Читать книгу Pawn - Carla Cassidy - Страница 9

Phoenix, Arizona

The police car had been following her for at least ten minutes before the cherry lights came on, flashing brilliant red glares across the stretch of desert on either side of the two-lane highway.

“Damn,” Lynnette White muttered as she slowed her car and came to a halt just off the shoulder of the road.

She watched in her rearview mirror as the police car pulled up behind her and stopped. She didn’t think she’d been speeding. She’d made no illegal turns and hadn’t been driving erratically. So, why was she being stopped?

A burly officer stepped out of the driver’s side of the car and walked with purpose toward her window. Maybe she had been speeding, she thought. She’d been known to have a bit of a heavy foot.

She rolled down her window and gazed up at the unsmiling man. His sunglasses gave away nothing, the mirrored surfaces reflecting the deepening shadows of the barren, brown landscape that surrounded them.

“License and registration,” he demanded.

“Good evening, Officer. What’s the problem?” she asked pleasantly.

“Ma’am, I need to see your license and registration.” His stern features and curt tone radiated a no-nonsense attitude.

Lynn was tired and eager to get home to her apartment on the outskirts of Phoenix. She’d stayed at Athena Academy, the private girl’s school, longer than she intended and now just wanted to get home. The last thing she wanted was to instigate any kind of hassle with the policeman that might hold her up.

She pulled her driver’s license from her purse, then grabbed her car registration from the glove box and handed both to the man who was keeping her from her dinner and what little was left of the evening.

If she’d been speeding, she’d accept a ticket, pay the fee and that would be the end of it. Unfortunately it wouldn’t be the first time she’d paid a speeding ticket.

She watched as he stared at her paperwork, then at her as if making certain the bad photo on her driver’s license matched her face. She hadn’t changed much since the photo had been taken. Her chestnut hair was a bit longer, but her eyes were still an unusual green-gold blend and her weight was the same, give or take a few pounds.

He looked back toward his patrol car and gave a nod, then opened her car door. “Ma’am, you want to step out of the car?”

Lynn frowned as her heartbeat increased. “No, I don’t. Not until you tell me what’s going on.” She was aware of another policeman approaching them. “If I was speeding, just write me the ticket.”

“This isn’t about a speeding ticket, Ms. White,” he replied.

What was happening? Her paperwork was all in order. “Then what is it about?” She was positive she’d done nothing wrong.

“Ms. White, we’re under orders to take you into custody. Now, you can either make this difficult or you can make it easy, but one way or another, you’re coming with us.” As if to punctuate his sentence his right hand crept to the butt of the gun in the holster at his hip.

Lynn quickly considered her options and was smart enough to recognize she had none. She was still in the process of learning exactly what she was capable of, but she knew that despite her incredible genetic gifts, she couldn’t outrun a bullet.

Unease whipped through her. “What about my car?” she asked as she stepped out into the hot, late-August air.

“Officer Birch will follow us with your vehicle,” he replied and gestured to the second man who had joined them.

Lynn looked from one to the other, but their rigid countenances gave nothing away.

Heart pounding with anxiety, she grabbed her purse, handed Officer Birch her car keys, then headed toward the waiting patrol car.

Minutes later, as she was driven to an unknown destination, she wondered if it was possible that the sins of her past had finally caught up with her.

It had been over a year since she’d stopped breaking a hundred laws all in the name of love for her godfather, the man she’d called uncle, Jonas White. Of course, at the time she hadn’t realized she was breaking laws and she’d been naïve enough to believe his lies.

For several years Lynn had been an expert cat burglar, breaking into museums and private residences to retrieve precious artifacts and jewels. Her Uncle Jonas had told her that they were working for the government, taking items that had been stolen so they could be returned to their rightful owners. But, in truth, she’d been stealing on Jonas’s behalf for his personal gain.

When she’d agreed to work with the FBI to catch her godfather and put him behind bars they had promised that all pending charges against her would be dropped.

Had something gotten screwed up? Was there still something on her record that had alerted the Arizona cops to the crimes she had committed in Miami?

She worried a strand of her shoulder-length hair between two fingers. She hadn’t felt this level of anxiety since discovering that the godfather who had raised her, the man she’d loved like a father, had been nothing more than a criminal using her skills for his own advantage.

A year ago the fates had taken away her support system, ripped apart her security, but in return she’d discovered that she had two sisters. Thoughts of Dawn and Faith and all the special women who had become her friends in the past year brought with them a surge of strength. Whatever was happening, Lynn would get through it.

Her stomach knotted as they pulled into a parking lot in front of a large warehouse. She sat up straighter. What was this? She’d expected a police station. This place was in the middle of nowhere. Something wasn’t right here. Something definitely wasn’t right at all.

There was also no way out of the backseat of the patrol car, which was apparently used frequently to transport criminals. There were no door handles on the inside.

She leaned forward to speak to the officer through the wire mesh that separated the backseat from the front. “Where are we? Why are you bringing me here?” Her anxiety toyed with becoming full-blown panic.

The officer’s continued silence only increased the frantic flutter of her heart. He’d spoken only once during the ride, and that was to radio in to somebody that they were in transit.

A handful of cars were parked in the lot and as their vehicle came to a halt, the officer shut off the engine and turned in his seat to look at her. “Don’t worry, Ms. White. You aren’t in any danger.”

“Easy for you to say, you’re in the front seat with a gun,” she replied with more than a touch of nervous irritation.

As he got out of the car and opened her door to allow her to exit, she once again assessed her options. There was no doubt in her mind that she could outrun him. Lynn had never met anyone she couldn’t outrun. But, there was the little problem of his gun.

She had no idea if he’d use it if she took off, but she wasn’t willing to take the gamble. Besides, even though she was anxious about the whole situation, she had to admit she was also more than a little bit curious.

Curiosity killed the cat, she reminded herself as she stared at the cavernous building.

As the officer led her toward the front door, she was aware of Officer Birch arriving with her car. He parked it next to the patrol car.

Dusk had disappeared, replaced by night and a darkness that made it difficult for her to discern exactly where they were. Heat radiated from the pavement as she was escorted between both officers across the parking lot. Her heart pounded.

A tall, silver-haired gentleman in a dark suit met them at the door. “Thank you, Officer Cook, that will be all.” The officer who had initially stopped her turned on his heels and headed back toward his patrol car.

The dark suit said nothing more until Officer Birch handed him her car keys. Once that policeman had left them alone, the man looked at her. “Ms. White, thank you for your presence.”

“I didn’t exactly have a choice, did I?”

He smiled, a smooth, practiced gesture she instantly didn’t trust. “I’m Special Agent Samuel Cahill with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’d like to talk to you.” He gestured her through the door.

FBI. She should have known. Her heart hardened. They’d used her once before and there was no way she intended for them to ever use her again.

“I’m not interested in anything you’d like to talk about,” she said and remained standing at the doorway.

A flash of annoyance crossed his features, there only a moment then gone beneath a pleasant facade. “Please, Ms. White. It’s a matter of great importance. If you’ll just give us a few minutes of your time you can get back on the road again.”

I don’t want to do this, Lynn thought even as she nodded her reluctant assent. There is no way they’re going to suck me into doing anything for them.

She stepped through the doorway, surprised to see that the building appeared to be a temporary headquarters of sorts.

Bright lights illuminated desks where several men sat either talking on the phone or working on computers. Electrifying energy filled the air despite the evening hour of the day.

It was obvious something was amiss, but no matter what it might be she couldn’t think what any of it would have to do with her.

“If you’ll just follow me,” Samuel said and led her past the desks and toward an inner office where blinds were pulled down and the door was closed.

A terrible dread filled her as she approached the office.

For the last year she’d rebuilt her life, a life that had been shattered beneath deception and lies. She’d moved from her godfather’s luxurious mansion on the beach in Miami to a small apartment in Phoenix. She’d made a nice life for herself here and she wasn’t about to let the FBI ruin things for her.

Whatever they were selling, she wasn’t buying.

Samuel opened the door and motioned for her to precede him. She stepped in to find a man seated behind a large desk.

He was an odd-looking man with an unusually wide forehead and a small nose. His buzz-cut hair looked unnaturally black and his eyes were that pale blue color that never managed to look warm. He stood, his gaze sweeping over her with intense assessment.

Every sense that Lynn possessed went on high alert. She knew instinctively that this was not a man to screw with. An aura of power clung to him, nothing subtle about it.

“That will be all, Agent Cahill,” he said.

Cahill dropped Lynn’s car keys on the desk, then nodded, left the room and closed the door behind him.

“Ms. White, I’m Special Agent Richard Blake. Please, have a seat.” He gestured to the chair in front of the desk. When she was seated, he eased back down behind the desk and eyed her with open speculation.

Once again an overwhelming sense of disquiet fluttered through Lynn. Who was this man and what did he want from her? Although she had a million questions, she refused to give voice to a single one. She’d wait until he was ready to tell her what the hell this was all about.

She didn’t have long to wait. He leaned forward in his chair, those pale eyes of his holding her gaze intently and radiating with keen intelligence. “Ms. White. We need your help.”

“Why not just give me a call and arrange an appointment instead of having me dragged here off the street by some of Arizona’s finest?” She didn’t try to hide her irritation.

One of his dark eyebrows drew upward and a disbelieving smile curved his thin lips. “And had I called you to arrange an appointment, you would have come?”

“Probably not,” she answered truthfully. The less polite answer was not in a million years. “Look, I don’t want to waste any of your time or mine. I can tell you right now that whatever you want from me, I’m not interested.”

“But you haven’t heard what I have to say.”

“It doesn’t matter what you have to say,” she replied. “I did my time with the FBI last year when I helped gather evidence against my godfather. It’s not my fault he escaped arrest, and he’s dead now anyway. I have no interest in disrupting my life to work with the FBI again.”

“This is bigger than the capture of one criminal.”

“It doesn’t matter how big it is, I’m simply not interested.” She stood.

She’d been curious when the cops had pulled her over and they had acted out of character. She wasn’t curious any longer. She was just tired and wanted to go home.

“I paid my dues, Mr. Blake. A year ago I did what I could to help the FBI. Now I deserve to be left alone.” She didn’t want to hear what he had to say, what he might want from her. She was terrified of getting sucked into a drama she didn’t need or want in her life. It was better to walk away knowing nothing.

“Sometimes we don’t get what we deserve,” he countered.

Lynn had enough. “Am I under arrest?”

“Of course not.”

“Then give me my car keys. I’m out of here.”

There was a split second when she thought he wasn’t going to comply. She saw something dark and angry flash in the depths of his cold blue eyes, but after a moment of hesitation he held out her keys.

She snatched them from his hand, overwhelmed with the need to get out of here, to escape this man, this place. “Thanks, and I hope we never meet again.”

She couldn’t get out of the office fast enough. She looked neither right nor left as she walked back down the hallway toward the exit.

As she left the building the night air embraced her, but she was unsure if the heat was from the outside temperature or the edge of anger that stirred inside her.

She strode to where her car had been parked and didn’t feel quite safe until she was behind the wheel with the doors locked. She couldn’t quite believe how easily he’d let her go.

It took her only minutes to orient herself as to where they had taken her and get back on the highway that would take her home. Home to her apartment on the south side of Phoenix.

The small apartment was a far cry from the mansion where she’d been raised in the lap of luxury. Her Uncle Jonas had kept her isolated from friends but had made sure she had the best of everything that money could buy. She’d also been raised to believe she was the heir of wealthy parents who had died in a tragic boating accident.

Lies. All lies. She clenched her fingers around the steering wheel as she thought of the lies that had filled her life.

When the FBI had gone after Jonas and frozen his accounts, Lynn had discovered she had no trust fund. She had nothing. She hadn’t cared, because she thought she had Nick. As always, thoughts of FBI Special Agent Nick Barnes brought with them a deep regret, an ache of love lost.

Nick Barnes had worked for her uncle. Of course, neither her uncle nor she had known that he was an undercover FBI agent determined to bring Jonas down. In the course of his investigation he and Lynn had fallen in love, but the timing for that love had been all wrong.

Lynn had just discovered the beginnings of the truth of her birth and the surprising existence of two sisters. One, Faith, lived in Louisiana where she worked in the evidence department for the New Orleans police. The other, Dawn, traveled the world on all kinds of hair-raising missions as some sort of mercenary soldier, fighting for justice. Lynn, left Miami and Nick behind to come to Phoenix to find out more about herself and the special school, Athena Academy, that their biological mother had attended. She’d known then that she couldn’t go forward in her relationship with Nick until she had the answers she so desperately needed.

As she drove she began to relax. Driving had always been the way she unwound when she’d been younger. The only difference was when she’d been living with Jonas she’d driven a new model red convertible with all the bells and whistles.

She now drove a five-year-old sports car with a dented front fender, but she’d paid for it with money she’d earned and nobody and nothing could take it away from her.

She breathed a sweet sigh of relief as she parked in front of her apartment building. She’d half expected to be followed home, but had seen no suspicious cars behind her.

Familiar scents greeted her as she walked into her apartment. A trace of her perfume lingered in the air, mingling with the orange-scented furniture oil and the fragrant candles she loved to burn in the evening. The decor was simple, but suited her. She’d chosen earth tones in keeping with this desert place, much different from the lush tropical colors of the Miami mansion she’d shared with Jonas.

She dropped her keys on the desk in the corner of the living room, then headed for the kitchen and leftover pizza from the night before.

She zapped the pizza in the microwave, snagged a cold beer from the fridge, then sat at the table to enjoy her meal. But any peace the day had brought to her earlier had been destroyed by the unexpected events at the end.

What had they wanted from her? It was important enough that they’d hunted her down, pulled her over and brought her in. They apparently knew her mindset well enough to understand that she wouldn’t have come in to see them on her own.

Dammit, she had earned the right to be left alone. Even though she had known Jonas was a criminal, even though she had known he needed to be put behind bars, one of the most difficult things she’d ever done was agree to help the FBI put him there.

Pizza half-eaten, she got up from the table and carried her beer out to the back patio where the night sky was filled with a million stars.

When she’d first come to Phoenix over a year ago, she’d been on a quest to learn the truth about who she was and where she’d come from. What she’d discovered about her beginnings was like something out of a science fiction movie.

Her past included a murdered mother, a secret lab with human experimentation taking place and enough conspiracies to make her head spin.

But, in addition to the horrors she’d learned of, she’d also been united with two sisters who, like her, were part of an experiment, all three genetically enhanced with special gifts.

She upended her bottle of beer and took a deep swallow. Damn the FBI and damn Mr. Richard Blake for making her think about things she didn’t want to think about.

Her computer mentally called to her, reminding her that she’d promised to have the Chastain Pharmaceutical Company Web site done in a month and it was a huge job. It was easy to lose herself in work, and that’s just what she needed to banish all thoughts of the FBI.

She carried her beer back into the house and went into the spare bedroom, which she used as an office. In the past year she’d gained a reputation as a top quality Web site designer and had managed to earn a living by using her computer skills. It was a job she enjoyed and that allowed her to pick and choose the hours she worked.

As she waited for her computer to boot up she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, willing away the headache that niggled at the base of her skull.

The day had begun so well. She’d had lunch with Kayla, a friend of her late mother’s, who served as police lieutenant of the small town of Athens, Arizona. Then Lynn had driven out to Athena Academy and had walked the grounds of the school where the mother she never knew had once walked.

Visiting the state-of-the-art college prep school nestled at the base of the White Tank Mountains brought a comforting peace to Lynn. It was a place of connection for her, a piece of her mother’s history that Lynn cherished. She loved seeing the new science wing, which has been completed over the summer. Another friend of her mother’s, TV news reporter Tory Patton, had given the dedication speech at the ribbon-cutting ceremony in July. Lynn had visited with more of her mother’s dear friends afterward.

She’d never meant to make her home here in Phoenix, it had just happened. She’d always intended to return to Miami and Nick. When she’d first left him to seek the pieces of her life that had been missing, they’d managed to call and e-mail each other frequently. But, time had a way of slipping by and long-distance relationships rarely had a chance of working.

There had been no bitter blowup and destruction of her relationship with Nick, only the interference of different lives and different paths.

She frowned, blaming the unexpected appearance of the FBI for the whisper of regret that now filled her heart.

With her computer up and running she decided to check her e-mail before she got to work on the drug company’s Web site. She pulled up her e-mail program and typed in her password.

Her mailbox showed about two dozen new e-mails. Several she knew were work related, a couple were from cyberfriends, some spam that had managed to get past her filters, but there was one sender she didn’t recognize.

The return address read, Delphi@orcl.org.

Lynn frowned, trying to decide if she should open it or not. She had filters and blocks on the system that shouldn’t allow in any viruses or bugs, but she also knew she couldn’t be too careful.

Deciding to take a chance, she opened the message.

Athena sister Lynette,

You have come to our attention. Your special, genetic skills are needed in our battle. As friends of Rainy we need your help. The Oracle Network awaits you. We will be in touch.

Lynn stared at the note, her mind whirling. Delphi…Oracle…sounded like something from Greek mythology. It would be easy to dismiss the note as nothing but some sort of crazy ad campaign or spam except that it mentioned Athena, her special, genetic skills and the mother Lynn had never known.

There were only a handful of people who knew that she had been created by a human experiment, that the experiment had been a success in that she had been born with superhuman speed and hearing and other strengths.

Even Nick hadn’t known the entire truth about the circumstances of her birth and her full capabilities, although he had suspected she was physically gifted.

So, who had written the note and what was Oracle? She hit Reply. What is Oracle, she typed in, then hit Send. It took only a moment for her to get a message that the e-mail address of Delphi@orcl.org was not a working address.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” she muttered. She spent the next half an hour trying to trace the e-mail address but came up with nothing. Definitely intriguing, but also rather suspicious.

Was it possible the note was from the FBI? She narrowed her eyes and stared at the message. It was pretty coincidental that she’d been detained by them earlier then came home to find this cryptic e-mail.

She closed the message, but was unable to still the new edge of agitation that rose up inside her. She didn’t like things she didn’t understand, things that didn’t make sense.

And she got the definite feeling that somehow the peaceful, quiet life she’d built here was about to explode.

Raymore, Florida

The ring of the telephone pulled Nick Barnes from the sofa, where he’d been cat napping for the past thirty minutes. He gazed at his watch and frowned. Who in the hell would be calling at midnight?

He grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

“Is Haley there?”

Nick’s gut twisted at the sound of the deep male voice. “Sorry, you’ve got a wrong number.”

“I was just looking for Haley.”

“Nobody here by that name.” He hung up the phone, his heart pounding with apprehension. Something was wrong. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten that phone call.

He got up from the sofa and grabbed his car keys from the kitchen table, then walked down the hallway and paused in the master bedroom doorway. Good, the phone hadn’t awakened her.

As he walked back down the hall toward the front door, he wondered what in the hell had happened. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

They had agreed, when he’d gone deep undercover three months ago, that there would be no contact unless it was a dire emergency. The fact that the code had been used meant something terrible had occurred and that couldn’t be good news for him.

He left a note on the table that said he’d gone to get a pack of smokes, just in case she woke up and wondered where he was.

As he left the house, as always, his gaze shot up and down the street, looking for anything suspicious, anything or anyone that didn’t belong.

Although Raymore, Florida, was only an hour’s drive from Miami, it was light-years away in culture and flavor. Struggling economically the small town was populated by people on their way down rather than on their way up.

It was also the place where an FBI undercover operation had been ongoing for the past year to break up a huge methamphetamine ring.

Nick started the engine of his ten-year-old sedan, then pushed against a panel in the door that opened to reveal a secret compartment. Inside the secret compartment was a cell phone.

As he headed away from the small bungalow he’d called home for the past three months, he punched in the number that would connect him with his contact.

“Are you safe?” a deep, male voice asked.

“I don’t know. You tell me.” Nick didn’t know the name of his contact, had only spoken to him by phone once before, on the day he’d gone undercover. He knew the man only by his contact name of Haley, a name that would have nothing to do with his real one.

There were only three people who knew where Nick was and what he was doing in Raymore. Buzz Cantrell, an agent who coordinated much of the undercover work within the agency; Frank Jessup, Nick’s boss; and Haley, a faceless voice over the phone.

“I’m alone in my car, on my way to a convenience store for a pack of cigarettes. What’s up?” Nick’s stomach remained knotted as he waited to hear what could only be bad news. As he listened to what Haley had to say, the knot twisted tighter. By the time Haley had finished telling him why he’d called, Nick had arrived at the convenience store.

Nick disconnected the call and sat for a minute, trying to digest what he’d just heard. He didn’t want to do it, but knew the men in charge would find a way of forcing his hand no matter how much he protested.

He got out of the car and went into the store. As he paid for a pack of cigarettes, he continued to think about what he’d just been told. They were asking him to play a dangerous game. They couldn’t pull him off the case he was working—too much time and effort had gone into setting him up in his current position.

But, they needed him to do another job for them, one that could not be done by any other agent. It was a dangerous request, with dangerous consequences should it be discovered.

He already knew that one false move on the case he was working would see him dead. The meth operation was headed by a handful of ruthless, amoral men who would think nothing of putting a bullet through his head should they entertain even a moment of suspicion. Now he’d been ordered to risk compromising his position.

He got back into the car and restarted the engine at the same time he shook a cigarette from the pack. He hadn’t been a smoker before he’d started this job, and he intended to quit as soon as this assignment was finished, but you couldn’t go out to buy cigarettes and not smoke them.

As he headed back toward the bungalow, he thought again of what he’d just been asked to do. The only positive thing he had to focus on was that if this got him killed, at least he’d have an opportunity to see Lynn again before he died.