Desperado Read online

  “That could put you both in even more danger,” Lassiter pointed out.

  “But it could also throw Gruber off balance,” came the reply. “If he and Adams relax their guard and get careless, you’ve got a chance to catch them in the act with that bug they haven’t discovered. We can tie them to Stillwell, with that tape. And I can have the freedom to do some digging into Gruber’s business connections in Europe and Africa. I’ll wear my dark glasses and let Maggie lead me around. Even if Gruber follows us, he won’t think I’m capable to getting up to much mischief. Meanwhile, you can have one of your contacts in that covert agency do a little digging on the Ivory Coast to see if they can connect JobFair and Global Enterprises. Can’t you?” he prodded with a grin.

  Lassiter chuckled. “I like the way you think. Lie low and carry the war into the enemy’s camp. Attack when it’s least expected.”

  “Exactly. Besides,” Cord added thoughtfully, “I can call in markers from old comrades who’d love to see Gruber go down for that coup attempt a few years back. We’ve all got scars from it. Once we’re out of the States, the odds become even. I have contacts overseas who can’t operate in this country.”

  Lassiter nodded slowly. “It might work. Not that it isn’t going to be dangerous,” he added. “What if Maggie doesn’t want to go?”

  Cord lifted both eyebrows. “You don’t know Maggie,” he said with a soft laugh. “The more adventurous it is, the more she’ll like it. She has a reckless spirit and she’s said more than once that she’d love to do something dangerous. Not that I’ll let her get into trouble.”

  “A unique woman,” the other man remarked.

  “Very unique, and good company under fire,” Cord added. He got out of the chair and shook hands. “I’ll start the ball rolling.”

  “Keep in touch.”

  “I’ll certainly do that.”

  Cord put on his dark glasses and sat in the waiting room until he got Red Davis to come and pick him up and take him back out to the ranch. Lassiter waited until he left before he went back into his office and, on a whim, turned the tape cassette to the flip side, expecting nothing more. But the next words that were spoken caught him like a blow in the throat.

  “We can’t target Lassiter, and Romero is formidable,” Stillwell agreed with the other man on the tape, “but it may not be necessary to use a hit man. I know something about Maggie Barton that you don’t. I’ve got clippings, videos, still photos. It cost me an arm and a leg to turn them up, but they’ll stop her dead. She has a past that she’d die to keep quiet. All we have to do is tell her what I’ve got, and she’ll stop Romero doing any more investigation into our affairs. I guarantee it. We’ll be safe.”

  “You’re sure of that?” Gruber asked contemptuously. “I can’t think of anything that would stop Romero, short of a bullet. Even blind, he’s dangerous. What if Lassiter teams up with him? There’s some sort of connection there. Besides, Romero knows a lot about me. Too much.”

  “He must have some affection for a woman he was raised with. If we scare her enough, she’ll find a way to make him back off.”

  “You can try,” Gruber said, unconvinced. “But if your way doesn’t work, mine will,” he added ominously.

  Lassiter listened to the rest of that side of the recording, but it was brief and nothing else of interest turned up. He pondered his course of action while he and Tess shared pastries and coffee. Tess, dared to do anything else that was reckless for the day, went back to her desk to work on cases and Lassiter went downstairs to Logan Deverell’s office to see Maggie.

  She was just saying goodbye to a client when Dane Lassiter walked in and asked to speak to her in private. She invited him into her office, aware of curious looks from Logan’s secretary.

  “Has something happened to Cord?” she asked immediately when the door closed behind them.

  “Cord’s fine,” he assured her. His black eyes narrowed. “We have tape of a conversation in Alvarez Adams’s office. One of his cronies has some potentially damaging information about you—videotapes and still photos…”

  Maggie went white in the face. Lassiter helped her into a chair and got her head down between her knees just before she passed out.

  He cursed silently. He’d hoped Stillwell was lying. Obviously he wasn’t.

  She moaned, with her head in her hands. “Did Cord hear?” she whispered.

  “No. He’d already left the office.”

  She swallowed hard, twice, and slowly sat back up. Her face was flushed now from the rush of blood, but she looked worn, and defeated.

  “I deal in confidentiality,” Lassiter told her at once. “I never reveal personal information, not even to Tess. Nothing you say to me in confidence will ever leave this room.”

  She could see why Kit Deverell liked this taciturn, quiet man. She hesitated, but only for a minute. “I know the photos and videotapes he’s talking about,” she said huskily. “They could destroy my life.” She swallowed. “I would rather die than have Cord see them,” she added simply.

  “That bad?” Lassiter asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she assured. “Definitely, that bad.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She hadn’t expected that she could ever tell anyone. It was surprisingly easy to tell Dane Lassiter. The agony of the past burst from her. It was like lancing a boil. It felt good to finally be able to tell someone what had happened. Lassiter sat quietly, uncondemning, and listened until she was through. He was pale by the end of the story, but he didn’t look at her with contempt, or disgust.

  “Cord doesn’t know?” he asked after a minute, surprised.

  She shook her head. “Amy never told him. I tried to, once, but I couldn’t. It would…change things between us. He might hate me…”

  “For what?” he exclaimed. “God in heaven, it wasn’t your fault!”

  She grimaced. “That’s what everybody said. But they looked at me as if I was too dirty to ever come clean again.”

  His black eyes glittered. “Cord wouldn’t blame you. He’d be homicidal, but not at you.”

  She met his eyes levelly. “That’s a chance I’m not willing to take, Mr. Lassiter,” she said quietly. “Cord has resented me for a long time, actively disliked me even longer. Until very recently, I was a thorn in his side and nothing more. He’s been kind to me since I came home from Morocco. I couldn’t bear to lose his respect.”

  He could have told her that it wouldn’t happen, but she was terrified. It was in her wide eyes, her strained face.

  “I’m not going to tell him,” he promised her. “But there is another thing you should know. Gruber is convinced that nothing short of murder will free him from Cord, and he mentioned targeting you, as well. But this other man thinks blackmail might work better.”

  “What can I do?” she asked miserably, near tears.

  “Nothing, by yourself,” he said. “But Cord has a plan. He can tell you about it. Don’t panic,” he added firmly. “Gruber’s a rat, but he’s not invulnerable.”

  She wasn’t really listening. She knew now that Cord’s enemies had information about her that Cord didn’t. They would always have it. She felt like screaming with rage.

  Watching her, Lassiter read her concern. “Stillwell’s evidence can be eliminated,” he told her. “I can’t have anything to do with it officially, but I can talk to some people on your behalf.”

  “Great,” she muttered. “We can take out an ad in the paper. Tell everybody!”

  He shook his head. “It won’t be like that. You have no idea what I know about some of the most influential people in the state. I share the information with several contacts, and all of them are as tight-lipped as I am. It’s why I’m still in business. Leave it to me, Miss Barton,” he added quietly. “I’ll take care of it. You have my word.”

  Tears stung her eyes, but she was too proud to let him see them. She lifted her chin and blinked them away. “Thanks,” she managed.

  “You should have therapy.�
��

  She ignored that. “I appreciate your telling me what you knew.” Her face tautened. “You won’t tell Cord?”

  “I won’t tell Cord,” Lassiter assured her. “But don’t underestimate him, either. He’s formidable under fire. If Gruber comes at him head-on, he’ll regret it.”

  “He does dangerous work. I know he’s good at it. I just try not to think too hard about the details,” she added.

  “You can take it from me that Romero is a dead shot and a formidable adversary in intelligence work,” he said. “You’re safe with him.”

  “I know that.” She smiled up at him. “Want to give me a job? I might as well learn the trade if I’m going to become a walking target for international criminals. I can shoot a gun if I have to.” She pursed her lips and her eyes twinkled. “And I look really great in a trench coat.”

  He chuckled, relieved to see her bounce back so quickly. “Dig it out. I’ll keep you in mind. Meanwhile I’ll do what I can to get enough evidence to go after JobFair and Global Enterprises at the same time.”

  She didn’t say what she was thinking, which was that exposure of the criminals would inevitably lead to her own exposure. They were the sort of people who’d take revenge any way they could get it, and Maggie was vulnerable. “Thanks, Mr. Lassiter,” she said solemnly.

  He shrugged. “We all have secrets that we’d rather not reveal to the world,” he said, his eyes dark and quiet. “Too often, that information is potential for blackmailers, especially for people in the upper levels of society. Pain and suffering mean nothing to some people if there’s a profit to be had.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “Don’t worry about Stillwell’s file,” he repeated. “But it would be to your advantage to tell Romero everything,” he added with genuine concern. “Just in case.”

  She smiled wanly. “That would take more courage than I have,” she confessed.

  He felt sorry for her. He wished he could do more. He wanted to tell her what Cord had in mind, but she’d find out soon enough. He said goodbye and left the office, determined to find a way to get that file out of Stillwell’s office.

  Maggie hadn’t considered a direct contact from Cord’s enemies, but a phone call soon before quitting time stopped her heart in her chest.

  “If you’re smart,” the sly voice said when she picked up the receiver and identified herself, “you’ll make Romero back off. We have some interesting video of you in, shall we say, compromising positions? Think how Romero would react if he saw it. What a nasty girl you are, Miss Barton!”

  “You bastard,” she choked, furious. “You utter coward! If I could get my hands on you…!”

  “Don’t push your luck!” the dark voice snarled. “Make Romero keep his nose out of JobFair. Think of some way to make him back off investigating us, and do it quick. Or you’re going to be a star on the evening news!”

  The receiver clicked. Maggie got up from her desk like a zombie, stumbled into the bathroom, locked the door, and threw up.

  Maggie gathered her seared nerves by the end of the day and forced herself not to consider how devastating the threat of disclosure was. She had to think positively. She had to think about the helpless victims of JobFair and its major client, Global Enterprises. But all she could consider was the horror, the disgust, in Cord’s beloved face if he ever saw those videotapes. She knew he’d never forgive her. Even his past hostility would pale by comparison with what she’d suffer. She had to hold her head up and pretend that nothing had happened.

  But that was almost impossible. When Cord came to pick her up at quitting time, wearing dark glasses and with Davis behind the wheel of a ranch pickup instead of the sports car, she was quiet and remote all the way to the ranch. If she only knew how to tell Cord the threats that had been made against her. Lassiter said Cord was going to take her out of the country, but she wasn’t convinced. Cord wasn’t the sort to run from a threat. What if she couldn’t convince him to leave town? The idea of her past being revealed in color video on the evening news made her sick at her stomach.

  “You’re brooding,” he remarked when Davis parked Cord’s car in the garage and left them to go back to work.

  “I’ve had a hard day,” she told him with a forced smile. “Nothing to worry about.” She gave him a long look and felt near panic. “I don’t suppose you’d like to go off to Tahiti with me and become a beach bum?” she added wistfully.

  He chuckled warmly. “Why not?”

  She shrugged. “I guess we’d be in even more danger there.”

  He studied her closely. “Tahiti is in the wrong direction. Too hot. But how would you like to go to Spain instead?” he asked out of the blue.

  Her heart jumped as she looked up at him. “Spain? You mean it?”

  He linked his long arm across her headrest and looked down at her. “I mean it. I understand that Gruber has made some veiled threats against both of us,” he said, without revealing how he knew it, and unaware that she’d spoken to Lassiter. He saw her pale, but he didn’t understand what she was thinking that led to such a sharp reaction. “I want to throw him off the track, make him back off, while Lassiter appears to do the same. If we can make the men careless, we’ve got a chance to stop them. If we leave the country, Adams and Gruber and Stillwell will think the pressure’s off. I have an elderly cousin in Spain. We can go visit him, or at least, appear to.”

  “What if Gruber follows us to Spain?” she asked.

  “I’m a blind man,” he said blithely. “What danger could I pose to him?”

  “That’s a thought,” she had to admit.

  “It might get dangerous, there’s always that possibility. But I can protect you. I’ve got a few friends who won’t mind tagging along at a discreet distance. In any case, you’ll be safer out of the United States than in it right now.”

  She didn’t think about the wording. She peered up at him with twinkling eyes, forcing her worst fears to the back of her mind. It would be an adventure. She would be with Cord. It was one last chance to share something with him that no woman in his past ever had. And if worst came to worst, if she was…shot…she’d have had the time with him to carry into the dark with her.

  She looked into his eyes with faint hunger. He would never have to know the truth if anything happened to her. But she would have such memories…! The prospect became exciting.

  “I can see me now, with an official number and a trench coat and a gun,” she told him with a gleeful grin. “I’ve almost talked Mr. Lassiter into hiring me, but this sounds much more adventurous. Call Interpol and tell them I’m available! Does the job come with one of those cyanide pills, just in case?” she added.

  He laughed, delighted at her response. She had courage and spirit and style. He admired her more than any woman he’d ever known.

  He touched her cheek with a teasing finger. “It comes with a damaged mercenary and a .45,” he chided.

  “Not so damaged,” she said gently, and reached up to touch, lightly, the skin beside the fresh scars around his eyes. She winced. “And very lucky!”

  He was watching her face, drinking in the helpless affection her actions betrayed, her visible longing for him. “Very lucky, indeed,” he said under his breath.

  She hesitated, frowning thoughtfully. “Cord, you aren’t just planning a visit to an elderly relative. Are you?”

  He traced her nose. “Leave it alone for now. We’re going on a blind man’s holiday. You’ll be my eyes. We’ll leave the country and let them think they’ve frightened us off. Then we’ll give Gruber some rope and see if he’ll oblige us and hang himself!”

  9

  Maggie packed just enough to fill a carry-on bag, excited at the prospect of an escapade with Cord, even under the circumstances. She didn’t question why Cord, a man who never ran from trouble, should be so anxious to get away from an investigation of the man who’d almost killed him. But it saved her, momentarily, from fear of disclosure by Adams and his associates. They�
�d think that she’d convinced Cord to leave the country and back off, and they’d be placated, if only temporarily.

  For the moment, JobFair and its threatening file could be left far behind. For a while, at least, she would be safe from reprisals. In that brief time, she could indulge her longstanding fantasies of Cord, being with him, traveling with him, being part of his life. She could share the danger, the chase, the excitement. However long it lasted, whatever the cost, she thought, it would be worth it!

  He looked up when she came into the living room in slacks and a T-shirt under a jacket, her long dark hair in a braid down her back, her one piece of luggage carefully packed and tagging along behind her on its rollers.

  “You do pack light,” he remarked approvingly.

  “I don’t really have that much stuff,” she reminded him. “Except for my photos of my parents and a couple of pieces of costume jewelry that belonged to my mother, which I’m leaving here, my clothes are all I own.”

  He’d never considered the scarcity of her memorabilia. Of course, his was similarly restricted. Everything his parents had with them was burned up in the fire. There were no relatives except his elderly cousin. His parents’ home had been a rented one, and whatever they had was sold at auction after they died. The authorities assumed that Cord had died with them, not being informed to the contrary until Cord was of age and able to contact them.

  He was looking at Maggie oddly. “No heirlooms?” he asked abruptly. “Not even from the great-grandmother who rode with Villa?” he teased.

  She shook her head, not wanting to tell him that everything in her home had been confiscated by the authorities long ago. God knew what had happened to it. She’d never asked, afraid to prompt new curiosity about the case.