Authors: Diana Palmer
He hadn’t been wearing his dark glasses, and he’d come into the restaurant alone, without the pretense of being guided, and Maggie had been too preoccupied to notice. He was trailing her now, certain of the one place he was likely to find her. She’d be on a boat somewhere. He knew it. All he had to do was find her, but he had to do it quickly. He whipped out his cell phone, dialed a number, and spoke into it briefly.
He found out that Gruber’s studio had been raided, and two employees were now in custody. Several small children were also in custody, protective custody, while agents fanned out in all directions trying to locate Gruber, who had fled the scene.
The man was armed and would be comfortable killing Maggie, if he could find her, and Cord as well, if it were possible. Cord’s heart stilled in his chest as he imagined how
hurt Maggie had been by his remoteness last night, and his verbal cruelty this morning. She had no idea that he was trying to deal with his own actions in the face of what he’d learned. He was heartsick, heartbroken, at the way he’d treated her for so many years in his ignorance of her real background. He was paying for that in ways she couldn’t imagine, and not dealing with it well at all.
Now he’d apparently given her the idea that he felt distaste for her. She, not knowing what he’d already ferreted out, was afraid of their return to Houston and his discovery of the truth. She expected censure, disgust, distaste—and with his reactions of the night before to go by, she was certain of the outcome. But she didn’t know. She couldn’t know how he felt!
He broke into a fast pace as he neared the canal with its boat docks at its edge. His heart was hammering. Amsterdam was a big city, but Gruber knew it intimately, and he had spies who could find anybody. Cord had his own contacts, but they weren’t helping him. He had to find Maggie before Gruber did!
There were plenty of tour boats, and they covered a lot of area on this stretch of the canal. Cord had no idea which one Maggie would have taken without searching them. He had one photograph of her, however, a dog-eared, crumpled one of her at Christmas when she was sixteen, that he’d carried around with him most of his adult life. She didn’t look much different even now.
He pulled it out and started showing it to employees of the various tour boats all along the canal.
Just as he reached the last boat in line, which was pulling out into the canal, a woman recognized the face he showed her and pointed to the boat, which would clear the dock in another few seconds.
He handed the employee a large bill and made a flying jump at the boat while she was shouting to him that he had to buy a ticket in one of the shops, that she couldn’t sell him one.
It was no use. He was limber and athletic, and used to taking chances. He went flying along the dock and jumped right out over the canal, landing hard and rolling on the deck in the nick of time to avoid diving into the dark brown, smelly waters of the canal.
Maggie was seated at a table with two couples and an elderly woman. One of the couples, newlyweds the old woman said complacently, were passionately immersed in each other while the boat pulled out into the canal.
She felt alone and betrayed and utterly miserable. She didn’t have a camera, which was just as well, because there was nobody to take a photo of. She stared blankly out at the water as the boat rocked and turned and started out into the water. There was yelling outside on the pier, but she couldn’t see above the level of the poles that held it out of the water. There was a hard thump and raised voices up ahead in the cabin where the pilot was sitting.
She stared at the aisle, barely hearing an offer of refreshments from a young woman going down the other way. Seconds later, a disheveled Cord Romero strode down the aisle toward her, looking furious.
Her heart bounced into her throat. He took a seat beside her, watching all around for signs of danger.
“Go away,” she choked.
“The only way back to port is to swim,” he muttered under his breath, “and it would take an act of God to get me into
that
water voluntarily.”
She wouldn’t look at him. She folded her arms across her breasts defensively. She felt eight years old again.
He leaned back, not touching her, and studied her averted face. “Gruber escaped,” he said at her ear. “We’ve got enough evidence to send him up for years, but we have to catch him first. Meanwhile,” he added darkly, “he’ll be looking for us, and it won’t be to wish us a pleasant holiday!”
She swallowed. They were in a very public place. She turned and forced her shamed eyes to look up at Cord, who wasn’t even trying to disguise his anger and frustration.
Her lower lip trembled as she tried to find something to say to him. She’d never been so unsettled, so terrified of the future.
His big hand caught in the hair at her nape and pulled her face under his. He kissed her very gently, aware that she trembled. His mouth moved to her eyelids, her cheeks.
“Ah, you are newlyweds, too,
ja?
” the elderly lady asked with a chuckle.
Cord glanced at her. “Not yet. But very soon, we will be,” he agreed huskily, and the look he gave Maggie was smoldering.
She didn’t even have a protest. She stared at him with her heart in her eyes and wished with all her soul that he meant it. But she was remembering what she’d found in the fax machine.
“Don’t look back, Maggie,” he said softly. “We’ve both done too much of that already. We have a future, together. I promise you, we do!”
His eyes were punctuating that promise. She gave in to temptation with a shaky little sigh. Without another peep, she moved close to him and laid her cheek against his broad chest. Odd, she thought, he’d jerked when she did that, as if the action surprised him. But she felt safe close to him. It was the only place she’d ever felt safe.
His arm contracted protectively and his cheek rested against her dark hair. “You haven’t been thinking straight for the past couple of weeks, have you?” he asked.
She blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“I know.” He kissed her dark hair and sighed heavily. “We’re closer right now than we’ve ever been.” His arm tightened again, and his mouth eased down to her ear. “I want to marry you, Maggie. I want it more than anything in the world.”
Her indrawn breath was so audible that the others at the table glanced at her curiously.
She looked up at him, confused, thrilled, afraid. She couldn’t agree, she couldn’t…
He moved to fish out his wallet. He produced a folded paper and handed it to her. “Here. Have a look.”
She noticed an official seal embossed at the bottom even before she unfolded the paper. Her lips parted on a soft explosion of breath as she studied the paper that Cord had obviously carried with him for some time.
She looked up at him with wide, shocked eyes. “It’s a marriage license,” she said huskily, “with both…with both our names on it!”
He shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he murmured, searching her eyes. “In fact, it still does, never more than now.”
She bit her lower lip almost in two. “It’s a very…bad one,” she choked. She handed him back the paper and fought down tears. “You have no idea at all what this could do to you. You don’t know what Lassiter has in those files, what Gruber would do with the information if he could get to a reporter!”
He held her close while he refolded the paper with one hand and stuck it in the pocket of his jacket. “I don’t care what he does, or with what,” he said fiercely. “You belong to me. I’m not giving you up. Not ever!”
She closed her eyes and wanted to believe that he meant it. But he didn’t know what Gruber had. Once he did, it would change everything. She wanted to bawl. It wouldn’t help, but she didn’t know what else she could do. That little piece of paper destroyed her peace of mind, even while it made her glow inside as if from the light of a hundred loving candles…
The sudden shattering of glass was surprising. She lifted her head and looked at Cord blankly in the space of seconds before she was pushed forcibly to the deck and held down.
There were screams and shouts of fear. The boat stopped dead in the current and began to drift.
Cord lifted his head long enough to look toward the cabin. He saw the pilot slumped in his seat and knew everything at once.
“Stay down, baby,” he whispered to Maggie. “Don’t move! Do you hear me?”
“What’s going on?” she asked unsteadily.
“Gruber, unless I miss my guess, and we’re sitting ducks here in the middle of the canal!”
“But what are you going to do?” she exclaimed.
“Get us out of here, while there’s still time. Stay down. Everybody, keep your heads down and keep calm!” he called to the other passengers. “Keep away from the windows!”
He darted down the aisle to the accompaniment of other bullets that rained down into the boat. Apparently someone was shooting at them either from the nearby bridge or the walk beside the canal. The angle of the bullets, though, indicated a high place.
Maggie peered up over the table and looked through the wide windows. There was a glint of metal on the bridge just ahead of them.
“Cord, he’s on the bridge!” she yelled.
He’d already pushed the pilot onto the floor and shouted at the tour guide to take care of him. He worked the controls
and suddenly shot the boat ahead, zigzagging it so that he made a difficult target. There was shattered glass in front, but he’d knocked enough of it out so that he could see ahead.
The trick was going to be getting the boat through the narrow opening under that bridge. It was one he remembered from other trips to the city. The boat had to be angled in, and even then, there was only a couple of inches of clearance on either side. Added to that, there were other tour boats on the canals and they often came close on the ride.
He had an idea. If he could get the boat under the bridge and get out, he might be able to get to Gruber. But that would require someone to drive the boat through.
“Maggie!” he yelled. “Get up here, quick!”
She darted down the aisle without hesitation, and went right to him, weaving as he darted the boat along the river to the accompaniment of gunfire.
“What can I do?” she asked at once.
“You can drive the boat, honey, I’m jumping ship.”
“What?”
He gunned the engine and set his jaw as he guided the wide boat under the bridge, scraping one side, and put it in neutral. He jerked out his .45 automatic and put Maggie into the driver’s seat, hurriedly familiarizing her with the controls. Her hands trembled, but she listened and nodded.
“I don’t want to do this,” he said huskily. “I don’t want to put you at risk, but if I don’t stop him, he’ll kill somebody. You understand?”
She pulled his head down and kissed him hungrily. “Don’t get killed. I love you so!” she choked.
“No less than I love you, Maggie. Nothing in your past will ever change that!” he swore fervently. “Believe it!”
He kissed her hungrily, feeling her instant response even as he pulled back and stood up, cocking the gun and taking off the safety as he headed for the steps that led up to the hull. “Get the boat through the bridge, even if you have to scrape the paint off doing it, and zigzag it when you come out from under that bridge. Don’t stop for a second. If he gets a clear shot, he’ll take it. The only advantage we’ll have is that he’ll be shooting from overhead and he won’t be able to see inside. Can you do this?”
She nodded. “I can do anything I have to,” she replied fearlessly, and looked at that moment as if she could.
“Don’t panic, whatever you do,” he counseled. “Just concentrate on the job at hand.”
“I can do this. You be careful and don’t get yourself shot!” she added firmly.
“Who, me?” He grinned. “Be careful yourself, sweetheart.”
He savored the look on her face for an instant before he turned and dashed up the steps with deadly efficiency.
Maggie watched him go, but she turned immediately back to the controls and put the boat in gear. It was time to emulate a racing-boat driver and save lives. She wasn’t going to let Cord down.
C
ord leaped from the boat to the filthy underside of the stone bridge and darted to the iron steps that led up to the top of the bridge. He clutched the .45 carefully in one hand while he climbed with the other.
He could hear the boat start. He knew that Maggie would have it in sight of Gruber any second now. Gruber, with any luck, would think that the scraping sound meant that the boat was temporarily stuck underneath and the pilot was having trouble getting it out. He might think the pilot was dead and somebody else was trying to free the boat. Either way, he wouldn’t be expecting Cord to attack him. Cord hoped.
The man was desperate, and he would kill. Knowing that, Cord steeled himself for whatever happened next. His only regret was that he hadn’t spoken honestly to Maggie first and told her what he really knew.
The noise of the motor boat below camouflaged the last few steps he took. He saw a short, dark-haired man with an automatic weapon huddled against the bridge looking down.
Cord aimed and yelled at the man, in Dutch, to drop his weapon.
Predictably the man turned and fired at him. Cord fired back, even as he felt a hot stinging pain in his left shoulder. The other man crumpled.
Cord didn’t take time to go to him. There was a bridge farther up, and he saw the glint of metal there, too. This man wasn’t Gruber. Maggie was on the canal, heading toward sudden death, and there was no way to get to her in time. His only hope was to draw Gruber’s fire or get to the next bridge before Maggie did.
Or…He had an idea. He grabbed his cell phone from his pocket, noting idly that there was blood on the face of it, and dialed the emergency services number. He gave his name, what was happening, and asked for assistance. Luckily there was a police car nearby. It would be sent at once.
Cord was running even as he stuck the phone back in his pocket. It would take more luck than he believed in to get a police car there in time to save Maggie. He felt sick and his arm was throbbing now, but he wasn’t going to let Gruber kill Maggie.
He darted past a throng of tourists, aware that he was frightening people, both with the pistol and the bleeding wound visible against the paleness of his shirt. But he kept going, his
heart pounding, as he pictured a bullet finding its way right into the cockpit, right into Maggie, from that bridge ahead.
“Gruber!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
Even above traffic and mumbled conversation, his voice carried. The man on the bridge stopped, turned, looked.
“I’m here, Gruber!” Cord yelled, his long legs making short work of the distance between them.
Gruber moved to the edge of the bridge and laughed, aiming his weapon down at the boat that was quickly approaching him.
“Maggie, turn the boat, turn the damned boat!” Cord yelled at the canal. Certainly she couldn’t hear him, not above the roar of the engines…!
But even as he told himself that, the boat began to turn, slowly, awkwardly, but presenting its back to the angry man on the bridge who was now firing haphazardly in a furious temper.
Cord was within firing range. He wasn’t sure of his aim. He felt as if he might pass out soon. He dropped to one knee, yelled at milling pedestrians to get the hell out of the way, aimed as carefully as he ever had, took a breath, and fired.
It seemed to take years for the bullet to get to the bridge. It was as if everything was moving in slow motion. His vision slowly blurred. The pain was monstrous all of a sudden. His shoulder was so heavy that he couldn’t hold it up. Nausea rose in his throat. He watched the man on the bridge turn in his direction, slowly, and he knew that he was a sitting duck. But he was going down fighting…
The police were everywhere in the aftermath of explosive gunfire. They directed Maggie to get the boat to the side of the canal, where a policeman jumped on board and guided it to where another policeman could use the bow rope to tie it to the steps temporarily. Paramedics appeared.
Maggie was helped out of the boat, because she was insisting at the top of her lungs that she had to get to Cord and she wouldn’t listen to excuses. She didn’t see him anywhere. There was a man down on the bridge, but that couldn’t be Cord. Where was he? Was he all right?
She raged at the authorities to hurry. In desperation, one of the policemen led her to an area of sidewalk surrounded by concerned faces.
Cord was propped on an elbow, bleeding from the shoulder, his pistol still gripped in his big hand as he cursed roundly. “Will you get to her…?” he was yelling.
Her sudden appearance electrified him. “Maggie!” he shouted, in a tone she’d never heard him use.
“Cord!” Maggie cried, throwing herself down beside him. She touched his face, his throat, while he gathered her in forcibly with the arm that still worked, holding her as close as he could, mindless of the blood he was smearing over her clothing. She held him, too, sobbing with relief.
“I couldn’t see you!” he growled at her throat. “I didn’t know if I got him in time!”
“I’m fine! I heard you telling me to turn the boat, even if
it did sound like a whisper in my ear. Oh, thank God, you’re alive,” she choked. “Thank God!”
“I’m alive,” he said huskily. “Even if a little worse for wear.”
That reminded her that she’d seen blood on his clothing in the brief seconds before he hauled her down into his arms, and he was sitting on the sidewalk. She pulled back a little and almost lost her composure when she saw the blood pouring from the wound in his shoulder. “You’re bleeding!” she exclaimed, horrified. “Please,” she begged the policeman above her, “get help!”
“This is all very irregular,” the man was muttering, but he spoke into what looked like a cell phone in a language that she didn’t understand.
Maggie took Cord’s big hand in hers and held on tight. “Don’t you die,” she choked, terrified by the blood. “Don’t you die! I can’t live without you. I won’t! Do you hear me?”
He chuckled at her vehemence. “Honey, I’ve had a lot worse than a bullet in my shoulder,” he said soothingly. “It hurts and there’s a lot of blood, but I’m not going to die. Am I, Bojo?”
“I should think not,” Bojo murmured from beside her, with a grim smile. “Cord is a hard man to kill. However,” he added with a wry look at the downed man, “if he does, I get to keep his pistol and that nice watch he wears.”
Maggie was aghast, but Cord burst out laughing.
The young policeman knelt beside Cord while they waited for the paramedics. He pulled back Cord’s shirt and looked
beneath at the bleeding wound. “It is not a killing wound,” he told Maggie in halting English. “You understand?”
“There’s so much…blood!” she sputtered.
“It may hit an artery, I think…”
Bojo interrupted him abruptly, kneeling to put pressure against the wound.
“Kill me and be done with it, why don’t you, damn it!” Cord cursed. But the bleeding slowed.
Bojo chuckled. “Ah, no, Maggie would take the gun and shoot me if I did.” He turned toward the police officer and spoke to him in Dutch. The man replied in the same language.
“What is he saying?” Maggie asked Bojo. “What are you doing to Cord? And where in the world did you come from?” she added, recovered enough now to be shocked at his sudden appearance.
“Never mind what he’s saying. I am putting pressure on the wound to slow the loss of blood. Oh, we’ve been here since the beginning,” he replied easily. “Cord had us around the city, staking out Gruber’s business associates. You’ll be glad to know that the police have all of them, besides enough evidence to have Stillwell and Adams tried in the world court on various counts of international criminal charges. Gruber, too, if he’s still alive,” he added with a cold glance toward the bridge, where police were standing over a form on the ground.
“He’ll be lucky if he is,” Cord said quietly. “I couldn’t risk Maggie’s life by aiming to wound him,” he added flatly,
clasping Maggie’s cold hand hard in his own while Bojo continued to exert pressure on Cord’s shoulder.
The young policeman’s phone buzzed. He answered it, frowned, nodded, spoke into it and hung up.
“The man on the bridge,” he said to Cord, jerking his head toward Gruber. He hesitated, searching for the English. “Not alive.”
Cord’s dark eyes narrowed. “No loss,” he replied curtly.
The other man understood. He looked down at Maggie. “Ambulance comes now,” he said, and seconds later, the sirens became loud in Maggie’s ears. She held on to Cord’s cold hand and prayed and prayed while he just smiled at her and spoke reassuringly through his pain. Bojo kept right on pushing against the wound until the paramedics came running toward them.
She wasn’t listening to Cord’s reassurances. It might not be a fatal wound, but she wanted Cord in the hospital, and quick. He was losing blood at a fantastic rate. She didn’t even know CPR. She was going to have to take courses, she told herself idiotically, if she was going to live with a mercenary.
It didn’t even occur to her then that she’d sworn to run if Cord discovered her past from Lassiter’s files. Running was the last thing on her mind. Cord had shown her a marriage license and she wanted to use it. The future could take care of itself. For now, at least.
Weary, worrisome hours later, Maggie was sitting beside Cord in the private room he’d been taken to after surgery to
remove the bullet—with only local anesthetic, to her dismay. Two policemen, plus Bojo and Rodrigo, were just outside in the hall. They hadn’t volunteered any information on why they were there, but Maggie wasn’t stupid. Gruber might have associates who were still loose in the city. Cord was going to be watched. It set Maggie’s mind at ease, somewhat.
He was going to be fine, they promised. He’d be out of the hospital the next day with an ample supply of antibiotics and painkillers. They could fly home whenever they liked.
This was welcome news, but frightening to Maggie, who dreaded having temptation put in Cord’s path by that file of Lassiter’s when they reached Houston. But Cord was alive and improving already. He’d be fine. That was all she needed to know.
She’d hoped to have a few minutes alone with him, but men in suits came and went with alarming regularity, speaking in all sorts of languages. One had a thick burr, another a French accent. Two others looked as if they were cut out of sheet steel and had never smiled in their lives. Cord later identified them as American, but wouldn’t tell her from which agency. The others were a mix of foreign agents, some from Interpol.
Sitting with her in the hall while Cord entertained his guests, Bojo studied her curiously. He was surprised at the difference a woman could make in a man. First Philippe Sabon, then Micah Steele, and now Cord Romero. He wanted to tell Maggie that her friend Gretchen had been in as much danger as she had been, and was just now in America—a visit that
would end momentarily if he knew Sabon—and that he, himself, was already overdue in Qawi after doing this favor for Cord. He must leave the country, and quickly. The aftermath of a coup attempt in that country had almost cost Gretchen her life, not to mention Philippe Sabon’s. That terror had been averted, with help from some powerful ex-mercenaries and a lot of courage from the sheikh himself. But there were details to attend to, and Bojo was needed rather desperately, along with his men.
She glanced up at Bojo, noting that he was still bloodstained from his work on Cord, which had probably saved his life. “I haven’t even thanked you for all you’ve done,” she said gently.
He shrugged. “I have done my job,” he reminded her with a smile. “Cord is my friend.”
She looked toward the closed door of Cord’s room. “If he had died,” she said quietly, “there would have been no place on earth where I would belong, ever again.”
“You will find that he feels the same way,” he told her. “If you do not know already,” he added with a grin.
She grinned back.
When he left, she closed her weary eyes and sighed. Despite the terror of the future, it was better than the terror of days past. She would get through it. Somehow, she would get through the uncertainty and the fear. It wasn’t going to be possible to walk away from Cord, whatever happened. He would have to push her away.
Two hours passed before he was through talking to his visitors. She went back inside to find him lounging in the bed in the unbecoming hospital garment, waiting for her with a rueful smile.
She went to him at once, sitting down in the chair beside the bed. She reached up to touch his face, his mouth. Tears stung her eyes. She tried to avoid them, but the fear and pain and worry of the past hours had ruined her self-control. Hot tears rolled helplessly down her cheeks.
“Hey,” he said softly. “I’m not going to die. Honest.”
She managed a watery smile and held his hand tight.
He searched her face slowly. “You look like hell.”
“Think so? You should look in a mirror,” she added.
He forced a grin. “No, thanks. Hey.”
“What?”
His fingers edged between hers. “When we get a minute, I’m going to buy us a ring each. My hand feels naked.”
Her heart jumped. She remembered, then, the folded piece of paper he had in his wallet. It had been rescued from his inner pocket—fortunately, the one opposite the side of his chest where the bullet had hit. She had it in her purse now, safe and sound.
“You didn’t even hint that you were thinking of getting married,” she accused, but she didn’t sound angry. “In fact, you swore you never would.”
He shrugged. “I had a hard time with Patricia,” he said after a minute. “I was never in love with her, Maggie, and
she knew it. I married her for a lot of reasons, none of the right ones. You were so young, baby,” he added huskily, and the anguish he felt was in his dark eyes as they searched hers. “I didn’t want to seduce you, and I was afraid I might. You were…you are…the dearest thing on earth to me. It was nothing more than a halfhearted attempt to protect you from a relationship I didn’t think you were ready for.” He sighed heavily. “Then Patricia committed suicide and I had to live not only with the guilt of her death, but the guilt of knowing that I never loved her. She knew it, too.” He caught her hand tight in his. “Just as, I’m sure, your husband knew you never loved him.”