Heart of a Hero (64 page)

However, if the information was locked in the safe, it needed to stay there until Eric’s team arrived.

“I can’t get it out of the safe,” Quince admitted.

“What do you mean? How did you expect to…Never mind, I can get into it,” Sean declared. “Haven’t met a safe yet I couldn’t crack. Let’s go.”

Quince was nodding, turning and pressing on one of the block designs beside the fireplace.

If they entered the secret passage and closed it behind them, they would be safe from Ali’s men. But McCoy could also kill them all in there, get the plans out of the safe, then hide and wait out the small army that was after them. Without a lot of luck or a fortunate accident, those goons would never locate that hidden section of the house.

Dawn couldn’t risk letting McCoy get whatever was in that safe. “No!” she cried. “Going there’s not necessary. I have what he wants.”

“Wait! Don’t…” Eric said through gritted teeth. He was frowning at her, his frustration tangible.

Dawn offered him a wry grimace, an apology for probably sealing their doom, and reached inside the front of her blouse. She withdrew the small device. “Here. This is not worth dying for,” she said, turning around and handing it to McCoy.

Sean took it in his left hand and gave it a cursory look. “And I’m supposed to believe this is what you say it is?”

Dawn shrugged. “Believe what you like. I followed the secret corridor from our rooms and found Quince’s office. This was in a locked drawer beneath his computer station. The plans are on it. I checked.” She reached for the device. “Of course, if you don’t want it, then I’ll…”

He snatched it back and shoved it into his pocket, then faced Quince. “What do you have to say about it, Quince? Is this what I’m looking for?”

Quince was already shaking his head. “No.”

“Then let’s go!” Sean commanded. “We’re wasting time we don’t have.”

His words were nearly lost as bullets struck the door
frame behind him. Everybody dropped and scrambled for cover.

Ali’s men were shouting now, running down the hallway, firing indiscriminately.

Eric popped one when he reached the doorway. The others obviously decided Allah didn’t need them yet and stayed back.

Two seconds later, she watched a grenade bounce into the room. The windows were barred. The enemy was outside the door. There was no way out but the secret passage, and it would take too long for Quince to open the panel.

E
ric flipped the heavily padded sofa over the grenade, leapt over it, grabbed Dawn and threw her to the floor just as the grenade exploded. He rolled to his back, already aiming at the hall door when Ali’s men came in shooting.

Dawn watched the scene unfold like something out of a silent movie, unable to hear it because the explosion had deafened her. While the action played out at full speed, her own reactions seemed to be in slow motion, her emotions temporarily numb. Then as suddenly as it had begun, the attack ceased.

Only when she saw Sean aiming directly at Eric did her autoresponse kick in. She finger-pointed her nine millimeter instead of taking time to aim and pulled the trigger repeatedly until the weapon emptied and she felt no recoil.

Sean fell flat on his back. Quince crawled out from behind a bookcase and bent over him. Dawn couldn’t hear
what he was saying, but his face had crumpled and he seemed to be begging McCoy not to die. Eric was checking the bodies of Ali’s men. He turned to her. “You hurt?”

Dawn shook her head. She hadn’t bothered to examine herself for wounds, but felt no pain anywhere. Her hands and arms were covered with plaster dust and residue from the gunshots. A small nick on her forearm began to sting, but it was only a minor scratch. “I’m okay,” she muttered.

Another explosion outside the study rocked the room and collapsed the inner wall adjacent to the hall. Debris blocked their exit. The whole place was wired, Quince had said. It could go up any second.

Eric grasped her arm. “Reload,” he ordered. She realized she was reading his lips and couldn’t hear anything but a distant roaring.

She looked around and saw the shattered gun case with its drawers at the bottom hanging askew. Finding no clip for the empty nine millimeter, she grabbed another gun out of the shattered case and began to check and load it. A Walther PK, she noted. Dependable weapon.

Dawn forced thoughts to practical things like that, trying to ward off others she didn’t want to have just yet. She had killed today. More than once.

Her hands shook. The odor of cordite made her gag. Or maybe it was the smoke that filled the room, almost obliterating her ability to see. Thank God she had seen Sean aim and…

No, she had to think about the gun. Get it loaded. Do what Eric ordered. Follow his lead. The only way out of this was to follow Eric. Her breath caught on a sob, but she held it in, willing her fingers to behave, to do what her brain demanded.

There. The clip was in. She had done it. She began to cough uncontrollably.

Eric’s arms came around her from behind and lifted her to her feet. He guided her to a door in the wall, a door that shouldn’t be there. The explosion must have triggered Quince’s secret panel.

Eric reached into a niche just inside the tunnel door and procured two flashlights, handing her one.

Luckily, the grenade hadn’t triggered the explosives Quince insisted were rigged to blow the entire place. Damn him and his stupid island villa anyway. Damn the whole island. Why hadn’t the government sent a military team here to clear it? Why civilian Special Ops?

And why not? Things would be right on target if the gadget she had found were the real thing and Eric’s transponder worked.

Dawn looked over her shoulder and saw that Eric had gone back to get Quince. He held him by the back of his collar and shoved him into the opening behind her.

She proceeded down the narrow tunnel until she came to a forked passage. When she stopped, Eric gestured to the right with his flashlight and she continued, hurriedly leading them God only knew where.

This was taking too long. Dawn sensed they were headed away from the main structure and that the path they were taking did not lead to Quince’s office where he’d said the safe was located. Apparently, the study had had more than one secret panel or else they had taken the wrong fork. The whole place must be a rabbit warren underneath.

Her lungs cleared and she began to smell salt air. Dampness had invaded the poorly framed and unfinished corridor sometime after it had degenerated into a rough tunnel carved out of the lava stone.

She figured they had walked just under a quarter of a mile
since leaving the study and should be well away from the villa by now. In any direction, that should lead to a beach.

Her hearing had returned, at least some of it. Quince’s breath huffed in and out right behind her. Their shoe soles scuffed against the irregular rock floor. Daylight loomed ahead.

“Wait,” Eric said. “Stop here and wait until I see where we are.” He stepped around Quince and came up beside her now that the tunnel had widened. “Keep him covered. If he tries to go back, shoot him.”

“I
have
to go back!” Quince cried. “Sean might be…”

“McCoy is dead,” Eric told him. “There’s nothing you can do for him.”

“Here. Hold on to this.” He handed her the flash drive she had given to Sean. “I brought this. It might have something on it since it was locked up.”

Dawn tucked it back between her breasts.

Quince had dissolved in tears, leaning against the wall of the tunnel with his face covered by his arms; he sobbed inconsolably. Sean had obviously been more to him than simply one of the bidders, but Dawn didn’t want to know what, at least not now.

Eric had disappeared out the end of the tunnel. She heard his surprised laughter and another voice she thought she recognized. Clay Senate? Where the devil had he been all this time?

“Dawn? Come on out here,” Eric called. “Bring Quince with you.”

Thank goodness it was time to abandon their roles as the Al-Dayals. This kind of undercover work was not the fun she’d always imagined it would be. Surreptitious entry was one thing, but becoming someone else for days on end was quite another.

She prodded the weeping man until he staggered along in front of her. They exited the tunnel onto a wide, rocky ledge above the beach. Steps led down to a sandy, sheltered cove.

“Come with me,” Clay said to them. “There’s a cave over there with all the comforts of home.” He smiled at her. “You could stand a little cleaning up.”

She touched her face and winced. Her fingertips came away coated black with soot, cordite and dirt. The rest of her must look about the same as her hands. Nasty. Her hair felt as if it were standing on end and her clothes were a mess.

Dawn trudged along with the men, periodically urging Quince so she wouldn’t step on his heels. He seemed to be in shock.

They entered Clay’s cave. Someone had indeed made it a refuge, probably well before Clay ever arrived on the island. Bedding and blankets were neatly folded against one rough-hewn wall. A fire pit lay near the front, stacked with small lengths of driftwood.

“The prisoners are bound in the back there,” Clay told them, pointing to a dark passage that led deeper into the rock.

“Prisoners?” Eric asked with a mirthless chuckle. “Who?”

Clay shrugged. “A really feisty woman I found hanging on to the rocks after she was pushed off the cliff’s edge, a couple of guards I managed to disarm, a Russian and an American mercenary I would really like to choke personally.”

“We need to contact Sextant and get this wound up,” Eric announced. “Unfortunately one of Quince’s bidders brought along a small army that seems determined to decimate the villa and everybody in it. See if your transponder’s working. For some reason, mine’s shot.”

They watched as Clay removed a knife from his belt and quickly sliced the tracker from the top of his shoulder before she could think to offer her help.

He wiped it off on the leg of his pants, then tapped the point of his knife to it several times. “There,” he said, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger for a minute. He frowned at Eric. “No response.”

“You’re bleeding.” Dawn shook her head in exasperation and looked around for something to pad his wound.

“It’s nothing,” he replied “I’ll go wash it off in a minute.” Then he crouched near Eric. “Do you have what we came for?”

“It’s still in the house, in the safe, so Quince says,” Eric told him. “A safe he can’t open. Oh, and the house is rigged with explosives, only he hasn’t yet told us how that’s set up. I can’t read him.”

Clay’s dark brows drew together in a menacing look directed toward Quince. “Time for a few questions.” He tapped the flat of his blade against his other palm. “Shall I?”

“Be my guest,” Eric said with a negligent wave of his hand.

Quince seemed oblivious to the threat.

“You aren’t going to try to scare it out of him, are you?” Dawn asked quietly. “He’s pretty much zoned out. I don’t think it would work.”

“What’s his problem?” Clay asked her.

Dawn considered the question before answering. “I think one of the bidders was more than that to him, maybe a co-conspirator. The guy was killed just before we came out.” She had killed him. That was going to bother her, but she couldn’t dwell on it now.

“McCoy,” Clay declared with a nod.

“You’ve been keeping closer tabs than I thought,” Eric said with a smile. As he spoke, he slid one arm around Dawn and drew her near, sharing his warmth. “Learn anything interesting?”

Clay looked from Eric to her and back again, one black eyebrow raised. “McCoy and the woman struggled and he shoved her off the cliff in an attempt to kill her. But they had a fascinating conversation before he did his worst.” He paused, then looked curious. “You couldn’t read them, could you?”

Eric glanced down at the floor of the cave, then raised his gaze to meet his friend’s. “No.”

“And you couldn’t connect with me, either. Or Jack and the others? What’s wrong, man?”

“Let it go for now, okay?” He released Dawn and stepped away from her, resting his hands on his hips. “Just tell me what you found out.”

“Quince isn’t Quince,” Clay announced. “Or at least not the Quince we thought he was.”

“That much I figured out on my own,” Eric told them. He reached out to brush Dawn’s hair off her brow and tuck the strands behind her ear with his finger. “You sensed that, too, didn’t you, Dawn?”

She had, but not fully until they were in the study. “Let’s ask him.”

Quince was sitting cross-legged on the cave floor, his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. Grieving?

Dawn knelt beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Where is Quince?”

He raised his head slowly, as if he’d been sleeping. “My brother?” He swallowed hard. “Dead. And good riddance. The man was a monster. A traitor to the human race!” He sobbed once, then placed a hand over his mouth to hold it in.

“You took his place for the bidding. Why?”

“No. You don’t understand. There was to be no bidding.
I can’t even get to whatever it was he had for sale, don’t you understand? I would never, ever sell it, even if I could!”

“But you wanted all of the bidders to come here to the island as planned, didn’t you?” she asked.

“To die,” he agreed. “I wanted to eliminate every one of them and I liked the irony of having them destroy one another.” He slid his fingers through his hair and left them there, holding his head as if it hurt. “I have to make up for all Stefan did, all the terrible things he arranged, the terror he abetted.” Then he looked directly at Dawn. “I wanted you to help me. You were like me, Aurora, caught up in something you couldn’t control by yourself. Trapped.”

She nodded and patted his shoulder. “I know. What is your name?”

“George. George Cydonia.” He sniffed hard and ran a hand over his face, sighing as he did. “Sean is…was…my son.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Dawn said automatically, trying not to think how she was the one who emptied the pistol into McCoy. She’d had no choice really, and it was counterproductive to waste time sympathizing with a killer. “He was very clever,” she offered. “I would have sworn he was Irish.”