Paradise Burning (23 page)

With carefully contrived nonchalance he
arrived in Mandy’s office just as she was tossing her cardigan
sweater into a corner of the counter. “I’ve stopped counting
birthdays,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound as awkward and
defensive as he felt, “but I don’t mind celebrating. How about
joining me for dinner tomorrow? I was thinking The Pelican. Great
view of the gulf.”

Mandy looked him over from head to toe, slow
and penetrating as an X-ray. “Not too bad for a day short of
thirty-seven,” she pronounced. “How does it feel, old man?”

“
Like one more word and you may have to
run for it.”

Mandy flashed a smirk. “Okay, big boy, you
asked of it. I’ll cook. My RV, seven o’clock.”

Not even Peter’s surge of pleasure at
Mandy’s invitation could dull his shock. “Uh, that’s okay, Mouse.
No need to fuss. You’ll, uh, love the view at The Pelican,” he
stammered. Mandy gave him Eleanor’s glassy stare.
Damn!

“
I took a course,” she informed him
stonily. “I’ll go easy on the arsenic. No gulf view, but we can
walk down to the river after supper.”

Thumb over his big mouth, Peter eyed his wife
warily. “You learned to cook?”

“
Scared you won’t make it to
thirty-seven plus one?”

“
Why?”

“
Why what?”

“
Why did you learn to cook? I presume
AKA hasn’t started starving its employees.”

Mandy shrugged and swung her chair around,
presenting her back.

“
Mandy?”

She ducked her head, her words little more
than a defiant whisper. “You . . . you used to make fun of me. Said
I wasn’t a real woman—”

Oh, shit!
“I
was only teasing, Mouse.”

“
But you were right. I was about as
one-dimensional as a girl could get. Mega computer nerd. Learning
to cook seemed a good place to start branching out.”

Why was he standing here questioning
his good fortune? Mandy had just invited him to her RV. Even if the
food was inedible, she’d opened a crack in her armor. He was
in
.

Peter made a formal bow. “Mrs. Pennington,
may I say that I would be delighted to accept your invitation to
dinner tomorrow night.”

The doorbell rang.

No need to look at the wallet badge being
held up by the man standing outside Peter’s front door. Dark suit
and tie, the face of the boy-next-door turned forty, serene blue
eyes only slightly dimmed by the weariness of the world, a physique
only an eighteen-year-old might challenge in a foot race. The FBI
had arrived.

“
Special Agent Doug Chalmers,” the
visitor said, his face lighting in a remarkably attractive smile as
Peter invited him in. Several minutes later, coffee cups in hand,
the three sat in the living room, the air alive with
speculation.

“
Brad gave me a translation of the
recording,” Chalmers explained, “and it certainly has a ring of
authenticity. I understand you’re the contact here, Mandy. Would
you mind telling me the whole thing from the beginning?”

Mandy began with her surprise at catching her
first glimpse of an indistinct figure on the far bank of the river
where, she’d been told, nobody lived. How her exploration of the
area beyond the small settlement of homes upriver had deadended
against a chain link fence, barbed wire, and a militant
Middle-Eastern male. Enough for even a newcomer to sense a
mystery.

Chalmers gave Mandy an encouraging smile.
“That could do it. Go on.”

“
I decided to be nosy,” Mandy admitted.
“I took a row boat upriver and found this truly lovely girl—long
blond hair, blue eyes, wearing a flowing white caftan—sitting on a
log in the middle of nowhere. She was Russian, with only a little
English
. Voilà!
An exponential
increase in my mystery.”

Mandy continued with Garrett Whitlaw’s
explanation about the old house on the ranch’s outer boundary,
followed by Nadya’s sudden disappearance. “I told myself she was
just another visitor. She’d gone home, and that was that. Mandy
paused, her closed fist slicing the air in frustration. “I was a
thick-headed idiot. I deserted her. Yuri could have beaten her to
death, and no one would ever know.”

“
Not your fault . . .”

“
How many times do I have to tell you .
. .” Peter growled.

“
I have to go back,” Mandy insisted.
“I’ve got to tell her we’re going to help.”

“
No way,” Peter said.

“
Well,” Chalmers hedged, “I’m afraid
that might be a problem. “You’ve got to face the fact that Nadya
and Karim are lovers, however weird their relationship. As much as
she says she hates what’s she’s doing, I didn’t hear any signals
that she hates her jailer. If you recall, she actually made excuses
for him. There’s no way we can be certain she won’t give the whole
show away.”

“
But—”

“
You can’t go back.” Peter at his most
intransigent.

“
We can’t just leave her there thinking
she’s been deserted!”

“
Okay,” Chalmers soothed, “let me see
what I can work out. “There’s enough small plane and ’copter
traffic around here so we ought to be able to get some pretty good
photos of the terrain without raising suspicion. I’ll study the
situation, see if I can find any justification for letting your
girl know the cavalry’s on the alert.” The FBI agent favored Mandy
with his most reassuring smile. “Will that do?” he
inquired.

“
For the moment,” she conceded
grudgingly. Mandy could feel, if not hear, sighs of relief from her
two companions. Her spine stiffened, her head came up.
“Nadya
asked
for help, begged
for help. You heard her. I don’t understand how you can leave her
hanging on a limb. It must be some kind of male ego that makes a
man think a woman is controlled solely by her hormones.”

Peter glared. Special Agent Chalmers stared
fixedly at the high polish of his shoes.

A few minutes later, as Chalmers backed
his car out of the driveway, Peter turned on his wife. “You will
not, repeat
not
, go back over
there.”

“
You expect me to disobey a direct
order from the FBI?” Mandy’s eyes were wide and
innocent.

“
I know that Jeffrey Armitage’s
daughter is capable of doing anything she damn well
pleases.”

“
Oh.” Mandy almost let her inner glow
shine past her frown. It was perhaps the finest compliment she had
ever had. But was it true? She had been raised to do daring things
with her mind, not plunge into actual physical danger. Martial arts
training and a remarkable gift for target shooting would be of
little use against hardened members of a prostitution ring. So it
made sense to let the FBI agent try it his way. At least for a
while.

Mandy reached up and patted her husband’s
cheek. “I’ll give him a few days,” she promised.

At her condescending tone, Peter’s amber eyes
flared in protest before his jaw clenched over whatever he had been
going to say. With a martyred sigh trailing behind him, he headed
upstairs to his cupola.

After watching Peter’s back until he
disappeared, Mandy found her way to the computer room on autopilot,
where her knees gave way and she sank into the chair in front of
her screen, Doug Chalmer’s visit superseded by even greater
evidence of her own insanity.

Hell had frozen over. Or her dinner
invitation to Peter was an illusion, a chimera born of pain and
anxieties that had caught up with her at last, spinning her into
madness.

She was the daughter of Jeffrey Armitage and
Eleanor Kingsley, her strong roots planted in a reality as solid as
New England granite. So if her mouth had opened and an invitation
to dinner had poured out, she must have meant it.

Which was a lot of bricks shy of a load. Just
plain nuts. She had a hard enough time dealing with Peter’s pull on
her senses when sharing a nine-room house. But a thirty-foot RV? At
night?

Even Jeff and Eleanor couldn’t have set up a
more well-crafted scenario for seduction. And she’d done it without
planning, without thought. Just opened her mouth and the words
popped out.

She really must have wanted to show Peter she
could cook.

Ha! It was
her
goose that was cooked. And she had no one to
blame but herself.

Melinda Mary Carlson, age five, opened her
eyes to darkness. Night, not morning. Voices. Loud voices. Melinda
Mary clenched her small fists, squeezed her eyes tight shut. Mommy.
Daddy. Yelling. Fighting? Her friend Kimmie’s parents fought,
Kimmie had told her so. But not hers. Well, almost never.

Jessie!
Slitting her eyes open, Melinda Mary peeked at the room’s
second small bed, where her three-year-old sister slept peacefully.
Good. Melinda Mary’s tummy was kinda sick. Jessie didn’t need to
feel that way too.

Louder. Real loud. Melinda Mary pulled the
covers over her head. Daddy sounded like a roaring lion. Mommy
sounded . . . scared.

Shaking, Melinda Mary crawled out of bed,
crossed the room by the faint glow of her butterfly nightlight,
opened the door. She crept down the short hallway toward the living
room.

The shouting stopped. Carefully, she stuck
her head around the corner of the opening that led to the living
room. A great sob of relief shook her. Mommy was alone. She looked
sad, sitting on the couch with her head in her hands, but Daddy had
gone away. No more shouting. She could go to Mommy, give her a hug
. . .

Daddy came out of the kitchen. There was
something in his hand. Mommy started to run. So did Melinda Mary.
All the way back to her room, where she slammed the door, jumped
into bed, and lay very still, pretending to be asleep. A good girl.
Always a good girl.

Back in the living room, Mommy wasn’t so
lucky.

One scream, and all was silent.

There was a limit to how fast a full-time
research assistant could shop for a birthday present, bake a cake,
and put together a gourmet meal. After considering her options,
Mandy decided to order the cake from a local bakery, where her
special instructions left the baker’s eyes gleaming at the prospect
of a new design.

Unfortunately . . . Mandy stared blankly at
the three-tiered wedding cake on top of the bakery display case. A
graceful waterfall of white roses, beginning at the feet of the
classic bride and groom on top, tumbled down the side of the cake,
bringing a rush of memories.

Oh, hell . . .

They’d had a grand Boston society wedding,
her gown from a world-famous bridal couturière on Newbury Street,
the guest list ranging from Boston Brahmins to the academic elite
of Harvard, MIT, and Peter’s alma mater, Boston University. A
reception on the top floor of the Copley, with rivers of champagne,
mountains of food, and music by the finest wedding band in New
England.

Gone in sixty seconds. Or so it had
seemed.

She’d been too young, too indoctrinated into
her parents’ dream. Her world too narrow, too isolated. She’d taken
one look at Peter, back in her early teens, and never questioned
that after she graduated from college, she would marry Jeff’s
hand-picked heir apparent, and they’d all live happily at AKA
forever after.

Put like that, no wonder Peter headed for the
hills. And how perfectly lowering—mortifying, in fact—that it had
taken Eleanor to roust her out of the hole she’d dug for herself
and shove her back into Peter’s life.

“
Will there be anything else, miss?”
The bakery clerk was patiently waiting, holding out Mandy’s copy of
her order slip.

“
Ah, no, thank you. I’ll pick it up
around four tomorrow.” Mandy slunk off for home. Hopefully, an
early morning trip to Golden Beach’s Art Center would take care of
Peter’s gift. As for the meal . . . Mandy sighed. Peter would
probably prefer steak, baked potato, and green salad, but how could
she show off with that?

She had, after all, packed her recipe books.
Every last one of them.

Shoulders back, eyes front, arms swinging in
cadence at his side, Major Karim Shirazi strode toward the chain
link fence. The branches of the trees on both sides of the road met
overhead, providing a leafy canopy that allowed only intermittent
flashes of sunlight to filter through. It wasn’t much, his daily
walk—a half mile down, a half mile back—but it helped curb his
restless energy, his driving need to get out of a house that stank
of sex and smoke. And prison.

A prison that was his as much as the
girls’.

There were no bombs here, no guns, tanks,
RPGs. No shattered houses, splintered bodies. He should throw
himself onto his knees and thank Allah for deliverance instead of .
. .

He broke out of the tree canopy, the chain
link gate directly in front of him. In the distance a great cloud
of charcoal smoke billowed into the sky, blotting out the bright
Florida blue that usually met his gaze when he entered the
clearing. Karim swore. Fire. And close, not more than a mile or
two.

There had been enough wildfires on the TV
news to make him instantly aware of the danger. Did they need to
run? Who to call for information? Certainly not the police.

With a rhythmic roar a chopper flew low
overhead. The instincts of a soldier urged him to dive for the
ground. Stoically keeping his feet, Karim watched the helicopter
race toward the fire, a huge bucket dangling on a long rope beneath
its body. The chopper was so low the bucket seemed to skim the
treetops.