Cherry Adair - T-flac 09 (27 page)

With coded sign language, so subtle no one but another T-FLAC operative would notice, he had Farris move his position between Heather and her father while he ambled over and held up a wall with his shoulder, watching father and daughter through hooded eyes. He mentally continued the five-minute countdown. Minute to go. Observing them together, he considered even that short a time together too long. Unless they were communicating telepathically, they had nothing to say to each other.

It was painful.

Time to shimmer. His lips twitched slightly as a man across the room behind Shaw suddenly noticed that the guy next to him had vanished into thin air in the middle of a whispered conversation. His eyes rolled, and he started falling to the stone floor in a dead faint. Then he vanished too as Dek snatched him into the teleport with his buddy. Show-off.

Brian made a grab for Heather’s arm, startling her. Her eyes went wide. Caleb pushed away from the wall with a frown as Shaw pulled his daughter closer. “You can’t keep it, Heather. You must know that would be a death sentence.”

Caleb’s radar tuned in.

“What?” Heather blew out an exasperated breath, tugging at her arm. “Good grief, Daddy. What on
earth
are you talking about?”

“God damn it! I should have known.” He was even more pissed off. “I’ve had my people searching all over the world for her accomplice, and all this time it was you!”

Heather pulled out of his grip, rubbing her arm. “Are you out of your mind? Accomplice to what? And who is ‘she’?”

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THESASSI, MATERA

SUNDAY, APRIL16

1212

Good questions, Caleb thought with a small amount of pride.

“You were the last person to see your mother alive,” her father said. The thought seemed to please him, as if a puzzling piece of information had finally come to light. Caleb didn’t like the man’s tone. And apparently Heather was having none of the triumphant hug her dad wanted to bestow on her. She stepped several feet out of reach.

Brian took a step, too, his eyes bright. “She did give it to you, didn’t she?”

“I wasn’t the last person to see Mom alive, Daddy.
You
were. She and I spent that morning at the flea market, and then—” she shrugged a very Gallic shrug. “You know the rest.”

Say what? Caleb, on the presumption that one or more of his men were there, motioned
hold.
He wanted to hear this. As far as they knew, both Heather and her father had been out of France when Babette Shaw had been murdered. Instead, they had both been at the house with her that day?

“Your memory is faulty, my dear. Now. Where is it?”

“It?” Heather repeated hollowly, her gaze flickering to the back of the room as the last of her father’s
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men was removed by Dekker. She blinked, rubbing her temple with her fingertips. “What?” she asked, clearly confused.

“The
money!
”

“
What
money?” Her shoulders were so stiff Caleb thought she might shatter. This could wait until—

“My
client’s
money,” Shaw snapped. “The money that mysteriously disappeared out of my client’s account last March.
That
bloody money, Heather. Forty-eight billion dollars and change that your mother stole.

“She gave it to you, so now what have you done with it? You have to tell me!”

Obviously stunned, Heather stared at her father as if she’d never seen him before. “Money? You think
she
stole money? My
mother
?”

“Of course your mother! Who do you think I mean? Queen Elizabeth? Why do you think I’ve been stuck in this godforsaken
anthill
for more than a year? What did you think I meant that day when I said the money was gone?”

“
One
client. A few million, for God’s sake, Daddy!” She rubbed her forehead. “
Forty-eight billion
dollars?
I had no idea. Why would
she
steal money from you?”

“Punishment. Retribution. Who knows.”

“She was upset when she found out who you did business with, I’ll grant you that. But she wouldn’t steal—” She turned to look at Caleb, her expression haunted. “My mother would never steal anything.

She wasn’t like that.”

“You told
him
?” Brian spun around and glared at Caleb.

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“That you misappropriated forty-eight
billion
dollars of assets from your clients?” He whistled while shaking his head no. “Jesus,” he said with false sympathy. “No wonder the Jets and the Sharks are pissed off and hunting you down like a dog. Gonna get ugly.”

“No one was supposed to goddamned
find
me until I had the money back where it belongs.” His attention stayed on Caleb, but he was still speaking to his daughter. He stepped closer to her, not noticing that he now had no security at his back.

“Your mother wanted it all, my darling,” Shaw modulated the ugly tone for something more controlled.

“Every cent. Babette cleaned out all my client accounts. Cleaned them out.
All
of them. That astronomical dollar amount is just my
client’s
account; she didn’t touch our personal finances at all. She wanted me dead, Heather. Do you understand what I’m saying? She knew what my clients would do to me when they discovered what she’d done. She wanted me to die slowly and without mercy.
That’s
what this was about. A vindictive woman and revenge.”

Heather was slowly shaking her head in disbelief.

“Help me, darling. Just tell me what you did with whatever she gave you before she died. Or what she said. She had to have said something.”

“Daddy, Maman was dead when I came downstairs, remember?” she said gently, with a small, telling catch in her voice. She was scared, and confused, but she was also starting to get pissed off with her father’s line of questioning if not his tone. “She didn’t say
anything.
”

Instinctively Caleb knew she was lying. And he’d bet his last paycheck that the woman
had
given her daughter something.

Shaw stroked his mustache pensively, “You must be mistaken! Think, Heather!”

Hell,Caleb thought furiously.
What
a clusterfuck this simple mission had turned out to be. All this for nothing. Not
nothing,
a small voice whispered in his head. Without Shaw he wouldn’t have met Heather.

There’d be no Bean…

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Yeah, asshole,he mocked himself.
But you don’t have them either, do you?

Crapshitdamn.

He’d take the man in, until this information was authenticated, but God damn it, the trail for the money had suddenly gone stone-cold. The
mission
had turned to shit. They’d wanted Shaw so that they could confiscate and cut off the funds to the terrorists who right now thought that
Shaw
still had their money. If Shaw didn’t have the money, he was just a cold-eyed, shitty father in a good suit.

If the bad guys couldn’t have Shaw, the next person they’d go after would be
Heather.

Not
would be. Was.

The kidnapping attempts, and attempts on her life—the tangos wanted what Shaw wanted. The money.

They wouldn’t believe that she didn’t know. Nobody would believe that she didn’t know if Shaw was suddenly taken out of the picture.

Caleb would be damned if he would let her out of his sight until he had someone to keep an eye on her—

He had an idea. A damn fine idea.

She wasn’t going to be happy, but for the foreseeable future his lovely bride was going to make her home at Edridge Castle. Gabriel and MacBain could keep an eye on her and Bean.

Christ, that was brilliant, he congratulated himself.

“The only thing I took when
you
hustled me out of the house that afternoon was the jewelry,” she said through clenched teeth. “And
you
gave me that.”

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Hustled Heather out of the country, Caleb knew, with a box of jewelry and only two men to guard her against some of the worst, most violent tangos on the planet. How she’d managed to survive this long on her own, he had no idea. Fury rose inside him at this man’s casual disregard for his daughter.

It was clear that Heather loved the man; why, Caleb had no idea. Thank God it was also apparent, to him at least, that she wasn’t willing to take her father’s bullshit.

The son of a bitch waved a well-manicured hand, dismissing several million dollars’ worth of jewels.

“The transfer was made the night before—Damn it! Did she converse with anyone at the street fair that morning?”

“Not that I saw. We were together the entire time.”

“Someone she could have given something to? Something small. Papers? A key? Bloody hell, Heather, a goddamned scrap of paper with a bank account number on it?
Anything
?!”

“She wasn’t out of my sight all morning. Not for a second.”

“Are you positive?”

“Yes.” A fine tremor shook her body. She didn’t take her eyes off her father as he approached. “Yes, I’m positive.”

Shaw took his daughter’s jaw in his cupped hand, looking into her eyes. “I don’t believe you, my darl—”

Pop.The distinct sound of a silencer.

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A bullet hole appeared between Shaw’s brows. Heather jerked in response, opening her mouth to scream—

Jesus Christ. He’d been a hundred fucking ways wrong on this mission, Caleb thought, watching fear follow surprise and leach the color from her cheeks. She did scream as her father fell against her. Unable to brace his full weight, they crashed to the floor together. Eyes wild, she cradled her father’s body in her lap.

“No. Neither do I,” a new voice inserted coolly, from a partially open side door. The man stepped into the room. Caleb recognized him instantly. Oh, Christ. Lark was right.
Worse
than the Sharks and the Jets.

Fazuk Al-Adel.

“No.” Al-Adel motioned Caleb to stay where he was as his men flooded the room. “Don’t move. One of my men might accidentally hit the girl.”

Caleb raised a brow. He didn’t waste time wondering if his own men were in position. Why Dekker hadn’t been on this guy before he got in. If Farris had returned, or if Rook had finished securing the grunts in back.

He, Heather, and her dead father were the only ones here. And
she
was Caleb’s only concern. His eyes locked on Heather as he ignored the man’s directive. Looking shell-shocked, she crouched on the floor, holding her father.

Even in quadruple time, faster than anyone’s eyes could possibly see him, Caleb kept his body between Heather and Al-Adel and his men as he raced to her side.

Her eyes went wide, confused, as she frantically looked around for him.
“Caleb?!”

She didn’t have time to draw in the breath needed to scream. He yanked her onto her feet, and into his arms, and got her the hell out of Dodge.

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THESASSI, MATERA

SUNDAY, APRIL16

0800

Heather lay in the curve of his arms, her back pressed against his chest. He’d TiVoed time back to that morning. Caleb buried his nose in her hair, tightening his arms around her.

Been here. Done this.

His heart pounded as hard as it had the last time. But in
this
version of this morning the reaction was caused by residual fear, not anticipation. And
this
morning he didn’t have a giant cockstand. And frankly, even if he had one, right now he felt too enervated to do anything about it. He frowned. He was accustomed to losing some physical strength when he TiVoed time. But lately the aftereffects had been excessive. He was weaker for longer. He didn’t like it. More, it concerned him because it was something that had only been happening recently. Lark may have been right. Damn.