Читать книгу Lethal Lover - Laura Gordon - Страница 9

At sunset, the island sky became a canvas for an indescribable work of multicolored art, the likes of which Tess had never seen duplicated by man. But troubling thoughts robbed her of the joy nature’s spectacle should have inspired this evening. As she stood on the balcony, gazing out over the water, Tess wondered how a dream vacation could have turned into a nightmare so quickly.

Below, dozens of people roamed the beach, couples walked hand in hand, kids frolicked in and out of the gentle surf and built fortresses in the wet sand. Among the other tourists enjoying the evening splendor was an older couple with a toddler in the shallow beach area cordoned off for small children. She would never have noticed them from this distance had Tess not been so be sure that the tall, dark, imposing figure standing over them was Reed. He seemed especially engrossed in conversation with the gray-haired couple, which seemed odd to Tess.

Was he questioning them about Selena? Had they seen her? Talked to her? Her glance swept the beach again and stopped when it found the tourist, whose stares she’d scorned this afternoon in the lobby, standing on the ground-floor patio outside the bar, staring up at her.

When he saw her looking down at him, he turned and walked purposefully back into the bar. Tess rubbed her arms, feeling suddenly vulnerable and inexplicably chilled, despite the seventy-plus temperature and the gentle southern breeze that warmed the evening air. When she looked back to the cordoned area where the older couple and the toddler were still sitting, Reed was gone.

As she continued to scan the area below for Selena, and now for Reed, the faint strains of reggae music rode the breeze around her. The jaunty rhythms that had welcomed and invigorated Tess hours earlier, now seemed teasing and cruel, a mocking reminder that while the rest of the island—at least that part of it vacationing here at West Palm—was spending a carefree evening, laughing, dancing and building memories beneath the Grand Cayman sunset, she was trapped in a frightening situation that she could neither control nor completely understand.

“Where are you, Selena?” she whispered. “And what in God’s name have you done?”

Accepting that for now there would be no answers, Tess told herself to be patient, to maintain her faith in Selena until all the facts were known. But despite her best resolve to maintain a positive attitude, the smattering of details Reed had given her swirled around in her mind and tested that faith severely.

The grim fact that the government had sent him to bring Selena back to testify was deeply disturbing, as was Reed’s determination to find her. If the prosecution wanted Selena’s testimony that badly, it seemed reasonable to Tess to assume that the defense would be just as desperate to keep her from giving it.

The dangerous scenarios that crept into her imagination made Tess curse every legal thriller she’d ever read. She cursed the quiet life she’d carved out for herself in Evergreen, the life that had kept her so preoccupied running her own business that she’d left little time for anything or anyone else. Despite the blood ties that bound them, Tess had to admit that she and Selena were little more than strangers. As Selena had so grimly pointed out earlier, it was true that they only saw each other at funerals. Since college, they’d done little more than exchange Christmas cards, Tess realized guiltily.

But even if she had made more of an effort to remain close, would Selena have confided in her? Tess wondered. And even if she had, how could Tess have helped?

When the phone rang, Tess jumped from the chair so quickly she knocked it over as she lunged back inside the room to grab the receiver before the second ring.

Her “hello” was clipped.

“T-Tess.” Selena’s strangled sob and a jumble of other incomprehensible words crackled through the receiver.

Tess’s heart froze at the sound of her cousin’s whimpers. “Selena! Where are you? What’s happened?” Her own voice was shaky and her hand trembled as it gripped the phone.

A rustling sound coming across the line told Tess the phone had switched hands. “Your cousin is just fine, Ms. Elliot,” a cool, calm, distinctly Caribbean male voice informed her. “Now listen carefully. In Selena’s suitcase, hidden in the lining, is a book, a bound journal. Find it. Show it to no one. Do not attempt to copy or memorize any part of it. Tonight at ten o’clock bring it with you to this address.”

Tess’s knees bent involuntarily as she folded numbly to sit on the edge of the bed. This isn’t happening! her mind whispered as she reached for a notepad and pen. This isn’t real. It can’t be!

“Are you still there?” The dispassionate caller seemed strangely polite.

“Yes—yes, go on,” Tess managed to say.

“I will give you directions and instructions only once,” the voice informed her, forcing Tess to concentrate on the situation that her hammering heart confirmed was all too terrifyingly real. “You will do exactly as I say, telling no one of our conversation, involving no one.”

“Just tell me what you want me to do,” she pleaded. “I’ll do anything, but please, please don’t hurt her.” She hadn’t realized she was crying until she felt the tears drip onto the phone and seep between her fingers.

As the anonymous caller listed his demands and dictated a series of strange directions, Tess scribbled wildly. Although she hardly recognized the scrawl her trembling hand had produced as her own, she repeated the directions when Selena’s abductor ordered her to do so.

“Ten o’clock sharp,” he reminded her.

“Ten o’clock,” Tess repeated as though hypnotized.

“Your cousin’s life depends entirely upon you. We don’t want to hurt anyone, but we will do what we have to do to get what we want. No doubt you’ll be tempted to call the police, or maybe even go to your embassy. Do not consider doing either of those things, Ms. Elliot. If anyone accompanies you tonight, you will never see your cousin alive again.”

Before Tess could respond to the horrifying warning, the line went dead. And for a long moment she could only sit with the receiver still in her hand, too numb and shaken and frightened to move.

Finally she hung up the phone, choking back the irrational fear that somehow by just disconnecting the line she’d severed her last tie to Selena.

Alone in the room that had grown murky with shadows, she felt utter despair. Her tears had ceased and in their place a cold, dry fear stung her eyes and burned her throat.

The numbers on the clock radio beside the bed glowed an eerie green. Seven forty-five. Selena’s abductor had said Tess was to meet with him at ten. Ten sharp. The numbers changed: seven forty-six and with that change, the reality of precious time passing hit Tess with deadly meaning, jolting her into frantic action.

Once on her feet, she switched on the lamp beside the bed and dragged Selena’s suitcases out of the closet and into the middle of the room.

Dropping to the floor beside the largest one, she jerked it open and sat staring, momentarily overwhelmed by the empty space staring back at her. She began searching. The stark fear that drove her caused her stomach to roil and her hands to shake as she felt the onset of a throbbing headache.

Although Tess was a frequent climber and had scaled some of the roughest terrain in Colorado, the obstacle she faced now was even more daunting than those lofty peaks. For Selena’s sake, Tess prayed she was equal to the challenge.

* * *

MINUTES LATER, after patting the sides and the back of all three suitcases, Tess sat back on her heels, a feeling of defeat pressing down on her. She turned to the smaller carryon that Selena had brought with her, scolding herself for being so slow to think of it.

The journal had to be in the carryon, she told herself. Certainly if Selena had been carrying something valuable or incriminating, Tess reasoned, she wouldn’t have checked it at the airport.

But after a thorough search failed to turn up anything concealed in the lining of Selena’s smaller bag, Tess’s heart sank again. In desperation, she searched all three suitcases again, ending with the largest one. She shook it, patted it and turned it upside down, but only after she’d kicked it angrily across the room and then stooped to retrieve it, did she feel the irregular outline on the bottom of the bag.

Her hands groped along the hard vinyl casing with trembling anticipation. Finally, she felt it: the outline of something firm and square and distinctly booklike lodged between the lining and the small, black plastic wheels on the bottom of the case.

Frantically she searched the room for something sharp to slit the lining, jerking open dresser drawers and rummaging through her own belongings. Finally, in the bathroom, her fingers closed around a metal nail file in the bottom of her cosmetic bag and a second later she was sawing away at the lining inside the suitcase.

When at last she withdrew the notebook from between the bag’s cloth lining and the frame, her heart beat double time as she stared down at the object that verified so much of what Reed had told her.

Gingerly, she opened it and sat staring uncomprehending at row after row of handwritten figures and dates, all recorded in Selena’s distinctive left-hand style. Reed had said she’d probably made numerous deposits for Edward Morrell and, by the list of figures—many of them seven digits long—Tess realized her cousin had been dealing with a substantial fortune.

Were the notations that stared back at her from Selena’s journal the only documentation of Edward Morrell’s dirty money? Where had all that money come from? And at what cost had this fortune been amassed?

“Oh, Selena,” she murmured, feeling heartsick and hollow. “What have you done?”

When the figures began to swim before her eyes, Tess swallowed and took a deep breath and told herself to prepare for the next step: the exchange of the notebook for her cousin.

Panic rose inside her when it suddenly dawned that she had no idea how she was going to find the rendezvous point Selena’s abductor had described. She might have given in to that panic, had she not glanced at the clock radio and realized that time was slipping by. It was already 8:15, which meant she had a little more than an hour and a half to find the appointed meeting place, along streets she’d never traveled before, in a country where everyone drove on the opposite side of the road!

But as any good climber knew, when stuck in a tight spot, looking down was the first mistake. On the side of a mountain or in Grand Cayman, the only way out was up, Tess reminded herself with grim resolve.

Hastily she changed into a pair of jeans, a navy blue T-shirt and sneakers. With a last look around the room, she grabbed her purse, the scribbled directions for the ominous meeting place and Selena’s journal, or the ransom, as she’d already come to think of it.

As she hurried toward the door, she shoved the journal into her purse and zipped the bag closed. The clock informed her that she now had little more than an hour to find the rendezvous point. Having no idea where the abductor’s instructions would lead her, or how long it would take her to get there, made her mission all the more nerve-racking.

Right now all she could allow herself to think about was getting away from her room, away from West Palm and into the winding streets of Georgetown, where somewhere her cousin was being held against her will.

A knock on the door scattered her thoughts like buckshot. “Tess, open the door. It’s me.”

Reed! Tess’s mind shrieked. Damn him! He would never let her get past him without an explanation of where she was going. And knowing him, if she ignored his pounding, he’d pick the lock or break down the door.

While she hesitated, wondering what to do, he banged on the door again, with more authority. “Tess. Open up. I know you’re in there.”

For one crazy moment Tess was seized with a bizarre impulse to fling open the door and throw herself into his arms and beg him to help her. But the bizarre and impossible impulse died when the ominous words of Selena’s abductor came back to haunt her: Your cousin’s life depends entirely upon you.

“Tess, let me in,” Reed demanded.

“Just a minute,” she stalled. “I’m—I’m not decent,” she lied as she switched on the light and shoved Selena’s suitcases under one of the queen-size beds.

“Tess. Open the door.” It was the voice of a man unused to being kept waiting.

“All right. All right. I’m coming.” She swallowed two huge gulps of air, willing her heart rate steady and pausing at the door just long enough to smooth her hair and whisper a silent prayer for courage.

“What’s wrong?” he said before the door even closed behind him.

“You mean, other than the fact that my cousin is missing and you keep charging into my room?”

His shook his head and allowed himself a slow smile. “Never one to mince words, were you, Tessa?” The smile faded. “Has she contacted you?”

“Would I be here if she had?”

His curt nod was the only indication that he’d accepted her hedge. For the first time she noticed he carried a small canvas bag, which he tossed onto the bed before unzipping it.

When Tess realized that the bag was filled with his personal belongings she gasped, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I need a shave.”

When he reached inside the duffel bag and withdrew a shaving kit, she blurted, “Well, go get one someplace else!”

He tucked the small shaving bag in one hand and turned to face her. “Listen, I’ve been up for thirty-six hours straight, I haven’t had anything to eat or drink but airplane food and warm beer and I need a shower and a shave.”

Tess was flabbergasted. “Surely you don’t expect me to stand by and—and—”

“Watch?” He shot her a wicked smile and shrugged. “Suit yourself, Tessa.”

“Oh! You are insufferable!”

“Hey, I’m not any happier about all of this than you are, babe. I’d hoped to fly in, snag Selena and be back in Miami by tomorrow morning. But sometimes we don’t always get what we want, you know?”

“If you’re so tired and so dirty, then why don’t you go to your own room to bathe and take your stupid shower?” she demanded. “Give me your room number and I’ll call you if I hear from her.”

His laugh was short, dry and brittle. “You always were a lousy liar, Tessa. And as for the room, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s the height of tourist season. There’s not a spare room anywhere along Seven Mile Beach. Face it. You’re stuck with me until your cousin turns up or you tell me where she is.”

“But...you can’t stay here!”

“Too late. I’ve already moved in.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he interrupted again.

“I promise I’ll be out of here the moment I catch up to Selena. In the meantime, I’m part of the furniture.”

The man was not only insufferable, but infuriating, as well, and Tess would have loved nothing better than to tell him exactly what she thought of his boorish behavior. Right now, however, delivering the notebook still stuffed inside her purse took precedence over her anger and her desire to tell him off—now and over the past eight years.

The more pressing problem was how to get away from him to make the exchange with Selena’s abductors. “Whatever you say, Reed,” she agreed suddenly, obviously astonishing him with her unexpected capitulation. “There are plenty of towels in the cupboard above the john.”

The suspicion in his eyes was undisguised and she added a terse, “And please, put the lid down when you’re finished in there.”

He laughed. “I’ll be the perfect guest,” he assured her with a mocking bow. “I’m glad to see you acting so reasonably. You always were the practical one, weren’t you, Tessa.”

“I thought I asked you to stop calling me that,” she shot back. “And I’ll thank you to stop telling me what ‘I always was.’” As if you ever really knew, she added bitterly to herself.

He nodded and continued to rummage for agonizing minutes through his duffel bag, withdrawing fresh clothes. Watching him, Tess couldn’t help noting how his dark, expressive eyes glittered in the soft lamplight that cast his features in shadows—the high, wide forehead and the aquiline nose.

A slow, satisfied smile spread across his face when he caught her studying him. “You haven’t changed either,” he said quietly.

“Go on,” she snapped. “Take your damn shower. I’ll listen for the phone in case Selena calls.”

He nodded and started for the bathroom with his shaving kit in hand and a fresh shirt thrown carelessly over his shoulder. Then he seemed suddenly to change his mind and headed instead for the door where, with a quick turn of his wrist, he locked the dead bolt with the key extending from it and withdrew the key and tucked it into the side pocket of his snug-fitting jeans.