Never Let Go (15 page)

Jeopard gave the news to him bluntly, without blinking. "I doubt she ever intended to keep it. Drugging you was the easiest way to solve the problem."

Rucker felt sick. Then his mouth curled in disgust. "She left me a note and you have it. Give it here."

"Rucker, there's no note. What would I gain by hiding it from you?"

Rucker jammed a hand through his hair. After a bitter moment his shoulders slumped. "All right. But my wife wouldn't dope me. She's not capable of that."

"I'm sorry, friend, but that's not the way it appears. We don't have the details because Dr. Scarborough is staging a silent protest. She refuses to say a word about anything she or Dinah did. But you've been drugged, and your wife's gone, and my men are following her. It's time for you to wake up—in more ways than one."

The implication washed over Rucker and a nauseating fist twisted in his stomach. He lurched up from the bed and staggered blindly toward the bathroom, clutching his midsection.

He refused to believe this. Fury supplanted shock. When he returned, bent halfway over, he jabbed a finger at Jeopard. "You cold bastard, you don't love anybody so I don't expect you to understand how my wife feels about me. Or how much I believe in her. Catching her and Valdivia is nothing but a damned job assignment to you."

Jeopard's lounging posture never changed, but his face tightened into a grim smile. "Oh? Valdivia killed my brother."

Rucker gazed at him in speechless astonishment. Kyle. Jeopard's brother. Millie's brother. Kyle had worked with Jeopard in Navy Intelligence and later as a freelance government agent. Kyle was one of the most decent, likable men in the world.

"I thought he was on assignment somewhere in Asia," Rucker finally managed.

Jeopard shook his head. "Kyle was in Surador about three months ago, investigating Valdivia. He learned that Dinah was living at one of Valdivia's haciendas. Kyle smuggled a message to her and she offered to meet him. When she did, Valdivia got him."

Jeopard paused, as if taking a moment to carefully suppress his emotions. "My information is sketchy, but as best I've been able to learn, Valdivia put him in a sealed courtyard with a pack of rottweilers."

Rucker took a long breath. Dinah had watched a man die. Kyle Surprise. She was nervous around dogs now. He asked slowly, "Are you sayin' that Dinah deliberately helped Valdivia set Kyle up?"

"It looks that way." Jeopard was silent, as if a spell had just turned him into marble. "Everything I know about her is documented by indisputable evidence. Everything you know is based on what's she's told you over the past few days." He lifted his hands in a gesture of regret. "You got vague assurances from a woman who once spent a year in prison and is faced with the prospects of going there again if I catch her."

"Damn you." Rucker groaned in bitter protest to Jeopard's logic. He went to the bed and sank down weakly. Dinah was gone. She'd left him, tricked him, drugged him without the least hint of concern. Jeopard wasn't lying about that.

"I'm on your side," Jeopard told him finally, his voice strained. "I'm not the one you should hate. Try hating Valdivia."

"That's easy."

"My men should be arresting him in a few hours. As soon as Dinah leads them to him."

Rucker gasped for breath. The only pain inside him now was the pain of old wounds tearing open. Then bitterness seeped into the pain, fusing it into something unyielding and deadly. He had trusted her. Never again.

He rasped the words. "I have a daughter in Surador. At one of Valdlvla's plantations, I think."

After a moment of stunned silence. Jeopard commented. "That's news to me. But it's possible."

"Anna Scarborough's daughter is workin" with Valdivia."

"We know. She's a loose end we don't intend to ignore."

Rucker looked at him sharply. "As in 'terminate with extreme prejudice?' "

"Relax, friend. I don't kill people. I meant that we have locals working to find her. We suspect that she's at one of Valdivia's haciendas. Possibly the same one as your daughter."

Rucker could think of little beyond his grief and anger. His dazed vision settled on the man beside Jeopard. Above a now clean-shaven jaw, black eyes gazed back at him.

"Lancaster."

The dark head bowed slightly in acknowledgment. "I had to make certain you got out of the mine."

Rucker swiveled his gaze to Jeopard. "You tracked us all the way here. You let Dinah escape. She was right. I was carryin' a transmitter. How?"

Jeopard nodded toward Rucker's watch. "It was the only way I could find Dr. Scarborough."

"And now your men will just follow Dinah back to ... to where?"

"New Orleans. She's probably there by now. As soon as she meets with Valdivia, we'll arrest them both. And take the package she was to deliver."

"What's in the package?"

"A herbicide that Valdivia's superiors are very interested in obtaining."

"What do the Russians want with a weed killer?"

Jeopard's voice was soft. "I think they want to destroy most of the plant life in the United States."

Rucker absorbed the information and felt his last bit of faith drain away. Dinah was party to an evil he could hardly fathom. She must have been desperate to do anything, to say anything that would keep him off the track.

Rucker didn't recognize his own voice. It was completely devoid of emotion. "So that's what Dr. Scarborough's been workin' on. She and her daughter."

"Looks that way. It has something to do with a virus carried by a certain species of South American butterfly. They concocted a synthetic form of the virus, at least a million times more potent than the original. Dinah is just their courier, if that makes you feel any better."

"Just the courier."

"Rucker?"

"Hmmm."

"We'll take you to see her tomorrow. She'll be under isolation and heavy security, but I can pull strings."

"I don't want to see her. I just want to get my daughter out of Surador."

"You're glassy eyed and upset. See how you feel in the morning."

"I'm not one damned bit upset." Rucker held out a hand. "Steady as a rock." He lay down, shut his eyes, and fumbled with the light blanket that had been covering him when he woke. How thoughtful. Dinah hadn't wanted him to catch a chill.

"Get out," he growled at Jeopard and Drake. "I need to think a while."

"All right. Good enough. We'll be around."

"Get out."

He heard the heavy thud of the door closing. Then he heard the creaking of a chair as someone settled into it. Rucker turned furious, dazed eyes toward a thronelike contraption in one corner. Drake Lancaster sat there, his hands crossed over his stomach, his legs stretched out in front of him.

"I said I need to think, dammit."

Lancaster nodded companionably to him. "I like to watch people think. But don't think too hard while you hold onto your blanket. You just ripped a big hole in it."

***

"The sun is hot these days. There are lots of reasons to watch the stars."

Her heart jumping, Dinah halted in the lobby of the New Orleans hotel and stared at the young woman who'd just spoken those words to her. The woman wore a sloppy brown dress suit. Her red hair spilled in fuzzy disarray to her shoulders. She carried a dingy leather purse and a handful of newspapers. Agents were hardly glamorous creatures.

Dinah inhaled sharply. "Astrology could be the answer to our questions."

Nodding and smiling, the young woman handed her a copy of the daily paper. "Enjoy." She left the lobby at a casual pace.

Dinah located the lobby restroom and hid in a stall. There she opened the newspaper and found the note she expected. Valdivia's dark, slanting script leaped out at her:
Danger. Change of plans. Meet me here.
He listed a street address and time.

Her head ached from lack of sleep and long hours of driving. Nervousness made her hands shake as she disposed of the note. It could mean only one thing. They were being followed.

***

Rucker had never seen Jeopard Surprise visibly angry. The fact that Jeopard was now pacing in front of Dr. Scarborough's fireplace meant that the phone call he'd just received had brought extremely bad news.

Drake lounged against a wall opposite the chair where Rucker sat. "Did somebody screw up in New Orleans?" he probed.

Jeopard nodded. "We lost them both. Valdivia met Dinah in an abandoned warehouse. The two of them slipped out a hidden exit. They've left the country by now. We'll pick the trail up in South America, but we won't have the jurisdiction to arrest either of them."

"Just find out where they're going," Rucker told him in a flat, unemotional voice. "And tell me."

Jeopard stopped pacing and gazed at him sardonically. "So you can go down there and get killed? Hell, no."

"I'm going after my daughter. I don't need your permission."

He watched Jeopard and Drake share a shrewd look. "You need our help, though," Jeopard remarked. "Unofficially, of course. Hmmm. A domestic dispute. An upset husband wants to bring his wife and child back to the States. He resorts to kidnapping. Understandable."

Rucker felt his teeth grinding at the inside of his cheek. "I don't want my wife back."

"Maybe not, but I have to insist. I want Sara Scarborough, too. Unfortunately, we can't kidnap Valdivia along with them—the extradition legalities would ruin us, since he's a Suradoran citizen. But bringing Dinah and Sara back is a good start."

Drake straightened and stretched languidly. "Give me a couple of days to get some surveillance reports on Valdivia's location. Then we can move in. How many men do you want?"

Jeopard smiled thinly. "Just the three of us. We're simply overworked businessmen taking a few days off to visit Surador with a friend."

If Drake felt astonished or worried, he hid it well, Rucker noted. The huge man merely shrugged. "A nice way to spend a vacation. I'll make the reservations." He arched a black brow wryly. "I suppose we're traveling tourist class?"

Jeopard bowed toward Rucker. "Certainty. Our friend is paying the expenses. Wouldn't want to take advantage of his hospitality."

Rucker shrugged. "We'll go first class. If you two are gonna risk your lives, the least I can do is make it pleasant."

"You'll be risking yours too," Jeopard reminded him.

Rucker looked at him wearily. "No problem. It's not much of a life anymore."

***

The hot, green smell of the jungle would always mean fear and captivity to Dinah. She shut her eyes and recoiled inwardly as Valdivia's armed driver opened the Mercedes's passenger door.

"Home sweet home." Valdivia murmured slyly, as he got out of the car. He turned, a tall, imposing figure in an exquisite dark suit, and offered his hand. "Come now,
querida
. You always look so unhappy when we return to my plantation. But you'll be with your daughter again, and I know you'll enjoy seeing Sara.

"You should go straight to your suite and rest. Your maid will run a cool bath for you. Then you and I will have a very pleasant dinner in my private courtyard."

Dinah let him help her from the car. She gazed up at the sprawling, white-washed hacienda surrounded by majestic trees. Despite its luxury and Spanish charm, it was a prison. Wrought-iron bars covered the windows of her suite.

"I don't have a maid," she retorted. "I have a guard."

Valdivia slipped an arm around her waist as they walked to an arched entranceway draped in flowering vines. Servants in brightly colored clothes bustled ahead of them. "It need not be that way," he insisted smoothly. "You and little Catalina could have a very fine life here. I have made offers—"

"My daughter's name is Katie. You have made a bargain. I expect you to keep it."

He sighed. "Allow me to examine the package from Dr. Scarborough, and then we'll talk."

"The project is over, Diego. You have what you want. Now you have to let us go. And Sara."

There was a harsh edge to his voice. "I will examine the package," he repeated. "This discussion is ended." He paused. "Tonight at dinner you'll wear the green dress with the emerald earrings. And wear your hair up." He stroked her waist through the blue linen of her suit. "You must tell me how you lost your sable coat. I want to know everything about your adventures."

Dinah stiffened miserably. She'd have to spend the rest of the afternoon concocting a plausible story that would exclude any mention of Rucker. The pain that ran through her at the memory of his drugged, helpless body made her stomach chum.

Believe, my darling. Believe.

***

Drake waved them to a stop. "We're almost there. Let's take a break and go over everything one more time."

Rucker ran a sweaty hand along the back of his neck then shrugged gear off his back. They'd spent hours in airplanes, then more in a rented truck, and now they'd hiked at least ten miles through a lush hell of jungle.

But fatigue was no match for the emotions that drove him. He stood with his legs braced apart, staring into the forest ahead of them. Valdivia's plantation was close.

He'd steal his wife and daughter from the bastard. even if his wife didn't want to be stolen. He'd take Katie to Mount Pleasant and together they'd create some semblance of a normal life. Dinah would go to prison, which was what she deserved.

Rucker forced himself to listen as Drake went over the layout of the hacienda one more time. They'd all three memorized it from surveillance reports provided by a local informant.

But he kept seeing Dinah's face and hearing her words from the past week. How could he have mistaken deception for devotion? How could he drag her back to the States and let strangers lock her away?

Damned fool
, he called himself.
Don't think, just do it
.

He realized suddenly that Jeopard was speaking to him. Rucker turned toward him, frowning. "What? Say that again?"

Jeopard clasped his shoulder. His face was stern, but his voice held gentleness. "I said. Don't look in Dinah's eyes. It'll be easier that way."

Rucker felt as if he'd been punched in the stomach. He fought to subdue the emotions that suddenly wanted to take charge again. His jaw clenched, he finally managed to nod in agreement.