Sure as Hell (7 page)

“Yeah,” he said. “Pull the tape. And Linus, I want to talk with your team, too. Directly, I mean.” He saw the hurt and confusion pass over the tech guru’s face. “It’s not personal. It’s my dad.”

A pause, then Linus nodded. “Sure. Of course. You won’t find anything, though.”

“I know,” Dante said. Linus was one of the best computer security geeks in the business, and if he said the communications were clean, then Dante believed him. “But I have to look.”

“Anything else you need me to do for you?” Linus asked, everything about his posture and tone of voice suggesting that he understood completely where Dante was coming from. Maybe he’d been offended for a moment, but the moment had passed, and they were on firm ground again.

Dante smiled and shook his head, grateful to the younger man.

“No, thanks. Just send in Tibor when you leave.” Linus nodded, then turned to leave the room, snagging a croissant from the buffet Dante had ordered three hours ago. The wares had diminished significantly as the casino’s team members had flowed in and out of the room, but Dante had yet to take a bite of anything.

“Linus,” Dante called, as the other man’s hand closed over the knob. “Everyone is clear on the rules regarding me, right?”

“Same as always, boss. You’re our security consultant. Nothing else.” His face lit into a mischievous grin. “You’re sure not the spoiled son of one of the world’s richest men.”

“I sure as hell am not,” Dante said, but with a smile.

“Don’t worry. We know. And under the circumstances, we all know how important it is for you to keep your cover. Mr. Benton-Smythe,” he added, stressing the name with which Dante had grown up.

Dante nodded acknowledgment, then waved the man out of the room. His cell phone rang, and he checked the ID, then flipped the phone open. “Any word on our missing little ones?”

At the other end of the line, Thomas Murchison let out a low whistle. “I’ve got this end covered. But you need to bring me up to speed on you. Don’t think you can get away with leaving messages as cryptic as that on my office voice mail.”

Dante chuckled. “Sorry. Didn’t have the time.” He brought his partner up to speed on the situation with his father.

“How can I help?”

“Nothing at the moment. I’m going to continue looking at the hotel guests, and I may ask you to run some background checks, just to keep things off book at this end.”

“You think it’s someone on staff?”

He didn’t, but Dante was cautious. “At this point,” he said, “I don’t know what to think. Give me the scoop on your end.”

Thomas did, telling him all about the file of little Megan Anders, kidnapped by her estranged father and taken . . . somewhere.

That was the question of the hour, and Thomas had all their resources on it. “Don’t worry about her,” he said, apparently sensing the anxiety in Dante’s silence. “As soon as we have a lead, you’ll be in on the takedown. And there’s no reason to believe she’ll be harmed. The same isn’t true of your father.”

“I know,” Dante conceded. “So far, I’m coming up dry.”

“Go get some dinner and start fresh in the morning. If I know you, you’ve been going at this without a break for hours.”

His buddy knew him well. It was already well past eight, and he hadn’t stopped. Now, though, it was time to get cleaned up. He had a date, after all. “As a matter of fact, I’m just about to go grab a bite.”

The top was down
on the Porsche, and he was racing far too fast for safety along the winding highway that wound like a ribbon through the mountains of Monaco, overlooking the majesty that was Monte Carlo. He had one hand on the wheel and the other on the door frame.

His eyes were on the road, but he could still see her beside him. A scarf covered her hair, but some still blew in the wind. Her lips were slightly parted, as if she were trying to drink in the beauty of their surroundings. And when she turned to him, her smile wide and bright, he just about drove off the road.

“I have to confess that I’d expected to eat in one of the hotel restaurants.”

“Good surprise?”

“I think so,” she said. “You still haven’t told me where we’re going. But I’ll admit the view’s nice.”

“That it is.” He cocked his head slightly, indicating the crystal blue Mediterranean, breaking in foamy waves on the beach below them, and causing the boats sitting like gems in the water to bob with the surf. The principality of Monaco might be tiny, but it was outrageously beautiful. And while Dante had never been keen on visiting his father for long stretches in the summer, he’d always considered it a gift from heaven that he’d had the town and countryside to explore.

He’d always been drawn to the ocean, and he’d explored the countryside above Monte Carlo and the Cote d’Azur for hours, often staying until the sun disappeared and the sea was illuminated only by the sparkle of the casinos.

All of Monaco encompassed only a few square kilometers, and Dante had picked over every inch during his youth. He’d quickly found two favorites. The oceanographic institute, which sat like a jeweled palace on the coast. And a small turnoff extending from the main road, hundreds of meters above the city. The place was intended to give cars safe haven to pull over and let others pass, but Dante had found it to be so much more than that. He’d discovered a stone staircase that led from the edge of the graveled area down to a rocky plateau. He’d spent many days there, watching and thinking, and simply enjoying the countryside.

He’d never once shared the spot with anyone; now, he was taking Lucia. And despite the fact that he’d been on dozens of dates over the course of his life, he was now actually experiencing first-date jitters.

He glanced over at her, saw her smile in return, and his stomach did a little flip. He gripped the steering wheel tighter, and hoped he was doing the right thing. She was, after all, undoubtedly expecting a restaurant. And the fear of disappointing her was so intense that he almost ignored the turnout altogether and headed on toward a lovely little hideaway he knew about with an excellent menu and wine from a nearby vineyard.

No. He wanted to share this with her, and so he tapped the brakes, turned in front of oncoming traffic, and screeched to a halt on the dusty pullout.

“Something wrong?”

“Welcome to Chez Dante,” he said.

Her eyes widened, but not with disappointment or irritation. Instead, he saw curiosity. And since he could live with that, he got out, retrieved the picnic basket he’d stashed behind his seat, then opened the door for her. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

A pause, then a smile that eased into his heart. “Yeah,” she said. “I do”

“Then follow me.”

He hooked a leg over the guardrail, then held a hand out for her. She hesitated only briefly, then followed him over gingerly, her linen slacks clinging provocatively to her thighs as she moved.

They edged along the cliff for a few meters, then he found the stone staircase. He could only assume it was part of an ancient battlement, and he negotiated the steps carefully, turning back often to make sure Lucia was doing okay.

Considering the nimble way she moved over the weathered stone, he shouldn’t have been worried. But it was the expression on her face that truly lifted his heart. Not concentration, but absolute delight and wonder. And when he took the final step, then edged along the narrow path to the stone plateau, her face lit even more, and he heard her quick intake of breath.

“It’s not five-star service,” he said, “but I like it here.” He held his breath, waiting for her response, the picnic basket clutched in his hand like a security blanket. Just hours before, this woman had wanted him gone. Now he’d taken her to the most romantic place he could think of. The place in all the world most special to him.

And he couldn’t help but fear that somehow, he’d overstepped his bounds.

But when she smiled, he knew that everything was okay. More than okay, even.

“It’s wonderful,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “You couldn’t have picked a better place.”

Lucia resisted
the urge to hug herself. That he would bring her here—to this exact spot—was unbelievable. She’d been here twice before, the years passed too many to count, and the memories too strong to ignore.

At the time, a fortress had stood here. A small watchtower raised from stone with three guards assigned to live and die here, their sole job to look out over the sea and watch for invaders.

She’d known one of the guards, as he’d been a distant cousin of her mother’s, and she’d come here twice before in her life. The first was to beg help from that guard, seeking his aid in getting a message to her grandfather that her mother was dying.

She’d been thirteen at the time. A woman, by the day’s standards, and she’d been prepared to use whatever womanly gifts were at her disposal in order to ensure cooperation from the unknown relative from whom she’d sought aid.

Her cousin hadn’t required that of her. Instead, he’d helped, even going so far as to seek assistance from a local healer. It had been too late, though, and her mother had succumbed.

She’d learned of her heritage, then, when her father had come to claim her and revealed the truth. At first, she’d rallied against him, desperately denying what he’d told her about who she was. But she’d ultimately acknowledged it. How could she not, when all her life she’d felt different? As if the hint of badness she’d felt in her soul had ultimately been responsible for her mother’s death. A curse, she’d thought. Punishment from the heavens for being a wild child and thinking impure thoughts.

Her father had swooped in and taken care of her. And in his training she’d found release for all her anger and fear. She had a home. She belonged. And with every assassination, the praise lavished by her father had kept her going, squarely quelling the sense of loss and desperation that screamed out that there had to be more. That she’d somehow lost so much more than a mother.

She’d given in only once to those melancholy thoughts. Once in all these years.

After her first kill.

It had taken her days to travel back to this spot, but travel she had. She’d needed to come here for the strength to face her future. One last glimpse of pure beauty before the lathe of her destiny broke her completely.

She hadn’t been back. Primarily because she’d never believed herself worthy to come.

And yet this was where he’d brought her. In all of Monaco, he’d chosen these few square feet of rock as the best place to bring her for a romantic dinner.

“Lucia?”

She jerked her head up, realizing suddenly that she’d been gazing out at the water, lost in her own thoughts. She shook off the melancholy, then took his hand. “It’s perfect,” she said. And so, she thought, are you. Even more so than she’d first believed.

Dante was the kind of man she could fall in love with, and that thought was a bit more than she could bear.

So instead of trying to, she took the basket from him and busied herself with spreading out the blanket and uncorking the wine, while he pulled out container after container of fabulous-smelling delicacies.

“You got the restaurant to fix you up with to-go containers?”

“It wasn’t that hard,” he said. “Best customer service in the world.”

She nodded at that, then took the glass of wine he handed to her. They sat for a moment until she could stand it no longer. She had to know. “So how did you know about this place? It’s beautiful.”

“I’m glad you think so.” There was a pause, and for a moment, she feared he wouldn’t answer her question. Though why the way in which he found the place would be such a secret she couldn’t imagine. “The truth is, I’ve been coming here for years, simply to get away. I have family here, and I used to come visit during the summers. Believe it or not, the lifestyle here can get old.”

“I know.”

He looked at her sideways, as if not sure if he believed her. She was serious, though. The glitz and glamour of the life she knew so well had become a yoke around her neck. Escape, however, was not a luxury she had.

After a moment, he cocked his head, indicating the cliff face behind them. “Come here,” he said.

“Where? There’s nowhere to go.”

“Trust me.”

And, because she did, she stood up and crossed the two paces to the cliff.

“That stone,” he said, pointing to one slightly bigger than the others, and definitely smoother. “Pull it out.”

She did, not even worrying about her manicure as she worked the stone free from the ones around it. It came easily, and once removed revealed an inset into the cliff face, at the back of which sat a small wooden box.

“My treasure,” he said. “Open it.”

She did, revealing a pirate’s treasure. Or, at least, the kind of trinkets a child would see as treasure. Chips from the casinos. Paste gemstones. Coins from all over the world worth, tops, five American dollars.

She drew her finger through the contents, smiling as she did. “What is this?”

“I told you. My loot.” He chuckled, then reached in for a chip from the Moreau casino. “When I was a kid, I used to play pirate on the beach. I’d spend my days searching for treasure, and that’s pretty much what I came up with.”

“Impressive.”

He chuckled. “Maybe. At any rate, when I was ten, I had a fight with my dad about not being serious enough about my future. I took my moped and headed off, stewing in my own juices. That’s when I found this place. I hid the chest behind that stone and never looked back.”

“You’re serious?” She couldn’t believe that he’d pulled out his childhood treasure for her to see.

“Dead serious. I was actually wondering if it would even still be there.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, touched and a bit distressed to discover that her eyes were actually tearing up. What man had ever pulled her so intimately into his life? What man had ever wanted to?

Because she couldn’t look at him without revealing the tears, she examined the box more closely. As she trailed her finger through the treasure she snagged a thin gold chain. She pulled it up, revealing a simple seashell hanging like a charm. “What’s this?”