Golden Threads (16 page)

"Oh, sure.
I wouldn't want you to miss your plane."

With something of a snap, the agent said, "Goodbye, Miss Callahan."

She pulled the door shut, but stood there for a moment without moving. Mentally, she was sending a
Well
done!
to
the nameless agent who had played his part so well. She was also wondering if this gamble had paid off.

After all they couldn't lead the cartel's man around by a leash; they could only assume that he kept a close watch on
her,
and that he saw and heard what they wanted him to. If he did, he should now
be doubting
any suspicions he had concerning Devon.

And he should be aware of the strong implication that Lara's past dealings with the FBI weren't happy ones.

Given all those highly uncertain coulds, shoulds, woulds, mights, and maybes, to say nothing of all
the ifs
, the cartel's man was right where they wanted him to be.

The ad would run in the Pinewood newspaper tomorrow (Lara had gotten it in just under the deadline), and in the New York and D.C. papers the day after. With a little luck or a benevolent fate (depending on which belief one leaned toward), she and Devon had given the cartel and their man pause.

The cartel would likely be informed by their man that Lara was playing a lone hand. She had used her FBI contacts only to check out the new man in her life while keeping quiet about the definite presence of a hunter, and had simultaneously sent a warning message to the effect that there was still a great deal she could tell the FBI, if she wanted to do so.

The message, which she and Devon had worded very carefully, was imprinted on her mind. To an unaware reader, it would seem like a simple, if somewhat obscure, personal ad; but to those who understood, it may as well have glowed in neon.

To Whom It May Concern: Lara Mason wishes to thank those interested in her welfare after the death of her father. At present, she has no intention of continuing the late Dr. Mason's work herself, but assures interested parties that said work did not die with him. She asks that anyone concerned contact her for further details.

Following was a post office box number, which neither Lara nor Devon expected anyone to make use of.

Mason, the name Lara had been born with, stood out boldly in the ad, along with her father's. It would catch the eye—certainly the eye of a watcher who was looking for just such an ad.

"Lara!"

She shook off the thoughts and headed back toward the stage, forcing all signs of tension from her face. She wanted to present the appearance of a woman who had been reassured somewhat during the brief trip offstage, but who was still troubled by other fears.
A woman who was hiding those troubling thoughts, not from a possible assassin, but from the new man in her life.

She didn't know how well she carried it off. There was no opportunity to talk privately with Devon for quite some time, since Nick immediately placed them in the tower room set and had them begin running lines.

Surprisingly, considering all the tensions inside her, Lara found it easy to rehearse the careful, gently tentative first scene with Rapunzel and her prince together in the tower. Though her love for Devon had ended her isolation, she remembered only too well how it felt, and had no difficulty in recreating in her voice and expression that scared aloneness, the wistfulness of being apart from others.

Nick, who was sitting just beyond the set and observing them closely, seemed more than satisfied. "Good," he murmured from time to time. He became so involved with their portrayals, in fact, that he skipped the scene of the witch's return to the tower and asked them to continue their scenes alone together.

"I want a sense of continuity," he explained, his expression intense. "Make sure the developing relationship works. And follow the stage directions, please; I want to see how well you two move together."

Lara was vaguely aware that the work on stage had halted, and that cast and crew alike were watching silently from various points on the stage, but she didn't really notice. Nick had ordered the tower room spotlighted, leaving the remainder of the stage in shadows.

They were virtually in a world of their own, surrounded by stone walls and darkness. The tower room was draped with bright, colorful silk hangings, and the furniture was dressed up to look opulent. There was a wide bed with tall posts topped with a canopy, a battered piano with a splash of gilded paint here and there as evidence that it was in the process of being converted into something much grander, a dressing table without a mirror, curved walls without a door.

There was a narrow, plush couch strewn with colorful, tasseled pillows like those on the bed, and that was where Nick's stage direction placed the lovers.
Ching, uninvited at the moment but nonetheless in his assigned position, had leapt onto the bed and watched silently.

Devon and Lara hadn't memorized their lines yet, but since they had been rehearsing only a few days, Nick hadn't expected them to. They held their scripts and read the lines, following the stage directions closely—at least at first.

But as the scene progressed, Lara forgot that she was obeying instructions to move this way or that. The emotions Nick had written into his play were so intense, and so intensely felt by her, that the actions flowed naturally from that wellspring of deep feeling. The prince with Devon's haunting voice and bottomless eyes held her captive more surely than any stone tower could have done.

And that was no prison.

Her longing for him was her own, shining through Rapunzel's innocent trust; her desire glowed in her eyes and in the shy expression of Rapunzel; her love was a husky, wordless need in Rapunzel's sweet voice.

Devon knew that the intensity between them now would never be reproduced on a stage before an audience. Because it wasn't a play they were performing. Though their director couldn't know it, what he was seeing was a fervor born of an awareness he would likely never understand.

They had staked everything on a gamble that risked their very lives, and now they shared the knowledge that they were committed... and that they could lose.

The first kiss between Rapunzel and her prince was infinitely tender, yet beneath the gentleness was the raging of a storm trapped under glass. And on each succeeding visit by the prince, with each touch,
that storm grew wilder and wilder
, until it could no longer be contained.

"Hold it!
Lights!"

The abrupt interruption should have been jarring, but it wasn't. Somehow, in that intense awareness between them, both Lara and Devon had found something that insulated them and left them incredibly alive as only those who have faced their own mortality can be.

The prince had lifted Rapunzel into his arms and taken a step toward the bed, and now Devon lowered Lara gently to her feet and spoke to the director with utter calm.

"Ching's embarrassed, Nick. You didn't tell him when he was supposed to give up the bed to us."

"Yah!"
Ching said, sending the director an annoyed glare.

"Never embarrass a cat," Lara murmured, wondering vaguely what she had done with her script. And what Devon had done with his. "You won't be forgiven for it quickly."

Nick gave the cat a somewhat blank look, then drew a shaken breath and said, "Lord, you two won't bring the house down—you'll burn it down!"

Lara sat on the bed and reached to pet her cat. "You wrote the play, Nick," she reminded him with a tranquil calm that matched Devon's.

"I didn't write what I just saw—and felt. Nobody could write that." Somewhat wistfully, he added, "I'd give ten years of my life if I could, though."

"Never wish your life away," Lara said in a light tone. She didn't look at Devon because that glance would have betrayed them both.

Much later, Lara snuggled closer to Devon and smiled as his arms tightened around her. They were in her bed, alone together in the darkness. Outside, his men used all their professional experience to make certain their close observation of the building went unnoticed by another watcher. Ching, still embarrassed about his missing cue, since he shared the feline trait of having a high opinion of his own dignity, had finally given up his muttering and sulking, and had gone to sleep in the living room.

"Think we pulled it off?" she murmured.

"I don't know," Devon said quietly. "You were certainly convincing."

"Who left the stage after I did?"

He sighed. "I lost sight of most of them at one time or another."

"Luke?"

"Yes."

"Who didn't leave the stage?"

"Nick. I don't think Sonia did, but I'm not sure."

It was Lara's turn to sigh. "And we can't be certain that the bait was taken at all. It could be any of them, couldn't it?"

"Realistically, yes.
But in fairness to them, it could also be someone neither of us has seen."

"I'd rather it were that."

Devon rubbed his cheek gently against her soft hair. "I know. But, until we're sure..."

She was silent for a moment, but very much awake. "Why did you become an agent?"

"I don't think it was ever a conscious choice. I was recruited out of college, and even though I had a law degree, I hadn't really decided what to do with it."

"No desire to be an attorney?"

"There are too many in this country now. I studied law just because it interested me. When the bureau made me an offer, I decided to try it."

"Regrets?"

"No, not for that decision."
He hesitated,
then
went on quietly. "I was on the brink of quitting when I was given this assignment."

"Why?" she asked softly.

"I was beginning to lose myself. There was one role after another, and the line between right and wrong was harder and harder to see. Sometimes I've looked at someone I had deliberately gotten close to and then betrayed, and I haven't known who was worse—my enemy or me."

Lara listened to his haunting voice and knew now where his pain came from. It was a pain she could only dimly understand, but it explained the struggle she had felt in him from the beginning.

She lifted her head from his chest and gazed at him. Even in the darkness of the bedroom, his eyes were vivid. Softly, she said, "You once said to me that platitudes couldn't ease pain. You were right, and I won't offer them. But, Devon, if you were as bad as your enemies, or worse than them, betrayal would be easy. It wouldn't hurt."

He slid a hand under the warm weight of her hair and kissed her gently, then guided her back to her resting place. "I hope you're right," he murmured almost inaudibly.

"His background checks out," the voice on the other end of the line said flatly.

"What about the other one?"

"Clean too. You must have been jumping at shadows. From what you heard, it looks like the girl hates the feds and hasn't told them she thinks someone's after her. The bit with Shane was apparently just common sense; they're in bed together, so she wanted him checked out. But the feds don't know we've found her."

"Sure about that?"

"Aren't you?"

"I don't know. Maybe they were rough on her when her father died. Maybe she's got no love for them. And maybe she figures the constant presence of the boyfriend will keep her safe, at least for a few days."

"A few days?"
The voice at the other end of the line sharpened.

"Yeah.
She needs at least a few days to be certain we've gotten the message."

"What message?"

"It's in today's Pinewood newspaper.
A classified ad."
The caller didn't read from the newspaper folded on the ledge beneath the phone, even though the bright morning light would have made it easy. Instead, Lara's message was recited coolly from memory.

There was a long silence.

The caller waited patiently for a few moments,
then
said, "It begins to look as if we've all missed something."

"You're sure her apartment was clean?"

"Of course.
I could have missed a piece of microfilm, I suppose, but nothing else, and her father hardly had the time to get that fancy. Look, she was in shock when the FBI took her into protective custody; they let her pack a small bag, and you can bet an agent was standing over her when she did. She didn't take anything out of there that
night,
and she hasn't been back to the house."

Slowly, the caller said, "A bluff?"

"Could be.
And it could be that either she's remembered something about that night or else she knew where the evidence was all along."

"Then why keep quiet about it?" The caller caught his breath suddenly.
"Blackmail?"

"She's bright enough to think of it. She's also bright enough to figure out that she's fairly safe as long as we know the evidence could be used against us. I don't think she's the blackmail type. But if that conversation with the agent was genuine, she might well prefer to deal with us rather than with them."