Follow the Sun (13 page)

The guy was no salesman. Jeopard knew without doubt.

Every muscle poised for action. Jeopard ambled down the dock behind the visitor. A hard, deadly tightness came over him as the man stopped in front of the
Lady
.

Jeopard glanced back. Madam Voluptuous had gone into her boat’s cabin. No one else was around on this weekday morning.

The man lifted his satchel and fiddled with something on the handle. Then he crossed the gangplank and stepped onto the
Lady
’s bow.

Tess’s security alarm didn’t make a sound.

Jeopard realized immediately that the visitor’s satchel held something besides samples. He had just counteracted the
Lady
’s alarm system. A thorough professional.

“Hey, pal,” Jeopard yelled. He staggered down the dock, weaving dangerously close to the wooden buffers at the edge. “You got a light?”

The man, a short, stocky redhead with a wholesome face straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, turned and frowned at Jeopard. “You’re drunk.”

“Hell, you’re kiddin’. I thought we were having another earthquake.”

“Beat it. I’m busy.”

Jeopard reached the
Lady
’s gangplank and staggered aboard, flapping at his coat pockets. “Damn. No cigarettes. Come on, buddy. If you got ’em, share one.”

“I’m afraid I don’t—”

“Too bad,” Jeopard interjected, and rabbit-punched him in the jaw.

The skilled upper cut made the ersatz salesman collapse like a bad soufflé, and he tumbled onto the deck. His coat fell open to reveal a small handgun with a silencer.

Jeopard knelt beside the man, jerked the gun from its holster, and tossed it over the
Lady
’s railing. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered to the unconscious man.
Jeopard propped the satchel on his chest. “You’re lucky I don’t have time to deal with you.”

He didn’t have
any
time. Jeopard heard a quick creaking sound and looked down the stairwell just as the cabin door banged open. Tess stood there, staring up at him, an expression of fear and horror on her face.

Jeopard could imagine how confused she must be, seeing him crouched over an unconscious salesman who had a small billboard on his chest innocently advising the world to ask him about Happy Suds Cleaning Products.

“Don’t be misled,” Jeopard told her in a soothing voice. “I’m the guy in the white hat. Relax, honey.”

She raised a tiny pistol and pointed it at his chest.

“The Cherokees had a title for a female who was good at fighting,” she informed him imperiously. “ ‘War Woman.’ ”

Jeopard straightened slowly and held up both hands. “Tess. I know you have a lot of doubts, but I’m your only hope.”

“You’re a hired killer.”

Faltering at that abrupt charge. Jeopard stared at her in stunned silence.

“I know about you,” she continued, the lethal little gun trembling in her hands. “You were hired to steal the diamond and get rid of me.”

The accusation that he was a paid assassin—paid to kill the brightest hope that liad ever come into his life-made him continue to look at her in astonishment.

“Who told you that?”

“My grandfather had you checked out. He has friends in American diplomatic circles.”

Jeopard grimaced inwardly. There were no official government records on former high-level agents such as himself. There were only carefully constructed facades designed to alarm and deceive an enemy.

The truth about his former line of work was disturbing enough; the lies she’d been given must have
terrified her. But maybe he needed that advantage right now.

“Tess, we haven’t got much time. We have to get out of here.”

“So you can take care of me without anyone’s seeing you?” Her voice cracked. “Who hired you?”

The assassin stirred weakly under Jeopard’s feet. Time had run out. Now that this guy had been exposed, someone else would be after her.

Jeopard watched Tess glance downward at the fallen man. He used that unguarded moment to lunge for her. She yelped, lowered the gun, and tried to shove her cabin door shut. Jeopard plowed through and wrapped both arms around her.

The momentum carried them both to her bed, where he fell on top of her. The gun sailed out of her hand and struck her computer with a metallic thud.

Jeopard pinned her arms and legs down. “The gun wasn’t loaded,” he told her gruffly. “I could see the empty chambers.”

Her silver-blue eyes were as fierce as they were frightened. “You cruel, deceiving bastard. Where were you when you called my answering machine? It would have taken you an hour to get here from Los Angeles.”

“I came by helicopter.”

She inhaled harshly. “My grandparents will look for me.”

“By the time they start, you’ll be gone. And later you’ll call and tell them that you were wrong about me, that you’ve gone into hiding with me until the danger blows over.”

She wiggled under him. “No.”

“Yes. I have a recording of your voice. That night we talked at the Zanzi Bar I recorded you for
hours
. My people can copy your speech patterns and tones from that. Someone will call Karl and Viktoria for you. Your grandparents will hear you say that everything’s just fine between you and me.”

She groaned and gritted her teeth. “What do you want from me?”

“I’m trying to save your life.”

“Tell me the truth!”

“Neither of us is interested in the truth. You’ve made that clear. You’re hiding something that makes somebody want to kill you. If you’d told me everything about the diamond, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

“I told you!”

She writhed under him like a trapped cat. Jeopard knew a dozen different techniques that would subdue her, but none that wouldn’t hurt like hell.

He squeezed his legs around hers and clasped her wrists in an iron grip above her head. “Stop it. Stop it, Tess, or by God I’ll make you sorry.”

She froze, then began quivering at the lethal insinuation in his tone. Jeopard gazed down at her coldly, all reconciliation gone from his manner. He watched her eyes widen in alarm at the look on his face. His heart broke.

He’d pay a price for saving her. He could see it in her disgust and terror.

Jeopard rolled her onto her stomach, so he wouldn’t have to look at her eyes. He used his belt to bind her hands behind her back, then went to her small dresser and searched until he found two long silk scarves.

He tied her ankles together with one of them, then knotted the other one snugly around her neck. Jeopard turned her over, winced inside at the wretched look on her face, and lifted her toward the head of the bed.

He fastened the end of the neck binding to the bedstead.

“Tied like a dog to a post,” she whispered raggedly. “At least give me a fighting chance.”

“Be quiet.”

He left the cabin before he lost all sense of logic, ripped the bindings off of her, and begged her to understand what he was trying to do.

The hired killer sat up groggily. Jeopard knelt in
front of him, grasped him by the collar, and smiled at him.

“If you’d hurt her, I’d have made you regret it,” he told the man in a soft, pleasant voice. “If I had time and privacy, I’d make you regret even
thinking
about hurting her. But you’re in luck. As it is, I’ll simply describe you in detail to some very ruthless people who like to take justice into their own hands. Now, get up, walk off this boat, and don’t look back. I’ll be watching.”

The man took his satchel and left without a word. Jeopard tracked him with a shrewd gaze, memorizing everything about him, until he got into a small sedan and drove away.

Back in the cabin Tess had turned to lie on her side, and her neck was bent at an awkward angle because of the way she was tied to the bed. “Don’t touch me,” she said in a low, raspy tone as he slid a pillow under her head.

Her chest moved swiftly. Jeopard groaned with frustration—she was about to attempt screams that a Banshee might envy. He ran to get more scarves, then stuffed one into her mouth and used another to tie it in place. She made muffled protests and tried to twist her head away from him.

Dull despair washed over Jeopard. She’d never believe his reasons for doing this. He grasped her jaw and forced her to look up at him.

“I’m taking the boat out to sea. Someone will meet us there. You might as well stop fighting, because you’re trapped.”

She jerked her head away and shut her eyes, effectively dismissing him. Jeopard touched a fingertip to the medallion that lay on her right breast, then lifted the antler amulet and looked at it.

A lump rose in his throat. What had she been trying to do, ward him off as though he were an evil spirit? She still had her eyes shut, finding him too loathsome to look at.

Perhaps he was evil, and it was too late to save
himself. But he’d save her, even if it meant putting her through hell to do it.

Jeopard grimly tossed the amulet back on her chest. “You won’t need any Cherokee magic,” he told her curtly. “As long as you do what I tell you, you won’t get hurt.”

Feeling sick, he left her to ponder that heartless warning and went above to set sail.

T
HE NEXT TWO
hours were an endless horror. Wherever Jeopard was taking her, it would be far away from anyone who could help her.

First they were met by a small power boat piloted by a middle-aged man who shook Jeopard’s hand but never said a word. They were transferred to the boat, and Tess looked back forlornly at the
Swedish Lady
, sitting abandoned.

“The Coast Guard will find her,” Jeopard said brusquely, and pulled her around so that she couldn’t look anymore.

The power boat took them up the coast to an unused oil platform, where a helicopter waited. There was another man, who shook Jeopard’s hand as if they’d done this sort ofthing many times—which they must have, Tess thought bitterly.

The helicopter took them inland to a stretch of empty desert, where a small private plane sat alone on a windswept highway. The pilot smiled at her as Jeopard carried her—still bound hand and foot—onto the plane.

Since Jeopard had long since removed the stuffing from her mouth, she told the pilot that he’d go to prison for aiding a kidnapper. He smiled even more broadly.

Jeopard spoke to her with a minimum of cool, brusque words. He put her in a window seat and sat beside her, his side pressed tightly to hers. After the plane settled into its cruising altitude he untied her.

“Rest room is in the back. Now’s your chance.”

“How kind of you.”

She rose and swept past him without a backward glance. When she returned he motioned her back to the window seat.

“Sit down. All right. Hands on your lap.”

Then he carefully prepared to bind her wrists and ankles with strips of wide, soft tape. She’d be more comfortable but no less a prisoner.

Tess stared out the window at clouds and blue sky, her teeth clenched. He handled her with a businesslike intimacy that made her face burn with fury and humiliation. Damn the man!

He rubbed her wrists to make certain they weren’t chafed, then probbed gently at her scraped palms. He ran his hand down her ankle and lifted one sandaled foot to study the big blister on her heel. Then he sat back and scrutinized the wrinkled shorts and old T-shirt she’d worn for the past twenty-four hours. Finally he put two fingers at the base of her throat and checked her pulse.

“Now I know how a slave girl feels in a harem,” she said between gritted teeth. “Do you intend to molest me later?”

He withdrew his hand slowly. “Of course. I’m that kind of man, as you well know. It wouldn’t look good for my reputation if I didn’t do a little sordid molesting, now would it?”

She flinched but said nothing.

“Your face is gaunt. I want you to eat,” he announced.

“A fattened pig for the sacrifice.”

He went to an ice chest in the front of the cabin and brought her a carton of milk, a large piece of cheese, two apples, and a package of crackers, all of which he placed on her lap.

He opened the milk carton and wedged it between her hands.

“Eat. If you need help, say so.”

“Let’s get something straight. You disgust me. I won’t ask you for anything.”

“You will soon enough,” he said softly, and left her. shivering as he went forward to sit with the pilot.

T
WO HOURS LATER
the plane landed on an airstrip set in a valley among dry, barren mountains Tess couldn’t identify. She blanched as Jeopard carried her out of the plane and she saw a small private jet on the runway.

“How far are we going?”

His arms tightened around her. “I got a terrific idea from your Cherokee history lessons. We’re going to North Carolina. Remember the caves in the mountains there? We’re going to hide in one.”

“Hide from what?” she asked in a small, stunned voice.

“That’s for you to tell me. You know why somebody’s trying to kill you. I don’t.”

Tess shook her head fiercely. “You’re the only killer.”

“Enough.” Jeopard stopped in the middle of the runway. He looked down at her, his blue eyes icy. “When you’re ready to tell me the truth, talk to me. Otherwise, keep quiet.”

Tess swallowed hard. She didn’t understand his frightening game. After he carried her aboard the jet and deposited her in a seat, she looked up at him desperately.

“Do you want money? A ransom? Is this revenge for the diamond?” She gasped. “You wouldn’t hurt my grandparents! Please tell me you don’t intend to do anything to them!”

He stared down at her with tired, unhappy eyes. “I’m not interested in them. Only in you. And you can make this a helluva lot easier if you’ll open up. Tell me how you got the Blue Princess.”

“The what?” she asked plaintively. “You mean the blue diamond? I told you, they gave it to me for my eighteenth birthday! I’d never seen it before
then! But I forgive them for what they did! They had reasons—”

“Dammit, stop,” he said, bending over her with menace. His expression was deadly. “I know that Royce was a jewel thief. The sooner you talk, the sooner this will be over with.”

Tess’s head reeled. He had known about Royce all along.
The sooner you talk, the sooner this will be over with
. When he got his information, would he dispose of her? But what information? And what did Royce have to do with the blue diamond that Jeopard called the Blue Princess?