Caught (11 page)

His eyes creased at the corners as he grinned. “Something like that, but taller and not jumping off Oprah’s couch.”

Toni laughed and slanted him a sly look. “And I bet you enjoyed having a different woman in every port.”

“I was on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf for eight months at a pop. I had to find my fun somewhere.”

She could only imagine what kind of fun he found. Her mouth went dry as the kiss they both seemed determined to forget blazed through her consciousness. She swallowed hard and steered the subject away from Ethan’s undoubtedly vast experience with women around the world.

“So I suppose you big, tough ex-military types focus more on the personal protection side of security in your business.”

He nodded. “We do plenty of that. But we keep up on the high-tech stuff. Especially Derek.”

“A sniper turned computer genius. Sounds interesting. You said he’s your twin?”

“Yeah, fraternal. But I guess we look alike.”

She didn’t know what made her say what she said next, but he was so sexually confident, and she was so at sea, she wanted to see if she could get under his skin. “Maybe you could fix us up.”

Ethan turned his attention away from the instrument panel, and even in the dim light of the plane she could feel the impact of his stare. The small space was charged with energy and heat.

“I don’t think so,” he said, in a tone that told her she’d scored a direct hit. He turned back to face the windshield.

He was silent for several minutes. Toni leaned back against the headrest and looked out into the darkness. There was almost no ambient light, only the occasional bright dot of a small town illuminating the desert darkness. Ethan’s voice startled her out of her trancelike state.

“So how did a computer genius like you go from having a lucrative job in high tech to working as a PI?”

How did he—? Oh yeah. Her job at SafeTech must have come up on her background check.

Toni shrugged. “Kind of happened by accident. I used to work in network security, and after I moved down here, a friend of a friend wanted me to do some family Internet security.”

He cocked a curious eyebrow. “I haven’t heard that term.”

She laughed self-consciously. “It mostly involves spying on their kids. It’s really scary when you see how many sleazebags are out there, trolling the Net and targeting young kids, and it’s hard for parents to keep on top of it.” She gave a shudder. “Through that first client I got several referrals. I also do some financial tracking, help people find assets their spouses might have moved to offshore accounts.”

“And cheating spouses?” Ethan asked.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Not too much, but definitely more than I’d like to. It’s bad enough when I have to show women the e-mails their husbands are sending to their girlfriends, but sometimes even that’s not enough proof. Like last Friday I was out until three, waiting outside the Sheraton to take a picture of my client’s husband.”

“Hell of a way to spend a Friday.”

Toni remembered the lipstick. While she’d been folded up in the front seat of her Honda, Ethan had been folded up around another woman.

She wondered if the plane came equipped with air sickness bags. “All I know is that even the most devoted husband will screw around if he thinks he can get away with it.” And she’d certainly been proven right in her own love life.

“What about the wives? Haven’t you caught any of Marcy’s friends with their pool boys and their trainers?”

She heard the harsh edge creep into his voice. “I’m sure it happens,” she finally said, “but so far I’ve only been hired by the wives.”

He looked like he was about to argue but let the subject drop as the lights of the Las Vegas strip came into view.

Jerry picked up the phone on the second ring as the fifty-year-old Macallan he’d just swallowed turned to battery acid in his stomach.

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.” He’d sent Manuela home, closed and locked the door to his study just to be safe. Taggart and that bitch Marcy had hired were on their way to Vegas, of all places, after finding a link to some guy they thought was Kara’s boyfriend.

Kara’s boyfriend, the amateur pornographer. Jerry had never thought he’d see the day when he’d prefer his daughter be in the company of a wannabe porn king, but even that would be better than where she really was. He’d been going crazy for the past day and a half, knowing Connors had her. Wondering what he was doing to her.

“Is Kara okay?”

“She’s fine. Would you like to speak to her?”

There was the muffled sound of the phone being passed. Then, “Daddy? Are you there?”

His heart raced in relief as his gut twisted in guilt. “I’m here, Kara. Are you okay? Has he hurt you?”

“Not really,” she sniffled. “But I want to come home. You have to get me out of—”

“As I said,” Connors cold, clipped voice came back on the line. “She is perfectly safe for the time being. But if you want her to remain so, you will turn over the prototype without further delay.”

“It’s not ready yet.” Cold sweat bloomed between Jerry’s shoulder blades as the lie spilled from his lips. His conscience ate at him. What kind of man equivocated when his daughter’s life was on the line?

But he couldn’t give up the prototype. Not before he made a few more modifications. “You have to give me more time to run some more tests. The buyers won’t be happy if it doesn’t work.”

“You let me worry about my customers.” Connors’s voice went even colder, if that was possible. “You have other, more important concerns.”

“You’ll have it in a few days. Just let Kara go. We can forget this ever happened. I’ll turn over the prototype as soon as it’s fully functional.”

“Your daughter is very, very beautiful, Jerry. I’m sure you know that.”

Bile burned at the back of his throat at the unmistakable tone in Connors’s voice. “Don’t you touch her, you sick fuck.” It was a possibility he hadn’t allowed himself to entertain for the past day and a half, ever since he realized that Connors had Kara. He’d calmed himself with the fact that this was a business transaction. Connors was pissed that Jerry was waffling on delivering the BioChip prototype, so he was using the best leverage he could find. It made perfect business sense, in a fucked-up criminal sort of way.

He didn’t allow himself to dwell on the possibility that his daughter might be raped because of his mistakes.

“Don’t worry, Jerry. Beautiful as she is, I have enough self-restraint not to sully the merchandise.”

“Merchandise?”

“I wasn’t always in high-tech. Prostitution used to be a lucrative part of my business. But nowadays, women—even beautiful, seemingly unattainable women—are willing to flash their tits at the camera, fuck anyone who asks. It hardly makes it worth paying for anymore. Whores have become a commodity. Which is why I moved into the technology business,” he said, as though explaining his résumé during a job interview.

“But there is one thing men will still pay for, Jerry, because it has become so very rare. Innocence.”

Jerry’s blood froze in his veins.

“Though I personally prefer a more experienced woman, I can understand the appeal. There are men who will pay—and pay well—to have first crack at a young woman. Like your daughter, for example. She is so pretty, so fresh. She will generate a great deal of interest.”

Jerry tried to speak, but all that came out was a garbled sound of horror and rage.

“Don’t worry. I won’t sell her to just anyone. The group I deal with is very exclusive. Wealthy men, much like yourself, who crave a taste of innocence. In the event that you do not deliver the prototype on time, I’m sure they will pay more than enough to allow me to pay my customers back.”

“I can pay you back!” Jerry sputtered, finally finding his voice. “I’ll give you back my cut, plus whatever they paid you. I’ll double it, whatever you want, just let Kara go.”

Connors’s laugh cracked over the phone line, sharp as a gunshot. “Now Jerry, what kind of learning experience would I be providing if I allowed you to buy your way out of this? Besides, Kara is so beautiful, her virginity so unusual at a comparatively advanced age, who knows what price she’ll fetch? I may make enough off her to earn a profit.”

He spoke of selling Jerry’s daughter’s body with the same emotion as if it were a used car.

“You sick, perverted fuck. If you harm one hair on her head…” Jerry let the threat linger, though he had no clue what he would do if Connors hurt Kara. He had Jerry over a barrel and he knew it.

“Turn over the prototype and you will no longer have reason to worry.”

Jerry ran a hand over his face, wishing he could wake up from this nightmare he had created for himself.

A nightmare in which he had to make a choice: hand over a technology that would spawn the next generation of biological weapons, resulting in the deaths of millions, or allow his daughter to be raped by some disgusting old man who got off on fucking virgins.

“The latest version didn’t work.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. In the last test, the prototype didn’t work perfectly, but with a slight modification to the sample preparation, it produced results beyond anything they’d ever seen. If he’d continued to run his experiment, he would have eventually ended up with a measles virus immune to any vaccines or drug therapies.

“Yes, as you mentioned. For that reason, I will speak to my customers and tell them there will be a slight delay. But do not wait too long. My customers are eager to see a demonstration.”

A shaky, hopeful breath billowed from his lungs. He could still modify the chip. Once he had Kara back, he’d grab her and Kyle, move all of his money to an offshore account, and go so deep into hiding no one would ever find him. Maybe he’d even fake their deaths, just to be sure. A plane crash—

“You are lucky that the delay works in my favor. It will give me time to settle negotiations for Kara’s fate in case something should go wrong.” Connors’s voice cut like a blade through Jerry’s wild imaginings.

“Nothing will go wrong,” Jerry bit out.

“I hope not. But I’ve taken some lovely photos just in case. Marketing material, if you will. You’ll see them if you check your e-mail.”

The scotch bubbled sourly in Jerry’s throat as he pulled up Kara’s computer. He’d hidden it from everyone, used it to communicate with Connors so there would be no evidence of their communication on his own computer. He logged in to his free Web mail address and clicked on the message. His extremities went numb with shock as he took in the image of his daughter. She lay on a bed, in a white nightshirt, her face a mask of fear as she stared at the camera.

She knew what would happen to her if Jerry didn’t deliver.

God, none of this was supposed to happen. It had all seemed like such a great idea when Connors—at least that’s what he called himself; Jerry didn’t believe for a second it was his real name—had contacted Jerry.

Jerry had seen it as a way to stick it to the fucking board of GeneCor, who thought they could push Jerry aside, after he’d spent six fucking years of his blood, his sweat, his goddamned money, turning his innovative idea for biological chips into a real product, a real company.

But then the company had gone public, and the investors decided that Jerry was too brash, too volatile, too lacking in focus and discipline to run the company. So they’d hired that fucking automaton and shoved Jerry into the proverbial basement to tinker with his toys. Oh, sure, to the outside world, Executive Vice President of Technology Innovation sounded prestigious.

But everyone in the company, every board member, all of the men and women Jerry had made rich with his ideas and his products, knew it was all a load of shit. At first he’d tried to take it seriously. For a whole fucking year, he had actually spent time and energy developing new product prototypes based on the existing platform.

They’d given him the equivalent of a pat on the head and told him to keep up the good work. When Jerry had complained to the chairman of the board, a man he’d always considered a good friend and trusted adviser, he’d been told that if he wasn’t happy, maybe it was time for him to move on. GeneCor had netted Jerry hundreds of millions of dollars, making him financially free to do anything he chose, including starting a new company on his own, where he could develop whatever new products he wished.

Provided he paid GeneCor appropriate licensing fees.

A carefully worded, oh-so-professional way of telling Jerry not to let the door hit him in the ass on the way out. Several days later Connors had contacted Jerry. He had well-placed sources everywhere, and somehow he’d gotten wind of what Jerry was working on. At the time, it had seemed like destiny. Divine justice for those who had tried to screw him over.

Connors’s voice ripped him back to the present. There was no time to wallow in regret. What was done was done, and now it was up to Jerry to get himself out of the shithole he’d dug for himself.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve procured girls for this group. And nowadays the Internet makes them so easy to find. Girls just like Kara, proselytizing the merits of saving themselves,” Connors said, as though Jerry hadn’t spoken. “Did I mention that they videotape the girl’s first time? They’ve sent me some of the footage for my own enjoyment—I’ve built up quite a collection. There’s nothing that compares with the expression on the girl’s face the first time she feels a cock shoving inside her untried hole.”

Jerry scrambled off the couch, barely making it to the garbage can before the scotch came boiling back up.

“I could send you copies, if you like.”

Jerry slumped back on the couch, sick and scared. His little girl. And Jerry had delivered her into the hands of a monster. “I’ll be ready. Just tell me where and when.”

“I’ll let you know the details of the exchange as the time gets closer. In the meantime, you will continue to keep the police uninvolved?”

“Yes. I’ve already posted to Kara’s Web site.”

“Good. And this investigator you were stupid enough to hire?”

“I’ve got him under control. The woman, too. Right now they’re off looking for Kara in Vegas.”