Mission: Irresistible (28 page)

“Not at all.” Tom smiled. “Go ahead.”

What a nice man
, she thought. Considerate and generous. Imagine, someone as important as the ambassador to Greece going out of his way to pick her up so she wouldn’t have to drive around by herself late at night.

She pulled out the antenna and flipped her phone open. “Hello?”

“Cassie, it’s David.” Her brother-in-law’s voice was low and rushed.

“Hi, David. Now’s not really a good time for me to talk.”

“You’re with someone.”

“Yes.”

“Is it your friend Dr. Standish?”

“No.” Cassie smiled at Tom and mouthed,
I’ll just be a minute.

“Listen to me, Cassie; this is very important. I know you have a habit of not fully listening, but please make an exception this time. Do it for me.”

Had he found out something negative about Harrison? Could Ahmose be right after all? But no, she could never believe that about Harry. Not after everything they’d shared.

“Is it related to what we discussed yesterday?” she asked.

“It is. I checked out your friend, and he’s as clean as they come. The guy could have been an Eagle Scout.”

What a relief. Cassie blew out her breath. “Whew, you really scared me there for a minute. So everything checks out?”

“Not exactly.”

“What not exactly?”

“Did you know Standish has a half brother named Adam Grayfield?”

“Uh-huh.”

“His father, Tom Grayfield, is the ambassador to Greece. Not a nice guy. He has a tavern in Adam’s and Harrison’s names. It’s called the Minotaur. The Minoan Order holds meetings there. He’s under investigation by the Greek government. He moves a lot of gold bullion out of the country and they can’t figure out where he’s getting it, but they suspect he’s laundering it through the Minotaur Tavern and Grayfield’s scrap metal companies in the U.S.”

Cassie gulped. Alchemy. The ability to turn base metal into gold. Members of the Minoan Order were supposed to know the secret of alchemy.

“Um . . . ,” she began, trying not to get nervous, “as a matter of fact, I’m in Tom Grayfield’s limo right now as we speak.”

“Aw, shit, Cassie, no.” The timbre of David’s voice changed so quickly, she felt her fingers grow icy cold.

“What is it?” she whispered. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to panic you, but whatever you do, you must get out of that man’s car!”

But it was too late. The back of her head burned fiery hot. Cassie turned to look at the ambassador.

Tom Grayfield was still smiling, but now he had a derringer clutched discreetly in his hand. “It’s time you hung up the phone, Cassie.”

Harrison worked feverishly, playing with myriad combinations of the number sequences that he found in the math book and drawing on his knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Three hours into the ordeal, he finally broke the code.

The ancient Minoan Order had used numbers to represent the characters from the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Their system was obviously influenced by Solen’s association with Egypt. Once Harrison understood which number related to which character, he was able to start translating the scroll.

It was a slow, painstaking process. He had to go from Egyptian hieroglyphics to Minoan number symbols to English. It was after midnight by the time he completed the conversion. He read what he’d written. Blinked. Rubbed his eyes and read it again.

No.
He shook his head.
It could not be.

There, in black and white, was the reason why the amulet was so important to the Minoan Order. It meant far more than reuniting star-crossed lovers, and it possessed much greater power than merely cursing a vizier’s descendants. The secret was even more stunning than the ability to turn base metal into gold or to create thunderstorms.

And it explained everything.

With dawning horror, Harrison realized what his brother must have understood the minute he translated the scroll.

Tom Grayfield would kill for the amulet. Even if it meant murdering his own son.

The truth was a sledgehammer.

Harrison had not only delivered Solen’s half of the amulet into Tom Grayfield’s deadly hands, he’d also placed Cassie in imminent danger.

There had to be a way to put a positive spin on this.

No point feeling terrorized or distressed just because she was staring down the barrel of a gun. What good did it do to panic or freak out? Life with Duane had taught Cassie that the more you focused on negative things, the more they grew. No negative thoughts allowed. She wasn’t going to end up in a ditch with a slug through the center of her head. No sirree. So she was just going to stop picturing that.

Being taken hostage by the U.S. ambassador to Greece was just a minor inconvenience. A little misunderstanding. A tiny blip in the huge scheme of things. It would all work out in the end.

Except no one else knew that Tom Grayfield was a homicidal maniac.

Stop it.

He wasn’t a homicidal maniac. He was just misguided, misdirected, or misinformed. It was up to her to set him on the right path.

“Tom,” she said, purposefully using his first name in hopes of putting him at ease. “You look really tense. Maybe you should have a tipple of something from that minibar.” She nodded at the small fridge tucked in the back of the limo.

“I don’t want anything to drink,” he snapped. “Just sit back and shut up.”

“A little vodka and tonic? A slug of gin and ginger ale? A snort of bourbon and branch?”

“Nothing!”

“Jeez, okay.” She raised her palms. “I was just trying to be helpful.”

“Well, don’t. Now, hand over the amulet.” He waved the gun at her.

“Is that what this is all about? Well, why didn’t you just say so? I would have given it to you without all the gun-brandishing. Sheesh.”

Cassie reached into her purse, pulled out Solen’s ring, and handed it over to him, because she didn’t know what else to do and she didn’t want to get shot. Not when she and Harry were just now getting to the good part of their relationship. The wild, hot sex.

“Seriously, Tom, you don’t want to kill me. Think of your reputation. Think of everything you’ll lose.”

Tom Grayfield flicked the dome light on, and he was staring at the ring with such rapture that Cassie almost asked if he needed a private moment alone with the amulet, but decided against being flippant.

He actually licked his lips. “No, I’m thinking of everything I’ll gain.”

“So you’re an optimist. Me too.”

“Stop being friendly,” he said and slipped the amulet into his pocket while still keeping the derringer aimed at her heart. “I don’t want to like you.”

“It’s okay to like me. Everyone likes me.”

Well, except for Phyllis Lambert, but she was in the minority.

And Harrison. He didn’t like you either.

Maybe not at first, but he liked her now. In fact, he liked her a lot. She could just tell. Cassie grinned, remembering.

“Why are you smiling? You’re in deep trouble, young lady. Stop smiling.”

“I can’t talk, I can’t be nice, I can’t smile. What can I do?”

“Face reality, woman.”

“I’ve never been very good at that.”

“How about this: if you don’t shut up,” he threatened, “I’m going to shoot you on general principle.”

“If you’re gonna get testy about it, all right, all right. I’ll shut up.”

“Thank you.” Grayfield blew out his breath in exasperation and turned off the dome light.

“You’re welcome.”

“I thought you were going to shut up.”

Cassie made a motion of zipping her lip.

“I’ll believe it when I hear it.” Grayfield sighed.

They traveled in silence. Cassie peered through the tinted windows and tried to see where they were going. She didn’t recognize this part of Fort Worth. There were lots of warehouses and scrap metal places. It was a dimly lighted, secluded area.

For the first time, it hit her how truly isolated she was and that she might not make it out of this alive.

The driver turned down a narrow road filled with potholes. There were no streetlights. The darkness around the limo loomed thick, lumpy, and profound. Anything or anyone could be lurking around the next corner.

Harry, if you can read minds, I’m in deep trouble. I need ya, babe.

She sent the mental vibration into the ether, crossed her fingers, and prayed. She was tapped out of positive thoughts.

The limo stopped at the end of the road, next to a large warehouse with an empty parking lot. The headlights played across a man lounging against the dock. He was smoking a cigarette. When the lights hit him, he dropped the cigarette on the cement steps, crushed it out beneath his sneaker, and leered at the car with a sinister smile.

A chill shot straight to the heated core in Cassie’s head. Here was a dangerous man.

The limo stopped and the man sauntered over. She recognized him at once. He was the man who’d come running out of Clyde’s house and knocked her down. The one who’d detonated the bomb.

Tom Grayfield rolled down the window. “Do you have what we need?”

“Uh-huh,” the man grunted.

For one surreal moment, it felt just like when Duane used to swing by his dealer’s location to pick up drugs.

The limo driver cut the engine. Apparently they were getting out.

The ransacking bomber opened the back door.

“Demitri,” Tom Grayfield said, “this is Cassie. I want you to take good care of her.”

The way he said “good care” made it sound like anything but.

Demitri held out a hand to help her from the car. She shied. His fingernails were dirty, and the look on his face was even dirtier.

“You were the one who ransacked my apartment,” she accused, staring down at his scuffed Nikes. “And you set off a bomb in Clyde’s house.”

“At your service.” He was still extending his hand, and she still wasn’t taking it.

“That was a really crappy thing you did, wrecking my collage wall, blowing up Clyde’s place. He doesn’t make a big salary, you know.”

He shrugged. “Had to make sure you hadn’t hidden the amulet inside your pictures. What’s that wall all about, anyway? Those all the guys you laid?”

“Demitri, there’s no need for vulgarities,” Tom Grayfield prodded. “Ms. Cooper, do as I say. Take Demitri’s hand and get out of the car.”

She didn’t want to but she didn’t have much choice, seeing as how Grayfield had just positioned the nose of the derringer right under her rib cage.

“I’m going, I’m going; don’t get so pushy with the gun.” Reluctantly, she took Demitri’s grimy hand and he hauled her from the car. The limo driver was standing outside the car with a flashlight and what looked to be a garage door opener in his hand.

“What are we gonna do with her?” the driver asked. His voice was deep and croaky. He sounded like a frog with throat cancer. She knew the thought was uncharitable, but at this point Cassie was over being kind.

Tom Grayfield smiled. “She’s going to be Kiya’s stand-in.”

“Good idea, Boss.” Demitri snickered.

Cassie didn’t even want to imagine what that meant.

The driver pressed the button on the garage door opener and the thick double-rollered doors on the warehouse rumbled open. The man moved into the warehouse and flicked on the overhead lights. Demitri strong-armed Cassie, shoving her inside. Tom Grayfield followed and closed the door behind him.

Locked in.

Trapped.

No way out.

Shades of living with Duane Armstrong.

Cassie was trying hard not to flip out when she spied what was sitting in the middle of the vacant, foul-smelling warehouse.

At first she thought it was just an ordinary coffin.

Her coffin.

But when Demitri pushed her deeper into the room, she realized it was Solen’s sarcophagus.

Harrison didn’t even think to call the police. That’s how insane with fear he was. He was a man without a plan, acting from gut instinct. Feeling and reacting instead of analyzing and evaluating. There wasn’t time to think. If there was ever a time for action, it was now.

He goosed the Volvo, exceeding the speed limit. He looked down at the instrument panel. The gas gauge needle had dropped past half-empty. But in spite of his deeply ingrained habit of filling up at the halfway mark, the idea never even entered his mind.

Only one thought existed.

Cassie.

He didn’t know if he was headed to the right place or what he would do when he got there. All he knew was that he was going to rescue his woman.

He had to find her.

Because if anything happened to her, he would die. He would cease breathing, his heart would literally stop beating, and he would leave this world a much better man for having known her.

Cassie sat on a stack of cold sheet metal, her hands and feet bound with duct tape. There was sheet metal to the left of her. Sheet metal to the right of her. And sheet metal behind her.

What was with all the sheet metal? Then she finally got it. Alchemy. That’s how Tom Grayfield had gotten rich. So if he already had the formula for turning base metal into gold, why was he after Kiya and Solen’s amulet?

Ahead of her, Demitri, the froggy-voiced limo driver, and Tom Grayfield donned Minotaur masks, black-hooded robes, and started performing some kind of bizarre ritual dance around Solen’s sarcophagus.

What a lot of bull-loney.

After several minutes, Grayfield positioned himself at the head of the coffin, pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of his robe, and began to chant something in a very strange language.

Outside, the wind kicked up. It howled through a hole in the broken glass of the window above her.

So this was the Texas contingent of the Minoan Order? Frankly, she wasn’t impressed. She had expected more. More people. More action. Something more
Eyes Wide Shut.

Grayfield went on and on and on.

Lightning momentarily illuminated the warehouse in a hot blue flash. Thunder grumbled. Rain spattered the tin ceiling. Funny, the storm had gusted in awfully fast. The midnight sky had been cloudless when they’d hauled her into the warehouse. Must be an unexpected norther.