Cherry Adair - T-flac 09 (29 page)

He could tell the leap hadn’t been that hard for her. “So what does he have to do with me? Why track me down—And how did you do that? Oh, shit. The robbery at Munzinger’s jewelers. You found me by my fingerprints, didn’t you?”

Damn, she was smart. “Yeah. My assignment was to get your father’s location.”

She scowled. “I didn’t know it. I was an assignment?”

“I had no way of knowing that you and your father had parted ways.”

“So you just opted to seduce me anyway?” Heather lifted one hand. “Don’t bother answering that. It was rhetorical,” she said bitterly. “Stupid me. It never occurred to me to wonder why a man on a business trip, a man staying in a hotel, was shopping for
groceries.
Or how you knew where I lived when I’d never given you my address or even my real name. And I was so freaking careful! How’d you get past my defenses?”

“Making love to you was never the plan. I was supposed to get the information about Brian Shaw and
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

get out. It wasn’t about seducing you.” He kept his gaze locked with hers, trying to make her understand.

“It’s not supposed to get personal.”

“Here’s an update, Caleb. It doesn’t get much more personal than screwing me senseless. Might not have been the ‘plan,’ but it happened anyway. Did you not use protection on purpose? Did you want to impregnate me?”

“Jesus, Heather!” Most of the vertigo from the time jump was dissipating, thank God. He managed to drag himself to a sitting position and lean against the headboard. “No. Of course not.”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. It happened. And you did it for power—No. Not power. You have that already. No. You did it to manipulate me into doing exactly as you wanted. And how did you imagine that I wouldn’t remember what happened yesterday?”

This was the tricky part. Caleb knew he had to do this right. “It happened today.”

She glanced at the bedside clock. “Yesterday. It’s only eighta.m . You took me to him, like a possible lamb to slaughter, at about ten yesterday morning.”

“Believe me.” Why should she? He shook his head and forged on. “It was
this
morning. This is our second shot at today.” He watched her face and saw that she was ready to call bullshit on him. “You’re asking me to tell you something only a few people, people like me, know.”

“Like you? What? Other lying, cheating, opportunists?”

“I have the ability to manipulate time.” He braced for her reaction.

She looked ready to nail him in the head with her purse. “Manipulate
people,
you mean.”

“That too. I’m a wizard.”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Heather tossed her head back, an incredulous expression crossing her face. “Beep! Wrong answer.”

“No one has ever been aware of it when I’ve manipulated time. No one who was present when we confronted your father will remember that we, my team, were there at all. For them, it’ll be like it never happened.”

“A wizard who can reverse time? Do I look like I have
stupid
tattooed on my forehead?”

“It’s the truth.”

She leveled her gaze on him. “That’s the lamest load of garbage I’ve ever heard.”

He merely looked at her.

“If it is, then prove it. If what happened this morning didn’t happen, then my father wasn’t shot.”

“That would be partly correct. Some of what happened this morning won’t happen on the second replay. You and Bean were my concern. The op was going to hell, I had to get you out of there.”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

She slowly lowered her arm. “Is my father alive?”

“No, I’m sorry.” Her chin trembled and Caleb gulped past the surge of nausea. “Someone on my team teleported him when I took you. He was dead then. He’s dead now.”

“Teleported?!”Heather shook her head, and cut to the chase. “Pretty damn convenient for you.” Caleb could see the wheels turning before she blurted, “But if he’d been left there, he’d be alive?”

“Yeah. But he wa—”

“Do it again. Do whatever you did.” She waved a hand. Her ring, the wedding band he’d put on her finger, shot sparklers of refracted light against the walls in the sunlight, illuminating the tears welling in her eyes. “Undo whatever.”

“It doesn’t work that way.” His gut clenched.

“Really.” She knelt one knee on the bench at the foot of the bed, swiping away the moisture from her face. She didn’t look like a woman settling in for a heart-to-heart. But she wasn’t running for the door either. “How
does
it work then? Is my dead father on another astral plane? Will we have to get a Ouija board? A crystal ball? Some eye of newt?”

Caleb decided to treat it as a genuine question. He chewed on a nut and thanked God that his strength was gradually returning.

“If I’d had the time”—he didn’t add
and the f-ing inclination—
“and had gotten to your father fast enough, then
possibly
I
might
have been able to perform the revivification spell.”

“Reviv—” She took her knee off the bench and stood. “Ah-huh.”

“Frankly, I’m not sure that I can perform that on anything other than animals. This isn’t an exact science.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

The only success I’ve had was with animals when I was a kid. It didn’t always work.”

“Ah-huh.”

“Like twenty percent. There’s a finite window of time in which it has to be attempted, anyway.” He had to buy more time. “If too much time passes after a death, it’s too late.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s been more than half an hour since your father was shot. Too long. In my experiments, the most time that could lapse between death and revivification was just over a minute. And that was for a twenty-pound
dog.
” Duncan’s Dixie. Caleb’s kid brother had been grateful for months.

“Tell you what,” Heather told him. “Put it all in a memo and e-mail me, okay?”

Oh, crap. She was going to split. “Hang on. Didn’t you have other questions?” Caleb asked desperately, tossing his can of nuts on the bed.

“Yes. I do. About a million. But apparently, you think what you’ve done to me is one big joke. So don’t bother. I’m sure I won’t believe your answers anyway!”

“I swear to God, I’ll answer truthfully.”

“Do wizards believe in God?”

He grit his teeth. “Yes.”

“You contacted me in San Francisco to track down my father?”

“Right. But you didn’t know where he was. We found him another way.”

“Did you get that woman pregnant too?”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

“No other woman. And I swear on Bean’s life, getting you pregnant wasn’t intentional.”

“Don’t bring Bean into this, damn you.”

“Okay. Okay. I was a bastard to sleep with you, I admit it. But damn it, Heather. I’m not sorry. We had—”

“And if I hadn’t been pregnant, would you have come back? Would you have married me?”

Shit. “It was the only way I could get at your father. I have to be in visual range to teleport someone else. But no matter the assignment, the minute I found out about the baby I would have convinced you to marry me.”

“Let me see if I’m getting all this right. You married me for access to my father. Then you planned to teleport him somewhere else. After that he’d—what? Go to jail? Be put to death for treason or something? And it didn’t cross your mind that that would hardly be conducive to a happy marriage? Or didn’t you plan on this marriage lasting after you got to my father?”

The skin across her cheekbones grew taut, and her dry eyes glittered. “It wasn’t love at first sight, was it?”

His stomach lurched. “No.”

“Well, that at least is honest—assuming I buy the whole wizard thing. I guess I should thank you for setting me straight. Well, good luck with your hunt. I presume my lawyer can send the divorce papers to your office? Or was Preda as fake as you are?”

Caleb scooted toward the edge of the bed, wishing he was freaking dressed, but not having the juice to do so yet. “What did your mother give you, Heather?”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

“Not a damn thing.”

“Your father was scared. And he had just cause. If
he
didn’t embezzle the money from his client, then someone else
did.
With your father dead, that person will come after you. It’s the logical next step.

They’ve already made a couple of half-assed attempts at grabbing you. Now they’ll get serious.”

She paused by the door, her hand on the knob. “Well, I can’t help you.”

“The funds were transferred out of your father’s account at threea.m. the day your mother died. The transfer was done from a computer on the grounds of your family estate in Paris. Who had that kind of access?”

He saw that he’d hit an emotional bull’s-eye as she bit the corner of her lower lip. “My father,” she finally said. “My mother. Me.”

“It wasn’t you. And it wasn’t, apparently, your father. So that leaves your mother.”

“Who’s
dead.
”

Caleb stroked his chin as he worked the sequence through in his head. “Between threea.m. and the time the two of you returned from your outing and she was killed, she must have passed that information on to
someone
else. Who could it have been?”

Heather was obviously rattled, but prepared to bolt. “I have no clue, but good luck finding them,” she said, turning the handle.

Desperate, Caleb shouted, “You can’t leave!”

The door slammed behind her.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Blinded by tears, Heather ran, stumbling down the uneven path outside their room. She slowed down a little because the cobblestones were treacherous underfoot, but she still moved fast. As if the hounds of Hell were after her.

“Bastard!” She stumbled. “Damn it!” Choking back sobs of rage, embarrassment, and disbelief, Heather caught herself before tripping. She had to keep going. The sun, golden warm, beat down on her head and bare shoulders. Rain should have been boiling out of a black sky to suit her mood. Didn’t she deserve crappy weather after being taken advantage of by a madman?

Hearing women talking in rapid Italian behind her, she walked faster, not wanting anyone to hear her talking to herself—crying, raging, and berating were more accurate terms.

She didn’t have her freaking sunglasses, so she crossed to the shade on the other side of the path. “Son of a bitch.
Wizard,
my butt.”

Damn it. She needed her suitcase. Which was back in their room, probably with her shades. All she had in this purse were a few hundred American dollars, a brush, a lip gloss, and Hallelujah! She sniffed, gaining control of her careening emotions. Her
passport.
She wasn’t without resources. Any number of friends would send her money if she made a phone call…

And involve them in this mess? After having disappeared for a year to avoid exactly this situation? No.

She’d rely on her own common sense, she’d already proven she could. Until Caleb, she thought, fresh tears heating her eyes.

What a gullible, stupid fool she’d been. Love at first sight? In real life? In
her
real life?

She’d been desired by men countless times. For her wealth, for her looks, for her social connections, for a hundred reasons that men and women played the mating game. Because it was fun. Because it was what men and women did. She’d cared for some of the men in her life, and they had genuinely cared for her. Some had tried to use her. But she’d never been played for such a fool. She’d never been used like
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

this.

And as for her father—Heather’s stomach roiled. She pressed her fist to her middle as she walked.

“Sorry Bean.
Hearing
the word
terrorist
from my father a year ago doesn’t even come
close
to meeting them face-to-face.” Probably because he’d intentionally only told her the tip of the iceberg about his business dealings. Just enough to make her scared enough to run, and stay hidden, while he tried to find the money.

She thought of her mother, and sorrow clutched at her throat. Knowing what she knew now, Heather believed her father
had
killed her in a fit of rage. Rage brought on by the very real fear of what his client would do to him when he discovered that his money was missing.

Her entire life had been built on quicksand.

Not had been—still was.

She’d never fallen so hard, so fast for a man.

She’d never before been quite that vulnerable, Heather thought bitterly, angrily swiping the moist streaks from her cheeks. Never been that open. That damn
needy.
The tears dried stiff on her cheeks as she continued down the winding path toward the foot of the steep ravine, propelled now by anger, muttering furiously to herself. “You used me, you bastard,” She walked faster. Worse—“I
let
y—”