Merrick's Eleventh Hour

They shared a grin.

“Did you tell Melita I wanted to talk to her?”

“I did. But like I said, I don’t think you’re going to learn much that we don’t already know. She lived at Lesvago with Simon when she was growing up. They were raised by maids and housekeepers. Cyrus popped in now and then. She says she spent one week once every other year with Cyrus and his wife and her half brother, but the visits were always on a different island.”

The look on Sully’s face made his dark Irish expression even more foreboding than usual. Melita’s life as Cyrus’s daughter had been no life at all. A virtual prisoner since he had killed her mother and taken her and Simon to Lesvago on the island of Mykonos. She’d been eight at the time.

Sully said, “I’ve been combing the islands for weeks, and I don’t have one damn lead on Cyrus’s current hideout.”

Cyrus’s corrupt activities had made him a wealthy man and allowed him to set up a maze of compounds throughout Greece. From a strategist’s standpoint, the islands were the perfect mecca for a criminal to hide and never be found.

“When can I talk to Melita?”

“She’s sleeping. Why don’t you catch a few hours yourself? You look beat. I’ll bring her to you when she wakes up.”

Merrick returned to the Aldora, but he never slept. He unpacked his duffel bag, tossed his shaving kit in the bathroom and his clothes in the drawers beneath the double-wide berth. All the comforts of home, he thought. Sully had even stocked the galley.

He never went anywhere without the picture of Johanna in the garden at the country house, and he pulled it from his duffel and laid it on the table as he entered the galley. He’d snapped the picture in the backyard a few months before her death. Johanna was standing among the roses wearing jeans on her narrow hips and a lavender silk blouse. She was smelling the roses, her hand holding back her long hair from her face.

Feeling like a caged animal, he headed up the companionway and left the Aldora to stroll the beach. He’d been traveling nonstop and was dog-ass tired, but his adrenalin was pumping. For some unexplained reason he felt he was about to learn something crucial that would put him back on the scent of his enemy.

Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but he’d always felt as though Melita was the key to finding Cyrus. She knew something, even if she wasn’t aware of it.

With the scent of his wife lingering on his body, Cyrus rose early. He grabbed his black robe off the chair and pulled it on. Callia was stilled curled up on the bed after he’d had her every way imaginable. The smile he wore as he left the room was that of a prevailing conqueror. The sex had been carnal, fueled by a rapturous hunger that would never be quenched.

Sated temporarily, he focused on his game of cat-and-mouse with Merrick. Soon his old buddy would return to Greece and lead him to Sully and Melita.

Melita’s latest escapade of rebellion had damn near cost him his life. His daughter had to know that he wouldn’t rest until he’d been compensated for that.

Downstairs he phoned Holic Reznik. “Give me an update. Is Merrick on his way yet?”

“He flew to Rome.”

“Why Rome and not Athens?”

“I don’t know. From Rome he took a flight to Crete.”

“And?”

There was a long pause.

“Don’t tell me you lost him. Did he make you on the plane?”

“I don’t know how he got out of that hotel in Iráklion without us seeing him.”

“Idiots. He’s a damn master of disguises, that’s how. I warned you to expect anything, and overlook nothing.”

“He never made me on the plane. I look damn good as a woman, better than I expected. I did find out that a boat was waiting for him in the harbor.”

“How do you know that?”

“I always find a way to make people talk, you know that. Before the fisherman choked on his own blood he told me a man left the harbor around midnight in an expensive little speed-demon cruiser.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“The fisherman said the old man was wobbling on a cane with two left feet, but that he had no need for the cane or the limp when he leapt on board and sent the cruiser out of the harbor at full throttle.”

“That doesn’t help me now.”

“I have the name of the cruiser.”

“Did the fisherman say if someone picked him up? Paxton?”

“No. The Aldora was empty when Merrick sailed her out of port.”

“Find the cruiser, and find Merrick. I didn’t fly to Washington for nothing. Do it, Holic. I hold you responsible for my daughter’s escape from Despotiko. Redeem yourself, or I’ll have no reason to keep you around. You’ve been a disappointment lately, and you know what I do to men who disappoint me.”

“Father?”

Cyrus slid his phone into his pocket, then turned around to see his son wearing sweat-soaked fatigues and a muscle shirt. “Where have you been, Erik?”

“I took a morning run.”

“Your mother asked me to talk to you. She’s still asleep. Perhaps this would be a good time.”

“She’s on the college kick again?”

“If she asks, tell her we’ve talked and you’re considering it. Now come and fill me in on your progress.”

His son followed him onto the veranda. Once they were seated, Cyrus studied Erik. The workouts over the past year were paying off. It was even more than he’d hoped for. It appeared Erik was putting his heart and soul into his work.

“I looked over the file Kipler’s been keeping on you. It’s impressive.”

“Kip says I’m a natural. I can nail my target eighteen out of twenty now.”

Erik flexed his muscles, and Cyrus could see that Kipler had made good on his promise to turn his son into a fighting machine.

Erik was staring at the fresh scars on his father’s chest. “What happened?”

“An encounter with Merrick.”

“Did you kill him?”

Cyrus had shared certain secrets with Erik. One of those secrets had been his life as a betrayed Onyxx agent left for dead in Prague. “No. He’s as good as I am at cheating death. But the opportunity will come again. That’s why you need to continue to keep up with your training. I don’t want you vulnerable should he show up someday unannounced.”

That would never happen. He’d made sure of that, but Erik needed to stay focused.

He didn’t intend to tell Erik about Melita’s defection. He would eventually have to if he didn’t get her back in a timely manner, but for now Callia and his son would believe Melita was safe at Lesvago with Simon.