In Plain Sight (Stolen Hearts) (20 page)
Read In Plain Sight (Stolen Hearts) Online
Authors: Kate Kelly
She rounded one shoulder. “It was a stupid idea. I’ll change it.”
“Armand hasn’t said anything about it to you?”
“No.”
She shivered when his mouth brushed against her ear. “What if he’s seen the mistake and decided to play dumb and leave it?” he whispered softly.
Rafe’s hard body pressed into her back, his arms on either side of her, his hands on the table beside hers. His delicious heat melted through her thin, tank top, and she gripped the edge of the table to stop herself from leaning into him.
“You’re saying…” Something important, she was sure. She knew Rafe was whispering in her ear because Armand had probably planted a listening device here, too. But he felt so good pressed against her, she didn’t care why he was doing it.
“That he’s leaving it there for the same reason you incorporated the mistake. Whoever unloads the necklace is going to get screwed.”
He pulled away from her so suddenly, she almost fell on her butt. He walked around to the other side of the table. “This radio work?”
“Yes. Please, turn it on. I like to work to music.” She picked up her favorite tool, a small metal punch, and stared at it for a minute as she tried to ignore the lingering tingles that shimmered through her.
Armand would hate not to be in control. If he had noticed how she’d reversed the design in small corner of the necklace, he would have known right away that she’d reversed the design on purpose so the fake necklace could be identified. And just as she hoped he’d go to jail when the alteration was discovered, maybe he was planning to pass the buck, so to speak, onto whoever owned him at the moment.
He preferred using his head rather than employing muscle, because stealing valuable pieces of jewelry was a form of entertainment for him. At first, she’d thought they were playing one of his games, but Armand didn’t have any more control over the situation than she did.
As Rafe had already pointed out, even if she finished the necklace, chances were they wouldn’t be walking out of here alive. The toast she’d forced herself to eat surged up her throat. She raced outside and reached the side of the barn just in time to kneel in the tall grass and empty the contents of her stomach. God, she felt miserable. She wished she could crawl into bed and sleep for a year.
Rafe squatted down beside her and silently handed her a glass of water. She swished water in her mouth, spit it out and got to her feet. Leaning against the side of the barn to support her trembling limbs, she looked at the beautiful summer morning, the air still fresh and clear, daisies and buttercups swaying in the slight breeze. “I always thought I’d like to live in the country. But I don’t think so. It’s too quiet.” She drained her glass.
“They’re going to kill us,” she said quietly, her gaze glued to the peaceful scene in front of her.
“Not as long as you’re working on the necklace.”
“I should get back to work.”
“It’s not the sapphire necklace, is it?”
She stopped, her back to him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
All she did was lie to him. Had she thought, for even a minute, that they could have a relationship? Armand was right. She’d learned young how to lie, to be someone she wasn’t, and she couldn’t change now. Maybe she didn’t want to. Except what kind of life would that be for her baby?
Rafe came up behind her. “Are you protecting me again or lying because you can’t help yourself?”
She forced back her tears. What he didn’t know could save his life. She’d warn Armand not to leave the designs hanging around again. “You’re imagining things, Pascotto. I have work to do.”
He followed her back to the worktable. “I’m worried about you, Bridget. Do you have the flu or is it nerves that’s making you sick?”
A or B. C didn’t exist in his world. “Nerves, likely.” What was one more lie on top of all the others? At least for now. She’d have to tell him at some point she was pregnant, but when was the right time to tell someone he’s going to be a father? Before the baby was born? After? How about just before she went to jail?
She sucked in a breath, placed her hand on her aching heart. She couldn’t go to jail. She’d die if she had to give up her baby.
Rafe pulled the radio closer and turned up the volume. “Are you all right?”
“Just a bit of gas.”
“You’ve lost too much weight, and you look like…like you’ve caught something. Maybe we should ask for you to see a doctor.”
She’d caught something, all right. One of his sperm. That was one of the things that amazed her. She’d always been so careful with birth control. Until she met Rafe. She’d gotten lax because she hadn’t been with anyone for so long, and when Rafe came on the scene it was like…well, like a starburst. She couldn’t get close to him fast enough. She’d wanted to absorb him. Still did.
“They’re not going to let me see a doctor unless I’m dying.”
“Could you do that?’
She looked up from the parts of the necklace she needed to solder together. “Do what?”
“Act like you’re dying.”
“I’m not sure. Doesn’t matter. They’d keep you. ”
He touched her arm. “But one of us would be free.”
“And one of us would be dead. No. I’m not risking your life any more than I already have.”
“You don’t have to take responsibility for other people’s actions, Irish. It’s not your fault I’m here.”
“Nice try.” She smiled for his benefit. “But no cigar. You wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for me.”
His beautiful blue eyes darkened. “It was driving me nuts not knowing where you were or what was going on.”
Oh, God. She was going to have to tell him what she’d done, and then he was going to hate her. “I, ah…I contacted Armand.”
He faltered back a step. “What?”
“Before Marianne’s, I called Armand and met him.” She talked faster when his expression turned grim. “I didn’t understand, I thought Armand was playing another one of his games, and I’d make the necklace, and…” She gestured toward the drawing that showed the reversal of design. “I thought it would be over for good, and I’d be free and no one would get hurt.” She stopped, gasping for breath.
“So you never really intended to let me help. You and your lover, Armand, were playing games.”
She sat on the stool and buried her head under her arms as she leaned forward on the table. “I just didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Guess your little game backfired on you.”
She opened her mouth to apologize, but nothing came out. She raised her head and glared at him. “I was trying to protect the people I care about.”
“That’s a lousy habit of yours. Ever let anyone look after you for a change?”
Hell, he was going to make her cry. Not a hard thing to do these days with her hormones going wonky on her. But if she let down her defenses and started crying, heaven knows what she’d tell him. Something guaranteed to kill him.
“I’ve got to get back to work.”
“On which necklace?”
“The sapphire.” She’d stick with her lies from now on.
“This isn’t the same design.”
“And you know because you looked at the necklace in a museum once?”
“I spent several years at college copying other people’s artwork, so I know the longer and harder you look, the more you see. I took my time studying that necklace. Several times. It helped to distract me from worrying about you.”
“Maybe you should get a life.”
“You’re not going to tell me the truth about the necklace, are you?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
She picked up both pliers and started opened several jump ring connectors. She was ready to start attaching different parts of the necklace together. It was over between her and Rafe. She could feel his withdrawal, both physically and emotionally. Who could blame him? No one wanted to be involved with someone you couldn’t trust.
What would happen if she told him everything? If they ever got free, he’d pass it along to Gage and once the FBI was involved…sometimes it was easier to accomplish things without working within the confines of the law.
“How can I help?”
“You can’t.” Because everything that was happening had been cast long before Rafe had appeared in her life. But that’s not what he meant.
“Of course I can. I’m good with my hands.”
And what beautiful hands they were. Large and strong and— “Okay. I need you to watch how I’m opening these small rings. See? Gently back and forth. Can you do that?” She watched as he carefully opened the rings. Once she was satisfied he understood, she picked up an open ring and used it to connect a completed smaller setting to the large central setting.
“Interesting Armand lets you use your tools without supervision.”
“What am I going to do? Burn down the barn?”
He turned the volume on the radio up higher. “It’s a possibility. Create a distraction so we can escape.”
“The first thing they’d do is grab us.”
“Not if we weren’t where they were looking. Think about it. Middle of the night. We sneak out of the trailer, torch the barn and take off into the woods.”
“Louis knows how to track people. It’s one of the first things they told me when I came here.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Sometimes I wonder if you even want to escape.”
“We’ll only get one try. We have to be smart about it.”
“Any ideas?”
She snorted. “Lots.”
He stopped working. “And?”
“Okay. Create a distraction, but instead of trying to escape, one of us gets to the phone and calls for help.”
“That’s pretty good. I wonder what they did with my cell phone. I was holding it in my hand when asshat slugged me in the SUV.”
“There’s no phone in the house, but Armand has a cell. I’ve watched, but I haven’t seen either Cyrus or Louis use a phone. So that’s maybe three phones. Armand took mine right away. I’ve looked for it as much as I could. I think he threw it away.”
“Who collects the trash?”
“Cyrus takes it somewhere once a week.”
“What day?”
“Thursdays.”
He shot her a look of admiration. “You’ve been doing your homework.”
Don’t even think about getting giddy because he paid you a compliment. “We could put a message in the trash. Kind of like a message in a bottle, you know?”
“And tell them what? We don’t know where we are, and what are the chances anyone would find the message?”
Her faint glow of hope died.
“You’ve got some pretty sharp tools here.”
“Yeah. I’ll use one to stab Louis right before he kills me. I don’t think my little files are going to do much damage.”
“A blow torch could mess up someone’s eyes, enough that we could grab a gun.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“That explains why none of them come close to me when I’m working. They always stay by the door and talk to me from there.”
“Christ, they’ve thought of everything, haven’t they?”
“I know. I’ve been thinking about it since I got here, and I still haven’t found a way out.”
Didn’t mean she wouldn’t keep trying, though. She had two people she loved depending on her now. She’d find a way to save all of them. She didn’t have a choice.
Rafe felt as if she’d slugged him in the gut. He’d been acting like a righteous asshole, accusing her of not trying or wanting to be free while all she’d been doing was looking for a way to escape the isolated farm.
“You know, maybe if you told me the truth once in a while I’d trust you more.”
“I told you the truth,” she said without looking up from connecting the two parts of the necklace. “You didn’t like it.”
“About what?”
“Contacting Armand.”
Surprised by a spurt of anger, he realized what bothered him most was that she’d gone to Armand the first chance she had. He’d gotten it into his head that he’d been helping her, and the idea that she’d turned to another man for help, especially Armand, pissed him off. Not a very heroic reaction, but he’d never pretended to be a hero.
“All that stuff we were doing, dodging people, hiding out at Honey’s apartment, what was all that about?”
“We were trying not to get caught.”
“Yet you walked into the lion’s den first chance you got.” Hell, he sounded petulant, even to his own ears.
She searched his face as if looking for the answer there. After a minute, she picked up a file and started smoothing out her weld. “I had a great mom, but she worked all the time.”
He saw a corner of her mouth lift. “Guess that’s where I get my independent streak. She always said we didn’t need handouts from anyone. I was about nine when she took on a second job, working as a waitress. She wouldn’t get home until midnight, and she was out the door at eight in the morning.”
“Who took care of you and Darcy?” Another jab of anger caught him off guard because he already knew the answer.
“I did.” She looked up. “It’s what I do, Rafe. I take care of people. When I left Marianne I realized the situation had gotten out of control, and I did what I thought was necessary to stop it. It worked for a while.”
He knew so little about her, and yet, in a way, it felt like she’d always been a part of his life. “That was a lot of responsibility for a nine-year-old. This is done. What can I do now?”
She looked up from the necklace and studied the pile of ring connectors he’d opened. “Good job.” She flashed him a smile. “You’re good with your hands.”
He wiggled his eyebrows up and down. “I have many hidden talents.”
Her face opened like a flower to the sun as she laughed. Even with the strain of the last month and having lost weight, she was still so beautiful. He’d give anything to kiss her right now, but he was afraid of chasing away the moment.
“You can leave that for a while. This is a flex shaft. It’s a handy tool. I use it for lots of different things but right now I need you to clean up this section.” She inserted a polishing pin into the flex shaft and demonstrated how to clean the crud off the necklace.
He took the tool from her, tried it on a couple of discarded rings, then went to work on the section of the necklace she’d put in front of him. “I looked up your designs online. I like your jewelry. I ordered a bracelet for Sophie,” he confessed.
“Which one?”
“A copper one with black stones. It looked unique.” Which, of course, it would be because Bridget had designed it. “Who takes care of the orders?”
“Estelle. She’s in Paris. I was going to move all the stock here but thought I’d wait a bit. A lot of our orders come from Europe, anyway.”
Another whole part of her life he knew nothing about. There were layers upon layers to discover about Bridget O’Neill, and he wondered if he’d have the chance to learn about all of them. What an incredible way to spend his life. Sure as hell, he’d never be bored.
“You and Darcy seem close.”
“As close as you are to your sister. What about your parents and your childhood? I’ve told you about mine.”
“Not much to tell. My mom owned an art gallery. She wanted to be a famous artist, but her life was full of disappointments.”
Bridget gave him her full attention. “Like what?”
He tried to laugh, but he sounded disgruntled. “She didn’t turn out to be a famous artist.”
“She must be proud Sophie’s career is taking off.”
“Mother hates that Sophie is a better artist than she was. She always liked her booze, but it’s gotten out of control the last few years, and she’s in rehab at the moment.”
“I’m sorry. That must be tough on you. Where’s your dad in all this?”
His gut tightened. “Never met the man.”
“Ah.”
“Yours?”
“Stayed around long enough to marry my mom, and apparently came back to get her pregnant with Darcy. I looked him up once. He lives in San Francisco. Decided he was gay. Not that I have a problem with that.” She picked up a metal punch and rolled it around in her hands. “But he never helped with money or anything, and my mom worked so hard to pay the bills. He just didn’t want us.”
Rafe put the flex shaft down, walked around the table and pulled her into his arms. She looked so sad he needed her in his arms. “Your father’s a fool.” He kissed the top of her head.
“No. He just wanted something different from life. Your father, too, I guess.”
He pulled her closer for a second, then let her go. “My father already had a family. My mother was his mistress for years, and Sophie and I were his two dirty little secrets he kept out of sight. He’s too rich and too important to be a mere mortal like the rest of us.”
“What about now that you’re adults?”
“He’s still rich and still important. To give him credit, he bought the art gallery for Mother and set up a trust fund for Sophie and me.”
“You and Sophie are wonderful people. He’s an idiot for missing out on your life.”
Still standing beside her, he covered her hand with his. He couldn’t not touch her. “When I have children, I’m going to be there for them one hundred percent.”
It felt as if the temperature in the barn had dropped several degrees as Bridget withdrew her hand and started to work again. Guess having kids was not a good subject for her. Maybe she couldn’t have them.
But, man, imagine having kids with her. He was embarrassed as his cock stirred to life. Just thinking about her being pregnant with his child turned him on. But judging by the way she’d shut down, she didn’t feel the same way. He could change her mind if she were able to have them; he was almost sure of that. But they needed time together, and that was one thing they didn’t have.
“Where do you think they watch us from?” He squinted toward the sunlight that spilled inside the open barn doors.
“Who?”
“Whatever their names are. Cyrus and the other guy. Armand said one of them was always watching.”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t seen either one on guard.” She walked to the open doors and looked at the yard. “They’d want to see if anyone’s coming up the driveway as well as keeping their eye on us.”
He joined her at the door. “It’s gotta be the hill beside the house. Everything else is flat.” He tugged Bridget back into the shadowy barn. “I don’t like you standing out in the open like that. I doubt he can see us if we stand in the shadows and search for him.”
“What good would it do to know where he is?”
“I’m not sure. At the very least, not run toward him if we ever get a chance to escape. Look.” He touched her elbow. “I just saw the sun glint off something. Bet he’s looking at us through binoculars.”
He felt her shiver before she turned away from the door. “I should get back to work.”
“It’s almost lunchtime. Can you set me up with a few more simple tasks? You look like you could use a nap. Just for a few minutes before lunch,” he added when her mouth turned down at the corners. “You’ll get a lot more done this afternoon.”
She wiped a hand over her face. “Maybe you’re right. I am tired.”
Rafe felt inordinately pleased with himself as she pointed to two more sections of the necklace that needed to be cleaned, then went to the trailer. If they were going to make a run for it, and so far that was the only way of escape that made any sense, Bridget was going to have to build up her strength. She was as weak as a baby.
He paused in the act of picking up the flex shaft. An idea nudged him, but it was gone before it fully formed. Hardly the time to start thinking about babies, although with Sophie about to have hers and the conversation he and Bridget had just had about their parents, it wasn’t surprising.
At what point would Sophie realize he was missing? They’d phoned each other every day the last two weeks, so she’d raise the alarm soon. Not that it would help. Gage would assume Bridget had contacted him again and that Rafe had met with her of his own volition. It wouldn’t occur to anyone he’d been forced to go. He had to find a way to tell them where he was, but first he had to find out the answer to that himself.
If only he could get his hands on a phone. After lunch he’d try to push the boundaries and see what happened if he checked out the SUV and maybe even wandered down the driveway a bit. He couldn’t just sit around playing with a damn necklace.
“Where’s Bridget?”
Rafe scratched the surface he’d just cleaned at the abruptness of Armand’s appearance. He hadn’t noticed him approaching. He bent his head and concentrated on repairing the scratch.
“I sent her in for a nap. She’s not feeling well.”
Armand snorted. “Is that what you call it these days.”
Rafe’s head shot up. “Call what?”
“Christ.” He couldn’t tell if Armand looked disgusted or amused. “Do you know what you’re doing? I need this necklace to look perfect.”
“Was the original?”
“Close enough.”
“I studied art for years. I’m pretty good at working with my hands.”
“That’s good, I guess. Bridget needs help. We’re running out of time.”
“What’s with the deadline? Can’t you get an extension?”
“No.”
“What happens if you don’t meet the deadline?”
Armand shrugged. “You don’t want to know.”
“I do, actually. We deserve to know what’s going on.”
The older Frenchman looked as if he were seriously considering Rafe’s request. In the end he shook his head and stepped outside the barn. “It’s too dangerous. I can’t risk telling you. If Bridget could just complete the necklace, we might have a chance.”
“How many people are we up against?”
“Three. No, four. Maybe five.”
Rafe stalked around the table. “You selfish bastard. You’ve lost control of the situation, haven’t you? What were you thinking, involving Bridget with your damned dirty business? It wasn’t enough to corrupt her when she was still a child; you had to pull her down into the mud with you again.”
Armand looked shocked. “Is that what she told you? That I corrupted her?”
“She’d just lost her mother, for God’s sake. She was innocent, and you seduced her and taught her how to be a thief.”
“What do you think would have happened if she’d gone into the system? I was good to her. Bridget never stole anything.”
Anger that had been simmering for days exploded in Rafe’s gut. He swung in Armand’s direction, and his fist connected solidly with the Frenchman’s nose. He brought his left arm up to block Armand’s fists and landed another blow on the older man’s chin that sent him reeling backward.
Rafe jumped after the man, astonished at how good it felt to release the anger that had built up inside. Before he could swing again, someone grabbed him from behind and put him in a headlock.
“You want I should work him over?”
Armand shook his head as he tried to stem the blood flowing from his nose with a rag. “Let him go,” he croaked. “We had a misunderstanding. It’s all right.”
“Where’s the little lady?” Louis asked as he tightened his grip around Rafe’s neck. The guy’s muscled arm was as big as Rafe’s thigh.
“In the trailer, resting.” Armand threw the bloody rag in the trash can.
“You better not be lying.” Louis jerked Rafe’s head backward, then released his grip and shoved him away.
Rafe fell to his knees and massaged his throat. His larynx felt bruised. Piece by piece these guys were rearranging his body. He hated to think which part would be next.