Forced Disappearance (20 page)

“Not anymore.” Oscar Danning’s seventy-five percent controlling interest had been equally divided between his two sons and his widow after his death, each receiving twenty-five percent. Cesar’s own twenty-five percent was now equal to all the others. “You’re an equal partner.”

“In a company that should be mine.” His jaw tightened. “Don’t do me any favors.” He practically spit the words.

Glenn stared. If he died, his shares would be split between his mother and brother. When Cesar married Gloria, he would assume control of her and her vote handily. She’d follow his advice even more than she did now. Tyler would be the only one to stand against him, but by controlling Gloria’s shares, Cesar would effectively have majority control. All decisions would be his.

“You had your chance.” Cesar motioned for him to step back even farther.

Glenn did, bending to avoid the propellers. If he could get into the helicopter, he could lift off, maybe, before a bullet hit him.

“You brought this upon yourself.” Cesar put his other hand on the gun and spread his feet, took aim. “If
you’d
stayed with Victoria, your shares, along with mine, would have gone to the son you would have had. Fifty percent in the hands of a Montilla. I would have been satisfied with that.”

Glenn took another step back. Cesar meant to shoot him, then escape in the chopper. Maybe take his body and drop it into the ocean. It’d take time, but eventually Glenn would be declared dead. Then Cesar would gain the power he craved.

But instead of squeezing the trigger, Cesar said, “Get in.”

Did he plan on carrying out the murder over water? The bullet hole in the chopper would point the finger at him. Maybe he’d just push his victim out over the open water, too far from shore to swim back.

Yet there was a flaw in the plan. In the close quarters of the chopper, Glenn could overpower him. Hope reared its stubborn head.

He opened the door and stepped up, waiting for Cesar to get behind the controls.

But the man stayed on the ground. “Go!” he shouted. “In a couple of hundred yards, the chopper will lose power and you go down. Whether you are over a populated area at that point or over water is your choice. Don’t bother trying to call for help. The radio is disabled.”

Cold sweat rolled down Glenn’s back. “And if I refuse to fly?”

“I shoot you right here. I’ll make sure it’ll look like the work of environmentalist extremists.”

“They wouldn’t. I cancelled the Florida oil rig contract.”

“I reinstated it this afternoon and issued a press release to go public tomorrow morning. Florida is good for our bottom line.”

“But that’s not the direction the company is going.” They’d agreed to diversify into renewable energy.

“It is now.” Cesar’s expression stayed somber.

He had a weapon. Glenn had nothing.

Or . . . He was sitting in a potential weapon, actually. He closed the door and went through the preflight check, registered the alarms that told him everything wasn’t as it should have been. But Cesar had told him he had a few hundred yards in the air. He only needed a couple of feet.

He lifted the bird into the air, but instead of banking to the left and taking off towards the harbor, he stayed low and drifted toward Cesar, turned so he could get between the traitor and the door to the staircase, then he herded the bastard toward the edge of the roof.

The first bullet hit the windshield but missed him. So did the second. Glenn pushed forward. If a bullet hit the fuel tank, the game would be over in a hurry. The chopper was an imprecise weapon, while the handgun wasn’t.

But as Cesar dropped on his stomach and aimed again, his arm jerked, red spreading on his shoulder.

Glenn glanced back, just in time to catch sight of Miranda dashing forward from the elevator, head down, her weapon aimed. He set the bird down a safe distance from her, then ran to help because Cesar was now shooting at her.

Chapter 17

MIRANDA STOOD AT
the edge of the roof, looking over the lights of Baltimore and the harbor, while Glenn talked to the last remaining police officer by the elevator. They’d taken Cesar away in handcuffs, but her body was still buzzing with adrenaline. The scene that had greeted her when she’d opened the door to the roof had about stopped her heart.

She’d pushed aside all emotion to enter the combat situation, but now those emotions were rushing back and stealing her breath.

She was in love with Glenn. She was no longer the clueless young woman, a fish out of water, insecure, like she’d been in college. She hadn’t known her own mind. Hell, she hadn’t known herself. And still, giving him up hurt like hell.

But this time around . . . The thought of giving him up again felt as if she was trying to rip her own heart out of her chest. She wasn’t sure she could do what she had to do here.

Glenn came up behind her, put his arms around her, and pulled her against his chest, holding her tightly against him. “They’re all gone. Cesar will be officially charged in the morning.”

She sagged against him, soaking up his presence.

“How did you know?” he asked next to her ear.

“We use the tools we have. Cesar had Venezuela.”

He pressed a kiss against her temple. “God, I love your brain.”

Her heart leapt.

“You saved my life again,” he said.

“We all have some bad habits. I’ll try to quit this one. I didn’t mean to hover.”

“I want you in my life.”

“You’re just saying that because you think I’m cheaper than a full-time bodyguard. Which you seem to need, by the way.”

“I’m serious.”

She turned to face him, wishing that things could be different between them. “You know why that’s not possible.”

“I don’t care about your past.”

“But the media and your future constituents will.”

“I want you more than I want future constituents.”

“Don’t ever say that in front of Gloria,” she advised. “She’ll have a heart attack.”

“I love my mother.” He flashed her a level look. “But my entire life can’t be about pleasing her, or about the company, or about a possible future in politics.”

“You could help a lot of people.”

“I can help a lot of people without becoming a politician. The way Washington is gridlocked these days, I can probably do more from the outside than from the inside.”

“Your grandfather was a senator.”

“I’m proud of him. I’m pretty sure he’d be proud of me no matter what I decide. He was big on common sense. And nothing makes more sense than to marry the woman I love.”

Her heart thumped against her ribcage. His words made her dizzy. “I have to go to Hong Kong. I should be getting to the airport.”

“We’ll take the corporate jet.”

“You have to stay here.” She gestured vaguely. “You have to talk to your mother and your brother. Victoria.” She still didn’t know how she felt about his ex-wife. “Cesar is going to be big news. You have to be here to deal with the press, the board of directors, and the rest.”

“The one thing I learned in Venezuela is that Tyler can manage pretty well without me. My absence forced him to step up to the plate.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll need to stay in Hong Kong.”

“We’ll make further plans once we know. If I have to fly back, I’ll fly back. But right now, I intend to spend a couple of uninterrupted hours with you, even if I can only get them over the Atlantic.”

He had his determined face on. She was too emotionally exhausted to argue with him. “I need to go back to D.C., finish packing, grab my laptop.”

“I need to file flight plans.” He kissed her forehead. “We’ll take the jet down to the airport in D.C. I’ll meet you there in two hours?”

She nodded.

The rest—the ride back home, the packing—passed in a blur. She was on the Danning Enterprises corporate jet before she knew it, sitting on a comfortable white leather sofa across from Glenn, a bottle of red wine on the table between them.

“Do you like it?” he asked, his eyes serious, as if her response was important to him.

“Not that different from military transport,” she said bland-faced. But then she grinned. “It’s seriously over the top, you know that, right?”

He was silent. Worried that she wouldn’t approve?

“Of course I love it,” she said. “Good grief, I could live on this plane and I don’t even like flying.”

And then he smiled at her.

Which she ruined by saying, “I still don’t think I could ever get comfortable with your lifestyle. How do you end up with a private jet?”

He frowned. “One thing leads to another.”

She couldn’t help a small laugh. “Most people say things like that about doughnuts or Girl Scout cookies.”

“I’m not most people.” Now he sounded displeased.

“I noticed that.”

“We’re not that different.”

God, this was hopeless. He refused to acknowledge the gorge between them. Desperation mixed with exhaustion inside her. It had to be past midnight. She stifled a yawn.

He pushed to his feet, then sat down at the end of her couch and drew her into his arms. “Sleep. You need to work in the morning. I’ll wake you when we stop in Vienna to refuel.”

She hesitated only for a moment. Sleep was easier than trying to come up with ways to convince him that they didn’t have a future, especially when she so desperately wanted things to be different.

She put her feet up and curled up with her head on his thigh. She was not going to be the reason he gave up the political future he’d spent his life working for. They’d finish their talk in Vienna. Then they’d go their separate ways. The only sensible course of action. She told herself that a couple of times to push back against the misery that descended on her.

He reached down and brushed the hair out of her face, then left his arm draped around her. She fell asleep like that, enveloped in his comfort and his scent, his warmth surrounding her.

She slept all the way to Vienna, where they stopped for refueling.

“Want to go out into the city?” he asked, and she wondered if he’d slept at all. If he had, it couldn’t have been too comfortable.

“I’ve never been to Vienna,” she confessed. “How much longer to Hong Kong?”

“Eight hours.”

She glanced at her clothes, all wrinkled. “I should probably change if we’re going out in public.” She could brush her teeth in the bathroom, but what she really wanted was a shower.

He must have read her mind because he said, “While you were sleeping, I called ahead and got us a hotel room. In case you wanted to spend a few hours here. There’s something I’d like you to see.”

He was being all mysterious. She raised an eyebrow.

“It’s an engineering thing.”

“I don’t like it when people try to use my weaknesses against me.” But she was smiling. “Okay. Show me this Viennese engineering wonder.”

A quick phone call and a hired car, a gleaming black Mercedes-Benz, came for them to the airport. The chauffeur drove them to the Empress Hotel, a luxury hotel decorated in gold and white marble inside and out, the lobby all palm trees, mirrors, and crystal chandeliers.

The manager greeted Glenn by name, and the porter just about bowed as he escorted them up the elevator.

They went straight to the top, into the Empress Suite that stole her breath away. “Wow. Seriously?”

The suite occupied at least half of the top floor, had glass walls on three sides, the city of Vienna sprawling before them, the Danube River a blue ribbon through it. Palaces, churches, bridges. She could only gape at the beauty of the architecture.

“Glenn, this is . . .” She turned.

“Over the top? Like the jet?”

“Way over.”

He sighed dramatically, mischief glinting in his eyes. “Then you’re really not going to like what I want to show you next.”

Something more elaborate than this? She couldn’t imagine.

But he enfolded her hand in his and drew her to a different, smaller elevator door at the other end of the suite. The door opened at the push of the button. They went up one more level.

“The roof?” She wasn’t keen on roofs at the moment. She’d almost lost Glenn on a roof in Baltimore just hours ago. But when the doors opened, the sight that greeted her rendered her speechless.

A smile teased Glenn’s masculine lips as he drew her forward, into the glass-and-steel conservatory. The shape resembled the scaled-down version of a European cathedral, except the walls and ceiling were all glass.

In the middle, what looked like a natural pond—the size of an Olympic pool—reflected the rising sun. The incredible blue of the water played off the lush greens of the palm trees that edged the walls. A stone shower stood at one end next to a shelf filled with white bath towels. A wrought-iron table sat in the other corner with a couple of chairs, a fancy cappuccino machine on the shelf behind it.

“The pool house goes with the Empress Suite,” he said. “It’s ours. The regular hotel elevators don’t come this high.”

“I thought we were just going someplace to shower and change, have a light breakfast.”

“We did. We came here.”

“I don’t even want to know what you’re paying for this.”

His smile widened. “I get a discount. Don’t worry about it.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why do you get a discount?”

“Because I designed this.” A proud grin sat on his face. “One hundred percent energy neutral. Solar power runs the heating, cooling, pool pumps, everything. Recycled steel frame. Green building concepts. Before my father died, I was thinking about making these and starting my own business. Then I had to take on more responsibility at the company, so I sold the design. This is the prototype. The hotel bought it from me.”

She kept staring around. “It’s incredible.” Then a faint memory tugged in the back of her mind. “Wait a minute.” Excitement shot through her. “It’s the palm house!” Except way more elaborate.

When they’d been at MIT, they participated in a contest to design a palm house for the Boston Public Garden. Their design had been very similar to this, except Glenn seemed to have solved some problems that they didn’t have the right technology for back then.

“I named it the Miranda.” He watched for her reaction.

Her heart twirled in a pirouette inside her chest.

She moved forward, drank it all in, tried to remember the exact details of the blueprint and small-scale prototype they’d put together. They hadn’t won the contest, but they’d spent a ton of time together during the project and became lovers.

The palm trees were just like the plastic model ones she’d used, except much bigger and beautiful. The banana palms even had bananas growing on them.

“It reminds me of the rainforest in Venezuela.” The soft sounds of the water circulating in the pool sounded like the creeks they’d come across. “All it’s missing is our bamboo sleeping platform.”

He grinned and led her to a stand of trees at the far end. An antique fainting couch, made of bamboo and upholstered in a traditional print, stood in the middle, looking like it came from some British colony a hundred years ago. The perfect place for a nap.

“What do you think?”

She oohed at the sight of the lush greenery around her, then turned back to the pool, the city in the background. “It’s magnificent.”

He looked pretty magnificent himself, his wide shoulders emphasized by dappled sunlight, his brown hair tousled. He was his healthy self again, looked nothing like the gaunt fugitive she’d found in Santa Elena.

She wanted to throw herself into his arms. Instead, she turned from him to walk back toward the water.

He followed after her. “Stay here with me. Just for a day and a night.”

“I can’t.”

He stepped forward and turned her toward him. “Stay with me forever.”

“Don’t you ever give up?”

“Not on you. Not ever again.” His long fingers slid down her arms to take her hands. “Tell me that you have no feelings for me.”

She closed her eyes for a second. “My feelings don’t matter.”

“They matter to me. If you don’t think what we have is worth fighting for, if this is not what you want, I’ll let you walk away. I’ll hate it, but I’ll step back. But if you’re turning your back on what we could be from some sense of nobility, wanting to give me what you think I should have . . .” He pulled her against his chest and reached under her chin with a finger to tilt her face up to his. “That’s bullshit.”

The heat in his eyes fogged up her brain. She needed to make a logical, convincing argument here, but her thoughts wouldn’t line up. “I want you to be all that you can be.”

“I appreciate that. But we’re talking about the rest of our lives. It’s a little more complicated than an army recruiting slogan.”

“What do you want?” She turned the tables on him. Maybe if he spoke his plans for his future out loud, he would see, at last, how incompatible they were with her.

“I want you. Above all. I want to spend today in the city with you and tonight here under the stars. And then I want to spend the rest of our lives together, as many days and nights as our work will let us have. Unless you’re ready to retire with me right now and spend the rest of our lives in bed. I can hand the company off to my brother.”

Ha! Like he would ever give up the company.

Would he?

She wouldn’t want him to, she realized. The family company was part of who he was. She liked who he was. And she didn’t want to give up her work either.

“I like my new job.” Not that his idea didn’t sound incredibly tempting. But she couldn’t see herself as a kept woman. It wasn’t who she was.

“All right. You marry me and you can keep your job.” He brushed his warm lips against hers, then pulled back far enough so he could look into her eyes. “But you’re not allowed to fall in love with any other man that you go off to save. I want to be clear about that.”

She smiled. Her heart was so full of him, she didn’t think there could be room for anyone else. “You’re not the boss of me,” she said, just so he wouldn’t get a fat head.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I’m an independent woman. I don’t need a man to complete me.”