back to Bobby. “What does Myra have to do with any of this?”
“Um . . . I’m not supposed to talk about that.”
Crap. Norah let her shoulders slump. Another betrayal. She’d been hoping Bobby’s presence was just a coincidence, that Raymond had blackmailed him into kidnapping her in return for not flunking out. That hope flew out the window.
She wanted to grab him by the neck and shake the truth out of him, but she needed to get out of there first and worry about the details later. Or let Trip worry about them. The details were his department, although there was going to be hell to pay when she got face-to-face with Myra.
“Bobby, you have to let me go.”
“Can’t. But I’m just supposed to keep you here for a little while. D—Lucius is going to call and tell me when it’s okay to release you.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Bill put in.
“We’re just renting your house,” Bobby said. “You aren’t even supposed to be here.”
“Surprise, genius, you’re not the only one with a plan. Shit, you’re not even paying me enough to deal with her.”
Norah rolled her eyes. “Like you’re such a picnic,” she said.