Mission: Out of Control (4 page)

“This coming from the woman who still winces when she moves her arm.”

Ronie lifted her left arm, letting the mirror reveal the purple-black bruise encircling the top of it. It still hurt to move it; tears still sprang to her eyes when someone bumped it.

“There's no such thing as too concerned. I think Brody Wickham is the real deal. I saw him watching you all day—I'm telling you, if you had slipped from that swing, he has arms that could catch you.”

“I think he's just as likely to let me hit the ground.”

“He'd take a bullet for you. I can see it in his eyes.”

Perfect. Just what she wanted—another person dying because of her.

Okay, yes, maybe she couldn't dislodge him from her brain—especially that smug expression as he tried to catch a glimpse at her phone.

Good thing she'd deleted the text. See, a person shouldn't save text messages on their phones—not in the new age of spy games.

No, she'd just have to keep his attention diverted while she played out her extracurricular activities.

“I thought rehearsals went okay today, didn't you?” She peered in the mirror at her bloodshot eyes, a few gathering wrinkles around her mouth. Okay, she shouldn't be quite so hard on herself. With the right makeup, she could turn the head of a photographer. At least as Vonya.

“I think you're brilliant. I love the swing song.”

She thought it was one of her cheesier pieces, but the crowds loved it. And Vonya vamped it up well, although it was one of the few songs that felt most like one Ronie might sing. All the same, it didn't matter what persona she played onstage, as long as it opened doors. As Vonya she'd held a concert for the troops overseas, she'd raised money for UNICEF, she'd visited the refugee camps in Africa…

All, of course, Tommy used for the good of her career. She used it for the good of her heart.

And in Zimbala, she'd met Kafara Nimba, a nine-year-old orphaned boy who had captured her heart.

This trip, she'd bring him home.

“Is it okay if I take off? I left the Thai food on the counter. And Tommy said he'd be by later to check on you and go over the itinerary.”

Ronie cinched the towel around her and opened the door. “Are you picking up Lyle or am I?”

“I'll go—we'll meet you at the airport on Saturday morning. Listen, you're all packed, you just need to get yourself there on
time.
No more holding the plane while you run through security.”

“They didn't believe I was Vonya—what could I do?”

“That's your fault for traveling as yourself.”

Yeah, see, no one recognized her when she simply played…herself. Not even her, anymore.

Leah hadn't moved from the door, and Ronie stilled. She closed her eyes when Leah said softly, “I'll be praying for you. For the record, I think you're doing the right thing.”

Her feet clicked on the cork floor down the hallway. Ronie pressed her hand to the foggy mirror and pulled it away, watching her handprint. The right thing.

Yes, eventually it would be.

A half hour later, her face scrubbed clean, wearing her green Hulk pajama pants and an oversize Harvard sweatshirt, she found the Thai food in the kitchen in the middle of an otherwise empty countertop.

The entire apartment on the top floor of her building
in SoHo reflected Vonya's eccentric style, thanks to Tommy D's vision for who she should be—at least for the various magazines that wanted an “insider look” into her life. The past year and a half, she'd risen in popularity so much she barely recognized the woman who just loved to write songs in the quiet of her room. From the S-shaped workspace suspended on cables in the middle of the kitchen, to folding Japanese screens that separated the spaces, to the two-story windows overlooking the skyscape of New York, the place exuded the artistic, eccentric flare of Vonya.

The only room Ronie claimed for herself—and she'd practically had to throw her body over it—was the tiny library with the round window that overlooked the rooftops of her neighbors' buildings. Yes, she could be accused of sitting in the darkness, watching people as they stargazed on their rooftops or sometimes serenaded the city. She often grabbed her guitar and played along.

Her library contained her books, a white shag carpet, a chaise lounge she'd picked up at an estate sale and re-covered in lime-green, her old acoustic guitar, and a pile of lined music sheets and notebooks filled with her handwritten songs.

Not that any of them would be sung by Vonya. Even if Ronie did bring them out into the light, they'd die under the bright glare of Tommy D's criticism.

Aw, she didn't really want to be a blues singer anyway, did she?

She'd definitely picked the wrong song to sing on Talent Night at the Harvard Business School. Wow, talk about getting in over her head.

Ronie brought the Thai food to the white sofa, curled up on it, and flicked on the television. She avoided the entertainment and fashion channels, ignored the soaps, and finally settled on a cooking show. Bizarre foods. Could be fun to eat fried squid on a stick, right?

The phone rang and she gave herself permission to let it go to the machine. Probably just Tommy, letting her know he'd be late.

“Veronica Stanton Wagner, this is your father, and if you're there, I expect you to pick up.”

Ronie caught a long noodle with her chopsticks.

“Okay, well, I just wanted to say…” He cleared his throat. She paused, her food halfway to her mouth. “Have a good trip.”

Oh, see, now that was nice—

“Please try to stay out of the newspapers. And don't drive your bodyguard mad. We've paid him good money to keep an eye on you.”

Ronie sucked in a breath.

“And your reputation.”

He hung up.

Ronie caught a piece of baby corn. Perfect. Just once, she'd like to hear his daddy voice instead of the senator voice, but frankly, it had been so long she probably wouldn't recognize it.

She stirred her food, then set it down. If only she could have figured out another way to raise money other than go crawling back to her father.

Maybe she shouldn't have given away quite so much of her money to charity. But she couldn't live with herself if she didn't help—after all, she had so much to make up for.

She clicked off the television and stared at the glittering lights of the city, fatigued to the bone.

From inside her messenger bag next to the door, her cell phone buzzed. She put down her carton of food, got up and retrieved it.

A new text message. From Bishop.

Keep your promise, I'll keep mine. Good luck.

It came with an attachment. She opened it, her heart racing.

Kafara. She knew him like her own handprint, despite the grainy image. He stood with three other boys about his age in a field next to a green truck. They wore dirty green pants and black shirts, their eyes dark and solemn.

Gravel filled her throat.

Each one of them held a black-as-night AK-47 on his hip.

She sank to the floor, ran her finger over Kafara's twelve-year-old face. She knew it, she just knew that when his letters stopped, when she'd heard of the raid in his village, that General Mubar had “recruited” Kafara into his private army of enforcers.

Please, God, don't let him have been used for minesweeping, or to murder someone.

Her hand shook as she saved the picture to her files. Yes, she'd most definitely have to shake Brody Wickham off her trail, whatever it took.

“D
erek, I don't suppose you'd consider just picking up your smelly socks, would ya? You're contaminating all my gear. Help a guy out?”

Derek shot him a chest pass and Brody caught the basketball, dropped it once to the pavement, then went up into a jump shot. The ball caught the rim and shot back out like a boomerang.

Derek snatched it from the air. “You're getting rusty.”

Or just old. This entire—now shortened—vacation had turned into one giant reminder of how much Brody had missed over the past twelve years living overseas. He'd cut his family out of his life—not intentionally but just by letting work supersede family events. Graduations, weddings, reunions.

Maybe he shouldn't be taking off so soon.

Which was why he scuttled home after rehearsal last night, just in time to see Derek creep into his bedroom after his shift at the local convenience store. With the dark curly hair, the wide shoulders, the lean build—the kid seemed a rubber stamp of himself at the age of eighteen. Now if he could just keep him from becoming
the cynical, angry man Brody had turned into. And no amount of praying, or asking for forgiveness, seemed to heal him. Maybe there was no forgiveness for him, despite what his Bible and his faith told him.

A man with scars so deep they touched his bones. And apparently also knocked him off his game. Like yesterday—Vonya had obviously seen right through his attempts to charm her.

If he didn't figure her out, she would have him wrapping himself up in knots.

He and his boys at Stryker International would have to earn every penny of that hundred-thousand-dollar check.

Now if he could simply figure out how to get past her stubborn pride. Or was it something more?

Maybe her so-called sneaky behavior bothered him more than it should. After all, what had she done, really? She certainly wasn't harboring national secrets.

Still, she'd taken way too much pleasure in mocking him about Lyle. He'd done his homework, and she'd lied.
Not
her son. But someone had plunked down a good chunk of cash to pay for this kid's boarding school in upstate New York. He was beginning to see the footprints of Veronica…

He swiped at the ball, but Derek faked and moved around him, going in for a layup.

The ball swooshed through the net and Brody caught it.

Twilight crept through the neighborhood, stirring to life the cicadas, the fragrance of fresh-cut grass. Ten years ago, it would have been the old station wagon parked at the curb in front of his parents' house. Now,
a low-budget hybrid, scaled down to transport the only two siblings still at home, lounged next to the curb. And in front of that, Derek's beater Honda.

In fact, too much had changed for Brody to feel completely at home—like his father shuffling around with a walker, trying to get his feet back under him.

Or his mother, dragging home dead tired from her day in the hospital's food service department.

Brody dribbled the ball out past the designated key—the crack down the center of the driveway—then turned and let fly a beautiful three-pointer, right above Derek's outstretched arms.

Swish.

“Pretty,” Derek said, grabbing the ball.

“You can take back that rusty comment any time,” Brody said, hating that sweat dribbled down his forehead and into his eyes while his kid brother looked as fresh as if he were out for a Sunday stroll.

“Only if you leave my socks alone.” Derek brought the ball out past the line and did some fancy dribbling. No wonder the kid was a varsity all-star. “So, what's she like?”

Brody whacked at the ball and missed. “Who?”

“Vonya. I mean, you totally rock, bro. I can't believe you not only met her but actually picked her up and carried her out of that mosh pit. Like, you
touched
her, dude.”

Brody knocked the ball from Derek's grip. It shot out into the grass and he chased after it. “Yeah, well, it was no big deal.”

Derek didn't move. “Are you kidding me? Every guy
at school has been bugging me for a week, wanting the 411. Did you get her digits?”

Brody scooped up the ball, breathing hard, then finally sat in the grass he'd mowed that morning. “I got hired to protect her during her tour. I've spent the week watching her rehearse. And we leave tomorrow.”

Derek flopped down next to him. “Wow. Is she as hot in person?”

In person? Not exactly, but at the senator's house, she did have a sort of class that had stunned him.

In fact, he felt like he chewed on his tongue all the way through dinner at the Wagners'. Until, of course, she pitched the roll in his face. Now, that was a little hot.

No. Not hot—good grief, he sounded like a teenager.

“I don't know. I'm just protecting her.”

“Oh, come on, dude.”

He still couldn't merge the split screen between Vonya and Veronica. But he didn't especially like either version, thanks. “Naw, she's not my type.”

Derek grabbed the ball, spinning it on his finger. “What's not your type? Have you looked at her?”

Brody pushed him over. “Please tell me that you're really not a moron, and I don't have to hurt you. There's more to a woman than how she looks.”

“Yeah, sure there is.” Derek grinned at him, setting the ball between his knees. “Okay. I'm just kidding. So what's she like?”

“You don't even like me.”
Again Brody heard pain in her voice. What did she care if her bodyguard
liked
her?

Brody combed through the grass, picking up the
remnant cuttings. “From what I can see, she's totally out of control, flamboyant, stubborn, ungrateful, selfish and a waste of exceptional talent.”

Derek smiled at him. “Uh-huh. Wow. Yeah, it's a good thing you're working for her because, you know, you're definitely
not interested
.”

Brody glared at him.

“Then again, maybe you don't know how to get a girl's number. It's not like you've been around any women for the past ten years. Last time I checked, they don't let women into Special Forces.”

No, not the Special Forces, but he'd been around women.

Or rather,
a
woman.

Brody looked away and, just like that, Shelby was there in his thoughts, her hand over her eyes to keep out the dirt churned up by the chopper, the wind whipping her brown shirt, waving to Brody as he touched down on the dusty pad.

Brody reached for the ball. “I think it's time for a game of Horse.”

But Derek was looking at him strangely, as if he'd seen right into his brain. “There was a woman, wasn't there?”

“Seriously, you might have me in one-on-one but I can still outshoot you.”

“Who was she?” Derek moved the ball away, out of reach.

Brody pursed his lips. Well, it wasn't like Derek was the CIA, or even a psychologist. “A doctor I met at a refugee camp in Africa. We were evacuating patients and helping with food distribution.”

“What was her name?”

“Dr. Shelby Marks.” He'd so rarely spoken her name over the past year, just letting it form on his lips elicited ache. And it also had the power to conjure. She lingered in his mind, long blond hair held up in a ponytail, wisps around her face, big green eyes filled with compassion, hands that could heal.

And way too much determination in her expression for her own good.
His
own good.

Especially when that determination had turned into desperation.

“What happened? Did you two break up?”

Brody looked away, toward the bruised sky. “No. We were really never together. I met her, she had something about her—probably I had more feelings for her than she did for me. But we never really found out.”

Derek stayed silent beside him.

Brody shook his head, almost willing the words back, but his chest flooded with an urge to tell someone. To breathe it out, with the hopes that in the telling the pain would loosen its hold, even fly into the atmosphere.

“She was killed while trying to rescue one of her patients.”

Derek frowned. “I'm sorry.” He squinted, as if trying to read Brody, and then—probably because the kid was his spittin' image on the inside as well as the outside—said, “You were there.”

Brody sucked in a breath. Nope, it hadn't worked. The pain had returned, filling every pore, burning, shaking through him. “Yeah. She died in my arms.”

Derek looked away, following his glance to the darkening horizon.

They sat in silence, listening to the cicadas, the cars motoring home into suburbia. Any moment now, Mom would have a roast on the table. Dinner would be loud and noisy, the perfect escape from this moment. From
every
moment over the past year when the image of Shelby, looking up at him with fading eyes, paralyzed him.

“How'd she die?” Derek asked softly. Brody recognized the compassionate tones of their mother in his kid brother.

Brody's own voice turned hard. “She trusted the wrong people. She heard a woman and her son had left the camp, and she went after them. Such a stubborn woman. I told her not to, but she wouldn't listen to reason. Just had to do it her way.”

Brody, for once, will you just follow your heart instead of your head?
Emotions did that—put his brain, his common sense, on the fritz. Which was exactly why he'd never let them out of their box again.

“It was a trick. She was ambushed. Shot by a bunch of rebels.”

Derek didn't move. “But you took them out.”

“Yeah.” Brody nodded, his body steeling against his words. “I took them out.”

Derek said nothing as he stretched his fingers out over the ball, then held it up in his grip. “Is that why you quit? Why you're doing this mall-cop stuff?”

Although it tore through him and turned him inside out if he let it, Shelby's death wasn't what drove him from his life in the military, just short of his retirement.

It wasn't
her
screams that woke him in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, gasping.

It wasn't
her
blood spilled that made him long for the mindless, easy job as a security specialist for Chet Stryker's international security firm.

She'd known the cost and was ready for it.

But there could never be a healing, a catharsis, a forgiveness for killing ten-year-olds. Even if one of them did have an AK-47 aimed at Brody's head. No wonder God seemed so quiet, although it had been Brody's hope that He would forgive him that kept driving him to his knees, reading the Bible. Hope, however, had started to wane.

So, Brody took a breath, dug deep into his training, and found his decoy voice. “I'm a little more than a mall cop but yeah. I needed something a little less life-and-death.”

“I get that.” Derek spun the ball. “You ever going to go back, into the military?”

No, he just wanted to lie low, put the pieces together, try to live with himself. He didn't really mind babysitting five-year-old princesses or running security checks on international bankers' vacation homes. Anything to keep his mind off the past, to make him feel like he wasn't a complete failure. “That life's over.”

“So is that why you're watching over Vonya?”

Was that why? To keep him from looking over his shoulder, or salvaging his future?

Maybe.

But somehow, over the past week, it had become more. Little Miss Pop Star had all his instincts firing—she had something to hide, and he wanted to know what it was.

Last time he'd ignored his instincts, people died.

Never again. He simply couldn't live with himself if it happened again. Even if she did drive him a little crazy along the way.

“I just hope she's not as much trouble as she seems.”

Derek passed him the ball. “I have no doubt that you know what you're doing, bro.”

Until recently, he thought he did.

He probably stayed up too late going over the different venues, the staff at the events. Threat assessment with a short deadline seemed sketchy at best, and he hated it.

Someone should have been watching Vonya's back long before this. He'd found no less than three websites dedicated to “Vonwatch,” and some of the threads on her fan forums felt downright creepy. Still, even he had to admit that her so-called stalker from last year seemed more of a starstruck fan than a guy out to hurt her. And as for General Mubar's threats…well, he'd threatened half the congress, not to mention the U.S. media and the United Nations.

A small part of Brody might agree he had defaulted to overachiever mode. Still, he was paid to stay on her like glue, whether she needed it or not.

The D.C. sky bled gray as he drove to Reagan National Airport. He dropped his rental car off, then found his flight. Thankfully, he'd booked a window seat. He popped in his earbuds, letting the cool electric blues find him. Stevie Ray Vaughan, God rest his soul, knew how to calm his nerves.

Classical. He smiled at the answer he'd given Veronica at the table. She wasn't the only one with secrets. Only difference—he had every intention of unearthing every last one of hers.

 

Brody's plane touched down at LaGuardia and he grabbed a coffee, then headed toward the VIP lounge of their KLM carrier. He'd wanted a charter flight, but Vonya had nixed that. At least he'd managed to secure for them first-class seats.

Okay, he'd secured first class for him and Vonya and Tommy D. The road manager, the band and Leah would fly in business class.

He entered the lounge and spotted a few familiar faces among the travelers. Tommy D raised a Bloody Mary to him, nodding.

Leah sat in a corner, earbuds in, eyes closed.

Where was Ronyika? A businessman tapped out something on his computer. Another was concentrating on his iPhone. A third stood at the bar, ordering up something bracing for the flight.