Standing outside the hospital where Salazar Sanso was still recovering, Janeal hesitated one last time.
She had spent the morning flight from New York to Tucson in first class staring at her orange juice, considering that a visit might be unwise. She would expose herself, for one, and risked triggering his ire. Or his infatuation, if it still existed. He might, because he could, decide to blackmail her or throw her to the wolves.
Janeal hated to think of Robert Lukin and Katie Morgon as wolves. At present, she was the truer wolf and they were as harmless as Peter and the Wolf's duck. But if they discovered her, those roles would certainly reverse and she’d end up in someone’s belly.
Salazar Sanso, lover of “games,” as he called them—games that ended in death—would not keep his promise to her. No doubt he saw promises as strategies, and his recent arrest would be reason to reevaluate. To send Robert after Katie was only the first move in a contest that would best all of them if she did not anticipate his game plan, because Sanso was a poor loser, and he would never concede to anyone connected with Jason or Janeal Mikkado.
Sanso would bring her down before he went down himself. She understood this because she had come to operate in much the same way. It had worked with Milan Finch.
She had to preempt Sanso’s move. If she was successful, she’d let Robert and Katie ride off into the sunset together while she faded to black.
As much as she didn’t want to, she’d have to let Robert go. Again.
At least Sanso couldn’t threaten anyone she loved this time, because Jane Johnson loved no one.
No one.
Before her flight touched down in Arizona, she had decided that there were ways around her concerns, starting with a call to one of Milan Finch’s friends in the attorney general’s office. Jasper Tennant became her friend after she squashed a story that incriminated him in an embezzlement scandal and instead ran an alternate theory that eventually created enough reasonable doubt in court to salvage his reputation. And his career.
Today she called in the favor.
With Jasper’s help, she secured a pass to interview Sanso as a defense attorney, as one Lisa Rasmussen, a bona fide partner in the firm that had already agreed to represent the criminal. Except the real Lisa was vacationing in Europe until the end of the week. All this explained why Janeal was here late on a Sunday afternoon, carrying a Styrofoam take-out container in one hand and a Dolce & Gabbana satchel in the other. She wore a cropped almond-brown wig and a pinstriped chocolate pantsuit, both in a style that Lisa preferred, based on photos Janeal had located easily online. A slim pair of Anne Kline glasses completed the look.
Sanso would recognize her mind and voice as Janeal—if he didn’t, she’d prod his memory—but if all went well he wouldn’t be able to pull her out of an All Angles lineup.
As if he read American magazines to begin with, acclaimed or not. She liked the idea that he might read comic books, though.
She wouldn’t be running her image in the periodical any longer anyway. That misery would fall to the new executive editor.
Janeal entered the hospital and took the elevator to the fourth floor and then to the secure wing, without anyone informing her that visiting hours were over. At Sanso’s door the guard on duty nodded as if he’d been expecting her and didn’t check the ID she’d assembled in her hotel room.
Sanso was napping when she entered the room. A weak blade of late afternoon sun cutting through a part in the blackout curtains was the only source of illumination at this hour. Janeal placed her take-out container on the rolling bed table and opened it. The man had aged some since their last encounter. Gray hairs rimmed his temples, and the fragile skin under his eyes sagged. No doubt injury and sleep gave off the appearance of being more vulnerable than he was.
The aroma of grilled tilapia and lemon rice filled the room. Janeal turned away and sat on the wood-and-upholstery visitor’s chair, her face in shadow. She did not have to wait long for the scent to wake Sanso. He stirred after only two or three minutes.
“Hungry?” she said from the dark corner.
Sanso did not reply, though she detected his head shift at the sound of her voice. After a breath he started patting the sheets, probably searching for the bed controls.
“Let me,” she said, her eyes having adjusted to the darkness. She went to his side and raised the back support, then moved the remote control so that it dangled by its umbilical over the head of the bed, where he couldn’t reach it. She returned to her seat.
“I should see what I am eating,” he murmured. “And who with.”
“You are eating fish and rice. With Lisa Rasmussen.”
“I doubt it.” His voice was baritone and coarse.
“Taste it and prove me wrong.”
“Ah. It’s not the food I question.” He prodded the Styrofoam container with his fingers and sniffed. “You might have brought a fork.”
“You never minded getting your hands dirty.”
“True. Nor did you. At least once upon a time. Janeal Mikkado.”
He folded his hands across his chest and sighed like a man content with life.
“You remember.”
“Child, the number of women I have not forgotten is so small that I have time to name you each in my morning prayers. I’ve waited for you to come back to me. I looked for you now and then—but not too hard. I’m a man of my word. Did you know I have prayed for you daily since the morning you sold your soul for a million dollars?”
“Did you know that I have cursed you daily since the night you slaughtered my father?”
“Prayers are far more effective than curses.”
“Look where you lie, murderer.”
Sanso turned his head toward her and opened his eyes wide. They seemed to bore through the shadows, and she wondered how clearly he could see her.
“I’d wager I lie in a bed far brighter than the one you have made for yourself,” he said. “Tell me why now, after all these years, you’ve finally come to me. Surely you could have found me more easily somewhere else if you had really wanted to.”
He reached into the take-out box and broke off a piece of fish. He placed it on his tongue and chewed slowly, licking his fingers before he swallowed.
“Would you like some?” he asked.
Janeal replied softly, measuring each syllable as if she were controlling the conversation. That she wasn’t in control bothered her; directing others’ words was something she had become accustomed to.
“What was your intent in telling Robert Lukin of a survivor?”
Sanso’s laugh was silent, but his chin bobbed. “Just a little harmless fun. That boy devoted his life to hunting me down—do you know what it’s like to be so idolized?” He dismissed the question with a shake of his head. “Of course you don’t. But what’s he got to live for now that he’s conquered me? He needed a diversion.”
“I’m surprised you concede defeat so quickly,” Janeal said. She fully believed Sanso had more sinister intentions for the man who had finally captured him— and in such humiliating fashion, if the stories being reported were true.
Sanso put another chunk of fish into his mouth and talked around it. "True. I think of my situation as a temporary pause in the game. No harm in making him think it’s over for now. That’s strategy. You’re a far more slippery eel than I ever was. It’ll take him a bit longer to track you down. I’m thinking twenty, twenty-five years. And if he’s looking for you, he’s not looking for me.”
Janeal had some difficulty following this rambling. Was he saying he had not intended to direct Robert to Katie? If not, how had Katie come to be a part of this scenario at all?
Sanso covered his mouth with one hand, feigning the embarrassment of a shocking realization, then spoke through his fingers. “Oh, I hope you’re not angry about me telling him. That wasn’t a part of our arrangement, was it? I don’t believe it was against any rules to tell him about you. He thought he was the only survivor, you know. Telling him there was another was really quite a precious moment. You should have been here.”
In the darkness of this fishy-smelling hospital room, the picture of what Sanso thought he had done became clearer in Janeal’s mind. Sanso had no idea Katie Morgon existed, and Robert Lukin had no idea Janeal Mikkado existed.
But Katie knew about Janeal.
She decided that she would have better luck controlling what Sanso revealed to her if she didn’t say anything at all.
“When he finds out that you’ve done business with me, that ought to make your reunion all the sweeter. I saved that information for later, but when he finds out, he’ll know he searched with a purpose. Wouldn’t it be sad to send a boy on a decades-long hunt for a woman who left him behind on purpose? See, but by me sending him to you, I’ll have helped him do more justice, even if you’ve already managed to spend all that money. Tell me you invested it, please?”
“He won’t waste twenty years of his life on me.”
“If it appears he won’t, I’ll inform him of your antics sooner than I had planned.”
Janeal couldn’t keep the fury out of her voice. “We had a deal!”
“And I have kept it faithfully. I keep all deals that serve me well. But once in a while I have to renegotiate.”
“Seems a pretty one-sided negotiation to me.”
“You have your secret identity, child. That ought to be worth something.”
“How much?”
Sanso deposited another bite of fish into his mouth.
“He’ll find you,” Sanso said, chewing. “Survivors of any tragedy have a connection that draws them together. I’ve seen it again and again. Yes, he’ll find you.” He took another bite. “And when he finds you, I’ll find him once more.”
Janeal stared at him.
“Or maybe you’ll find him for me,” Sanso said, smacking his lips. “Preempt his moves, save your own skin. You’d save me a lot of time.”
Janeal stood and placed her bag on her shoulder. He raised his eyes to Janeal slowly, without moving his head. She must not have taken enough care to hide the fury on her own face, because he laughed at her—a low, soothing laugh.
“Don’t be mad. I’ve only made your life more interesting. You could thank me.”
Janeal placed her hand on the doorknob and turned it.
“Janeal Mikkado. Stay another moment.” The tone of his voice had changed from teasing to tempting, raising in Janeal’s mind the memory of her first encounter with him as a girl. “Tell me what you’ve done with your life.”
She stood in the cone of light that came in off the hall. She was surprised to find herself considering his invitation. She tried to bring her mind back to the urgency of the moment he had put her in.
“Nothing interesting,” she said.
“You could scrub a toilet and make it interesting, child. Why are you always running from me?”
Her answer popped out before she could edit it. “I have no desire to be like you.”
“I think you’re in a hurry to leave because you know you’re already exactly like me, and it frightens you.”
His eyes glinted at her in the darkness, and she realized he spoke the truth. She was like him—she could sweep across the surface of the world without concern for any desires but her own.
“You shouldn’t be afraid,” he said. “We could help each other. Soul mates united.”
“Help each other do what?”
He didn’t answer immediately. “Find the happiness that continues to elude us, in spite of all our accomplishments.”
“I’m happy enough.” It seemed necessary to protest, though without conviction.
Sanso’s low laugh sounded appropriately villainous this time.
“Don’t,” she murmured.
“Come put my bed back down so I can sleep again. Though I doubt I'll sleep much tonight.”
Janeal did not evaluate whether she should do as he requested or walk out the open door. But when the door closed and latched, she found herself standing at the head of his bed, fetching the controls and returning them to his hand.
His fingers closed around hers and she let them.
“Find Robert Lukin before he finds you. You have the advantage. We can keep what we have. We can have more.”
“We don’t have anything,” she said.
Sanso raised her fingers to his lips. “We could have everything,” he said after a kiss to her knuckles. “After you deal with Robert, you’ll come back to me.”
“I don’t visit prisons.”
“Neither do I.”
Janeal snatched her hand out of his and took quick steps to the door.
She threw the door open and stepped out into the hall. She was shaking.
"See you soon,” he prophesied in the darkness.