Dragon and the Dove (12 page)

* * *

At noon, Jessica sent out for two lunches to
be delivered. She and Cao Bo ate in relative silence punctuated by
smiles and small gestures of politeness—“Did Ms. Cao want more
chips? Coleslaw? Tea?”

All offers were declined, and all told, Ms.
Cao ate barely more than a nibble. Jessica’s maternal instincts had
been buzzing throughout the morning, noting the younger woman’s
unease that seemed a mixture of fear and nervousness, the almost
unnatural brightness of her eyes, and her refusal to release her
hold on the padded folder she held even while she played at eating.
The lack of appetite was a final clue Jessica couldn’t ignore.

“Are you sick?” she asked, leaning across
the small table they shared in the reception area and lightly
touching Ms. Cao’s arm. Her hand immediately tightened. The young
woman was burning up.

Jessica rephrased her question, putting even
more concern in her voice. “How sick are you? Do you need a
doctor?”

The woman shook her head in the negative,
but her eyes told a different story.

“I think I should take you to the emergency
room,” Jessica said, realizing she’d let her other worries occupy
her to the point of negligence. What she’d interpreted as
nervousness was at least partially fever and physical discomfort,
maybe even pain.

“No,” the woman said, her voice tinged with
desperation. “No hospitals, no doctors, please. I am only
tired.”

Jessica gave her an inquisitive look, her
hand still gentle on the woman’s arm. Either Cao Bo’s pronunciation
was improving with the increase in her temperature, or she spoke
better English than she’d led Jessica to believe.

“To a hotel, then. You need bed rest and
probably a couple of aspirin every four hours. And liquids. Lots of
liquids.”

“No hotel. I will wait here for the Dragon,”
Ms. Cao insisted.

“The Dragon—” Jessica caught herself and
made the correction. “I mean, Mr. Daniels, might not be here until
very late. You can’t stay here for the rest of the day, not in your
condition.”

“I will wait.”

“But I won’t, and you can’t stay here
without me. That is against the Dragon’s very strict rules.”
Jessica was making up the rules as she went, but that was what she
got paid for—thinking on her feet. “I can take you over to a hotel
very near here and leave a message for the Dragon. He can contact
you when he arrives.”

“No.” Ms. Cao shook her head again, her eyes
downcast. “No hotel. I have no papers.”

Actually, she had lots of papers, right
there in her folder, but Jessica understood what she meant, much to
her chagrin.

“You don’t need a passport to get a hotel
room,” she said, then wondered if she had just broken an
immigration law by aiding and abetting an illegal alien. Cooper
Daniels was going to be the death of her reputation, and she
doubted if it would take him all week to accomplish the deed.

“No,” the younger woman said again
.

Jessica had to admit that Ms. Cao had that
particular word down pat, with just the right amount of
stubbornness to give it validity. “Okay,” she said, continuing to
think on her feet. Cooper wouldn’t be too pleased if she let his
“information” deteriorate into life-threatening illness, so she did
the reasonable thing. “I’ll take you home with me for a few hours,
and when the Dragon arrives, he can come and get you.”

When Cao Bo nodded in agreement, Jessica
took the victory with a sigh of relief and went back into Cooper’s
office to leave a message.

As a matter of course, she checked the fax
and Cooper’s E-mail. Nothing had come in, but as she turned to
leave, the phone rang. She’d had a few calls during the day, so it
didn’t seem unusual, until she answered it and heard the hoarsely
spoken words. “Help. Coop . . .”

The line went dead before any more words
could be spoken. Her first thought was that it was Cooper, and her
heart plummeted.

* * *

Cooper found Jessica’s message in his office
a little after midnight, and within five minutes he was back in his
car and heading for her house in the suburbs. He’d called first to
tell her he was coming, but had deliberately kept the conversation
short. She’d taken an operative into her home, and he was torn
between blaming himself for the screw-up or blaming fate. He knew
there wasn’t anybody else.

The first thing Leeds had told him on the
phone last Friday morning in London was to get rid of Jessie
Langston. She didn’t belong in his game, George had said. George
had been right. There was no way for Cooper to warn her about every
possible danger, not in the short time they had, and not
considering the job they had to do in that short time.

The yard was dark when he arrived, but as he
got out of his car the front porch lights came on, a beacon at the
end of a long tunnel of night-darkened greenery.

She was waiting for him at the door, dressed
in a T-shirt and jeans. Her hand was raised to her chest, her gaze
searching him from head to toe, looking for the damage her note had
said she feared had befallen him. He didn’t miss the close scrutiny
she gave his bad leg, as if she thought the weakest part of him
would be the first to go.

Once on her porch, he stood closer to her
than was necessary, looking down at her in silence, forcing her to
meet his gaze. She looked up, flustered.

“Mr. Dani—” He lowered his mouth to cover
hers before she could finish saying his name.

“Cooper,” he said roughly when he lifted his
head to look into her startled eyes. After the concern he’d read in
her message, he figured they were solidly on a first-name basis.
She drew in a small breath, her hands pressing against his chest,
and he took the opportunity to kiss her again, warming her mouth
with his until she opened for him.

The gentle, insistent stroking of his tongue
along hers had an immediate effect on him and a desirable effect on
her. The pressure of her palms lessened, and her hands slowly slid
up over his collarbone, then his shoulders, and finally around his
neck. She was softer and sweeter than he remembered. He wrapped his
arms around her, holding her tight.

“I thought you were hurt, maybe captured,”
she murmured when he kissed her cheek. “I’m so relieved you’re
okay. It’s been hell since lunch, and I want you to know you—”

Jessica pulled herself up short when she
realized she was babbling. When the first tear spilled over, she
got angry and pushed herself away from him. “Damn you.”

“Yeah. I’ve had days like that too. But I
didn’t have enough balls to cry about them. Where’s the woman?”

He could make a life out of shocking her,
Jessica decided. “She’s in Tony’s room.”

“Alone, I hope.” He gave her a wry
glance.

She ignored him. “She’s ill, feverish. It
could just be exhaustion. I wanted to call a doctor and have her
looked at, but the idea upset her so badly, I decided against
it.”

“Good. She’s justifiably paranoid if she’s
fresh off the boat. If she’s been in Chinatown long enough to meet
the kind of people who usually feed me information, she’s got even
more reason to remain as anonymous as possible.”

Cooper followed Jessica up the stairs to her
brother’s room. He didn’t tell her he wished like hell she hadn’t
brought the woman home. No matter where Cao Bo came from, someone
was bound to have followed her, making sure she did her job, and
that someone had been led to Jessica’s house. It was all he could
do to keep from hitting the wall with his fist.

They looked in on the young woman, keeping
their voices low and their intrusion short. She was sleeping
peacefully, and Jessica wouldn’t allow him to wake her for
questioning. A few more hours, she told him, wouldn’t make any
difference.

Cooper knew she was wrong, but he let her
have her way, because he wanted to talk to her more than he wanted
to talk to the mysterious Cao Bo.

“Can I use your phone?” he asked, following
Jessica back downstairs to the living room. He had noticed the
first time he was there that Paul Signorelli had a preference for
animalistic furniture and accessories. One wooden table looked like
a cheetah, a wrought-iron chair resembled a sleeping flamingo, and
they both resided in a jungle of greenery that was not outdone by
the landscaping of the yard. Cooper wouldn’t have been surprised if
it had started raining in the living room.

“The phone’s in the kitchen,” she said, and
led the way.

“I know it’s late, but would it be too much
to ask for a cup of coffee?”

“No. Are you hungry?” she asked.

“Yes, but I don’t expect you to cook.”

“Tony’s the cook,” she informed him, walking
over to the refrigerator. “And you’re in luck. We’ve got an
incredible pasta salad, cold crab, sourdough bread, and some
indecent chocolate thing Alaina made for dessert.”

“That would be great,” he said. “But if it’s
too much trouble, I can have something brought over.”

His wording was deliberate, and it didn’t
slip by her.

She looked over her shoulder at him, her
hand on the refrigerator door. “You make it sound like you’re not
leaving for a while.”

“I’m not.”

“If it’s the kiss, you misunderstood,” she
said calmly, but he noticed her grip tighten on the door.

“I wish it was the kiss, but it’s not.
You’ve got a woman upstairs who you shouldn’t have brought home,
and I can’t leave until I know there aren’t going to be any
consequences.”

“Consequences.” She repeated the word dully,
and he could see the full impact of the situation register on her
face. She was frozen in place for a heartbeat before she half
walked, half ran toward another part of the house.

When she returned a few minutes later, the
panic was erased from her face, replaced by a steely
determination.

“How are the kids?” he asked, guessing where
she’d gone.

“Fine. Help yourself to dinner. I’ll be
back.”

He watched her take a ring of keys from her
purse and head for the basement. He could tell by the faint jingle
and clanging noise coming up the stairs that she was opening a
metal cabinet. Having a pretty good idea of what was probably in a
locked metal cabinet in a basement—namely guns—he decided right
then and there to call Elise Crabb in the morning and apologize for
his doubts about the angelfish in silk.

After relocking the gun cabinet, Jessica
came upstairs in time to catch the tail end of Cooper’s telephone
conversation.

“ . . . for tonight at least. Bring what you
need and call your cousin Yuxi. I want two men here.”

She set a handgun on the kitchen counter,
within easy reach, and started to make a pot of coffee. The
.357-caliber Magnum had been the ninth and last wedding anniversary
present from her ex-husband. She’d thought it was an odd present,
and had only realized later that it had been a big clue that he
wasn’t going to be around much from then on, especially at night.
He’d replaced the security of his presence with the security of a
gun so he could go his roving way with a clear conscience. She’d
been furious with herself for being so blind back then, and she was
furious with herself now, though for a different reason.

“I don’t really think it’s as bad as I made
it sound,” Cooper said behind her after he’d hung up the phone. “I
just don’t want to take any chances.”

“I don’t either,” she said, tight-lipped.
She finished pouring water into the coffee machine, and when it
spilled, she swore softly and grabbed a towel to mop up. “Who did
you call?”

“My houseboy, John Liu, Dr. Liu’s
brother.”

“Your houseboy does double duty as a
security guard?” She hated the tremor in her voice. Dammit, she
wasn’t naive. She knew the score when it came to the good guys and
the bad guys. It was a game she’d grown up in, and one she’d
married into.

“It’s more like my security guard doing
double duty as a houseboy.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Good Lord,
Cooper. What kind of life do you lead?”

He was silent for a small eternity before he
said, “Not an easy one since Jackson died.”

The edge in his voice caused her to turn
around and look at him, the damp towel still in her hand. He was
rumpled, and tired, and gorgeous. She shouldn’t care, she told
herself. There was nothing in him except trouble and danger—and an
anger born of pain.

“You can blame me for this problem,” he
said, running his hand through his hair, his eyes closing out of
sheer weariness.

“I could,” she agreed, setting the towel
aside and wiping her hands on the front of her jeans. “But then I’d
only be half-right.”

His eyes opened, capturing her gaze. “If I’d
been straight with you from the beginning, you would have made a
different decision.”

“Probably.”

“There’s no reason to blame yourself,” he
said, seeming determined to give her an out.

She didn’t need him handing her absolution,
and it was time she told him. “Yes, there is,” she said, turning
aside and punching the brew button. “If I had been thinking with my
head instead of my ego, I would have walked out the first time you
fired me. And for the record, I won’t relinquish the responsibility
for my decisions to anybody.”

“I can respect that.”

“You’d better.”

They were at a Mexican standoff, and Cooper
was too tired not to blink.

“I think I already know the answer,” he
said, “but just in case I’m wrong, do you know how to use that gun
on the counter?”

“My dad was a cop for thirty years,” she
answered. “My ex-husband is a PI and I have two uncles and two
brothers currently employed by the San Francisco Police Department,
one as a martial-arts instructor. There isn’t a Signorelli in a
two-hundred-mile radius who doesn’t know how to break down, clean,
put back together, safely store, and fire that gun on the
counter.”