Iris Johansen

Janna breathed a profound sigh of relief as she settled herself in the rented blue Chevette and backed out of the motel parking lot. The last hour had been more of a strain than she’d anticipated, and she was relieved that she no longer had to pretend a confidence she was far from feeling. Another fifteen minutes with David, and her guilt and apprehension about tonight might have tempted her to tell him the truth, and that would have been totally foolish. If the professor knew of her plans for tonight, he would never let her make the attempt no matter how desperate they felt about the fate of their cause.

She’d received explicit instructions from the rental-car clerk at the airport as to how to get to Santine’s Castle, which was becoming something of a local Carmel landmark, and had no trouble following the directions to the fabulous seaside mansion. She almost wished she
had
experienced difficulties that would have kept her from thinking on her way to her destination. Once she’d made up her mind, she’d thought there would be no second thoughts to plague her, but she found this was not the case.

Damn it, why hadn’t the man consented to see her? Then this little adventure tonight wouldn’t have been necessary. She’d tried desperately to convince the secretary in Santine’s San Francisco office how important it was that she at least have the opportunity to lay her request before the woman’s employer,
but had been told that Santine was recuperating from a serious illness at his home in Carmel and couldn’t be disturbed. The wall of resistance from his employees was as hard and cold as Santine himself.

Well, perhaps that wasn’t quite accurate, she thought wryly. According to the gossip columns, Santine was far from cold. He reportedly changed mistresses as often as he changed shirts, and seemed to have no problem in keeping them very contented for the brief periods that he maintained them. But there was no doubt at all about his hardness. His reputation for ruthless brilliance had been earned over years of fighting to the top of the economic ladder from the slums of New York. From what she’d read about him, Janna knew that Santine had started as a construction worker at sixteen, and by the time he was twenty-three he had owned the company. From there he’d risen like a runaway comet, branching out into real estate, computers, and oil. The list was staggering, and everything he touched turned to pure gold. Now, at thirty-eight, he was practically a legend, a self-made billionaire wielding more power than many heads of state. Unfortunately, his emergence at the top of the mountain hadn’t seemed to mellow him. His takeovers of smaller companies occurred with sharklike regularity even now that he was an economic giant.

And this was the man she was going to force her way in to see tonight? For a moment Janna doubted her own sanity. Then her chin lifted with determination and her lips quickly tightened with resolution. No, she was not going to let Santine’s reputation intimidate her. Once she was actually in his presence, surely she could find a way of appealing to his softer side. The man couldn’t be granite all the way through, despite the stories about him. She really had no choice now that she’d tried every other means at her command to earn a reprieve for the wildlife
reserve. There was no way that she was going to let their landlord’s greed send those animals back into captivity.

She rounded the curve, and caught her breath as she saw her objective directly in front of her, gleaming at the top of the hill like a beacon in the soft twilight dimness. Janna’s first impression of the mansion the gossip columns sometimes referred to as Santine’s Castle was that it didn’t look like a castle at all. The massive residence, with its redshingled roof and honey-beige stone, looked far more like a stately old Spanish monastery. There was even a belltower. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised that the media hadn’t drawn the same simile as she. Santine’s risqué reputation didn’t bring to mind thoughts of monasteries or the chaste life. Whatever the man’s morals, she couldn’t fault his taste in real estate. The mansion shone in the lushly landscaped hillside setting like a finely crafted jewel. And she hadn’t the slightest doubt that jewel would be very carefully guarded.

A twelve-foot brownstone wall appeared to encircle the estate, and there was a decorative, black-grilled main entrance that was guarded by a gatehouse fronting the road. She knew the futility of applying at the gatehouse for entrance, and drove slowly past the mansion until she rounded a curve in the road. Then she quickly pulled into a small stand of trees beside the road and shut off the engine. She drew a deep breath as she stared at the brownstone wall before her. The walls of Jericho couldn’t have appeared more impregnable to her at that moment, and she certainly had no horn to blow to send it tumbling to the ground.

Then she gave herself an admonishing shake and opened the door and got out of the car. She might not have a horn, but she did have a rope and grappling hook in the trunk of the car. She hadn’t expected it to be easy to breach the estate grounds.
She supposed she should be grateful that it was a stone wall, where she could at least find hand- and toe-holds in the rough surface. She slammed the car door and strode briskly toward the trunk of the Chevette.

Ten minutes later she was sitting triumphantly on the top of the wall, swiftly changing the grappling hook to the other side of the wall. It only took her a few minutes to climb down the rope into the actual estate grounds. She released the rope, absently rubbing her stinging palms on her khakicovered thighs, and knew a surge of renewed confidence at this victory over the first of the obstacles that she might encounter. That hadn’t been so bad. Now to find her way through these woods to the house, and try to find an entrance that wasn’t guarded by a disciple as efficient as that dragon of a secretary in Santine’s San Francisco office.

She set off quickly through the woods in what she assumed was the general direction of the main residence. She soon stumbled on what appeared to be a bridle path, and after that the going was much faster. She was mentally congratulating herself on the oil-smooth success of her first attempt at trespassing—well, breaking and entering really—when her self-satisfaction was shattered by a sound that caused her to stop dead in her tracks with a shiver of primal fear.

It was the high shrill yelping of dogs that had brought her to a halt. Guard dogs! Why hadn’t she realized that there would be guard dogs protecting an estate the size of Santine’s? It was a fairly common security measure these days. They obviously had her scent, because she heard a crashing through the underbrush ahead that brought her heart to her throat. She would have rather faced a wild tiger than a trained guard dog. Ever since she was a small child she had possessed a power over animals that she’d always accepted as perfectly natural. There
seemed to be a cord of communication that linked her in a bond of empathy so that at times she felt as if she could actually feel their emotions as her own. But facing a ferocious dog that had been taught by man to maim and kill was a different proposition entirely. How could she be sure instinct would triumph over training?

Well, she was soon going to find out, she thought grimly, as two huge Dobermans burst through the underbrush, their white, razor-sharp teeth gleaming as they snarled ferociously. Janna swiftly dropped to the ground, crossing her legs tailor fashion, trying to clear her mind of all fear, and watched the Dobermans racing toward her.

Rafe Santine gazed broodingly into his brandy, occasionally swirling the amber liquid in the cutcrystal glass. The forty-year-old Courvoisier was rare and, obviously, very expensive, but it might have been wood alcohol, for all the enjoyment he was receiving from it. His face darkened in a forbidding frown. The brandy was as tasteless and boring as everything else in his life at the moment. He took another sip and then lowered the glass, uttering an impatient obscenity that was a souvenir of his early years as a construction foreman. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be drinking himself into a stupor from sheer boredom, and he’d never needed that kind of crutch. He’d always had a keen zest for life and the games that he’d played so expertly. He found the manipulations involved in big business as exciting as highstakes poker.

Why, after twenty years of loving every minute of that challenge, was it suddenly beginning to pall? It must be this damn flu bug that he’d picked up three months ago. He’d probably be himself again in no time, once he was back in harness, provided he didn’t go crazy with this blasted inactivity first. For the thousandth time he cursed his own arrogant stubbornness,
which had led him to ignore the doctor’s orders and continue to work his usual fourteen-hour days while he was fighting off the virus.

He’d been furiously indignant when his body, which had always accepted every demand he placed on it, betrayed him in this instance and he collapsed and had to be hospitalized with severe bronchitis. Now he wouldn’t be able to return to work for another two months. Two months! He had only been in Carmel for a week, and boredom was already scraping like sandpaper on a temper that wasn’t known to be placid under the best of conditions.

He gazed impatiently around at the book-lined mahogany walls and the magnificent red-and-cream Persian carpet that covered the gleaming parquet floors. Then he scowled critically at the long leather couch and easy chair that fronted the massive stone fireplace at the far end of the room. He should have the house redecorated during his enforced stay at the estate. It would give him something to do other than twiddle his thumbs for the next couple of months. He frowned moodily and sipped at his brandy thoughtfully. No, damn it, he liked the Castle just as it was. The problem with having unlimited means to get exactly what you wanted was that, once the dream was a reality, there was nowhere to go from there.

There was a polite knock on the library door, before Pat Dawson strolled into the room with a white folder in his hands and a sunny smile on his boyish face. Santine regarded him sourly as he came toward him. As incredibly efficient as his young assistant had proved to be, he didn’t know if he’d be able to tolerate that wholesome
joie de vivre
for an entire two months. Dawson just might find himself sent scurrying back to San Francisco to act as a liaison between Santine and the various conglomerates under his dominion.