Lethal Lover

But even if she had made more of an effort to remain close, would Selena have confided in her? Tess wondered. And even if she had, how could Tess have helped?

When the phone rang, Tess jumped from the chair so quickly she knocked it over as she lunged back inside the room to grab the receiver before the second ring.

Her “hello” was clipped.

“T-Tess.” Selena’s strangled sob and a jumble of other incomprehensible words crackled through the receiver.

Tess’s heart froze at the sound of her cousin’s whimpers. “Selena! Where are you? What’s happened?” Her own voice was shaky and her hand trembled as it gripped the phone.

A rustling sound coming across the line told Tess the phone had switched hands. “Your cousin is just fine, Ms. Elliot,” a cool, calm, distinctly Caribbean male voice informed her. “Now listen carefully. In Selena’s suitcase, hidden in the lining, is a book, a bound journal. Find it. Show it to no one. Do not attempt to copy or memorize any part of it. Tonight at ten o’clock bring it with you to this address.”

Tess’s knees bent involuntarily as she folded numbly to sit on the edge of the bed. This isn’t happening! her mind whispered as she reached for a notepad and pen. This isn’t real. It can’t be!

“Are you still there?” The dispassionate caller seemed strangely polite.

“Yes—yes, go on,” Tess managed to say.

“I will give you directions and instructions only once,” the voice informed her, forcing Tess to concentrate on the situation that her hammering heart confirmed was all too terrifyingly real. “You will do exactly as I say, telling no one of our conversation, involving no one.”

“Just tell me what you want me to do,” she pleaded. “I’ll do anything, but please, please don’t hurt her.” She hadn’t realized she was crying until she felt the tears drip onto the phone and seep between her fingers.

As the anonymous caller listed his demands and dictated a series of strange directions, Tess scribbled wildly. Although she hardly recognized the scrawl her trembling hand had produced as her own, she repeated the directions when Selena’s abductor ordered her to do so.

“Ten o’clock sharp,” he reminded her.

“Ten o’clock,” Tess repeated as though hypnotized.

“Your cousin’s life depends entirely upon you. We don’t want to hurt anyone, but we will do what we have to do to get what we want. No doubt you’ll be tempted to call the police, or maybe even go to your embassy. Do not consider doing either of those things, Ms. Elliot. If anyone accompanies you tonight, you will never see your cousin alive again.”

Before Tess could respond to the horrifying warning, the line went dead. And for a long moment she could only sit with the receiver still in her hand, too numb and shaken and frightened to move.

Finally she hung up the phone, choking back the irrational fear that somehow by just disconnecting the line she’d severed her last tie to Selena.

Alone in the room that had grown murky with shadows, she felt utter despair. Her tears had ceased and in their place a cold, dry fear stung her eyes and burned her throat.

The numbers on the clock radio beside the bed glowed an eerie green. Seven forty-five. Selena’s abductor had said Tess was to meet with him at ten. Ten sharp. The numbers changed: seven forty-six and with that change, the reality of precious time passing hit Tess with deadly meaning, jolting her into frantic action.

Once on her feet, she switched on the lamp beside the bed and dragged Selena’s suitcases out of the closet and into the middle of the room.

Dropping to the floor beside the largest one, she jerked it open and sat staring, momentarily overwhelmed by the empty space staring back at her. She began searching. The stark fear that drove her caused her stomach to roil and her hands to shake as she felt the onset of a throbbing headache.

Although Tess was a frequent climber and had scaled some of the roughest terrain in Colorado, the obstacle she faced now was even more daunting than those lofty peaks. For Selena’s sake, Tess prayed she was equal to the challenge.

* * *

MINUTES LATER, after patting the sides and the back of all three suitcases, Tess sat back on her heels, a feeling of defeat pressing down on her. She turned to the smaller carryon that Selena had brought with her, scolding herself for being so slow to think of it.

The journal had to be in the carryon, she told herself. Certainly if Selena had been carrying something valuable or incriminating, Tess reasoned, she wouldn’t have checked it at the airport.

But after a thorough search failed to turn up anything concealed in the lining of Selena’s smaller bag, Tess’s heart sank again. In desperation, she searched all three suitcases again, ending with the largest one. She shook it, patted it and turned it upside down, but only after she’d kicked it angrily across the room and then stooped to retrieve it, did she feel the irregular outline on the bottom of the bag.

Her hands groped along the hard vinyl casing with trembling anticipation. Finally, she felt it: the outline of something firm and square and distinctly booklike lodged between the lining and the small, black plastic wheels on the bottom of the case.

Frantically she searched the room for something sharp to slit the lining, jerking open dresser drawers and rummaging through her own belongings. Finally, in the bathroom, her fingers closed around a metal nail file in the bottom of her cosmetic bag and a second later she was sawing away at the lining inside the suitcase.

When at last she withdrew the notebook from between the bag’s cloth lining and the frame, her heart beat double time as she stared down at the object that verified so much of what Reed had told her.

Gingerly, she opened it and sat staring uncomprehending at row after row of handwritten figures and dates, all recorded in Selena’s distinctive left-hand style. Reed had said she’d probably made numerous deposits for Edward Morrell and, by the list of figures—many of them seven digits long—Tess realized her cousin had been dealing with a substantial fortune.

Were the notations that stared back at her from Selena’s journal the only documentation of Edward Morrell’s dirty money? Where had all that money come from? And at what cost had this fortune been amassed?

“Oh, Selena,” she murmured, feeling heartsick and hollow. “What have you done?”

When the figures began to swim before her eyes, Tess swallowed and took a deep breath and told herself to prepare for the next step: the exchange of the notebook for her cousin.

Panic rose inside her when it suddenly dawned that she had no idea how she was going to find the rendezvous point Selena’s abductor had described. She might have given in to that panic, had she not glanced at the clock radio and realized that time was slipping by. It was already 8:15, which meant she had a little more than an hour and a half to find the appointed meeting place, along streets she’d never traveled before, in a country where everyone drove on the opposite side of the road!

But as any good climber knew, when stuck in a tight spot, looking down was the first mistake. On the side of a mountain or in Grand Cayman, the only way out was up, Tess reminded herself with grim resolve.

Hastily she changed into a pair of jeans, a navy blue T-shirt and sneakers. With a last look around the room, she grabbed her purse, the scribbled directions for the ominous meeting place and Selena’s journal, or the ransom, as she’d already come to think of it.

As she hurried toward the door, she shoved the journal into her purse and zipped the bag closed. The clock informed her that she now had little more than an hour to find the rendezvous point. Having no idea where the abductor’s instructions would lead her, or how long it would take her to get there, made her mission all the more nerve-racking.

Right now all she could allow herself to think about was getting away from her room, away from West Palm and into the winding streets of Georgetown, where somewhere her cousin was being held against her will.

A knock on the door scattered her thoughts like buckshot. “Tess, open the door. It’s me.”

Reed! Tess’s mind shrieked. Damn him! He would never let her get past him without an explanation of where she was going. And knowing him, if she ignored his pounding, he’d pick the lock or break down the door.

While she hesitated, wondering what to do, he banged on the door again, with more authority. “Tess. Open up. I know you’re in there.”

For one crazy moment Tess was seized with a bizarre impulse to fling open the door and throw herself into his arms and beg him to help her. But the bizarre and impossible impulse died when the ominous words of Selena’s abductor came back to haunt her: Your cousin’s life depends entirely upon you.

“Tess, let me in,” Reed demanded.

“Just a minute,” she stalled. “I’m—I’m not decent,” she lied as she switched on the light and shoved Selena’s suitcases under one of the queen-size beds.

“Tess. Open the door.” It was the voice of a man unused to being kept waiting.

“All right. All right. I’m coming.” She swallowed two huge gulps of air, willing her heart rate steady and pausing at the door just long enough to smooth her hair and whisper a silent prayer for courage.

“What’s wrong?” he said before the door even closed behind him.

“You mean, other than the fact that my cousin is missing and you keep charging into my room?”

His shook his head and allowed himself a slow smile. “Never one to mince words, were you, Tessa?” The smile faded. “Has she contacted you?”

“Would I be here if she had?”