Soldier's Redemption (6 page)

“I’m glad you came, too.”

“My uncle’s estate isn’t far. We should be there within minutes.”

His fingers brushed her face, tilting her chin up, his lips so close she felt them move when he spoke. “Then we better start saying goodbye right now,” he said. The heat of his breath made her quiver as his mouth closed over hers.

* * *

C
OLE RETURNED TO HIS ROOM
a little uneasy about the evening. Where had his noble intentions gone? How could he justify finding out the truth and exacting justice for himself while taking those very things away from someone else?

Especially from someone he was beginning to care about?

Not that kissing Skylar had been anything but genuine on his part. Who wouldn’t want to kiss her? But his motives were complicated—even to him—and he knew if he was honest with her about his intentions and goals, she would be as likely to push him under a bus as ever look at him again. And he couldn’t chance losing her because then he would be worse off than before, his very presence a red flag to Luca Futura. At that point, his best bet would be to get out of Kanistan as quickly as possible.

There was a saying his adoptive father had uttered at times: in for a penny, in for a pound.

As he unlocked his room door with the swipe of a card, he wondered again about Ian Banderas and the sad woman who had come up to him in the public venue of a restaurant. From her demeanor, it was obvious she wasn’t the kind to cause a stir, which in itself underlined a desperation to her action. Skylar had picked up on it immediately as had he.

The door closed behind him, and he paused for a second, reviewing, in his mind’s eye, the sight of Skylar seated across from him, her expression as soft as her lips, her eyes glowing in the candlelight, so young and pretty and such a world away from anyone and anything he’d ever experienced that he felt as drawn to her, in his way, as that woman had been drawn to Ian Banderas.

But there had been a somber note to their parting that had been unexpected. At first he thought the hurried way she left the cab had to do with the accumulation of too many unexpected and overwhelming events of the day, but on the way back, he’d speculated it might be that he was rushing her. Hadn’t she mentioned him going fast the minute he kissed her?

He took a deep breath and, out of habit, checked the small case he kept atop the dresser, positioned just so with the image of a compass on top pointing one degree south of northwest.

It was off by that one degree. Someone had made it line up just right, which meant it was wrong.

And that meant someone had been in the room.

His gaze swiveled to the bed, which was turned down with a candy on the pillow just as it had been the night before. The maid had been here. She could have been intrigued by the case and tried to open it. Hell, she could have set something down on the dresser that scooted it out of position. Time to check the other safeguard—this one the felt bag he kept in the back of the bottom drawer.

The bag was where it was supposed to be, and he retrieved it, carrying it to the bed where he sat down to examine the loose knot in the beige cord. It looked exactly as it had when he left except that the extra beige thread that he habitually threaded in the knot was missing. Someone had untied the cord to uncover a wad of euros folded inside. As he expected, the money was intact...and that meant his searcher hadn’t been a thief. He’d been after something else.

Who else but Luca Futura or, more accurately, one of his henchmen?

The question was simple: Did they find anything to arouse suspicion? Doubtful. He had a briefcase full of documents for a legitimate business that he’d bought into the week before coming here. His ID would reveal he was exactly who he said he was, because for all intents and purposes, he
was
exactly who he said he was.

Maybe this was business as usual for a man like Futura, who would be speculative about anyone who crossed his path no matter how peripherally. But how did they know Cole would be out of his room?

Two possibilities: it was no coincidence that Ian Banderas had been in the dining room because he’d come here at Futura’s bidding,
or
Skylar Pope’s arrival hadn’t been as innocent as it appeared.

Was that possible? He couldn’t imagine there was a duplicitous bone in her body, yet the way she’d said good-night when they arrived at the palatial estate of her aunt and uncle had held a note of finality, leaving him wondering if the dinner invitation would ultimately be rescinded and Skylar would disappear from his reach. Maybe her uncle had given her the task of distracting him.

He shook his head at his own paranoia then, remembering the clown, he crossed the room to open the drawer. The clown was where he’d left it. What had the searcher made of a grown man carrying around an obviously old toy like this?

More importantly, if whoever had searched this room reported the presence of the clown to Luca Futura, would it raise an alarm in the man’s distant memory?

Well, he’d know tomorrow night if not sooner.

Chapter Five

The next day, assuming he was being watched in some capacity, Cole went through the motions of visiting different outlets, placing orders and discussing sales with contacts his new partner had made in the months before. Those contacts and the partner’s floundering ability to pay his overhead were the reasons Cole had bought into Nevada Consolidated in the first place. He now owned four-fifths of a company teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and the truth of the matter was that it would probably go under and he would lose every penny.

But that was just money. What he had needed was the legitimacy of a career change after his injuries had forced him out of the army. When Luca Futura researched Cole Bennett, he mustn’t find anything to arouse suspicion.

Half expecting a call that canceled dinner plans, Cole checked his room messages often throughout the day. The call never came, and at seven, warned by the concierge the city’s maze of streets wasn’t to be tackled lightly by foreigners after dark, he showed up at Futura’s front gate in a taxi and was ushered inside by a very proper-looking butler with a British accent.

Skylar abandoned her seat on a brocaded sofa and approached him. He had to remind himself to breathe. She was dressed in what surely must be one of her creations, an artless dress composed of many different patterns of fabric that fell from her slender shoulders and stopped just above her knees. The streak in her hair was now more purple than pink, and the smile she wore lit up the high-ceilinged room.

One thing Skylar wasn’t was a chameleon. She did not blend in to her surroundings. Take this room, all gilded and glitzy and full of antiques he hoped no one would think to ask him about. Skylar didn’t clash with it exactly; she just had such a strong sense of style and of herself that she remained undiminished, just as she had in Aneta’s apartment building the day before.

He tore his gaze from her dazzling face to see another woman, this one older and frailer. She, too, sat on the sofa, a blue scarf wrapped around what must be thinning hair, her skin translucent. It was obvious she’d lost weight recently, but he found the same spirit in her eyes that he found in Skylar’s, and her handshake upon introduction was welcoming.

“I am so very pleased to meet you,” Skylar’s aunt said, her voice gentle. “Please forgive my husband,” she added. “He’s busy putting out fires over the phone, but he’ll be downstairs in a moment. Can we get you something to drink?”

“Whatever you’re having would be fine,” Cole said, glancing at the cup that sat before her on a low coffee table.

“I can’t drink alcohol right now,” she said. “This is just herbal tea. I’d like to offer something more exciting to the man who did so much for Skylar yesterday and tried to help poor Aneta. Skylar, ask Davis to pour wine.”

“Only if Skylar will join me,” Cole said.

“Of course I will,” Skylar said, and actually pulled on a cord just as he’d seen people do in movies. Within seconds, the butler showed up and opened a bottle of wine, delivering two glasses before departing.

“I’m very sorry about your employee, Ms. Ables. If we’d only arrived a few minutes sooner, maybe we could have made a difference.”

“Or maybe you both would have been hurt, as well. There’s no use in thinking what if, is there?”

“Have the police any leads on the theft or the murder?” Cole asked.

“I’m not sure,” Skylar said. “I was at the shop all day trying to figure out if anything else is missing.”

“What would I do without you?” her aunt asked with an affectionate smile.

Skylar smiled back. “You know I love to help you out, Aunt Eleanor.”

“And
is
anything else missing?” Cole asked.

“I don’t believe so, but I’ve suggested to Aunt Eleanor that she have an auditor look through the books to be on the safe side.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” Eleanor said.

“This is quite a house,” Cole said after a short lull, uncomfortable with his own prying questions.

“I think it’s rather ostentatious,” Eleanor said, her eyes lively. “But my husband loves it.”

“Has it been in his family for generations?” he asked.

“Oh, no. No, his parents were humble people of limited means. But Luca worked for an American ambassador way back when, and after the explosion that killed the man and his family, Luca was called to fill increasingly demanding roles.”

“An explosion? Here in Traterg?”

“Yes. We had just married. Kanistan was very strange to me at first. So political. The country was uneasy, so I guess it was natural that I would become friendly with the only other American woman I knew, and that was Ambassador Oates’s wife, Mary.”

“Was the American ambassador’s death political in nature?” Cole asked, trying to keep the anxiousness out of his voice.

“No, I’m afraid it wasn’t. My husband doesn’t like to talk about it, but it seems the ambassador had an affair with a much younger woman. Lenora Roman was her name. Mind you, I found this so hard to believe. I’d met him several times when I visited them with Luca, and the ambassador always seemed like such a decent man. Anyway, Lenora became pregnant, and then she was murdered. The police discovered that her father and brothers assumed it was the ambassador’s doing and sent a bomb to the house in retaliation. The blast destroyed the whole family.”

“There were no survivors?”

She shook her head. “No. They all died. The ambassador, Mary and worst of all his son by a first marriage and the two smaller boys he and Mary had together. My husband was just devastated.”

“Now, Eleanor,” a voice said from behind Cole, who jerked in surprise. He’d been totally wound up in Eleanor’s story and hadn’t heard Luca Futura enter the room.

Cole rose to his feet to greet his host and found the man’s distant smile in place.

“I’m sorry, Luca,” Eleanor said. “I don’t know what got into me talking about all that. I know you don’t like to remember any of it.”

Luca leaned down and kissed his wife’s head. “No worries, my darling,” he said. No, he didn’t say it, he sang it, his voice trailing off into a melody.

Cole sat down so abruptly that the other three looked up at him. “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling exposed. He had the irrational desire to leave the house immediately.

“What’s wrong?” Skylar asked.

“I tripped on my own feet,” he said, trying out a self-deprecating laugh.

Luca smiled. “You do not strike me as a clumsy man,” he said.

“I’m usually not,” Cole said. “That was a pretty tune you hummed a minute ago.”

“It’s a folk song. Not many people know it anymore, but it still plays on in my mind.”

Eleanor began singing, her voice a little reedy, and that somehow made the lyrics more poignant. “No worries, my darling, I’ll always be near. No worries forever, just sleep. Tomorrow will dawn with the sun bright and clear. No worries, my darling, just sleep.” She looked up at her husband, and he squeezed her hand. Then she looked at Cole and added, “Luca used to sing that song to Skylar when she was little. Remember, Luca?”

“Yes, I remember,” he said.

Skylar rose and poured her uncle a glass of wine. She handed it to him, and he sat beside his wife while Skylar took a chair so close to Cole he could reach out and touch her. And that’s exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to get her alone, away from that house, away from the images her aunt had just planted in his head right before her husband had hummed a tune.

He also wanted to tell Eleanor how much he appreciated the tree-of-life paperweight Skylar had given him but hesitated, unsure if her uncle knew that she’d seen him the night before and not sure if the news would be welcome. It was impossible to miss his protective vibe. Instead, Cole talked about Eleanor’s exhibit at the gallery and how much he had enjoyed that, although the truth was that it was almost impossible to connect this delicate woman with the powerhouse artist she must really be.

“That endeavor was a labor of love for me,” she said, obviously pleased with his compliments. “When I’m better, I plan to start a new project. This time I want to do volcanoes of the Pacific Rim, like Krakatoa and Pinatubo, and even Mount St. Helens in the Pacific Northwest.”

“I can see I’m going to have to start a collection,” Cole said.

“Perhaps you should ask Mr. Bennett about the table in the drawing room,” Luca said, addressing his wife. “I imagine he could settle its origins once and for all. He must know a lot about antiques.”

“I’m afraid that’s not true,” Cole said. “I’m new to this.”

“What do you mean?” Skylar asked.

“I recently bought into an acquaintance’s business. I was injured overseas, while serving,” he explained to the others. “After I recovered, I needed a new direction, and Martin needed a partner. Right now I’m just learning as I go.”

The butler showed up to announce dinner, and they retired to the dining room, another over-the-top area. Eleanor, as expected, barely touched her meal, and Skylar seemed intent on keeping a light conversation going. Luca appeared content to sit back and watch their interaction.