Twice Burned

by Pamela Burford

  “But Mac got it eventually. By kidnapping Candy and holding her for ransom.”

  Logan slid onto a corner of the dinette bench, draping one long arm over the back. “That was the deal, Candy in exchange for the ray gun. When Gage went to meet with him, Mac got the gun.”

  “But didn’t release Mom,” she surmised.

  “Right.”

  “Because she can identify him. But I can identify him, too, and that’s why he’s trying to kill me. How can you be so sure his adolescent crush on my mother will keep him from…from hurting her?”

  He laid his hand on her arm. “I can’t be sure, Zara. When you’re dealing with someone like Mac, there are no guarantees. I’m going by my gut here—and something Mac said to Emma. He hinted that he had plans for Candy that would put her on easy street. Don’t ask me what that’s about.”

  “I’m surprised the FBI is letting you work on this case. I’d think they’d be concerned about your connection to Mac, a conflict of interest.”

  “I’m not with the Bureau anymore.”

  “What!”

  “I quit a couple of years ago.”

  She sat straight, panic surging anew. He dropped his hand. “Are you telling me this is a one-man operation? That you don’t have the FBI behind you?”.

  “I have contacts in all the agencies, resources to draw on. It’s what I do.”

  “What does that mean, it’s what you do?”

  “I solve problems, Zara. For individuals. For companies.”

  She shook her head, uncomprehending.

  “Corporate espionage. Celebrity stalkers. Kidnappings. Blackmail.” He spread his hands. “Problems. Some things can be handled more efficiently by circumventing the official channels. There are times when the police and the D.A.’s office, even the Bureau, can compromise a delicate situation. A case of too many cooks. None of whom care enough to see the thing done right.”

  “What are you saying? That you work outside the law? That you’re some kind of—of hired gun?”

  “Not outside the law…on the fringes maybe. I have my own code of ethics and I’m comfortable with it.”

  “Would the authorities be comfortable if they knew what you do?”

  He shrugged. “I’m careful. And discreet It’s been my bread and butter for the past twenty-two months, since I cut myself loose from the Bureau.”

  “What made you quit?”

  He sighed. “That’s a long story.”

  She put down her fork, leaving half her waffle. “I have all day.”

  “You read the papers. You know some of it already.”

  “What, like what happened at Waco?”

  “Waco, Ruby Ridge. As tragic as incidents like that are, the real tragedy is that they’re avoidable. A matter of too much stiff-necked policy-making and too little plain old horse sense. The Bureau’s dragged down by this swollen, inflexible bureaucracy. The average agent in the field is swamped by paperwork and dead-end cases.”

  “So you decided to quit.”

  He stood abruptly and started clearing their dishes. “I figured I could do more good on my own. No partners dropping the ball. No double-crossing supervisors. Just me.”

  He had his back to her as he loaded the dishwasher. She wondered what he wasn’t telling her. The first time she’d looked into his eyes, days ago, she’d known he was a man with a wealth of stories.

  Trust no one, he’d said. She was beginning to piece it all together.

  “But it isn’t just you, is it?” she asked his back as he wiped out the waffle iron. “You’re working with Lou. Tell me she isn’t on her way to my office right now, or my apartment, or somewhere else Mac might make an appearance.”

  “Lou’s different. I’d trust her with my life. I have trusted her with my life, on more than one occasion.”

  Don’t do it! “How long have you two been. involved?”

  “Two years.”

  She was glad he couldn’t see her face.

  Abruptly he went still. He looked over his shoulder. “Do you mean involved involved?”

  She could only nod.

  And fight the urge to slap that smug grin off his face.

  “Does that bother you?” he asked.

  “Of course not” Her voice had risen an octave or two.

  He turned around and leaned back against the counter, fingers curled over the edge. His smile softened and she felt like sliding under the table, ashamed of the discomfort she was helpless to conceal.

  “Lou and I go back a long way,” he said.

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

  “She’s from my old hometown—one of that ‘better crowd’ I told you about? Lou believed in me. She helped me see that my talents didn’t stop at hotwiring cars.”

  Zara didn’t want to think what talents Lou had helped him hone. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I told you damn near everything else. Why not this?”

  She had no answer.

  He said, “Lou and I became lovers our sophomore year at Brockport.”

  You asked for it, she chided herself. Then.

  “Wait a minute. I thought you said you’ve only been together two years.”

  “We’ve been working together two years, since I set up shop. That fling in college lasted five hellish weeks. We couldn’t get along—I think it’s because we’re so much alike. We nearly killed each other until we called it quits and agreed to be friends again.”

  “Was Lou with the FBI, too?”

  “No. She was a detective with the NYPD, married to another cop, Adam Noonan. Good man. Adam got killed during a drug shoot-out seven years ago, and that’s when Lou quit the force to become a P.I. She wanted to spend more time with her daughter.”

  “Lou has a daughter?”

  “Holly. Eleven years old. She left for school before you woke up.”

  He pushed off the counter and came toward her, a gentle smile in place. “What made you think Lou and I were an item?”

  “Well…I noticed you’re wearing a fresh change of clothes.”

  “I keep extra stuff in the trunk of my car.”

  “And, um, I guess I wondered where you slept last night.”

  “On the sofa in the living room.”

  “I’m making an ass of myself, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah, but don’t stop on my account.” He placed his palms on the table and leaned on it, smiling down at her. “It’s quite a novelty, watching polished, poised Zara Sutcliffe make an ass of herself. And, I might add, flattering as hell being the cause of it.”

  “Why, you arrogant fool!”

  He laughed then, a joyful, spontaneous laugh that lit his golden eyes and suffused his face with color, swelling a vein on his smooth forehead. Had she ever seen him laugh?

  Not like this, she decided. Not with this pure, unreserved delight. He was beautiful to her then, in a starkly male way, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  He ended on a rumbling chuckle, grinning at her sheepishly from beneath thick black eyebrows.

  “You’re really vile,” she said, ignoring the renewed bout of mirth her words triggered. “You know everything about me and I know practically nothing about you.”

  “I’d say you’ve gotten pretty well caught up.” He sobered. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone so much about myself.”

  She detected a hint of regret. Regret that he’d spent so much of his life emotionally isolated from others, or that she’d managed to wheedle information he’d just as soon keep private? Perhaps she was better off not knowing.

  She said, “Let’s call Emma.”

  He retrieved Gage’s phone number and called from the kitchen wall phone. “Gage. Logan Byrne. I have—”

  Zara watched his face tighten and felt her gut respond. He glanced at her for the briefest moment.

  “When?” he asked. “Did you check the airlines?” After a moment, he said, “No. You stay there. She might call.” He gave Gage the phone number
at Lou’s and his cell phone number and hung up.

  Zara found herself on her feet. “Don’t sugarcoat it, Logan.”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Emma’s worried about your mother—and you. She slipped away from Gage and took off for New York. What is it with you women?” he barked. “Why can’t you just stay put?”

  And trust the men in our lives to take care of us?

  Trust didn’t come easily. The men in their lives had a less-than-sterling track record—starting with John Sutcliffe. “Did her plane get in yet?”

  He nodded grimly. “Too late to intercept her at the airport.”

  “Your specialty.” She tried to anticipate Emma’s moves. “She doesn’t know where you’ve been keeping me. She’s going to check out my apartment, my office…”

  He was already dialing the phone. “Mac’s out there, just itching to finish what he started.”

  She slumped onto the bench and dropped her face into her hands, listening to him alert Lou. That’s when she realized his associate had associates herself, surveilling various locations.

  She felt Logan’s hand on her shoulder. “I’ll find her, Zara.”

  He didn’t need to add, Unless it’s already too late.

  Chapter Eight

  “Ronald.” Emma yanked off the floppy green-andyellow sun hat and the dark glasses. “Am I glad to see you.”

  “You!”

  “Now, hold on—”

  “I’m not talking to you!”

  Indignation colored Ronald Harrington’s pale face and throat and heightened his Boston accent. He stood in his apartment doorway in gym shorts and a wide leather weight lifter’s belt. His bald cranium glistened, as did the tawny fur on his muscular chest and back. Apparently that which failed to take root on his head sprouted with vigorous abandon elsewhere. The designer tortoiseshell eyeglasses slid down his nose and he pushed them back up. To Emma he looked like a woolly, bespectacled Mr. Clean.

  She glanced down the hallway. “Can I come in?”

  His mouth dropped open. “Not likely! After that stunt with my Porsche? It needed thirty-four hundred dollars in repairs after your little jaunt. It’s still in the shop. I’m very angry with you, Zara.”

  Down the hall the elevator doors started to open. Emma bullied past Ronald and slammed the door shut. His apartment was identical in layout to Zara’s next door, but there the similarity ended. His entire living room was filled with Nautilus machines and free weights. The walls were floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

  Ronald Harrington was a partner in a prestigious Wall Street investment firm and looked the part—above the tree-stump neck. From the chin down, he was solid, pumped-up muscle, which strained the seams of his usual designer suits.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about your car.” Pretending to be Zara, she’d sweet-talked the keys from him to follow Gage when he went to ransom her mother.

  “As well you should be. I make an effort to be neighborly and look how I’m rewarded.”

  She was well aware what reward he’d anticipated for his “neighborliness” but was too much of a lady to bring it up. “I need to tell you something,” she said. “I’m not Zara. I’m Zara’s twin sister, Emma.”

  He stared at her, expressionless. “Get. Out” He reached for the doorknob, and she grabbed his thick wrist.

  “No! Please, Ronald. I’m being followed.” She hoped it was a lie.

  “I’m no longer amused, Zara. My amusement ended thirty-four hundred dollars ago.”

  “Oh, stop with the thirty-four hundred! You’re insured.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Ronald. Think about it. If I were Zara, how could I manage to grow my hair so quickly?”

  “Wig.”

  She stalked up to him, tugging on her long hair. “Is this a wig? Feel.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Feel it!”

  Tentatively he lifted a strand and rubbed it between his fingertips. He pulled on it, gently at first, then not so gently.

  “Ow! See?”

  He inspected her scalp with simian concentration. “How did you do that?”

  “I’m not Zara!” She jerked away from his probing fingers. “Didn’t she ever mention a twin sister?”

  “Never.”

  Emma wasn’t surprised. She didn’t talk much about Zara, either. She and her sister had led separate lives so long, it was easy to forget she’d been born a twin. At least that was how it had seemed before Zara asked her to impersonate her to keep the meeting with Mac Byrne.

  If the last couple of weeks had taught Emma anything, it was the importance of family. She only had one sister, and she loved her, no matter how much distance—emotional as well as geographical—they might have put between themselves over the years.

  Whose fault was it? Their father’s certainly, at least in part. He’d made no secret that Emma was his favorite. She’d watched her sister try so hard to please him, but Zara could never do enough. His attitude had crippled the girls’ relationship and brought out a rebellious streak in Zara.

  Emma regretted letting her father’s neuroses dictate her adult relationship with her sister—or lack of it. It often took a crisis to open one’s eyes to what was important. At this point she wanted nothing more than to see her mother safely rescued…and to tell Zara she loved her.

  Ronald eyed her warily as he wiped his face and dome with a towel. “You really are Zara’s twin sister, aren’t you.”

  “I really am. I need to know if you’ve seen her the last few days. Has she been back to her apartment?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  It was the answer she’d expected. Logan had said he’d keep her somewhere safe. She wished Mac’s taciturn brother had been a bit more specific.

  “I’ve been checking my answering machine from Arkansas,” Emma said, more to herself than Ronald.

  “From where?”

  “Zara left a message—I don’t know when. Sounded rattled. Said she was coming over.”

  While she was supposed to be under Logan’s protection, holed up in some safe house! Something had gone wrong. Hearing that message had been the final straw. She’d spent days anxiously awaiting word that her mother had been rescued. But Logan hadn’t called, and she didn’t know where to reach him.

  Emma’s nerves had been stretched thin when she dialed her home phone number in Queens last night and heard Zara’s message. She’d insisted on flying to New York, but Gage had been adamant that she stay there in Arkansas, where she was safe. While God knew what was happening to her mother and her sister.

  She and Gage had argued. Zara could take care of herself, he’d insisted, but she knew he was talking about the Zara Sutcliffe profiled on TV and in the newsmagazines. He’d never met the woman who was vying to be his agent. He didn’t know, as Emma did, that behind the brash, self-confident exterior she was as insecure as Emma. Perhaps more so.

  That morning, while Gage was out running a few errands, she’d taken off for the airport and grabbed the first flight to New York. Once in Queens, she’d swung by her house and found it in the same ransacked condition she’d left it—with the addition of a pile of Zara’s clothes in her bedroom, looking as if they’d been torn off her.

  Knowing Mac could be anywhere, she’d grabbed the hat and sunglasses as an impromptu disguise and taken a cab here to Zara’s apartment building on East Eighty-sixth. Next step: her sister’s office on Sixtieth and Madison. Not that she expected any sign of Zara there, either. But she had to do something.

  She jammed the hat back on her head and slid the sunglasses on. Ronald said, “It’s the hideous hat that convinced me you’re not Zara. She wouldn’t be caught dead in a monstrosity like that.”

  “Gee, thanks.” So much for her bold and daring departure from natural straw. She’d never be the fashion plate her sister was. “Listen, if you do run into her…” No. He had no way to get in touch with Emma. She didn’t even know where she�
�d be staying. “Forget it. I’ll call you. Tomorrow.”

  She eased open the door and checked the hall. Clear. She bid Mr. Clean adieu, hurried down the hall and pushed the Down button.

  Once out on the street, she headed toward the subway but wondered how much it would cost to take a taxi to Zara’s office twenty-six blocks south. She straggled to summon her usual frugality, even as her mind insisted on replaying the horrific result of her last foray into the New York City subway system. Mac Byrne, dressed as a vagrant, had snatched her shoulder bag and shoved her off the platform into the path of a train. If Gage hadn’t jumped onto the tracks to save her…

  A block from Zara’s building, her steps slowed. No, dammit. She couldn’t go back into a subway tunnel. Raising her hand to hail a taxi, she stepped off the curb and scanned the oncoming traffic. A yellow cab peeled away from the phalanx of vehicles and cut across a lane. She dashed toward it, opened the back door and slid inside.

  Mac Byrne scooted in right behind her and pulled the door closed. Her mouth locked open on what would have been a scream if the tip of a gun barrel hadn’t been poking her ribs through the pocket of his cream linen sport jacket.

  “That’s what I like about you, Emma. You’re the sensible one.” He flipped the hat off her, onto the floor of the cab. “Except for this silly thing. It looks better in your hall closet.”

  Which had to be where he’d seen it last, and why he’d recognized her.

  He removed her plain, dark sunglasses and perched them on his own face. One long arm snaked around her shoulders in a loverlike embrace as the gun gouged deeper. “Eightieth and Lex, driver.” He peered over the top of the shades and winked broadly. “And keep your eyes on the road!”

  “SHE NEEDS MORE TIME to rest, Logan. Can’t you see how pale she still is?” Lou’s voice was an urgent whisper.

  Logan stood huddled with her in the kitchen, their voices muffled by the noise of the dishwasher. Beyond the archway into the dining room they could hear eleven-year-old Holly, a budding novelist, pumping Zara for information about the glamorous world of publishing. They’d just polished off a meal of spaghetti and meatballs.

  “Do you think I want this?” he said. “I know she’s in no shape to go back to that…” He scrubbed a hand over his face, weary and wishing for the miracle of a few more options. Hotels weren’t safe. And they’d been at Lou’s too long as it was. “The longer we’re here, the more danger you’re in. Mac knows I’ve stayed in touch with you. Who’s to say he hasn’t already tracked us down here?”