by Sandra Brown
Because he didn’t go into any of that, he couldn’t account for the solemn silence that ensued when he finished. “Guys? Have you nodded off?”
Mike asked, “You at your computer?”
“No. In the bedroom.”
“I just sent you an email. Call us back after you’ve looked at it.”
He disconnected before Drex could say anything more.
He rolled up and off the bed, went into the main room, and opened his laptop. The subject line of Mike’s email was empty, nor was there any content in the body of it. It had an attachment.
Drex opened it, and his heart blipped with excitement when the photograph taken aboard Marian Harris’s yacht came up full screen. The boys in Bombay were geniuses and worth every penny they charged. The picture had been clarified and enhanced, and the quality was far better than Drex could have hoped for.
He zoomed in on the figure of the man he suspected was Jasper Ford. “Damn!” He’d hoped for a voilá!, for an unmistakable image of the man living next door.
But the improved color density had sharpened the contrast between the brilliant sunset and the male figure silhouetted against it. His features remained dark and indiscernible. His hair wasn’t a sleek ponytail, but a wreath of frizzy curls. The nose in profile? It could possibly be Jasper’s, but Drex couldn’t swear to it, and, besides, he could have had rhinoplasty. Even a slight alteration could make a significant difference in his appearance.
He studied the close-up for several minutes before admitting that if there was something new and revelatory to see, he was missing it.
He returned the photo to its original size, sat back in his chair, and took it in as a whole, wondering what it was in particular that Mike and Gif had wanted him to see. Little of the yacht itself was visible in the picture, and Drex didn’t see anything of consequence from what was shown. The enhancement hadn’t changed Marian Harris’s image that dramatically. There was nothing to see in the background except for the blazing sky.
The partygoers? The doctored chromaticity had deepened some hues, lightened others, making it easier to delineate forms within the mishmash of faces and limbs. Individuals were now distinguishable. One in particular on the fringe of the crowd caught Drex’s eye because of a slender shaft of light shining on her hair and—
And matching it to the golds and reds that threaded through the sunset.
He sat perfectly still for a long time because he was too sickened to move. He could only stare at the face, which was out of focus, but dreamworthy, unquestionably lovely, and indisputably identifiable.
He got his voilá!, after all.
Chapter 11
Starting from the time he received that initial call from Deputy Gray in Key West, it took Rudkowski three days to find the hotel.
During that seventy-two hours, he’d pulled together every resource at his disposal in an attempt to tree Drex Easton without causing too much of a stir. He wanted to keep the higher-ups unaware that Easton was at it again.
The son of a bitch.
Rudkowski was tempted to let him move forward without intervention. Why not sit back in his La-Z-Boy, overdose on ESPN, and allow Easton to self-destruct? Rudkowski’s life would be simpler once Easton was completely wiped off the landscape.
But in the process of destroying himself, Easton would create a shit storm. Some of it was bound to blow back on Rudkowski. He wasn’t one of those rah-rah, diehard agents who thought the FBI was an exalted company of which he was fortunate to be a member. He wasn’t a blindly loyal disciple of the bureau.
He was, however, fanatically devoted to his pension.
He didn’t give Easton the satisfaction of calling Mike Mallory or Gifford Lewis, demanding to know where the hell he was and what he was up to. His cronies would report straight back to him that Rudkowski was on the warpath, and Easton would get a kick out of that. Even more, he would enjoy knowing that, so far, he was winning this current game of hide-and-seek.
But Rudkowski had agents surreptitiously keeping a close watch on Mallory and Lewis. For the past three days, they had reported for work as usual. After office hours, each had gone directly home. Neither was married, both lived alone, they seemed not to have any social life or any friends except for each other and Easton. On the surface they appeared to be the two biggest dullards on the face of the earth.
Rudkowski wasn’t fooled. He sensed that behind the closed doors of their drab apartments, they toiled into the wee hours, diligently working underground for their ringleader, Easton.
Rudkowski would continue to have their activities monitored, although he knew it was futile. Neither of the men was likely to make a slip-up, and neither would betray Drex Easton, not even if his life depended on it.
Rudkowski knew that because there had been a time when their lives had depended on it, and neither had caved.
Twice over the course of the past three days, Rudkowski had called Deputy Gray in Key West to inquire if he had heard anything more from Easton. He hadn’t. Rudkowski pulled rank and got a sergeant in the sheriff’s department down there to see if he could retrieve the telephone number that had called there twice on Sunday, the calls several hours apart. It took a while, but the sergeant came through and passed the number along to Rudkowski.
It was a short-lived victory, because when Rudkowski called the number, he got a recording telling him that the call couldn’t be completed as dialed. Unsurprising, really, considering the savvy bastard he was dealing with. Easton would have destroyed that phone within minutes of speaking with Gray.
Miracles did happen, however. Rudkowski’s shrinking belief in them was fully restored just that morning soon after he had arrived at his office. Another agent who’d been helping him on his search popped in. “You still on Easton’s tail?”
“What have you got?”
“That last cell number you had for him?”
“No longer good.”
“Not any more, but it was nine days ago. He sent a text from it.”
“To who?”
“Mike Mallory.”
“Shocker. From where?”
“A chain hotel in Lexington. I got the address.”
Rudkowski signed out for the remainder of the day and recruited another agent to drive him the seventy-something miles from Louisville to Lexington. When they reached their destination, Rudkowski left the second agent waiting in the car, preferring to handle this interview alone.
When the double automatic doors opened, a group of uniformed men and women filed past him pulling roll-aboards toward a waiting van. Flight crew, Rudkowski figured. Their departure left the lobby empty.
The receptionist greeted him as he approached the check-in desk. “Good afternoon, sir.”
“Hi.” He produced his badge and gave the young woman time to read his name on his ID. “It’s pronounced just like it’s spelled, short u. I need to speak to the manager, please.”
“She’s at lunch. She left me in charge.”
He leaned across the counter and read her name tag. “Ms. Li?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m here to ask about a guest—”
“Special Agent Easton?”
Rudkowski scowled. “How’d you know?”
“Because he’s the only FBI agent I’ve checked in.” She beamed a smile. “He’d be hard to forget anyway, because he was so nice.”
Rudkowski wanted to grind his teeth. “Yeah. Hell of a guy.”
“Are you—”
He cut her off. “I’ll ask the questions, Ms. Li. If you don’t mind.”
Her warm smile turned cooler. She bobbed her head.
“How many nights did he stay?”
“He didn’t.”
“He checked in but didn’t stay?”
“They were here for only a couple of hours. But Mr. Easton paid for a full day.”
“‘They’? Did he bring a woman?”
“Nothing like that,” she said, her lips pursing primly. “He was here for a
meeting with two associates.”
“Mallory and Lewis?”
“I didn’t get their names.”
“Was one of them a fat guy, face like a bulldog?”
Seeming to be offended by the description, she said, “He was…heavyset. Not a handsome man.”
“Not handsome and nice like Agent Easton.”
She didn’t say anything to that, only looked at him with unblinking eyes.
He asked, “What about the third man?”
“I don’t remember him very well.”
Gif Lewis, Rudkowski thought. That guy faded into the woodwork. Rudkowski worried his lower lip between his teeth. “Easton used a credit card?”
She answered with a curt nod. “He reviewed the bill to make certain I had added the minibar charges. Plus the cake.”
“Cake?”
“He called down and asked me to have room service deliver—”
“Cake?”
“Yes.”
No more “sir,” he noticed. Not that he cared about her opinion of him, but he added a bit of saccharine to his next question, because it was the most important one. “Ms. Li, after settling the bill with the additional charges, did Easton happen to tell you where he was going from here? Did he make a reservation at one of your chain’s other hotels?”
“No. But he left something for you.”
“For me?”
“That’s what I was trying to ask you at the start before you interrupted. I was about to ask if you had come to pick up the envelope. Mr. Easton said that you might be coming by for it within a few days. Honestly, I was about to give up on you. Wait just a moment, please.”
She disappeared into an office and returned shortly with a letter-size envelope. “Here you are.”
He plucked it from her hand. “Thanks.”
“I’ve already been thanked. By Mr. Easton. I was happy to provide the service for him.” She turned her back on him and went back into the office.
Rudkowski stalked across the lobby and through the double doors, waiting until he was outside to rip open the envelope and pull out the single sheet of hotel stationery. In the center of it was printed: Hey there, Rudkowski. Kiss my ass.
Chapter 12
Stroking her cheek to remove the speck of chocolate icing had been one thing. Licking it off his thumb had been another. If Drex had stopped at the former, and hadn’t done the latter, she would have forgotten the incident by now. Probably. Maybe. But because he had done it, she was still thinking about it two days later. With each replay of the scene in her mind, the scintillation was magnified. As was her unease over it.
Because it hadn’t been a reflexive action that could be laughed off. He hadn’t noisily smacked his lips or wisecracked about her chocolate addiction. It wasn’t wittiness that had simmered in his eyes as they’d held her gaze. Nothing like that.
No, licking it off his thumb had been provocative. Which compelled her to report it to Jasper.
But she hadn’t.
She hadn’t told him later that afternoon when he returned from the country club, or during their dinner out that evening, or when they’d come home to find that Drex had brought back their fan, along with a note regarding tonight’s reservation.
On any of those occasions she could have mentioned the incident to Jasper in an offhanded manner, made light of it, and given it no significance. But she hadn’t slipped it into a conversation, and now too much time had passed, during which it had acquired significance.
Of late, there had been a mounting tension between Jasper and her, made even worse because neither of them acknowledged it. Telling him about the incident with Drex might force them to expose problems within the marriage, which, to this point, neither had been willing to do.
In any case, telling Jasper about it now would feel like a confession. He would want to know why she was just now getting around to informing him of it when they were an hour away from joining the man for a double date. She didn’t want to get into anything with him just before leaving for their evening out.
As predicted, Elaine was as giddy as a coed who’d been invited to the prom by the varsity captain. She’d called Talia within minutes of Drex’s inviting her and had recounted word for word all he’d said, speaking as though every sentence ended in a pair of exclamation marks. Over the course of the past two days, she had called Talia no fewer than a dozen times in a dither over what she should wear tonight.
Meanwhile, Talia hadn’t seen or heard from Drex since leaving him on his doorstep. Without taking time even to say goodbye, she’d gotten the hell out of there. Several times, she had noticed that his car wasn’t in the driveway, but hadn’t caught sight of him leaving or returning. When she casually asked Jasper if he’d crossed paths with him, he’d said with disinterest, “No.”
Now, soaking in a bubble bath, chin-deep in scented suds, Talia wondered if Drex shared her disquiet over the incident. If he had dwelled on those few moments as much as she had, he might regret what he’d done and could well be embarrassed when he saw her tonight. Would it make for an awkward situation?
No. There wouldn’t be any awkwardness because she wouldn’t allow there to be. She would treat him as she had before: friendly, but with boundaries clearly drawn.
She was probably making far too much out of it anyway.
Having resolved that, she climbed out of the tub and proceeded to dress for the evening. She and Jasper had offered to pick up Elaine at seven. At fifteen minutes to, Talia checked her reflection in the mirror one last time, picked up her handbag, and, as she emerged from her dressing room, called to Jasper, “I’m ready.”
Elaine lived in a classy community of townhouses, Georgian in design, which afforded owners ample and pricey square footage, but zero lot lines. Talia parked at the curb and went up the walkway connecting the sidewalk to Elaine’s front door, which was made private from the street by an iron picket fence lined with shrubbery.
Within seconds of Talia’s ringing the bell, Elaine opened the door and exclaimed, “Oh my God, you look stunning!”
“Thank you. So do you.”
“It’s new.” Elaine pinched up the full skirt of her dress and curtsied.
“It’s lovely.”
“I can’t do slinky anymore,” she said wistfully, eyeing Talia up and down. “Is Jasper parking the car? Come in, come in so the mosquitoes don’t eat us alive. Drex, will you please tend bar?”
Talia drew up short just as she stepped across the threshold and spotted him lounging on the sofa. A great cat, having feasted on a fresh kill and lazing in the sun, couldn’t have appeared more satiated and indolent as he unfolded himself and stood up. “Hello, Talia.”
He was wearing dress slacks and a necktie, but the tie had been loosened, his collar button undone. She hadn’t yet braced herself to look him in the eye for the first time since last she saw him and was so taken off guard to find him here that the first words out of her mouth sounded like an accusation. “I thought you were meeting us at the restaurant.”
“He called and asked if he could come by early,” Elaine said. “And look what he brought me!” She pointed to the coffee table on which lay a rubber-banded manuscript.
“He had a copy made and asked me to read it and give him an honest assessment, which I swore I would do.”
Talia’s gaze moved from the manuscript back up to Drex. His smile was smug, his eyes glinting with insinuation, and she was certain he shifted them ever so subtly to the spot near her mouth that he’d touched with his thumb.
Before she gave in to the temptation to cross the room and slap him as hard as she could, she turned her back to him and addressed Elaine. “I’m sure he’ll benefit from your opinion.”
“He already has. He bounced several titles off me, and we decided on one just before you got here. Am I at liberty to tell her, Drex?”
“I’d rather keep it between us for now.”
Taking in the scene, Talia noticed that Elaine’s high-heeled sandals were l
ying on their sides in front of the sofa. Drex’s suit jacket was folded over the arm of a chair. Two half-filled highball glasses were on the coffee table. A gas fire flickered in the fireplace. It lent a romantic ambiance, but wasn’t radiating any heat.
Talia’s cheeks, however, were. She was furious over the way he had played her. It was an insult that he had asked Elaine to read his manuscript when he had soundly rejected her offer to do so. He was also playing Elaine in the very manner that Talia had warned him against.
“What’s keeping Jasper?” Elaine asked.
Talia hid her anger behind a rueful smile. “He sends his regrets.”
“He’s not coming? Why?”
“I would have notified you, but I didn’t know myself until we were due to leave. He waited until the last minute to tell me so I wouldn’t cancel on you. He insisted I come on. Besides, the plan was for us to drive you tonight. He didn’t want to stand you up. As it turns out…” She let the statement go unfinished except for a one-shoulder shrug and a backward nod toward Drex.
He said, “Why isn’t Jasper coming?”
She turned around to face him. “Tummy issues.”
“A bug?”
“The oysters he had for lunch.”
Elaine said, “I used to warn my husband against eating them raw.”
Neither Drex nor Talia contributed anything to that. He was still looking at her as though they shared an inside joke. A naughty inside joke. Spending an evening in his company would be intolerable.
“I hate to bail on you, too,” she said to Elaine. “But I really feel I should go home and make certain that Jasper is all right.”
Elaine stepped forward and hooked arms with her. “Nonsense. You know how men are when they’re sick. They’re either pitiful and want their mommy or they’re ornery. I believe Jasper would fall into the second category. Besides, I’m not about to let you waste that knockout dress. Drex, you don’t mind escorting both of us, do you?”