Authors: Kay Hooper
Sarah half saluted him with her coffee cup, smiling. “It’s not the face, it’s what’s under it.
Nobody is ever again going to think you’re a tamed tiger.”
He reached across the small table to cover her hand with his, having discovered that touching her was as necessary to him now as breathing. “Is that supposed to make sense?” he wondered.
“It makes sense. To me, and to you.” Her smile widened. “Your two friends know it as well. They were both very wary of you on the island. Explosions in the past?”
Rafferty wasn’t surprised by her perception, for he had realized she was a strongly intuitive woman. “One or two. In addition to being friends, we’ve worked together several times on projects related to our boss’s highly visible business affairs.”
“For instance?” She was definitely curious.
He reflected for a moment. “A few years ago, there was a kidnapping threat. Josh was in the middle of some tricky negotiations and refused to accept protection. Zach was with him twenty-four hours a day, of course, and he’s more of a bodyguard than most men ever need.
Lucas was running down every lead we could dig up, and I was involved in the legal aspect of the business negotiations. Then, right out from under all our noses, Josh vanished.”
“What happened?” she asked, intrigued.
“Well, we were all under standing orders not to go public if something like that happened. We alerted Josh’s stepfather and sister and Zach sent some of the security team out to keep an eye on them. I stalled the business negotiations without letting them know anything was wrong.”
Rafferty brooded for a moment in silence, obviously thinking about that occasion, and Sarah could see that he was still bothered by the memory. She waited patiently, and after a time he went on.
“Relatively speaking, I was the new kid on the team; Zach’s been with Josh nearly fifteen years, and Lucas almost ten. I’d been with him just over a year, and it had taken that long for me to become familiar with both his business affairs and his personality. I knew Zach and Lucas, of course, but not well, and they hardly
knew me. What I
did
know, however, was that Zach’s security was airtight, that Josh was as close to him as a brother, and that Josh had a rather unsettling habit of doing dangerous things instead of paying other people to do them for him.”
“He hadn’t been kidnapped,” she guessed.
“Bingo,” Rafferty said with a sigh. “They hadn’t expected me to see it, because I
was
new on the team. But before I had accepted Josh’s offer to be his attorney, I’d checked him out, and I knew quite a bit of his background. So I knew he hated to just sit and wait, letting someone else control his life. But when he vanished, naturally my first thought was that someone had gotten to him.”
“But he vanished on his own.”
“Exactly. He told Zach to put everything on hold, then more or less picked up his car keys and disappeared. Went underground.”
Sarah couldn’t help but smile. “I always thought that sounded so romantic—going underground.”
Rafferty grinned a little. “It isn’t. And you
wouldn’t think someone with Josh’s fairly famous profile could get away with it. But somehow he does. Since he’s no dummy, he realized that the kidnapping threat was tied in with the negotiations.
Somebody
didn’t want him to take over that company. He went underground to find out who—with a minimum of fuss and bother. He got in touch with his intelligence contacts, and they went to work.”
“But you didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t know that. And, having a suspicious mind, I couldn’t help wondering if maybe Zach or Lucas—the only two besides myself to know the complete security setup—might possibly have turned traitor.”
“Ouch,” she said.
“Uh-huh. I’d seen too many cases of an insider going bad, so I could hardly rule it out. I was hamstrung by Josh’s orders and I didn’t dare trust anyone else. And there was a hell of a lot more at stake besides the life of a man I’d grown to like and respect very much; his disappearance or, heaven forbid, death would send stock markets all over the world into tailspins.
Josh Long
is
his company, and thousands depend on him for employment.”
“And you couldn’t just sit and wait.”
“No. I knew there was a possibility he’d vanished on his own, but I couldn’t be sure. So I did some checking. It took several days, and in the meantime I was stonewalling the negotiations with every excuse I could think up. Zach and Lucas were going through the motions of looking for him, but it didn’t ring true. Then, about the time I’d decided to confront the two of them and get a straight answer, one of the partners in this company we’d been negotiating with suddenly started a rumor that Josh had been kidnapped.”
“He got nervous,” Sarah decided.
“Definitely nervous. We found out later that the men he’d hired to do the job had disappeared—Josh’s intelligence contacts had found them pretty quickly—and since he couldn’t get in touch with them he had no way of knowing if they actually had Josh. On the other hand, the men had been hired through
middlemen, so they didn’t know who had ordered the kidnapping. Stalemate.
If
I had known what Josh was up to, I’d have been in the perfect position to sit and wait for somebody to start squirming. As it was, all I had to go on were my own suspicions and a paper trail that told me this particular partner had the most to lose by the takeover.”
“What did you do?”
Rafferty grinned. “I busted it wide open.”
“How?”
“Well, suspicion aside, I didn’t really believe that Zach or Lucas had kidnapped Josh. At the same time, I was mad as hell over the entire situation. I don’t like being caught in a poker game with blank cards.”
Sarah gazed at him, seeing again the tiger who assumed protective coloration. “I see. And so?”
“Orders or no, I wasn’t about to sit and do nothing. So I gathered the paper evidence, contacted a friend of
mine
in the intelligence community, and spilled the beans. That gave the authorities both ends of the trail, and the
nervous partner was quietly hauled away in the middle of his lunch. An hour later, Josh came home.”
“What’d he say?”
Rafferty grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m afraid I didn’t give him much of a chance to say anything. First I tendered my resignation, and then I really flew off the handle. He couldn’t get a word in for ten minutes, and Zach and Lucas just stood there with their mouths open. I must have surprised them,” he finished reflectively.
“Must have,” she agreed. She cleared her throat. “You still work for him.”
“Yes, well. I’m not exactly sure how that came about. Josh talked a lot. Zach and Lucas talked a lot. And then we all four got drunk. When I stumbled into the office the next morning, my resignation was on my desk, torn neatly in half. I felt too lousy to protest.”
Sarah couldn’t help but laugh. “I’d like to see you drunk. Hagen says you can tell a man’s true nature when he’s had a few too many.”
“That just might be true. Josh gets very
gallant and very humorous after a few. Zach smiles a lot and makes everybody nervous. Lucas would storm hell with no more than a glass of water.”
“And Rafferty?”
“Rafferty just gets silly.”
“Next time we run into your friends, I’m going to ask them.”
“But I told you.”
“Ummm. I’ve a feeling they’d tell me something different.”
He smiled a little. “Maybe. How about you?”
“Drunk?” Sarah looked innocent. “Rafferty, I don’t get drunk.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “Uh-huh.”
“Darling, I never have—”
Sarah didn’t get a chance to further defend her claim, mainly because Rafferty more or less attacked her. She didn’t realize why until a considerable time later when they were lying together on the bed in a tangle of arms and legs and clothing and exhaustion.
In a bemused voice, she asked, “Are you going to do that every time I call you darling?”
Rafferty’s change from a state of prostration to one of revitalization took roughly five seconds.
“It triggers your libido?” she managed faintly sometime later.
“It triggers something.”
Siran kept his eyes on the couple at the bow while he put through a call on the radio. “It won’t work,” he reported tersely. “A blind man wouldn’t believe a fight between them. Over.”
“That’s impossible,” the voice returned flatly. “Every eventuality has been covered. Over.”
“Then you missed something.” Siran’s voice changed, and as if he were speaking to an equal, he said, “They’re in love, and love on the edge of a knife is unpredictable. In any case, it’s my judgment that no observer would find an argument between them believable. Over.”
Words sprinkled with brimstone came from
the voice not known to use them. “All right. I’ll devise another plan. Unless you hear from me before, cross the three-mile limit late tomorrow morning. Understood? Over.”
“Understood. Over and out.” Siran replaced the microphone and shook his head a little as he watched the couple. The threshold of hell, he thought, was a damned unsteady place to conduct a love affair. He could only hope theirs would bond them together, make a team of them. He had seen it happen.
Once or twice.
Joshua Long held the microphone and gazed at his wife of several weeks, both of them listening intently to the voice droning steadily on. When there was a break in the officious voice, Josh pressed the call button and spoke firmly.
“Stop explaining; it wouldn’t make sense to anyone except you and Machiavelli. Let’s hear some suggestions for straightening out the mess.”
Five minutes later, Josh signed off and gave his wife an eloquent look.
“I know,” Raven said meekly. “It’s my fault you got involved with him in the first place.”
Josh pulled her close and kissed her. “I don’t regret you,” he explained quite unnecessarily. “Just him. Anyone in his right mind would regret Hagen. And I’d like to know how in hell he found out the
Corsair
was here in the Caribbean.”
“I don’t think we really want to know that,” Raven said. “It would probably give us both a Big Brother complex. Anyway, if he’s telling us all of the truth—and heaven only knows if he is—then this plan he’s concocted seems sound. At least as far as it goes.” She frowned and rubbed her cheek against this chest. “An awful lot seems to be riding on Sereno’s reactions.”
Obviously enjoying the feeling of his wife’s soft curves pressed against him, Josh said absently, “Too much. Unless, that is, a piece of the puzzle is still missing. Want to bet Hagen’s kept just one
tiny
item of information to himself?”
“Not really, no.”
“I don’t blame you.” He frowned a little. “I just might be about to make a formidable enemy.”
Disturbed, Raven tipped her head back to search his face. “Sereno certainly won’t be happy with you if he connects Rafferty and Sarah to the disappearance of the information, especially if those terrorists discover he welcomed them onto the island. You’ll owe him after this. In a big way.”
“Yes. Oddly enough, I think he’ll be fair in collecting the debt. He didn’t strike me as a man to let temper get the better of him.”
“Darling, I know you want to help Rafferty, but he wouldn’t thank you if you had to compromise your principles or make a bad enemy to do it. You won’t, will you?”
Josh laughed. “No, I won’t. I’ve kept an eye on Kadeira since I met Sereno, and I think there’s a method to the man’s ruthlessness. I don’t condone his method, but the goal is one I agree with. Besides, even though I’m gambling that he’ll play fair, it isn’t that big a risk. He’s
too proud to ask for much in return for a favor. Even a favor that costs him personally.”
“How much is much?”
Josh dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Well, he won’t ask me to arm his fleet.” Then he turned back toward the radio.
Almost to herself, Raven muttered, “His fleet’s already armed.”
Josh sent her a rueful glance of agreement, but concentrated on putting through a call to the island of Kadeira. He spoke in flawless Spanish, identifying himself and asking for President Sereno.
He got him.
Sarah sat up determinedly and looked down at the man stretched out lazily beside her in the double lounge. “We’re not acting at all like agents on the day before a serious mission,” she told him severely.
One golden eye opened and then closed again. “No, I suppose not,” Rafferty agreed. “Should we put on our trench coats?”
“Very funny.”
He sighed. “I’m trying not to think about tomorrow,” he explained, opening both eyes to stare up at her wryly. “For several reasons, not the least of which is that I don’t want to have to fake a fight and yell at you.”
“Well, I don’t want to yell at you, either.”
“That will not be necessary.”
Both jumped in surprise and turned their heads to find that Siran had approached cat-footed. His face was expressionless.
“Word has come from Hagen,” he told them. “It is no longer required that you fake a disagreement. President Sereno will welcome you on the island.”
“Why?” Rafferty asked bluntly.
“I have no idea, Mr. Lewis.” And his tone said that he didn’t particularly care whether Rafferty believed that. “We will cross the three-mile limit tomorrow just before noon. We will be met and escorted to port. You will be invited to stay in the presidential residence.” He turned and retreated.
Sarah looked at Rafferty. “How do you like that?”
“I don’t.” He was frowning. “Look, are you
sure
that Sereno was in love with a woman who looked just like you?”
“Positive,” she said immediately. “There were some news clippings—foreign correspondents, of course, since there’s no longer a free press in Kadeira. I looked up the stuff myself. The reporters were gleeful that an American girl he met in Trinidad could have such a powerful effect on Sereno. Somebody managed to get a picture of them together. Looking at that Sara was like looking in a mirror.”
“All right. But the original plan was for us to stage a fight, presumably within Sereno’s sight. Your resemblance to his love was supposed to do the trick after that.”