Hunt Me (Love Thieves #3) (17 page)

“No. He promised, Kitten….”

Her chest squeezed in sympathy. “I know, but he lied. The viscount is a thief, Grandpa. A thief and a liar and a cheat. But it doesn’t matter.”

“It does. I wanted to fix it for you, fix your mama, and make sure when I finally kick off you aren’t left with my bad luck.”

She sighed. “Grandpa, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I—” She stopped trying to fumble the explanation and bent down to open the box inside the bag. Nestled carefully amongst the packing materials, the golden Buddha winked up at her. It was cool to the touch, the metal smooth, almost liquid satin in its softness. Made from pure gold, the monetary value of the Buddha was incalculable—but the wealth wasn’t what her Grandfather wanted nor was it why she’d devoted so many man-hours in the last year to getting it back for him.

“I have something for you, Grandpa.” She set it on the bed between them. Taking his hand, she wrapped his gnarled fingers around the Buddha’s hip, his fingertips brushing its belly.

“It’s—” He wheezed, pulling himself upright before she could stop him. He lifted the statue and stared at it, the exhaustion and grief in his face transforming to something rapturous. All the worry and anxiety in her gut washed away as he began to smile. “This is the Buddha, Kitten. You have to rub its belly.”

“I’m fine, Grandpa. You rub his belly.” She’d held the Buddha a half-dozen times this year. Each time it weighed more heavily on her soul. She wanted to grant him this last wish and then she would take it home. Correction, she and Jarod would take it home.

“I’m sorry,” Sebastian whispered, but he wasn’t talking to her. His gaze remained fixed on the Buddha in his hand. “I’m really sorry I tried to take you, and I left you all behind. Please forgive my family and make it better for them.”

Tears gathered in her eyes, and she fought a losing effort to keep them from escaping. Sebastian leaned back against the pillows, cradling the Buddha like a baby. “It will be okay for you now, Kitten—” He wheezed a long, raspy breath at the end of the word and stopped.

Kit jerked up and looked at the machines, which screamed an alarm. Swinging her gaze back, she found Sebastian’s eyes were closed and his face relaxed. “No. Come on, Grandpa. No….”

The door flung open, and a pair of nurses came in. They ushered her back from the bed. One nurse plucked the statue out of her grandfather’s hands and passed it to her. She took it, holding it loosely as she watched in numbed shock. Sebastian Kant died with a smile on his face, the ache of more than fifty years of grief eased from his expression.

After ten minutes, a doctor walked in and called it. He murmured apologies; so did the nurses. They talked to her, but she didn’t hear them. She could only see her grandfather’s beatific expression and hear the quiet joy in his voice. She’d lost the last year of his life to this Don Quixote quest, but she couldn’t deny him the last chance to right what he felt went so horribly wrong.

The Buddha warmed under her touch, but the rest of the room faded. The voices of the doctor and the nurses drifted past her from a great distance. She nodded when they paused, and shook their hands. All the arrangements for the funeral home were in his file. They would take care of everything. They finally left her alone, and she moved with wooden slowness to store the Buddha back in its box. If she never saw the damn thing again, it would be too soon.

His cheek was cool when she bent to press a last kiss to it. “Good-bye, Grandpa. I hope, wherever you are, you’re happy again.” A hot tear escaped, and she swiped at it. She wanted to stay here and hold his hand, but he was gone, and what good would it do him anymore? Straightening, she picked up the bag and tried to memorize the peace in his expression. She wanted to hold onto the last memory—for both of them.

Leaving his room, she walked up the hallway, blinded by her tears. More nurses came out. One patted her arm, another rubbed her shoulder, and a third—a stout woman who’d attended her grandfather from his admission to the hospice eighteen months before—gave her a hug. Kit murmured some appropriate words to each, accepting their condolences before moving on to the next wave. The sunshine blinded her as she walked outside, but she didn’t reach for her sunglasses.

It took every ounce of her willpower to put one foot in front of the other. She was almost to the car when a man stepped into her path. She looked up to see a stranger, his hand outstretched to take the bag in her hand. She stared at him numbly, but he never touched her or the bag. Jarod’s arm snaked around the assailant’s neck, and the man grunted and slowly went to the ground, unconscious.

Jarod tugged the man behind a line of bushes and came back to her. “Kit Kat?”

She sighed and burrowed into his arms, giving him the bag and letting her tears fall.

“Jarod, Louis duMonde knows my grandfather. Grandpa…Grandpa blamed himself for a heist gone wrong a long time ago. He’d known duMonde since his teen years, and he used to mentor him. When he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, he called duMonde and told him how to get the Buddha. He has to know where I am going.” Kit told him the whole story, including her involvement after duMonde failed to deliver the item as promised. After tracing the artifact, she’d followed Louis and the item from Morocco to Geneva. Later, she found the information on Anya in his safe and left it for her, taking only the statue. It only took pulling a few strings to get the Buddha into the States using a museum, but, like her, Louis’s training came from her grandfather. He’d anticipated the move.

He’d turned a curator at the museum and sent his men to claim the piece before she could. It was when Kit used her friendship with Pietr to befriend Sophie and cultivate her own connection. When the Buddha ended up in police evidence, she charmed her way in and sent it out via the internal post system. Packages entering a police station were scanned—not those leaving.

All she wanted was to grant a dying man his last request. If Louis knew about the hospice, he didn’t doubt the Frenchman would have men waiting for her. He’d sent her in—scouting ahead first to deal with the two men in the lobby. She’d picked up a tail on her drive in, and he’d dealt with those men while she bid her grandfather good-bye.

Another pair were sleeping off a cocktail of sedatives in the stairwell.

The seventh, and final, now lay under a bush. Jarod sent a text to an asset and let the man get the Bakersfield police to pick these men up. He ushered Kit back into the car and stowed the bag in the backseat. When she fell silent, he let her cry and held her hand when her tears turned to hiccups and finally to empty despair.

The loss of a parent or a grandparent was not an easy burden. She’d focused so much of her energy on giving the old one man his last wish she’d hidden from the grief of losing him. He kept a wary eye on the rearview mirror, but no one followed them. As for duMonde, he was on a plane, confident his men would snatch the Buddha back for him. The bastard had likely already arranged an alibi.

“In the early 1970s, the Cold War was in full force, and agencies on both sides of the pond worked to outsmart the other.” He turned onto the freeway and headed for the airport and her private plane. She would come back for the funeral, but, for now, he wanted her off the ground in Los Angeles and away from any other messengers Louis might send until he dealt with the viscount. “My father was an up-and-coming analyst. He discovered a group of foreign agents communicating via rare book auctions. They would hide the messages on the blank pages in invisible ink—one agent would put it up for auction and another would purchase it. He intercepted more than a dozen before he broke the code.”

She sniffled and let go of his hand to claim some tissues from her bag. “What did he do with them?” There she was. Beneath the layers of sadness and regret, his Kit Kat began to rouse.

“He turned a report into his superiors, but they didn’t see how they could use it to their advantage. My father suggested swapping one set of coded books out, intercepting them and replacing them with the dummy information.”

“They could control the information flow and learn where they had leaks.” She dabbed at her eyes.

“Exactly. He got a job at a rare book dealer and used the cover to handle the intercepts. He also got to know one of the agents who bought many of the books—a literature professor at a local university. When she came to auction, he always replaced whatever book she purchased with one of the coded ones he created…and one day, she brought in a coded one of her own to auction.” Jarod smiled. Even amidst all the moves and countermoves, his father took the time to engage in a whimsical courtship. “He took the book she’d put up for auction, replaced it with another, tagged it with an isotope so they could track it. Later, he translated her book.”

“I’m going to assume the message was important.”

“It was. You see, in all the books she’d purchased, he’d included a second coded message. The first time, it was an introduction of sorts—a compliment to her beauty. Later, they were notes about the classes she taught and her interest in Renaissance writing. He knew everything about her—because he studied her—and he fell in love.” He glanced sideways at her. Kit’s mouth opened, but no words came out. “Now, remember, it’s the cold war and consorting between agents happened but were also grounds for treason. He was very circumspect in his letters, never revealing his identity.”

“And the one she sent back?” She latched onto the single, critical fact.

“A thank you for all his kind thoughts, but because of her work and her conflicted commitments, she didn’t have much to offer.” It was an opening, an access point his father could leverage. “He waited a week and set up another book drop. This time, he didn’t wait for her superior’s orders to come in, he’d already figured out most of the system. When she bought the book, she received the information he’d like to help her with the conflict. He could fix it for her…but she had to trust him.”

Engaged in the story, Kit leaned forward and stared at him. “And?”

“And he walked into the director’s office and pitched to him the benefits of turning a foreign agent and helping her defect. He cited all of her skills and qualifications and the fact that in every book he’d intercepted from her over the last year, she left out key data her superiors would have wanted—data she had to have access to.”

“She was sabotaging her own mission.”

“More or less.” Jarod nodded. “At first, the director was reluctant. He required three tests of loyalty.”

“And she passed them.” Kit sniffled, but her confidence didn’t waver.

“Yes, she did, but the director decided it would be better to turn her and send her back. That way she could provide information to the agency. My father disliked the idea, and when the director wouldn’t change his mind, he warned the other agent as long as her cover remained intact—and she could safely return—they were going to ask her to.”

She sucked in a little breath, and her fingers tightened against his. “What did she do?”

“She sent a blatant lie in her next coded message home. My father replaced it then took the evidence to the director. He told him the agent would rather die than go back, so she’d begun to dig her own grave. If they wanted to take advantage of her skill set, they needed to take her out of play.”

“And they did?”

Jarod laughed softly at the impatience creeping into her voice. “Yes, it took a few more such messages and threats on both sides, but, eventually, the director caved. My father sold her a book with a single message in it—a date and location.” He lifted Kit’s hand and kissed a knuckle lightly.

“And?” She tugged her hand away and pinched him. Sadness still lingered in her gaze, but she sounded more like herself.

“And, he met her for dinner at a little French bistro in Washington D.C. By the end of their meal, he’d asked her to marry him and she said yes. An hour before she walked into the agency to turn herself in, they signed their marriage license.”

“Oooh,” Kit breathed. “She’s your mother?”

“Yes, she is.” Delighted at how swiftly she’d caught on, he grinned at her. “The director was furious, and they demoted Dad. He nearly got tossed out entirely, but they both knew the game, and they knew how to make it work. But what my mother and the director never understood was, from the moment he had her file, Dad fell in love with her. He knew he was going to get her out, and he’d only needed the time and the leverage to do it.”

“That’s so romantic.”

He laughed again. “That’s what my mom says.”

“Doesn’t your father think it’s romantic?” she demanded, her red-rimmed eyes sparkling.

“No. He considers it a success.” He claimed her hand for another kiss.

She laughed and leaned over to press a kiss to his cheek. “It’s still romantic.”

“I’m sure it is. You can argue the point with him when you meet them.” He gauged her reaction from the corner of his eye.

Her sweet mouth curved into a delighted smile. “You want to introduce me to your parents?”

“I do.”

She was silent long enough to give him pause, and then she gave him a smug look. “You know that’s worth a point, right?”

He sighed. “Yes, darling. It’s worth a point. Eight-six, it is.”

“Eight?” she protested. “When did it become eight?”

One week later…

The Viscount duMonde glared at the news on his digital tablet. The return of
The
Fortunate Buddha
to the temple in Thailand made the wires. The artifact’s history and its recent ties to a pair of murders in New York were listed in the sidebar. He flexed his right hand; the bruise from his encounter at their airport still made his fingers twitch. He picked up the wine glass with his left and drained the contents. His waiter strolled over the moment he finished and set down a fresh glass, clearing away the empty.

“Is there anything else I can get you, sir?” The man’s practiced tone edged on the patronizing, but his helpful expression settled Louis’ ire. He shook his head and waved the man away. He would spend his afternoon getting drunk. The men he’d left to fetch the Buddha sat in a jail in Bakersfield, California, and two were threatening to roll over on him. It would cost, but they would be silenced.