Deep Breath (4 page)

She didn’t mind so much, and hoped they all forgot about her. Maybe when they weren’t looking, when they were busy taking all the money from the register—wasn’t that why they were here? what else could they want?—she could slip off unnoticed and call the cops.

But no one went for the register at all. The two bullies stood guarding their prisoners like they were waiting for a bomb to drop or something.

It was then that the quiet man moved, picking the two-person booth nearest the door. He was of average height and rather thin, sleazy looking in one way, and nice looking, like a fashion model, in another. As she looked on, he motioned one of the big thugs to bring over the woman from the booth.

The woman looked even more miserable and mad than earlier, but one thing she didn’t look was scared. She slid into the other side of the single booth, slouched down, and glared. She didn’t say a word.

Finally the man shook his head, laughed, the sound soft and spooky, and said, “Hello, Georgia.”

12:20
P.M.

“Charlie.” Crap. Just…crap. First, the arrest. Second, no dossier. And now Charlie Castro. Could her day, no, her week, no, her
life
, slide any further downhill? “What do you want?”

“Is that any way to greet an old friend?” he asked, the bored look on his face telling the truth of their nonexistent relationship.

Still, she took pleasure in reminding him. “You’re not a friend. You’re barely an acquaintance.”

But he was a threat. And that reality was one not scraped away as easily as slime from the bottom of a shoe.

The comparison was apt. If she got wind of Charlie Castro chasing down the same lead she was, she backed off. The stench of his ruthlessness clung like sewer waste.

Tangling with him was a no-win situation. And she’d grown attached to having all her fingers and ear parts and kneecaps in working order.

“And here I thought being in the same business made us colleagues,” he said, his mouth smiling, his eyes not.

“Think again.” She crossed her arms over her middle.

Time was ticking. This weekend was her best and possibly last chance to get her hands on the TotalSky dossier. She was not about to share with Charlie Castro that she had it on her radar. The fact that she was on his was bad enough.

“Whatever you want, I don’t have it. You’ve searched me. You’ve searched”—she started to say
my brother
, held back the ammunition just in time, and said instead—“Finn. Have one of your thugs search our truck. My backpack and duffel are in the cab. If you think I’ve found anything of value, your sources are dead wrong.”

He stared at her for several long moments, one dark brow lifted as he studied her, his expression flat. She knew her eyes gave away nothing; she’d been in this business long enough not to lose her poker face under pressure. But beneath the table, her left knee bounced up and down with a nervous tic that was giving her hell.

Finally, Charlie moved, leaning to the side yet never looking away as he reached into the pocket of his suit coat and pulled out a card-sized envelope with an embossed vellum invitation inside. He took his time, holding her gaze while removing the auction announcement and sliding it across the table.

Georgia wanted to choke.

The paper told her exactly what information he had, information he’d somehow used to connect her to Duggin. But it didn’t mean he was aware that she knew the location of the dossier. It couldn’t mean that. Not when she was days away from closing the book on this nightmare.

While Georgia tried to quell her rising panic, Charlie called over his shoulder to the waitress, “A cup of coffee please, black.” The waitress, Tracy, nearly fell off her stool to comply. Georgia cringed.

The waitress, the cook, the cool-car hottie who’d made that heroic dive across the counter—none of them deserved this. Even Finn, who had done nothing more than end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, now had the barrel of a shotgun aimed at his head.

For not the first time in the past three years, Georgia questioned the cost of her search—to her physical health, her mental health, to Finn. But to have three strangers staring into the face of danger—a face named Charlie Castro—was more than she knew how to deal with.

Tracy arrived then with the coffee, having poured it under the watchful eye of one of the goons. At Charlie’s clipped “thank you,” she hurried back to the stool where she’d been sitting.

With Georgia facing away from the others, the waitress was the only person she could see. She gave Tracy the warmest smile she could muster, and the other woman fluttered her fingers hesitantly in response.

Charlie sipped at his coffee, returned the white stoneware mug to the table, then reached for the invitation and pushed it closer to her side. “You may not have found it yet. But you will have by the end of the weekend.”

“Is that so?” And even as the words left her mouth, nerves coiled in her belly like a rubber band ball. Anyone interested enough could have made the connection between her, her father, and TotalSky.

But Duggin had been out of the picture since senate hearings had cleared his name almost twenty years before—hearings that had been closed, the records sealed in the name of national security.

There was no way Charlie could have linked her to the General without a lot of digging. Or an inside source. And for the first time, she wondered if she’d run into a situation with which even Finn couldn’t help.

“Yes. It’s so.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she hedged.

“Then let me spell it out.” Charlie pushed his coffee mug to the side. “A missing dossier detailing the TotalSky scandal. My sources tell me it will be available for bid at this auction.”

The very thing she’d been trying to get her hands on for three years, begging the general, scouting around to see if it might possibly have found a new home. And he knew almost as much as she did.

The criminal element had all the luck. “Not all rumors in this business turn out to be true, Charlie. You know that as well as I do.”

“You’re going to help me prove this one true or false.”

The rubber bands in her stomach began twanging. “And how am I going to do that?”

“I have a client interested in laying claim to the file.”

She gave an indifferent shrug. “The auction is open to the public. Have at it.”

“Crowds aren’t my thing.”

“Surely it’s not a matter of money.” She lifted a brow. “I hear you run in circles Donald Trump can’t afford.”

“Not all rumors in this business turn out to be true,” he said, his head cocked to one side. “You know that as well as I do.”

Grr, she hated hearing her words coming out of his mouth. “Sorry, Charlie. I really don’t know how I can help.”

“There are parties referenced in the dossier who wish to remain anonymous.”

She wondered who he was working for since obviously it was neither her father nor General Duggin. She knew there had been other men involved in the scandal, but their names had never been released.

Not that she cared what Charlie or anyone wanted since she planned to make the documents public. “Again, I don’t see how I can help you. I barely have enough money to pay for the hamburger I never got to eat. I can’t afford to bid on the General’s grocery list.”

“Then you need to find the item before it goes up on the block.”

“And do what?”

“Steal it, of course.”

“I don’t think so. That’s your area of expertise. Not mine.” An obvious truth based in part on her recent arrest.

“I’m counting on your having learned from your mistakes.”

One night in a county jail was hardly enough time to reflect on anything. “It doesn’t matter what I know or might have learned. The preview is tonight, the auction on Sunday. There’s no time to do what you’re suggesting even if I was criminally capable. Which my record proves I’m not.”

“Working under the gun will give you the motivation you need.”

She really did not like the way he dropped the word
gun
into the conversation. And so she sat where she was, one leg bouncing, her short fingernails digging into her arms as she tried to hold herself together. She was not going to work for this man, do his dirty deeds, play his game.

When she didn’t respond, he signaled for one of his men. The dark-haired thug came over, bent for Charlie’s whispered order, retrieved the wallets Tracy had collected earlier.

Georgia’s driver’s license and forty-five bucks seemed of little interest. He passed the card holder across the table; she raised one hip and slid the ID into her back pocket while he studied the others.

“The dossier is in the general’s possessions. And, like my client, you know it’s there.” He tossed the cook’s wallet back into the tub, picked up the one belonging to the convertible driver, and Finn’s.

“I don’t care how you get it.” His gaze came up then, snagging hers coldly and with cruel intent. “But you’re going to bring it to me. By Monday, one P.M. That gives you seventy-two hours. Use it wisely.”

Was he insane? “And what? You’re just going to wait for me here?”

“I won’t be waiting alone.”

The air conditioner kicked on, a chilling buzz in the silent room, and Georgia began to shiver. “I can’t do what you’re asking in seventy-two hours. Not by myself.”

He held Finn’s wallet in one hand, the stranger’s in his other. “The name McLain gives you a stake in this one’s well-being.”

She didn’t say anything. She barely managed to swallow.

“Mr. van Zandt. Please come here,” Charlie called out, and behind her she heard vinyl squeak and what sounded like shoes and men scuffling. A quick glance at the waitress’s wide-eyed expression confirmed for Georgia that Mr. van Zandt was less than willing.

Finally, and under escort, he arrived at the table and stood without speaking. Honestly? After that dive he’d taken across the counter, she’d expected no less. A man of action, this one, rather than a man to mince words.

She sensed a restrained energy and waves of pulsing anger, and cast a quick glance to the side, taking in no more than the fit of his blue jeans and the size of his hand, curled into a fist, before dropping her gaze to the auction invitation that seemed to be mocking her failure.

“Mr. van Zandt. This isn’t your battle. You could abandon Ms. McLain and go on your way. For, I believe, her brother’s sake, I’m asking you to accompany her to Dallas while she retrieves an item of interest to me.”

Her knee stopped bouncing. Her anger rose. “This is between you and me, Charlie. Leave Finn out of it. Leave everyone out of it.”

“Make up your mind, Georgia,” Charlie said with no small hint of sarcasm. “You just told me you couldn’t do it alone. I’m giving you the help you said you need.”

“If you want to give me help, then give me Finn.”

“Remember what I said about the right motivation? I keep your brother. You bring me the dossier. As long as you’re back here by Monday, no one will get hurt. Otherwise, your brother will.”

1:00
P.M.

“Pull over. Let me drive. I know where we’re going.”

“You? Drive this car?” Harry snorted. “Maybe in another lifetime.”

“Then speed it up. If we don’t get to Dallas and fast, we won’t have any lifetimes left to worry about.”

“Dallas I can do,” he said, and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The huge car surged ahead.

He still couldn’t get over the scene in the diner after Castro had delivered his not-so-veiled threat to Finn McLain. Georgia had come up out of her seat like a pouncing tiger, growling and scratching and clawing and mad.

Harry’s first reaction had been to help her, to take out the bad guys like he’d been trained to do. Playing the part of the innocent bystander had required a lot of restraint and a lot of patience, and had left him feeling foul.

Once Castro’s dark-haired goon had pulled her out of the boss’s face, he’d escorted both Harry and the hellcat outside. Under the thug’s watch and orders, she’d grabbed a duffel bag and backpack from her brother’s pickup, and tossed both into the open backseat of Harry’s car.

He’d been under the same watch, the same orders, but since he’d wiped out his water glass during his lunge across the counter, he’d taken two minutes to dig through his own things to find a dry shirt. That had apparently been too long for Miss Hiss and Spit to wait.

Sunglasses in place, she had stood there, her weight cocked, tapping the fingers of one hand against the opposite arm where she’d crossed them over her middle. He wasn’t sure if she was trying to hold herself together or if she was really as aggravated as her stance made her seem.

That was when his foul mood worsened. He’d wanted to tell her not to worry, that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her brother. But he couldn’t tell her that without revealing things about who he was that she didn’t need to know.

What was important right now was getting her to Dallas—and getting her to talk. That was the only way either of them would survive the weekend. It was also the only way to guarantee his mission’s success.

He cast her a sideways glance. “You want to tell me what all of that was about back there?”

“No.” The exact response he’d expected.

“You have a history with that man, Castro?” Charlie Castro. A name Harry would be transmitting to the SG-5 ops center at the first opportunity that came his way.

“Not a personal history, no.” She relaxed a bit, her shoulders dropping as tension drained. “I’ve run into him in the past a time or two.”

Not personal. That made it business. “You both hunt down antiques?”

“Something like that.”

Harry ground his jaw. This lack of real information was getting him nowhere. He pressed, needing details. “I saw the auction invitation on the table. Whatever this man wants from you is something going up for bid?”

“It might be.”

“But you don’t know.”

“I haven’t seen the auction brochure yet. But, yeah. It could be there.” She didn’t say anything else for several seconds, leaving Harry to wonder exactly what she was keeping to herself. If what she did know was worth prying for. Whether another few hours would matter. If he could afford to wait for her to tell him on her terms.

Options weighed, he didn’t insist, and she finally shifted sideways in her seat, pulled up one knee, and propped her elbow on the seat back. Her hair blew into her face when she turned to face him, and she gathered up the wavy brown strands in one hand. “Listen. I’m sorry Charlie involved you in this. Once we get to Dallas, I can rent a car and you can get back to your life. Just please don’t go to the cops. Not yet. Not until this is over. I don’t want anything to happen to Finn.”

Harry nodded, pretended to consider her offer when what he was most interested in was the self-confidence implied in her willingness to write off his help. “So the guy you were with
is
your brother.”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice breaking softly. “My baby brother. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to him.”

An ace to store up his sleeve. “Then we’ll have to make sure nothing does.”

“Listen—” she started again, paused, shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know your name.”

“Harry.”

“Harry, thanks. I’m Georgia, which obviously you know.” She waved a hand. “That Mr. van Zandt thing sounded too much like you’re somebody’s grandfather.”

“Nah.” He liked her attitude. “I just drive somebody’s grandfather’s car.”

“Yeah, Finn noticed it earlier when we passed you.” She turned her attention back to the road ahead. “I cannot believe this is happening. I told him we should eat before we left Waco so we wouldn’t have to stop once we were on the road.”

“If this Castro was following you, he would’ve caught up with you sooner or later. Right?” Something else to look into. Where had Castro come from? How had he found Georgia? Who was he working for? “At least this way there wasn’t a crowd around to suffer a lot of collateral damage.”

She glanced over. He caught her frown from the corner of his eye. “Collateral damage. That’s something I’d expect to hear from a news junkie or military type.”

Point to the lady. “How ’bout both?”

“In this situation?” She blew out a heavy breath. “The latter would do me a lot more good than the first.”

“Then you might not want to cut me loose when we get to Dallas.”

“Why not?” she asked, looking back.

He leaned across the seat to open the glove box, brushing her knee when he straightened, his own auction invitation in hand. “I hesitated saying anything in case we had some friendly competition happening here, but we’re going the same way.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” She grabbed the card from his hand. “You’re not kidding me.”

“Not kidding at all. There’s a ’48 Jaguar Roadster I’ve got my eye on.”

“I know that car. I know the money that car’s going to bring.” She snorted. “Charlie should’ve sent
you
after the file he wants. I sure don’t have the money it’ll take to walk out of the auction with it.”

Meaning she had never intended to bid on the file in the first place. “You have an alternative solution in mind?”

A humorless snort. “Nothing I want to share with a military type.”

“Ex-military.”

“Semantics.”

He let that go, thought about her father’s history in the service before going to work for TotalSky, wondered if she was doing the same. “So, these documents. They’re important to you personally?”

She slouched down in the seat, thought about propping her feet on the dash. He could tell that because he could tell when she changed her mind. She made a fidgety movement before planting her boots flat on the floorboard.

Head back, she cast a quick glance to the side. And just when he’d decided she wasn’t going to answer, she said, “More important than you can possibly know.”