Then You Hide (4 page)

Instead of taking his hand, she put her fingers to her temples to quiet the sound of her rushing blood, but her ears still vibrated and buzzed. “Yes.”

“I thought so. I’ve been—” He glanced at her bag. “Do you want to get that?”

“Get what?”

“Isn’t that your phone?”

Instantly, she dived for the clip on her bag. “It’s been so long since I heard it…” She touched the screen, and the vibration stopped. “Text message.” The name of the sender took a moment to appear, so she glanced at the man who’d gone from stone-cold sexy to slightly scary in less than a minute. “How do you know who I am?”

“Because I’ve been sent to find you.” Each vowel was drawn out like hot caramel over ice cream.

This
had
to be because she’d questioned dozens of people and waved Clive’s picture all over the Caribbean. The iPhone vibrated again, reminding her of the text. She glanced down and almost cried out with joy. A message from Clive!

watch ur back

She lifted the device and shaded the sun to read it again.

watch ur back

Three weeks without a word from him, and she got
this
? It was an inside joke as old as their friendship, a private reference to the sharks that trolled Wall Street looking for prey.

Why? What did he mean by that?

She dropped her hands onto her lap with a thump, holding the phone as she studied the man in the cab, questions bombarding her. She went with the ones this stranger could answer. “Who are you, and why are you following me?”

“I plan to tell you outright, ma’am, but I’ll warn you, it might be a little upsetting.”

What could he possibly tell her that could make her day any suckier?

“Hit me, pal. I’m in a hurry.”

“All right.” He straightened and turned to look directly at her. “I’m here on behalf of a woman named Eileen Stafford.”

White lights flashed behind her eyes as if she’d been punched in the head.

Eileen Stafford.

Oh, yeah. Her day just got seriously worse.

CHAPTER THREE

WADE KNEW THAT
look so well. That blood-draining, eye-popping realization that distorted a target’s face the millisecond they realized they’d been shot. Instinct made him reach a reassuring hand to Vanessa, but she snapped her arm back, clutching the phone to her chest, speechless.

“You know Eileen Stafford,” he said.

It wasn’t a question, because that wasn’t the blankness of confusion that paled her creamy complexion. That was raw horror and a shell-shocked brain that hadn’t quite engaged yet.

She flipped the metal handle and threw the car door open. Wade lunged and managed to snag a handful of her shirt before she leaped.

“Hey!” the cabbie yelled, slamming on his brakes.

She jerked away, and cloth tore as Wade yanked her back.

“Stop the cab!” she hollered, throwing him a venomous look as he managed to pull her back safely and the cab squealed to the curb.

He let go of the shirt, his whole hand circling her slender but solid bicep. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She shook her arm hard. “You
are
hurting me.”

He loosened but didn’t release. “Please listen to me.”

Her eyes blazed. “No. I know who Eileen Stafford is, and I know what she is.” She tried to shake him off again, clenching her teeth when she failed. “Whatever you’re selling, buddy, I’m not buying.”

“Just stop moving long enough to listen to me.”

Her eyes turned to slits behind her glasses. “I don’t need to listen. I know what you’re going to say. She’s my birth mother. I’m adopted. She’s rotting in jail for murder. I’ve known for years.”

He opened his mouth to speak, and she held her hand up.

“Stop.” She wrenched her arm free. “I am not even remotely interested in hearing anything about her. I don’t care if she died and left me a stash of gold bullion. She doesn’t exist. This is nonnegotiable.”

“I haven’t had a chance to say my piece, ma’am.”

“No you haven’t,
bubba
. Don’t you know the meaning of nonnegotiable?”

He took his shot. “She’s dying.”

“Oh, Jesus Chri—hey!” She yelped as he squeezed her arm again. “I don’t
care
. Not my problem. I don’t…” She dropped her head back, closed her eyes, and exhaled in pure surrender. “Of what?”

“Leukemia. She needs a bone-marrow transplant from a relative.”

She choked. “Oh, that’s great.” She shot forward again, fingers stabbing through her cornsilk hair, color flooding back to her sculpted cheeks. “The woman sells me—
sells me
—to a total stranger, shoots a hole through some poor woman, then writes me off for thirty years. Now she wants me. Now she
needs
me. Oh, that’s just rich. And who are you, the warden?”

“I work for a security and investigation firm that’s attempting to locate the—”

“Not that I’m sorry she sold me.” She cut him off. “My dad was great, and I wouldn’t trade him for anything in the world. Especially because I probably would’ve ended up in some orphanage, since she was a
killer
. Did you know that about her?”

“I know she’s in jail and has been accused of murder.”

She snorted. “And you say that like she might not be guilty. Have you read about her case?” She angled her hands like a book. “Open and—”
Crack
. She slapped her palms closed. “Premeditated first-degree murder.” Drawing out the last two syllables with total repugnance, she shook her head. “And now she needs my bone marrow? I don’t believe this.”

He remained still, letting her blow it all out. She opened her mouth to say something, then suddenly stared at the phone as if it held an answer.

“Clive sent me a text message sometime in the last hour. ‘Watch your back,’ he said. I thought maybe he meant you, but if you’re telling the truth…”

“I never lie.”

She finally pulled the cab door closed. “Well, good for you. I wish you were lying now. I wish you weren’t the emissary of My Mother the Murderer.” She leaned forward and spoke to the cabbie. “Sorry about all that. I still want to go to Basseterre. Can we go there now, please?”

Her hands were still shaky as she reread the message on her phone. “Naturally, there’s no satellite service now.”

“Sounds like your friend might be in some trouble,” Wade suggested, letting her get a little more calm before he dropped the next bomb. “Does he normally send that kind of message?”

“No. I’ve heard from him only three times since he left, including this one.”

“So why exactly is his disappearance your problem?” he asked.

“Because A, he’s my friend, and B, he left a mess at work, and C…” She shrugged. “He’s my friend. That’s all that matters. Don’t you have friends you care about so much that you’d put your ass on a plane and fly to hell in July to find them?”

“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly why I’m here.”

“You’re helping a friend?”

“I’m working for a friend.”

She looked skeptical. “That woman in jail. Is she your friend?”

“No. I’ve never met her.”

“Then who sent you here?”

“My friend owns a security and investigation firm, and she’s launched this search.”

“Well, search is over, hon.” She dipped down to peer out the windshield. “How far are we from the Ballahoo?”

“So, you’re going to keep looking for this friend of yours? Even though he sent you a warning?”

“That wasn’t necessarily a warning. ‘Watch your back’ is a private joke with us.”

“Not a very funny one.”

She shot him a look. “Right here is fine,” she told the driver. “What do I owe you?”

Wade put a hand on her arm. “I’ll pay for this.”

She produced a wallet, hesitated, then tossed it back into the abyss of her bag. “Fine.”

“And I’d like to come with you,” he said, handing a bill over the front seat.

“As much as you’d be very nice gay-boy bait, I’m sorry, I have my own agenda, and you’re not on it.”

“I’m actually quite good at finding people.”

“So you’ve demonstrated.” She whipped the car door open and climbed out to the sidewalk.

Wade got out on the street side, sauntered toward the back, and blocked her. “I’m not done.”

She glared at him. “Sorry, but you are
so
done. You have my answer, I’m tired of this conversation, and I have more important things to do. Good-bye.”

She moved to the side, but he blocked her again. “I have access to tremendous resources that could help you find your friend. Like tracing that text message, the satellite it came from, and what island he’s on. I can help you.”

“That’s very impressive, but I’m pretty good at getting information myself,” she said impatiently. “I found my own birth mother years ago.”

“I’m just offering to help you.”

“And what’s the exchange rate? I have to fly to the Big House, visit Mom, and suck out some marrow for her? I don’t think so.”

She managed to get by and sprinted into the street, barely avoiding an oncoming cab.

“Sheez,” he blew out, charging after her. The woman was like a human tornado. He reached her in four long strides and got hold of her elbow.

“Then maybe you’d do it for a chance to meet one of your sisters.”

She froze, then slowly turned to him, her eyes narrowed in disbelief. “What?”

“As I mentioned, we have impressive resources. We’ve been able to locate one of your sisters.”

“One of my
what
?” It was barely a whisper.

“I thought you were so good at finding information? Evidently, you didn’t find it all. You were one of triplets given away by Eileen Stafford in July 1977.”

Once again, she wore the expression of someone who’d just taken a bullet to the heart. He used the rare moment of speechlessness to guide her back up to the sidewalk.

Gideon Bones took a long, deep drag on a Los Bancos Robosto Criolla and cursed Vanessa Porter and her nonstop mouth. Although, truth be told, whatever she’d just been told had shut her up good and fast.

If it weren’t for her untimely arrival, he’d be sitting on his roof deck, staring up at the cloud-fringed crater of MountLiamuiga, enjoying the Dominican roll he’d saved in a humidor for this afternoon’s smoke.

But she’d interrupted that peaceful pleasure, and now he was in the backseat of his Porsche Cayenne, watching her swoon in the arms of a thoroughly and unfortunately straight stunna who must have something good on the mouthy Miss Porter.

Did the man know Clive? Or, worse, did he know Clive’s enemies?

Bones didn’t have all that worked out yet, but he would. He’d figure out who was the threat, and then he’d eliminate it. Clive might swear his fag hag was harmless, doing exactly what she said she was doing, but Bones trusted no one.

There was no such thing as harmless in this situation, and Clive would be wise to remember that. At the very least, she was a magnet, attracting attention they didn’t want or need.

So Bones watched. And smoked. And admired the man who, based on the posture, the alertness, the subtle command in his body, was probably ex-military. Certainly armed, because he had that cool confidence that came with carrying.

What did he want with Vanessa, other than the obvious?

He tried to see her as a straight man might. Nice pouty lips, even if they did move too much for his taste, and the black-rimmed glasses against the platinum locks might appeal to a man with hot-for-teacher fantasies. She had a decent body, with nice cans that jostled around as if they were real and a tight ass, but so did half the trollops who climbed off those cruise ships looking for available players. Would that hottie boy endure all that chatter just to get laid?

No. This wasn’t a mating dance; this was more like a battle royale. There might be attraction, there might even be some electricity, but it wasn’t welcome, he could tell.

So what was the man up to?

Bones knew men well. He worshipped them and had spent his life learning how to spot types. He could psych out an artist, a warrior, a leader, a thrill seeker, a competitor, a thief, a cheat, or a spy. He’d made a fortune by understanding the male species, and he’d bet a box of Los Bancos that those baby-blue eyes were trained to hunt, and those strong hands were able to kill.

So, what was he hunting, and who was he killing, and how did it involve Vanessa Porter?

He flipped the butt out the window. “Raoul!”

The driver turned, training a bloodshot gaze on his boss. Raoul had been smoking again, and not a Criollo. “Yeah, mon?”

“Did she see you when she came to the house?”

“No. I was upstairs.”

“Are you sure?”

Red-rimmed eyes turned to insulted slits. “I am sure.”

“Good.” Bones dug in the seat pocket for the notebook and pen that he kept there in case an idea came to him while he was being driven. Sometimes it was a line of poetry, sometimes an observation on the foibles of humanity, sometimes a game of hangman.

He flipped to a clean page. “I want you to deliver a message to her. And I don’t want him to know about it. Can you do that?”

“I can do that.”

He scratched the words and folded the paper. “Here. Don’t screw up.”

The only way to stop a hunter was to deflect him. He would start by sending the prey on a hunt of his making, one that would lead her to a controlled environment. A small place where he could watch her and move her around like a pawn on his chessboard. It was a little risky, but he didn’t think she could outsmart him. Hell, she might give up her search and get naked with the stud.

But just in case that stud was hunting something Bones didn’t want him to find, and just in case Vanessa Porter was truly as relentless as she appeared to be…then this plan ought to shut him down and shut her up.

If not, there were other, less civilized ways to accomplish that goal.

CHAPTER FOUR

TRIPLETS.
TRIPLETS
? FOR
the second time in one day—hell, in one hour—Vanessa was dumbfounded. “Nobody even
had
triplets thirty years ago, did they?”

He laughed softly. “They had them, it was just a surprise on delivery day.”

“How could I not know this?” After all the research she and her father had done, it didn’t seem possible that a fact as monumental as
there are two sisters
slipped by some of the best adoption investigators Daddy’s money could buy.

“Very few people do know about this,” he said.

“No shit, Sherlock. Where are we going?”

“You look like you’re going to faint,” Wade said as he ushered her to the same patio restaurant where she’d been less than two hours ago.

“I don’t faint,” she shot back. “It’s a thousand degrees out, and you shocked me, and I—I’m
reacting
.”

“Gotcha. Well, you look like you’re about to react, so let’s sit down in the shade here, under this umbrella, and have a cold drink and talk about it, okay?”

His patronizing drawl infuriated her, but the suggestion had definite appeal. She needed something cold—and potent—to make sense of everything that had happened since she got off that boat.

“Two iced mineral waters,” he said to the waitress.

“And a vodka tonic,” Vanessa added. “But skip the tonic. And no lime.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. “You drink like you talk and walk. Tough.”

“I hate limes. And tonic.”
And you
. She crossed her arms. “You’d better have proof.”

“There’s no actual paperwork.”

She slammed her hands on the tabletop and pushed back in the chair. “I knew this was totally bogus.”

“But I have a picture.” He placed a photograph on the table between them.

Wasn’t that a fine twist? For the first time in three days,
she
was being shown a picture instead of the other way around. Though she wanted to be a complete brat and refuse to look at it, curiosity won out. She squinted at the photograph, half expecting—and half dreading—to see a reflection of herself.

“Oh.” The word was a note of pure wonder, matching the sensation that rocked her. “She’s beautiful.” Then she shoved the picture back at him. “And she doesn’t look a thing like me.”

“You’re beautiful.” He slid it forward.

“Thanks, but I’m blond—natural, by the way—and my face is longer, my mouth is wider, my eyes are shaped differently.” Unable to resist, she took one more look. “She’s really…delicate-looking.” Willow-thin and fragile. No cleft in the chin. No glasses. No boobs.

No dice.

“We don’t even look related.” She gave the picture a good shove.

“Triplets aren’t always identical,” he said. “Sometimes two are, and one is from a different egg. That might explain the difference in your looks and makes it possible that you’re a match for the marrow, when she’s not.”

“She’s not?” That hit her hard. If this alleged sister had been a match, would Eileen Stafford have dispatched an investigator to find
her
? Or would she have let Vanessa go to her grave without ever initiating contact? Of course, she would have. God, she despised the woman right down to her last bad cell.

She turned toward the bar, lifting her hair with one hand to get a nonexistent breeze on her neck. “Where is that drink?” This was so ugly, so complicated, and so
not
what she wanted to be doing with her time in St. Kitts. Or anywhere, for that matter.

With impossible purpose, Wade inched the picture back across the table, like a gambler willing to risk a decent card for the remote possibility of a better one.

“Her name is Dr. Miranda Lang.”

Something slipped inside Vanessa.
Miranda
.

She didn’t care what her name was. She didn’t
care
. Didn’t he get that?

“What kind of doctor?” she asked, so casually it couldn’t be interpreted as anything but small talk.

“An anthropologist. She has a book out that’s been getting some media coverage, about the Mayan calendar and the myth that the world is going to end in 2012. Have you heard about it?”

She lifted an indifferent shoulder. “Unless it moves money, changes the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or otherwise generates cash with at least seven, preferably eight, figures involved, no.” She fanned her sticky neck, wishing something wasn’t pressing so hard on her chest.

Finally, a drink tray landed on their table.

“Thank God,” Vanessa mumbled, her gaze sliding over the much-needed vodka only to land on the much-hated picture.

Wavy auburn hair. Wide smile. Pretty. An anthropologist.

She grabbed the ice-cold glass and plucked out the damned lime. “There’s obviously been a mistake. I’m sorry she’s going to be disappointed. But my father and I did exhaustive research, and there were no sisters.”

She put the cold glass to her lips.

“I have another picture.”

She didn’t drink. She couldn’t. She watched as he slowly reached back into his billfold, methodically drawing out another picture. Part of her wanted to kick him into faster action and get this hell over with. But it was easier just to watch his stunningly masculine hands as they moved to find something she just knew she didn’t want to see. Nice hands. Sexy fingers. Bad, bad news.

“I think you’ll be real interested in this one.” He burned her with a look that might have been a warning or might have been something else. It was hard to read this man, hard to get past the eyes and the body and the face.

Was that a calculated move?
Send an irresistible hottie to sway her
.
I need bone marrow
. Her stomach tightened, and she pressed the icy cold glass on her cheek.

“This picture,” he said, his voice as measured as his movements, “is actually of the back of Miranda’s neck.”

Her vodka splashed over the rim of her glass. Oh, no.
No
.

“Right here.” He reached a hand around her head, making a tiny circle with his fingertip, right above the hairline, a million little hairs rising up at his touch and sending shivers down her back.

“She has a tattoo right here, and all three babies were marked with them. You have one, don’t you?”

The drink slipped out of her grasp and clunked on the wooden table, drenching her shorts and legs with ice and vodka.

She pushed back from the table and swiped the spill much harder than necessary. “Screw you.”

He instantly grabbed a napkin and started wiping her soaked thighs. His hand was hot on her thigh, and she jumped back, standing up.

He looked up at her. “I’m gonna take that as a yes on the tattoo.”

“Then you’d be mistaken.” She whipped the napkin from his hand, despising the crack in her voice. Crack? That was a bona fide sob. “I hate this. I hate that you’re making me…”
Feel
. She flicked the napkin at the picture, a clinical-looking thing showing a close-up of a woman’s head, her long hair pulled away to show a tiny dark mark. “Oh, my God.” She leaned down closer, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Does that say ‘hi’?”

“Miranda thinks it might be the numbers one and four. Which, upside down, look like ‘hi.’” He straightened the picture. “Did you say you don’t have a mark like this?”

“No, I don’t.” Not since her laser tattoo removal. “And I’m glad. I don’t want any connection to a killer.”

“I understand that. However…” He sat back in his chair. “Some people believe her trial might have been unfair and that she’s serving time for a crime she didn’t commit.”

Not a chance. “I read enough about it to know she didn’t take the witness stand, she had the gun in her possession, and she was jealous of the woman she shot. Pretty incriminating stuff.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Two sides to every story. Do you have the tattoo?”

“No.”
Damn him. Damn that evil woman. Damn this whole situation.

“Are you certain?” he asked. “It’s kind of a hard place to see yourself.”

“I’m certain.” Certain she had a faint red scar that he could see in this sunshine. Certain the scar didn’t look anything like the design in the picture. And definitely certain that she just couldn’t handle this right now.

She wanted to find Clive, get back to the familiarity of New York and the cool, controlled comfort of her office at Razor Partners. Maybe then, in the vault of protection she’d built around herself since her mother flew the coop and her father was killed, she could figure out what to do. But not here, beaten down by a blistering sun and an equally blistering man on his own mission, with his own agenda and his own pictures.

Vodka dribbled down her thigh like a tear.

“Could you excuse me?” she said, as calmly as she would to an enemy attorney in the middle of a merger negotiation when she needed to change the direction from give to take. “I’d like to go wash this off.”

“Certainly. I’ll order you another.”

“Thanks,” she said, grabbing the shoulder strap of her bag.

He stood, gesturing toward the back of the restaurant. “I’ll wait for you.”

He didn’t sit as she walked away. A Southern gentleman. Great-looking, polite as hell, and carrying a wallet full of news she didn’t want.

She rounded the bar and gave a questioning look to the bartender. “Ladies’ room?”

He pointed his thumb to a hallway that led into the building behind the bar. It was much cooler in the dimly lit passageway. As she reached for the doorknob, a clammy hand seized her upper arm and made her spin with a gasp.

She half expected to see crystal-blue eyes, but the ones she met were dark, bloodshot, and sunken inside the face of a thin Hispanic young man.

“What do you want?” she asked, wrenching from his weak grip.

“For you.” He stuffed a piece of paper, folded into squares, into her palm. “From a friend of Clive’s.”

He disappeared out into the sunlight, leaving the scent of pot in his wake.

Her heart stuttering, she turned over the note. A friend of Clive’s?

She shouldered the door open into a dingy bathroom with a yellowed toilet and a cheap vanity, lit only by sunlight filtering through a window over the sink. As soon as she locked the door, she unfolded the note.

The man you want is in Nevis
.

Nevis ? Clive was in Nevis? That was what, just seven miles away? A bunch of the passengers onboard were taking a ferry from St. Kitts to that island today.

Who had sent her this message?

And more important, should she act on it? Did she have time to go to another island and get back before the ship set sail?

Who cared? She couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the cruise. She not only wanted to find Clive, now she
needed
to. He’d jump all over this; he was great at stuff like this. When he took his Zoloft, anyway.

Once she found Clive, she could get him out of whatever life crisis or love affair he was caught in, and then he’d help her. He’d know whether she should take this new, twisted road in her life.

Her brain raced, planning the steps.

She could run back to the ship, grab just one bag, and go to Nevis. After she found Clive, she could have her stuff sent back to New York, or if it was in a day or two, they could catch up to wherever the ship was docked.

Oh, yeah. This was totally doable. Nevis was a small island, and the gay community was tight-knit everywhere. She’d find him in no time.

Besides, it would get her away from Wade Cordell. The man with the pictures and the news and the connection to a woman—to
women
—Vanessa wanted no connection to.

She fingered the note.
The man you want is in Nevis
.

Two cryptic messages in one day. This and
watch ur back
.

Which should she believe? The one from Clive’s cell phone or the one that came from out of nowhere? And then there was the complete stranger sitting fifty feet away with the worst message of all.

If she spent too much time with Wade Cordell, he’d wear her down with those insanely blue eyes and those masculine hands and all that Southern comfort. Slow and gentleman-like, he’d polish her down until she said yes.

Because, in her heart, isn’t that what she wanted?

No.
No
. She owed far more to Clive than to Eileen Stafford. Sometimes water was thicker than blood—especially if the blood was tainted.

She eyed the dingy countertop around the sink. Kneeling on it, she pushed the window higher, checking out the alley through the sizable opening. One quick hop and she’d be gone. Wade would probably wait another ten minutes before looking for her, but by then she could have grabbed the tender and be well on her way to the ship before he figured it out.

He may be good, but she was better.

Flipping her bag over her shoulder, she climbed through the opening, dropped to the ground, and ran all the way to Port Zante without stopping.

“She bolted,” Adrien Fletcher said, his Australian accent filled with disgust and disappointment.

“She
what
?” Jack Culver clunked down his coffee mug.

“He had her, told her, and lost her. Never even got to see the tattoo.” Fletch snapped the cell phone closed. “Wade said she bugged off through a window in the loo.”

“Well, that bites.” Jack took a sip of the cold decaf he’d been nursing since they’d sat down in the infirmary cafeteria to wait for Miranda. “Doesn’t she want to meet her mother and her sister? Why would she run away?”

Fletch gave him a look of total disbelief. “What the bloody hell do you think Miranda did when you asked me to go to California to do the same thing?”

“Fell flat in love with you?”

“Aside of that.” He grinned, flashing his world-class dimples and looking every bit the rangy rugby player he was. “She ran like a wounded roo, and she didn’t even know there were sisters involved. I know this is a big-ass deal to you, mate. I know you been on this one since you met poor Eileen Stafford and got this bug about finding her daughters for her. But put yourself in the girls’ shoes. It’s not easy to find out your mother’s a murderess, dying, and needs your marrow.” He shook back his long hair and twirled the cell phone on the table. “And trust me, it isn’t easy to be the one who has to tell the sheila the truth.”