Читать книгу Hart's Last Stand - Cheryl Biggs - Страница 11

It was almost noon when Suzanne pulled her rental car alongside the building that housed Hart’s office. She’d meant to arrive earlier, but after he’d left her last night, she’d known she would have a hard if not impossible time getting to sleep, so she’d run down to the hotel lobby to get a book from the gift shop.

The sight of Salvatore DeBraggo standing in the small shop, flipping idly through a magazine, had rattled her, and she’d been about to turn and hurry away when he’d looked up, spotted her and spoken.

“Mrs. Cassidy.” His thick accent turned her name to a series of deep, musical rolls.

“Mr. DeBraggo, hello.” She felt a tiny bit of relief to realize there were several other people in the gift store. She wasn’t alone with him.

“Please, let me apologize again for interrupting your dinner earlier,” he said, smiling.

Anger and a bit of bravado melded with her fear, and she instantly decided to confront his lie. She’d never been one to skirt an issue. “I didn’t tell my associate in L.A. where I’d be staying, Mr. DeBraggo.”

He nodded. “Ah, my late wife used to tell me I wasn’t very good at white lies.” He smiled. “I should stop trying.”

Suzanne didn’t return the smile.

“Yes, well, the truth is, I recognized you from your picture in the New York Times—the article they did on your gallery when you purchased the Mastroniani painting from the Brenroget estate last month. I’m afraid when I saw you in the hotel restaurant, impulse overrode my normally good manners.” He shrugged. “Again, I apologize.”

It had been a coincidence, and Suzanne had chided herself for the dark suspicions she’d harbored about him. Assassin, FBI agent, foreign spy, even privateer and terrorist.

She turned the car ignition off and grabbed her bag. Before leaving for Hart’s office she’d made several long-distance calls in regard to the jewelry Mr. DeBraggo wanted to sell. She wasn’t certain but something still didn’t ring true about him. And she could swear she’d seen one of the pieces before—in a museum.

She’d also placed a call to Clyde, who had suggested she move into a place owned by a friend of his. He’d also badgered her mercilessly for almost fifteen minutes for details about whom she’d gone to dinner with.

The fact that Hart could still stir feelings in her she didn’t want stirred had taken her aback yesterday, but she had gathered her wits about her now. It was merely a physical attraction. That was all it had ever been, and she could handle that.

She stepped from her car and entered the building. She made her way to his office and found his aide standing at the file cabinet just outside. Hart’s office door was closed, but she knew he was in there. She’d seen him through the window when she’d climbed out of her car.

She had to be careful.

The aide turned from the cabinet, and Suzanne asked to see Hart.

Even though Hart could hear her voice through his closed door, he’d known the moment she stepped into his aide’s office, had been acutely aware of her presence since he’d seen her car pull up outside. Anger and yearning churned within him. He had half hoped that she had left Three Hills and was out of his life forever, and he had feared that was exactly what she would do and he would never seen her again. His feelings didn’t make sense, but he was too smart to examine them.

Doubting oneself, examining feelings and trusting women were the three things that turned a man into a fool.

He looked down at the lab report on the drinking glass he’d taken from the hotel dining room. They’d come up with nothing out of the ordinary. According to the fingerprints from DMV and when she’d worked as a clerk in the army before her marriage, Suzanne Cassidy was Suzanne Cassidy. Maiden name Ramsey, middle name Julynne. Her parents had divorced by the time she was eight, father ex-military, mother an artist who’d been married six times.

The preliminary background check Hart’s aide had handed him earlier on Suzanne hadn’t told him anything different. It was far from complete, and he didn’t need to read through it again to know what it said. He’d already gone over it a half-dozen times.

According to it, Suzanne was clean. But Teresa Calderone’s record had been clean, too, or so said the feds, and believing that, and them, had nearly gotten Hart and several other members of the Cobra Corps killed.

A little over two years or so ago, the daughter of Peru’s staunchest antidrug advocate had been abducted by a member of the drug cartel, and the CIA spooks pulling duty there had requested the corps’s help in getting her back. It had been a simple plan: go in, grab her, get out.

The CIA’s main contact for information in Peru had been Teresa. Unfortunately, the spooks’ background check on her failed to discern that her fiancé had been murdered by a member of the cartel.

Teresa hadn’t really cared about rescuing the hostage or aiding the war on drugs. She hadn’t even cared about living. All she’d cared about was getting revenge—killing the man who’d ordered the death of her fiancé—and helping the CIA and the Cobra Corps put her in a position to do just that.

But Teresa hadn’t done nearly as good a job of seducing the cartel’s leader, Guilermo Ortega, as she’d thought, and when she tried to kill him, he’d been ready for her. It was only by sheer luck that Hart had been nearby and heard the struggle. A well-placed fist to the jaw had rendered the older man unconscious, and Hart had gotten Teresa away.