Touch of Betrayal, A (6 page)

I slid the duffle out of the closet and laid it out on the floor. Going for the smaller side pocket first, I was rewarded with nothing but a dozen or so spheres of chocolate mint truffles wrapped in foil. They happened to be one of my favorites, so maybe she wasn’t all bad. I popped one in my mouth. No sense wasting them.

Moving on to the main compartment, I gingerly squeezed the zipper pull between the pads of my thumb and index finger. It was cold against my skin, and the sound of the teeth opening sent a shiver over my shoulders. I ran my hand along the inside and a series of images flowed through my head; Miz Stalker packing her weapons, adding a change of clothes, some ammo, and finally a photograph of Millie and Harlan. An old photo. They appeared to be in their late forties, so it must have been taken when they first went to work for my parents.

Recycled air swirled down my throat, leaving the bitter taste of chaos behind. Pierce had known about my childhood home long before the explosion, so it made sense that he could have met Millie and Harlan, maybe even made it a point to meet them. And maybe he shared that info with Miz DB Stalker, but that didn’t explain the picture. Photographs didn’t happen in my family. It was one thing my parents, James and Loyria Gray, were adamant about. No pictures of them, of me, and certainly not of our gardener and…butler. I couldn’t really call Millie a cleaning lady, because she took care of everything around the house. And me. She’d always taken care of me in her own distant sort of way. I understood, knew she and Harlan kept their distance out of respect for my relationship with my parents. Millie especially never tried to step into the role of mother, and I appreciated her for it.

My fingers shook.

“Hey, Belisama.” The Irish in his voice was heavy, maybe with regret.

I whirled to face him, a jumble of nerves spinning through me. “Enough with the sneaking up on me, Pierce. It’s bad enough that you’ve kidnapped me, and know all kinds of stuff about the agent who was killed on my property,
and
about Millie and Harlan, without adding scaring the freaking bejeezus out of me to your list of crimes.”

He rested his shoulder against the doorjamb, hip cocked. “Only know one way to move. You’re not making much sense, but I gotta guess your fingers have been busy.”

Two could play at this. “They only know one way to touch,” I said with a hint of smug in my voice.

Pierce hooked his thumb toward the main cabin. “Need to talk.”

I followed. Not because I was shooting for most obedient kidnap-ee of the year, but because the only other time Pierce had initiated a
discussion,
it had been to tell me about my mother being a spy. That talk had been loaded with information that changed my life, so I wasn’t about to miss any conversation that Mr. Silent initiated.

He pointed to two chairs flanking a round table, then went into the galley. Lifting the coffeepot off the warming plate, he swirled the dregs and wrinkled his nose. The smell of stale coffee, bordering on burnt, drifted through the cabin.

“Soft drink okay with you?” he asked, rinsing out the pot.

I probably shouldn’t have had more caffeine, but I nodded because I wanted something to hang on to. I plopped into one of the chairs Pierce indicated, then unlaced my sneakers and kicked them off. We still had hours left in the air before we reached Hawaii, and I wanted to be comfortable. Curling into the chair, I covered myself with a heavy cotton blanket that had been neatly folded on a shelf next to the chair. The good news: no images. Some might call crawling behind a blanket hiding, and they would probably be right. But there was no telling what kind of information Pierce was gonna hit me with, and experience had me prepping for the worst.

Turbulence sent the plane into a sharp, momentary drop just as he stepped out of the galley, and he lurched toward me with two cans of soda. One Diet Coke and one regular. He sat, balancing on the edge of his chair, and slid the diet across the table toward me. “Figured you’d want something to hold on to.”

Well, damn. I squirmed. How’d he get to know me so well? Still, I couldn’t stop clutching the cold can, the chill seeping into my fingers. Carefully, I let my fingertips rest on the metal and was rewarded with a smudgy image of Nameless stocking the fridge. Unsure whether to drink or not, I eyed Pierce over the rim of the can. “How bad is it?”

“Just got word that Millie’s been located.” His words held a tinge of regret.

Pierce didn’t do regret. Not that I’d ever seen, and a trickle of fear vibrated along my spine. Damn, but I hated when his voice hinted at bad news. “Okay.” I set the can of Diet Coke on the table. Under the circumstances, it was probably best not to hold anything I might drop.

“Accident. Car fire. She’s in the Straub Hospital burn unit.” He tipped his can of soda up and swallowed.

Several long seconds later an ache exploded in my chest. Millie? Burned? I twisted the blanket in my fingers. “I repeat, how bad?”

“She’s out of danger, but they’re keeping her medicated. We’ll hit the hospital first, see if you can pick up anything from her.”

“Uh-huh.” I dropped the blanket and grabbed the soda can, rolling it between my palms, craving the reality of the cold condensation on my skin. “What’s the relationship between my parents’ house burning to a crisp and Millie…?”

“Don’t know yet.” A couple bumps of turbulence bounced Pierce back in his seat. “We have to locate Harlan. Millie’s safe in the burn unit, since the staff there are trained to be on the high end of observant.”

It was the word
safe
that had my brain going fuzzy. “Why’d they run, Pierce? Because that’s what happened, right? Somehow they knew the house was going to blow and got out.”

“They had warning.” His jaw and shoulders stiffened, and his fingers flexed around the Coke can.

It didn’t take much for me to interpret the change in his body language, not with the sadness darkening his eyes. “Your stalker lady with the dimples delivered the in-person warning, right? That’s why there was a picture of Harlan and Millie in her duffle.”

He nodded, the movement measured and tight. Then he squinted at me. “Stalker?”

“She was a thief, stalking my plants and taking samples of them.”

He opened his mouth, but I didn’t give him a chance to respond, just plowed through. “And you loaded Millie and Harlan on this flying penthouse.”

Betrayal buzzed in the back of my brain. Pierce had never lied to me before. Skirted the truth, maybe, but never flat-out lied. It was like he’d punched a hole in our friendship, and all the respect and trust leaked out, suffocating me. I had to ask. “So why did you pretend you didn’t know where they were? Why fake a need for my fingers?”

 
His eyes blazed with blue fury. “Not lies. Millie and Harlan slipped off the radar after I left them with Kahuna Aukele.”

It made sense. I blew out a shaky breath. “My grandfather would, of course, help them disappear. He’s good at that, the Kahuna.”

“Better than any agent I’ve known, including me and A.J.”

I brought the Diet Coke to my mouth and drank, letting the bubbles rest on my tongue before I swallowed. The tingle was somehow reassuring, and helped me feel close to Annie since we both drank way too much of the stuff. “Speaking of Annie, that’s where you’re taking me, right? To her house?”

Pierce’s gaze drifted toward the window. “Eventually. Gotta find Harlan and your grandfather first.”

And there it was again, the crinkle of the soda can as his fingers tightened around it. Pierce watched me with a sneaky, sideways look. I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to clear a sudden fogginess.

He looked woozy.

No, it had to be me. I blinked a few times, but the woozies just got worse.

“Ya-oou dru-ug…ma-eee…”

SIX

I breathed in, filling my lungs
with the fragrant, spicy air—warm and soft with a touch of the tropics. Whoa. Warm? Soft? Not recycled airplane molecules. Hawaii. Even groggy, I recognized the one place on the planet where I usually felt at home. For a nanosecond my heart swelled with happy vibes, but the highway noise and vibration of tires racing on pavement brought me back to reality.

My eyes snapped open. Back seat of an open Jeep. Blanket covering me. Pierce driving. I’d recognize that head of dark hair anywhere.

He hit the gas, and we shot through what must have been an intersection. Couldn’t keep my eyes open. Anger zipped through me. And maybe panic. Hard to tell with a minimum of brain cells working. I shifted and the wind caught the blanket, lifting it.

“You awake, Belisama?” He sounded worried, not Pierce-like at all.

I grappled for coherent thought. A bottle of water was stuck in a webbed pocket behind the front seats. I grabbed it, levered up to my elbow, and drank. Warm water washed away the taste of…oh, holy Mamma Mia, Pierce had drugged me. I lurched up, fumbling for something to hang on to, and caught the back of the front passenger seat. “You. Drugged. Me. How could you?” My righteous indignation sounded weak and rusty.

He met my gaze in the rear view mirror, eyebrows arched. “Not me.”

The synapses in my brain must have all fired at once ’cause I was hit with the mother of a headache. “Ouch. Damn it.” I slugged down some more water. It landed with an uneasy thud in the pit of my stomach. “Seriously? You’re going to deny it when you were the only person around other than the nameless pilot? And a whacked-out me wouldn’t be getting into things you’d rather keep private. Besides, we were on a private jet. What happened to it? How long have I been out? And what the hell kind of drug did you use? It sucks on the aftertaste.”

My inner bitch had found her power and was contemplating various methods of homicide.

Pierce tossed a bottle of aspirin over the seat. “I’ll pull through the next McDonalds for some fries and a Diet Coke.”

 
“Huh?” I struggled with the cap on the aspirin. “Now you want to fix me? You’re confusing, Pierce. I want real food and the old lady kind of lids on my pain meds. This childproof thing is too complicated. And why aren’t you answering my questions?”

Pierce met my gaze again, forehead wrinkled. “Fries and Coke, best thing for a hangover.”

“Oh? I’ve never had a hangover, and this definitely isn’t one, so how about we move on to, say, Zippy’s for some Hawaiian stew. Do you think solid food will loosen your vocal cords enough to actually talk to me?”

Not that I expected Tynan Pierce to talk, but if I badgered him enough, he wouldn’t notice that my head was working overtime on an escape plan. My brain cells had kicked in and decided Zippy’s would work well as a diversion. The diner-type restaurants were usually in populated areas, and I’d be able to escape from this new, definitely
not
improved, psychotic version of Tynan Pierce. Preferably before he did worse than drug me. But I had to get my feet under me, and all brain cells at full capacity before I tried to outsmart Mr. Superspy.

Or I could try trusting him. The three of them, Annie, Adam—yeah, and Pierce—had always been there for me.

I took stock of the situation: no shoes, clothes too warm, too wrinkled, and much too smelly to keep wearing. My nausea was fading, headache pounding, and hunger was persistently requesting food. But mostly I needed a…there tucked under the front passenger seat. I reached for my handbag. It was nice of Pierce to stash it nearby, considering. Now if he hadn’t swiped my cell, I’d be in good shape. I could call someone. Except there wasn’t anyone but Annie, and she’d been friends with Pierce long before she met me. A taxi, then? A hotel?

My sneakers were on top of the handbag. I wiggled into them, double knotting the laces. At least now I could run without wearing holes in my feet. I peered into my bag, panic rocketing through me until I spotted my phone, but when I clicked it on? Nothing. The battery was dead, and my charger was one large ocean and an entire continent away. That’d have to be fixed right away. First thing after I escaped; buy a new charger cable.

I tugged my iPad free and checked for emails from Mitch and Annie. Nothing. And there wasn’t a wireless connection available in the Jeep. Not surprising, and it probably meant that my desperate attempt at communication hadn’t hit the ethers yet. I’d have to get my cell account attached to the iPad now that I was back into business chasing bad guys—even if Pierce didn’t have my back. Or did he? How could I trust a man who wouldn’t communicate? Who kidnapped me without an explanation? Who’d always been there, and even taught me to pick locks? Damn, but I hated not knowing what was real and what was super-spy gobbledy gook.

The Jeep slowed, and the familiar scent of burgers and fries assaulted my nose, triggering a wave of nausea. Maybe I wasn’t all that ready to eat.

Pierce chatted up the squawk box, paid, and collected a small bag and huge soda before I could figure out how to pantomime I was in trouble. Probably not a big loss since the teenager at the window didn’t even glance in the back seat, and she looked like she’d had a worse night than I had. Hard to tell with three piercings in her upper lip.

Pierce handed back the fries and drink. “Eat the fries. You’ll feel better, and I need you alert by the time we get to Straub.”

Straub Hospital. Millie. Memories jolted into place. I peeled the paper off my straw, stuck it in the appropriate slot, and drank. It took both hands to hold the extra-large plastic cup. Guess Pierce figured I was in dire need of caffeine and bubbles. And he’d been right. My stomach quieted almost instantly. Better. Much better. Or maybe it was just that the aspirin had started to work.