Golden Threads (20 page)

"Dead end?"

"It looks like it. Unless he breaks, we don't have a tie to the cartel."

Lara wasn't really surprised; it had been a slim chance at best. A twinge from her head was echoed by one considerably lower down, and she felt under the covers until she located an extremely sore spot over the center of her rib cage. "Ouch. I feel like I've been kicked by a mule. And what did I hit my head on?"

"The shelf behind the desk."

She probed a bit more, than said, "What am I wearing?"

"A nightgown.
I put you into it." Answering the rest of her questions before she could ask them, he said, "It's your nightgown. You're in your own bedroom here at the house, with a couple of agents downstairs. You've been asleep about four hours. One of the men went out for groceries a little while ago, so you'll probably smell burning bacon any minute now. And I love you."

Lara blinked, sifted through the information warily, and found that she still distinctly recalled hearing that last statement. But it seemed odd in the same company as burning bacon. She looked cautiously at Devon, and found him grave and unsmiling.

"Before I make an utter fool of myself," she said slowly, "let me ask you if I just heard what I think I heard."

"I love you," he said.

She felt the pain in her head retreat. It didn't stand a chance. "You love me?
Really?"

Devon's grave mask cracked suddenly, and those wonderful eyes glowed with an unshadowed brightness she'd never seen before. "God, yes, I love you," he said thickly, gathering her into his arms and holding her.

Lara didn't have to ask if he believed in her own love. She could feel it in him. The affinity between them had never been stronger, and she knew that no tower or prison, with real bars or symbolic ones, would ever isolate either of them again.

"I'm taking a desk job," he announced a few minutes later.

"Do you want that?" she asked, snuggling up to his side in blissful contentment.

"Yes. Make use of that law degree. You are going to marry me, aren't you, Rapunzel?"

"Certainly I am. You don't think I carry on like this with just any prince who happens to climb in my window, do you?"

"Well, not if your cat doesn't like him."

"An excellent judge of character, my cat.
Do you smell something burning?"

"Bacon.
I warned you."

"So you did. I suppose we'd better go rescue it?"

"If we want to eat."

Lara was naturally disappointed that they hadn't managed to get anything on the cartel. She still wanted justice for her father—and she still wanted her own roots back. She had told Devon the truth in saying that she could live in a prison with him and never notice the bars, but it was also undoubtedly true that living with an assumed identity and being aware that a group of powerful people considered you a threat and were actively searching for you did not offer a very good base for a peaceful life.

So when Devon suggested, early that afternoon, that they make one final attempt to find some knowledge about the missing evidence in her memories, Lara agreed. And this time, Devon wanted her physically to walk through the night her father had been killed.

"Well never have a better chance," he pointed out. "In a few hours, we’ll be leaving here, and you can't come back until we can move against the cartel."

Lara understood that, and even though she didn't believe that the key lay in her memories, she was willing to try a last time for Devon's peace of mind.

The two agents who had remained were sent out of sight, and then Devon called Ching, carried him to the top of the stairs, and told him to stay there.

"I wondered why you brought him along," Lara commented, standing by the front door.

"He was here that night," Devon said, coming back down the stairs and moving to a position to the left of the front door. "Now, face the door with your hand on the switch. We can't make the place dark in the afternoon, but I want you to remember how it was that night."

"All right.
It was dark. I was reaching for the light switch when Ching howled—"

"Yarrr!"

Lara hadn't noticed Devon send a brief hand signal to her cat,
who
had rapidly learned stage cues for the play, and the sudden howl sent a chill through her.

"Good Lord," she muttered. "How did you—"

"Shhh.
I rehearsed with him while you were in the shower. Now concentrate, honey. You're reaching for the light switch, and then—" He signaled the cat again.

"Yarrr!"

Lara's fingers hesitated,
then
quickly flicked the light switch. She turned around, uneasy.

"Tell me what you're thinking," Devon ordered softly.

"I've never heard him sound like that before," she murmured. Her eyes lifted to the top of the stairs and found the cat sitting on the first tread. "He doesn't want to come down." A frown flitted across her face. "That's odd." Her gaze left the cat and went to a table in the foyer. "Everything's such a mess, newspapers on the floor—"

"Lara," Devon said.

She was still remembering that night.
"Hmmm?"

"Look back at Ching."

She returned her gaze to the cat, and again a faint frown flitted across her expression.

"What is it?" Devon kept his voice very soft.

In a vague but conversational tone, Lara said, "Well, I just don't see why, that's all. The one he had was just fine, and almost new. Why change it?"

"What's different, Lara?"

"His collar," she answered obediently.

"What's wrong with it?"

"He's wearing a new one. It's darker against his fur, I can see that. Why would Dad get him a new collar when there was nothing wrong with his old one?"

Even as the puzzled words left her lips, Lara blinked, and a sudden chill snapped her out of the memories. "His collar," she whispered. "I haven't thought about it since..."

Devon took her hand. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, of course.
Devon, the collar!"

"Ching," Devon called, leading Lara to the bottom of the stairs. The cat bounded down to meet them, bright-eyed and proud of
himself
for having flawlessly followed his idol's stage directions.

"Wauur?" he asked Devon.

"You're a smart cat," Devon told him, bending to unfasten the leather collar. "But I wish you'd been smart enough to tell us where to look all this time."

Ching gently bit his wrist.

"Sorry," Devon murmured. "We just didn't know the right question to ask, did we, boy?"

"Yah," Ching said.

Lara sat down on the third step, trying not to hope too much. "But, it's such a little thing! Devon, I might not even have noticed it. In fact, I hardly did. How on earth did you know?"

"I didn't." He sat on the step beside her and began examining the collar carefully. "But I had a hunch. The way you frowned when you remembered Ching from that night. You seemed to be bothered by more than the fact that he was upset. I thought it was worth a try."

Lara watched as he examined the silver bell and then detached it from the collar and set it aside. "But what could Dad have hidden in a collar?
A message?
'

"Well find out." Devon studied the collar, which was made of two strips of leather stitched together, then produced a pocket knife and began prying gently at the stitches. He started at the pointed end of the collar, revealing the rough inner surface of the strips. He carefully cut more stitches. Then, just past the notch worn by the buckle of the collar, they both saw the edge of a strip of paper.

"I don't believe it!" Lara mumbled.

The other two agents had returned to the foyer, and both stood watching Devon work.

"You mean the cat had it all this time?" one of them exclaimed.

"Yah!"
Ching said from his position on the fifth stair, disliking the term of address.

"Sorry, Ching," the man said absently.

She was so tense, she could hardly think; but Lara couldn't help smiling. Her cat made his feelings known so plainly that it no longer surprised her to hear even strangers react to him as if they understood him completely.

"It's a tight fit," Devon murmured, working very carefully to cut the stitches without disturbing what lay between them. "He must have had this already done that night, just in case."

Lara was watching intently. "There's something else. The paper's wrapped around something."

Devon cut the last stitch and gently removed the paper and what it enclosed.
"A key."
It was a tiny key, very narrow and flexible. He unfolded the strip of paper, and they could all see the neatly typed words.

The top of the safe, Lara.

Within seconds, they were all in her father's study.

Devon lifted down the painting that hid the safe; it had been mended, but the hinges were ruined, and so the painting had simply been hung on a hook.

"Wasn't this safe checked out?" Devon demanded of one of the agents.

"Of course it was. Some of them have false bottoms or backs, and we checked.
Nothing."

"The top of the safe," Lara read from the message.

"You don't know what it means?" Devon asked her.

"No. I thought it was just a very obvious safe."

"What's the combination?"

Lara gave it to him and watched while he twisted the dial and opened the heavy door. The safe was empty, smooth walls giving nothing away. Devon began probing the inner surface with a careful, sensitive touch. Then he searched the facing where the door rested when it was closed. He closed it, examined the front minutely.

"Nothing."
He stepped back and let his gaze roam slowly over the area. Above the safe was heavy pine paneling, the only wall in the room that was paneled. His eyes narrowed, and he stepped forward again to study the wall.

"Damn," he muttered softly.

"What is it? Have you found it?" Lara spoke tensely.

"This knot in the paneling.
Wait a minute." He produced the tiny key and carefully inserted it in an all but invisible slot that, if noticed, would have looked like a simple and natural crack in the wood. And when he gave the key a quarter-turn clockwise, they heard the soft hum.

The paneling didn't open. Instead, the "very obvious" safe slid down out of sight behind the paneling, and another safe descended from inside the wall and took its place.

"We ought to be taking notes," one of the agents muttered. "Eliminate a false bottom or back, and who'd think there was another safe sitting on top of this one?"

Devon looked at the combination dial, then at Lara.
"Your birthday.
Month, day, year."

She gave him the numbers quickly, and the safe opened. Inside was the evidence. And it was more than any of them had expected.
Notes, documents, diagrams.
Some items were wrapped in plastic and marked clearly to indicate they bore important fingerprints—and those included two complete sets of stolen classified designs.

"We've got them," Devon said.

The following day, the newspapers carried hasty stories about a series of unexpected arrests by the FBI. Little information was available, they stated unhappily, but a number of highly influential people involved in the cutting edge of technology and the inner circles of government were involved...

"They don't know what's going on," Lara said, pushing the newspaper off the bed.

"They will when the cartel goes to trial."

Lara turned to cuddle closer to Devon, folding her hands on his chest and smiling down at him. "Ching will get his feelings hurt if nobody happens to mention that he literally carried the key all this time."

They both heard newspaper being fiercely shredded on the floor by the bed.

"Can he read?" Devon asked.

"Do you really want to know?"

"No."

"Neither do
I
. But I do want to know why he was so hostile to Luke. Melanie is understandable, but—"

Devon kissed her. "Darling, that's the easiest answer of all. Let's get married quickly."

Lara allowed herself to be momentarily distracted. "I'd like that. But you and I are going to have trouble establishing residency for a license. Or will we?"

He grinned at her. "You and your cat have just aided the Federal Bureau of Investigation in toppling a criminal cartel that had infiltrated the highest levels of technology, to say nothing of a few scared government circles. Do you really think anybody's going to balk at waiving a simple little thing like establishing residency or a waiting period?"