Desperado (10 page)

“He was checking for nitrates,” he said.

She frowned. “Fertilizer?”

He pursed his lips and looked amused. “Something like that.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know anything about that electronic device he had, but I do know that they use a wand like the one he was carrying at the airport. They aren’t checking for fertilizer, either.”

“You’re too sharp for me, honey,” he drawled, without even realizing he’d used the endearment. But he noted her soft flush with pleasure. “He was checking for a bomb.”

Her gasp was loud in the silence.

“I won’t hide things from you,” he said. “You’re a grown woman. You can handle this. Gruber is the sort who wouldn’t think twice about setting a bomb here, and he wouldn’t mind killing innocent people to get to me, or to you. From now on, until I settle with Gruber, I’ll have to have the cars and the machinery, the outbuildings and especially the house, swept for bombs and bugs constantly.”

The danger came home to her in that instant. She looked at Cord and remembered the bomb that had almost killed him. The fresh wounds were stark against his olive tan. They weren’t disfiguring. In fact, they gave him a roguish look.

Her hands clenched. “I’ve been very naive,” she confessed.

“You aren’t used to this sort of thing. I am,” he said. “And because I am,” he added, tossing her the car keys as he slipped a pair of dark glasses on, “you’re driving and I’m blind.”

“You’ve never offered to let me drive you before,” she remarked, her eyes on the keys.

“Trust takes a little work. And a little time,” he said gently.

She looked up at him worriedly. “I’m not used to trusting people.”

“Neither am I,” he remarked. “But we can learn. Can’t we?”

Hesitating, she nodded. Then she smiled and got in behind the wheel.

She loved driving the sports car. She’d have loved one of her own, but she’d never been able to afford such luxury. She almost laughed at the irony of her position, driving the one
man in her life who was more than capable of taking care of himself and everyone around him. But, as he said, the fiction of his injury had to be maintained if he was going to get the best of Gruber.

She glanced at his profile when she stopped to turn onto the main highway. She’d never let herself think too deeply about his work. They’d lived separate lives for a long time. She’d never seen him in action, although she heard from Eb Scott, among others, about the chances he took, the cases he worked. She remembered when he’d been shot, when Patricia had committed suicide. It had been Maggie who had stayed in the hospital waiting room day and night, for the three days when he was in intensive care. She’d tried to phone his wife, but Patricia hadn’t answered the phone, and Maggie had assumed she was out of town. She hadn’t been able to find anyone who knew where she was. The tragedy didn’t reveal itself until Cord was released from the hospital, and he’d found her body. It had changed him terribly. After that, he quit the FBI and took freelance jobs that most other mercenaries wouldn’t have touched—mostly involving demolitions. He was an expert at defusing bombs.

He felt her inner turmoil. “You don’t like what I do for a living, do you?” he asked.

“No,” she said honestly.

She stopped for a red light and he studied her stoic expression. “I’ve never thought seriously about giving it up. Those adrenaline rushes are addictive. The greater the danger, the bigger the rush.”

“I noticed that myself.” She laughed shortly. “But you’ve never been family-man material.”

He frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“I can see it now, you, with a wife and baby, rushing off to defuse a ticking bomb somewhere,” she said with no real mirth. “I don’t think there’s a sane woman on earth who could live with that sort of uncertainty. It would kill a marriage at the outset.”

He was silent while they waited for the light to change. His lean, strong fingers traced the dash absently. “I’ve never thought about my job in that light.”

“No reason to,” she said easily. “You have no one to consider except yourself. You can do what you please without worrying about anyone else’s reactions.”

His eyes narrowed as he looked at her averted face. She was speaking conversationally, but her body was giving away secrets. She was rigid. Her hands were tightly clenched in her lap, the nails biting into her palms. It occurred to him that she’d known about some of his more dangerous exploits, and that she’d worried about him—worried a lot. He thought he didn’t have to consider her feelings, but if she cared about him, certainly she’d brood on the dangerous chances he took. He reversed their positions and thought how he’d react if Maggie defused bombs and took mercenary jobs in high-risk cases. Amazing, how sick it made him.

He noticed that the light had changed. She stepped on the gas a little too heavily, jerking the car. He was thrown off
balance by his worried thoughts and barely kept from pitching forward against the seat belt.

“Sorry,” she said tersely.

Cord never made ungraceful movements. She wondered what he’d been thinking to unsettle him. Probably about Patricia, she thought miserably. Poor Patricia, who’d loved him, too.

When they got to the Lassiter-Deverell Building, Cord walked beside Maggie into the elevator, sunglasses in place and holding her arm as if he needed it to guide him. He stood beside her without speaking as they rode up to her floor. His lack of conversation made her uneasy. He was brooding.

They got off on her floor and walked down the deserted hall to the wooden door with a brass plate announcing that this was the office of Deverell Investments.

“Thanks for coming in with me,” she began.

He touched her cheek gently. “There’s an old saying, about not judging people until we’ve walked in their shoes,” he said out of the blue. “I’ve gone through life without considering how I affected other people’s lives with my actions.”

“We just agreed that you didn’t need to,” she pointed out.

His face was drawn. “How many sleepless nights have you spent over the years, worrying about me?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “I’ll have to check my diary,” she said lightly.

His fingertips went to her mouth and traced the upper lip. “I wish you wouldn’t wear red lipstick,” he murmured
quietly. “If I kiss you, they’ll think I landed the lead in
Cabaret
.”

Her heart skipped wildly. “What did you drink for breakfast?” she asked wryly.

“Coffee, just like you.” His fingers didn’t move. He scowled at her mouth with visible curiosity, with a growing hunger to bend and catch her lips under his. He felt his breath choking him as he recalled unwanted memories of her soft breast under his lips, her faint moans like music to his ears…

He jerked his hand back and looked more formidable than ever. “I could retire on what I’ve got in the bank,” he said absently. “Demolition work isn’t much more than a hobby these days. I like breeding purebred bulls.”

“Are we having the same conversation?” she asked. “We were talking about coffee, as I recall?” she prompted.

He smiled at her, with genuine warmth. It made his eyes soft, crinkly at the corners. It made his hard mouth look sensuous.

“You look elegant with your hair in a braid,” he remarked, “but I like it long and soft around your shoulders.”

“I work here,” she pointed out. “I don’t want to divert the clients by flaunting my sexy hair. Think of the complications if I had to toss someone out the window for getting fresh over AT&T preferred!”

He chuckled deeply. “You don’t resort to those methods with me.”

She shrugged. “You’re special.”

The smile faded. His eyes darkened, as if the glib remark
touched a sensitive spot. “So are you,” he said in a rough, husky tone. “More special than I ever knew.”

“Stop it,” she chided, trying to ward off more complications. “You’ll make me blush.”

He bent unexpectedly and brushed his lips tenderly over her eyelids, closing them in a flutter of long lashes. “You don’t leave the office unless someone goes with you,” he whispered. “You wait for me to come and get you when you get off work. I’ll have Davis drive me, to make it look good. If anything happens in between that worries you, you call Lassiter’s office or you call me. Or else.”

“Or else what?” she asked huskily.

“Or I’ll carry you down to the car and take you home right now.” He lifted his head to search her misty eyes. “Considering the state I’m in just at the moment, that might not be my best idea to date.”

“The state you’re in?” she murmured drowsily.

He glanced up and down the hall, found it deserted, took her by the waist and gently pulled her against him. “This state.” He smiled ruefully.

She jerked her hips back from his and a film of color lay along her high cheekbones.

He shrugged. “Think of it as an unavoidable response to an attractive woman,” he murmured with helpless pride.

“More likely, it’s a response to enforced abstinence!” she shot back.

His eyebrows lifted. “How do you know I’ve abstained?”

She colored even more. “Your private life is none of my business!” she muttered, glaring up at him. “I don’t care how many women you have sex with! You can sleep with every woman in the building for all I care, from the cleaning lady up!”

He was suddenly looking over her shoulder with unholy amusement.

She groaned inwardly and turned. Logan Deverell was standing in the open office door with a speaking glance.

Logan cleared his throat. “The, uh, cleaning lady is fifty-two, twice married,” he remarked, “and she only has three teeth…”

“Lead me to her,” Cord enthused. “Experienced women turn me on!”

Maggie choked back laughter, dashed past Logan and shot into her own office with a speed that left Cord chuckling merrily.

Cord was shown into Lassiter’s office by the secretary. Dark-eyed, dark-headed Dane Lassiter rose from behind his desk and moved around it with traces of a limp to shake hands.

“As you might notice,” Lassiter said dryly, “I’ve had my own share of physical trauma. I let my attention wander during a shoot-out when I was a Texas Ranger and got shot to pieces. I lost my job, but I ended up with something almost as good.” He indicated the office with a bland smile. “An infrequent limp isn’t a bad trade-off.”

Cord smiled and removed his dark glasses. At least here on
this floor, there was no need to pretend. “You can see my latest mishap in my face. I’m damned lucky to be alive and still have my sight.”

Lassiter noted the scars around the other man’s eyes and nodded slowly. “Defusing bombs is suicide. Why do you do it?” he asked with customary bluntness.

Cord shrugged. “My wife committed suicide and I felt responsible. I guess I’ve been punishing myself for it.”

Lassiter gave him a meaningful look and moved back around the desk. On it were photos of a blond woman and a son of about eight, along with a blond girl not much younger. He noted Cord’s curiosity and smiled as they sat down.

“Our son and daughter,” he said with noticeable pride. “Tess and I didn’t think children were even a remote possibility.” His face tautened. “She almost lost her life with our first one. You never know how you feel about a woman until you’re faced with losing her forever. I got my priorities straight in about ten seconds flat.”

Cord wondered at the emotion in the other man’s deep voice. He had a feeling Lassiter’s road to fatherhood hadn’t been an easy one, but he certainly looked like a happy man now.

“They both want to be detectives,” Lassiter added with a look of absolute disgust. “And my wife,” he added with muted outrage, “is out right now with one of my own damned operatives—who won’t be an operative very much longer, I promise you!—trying to get tape of Gruber and Adams in the JobFair office!” He threw up his hands. “They bugged it and
staked it out without even bothering to tell me, and Tess is supposed to be at a staff meeting here in two hours.” He stared at Cord, who was struggling not to laugh. “They say marriage and motherhood settles women. Hell!”

Cord gave it up and burst out laughing. So much for his illusions.

I
t was all Cord could do not to roll on the floor laughing at Lassiter’s expression. “How did they bug the office?” Cord asked the older man.

Lassiter sat back heavily. “Posing as exterminators,” he said with barely concealed irritability.

Cord grinned. “Should I ask why an exterminator was called in?”

“Why the hell not?” Lassiter exclaimed. “Tess and Morrow went to a pet shop and bought thirty hissing cockroaches, put them in a box, and shot them into JobFair during lunch when the office was closed! That’s when they spliced into the telephone line. When the call went out for an exterminator, they intercepted it, moved in, and planted bugs everywhere. Apparently Gruber and Adams didn’t even suspect them, because they haven’t swept the office today. I expect them to, any minute,” he added icily.

Cord grinned. “Well, it’s innovative.”

Lassiter shrugged. “Hissing cockroaches.” He thought about it for a minute and chuckled. “I suppose it is. Tess isn’t bad at detective work. But she’s setting a bad example for our kids,” he added. “They put a listening device in the teacher’s desk and had tape of her making a steamy cell phone call to her boyfriend during lunch. God knows what they planned to do with it. Fortunately we caught them before they had time to make plans! We grounded them for two weeks, and laughed into our hats for days afterward,” he confessed amusedly.

“What a formidable duo they’ll make later on.”

Lassiter nodded. He leaned forward then, solemn. “I’d like to know what you have on Gruber.”

Cord pulled a thick padded envelope out of the inner pocket of his suit and pushed it across the desk. “Documents, photos, background information on both Gruber and a man named Stillwell, the figurehead president of Global Enterprises, Limited, which is the multinational corporation founded, we believe, for the express purpose of exploiting child labor in developing countries,” he said, explaining the contents.

“There’s a CD in there as well, with what I downloaded from the CIA and Interpol files,” he continued. “We suspect that JobFair and Global Enterprises are connected, and that both have a direct link to Gruber, but nobody’s been able to prove it so far. The photo Kit Deverell took is the first break we’ve had. But it won’t be enough without hard evidence that Gruber is the real head of Global Enterprises. That would give us an airtight case
if we could. The corporation is known to deal in child exploitation for profit, with JobFair as its supplier, and it’s recently been under fire in Africa. I was investigating JobFair when Gruber caught me off guard and damned near blew my head off with a planted bomb in Miami.”

“How about the corporation’s board of directors?” Lassiter asked.

“That’s a possible back door,” Cord told him. “I’ve got somebody working on it right now. One of the directors lives in Amsterdam and has been accused, but not convicted, of heading a child pornography and prostitution ring. Another is Spanish but lives in Morocco. He deals in prostitution, as well. Pity we don’t have somebody who could go overseas and ferret these guys out. We might make a connection to Gruber if we dug hard enough.”

“How did you get CIA and Interpol files, if I might ask?” Lassiter murmured with admiration as he examined the papers.

“Don’t,” came the dry reply.

Lassiter gave him a curious glance. “It’s only illegal if we’re helping the bad guys,” he rationalized.

“Now, that’s just what I tell myself every time I do it,” Cord agreed.

Lassiter’s gaze went back to the papers on his desk. He was scowling. “This is interesting. Alvarez Adams has financial ties to Global Enterprises, Ltd., although JobFair doesn’t—at least on paper. Do you know much about it?”

Cord shook his head. “Only what’s there. It’s hard to
research, even for specialists. They cover their tracks very well electronically.”

“I wouldn’t know either, except that a former agent of mine works for the FBI out of Washington, and a friend of his is with a—” he hesitated “—shall we say covert organization with underworld connections. Global Enterprises runs a huge cocoa plantation on the Ivory Coast, as well as mining operations and cattle ranches in South America. We know that thousands of children are employed without pay in these enterprises. The problem is that, even though the countries where they’re located are willing to help, they don’t have the financial resources to combat a multinational corporation worth billions.”

“That’s the crux of the situation,” Cord agreed. “Money. It always comes down to money.”

“Sad commentary on the world, isn’t it?” Lassiter replied. “But while we’re feeling sorry for those poor kids, how about the Hispanic women who are brought into this country illegally to work in sweatshops or prostitution? They lure them in with promises of money, and when they get them here, they threaten them with disclosure and prison.

“I never knew how widespread the problem was until I started investigating Adams,” Lassiter concluded with a heavy sigh. “It turns my stomach. Even if I weren’t getting paid for the investigation, I’d take it on. These people need to be stopped.”

“They do,” Cord agreed. “But you can’t go at an orga
nization with this sort of money and power head-on. You have to slide in the back door when they’re not looking. It’s going to take a lot of manpower, and help from some powerful government agencies.”

Lassiter grinned. He pulled a file out of his desk drawer and slid it across to Cord. “You didn’t see this,” he added.

Intrigued, Cord opened it. He whistled under his breath. “And I thought I had connections,” he murmured as he went through the list of contacts.

“They’re not all contacts, just yet. That’s where I thought you’d come in handy. See the one at the very bottom?”

Cord did. He chuckled. “That’s right. I’d forgotten that I had a cousin who works in imports and exports in Tangier. Until recent years, when I started searching for family,” he confessed on a more somber note, “I didn’t know there was any left except an elderly cousin in Andalusia, not too far from Málaga.”

“You lost your parents here, didn’t you?” Lassiter said.

Cord nodded. “In a hotel fire. I had no close relatives, although I had American citizenship through my mother,” he added. “But if Amy Barton hadn’t come along, I don’t know what I’d have done.”

“I don’t remember the hotel fire personally, but I read about it. There wasn’t a lot about it in the newspapers because of a high-profile sex scandal here in Houston about the same time,” he added. “Two men were arrested for trafficking in child pornography. It was a heartbreaking case, and there was a lot of
public outrage. They were sentenced to life in prison, but one of them was killed in a prison riot not much later.” He shook his head. “We live in a perverse world.”

“We do, from time to time, but…”

Before he could get the sentence out, the door opened, and a young woman with long blond hair and dark eyes burst in with a tape in her hand.

“Dane, guess what we got…?” she burst out.

The change in Lassiter was sudden and stark. His genial expression eclipsed into one of tormented relief. He jerked out of his chair and came around the desk with hardly any evidence of a limp.

“You crazy, half-witted, stubborn…!” Before he got all the words out, he had the woman up in his arms and he was kissing her with a violence and passion that knocked the breath out of Cord. He’d never seen such stark emotion erupt out of a man, especially one who seemed as cool and self-possessed as Lassiter.

The woman kissed him back just as hungrily and then seemed to notice Cord, and pulled away a little with a self-conscious smile.

Lassiter didn’t let her go. His face slid into her throat and he still held her close. “Hissing cockroaches, for God’s sake, telephone repairmen…!” He cursed once, harshly.

“Now, now, darling, I’m fine,” Tess Lassiter said gently, smoothing his dark, dark hair. “I had Morrow with me. You stole him from the FBI. He’s very good.”

“Damn Morrow! I’ll have him for breakfast!” Lassiter raged, and Cord noted with some amusement that the older man looked perfectly capable at that moment of roasting his erst-while employee over a slow fire.

Tess grinned. “I was never in danger. Dane,” she added, patting him on one shoulder, “we’re not alone.”

The man seemed only then to realize where he was and what he was doing. With a groan he pulled back from her, but his dark eyes couldn’t let go. Cord felt like a voyeur just looking at the two of them. What they felt for each other was so tangible that it filled the room. And they’d been married almost nine years, he recalled with faint shock. Imagine an emotion so powerful that it still burst its bonds like that after nine years! It unsettled him.

Lassiter went back around his desk, leading Tess by the hand. He sat down, with her beside his chair, her hand on his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said stiffly. “She takes chances. Morrow won’t, anymore, by God, when I’m through with him!” he added tersely.

“Morrow’s nice, and I talked him into it. He said you’d shoot him, but I promised you wouldn’t. Here,” she added, placing the tape on the desk. “We got good tape. You’re going to love the information you get from this. Hello,” she added shyly, glancing at Cord. “I’m Tess, Dane’s wife.”

“The source of my only ulcer,” her husband replied dryly, a little calmer now.

“Us and the kids,” she added with a proud smile. “But we try not to get on his nerves too much.”

“This is Cord Romero,” Lassiter introduced.

“Oh,” Tess exclaimed. “You’re Maggie’s brother!”

His face tautened. “We were foster children together,” he corrected. “We’re no relation to each other.”

“Sorry!” Tess said at once, and blushed as she smiled. “Maggie didn’t explain.”

That was damned irritating, and he was going to have something to say to Maggie about it later.

“That’s it, walk in and start trouble,” Lassiter told his wife when he noted Cord’s expression. “Never mind, what’s on this famous tape that you think would have compensated me if something had happened to you?”

Tess grinned proudly. “A clue that may tie Gruber to that multinational corporation Adams is working with. It’s right there, on tape, in his voice. The corporation’s president is a man named Stillwell, and he’s on the tape, too!”

Lassiter burst out laughing. “You little torment,” he murmured, but when he looked up at her, his face was beaming.

She bent and kissed his forehead. “I love you, too. Now I’m going to have breakfast. Don’t be hard on Morrow, okay? He’s really sorry already.”

“We’ll talk about it later. Bring me back a bear claw, will you? Want anything?” he asked Cord.

“Thanks, but Maggie and I had a big breakfast.”

Lassiter stood up and dug into his pocket for a bill. He handed it to Tess, smiled faintly and nudged her toward the door. “Don’t get into any more trouble today,” he instructed.

“And I was going to stand outside the bank with a pocket full of twenties and fish for pickpockets!” she scoffed.

“Out!”

She wrinkled her nose at him, exchanged a look that could have heated cold water, and left. Lassiter sat back down when the door closed, and it took him a minute to get his mind back on business.

“You’ve really been married nine years?” Cord had to ask.

“Almost.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t seem like even a year. Okay. Let’s listen to this tape!”

He put it into the player and Cord sat back, his mind troubled with images of Lassiter and his wife in that unexpected, furious embrace. It had never occurred to him that marriage wouldn’t take the edge off passion, leave the relationship lukewarm and complacent. He was having to mentally rewrite all his former opinions of it.

He had to force himself to concentrate on the tape when it began. He listened absently until something caught his attention. There was a new voice on the tape, identified by Adams’s voice as someone called Stillwell.

Lassiter stopped the tape. “Stillwell is the visible president and chief stockholder of Global Enterprises, Ltd.,” he told Cord. “If it had offices in this country, every government agency we have would be investigating it. Its headquarters are in Morocco, in North Africa, and all efforts by the West African governments on the Ivory Coast to prosecute it for exploitation of children, and women, have failed. Money and
power give immunity on a continent where the annual wage is less than $300 per household.

“Some parents sell their children without even realizing they’ve done it. The company gives them money in advance of a child’s wages, being told that the children will earn a fortune in jobs abroad. By the time they realize that the child isn’t coming back, it’s too late to do anything. Most children can’t even be traced,” he added with disgust. Before he started the tape again, he added, “The corporation lies low in Morocco, out of reach of legislators in the poorer countries.”

On the tape, Adams was telling other people in the office that he’d looked into the identity of a young woman who came up and spoke to him and his companion outside a restaurant the day before, that she was the foster sister of an old enemy, a man named Cord Romero.

Cord exchanged a worried glance with Lassiter.

The tape continued. A voice quickly identified by Lassiter as corporation president Stillwell informed the others that he was certain that he was under investigation by the Interpol, but that he was certain they hadn’t been able to connect him to anything illegal. He’d made certain of it, he added in a dark, ominous tone.

Gruber spoke now. Cord recognized his voice and told Lassiter who it was. Gruber mentioned an investigation by the Lassiter Detective Agency being conducted against Adams. He said that he’d observed a second dark-haired woman in the doorway of the restaurant taking his photo with Adams while
the first woman detained them by pretending to recognize Gruber. He described the photographer and Adams identified her as Kit Deverell, an agent with Lassiter’s agency. There was a profane curse.

Gruber said that he’d assigned a man to get rid of Cord Romero because he was helping a friend in a government agency investigate an illegal immigrant smuggling operation in Miami that could link Gruber to Global Enterprises. A bomb had been planted and Cord had been diverted to defuse it. Sadly it hadn’t killed him. Now they had to take care of Romero before he came at them again. Even blind, he was formidable and he never gave up. It wouldn’t be a bad idea, Gruber added, to take out Maggie Barton, as well. The Lassiter Agency was too high-profile to target, it would get the Texas Rangers involved as well as the Houston police if they tried. But Romero was a different proposition, and accidents did happen. They could target his foster sister and make Romero think twice about opposing them. He knew a man who could assist them, a professional.