17

Jake waited until he’d cooled down before heading for the jail. He found Luke and Bryn watching a closed-circuit monitor.

“What?”

Without answering, Luke pointed at the screen. Jake stepped around him and saw Phoebe in a cell with someone who had to be Holly the Horror.

“Why haven’t you moved her?”

“We were waiting until they finished Wild Thing.” Luke grinned at his brother.

Jake did a double take. “Is that a harmonica?”

Bryn’s expression was classically conflicted, with equal parts rage and laughter. She managed to control her twitching lips long enough to say, “Looks like the poor little abused girl can take care of herself.” She rubbed her temples. “Sure like to know how she got that thing past us.”

Jake grinned. “Magic?”

Luke gave Jake an amused, pointed look. “It’s obvious she has a highly disruptive influence on everyone she comes into contact with.”

Jake rubbed the back of his neck, saw Bryn and Luke watching him do it and lowered his hand. “How about you get her out of there before she gets too comfortable, Luke, while Bryn and I figure out a new approach?”

“You sure know how to take the fun out of things,” Luke grumbled good-humoredly as he left. Something told Jake he’d be back, though, with more questions for his little brother. Behind the humor had been a boatload of worry.

Bryn crossed her arms and leaned against the console. “Works for me. What are you thinking?”

Jake turned his back on the console and Phoebe. He couldn’t think while looking at her. “They go after their targets mainly to expose their nasty secrets, right?”

“That appears to be their priority.” She sighed. It was hard to hate Phagan. She was reluctant to admit it, but she was worried about him. She hadn’t heard from him since Phoebe got picked up and had had no flowers, chocolate, or romance novels from him, either.

Jake’s stopping that disk wipe had seemed like a major coup. To her deep chagrin, she had been relieved when Matt’s computer guru found nothing. Chasing Phagan was like trying to take down Robin Hood. She was getting tired of being on the side of legal slime like she suspected Peter Harding to be. She hadn’t gone into law enforcement to protect his ilk.

“So, if we can’t beat her, why not join her? We offer her a deal in exchange for what she knows about Harding, Hyatt and Phagan.”

“She won’t give up Phagan. If he’s on the table, she won’t deal.” The conviction in her voice startled her. What was wrong with her? She’d been hunting Phagan for five years. Here was her chance to get him, and she was backing off? “And I’m betting she won’t rat on Hyatt either. If she is Pathphinder, they’ve got to be tighter than these shoes I wish I wasn’t wearing.”

She grimaced and eased them off to give her feet a short break. It took away any height advantage she had with Jake, but he didn’t seem to notice.

He was frowning into the distance. “You’re probably right. Course, if they are tight, Hyatt will make some kind of move to help her. We should start with the whole package. The real question is, can you make a deal that doesn’t include Phagan?”

“If she returns RABBIT, I might make it work with my people. What about you?”

Jake’s smile had an edge to it that made her uneasy, though she couldn’t say why.

“I’ve got a few ideas that should make it palatable to my side,” he said. “I just need some maneuvering room, so I can make it look like I’m giving ground.”

“Okay.” She gave him a minute to enlighten her, but he didn’t bite. She sighed. “You want me with you when you make the offer? She doesn’t like me.”

Jake grinned. “Phoebe doesn’t like much. If you don’t mind, I think I should go in alone, at least the first time.” He looked at his watch. “The clock is ticking. We’ll let her simmer a bit while we get approval. Let me know ASAP.”

Bryn nodded. She wanted to ask him if he was going to be okay, but she knew he would. He just might not be the same. He was hiding it well, but Phoebe had changed him somehow. He’d lost his little-boy-having-an-adventure aura. Was more serious, more sad. It wouldn’t change what he’d do. She knew he’d do what he had to, but at what price?

She sighed. What price would they each pay before this was over?

Stern passed Harding’s secretary, his glance flicking over her long enough to see her slight grimace warning him all was not well in the inner sanctum. He wasn’t surprised to find the room dark, the curtains shut against the world slipping from Harding’s control.

He heard the clink of ice in a glass and turned away from the desk. As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he saw Harding stretched out on the couch, his tie loose, his mouth drooping in a petulant pout. On the bar, the brandy decanter was nearly empty. On the floor next to him his glass lay on its side, the melting ice dripping onto the carpet.

He knew Harding stood on the thin edge between madness and sanity. Had wondered what—or maybe it was who—would push him over that edge. If Harding could have mastered himself, if he could have directed his energy toward the accumulation of money and power, nothing could have stopped him. Without his rather glaring Achilles heel, he could have had the Presidency one day. All great men were both shadow and light, but if they weren’t careful, what they did in the shadows could overcome the light.

It had been a wasted effort to erase his past. He’d brought it with him. If it hadn’t been Nadine, it would have been someone else. You couldn’t have the kind of tastes Harding had without something being exposed. The Feds were looking hard now. They’d find something. They usually did once they’d gotten a scent.

Maybe, just maybe, he could contain the threat Nadine and her cohorts posed. He’d come too far to throw it all away. But he wasn’t going down with Harding.

He punched the intercom. “Get hot coffee in here. Lots of it.”

Harding stirred and opened his eyes. “Where you been?” His speech was slurred and thick, but then he seemed to shake it off. “Do you have her?”

“It takes time to setup something like this without leaving a trail. Farley’s arranging for a lawyer. If the cops check, it’ll look like they were all in it together.” He’d made sure he didn’t mention to the boys that they’d been captured on film or they’d both be long gone. He needed them alive just long enough to help solidify the frame. A pity they’d have to die. He rather liked Farley. As much as he could like anyone. “They won’t arraign her until they have to.”

“What if she makes a deal?”

“Then we’re screwed. They’ve got her in isolation. No one can get at her. My man inside laughed when I asked him to try.”

“I pay good money to—”

“There isn’t enough money in anyone’s bank account to change his mind. She’s under constant surveillance. He’s greedy, not stupid.”

The secretary brought in the coffee and hurried out. She knew her boss’s temper when drunk and had no desire to hang around. Stern poured him a cup and forced him to drink it, then poured him another.

“Get your head clear. Think. She knows she’ll get bail. She’s got no record. The Feds can scream all they want about flight risk, but all they got on her is aiding and abetting. Not nearly enough to convince a judge to deny bail. Not with a good lawyer crying foul. She’s proved she’s not stupid.” Unlike you. “She’ll sit tight because she wants you.”

“She wants me.” Harding smiled, his eyes glazing. “And I want her.” He looked up at Stern. “You have to get her for me.”

“Get sober and call your fiancée. She’s been leaving messages for you.”

It was definitely time to—sever—his relationship with Harding, Stern realized. He’d help Harding finish his game because he wasn’t going to let some twit of a girl beat Barrett Stern. But that was all he’d do for the man. He headed for the door without looking back.

“Call me if you hear anything!” Harding called after him, wincing when Stern slammed the door. Stern was getting too cocky. “Asshole,” he muttered, setting down the coffee cup now that he was alone.

“I totally agree,” a voice said from the darkness in the direction of his desk.

His desk chair swivelled around until he could see someone sitting in it. Whoever it was reached forward and turned on the desk lamp. Harding winced again as the light stabbed into eyes. His brandy-sodden brain tried to remember if they’d said anything incriminating.

“Who the hell are you?” Harding struggled to his feet and started toward the desk and his gun, until he got close enough to see his gun trained on him. “What do you want?”

“World peace, an end to hunger, and clean air to breathe,” Dewey said. “But I’ll settle for being obscenely wealthy.” He got up, gesturing with the gun toward the recently vacated couch. “Better sit down while we talk. I don’t like picking drunks up off the floor.”

Harding wanted to object, but even drunk, he knew better than to argue with a gun. “How did you get in here?”

“I have my ways.” Dewey perched on the edge of the desk. “As, apparently, do you. You’re quite the villain, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?” Harding rubbed his face with his hand, feeling the lines that fear was carving into his brow, but too panicked to do anything about them.

“Come, come, Harding. Your RABBIT don’t run. It don’t even totter. It’s beyond the dud zone. I suppose that’s why you tried to have it stolen. Only I beat you to it.”

“It was you.” Harding threw a quick look at the door. Stern had picked a hell of time to leave, he thought bitterly. They’ll come to us, he says, then leaves him alone and unprotected. He downed the coffee. Had to get his head clear. The surge of caffeine gave him a brief burst of clarity. “You’ll have a hard time proving you’re not the one who screwed it up.”

“The thought did occur to me.” Dewey studied him long enough to make Harding nervous. “What would you say if I told you I have a working prototype?”

“I don’t believe you. You couldn’t—”

“I had a feeling you’d say that. Do you think I’d be here if I couldn’t prove I have a chip that works better than the Energizer Bunny?” Dewey walked over to the bar and helped himself to a dash of Harding’s best brandy. “I’m sure even in your impaired condition you can see the benefit to your political aspirations if you recover your RABBIT and it works.”

Harding licked his lips. “What’s the catch?”

“I told you. I want to be obscenely wealthy. And not in jail.” He went back to the desk and booted up the computer, then turned the screen so Harding could see it. “I want half of the money you’ve got stashed in these Swiss bank accounts. I’ll give you a number to transfer half my money to. When I verify you have completed the transaction, I’ll meet you here with proof your RABBIT runs.”

“How do I know you won’t take the money and run?”

“Because you’ll have Nadine. I get her back—unharmed—and the other half of the money when I deliver your chip.” Dewey walked up to Harding. “What do you want more, Harding? To be governor? Or Nadine?”

“I want them both.”

Dewey was smiling, but his gaze was chilling. “Nobody gets everything they want.” The look in his eyes had Harding tugging at his tie. “Take me, for instance. I want you dead for killing Kerry Anne Beauleigh. I want you to die, the way she did. Your blood drip, drip, dripping out of your body. Your life fading away. I want you to be as afraid as she was when she died.”

Harding was finally stone-cold sober. Looking death in the eyes did that. He stared, afraid to move or speak. Slowly, the deadly look faded to one more neutral.

“Since I don’t get what I want, you don’t either. We’ll just call this one a draw and go our separate ways. You get your life, minus some cash, and we get ours, plus some cash.” He ran a finger the length of the gun. “Of course, if you renege in any way or try to alter our deal by a single penny, I will kill you. I’d consider it a privilege to go to jail for ridding the world of the likes of you.”

“I need to think about it.”

“I wouldn’t think too long. I’m sure the Feds will offer Nadine a sweet deal for returning the chip. And she’s liable to turn over both versions to lighten her sentence.” Dewey headed for the door but stopped before opening it. “I wouldn’t mention this to your goon, Stern.”

“Why not?” Harding struggled to his feet.

“You didn’t ask where I got my working prototype. You didn’t think I got it working, did you?”

Before Harding could respond, the man was gone, pulling the door closed behind him.

Stern. He’d had a working prototype all along? Why? Why would he do this to him? Of course! He wanted the power for himself. Well, he’d find out what happened to those who screwed Peter Harding over. He’d find out. And then he’d be dead. Very dead.

Stern had a finally honed sense of danger. It had served him well for many years. It led him to those who could help him and away from those who were against him. Harding would be a challenge to neutralize. He was a public figure. The challenge would be taking him out while implicating him in the theft, then getting away clear and clean. Stern was also a semipublic figure, if a shadow could be considered public.

He’d gone to his office after leaving Harding wallowing in his own fears, but Stern’s sense of unease grew too strong for confinement. He needed to be out, where he’d have a clear sight line ahead of him and his back protected.

He let himself out the private entrance, where no cameras monitored his comings and goings, and crossed to his car. Inside, he shoved the key into the ignition, but before he could turn it, he felt something cold against his neck. Something long experience told him was the barrel of a gun.

Without moving a muscle, he looked in the rearview mirror.

“Put your hands where I can see them,” Dewey said, digging the gun harder into Stern’s neck for emphasis. “Slowly. I’m a little jumpy, and this has a hair trigger.”

Stern was no fool. He did as he was told. “Who are you?”

“I’m the man who’s going to make you very rich,” Dewey said.

“I’m already very rich,” Stern said, wondering how he could distract him.

“Not this rich.”

“Okay. I’ll bite,” Stern said. “How are you going to do it?”

“By delivering RABBIT to you.”

Stern jerked, but couldn’t quite repress a smile. “RABBIT?”

“Let me clarify that. The one that works.”

That got his attention. “I don’t think I understand you...”

“Oh, you understand me all right. At least halfway. You knew that chip in the research lab was worthless. You just didn’t know about the one that worked. The one Harding had stowed in his personal safe.”

A pause. “What makes you think I didn’t know about it?”

“Call it a gut instinct.” Dewey rubbed the barrel on Stern’s neck. “Do we talk? Or shall I fade away and let your chips fall where they may?”

Stern stared at him in the mirror. Did the little piss ant really think he could take him on and live? He’d find out what happened to people who screwed him. As would Harding. “We talk.”

Jake had enjoyed the family dinner, as much as he could enjoy anything. His mom’s roast had been even better than his memory, the talk lively. He’d been to Matt and Dani’s wedding, but this was his first chance to see the couple together in a post-nuptial setting. In an out-of-the-loop way, he’d been amused to think of his tough-minded big brother getting snagged by a romance writer who was afraid of heights. He was surprised to find he liked her and that she wasn’t at all what he’d expected, although he couldn’t have said exactly what he’d expected a romance writer to be. She seemed to have Luke, who called her Louise, wrapped around her pinkie right next to Matt. Mom liked her, too, he could tell, feeling like an outsider.

When Dani’d announced she and Matt were expecting an addition to the Kirby clan, the reunion turned into a celebration. Jake was delighted for Matt. His big brother deserved to be happy. He’d become harder, more distant after the collapse of his first marriage. He’d always wanted kids, and Jake knew Dani had lost her first child in an accident. They deserved this happy ending and even happier beginning.

It wasn’t their fault Jake’s life was spinning off-center, that there’d be no happy ending for his...he couldn’t even call it a romance. Some heavy breathing, one near kiss and a bunch of might-have-beens did not a romance make. He felt like the specter at the feast and slipped outside to keep from casting his personal pall over the proceedings. Had he stooped so low he was jealous of his brother? If this was what love did to you, he wanted no part of it.

He looked back toward the house, where his mom was telling Dani what kind of baby Matt had been. This couldn’t be love. That stuff inside the house was love. Love was joy, not pain. All he had now was only lust, proximity. It had to be. It would fade. He’d move on and get on with his life.

He heard the screen door slam and saw Dani strolling toward him like someone out to enjoy the night. She was, Jake decided, a beautiful woman, though not in the way most people rated beauty. She was a quiet mountain meadow, as opposed to the Grand Canyon. Her coloring was soft, but there was strength of character in the rounded curve of her jaw. Her steady gaze was that of someone who had seen sorrow and come to terms with it.

“It’s nice out here,” she said. She leaned against the fence and stared up at the sky. “I always vow I’m going to learn more about the stars, but I always forget.”

“Too many things, not enough time,” Jake said, feeling his insides begin to smooth out. No wonder Matt looked as if he’d found the mother lode when he had her to come home to every night.

There was a short, companionable silence, one filled with only the soft sounds of the night, the murmur of his mom’s voice directing the cleanup of the dinner debris and the hum of a distant car passing.

Jake sighed. “I’m really happy for you and Matt,” he said.

“I know.” She turned toward him, her eyes reflective and almost sad. “When Meggie—died, I avoided being around children.” Her smile flickered in the dark. “I’d drive blocks out of my way so I wouldn’t have to pass any schools.” She rested her arms on the fence as she stared skyward. “It wasn’t that I begrudged other people their children, their joy. I just couldn’t bear to see it. It made my loss seem bigger. More raw.”

“How did you get over it?”

“I didn’t. I thought I had, but I was just moving too fast for the pain to completely overwhelm me. It wasn’t until I got stopped in my tracks by the little incident last year—”

Jake grinned at her calling being kidnapped by a nut case and almost tossed off a mountaintop a “little incident.”

“—that I realized it. It took almost dying to make me realize how much I wanted to live, even in a world without my daughter. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss her, but I’ve made my peace with the pain. Learned to live with it, like a lousy roommate.” Her smile was wry and soft around the edges. “One thing I know for sure, the shadow of her death makes the light I’ve found with Matt that much sweeter. Because of the sorrow, the joy is...”

Her hand spread across her stomach in a gesture both protective and loving. He saw unshed tears glitter in her eyes and felt his throat tighten.

“Let’s just say I’m trying to not run from life.” There was a long, peaceful pause, then she asked, “What’s she like?”

“How did you know?”

Her laugh was soft but kind. “I’m a romance writer. If I couldn’t sense unrequited love in the air, I’d be a disgrace to my profession.”

Jake chuckled, surprised that he could. “You’d like her, I think. And she’d like you but probably wouldn’t admit it.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Getting her to admit anything is near impossible.”

“Is she the one you have in custody?”

Jake nodded. “Mom says if it’s meant to be, it will be.”

“You don’t believe her?”

“It’s not that.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and scowled at the future.

“You want it to be but don’t see how it can?”

“You’re good.”

“I’m a romance writer. I have to be.” She slid her arm through his and started him back toward the house. “Does she feel the same about you?”

“I think so, but—”

“No buts.” She stopped, forcing him to look at her. “You’re a fixer, like Matt, so this is driving you nuts. My advice, for what its worth, is you do your job and let love find the way.”

Right. He managed to smile at her, as if she’d helped, as they started up the steps. “Okay.”

She laughed. “You don’t believe me. Let me ask you a question then. How did you catch her? Matt didn’t seem too optimistic about that prospect yesterday.”

Jake stopped halfway up. “You know, that’s a good question.”

An offhand comment Sebastian had made while securing the computers at Smith’s came back to him now. “I wonder why she didn’t phone in the wipe?” he’d asked, as he unplugged the computers from the phone line. At the time, Jake had assumed there’d been physical evidence she needed to destroy and let the comment pass, but why hadn’t she done that before the heist? So far Sebastian hadn’t found anything on the drive. It was almost as if it had already been wiped. Matt had put someone on to piecing together her few shredded papers and hadn’t found anything of interest there either. If she was Pathphinder, how had she made such a rookie mistake?

“A...very good question.”

“Maybe she’s trying to find a way to you.”

Or it was part of the plan?

“Matt is luckier than he deserves.” He grabbed Dani and kissed her on the mouth.

The screen door opened, framing Matt in the opening. “When you’re through kissing my wife, I’d like to take her home.”

Jake grinned. “I’m almost done.” He kissed her again, this time on the cheek. “Thanks.”

She patted his cheek. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

Jake rubbed the back of his neck. Maybe romance writers couldn’t help being optimistic.