Dark Waters (2013) (29 page)

She reached for him but he grabbed her hands and held them still. His eyes were haunted.

“I think we both know you want me.” She leaned up and drew his earlobe between her teeth. With a shudder he picked her up and set her purposefully away from him.

“Maybe,” he said, “but I learned a long time ago, you can’t always get what you want.”

He let himself out of the shower cubicle, running as much from himself as from her. How ironic that she’d finally found a man she truly wanted to make love to, and he was as screwed up as she was.

“Where the hell is she?” Ed said to Barb as he looked at his watch for the millionth time in the last three hours. They’d both searched the enormous ship for their respective spouses but there was no trace anywhere. He headed back to their cabin to check that Katherine hadn’t taken her cell with her. How dare she take off like this? He knew she’d been feeling a bit down lately. That’s why he’d booked this cruise, to cheer her up. But to go off without a word? That level of selfishness was maddening and totally out of character. Fury pounded through his blood. The fact Harvey Montgomery was also AWOL set his teeth on edge. He’d seen how the other guy looked at his wife. Katherine was the real deal when it came to natural beauty and everyone wanted a piece of it. But Ed didn’t share. He never shared.

Ed had lost his first wife to cancer when his son was a teenager. It had been a terrible time, but they’d gotten through it. She
didn’t know it, but Katherine had stopped him from making a colossal mistake when Eleanor had lain slowly dying. He’d almost run away. Almost crumbled under the staggering pressure of watching the woman he’d sworn to love waste away into a skeletal shadow. But once he met Katherine, he knew he could get through it and come out the other side as a better man. So he’d helped her and her daughter through Davis’s arrest and imprisonment—more than happy to pick up the pieces.

Goddamn Davis Silver, ruining their holiday. He and Davis had worked together, although they’d never really gotten along. Even after all these years, the imbecile was making his life difficult. What the hell Katherine had seen in him was beyond Ed. The guy was a total fool. Idealistic and stupid. Now Davis was dead—someone from work had called to tell him the news. Ed gritted his jaw. He wished the bastard had died in prison a long time ago. Someone must have told Katherine, probably Anna. That was why his wife was acting so uncharacteristically uncooperative.

He wasn’t worried about Katherine straying. Even the thought of causing a scandal made her break out in a rash. But it didn’t stop men from trying to gain her attention.

“Maybe she and Harv ran off together.” Barb smiled her snarky smile, but it looked strained. She’d followed him in his search, and usually he enjoyed her company and her pithy attitude. She flirted with him, and he wanted his wife to know other women found him attractive. Barb was fun and energetic, but right now he wished she were somewhere else.

Like making sure her own husband didn’t stray.

“Did you call Harvey?” he asked Barb.

She shrugged a delicate shoulder, the lines on her neck revealing her age. “I left him a voice mail. I expect he chartered a helicopter and went up some mountain somewhere. We had a tiff.”

The back of Ed’s neck grew hot. Harvey was rich as Crusoe, which Barb loved to remind everyone within shouting distance.
Well, he’d better not have taken Ed’s damn wife with him. Anger and resentment grated at him. What had Harvey Montgomery ever done to deserve his cash? Not a damn thing. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Suddenly a wave of jealousy hit him. What if Katherine
was
with him? What if she was having an affair and he was too dumb to realize it?

Christ
. He felt dizzy and his knees went from under him and he collapsed to the bed, sinking his face into his hands.

He felt fingers in his hair. “Don’t worry Ed, darling. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”

He thrust her hand away. His phone rang and he snatched it up. It was Harvey fucking Montgomery. “Where the hell are you and where is my wife?”

A stranger replied, “Funny you should ask that, Mr. Plantain.”

Ed pulled back for a moment in surprise, then he put the phone back to his ear. “Who is this?” he demanded.

“Shut up and listen. I have Katherine.” The voice was low and calm. Unease hit Ed dead center in the chest. “If you want to see your wife alive again, you need to do the following. Get Anna Silver to Vancouver Island by 1400 hours tomorrow. If you fail to produce your wife’s daughter, I will kill Katherine.” No inflection, no emotion. “If the cops find out, I’ll kill Katherine. If for a moment I think you’re trying to screw with me, I will kill Katherine.”

Who the hell was this? Were they serious? Was it a joke?
“Can’t you just go to Anna’s house?”

“Yeah, I think I might have already tried that, Einstein.”

Oh, my God
. “Is Harvey there too?”

A small huff of amusement. “I’ll call you again with instructions of where to take Anna when you get her, alone. And I suggest you keep this to yourself, Ed, because I’d sure hate for you to make a mistake you can’t fix.”

The man hung up and Ed stared at the phone, shaking, wondering if it was a sick joke. Then he got another incoming
message with a photo attached. He opened it and flinched as he saw Katherine and Harvey lying next to one another, bound hand and foot.

Barb looked over his shoulder. “Dear God. We need to call the police.”

“No cops.”

She stuck her hands on her hips. “Look, Ed. Harvey and I are probably getting a divorce. In fact, I’d be far better off financially if I pretended I never saw that photograph. But they’ve been kidnapped—you can’t just run around thinking you know how to handle this.”

Her sharp features were locked on his, showing more compassion and understanding than he’d ever imagined her capable of. He nodded. He knew exactly what he had to do.

Fire radiated across Jack Panetti’s back, but what he noticed first was that god-awful smell. Antiseptic and sick people. His stomach rebelled. There was a constant irritating beep. Where the hell was he? He squinted at pale blue walls.

“He’s coming around,” someone yelled.
Too damn loud
.

He turned his head away from the noise and closed his eyes.
Damn
. His insides felt like jelly and his brain so drugged he could barely lift his eyelids. He tried again. Saw a stranger leaning over him. He knew the guy was a cop from the cheap suit and excess baggage under his eyes.

“How you feeling, Mr. Panetti?”

“Like I’ve been shot. Again.” He lifted his head long enough to wriggle his toes. Thank God. Being paralyzed was what he’d most feared when he’d slipped in and out of consciousness in the ambulance and his lower body had gone numb. The fact his legs worked made him want to dance, though he wasn’t quite up to that yet.

A half smile tugged on the detective’s lips. “Third time according to the docs.”

Jack nodded and then held still, waiting for the world to stop exploding. “Twice as a cop.” Probably the unluckiest cop alive. Or maybe the luckiest, depending on your perspective. Jack had always been a glass-half-full kind of guy. He saw his secretary and the Denver office’s computer guru, hanging around the doorway. He shot them a concerned look, and tried to mutely apologize for causing them grief.

“What happened?” he asked. His tongue was thick with the taste of anesthetic.

“We’re hoping you can tell us.”

A swift image of a uniformed police officer jerking on his feet flashed through his brain. Oh, God. All of a sudden he was grateful for the pain in his back because it meant he wasn’t dead. Jack closed his eyes. “The cop?” he asked. The heaviness in his brain wasn’t all drug related.

“Dead.” The detective’s voice was quiet with the knowledge that he could have been that cop. Jack could have been that cop too. The guy had never stood a chance. “What can you tell us?”

He sucked in a deep breath, but maybe he had a punctured lung because it didn’t seem to be helping. “I was staking out the home of the head of security for the Holladay Foundation.” He reeled off the address. The cop exchanged a look with someone across the bed standing behind Jack. He didn’t have the energy to turn and look. “I was about to call it quits when some guy climbed in the backseat, put a gun to my head, and told me to drive.” Shame welled through him. “I couldn’t believe how lucky I was when that patrol car came up on the highway. I sideswiped him to get his attention.”

He’d gotten the man killed and every person in the room knew it.

The detective was writing in his notebook. “You see a face?”

Jack frowned. “Maybe. It was dark.” He needed to get in touch with his client. Brent Carver was up against something bigger than either of them had imagined. Hell, he hoped the guy was still alive.

“Why were you watching these guys?”

Jack’s face distorted as he tried to smile. “It was just a hunch. A guy died under mysterious circumstances on the subway last week—”

“The guy who claimed he was stealing their money?” The detective perked up.

Jack nodded. “I was just trying to make sure it was an accident, is all. You need to talk to their security people.”

“The death was deemed accidental, if I remember right.”

It hurt to talk but Jack was grateful to be alive. That cop was dead. “You need to look harder.”

“Yeah, try telling that to the state attorney’s office,” the young detective muttered under his breath. “Did you see the shooter come out of that house?”

Jack shook his head. “Did he have a family? The uniform?”

The detective stared at the white sheets of Jack’s bed. “Wife and two boys.”

A sharp clawing pain was reflected on the heart monitor.

“Who’s your client?” This voice was harder, condemnation in every word. It was always the quiet ones you had to watch. He turned his head carefully. A female detective stood by the window. A tall woman with short-cropped copper-colored hair. All angles rather than curves.

“Can’t tell you that.”

The woman leaned over him and Jack got a face full of bitter disapproval. “We’ve got a dead cop—”

“And your client could be in danger,” the younger guy said with more tact.

Jack pressed the call button for the nurse. He never revealed a client. “If I think it’ll find the bastard who murdered that cop, I’ll tell you. In the meantime I’ll see what my team can dig up.”

The witch’s eye twitched. “Interfering with a police investigation is a criminal offense—”

Jack’s temper spiked. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t want that bastard
more
than you do?”

“Keep us informed if you get any solid leads, OK?” The younger guy was obviously the peacemaker and the brains of the organization.

“Sure.” Jack held the redhead’s glare as she backed to the door. “Have a nice day, Detectives.”

From the way her eyes shot daggers at him, he figured it was a good thing he was already flat on his ass. When they were gone, his secretary, Ramona Stone, and his technology guru, Trace Maddox, came into the room. “Thanks for rescuing me from the ballbuster.”

“Hey, you should have stayed asleep. That detective is a bitch on wheels.” Trace’s fervent words suggested they’d shared some quality time.

Ramona put her hand on his forehead and then kissed his cheek. “Glad you decided to rejoin the living.”

“Me too.” He leaned his head against the pillow and smiled at the nurse who approached. Then he faced Ramona and asked, “Did you speak to the client?”

“He called a few times, but…” Ramona held up a newspaper, and there was Davis Silver’s daughter on the front page.
Shit
. “Her boyfriend was found dead in her house. Cops are asking for any information on her whereabouts.”

She was supposed to be with his client.

“See if you can contact the client. We need to keep working his case.”

“No work for you,” the nurse told him sternly.

“We’re on it,” Ramona told him softly. He caught her hand.

“Low profile. No following these cowboys around.” He glanced at Trace. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Trace tipped his cowboy hat.