Dangerous Loves Romantic Suspense Collection (63 page)

And it had. Because she’d begun to trust Grayson, to believe that someone was trying to set him up, he’d wedged his way into a powerful position. While she let down her guard and flirted with gentle yet dangerous feelings like love, he was able to steal the one thing that could hurt her the worst.

Fiona.

He was the one who’d turned this into a cat and mouse game. He was the one who’d kidnapped Fiona in the first place just to lure Vega back into the chase.

The reasons for tormenting her might not be clear. But, to Vega, one thing was guaranteed. It was past time to put an end to his game.

She packed an arsenal of weapons and equipment into the back of her rented SUV. Butch had called three times, offering to help. Each time, she’d refused. She didn’t want Butch around muddling her thoughts. For Fiona, she needed to stay focused.

“Don’t you worry, we’ll get him,” Johnson stopped by the hotel to report that afternoon. He scoffed at her suggestion that Grayson would run to a neighboring state. The borders had been sealed, the idea far-fetched. “That sure sounds like a wild goose to me.”

“Fiona believed Etta Gray is the key. I’m not going to dismiss her ideas any longer. She’s good, better than I give her credit for,” Vega insisted.

Jack sniffed loudly and turned away.

“What about Joshua Whitfield?” Vega asked. “Are you any closer to making an arrest there?”

“Those files on the CD are a mess. We’re digging and finding what looks like dirt. We’re building a case showing that Whitfield was acting as the financial arm of a major organized crime ring.”

“Spider?”

“Yes, Spider. They’ve got their fingers in drugs, terrorism, and general mayhem in many of the major cities around the country. They were paying thugs like the Finn Kayne you encountered in Detroit to act as regional crime bosses. Finding this Whitfield/Six-Star connection is a huge break for us at the FBI. I hope to be able to charge Whitfield in the next couple of days.” Johnson scratched his chin and frowned. “Unfortunately Whitfield’s gone to ground. No one knows exactly where he is. His lawyers promise he’s staying at his Miami estate. Between you and me, I’m worried. If he weren’t so politically powerful, I’d haul him into custody. But I can’t. I can’t touch him without rock solid evidence.”

“I’m not surprised. How about those files? Is there anything you can tell me about what Six-Star Enterprises was doing to help us figure out how to find Grayson Walker?”

Johnson only shook his head. “Best we can tell, neither Harper nor Walker were involved with Spider. But then,” Johnson placed his hand on Vega’s shoulder, “we’re doing everything possible to find your sister. No matter what, we’ll find her.”

Vega didn’t find any hope in his assurances.

“Why don’t you get out of Atlanta for a while? You’re just underfoot, you know. Go somewhere and sleep for a couple of days, you look like hell.”

“Sleep is grossly overrated these days.”

An hour later, Vega was in her rented SUV and heading down to the coast of South Carolina to follow up on Fiona’s best lead. Jack had acted only too happy to get her out of the hotel. He pushed her all the way to the door, telling her he’d call if he heard anything.

* * * *

Spanish moss drooped off the limbs of the sprawling oaks, green even in the middle of January. A cool mist rose like an enchanted breath from the damp marshes. A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature crept down Vega’s spine. She turned off the highway onto the road that marked the entrance of McClellanville. It was as if Fiona’s own hand had led her to this impossibly small town not much more than a handful of roads, a few paved.

The sun dipped behind the pine trees to the west just as she found the address she was looking for. The dying afternoon sky blazed crimson, giving the unpainted, weather-beaten Victorian cottage with a lazy porch encircling the exterior a supernatural glow. While the water in the bay beyond appeared to open up and feed the night its darkness.

A small sign tacked beside the wooden door had the words, “boat rentals” printed in navy blue paint. Vega parked the SUV in front of the house.

It had taken her most of the day to get to this town on the rural coast of South Carolina. She was just a few miles away from Tommy Fisher’s bar, the Broken Cricket, where this jinxed adventure had all started. And again, Vega was not at all certain she was in the right place. After Fiona’s abduction, she was beginning to question her hunches, even the strong ones.

Vega knocked on the heavy pine door. The quick raps echoed high in the thick canopy of trees surrounding the house. It took no more than a moment or two for the yellow light on the porch to turn on. Her senses alert, she kept a keen eye on the growing shadows around the property, watching for movement.

“Yes?” a voice from inside the house asked. The rusty hinge wailed when the door opened a crack. A single ancient eye, nearly entirely white from a heavy cataract, peered out at her.

“I’m looking for Etta Gray’s place,” Vega said. “I’d been told you could guide me to her summer home.” And that was why Vega had been drawn to this clapboard house.

The man sighed and stepped back from the door. The place looked like a museum, only much more disorganized. Stacks of antique furniture, folk art, and mysterious wooden crates narrowed the front hallway from floor to ceiling.

“I’m Vega Brookes.” The man appeared to be nearly blind with those white, cloudy eyes of his, but nothing seemed wrong with his hearing. The wrinkles on his face, a testimony to his wisdom and experience, pulled down toward the floor as he turned back toward her. “Pearl Sampit sent me.”

“That old gossip?” the man snorted. He didn’t offer his name and Vega chose not to pursue it. “Might as well make yourself comfortable.” He gestured toward the living room where more treasures upon treasures had been heaped. A sweet, musty smell filled Vega’s nostrils when she perched on the corner of an ornate sofa that, in a museum, it would’ve had a velvet red rope hanging across the faded red velvet cushion.

He picked a battered easy chair that held no value besides comfort. “It’ll cost you one hundred dollars a day plus fifty dollars for me to draw you a map and give instructions on how to find your way through the marsh.”

“Okay.” He’d lost Vega. “One hundred dollars a day for what?”

“For the boat, of course.”

“The boat?”

“Pearl told you nothing. Etta’s summer home is on a marsh island. I’ll give you instructions on how to navigate the maze of channels to get you to her island—not that’ll be easy, mind you. You’ll most likely get lost.”

“I won’t get lost.”

The old man chuckled. “I require cash, up front. For fifty more dollars, you’re welcome to stay the night.”

“Stay the night?”

He snorted again. “An outsider like yourself couldn’t find the ocean, much less a small house in the middle of this marsh at night. Be lucky to do it during the day.”

That night Vega slept upstairs in the man’s sprawling old Victorian home on what felt like a cardboard mattress with the room’s expansive windows open. Teams of cicadas droned in her ears while confusing images of Fiona and Grayson haunted her dreams.

* * * *

The next morning, water whirled along the side of the fiberglass hull of the two-man boat Vega had rented. The bottom of the boat was wide and shallow. The craft glided down the creek with very little resistance from the tugging tide. A soft hum from the boat’s tiny trawling motor was the only sound for miles. Two wooden oars lay at her feet, she intended to switch off the motor and paddle her final approach to the island circled with a red pen on her map.

Navigating through the narrow marsh channels proved a disorienting challenge. Rough blades of marsh grass, winter brown in color, towered over both sides of the boat and over her head, even when she stood. The grasses blinded Vega, forcing her to rely solely on the hand-drawn map, which wasn’t easy. The pull of the tides created several narrow paths and openings that looked nearly identical to the navigable channels.

But Vega took her time and managed to find her way to the unmistakable fork in the channel where a folly of palms rose up from the grasses. Etta Gray’s secluded island, according to the map, should be just a few more turns down the creek’s winding channel. She shut off the engine and opened her black backpack holding her mini-arsenal. She tucked a loaded Beretta into her hip holster so it nestled in the small of her back. And in each pocket of her leather coat, a pair of handcuffs and an air gun Taser with a fifteen-foot range, and a shock guaranteed to overwhelm an assailant’s central nervous system.

She needed to take Grayson alive. If he didn’t have Fiona with him on the island, she would wrestle the information out of him.

“It’s your responsibility to watch out for your sister,” her father had once shook Vega by the shoulders and scolded.

Fiona had been only five at the time and had followed Vega on one of her solitary biking adventures through the neighborhood. Before they’d gone even two blocks, Fiona had fallen off her three-wheeled trike and was nearly hit by a car, tore her dress, and scraped her arms and legs. The driver of the car had carried Fiona back to the house while Fiona screamed as if that sound was to be her last and she wanted to make an impact.

I expect you to be the responsible one, Vega, and yet you continually disappoint me
.

She could feel her father in the boat with her, with that scowl he’d get whenever his gaze chanced to meet hers. That look of utter dissatisfaction would harden his features. She should have taken better care of his charming little Fiona. She should have never allowed herself to believe in Grayson. Perhaps…

She gulped an uneven breath. Fiona would be okay. She’d trade her life for Fiona’s, if need be. That should please her father.

With a strangled sob, she caught hold of the budding emotional outbreak and pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. Her focus slowly centered on the coming few hours until nothing else existed but her determination to capture Grayson.

He would not escape this time. She was good. Her prey never eluded capture for long.

Vega dipped the oars into the water and silently guided the boat up the creek. Gradually, the channel widened and the water rose, giving Vega a better view over the marsh grasses. She rounded a bend in the channel. A heavily treed island came into view. According to the map, this land belonged to Etta Gray.

She rowed toward the island, searching the marshy shore for the slightest sign of movement. Grayson shouldn’t be expecting her, but she sure as hell wasn’t about to take any chances. Out in the channel, without the cover of any kind of vegetation, she presented a tempting target to whatever might be lurking in the trees. Vega tugged on a floppy hat she’d purchased low on her head and tossed a fishing line out over the side of the boat.

A short, rickety dock with several loose boards curling up here and there and the supporting piers slanting at a sharp angle appeared on the far side of the island. There were no other signs of human inhabitation, no grand house rising up over the trees. Vega pulled up beside the dock and secured the boat to a pier close to shore. After hopping out into shallow water, she wedged the boat between the piers underneath the dock so it wouldn’t be readily noticeable. She took her backpack filled with an assortment of weapons, and sloshed her way over oyster beds and up the muddy bank.

Grand oaks like those in McClellanville, green even in the winter, hugged the shore. A grassy path led through the maritime forest, leading, no doubt, to Etta Gray’s home site. Hoping to make a silent approach, Vega wove her way through the thick woods. They swallowed her up, creating a strange sensation of being transported back a century, to a lush flowering tropical forest somewhere much further south.

She stayed parallel with the narrow man-made path until she reached a clearing in the forest. Smoke rose from the chimney of a rusty roofed bungalow. Her heart thumped. The bungalow wasn’t closed up for the winter after all. Just as she suspected, someone had taken residence in Etta’s absence.

Vega stashed her backpack against the far wall of a boat shed and covered it with pine straw and leaves. She crouched down to watch the house. Other than an occasional rustle of leaves and the creaking of a well handle as the wind pushed it, the island was completely silent. Almost too silent.

If Fiona’s life weren’t depending on the finesse of the execution, she’d charge the house and use her Taser to immobilize anyone she encountered inside. But the direct approach might put Fiona’s life at a greater risk. She played out several scenarios in her head. The most deadly would be to tip off Grayson and give him the opportunity to harm Fiona.

The only way that made any sense was to take Grayson fast and hard…and soon. Which meant she’d either need to locate him inside the house before he noticed her presence, or figure out a safe way to lure him out.

To lure him out, she’d need to create enough of a disturbance to rouse his curiosity without sparking excessive suspicions. It was a gamble of course, but Vega decided it would be safer to confront Grayson outside as far away from Fiona as possible. Besides, she had no desire to walk into a room without knowing exactly what to expect.

While she sat there wondering what she could do besides throwing stones at the windows, which just seemed like a really bad idea, the front door to the small house opened. She kept her back pressed against the side of the small shack and peered around the corner of the building.

Grayson stopped on the bottom step, his alert gaze scanning. Her father’s Glock was snug in one hand, a rope sling for carrying wood in the other. He headed toward the shed. Vega could see the military training and focus with each step.

She looked behind her. A pile of wood was stacked just a few feet from where she stood, which meant he’d walk right into her snare.

Hopefully the air gun Taser worked as well as Jack claimed. According to him, this stun gun was the best thing to happen to small arms since the invention of the self-indexing breech that had made the development of automatic pistols possible. Instead of bullets, the gun fired two electrified probes that, when latched onto the target, sent an electrical-muscular disruption pulse through the body strong enough to completely disable the central nervous system. Temporary, harmless paralysis. A damn good tool for her business.