Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) (17 page)

As for Jeff, I was certain he’d never shot anyone. The SWAT team had snipers for wet work, and Jeff wasn’t one of them. He’d never been in a shoot-out. The activities of the Calusa County SWAT team were far from secret, and Jeff himself was pretty much an open book. What you see is what you get. Which was probably why he was still looking me as if I had two heads when the elevator disgorged us into an entryway just outside the kitchen.

At two in the afternoon, the kitchen was empty. We headed into the greatroom, where Gramma Blaine was watching television, knitting up a storm on some fancy yarn that looked like a fur coat. “They’re waiting for you in the office,” she said.

Sure they were. I could tell even Gramma knew there was trouble.

“
Okay, kid, let’s do it,” Jeff said, and ushered me down a hall to a large room at the back of the house. Dad’s corner office has every gadget known to modern technology. Broad windows gave him a panoramic view of woods as far as the eye could see. Woods so thick the winding Calusa River, about a half mile away, was totally invisible. Dad was in his electric wheelchair, close to the dark blue leather sofa where Mom was sitting, her eyes anxious. Dad, as always, was inscrutable.

Mom jumped up and gave me a hug. She smelled of citrus from her favorite daytime cologne. I bit my lip and reminded myself I was all grown up now. But that hug felt good.

Mom and Dad are both pushing sixty, but remarkably well-preserved. Neither has let a gray hair show. Ever. Mom’s the classic girl-next-door—round face, golden brown hair, blue eyes that radiate faith in humanity’s better side, and her determination to endure what could not be helped. Dad, in contrast, still radiates a lot of the tough guy he once was. His hair remains steadfastly dark brown, his eyes the golden amber color of a Florida panther’s coat. His shoulders are still broad and, believe me, my brothers have to work to beat him at arm wrestling. Dad used to stand six-three, and the brothers all have his build, though Logan’s on the lean side. I, fortunately, got my small bones, ample curves, and bronze hair from the Blaine side of the family.

I sat in an upholstered chair that matched the leather sofa, leaving Jeff to sit next to Mom. If I was going to be in the witness chair, I might as well look the part.

Dad had a hand on each arm of his wheelchair. “You were able to fix things for the Arendsens?” he asked, mildly enough.

“
Yes. They seemed thrilled with Machu Picchu when I last saw them. They could hardly wait to get out and explore the ruins.”

“
Good,” Mom said, beaming at me.

“
Your mother tells me there’s something wrong,” Dad continued. “And since her instincts are infallible, out with it, Laine. What happened?”

I was saved by footsteps pounding down the hall. “Sorry I’m late,” Doug said. “An accident on I-4. Eighteen wheeler.” Doug could be Jeff’s twin, except he has Dad’s amber eyes and the tough-guy confidence of someone who has experienced more than Jeff will after a lifetime on the Calusa County SWAT team. Doug scooted the office chair from Mom’s computer across the tile floor and plopped himself down. “Did I miss anything?” he asked, swinging his long legs close to mine.

Believe me, being grilled by my family is worse than testifying in a high profile murder case, so I didn’t even try to equivocate. (Well, almost.) I sat there and laid it all out, from Paolo’s initial call about the wrong plane in Nazca to finding a semi-conscious Brit on the Inca Trail. Jeff’s mouth was agape, Doug shaking his head. Mom seemed fascinated, and Dad’s eyes had taken on a gleam I rarely saw. “Go on,” he ordered.

That, of course, is when things got sticky. I had to mention the dawn attacker, who might or might not have been Russian. Our taxi trip down Machu Picchu mountain. I didn’t fudge about the rifle shot into the tire. There was no way Dad wasn’t going to find out.

I told them about my decision to see the Brit back to his embassy. Jeff’s eyes got wider, but everyone else merely nodded. This kind of noblesse oblige was expected from a Fantascapes troubleshooter.

I told them my stray recovered his memory—his name was Rhys Tarrant. He was an Interpol officer.

“
Paper tigers,” Doug sneered.

“
He isn’t!”

“
Don’t carry guns, can’t make arrests.”

“
Enough!” Dad glared as if we were toddlers we sounded like before raising an eyebrow in my direction. “A liaison officer working drugs?”

I frowned, shook my head. “He said he was out of his territory, that he worked trafficking in women and children. And it seemed to fit. His Spanish was sketchy, probably no more than he was able to glean from his fluent French.”

“
So he was in Peru why?” Doug growled.

God help me I was about to lie to family. Worse yet, I was about to lie to my Boss. Why mention Rhys’s job offer when it wasn’t likely to be repeated? “I suppose I wasn’t included in need-to-know,” I murmured. And before anyone could ask more questions, I plunged back into my tale, describing the visit from Lieutenant Manko and Sergeant Sayani, about the dead body found at Phuyupatamarca.

Doug pounced. “And your Interpol guy was a likely suspect!”

“
Rhys was found in the same place,” I conceded. “And he’d obviously been in a fight, so, yes, there was reason to connect the two cases, but that’s a long way from genuine evidence. And . . . you might call it strange, but Rhys and Lieutenant Manko seemed to connect in some basic cop fashion. I’m quite sure Manko was convinced Rhys was some kind of undercover drug investigator. And the dead Quechua was a known bad guy. Anyway, Manko agreed to let us return to Cuzco and be interrogated by the police there, closer to our embassies. He sent Sergeant Sayani with us. I never quite figured out if he was an escort or a guard,” I ended on a sigh.

Courage. Can’t fudge the next part. Have to tell
.

I described the train ride back to Cuzco. The office was so quiet it was like a mausoleum at midnight. “So I shot him. Three times,” I said, then forged on before anyone could get in a comment . “He had no ID. His skin was pale—he might have been South American, but I doubt it. His clothes were Eastern European. At least Rhys thought so.” I had to pause for breath.

“
You
killed
him?” Mom said. It wasn’t really a question.

“
He killed Sayani and almost killed Rhys.” My guilt was fading rapidly. I’d been a credit to the family, and I was learning to live with it.

“
You did good, kid,” Jeff hissed. “Damn good.”

“
No choice, Laine,” said Doug, leveling his fine amber eyes in my direction.

“
Hit him with all three shots?” Dad inquired casually.

“
Yes.”

“
So what haven’t you told us?”

“
Like what this Rhys Tarrant was doing on the Inca Trail,” Doug added.

“
And why was somebody trying to kill him?” Jeff looked expectant, as if he really thought I knew the answer.

“
He doesn’t know why someone’s after him,” I said, answering the easy part first.

“
So he was on vacation?” Jeff scoffed.

Doug snorted. “Interpol’s probably a cover to make him look like a pussy cat. They’re nothing but a bunch of paper pushers—”

“
Are you aware,” Dad inquired softly, “that not a single international arrest can be made without Interpol? That if someone commits a crime—no matter how horrible—in one country, then runs to another, he can’t be arrested without Interpol issuing the warrant? Which is why more countries belong to Interpol than belong to the UN.”

“
Bunch of old fogies,” Doug muttered.

“
They served a useful function even when they were,” Dad said. “And they left that image behind some time ago.”

“
So what happened to this Rhys?” Mom asked.

“
He”—my lips turned up in a tiny, reminiscent smile—“he dictated the witnesses’ statements, giving them our version of what happened in English, French, and German. Then he told me he’d turn up, see that Fantascapes got all the money we fronted for him. And that was it. We were rescued by our respective embassies and basically booted out of the country before we could cause any more trouble.”

“
I hope you’re not blacklisted,” Mom murmured. (As I’ve mentioned, we do a lot of business in Peru.)

“
I’d like to talk to Laine alone,” Dad said.

Mom bounced to her feet, deserting me with no more than an encouraging smile and a pat on the hand. Jeff shot me look full of sympathy, tinged with admiration. I felt Doug’s hand on my shoulder, and then they were gone.

I was alone with Jordan Halliday, my Boss.

Chapter Ten

Even from a wheelchair, my father dominates a room, his silences speaking more loudly than most people’s shouts. I did my best not to squirm beneath the steady amber of his gaze, but it was tough. I’d stepped outside the boundaries of the world he’d created from the ruins of his life, and at the moment neither of us was comfortable with reality.

“
I presume you’ve considered that the whole thing might have been a ruse,” Dad said at last, “that you were neatly maneuvered into a situation that forced you to kill?”

“
I considered it.”

“
And?”

“
It didn’t fit. Didn’t feel right,” I added as Dad’s gaze remained steady, revealing little beyond mild curiosity. “I tried to see Rhys as a bad guy, and couldn’t. Not even when he was just a stray with no name. There was something about him—.”

“
It didn’t occur to you there was something odd about the Arendsens having so many problems, that it might have been a set-up?”

Omitting information was one thing. Deliberately lying to the Boss was another. So I told Dad about Rhys’s interference in Fantascapes’ business. And why. I worked hard at being casual, as if Rhys’s manipulations, his recruitment offer meant nothing at all. Fortunately, Dad seemed to take it as lightly as I made it sound, zeroing in on Rhys’s sabotage instead.

“
Tarrant messed with our operations, Laine. Nearly ruined the Arendsens’ trip. And if we’re to believe his story, he did it to make an end run around the family. To top that, he says he has no idea who’s trying to kill him or why. That’s not exactly Good Guy material. Certainly doesn’t make him a man to be trusted.”

Miserably, I nodded.

“
So . . . there may be a Russian connection?” Dad asked, changing gears with his customary rapidity.

“
The attacker on the trail—the one I didn’t shoot. He cursed in what sounded like Russian. The man on the train, he could have been Czech, Romanian, Ukrainian, Russian. Impossible to tell.”

Dad tapped his fingers against the arm of his wheelchair. “Worst Case,” he said, “the whole thing was a set-up and Fantascapes is involved in something nasty. Do we have any Slavic connections at the moment?”

“
Unless something’s come up while I was gone, there’s just the Kirichenko wedding. The one with the Fabergé
matrioshka
dolls—Mom’s probably mentioned it.”

Dad’s lips curled into his version of a Mona Lisa smile. He wasn’t about to comment on the frequent excesses demanded by the clients of Weddings Extraordinaire. “Viktor?” he asked, “who’s spending a small fortune to impress a mail-order bride from Odessa?”

“
That’s the one.” I could see he was itching to run Viktor Kirichenko through his databases. And Rhys Tarrant. I started to get up.

Dad’s index finger flashed down, for all the world like a trainer giving a silent command to a dog. I sat. A small whir as Dad cruised across the space between us until the foot-pieces on his chair were almost touching my toes. “Laine . . . killing someone is a decision I never wanted you to have to make. It was a righteous shoot, which helps, but you’ll still have to learn to live with it. As I did. As your brothers do. It’s part of what we are, though why I thought I had the power to keep you out of it I can only attribute to the fact that the world I grew up in had very few gun-toting women. The truth is . . .”

Dad paused, looking as flustered as I’d ever seen him. “The truth is, when the Halliday men think Serve and Protect, we include our women under the umbrella. Archaic to some, I know, but there it is. It’s possible this Tarrant character was right. He needed to talk to you somewhere far from home. Which is the Best Case scenario—he is what he says he is, and he really wants the input you could add to Interpol’s files.”

I waited for him to say that Interpol could take a flying leap, but he didn’t.

“
Interpol’s a glorified database service, Laine, accumulating information on a global scale, passing it along. In the last decade or so, they’ve added analyzing and consulting, but local policeman make the busts. Interpol agents don’t come with licenses to kill. And they’re seldom targets, but”—Dad pressed a thumb to his chin and scowled—“if Tarrant checks out and you’re so inclined, you have a right to try your wings. I’ll talk to your mother. Hopefully, she’ll understand.”

If working for Interpol wasn’t dangerous, then what had been happening in Peru?

At the moment I was too relieved to think about it. Maybe, just maybe, my family obligation was going to be eased enough to let me be part of something bigger than weddings and holidays.

If Rhys came back.