Feel the Heat (4 page)

Finally, he disconnected the call in mid-rant and turned back to Lauren. She was watching him, eyes wide. Her face was pale and her body taut with anxiety. He needed to be sharp here, not just to analyze the situation and develop solutions but to assure Lauren that he had things well in hand.

He was, however, having a hard time focusing. The Hallorans hadn’t warned him that Lauren Cahill had the kind of earthy beauty that punched you in the gut and stunned your body. It was all the more shocking because she was so unaware of her natural sexiness. And he totally hadn’t expected to be blindsided by the electricity that crackled between them from the first casual brush of hands. Not that he ever lacked for women. He had a healthy sexual appetite and wasn’t shy about feeding it. But no woman had ever affected him like this one. His fingers itched to sift through the silk of her thick brown hair and his mouth badly wanted to taste hers. And her body!

Holy shit!

He had to forcibly rein in his libido, reminding himself he was here on business. What now appeared to be really serious business. And he couldn’t let himself be distracted by a woman whose very presence set his blood to heating and his cock hardening to the point he could pound nails with it. Shit. He had more control than that.

Didn’t he?

He damn well better have.

“You have an answering machine, right?” he asked her. Who didn’t in this day and age?

She nodded. “In the room I use as my office.”

“Show me.”

She led him into the cozy room where bookshelves lined two walls. A large window looking over the backyard let in plenty of light and sunshine and made it a pleasant work environment. Here, she’d set up the computers and printers she used for her web design and graphics business, a large corkboard on one wall displaying printouts of projects in various stages of design.

“I fell in love with this house the minute I saw it,” she told him. “My family tried their best to talk me out of it.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Different reasons. Too big. Too much space. Too much to take care of. What was I doing with something this size?”

He couldn’t help smiling. “But you bought it anyway.”

“Of course. I had the money and I needed to get away from my mother’s constant disapproval and my father’s worry. I was too old to be living with my parents anyway.”

“When did you buy it?”

“About eight years ago. And I’ve never been sorry.”

Troy took a moment to admire the room before turning toward the desk. Lauren was scant inches away from him and again that charge of electricity crackled between them. Holy shit! This woman was in danger, and his cock insisted on doing his thinking for him. He’d never had this problem before, and he needed to get it under control now.

The answering machine was garden variety, built into the base on which the receiver sat with a limited capacity for storing messages. Messages had to be erased regularly to make space for new ones. He picked it up to examine it more closely and was still holding it when the phone rang again. He held up his hand to stop Lauren from answering and shook his head.

“Let it ring.”

“I usually do when this chaos starts again. I didn’t even mean to answer it before. But then I worry it’s someone I really need to talk to.”

“You have a cell phone, right?”

She nodded.

“Then anyone important will call you on that. If they don’t have the number already, give it to them. Let’s see who this is.”

The first words left no doubt.

“I know you’re listening, you insane bitch. Well, listen to this.”

The venom spewing out of the speaker made every muscle in Troy’s body tighten.

“You can’t get away from me,” he concluded. “I’ll find you and neutralize you before you do real damage.”

Lauren had dropped into the big wing chair in the corner, even paler than before, hands clasped tightly in her lap.

“He’s never made this many phone calls at one time,” she said almost in a whisper. “I think he’s getting worse.”

“You’d better believe it,” Troy agreed. “And that means we need to take the proper steps to ensure your safety. You can’t even be sure the media has backed off completely. They could just be biding their time before another assault. If you won’t stay with the Hallorans, or even at a hotel…” He paused, looked at her, but she shook her head. “Then we need to create a total security blanket for you.”

He pulled out his cell phone and pressed the speed-dial number for Mark.

“Who are you calling?”

“Mark and then our other partner who lives in San Antonio, Dan Romeo. This calls for a little more than a basic security system and a better answering machine.”

* * * * *

Kurt Olberman leaned back in his big leather desk chair and lit one of the fat cigars he enjoyed so much. Puffing a stream of smoke into the air, he pressed the rewind button on his remote and watched again the chaotic scene in front of Lauren Cahill’s home in San Antonio, Texas. Listened one more time to her background as a photo of her filled the screen. The idea rooting around in his brain continued to form and grow.

He had become the multi-billionaire that he was by paying attention to things that most people passed over. To the media, Lauren Cahill was a freak, a source of sensationalism, fodder for their gristmill. To the general public, she was weird and someone to be shunned. But Kurt saw in her the source of untold money if handled properly.

The first time he’d seen a story about her, he’d tucked the information away in a corner of his mind until he could investigate further. Since then he’d researched both Lauren and everything he could find on psychic healing. The more he read, the more fascinated he became. Especially with Lauren herself.

He traveled all over the world, wheeling and dealing in his mostly illegal enterprises. From drug smuggling and white slavery to selling arms to both sides of a conflict and supporting terrorist groups, there was little he didn’t have his fingers in. In the course of his activities he’d met many men with untold wealth, many of whom had a family member with some type of lingering illness. And who would without doubt pay an exorbitant price to have that person cured.

Olberman swiveled in his chair and gazed with great pleasure out the big window overlooking the grounds of his fortress. And that’s what it was—a fortress. One hundred acres of lush green lawn and thick forest, with the three-story stone Tudor house rising from the crest of a hill high in the Colorado Rockies. A stone wall ten feet high, constructed at great cost, surrounded the entire property, its top embedded with sensors should anyone have the balls to try to breach it. Not too far from the house, trees had been cut down to build a landing strip and a hangar for Kurt’s private jet and his helicopter. It allowed him the freedom to travel on his own schedule and also provided a facility for those few he invited to land their own planes.

Some might have chafed at the isolation, but for Olberman it suited his purposes perfectly. He had the magnificence and grandeur of the Rockies as a backdrop and the assurance that he was well protected from his enemies. Oh yes, he had enemies. A man didn’t do what he did without accumulating them. But no one could get to him here.

He smiled. This was his paradise, his kingdom, and even thinking about it gave him great pleasure. And an ideal place for what he had in mind. All he had to do was sweep up Lauren Cahill, install her in private quarters in the house, and make her available to those who would pay handsomely for her services. And with the hangar and landing strip the “clients” could come to him. The lovely Miss Cahill could live out her days here until such time as her powers failed. Then he would find someone else to replace her.

But first, he had to satisfy himself that she was the real deal.

Turning back to his desk he pressed a button on his intercom. Vivian Jackson, his no-nonsense assistant, answered at once.

“Yes, Mr. Olberman?”

“Please come in. I have an assignment for you.”

* * * * *

Lauren poured coffee into three mugs and handed them to the men sitting at her kitchen table. Then she sat down with her own mug between Troy and Mark. Directly across from her was a man she was meeting for the first time, the darkly good-looking Dan Romeo. Six five, olive-skinned with dark hair and darker eyes, a former Force Recon Marine, he was the nominal leader of the group, although they all had equal decision-making powers. She knew two partners were absent. In addition to Mark, former Delta Force, and Dan, the partnership included flyboy Mike D’Antoni, who’d trained with England’s crack SAS, and finally Eric “Rick” Latrobe, former Special Ops and a trained sniper.

Each brought highly specialized skills to the agency known simply as Phoenix. A good name for a group that rose from the ashes of war and one that now contracted to both private citizens and the United States government for jobs that had to be conducted “off the books”.

Dan had made her feel at ease immediately. She recalled being told his wife had precognitive abilities, the gift that allowed her to see future events before they happened. Her visions usually came to her in bits and pieces and sometimes only as clues that she had to decipher. But Mark had also mentioned that her visions had helped Phoenix wrap up an espionage case. Faith and Mark also used their telepathic communications gift when the agency needed it.

She wondered about Rick Latrobe’s wife, Kelly. They lived in Maryland, along with Mike and Kat D’Antoni, so she was unlikely to meet them. Still, she couldn’t help being curious.

Now the three men were holding a council of war in her kitchen with an efficiency that was at once both comforting and frightening. Before this, she’d always just hidden from the crowds and the stalker, closing all the drapes, working in near darkness, answering calls only from her family. Eventually everyone got tired and left her alone. She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that this time everyone had stepped up their game. More reporters. Bigger mob. More vicious and more frequent vitriol from her stalker.

“Aren’t you all making just a little too much of this?” she asked finally, cradling her mug as if the warmth of the liquid could ease the chill suddenly invading her body. “Mark, you know I’ve been through this before. In a few days, the media loses interest and focuses on someone else. And my so-called stalker has never done much beyond his phone calls. Even the letters have stopped. Then he loses interest too.”

Mark leaned forward. “Lauren, you know I’m not an alarmist. If I agreed with you, then we’d set up some simple security procedures and let it go at that. But this time is different. First of all, this is the largest media mob you’ve had hounding you by far. Maybe it’s just a slow news week, but they’re out for blood.”

“Not to mention the fact,” Troy added, “I guarantee you we haven’t seen the last of the sleazy tabloids.”

“Second,” Mark went on, “we listened to the message on your answering machine. Trust me when I say we’ve been doing this long enough to know when someone’s about to go over the edge.” He narrowed his gaze. “And I am more than mildly pissed that you never came to me before about the letters and the constancy of the phone calls.”

“You have much more important business to attend to than being bothered by my little problem.” Asking for help had never been easy for her.

“Damn it.” His hand tightened into a fist. “Now I’m really pissed off. There’s nothing more important than helping my friend. Jesus, Lauren. You’re practically family.”

“The police—“

“Can do a good job. More than adequate. But they don’t have the resources Phoenix does.” He pinned her with his dark gaze. “So are we clear that this time we’re in charge?”

“Yes, yes, yes. Okay. I know you’re right.” Lauren tightened her grip on her mug. “I just hate having my life controlled by some nut who’s probably going to move on to someone else before I can blink my eyes.”

“And that would be the best-case scenario,” Troy said. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“What I want to know,” Mark said, “is why you never mentioned the stalker before? People like that are far from harmless, and from his messages, he’s been doing this a long time.”

She shrugged. “There used to be more than just him but I think they got tired of me and decided to focus on others. The police did put a trace on my line but he always used throwaway phones so they gave up. I’m sure he’ll get tired of it after a while too.”

Dan picked up his tablet and tapped it, bringing up a list he scrolled through. The smile he gave Lauren was one she knew was meant to be reassuring. “When I heard from Troy this morning, I called our office in Maryland. Our super geek, Andy, runs what I think is the computer that rules the world.” He grinned. “He calls it the Dragonslayer, and he may be right. I asked him to find every story ever written about you and send it to me in a compressed file.”

“He can do that? Won’t it take a lot of time?”

Dan shook his head. “Not with the Dragonslayer.”

“But what’s the point?” she wanted to know.

“Just getting a feel for what’s out there and what kind of thing might trigger your stalker. Is it something specific that was written, or just the general fact of your gift? I also asked him to see if other healers have been getting threats too. If so, maybe there’s some kind of link. We can have Andy run a number of different probabilities. Narrow things down.” The look on his face was serious. “I know how you protect the privacy of your clients, Lauren, but I’m going to need a list of them too.”

She frowned. “I never give out anyone’s name. People who use my…skills often don’t like to let others know about it. Psychic healing isn’t widely accepted, you know.”

“Still, this guy has a tie to you someplace, either you as a healer or you specifically and we have to be able to narrow the list. I promise you, these people will never know anything about this. Unless, of course, it leads back to one of them.”

“I can’t believe anyone connected to any of my calls would do this, but…if you say it’s necessary I’ll get the list together for you. Just treat it carefully, okay?”