“And you’re prettier than you think you are. Almost as pretty as Mama.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she made a face. “I’m all hoarse. I sound like a frog. Daddy said it’s because I’m not used to talking anymore.”
“That would cause it.” She couldn’t get enough of looking at the child. So alive. So wonderfully alive. She’d never seen this Cassie except in photographs and TV news. “It should get better in a few days.”
“I don’t care. It makes Daddy laugh.” She smiled. “And then I laugh.”
“That’s the way it works.”
“I forgot.” Her smile vanished. “You’re still hurting. You go to bed.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She turned and wheeled toward the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Early. Come early, Melissa.”
“Stop it. You don’t have to talk to me this way anymore.”
“It’s easier.”
“Don’t do it anyway.”
“But my throat’s sore. You wouldn’t want me to hurt my throat.”
“Not that sore. And people don’t understand when you talk like this. It would worry your mama and daddy.”
“Well, then I won’t do it with anyone but you.”
It was clear Cassie was going to get her way regardless of whatever Melissa said. Accept the compromise. “That might work.”
“Are you sure Michael is all right?”
She opened the door. “The doctor said he’ll be fine.”
“I’ve been worried. I’ve been trying and trying, but I can’t reach him. If I stay out, he has to stay out too. It’s not fair otherwise.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You tell him. It’s not fair. . . .”
“I want out of here,” Travis said as soon as Melissa came into his room the next morning. “And what are you doing in that wheelchair? Deschamps did hurt you. I wasn’t sure the bastard was lying. I hoped to hell he was.”
“Be quiet.” She moved close to the bed. “I’m okay. I’m just bound to this blasted chair for a while. Cassie and her father are going to visit you, but I wanted to see you first.” A luminous smile lit her face. “She came back last night, Travis.”
He stiffened. “My God.”
“She was jarred out of the trauma when she thought you were dying.”
“How is she?”
“Scared, eager . . . beautiful.” She swallowed hard. “So damn beautiful. I went in to see her last night and again this morning, and she smiled at me. I’ve never seen her smile.”
“Neither have I.”
She drew a deep breath. “We have to get you out of here. Right now Andreas is all sweetness and light.” She grimaced. “As much as he can be. But once he’s sure Cassie’s okay, I don’t know what he’ll do. He’s finding forgiving you a little difficult.”
“That qualifies as the understatement of the year. I didn’t expect forgiveness.”
“Well, if we get you away, it may be a case of out of sight, out of mind. He’s got Cassie and the Wind Dancer back, and Deschamps is dead. He can’t have a pound of your flesh too.”
“No?”
“I’ve called Galen. He’s going to come and pick us up within the next half hour.”
He frowned. “I don’t want Galen involved.”
“No one has to know he’s anything but a commercial pilot. He’s taking us to Nice, and from there we’ll go to Juniper.”
“You’ve got it all planned.”
“Someone had to do something. Since you got yourself shot up and weren’t able to lift your head, much less—”
“Okay. Okay.” He started to laugh. “But when Galen sees how banged up we are, I’ll never hear the end of it for not taking him. He’ll swear it would never have happened if he’d been along.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have.” She shook her head. “I don’t know anything anymore. The only thing I’m certain about is that I have to get you out of here.”
“And I’m certain I have to go with you.” He paused. “Anywhere. Anytime.”
She went still. “What?”
“You heard me. It’s amazing the revelations that come to you when you think you’re going to die.”
“What about staying on the outside looking in?”
“I didn’t say it was going to be easy.” He smiled. “But I believe it’s definitely worth a try.” His smile faded. “What do you think?”
She said unevenly, “There’s a possibility I might think it’s worthwhile. Though you’re a very—”
“Michael, I’ve been waiting to see you.” Cassie had burst into the room. “You should have come with— Oh, you are banged up. Melissa said you were, but I—”
“I’m just a little torn around the edges.” He smiled. “But you look awesome. Welcome back, Cassie. How do you feel?”
She walked slowly across the room. “I can’t walk very far or my legs feel funny.” She plopped down on the side of the bed. “Daddy says that’s because I haven’t used them in so long.”
“That’s probably true.”
“Mama’s coming here. Daddy told her to stay in Washington, but she was already on a plane when he talked to her. She said she wasn’t going to wait any longer to see me.” She giggled. “And Daddy said she’ll probably have the only baby ever born on Air Force Two.”
“It sounds like everything’s good with you.”
“Mostly. It’s still scary.” Her smile widened. “But the Wind Dancer’s here. He’ll keep me safe. Daddy brought him to me last night. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Melissa felt a ripple of shock that Andreas had brought the statue from that scene of death straight to Cassie. No, she guessed it wasn’t so bizarre. The Andreas family and the statue had seen centuries of death and joy. If the Wind Dancer could bring Cassie happiness and a new confidence in life here at Vasaro, why shouldn’t she have it? “Wonderful, Cassie.”
Her smile faded. “But Melissa says you’re both going away, Michael. I don’t want you to go.”
“It’s best for us to leave,” he said. “We’ll always be there for you if you need us.”
She frowned. “You promise?”
“promise.” Travis squeezed her hand. “You let me know and I’ll come running.”
“Most people wait for a formal invitation,” Andreas said from the door.
Travis stiffened. “Cassie just issued one. But if you take good care of her, she’ll never have a reason to send out an SOS, will she?”
“I’ll take good care of her.” He crossed the room and picked up Cassie. “ take it you intend to leave here?”
“We have a pilot picking us up in ten minutes,” Melissa said quickly. “know you’ll be glad to be rid of us with Mrs. Andreas coming.”
“There are many ways for me to rid myself of you.” He kissed Cassie’s cheek. “Where do you intend to go?”
“Juniper.”
“hat a surprise. Not exactly Travis’s cup of tea, is it? He requires a more exciting venue. And it’s very close to Washington.” His lips thinned. “Maybe a little too close for me.”
“We may not stay there,” Melissa said. “But I have private business to attend to. Jessica. You’ll take care of the release?”
He nodded. “I’ll see to it.”
“Good.” She met his gaze with a boldness she didn’t feel. “Then it’s decided.”
Andreas didn’t speak for a moment, staring at Travis. “So it seems. I’ll have Danley arrange to bring you downstairs and put you on the helicopter.” He started to carry Cassie from the room.
Melissa breathed a profound sigh of relief. She didn’t even want to know how close Andreas had been to going the other way.
“Let me down, Daddy.” Cassie wriggled out of Andreas’s arms, ran back to Melissa and into her arms. “ I . . . love you,” she whispered. And then she said fiercely, “Don’t you forget me.”
Melissa hugged her tightly. “I could never forget you.” She swallowed hard. “’ll always be clo
se to you, sweetheart.”
Cassie stepped back and nodded emphatically. “You bet you will.”
It sounded almost like a threat, Melissa thought with amusement. Cassie’s insecurities were rapidly vanishing.
Cassie gave her an impish grin and winked before marching over and taking her father’s hand. “I’m hungry. Can we have waffles for breakfast?”
“I believe that could be arranged,” her father said as he led her from the room.
Melissa chuckled. “Give Cassie another few months and she’ll be running the White House.”
“She’s not the only bulldozer around here,” Travis murmured.
“You and Andreas were both arching like tomcats. Someone had to step between you two and distract him.” She wheeled her chair toward the door. “I’ll be glad to get back to Juniper and away from all this—” She stopped as pain rippled through r. “ No, I won’t. Every inch of the place will remind me of Jessica.”
“After the funeral, maybe we’ll go away for a while.”
“Maybe.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. “But Juniper will probably be safer until Karlstadt forgets about you.”
“You’re protecting me again.” He smiled. “m handling Karlstadt. I’ll send him the money and the disk as soon as we get to Juniper. I’ve already given him the diamond I gave to Thomas.”
“That should satisfy him, right? The only diamonds missing are the ones the CIA confiscated.”
He hesitated. “Well, not exactly.”
“What?”
“There are three good-sized ones I had to use to negotiate.”
“Negotiate with who?”
“Danley.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Danley? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I made a deal with Danley the night he picked me up in Amsterdam. I thought I might need him.”
“Danley took a bribe?”
He smiled. “Most people have their price, and those diamonds would have made him a rich man. Though he was very cagey about the amount of help he’d give me. He agreed to help me escape only if I needed it.”
“And he actually knew you were going to take Cassie?”
“No, Galen and I took care of that. But after he learned I’d taken Cassie, he damn well knew he’d better make sure I wasn’t caught. I’d already told him that if I went down, I’d take him with me. There’s no way he wanted to be drawn in as an accomplice.”
“So he put stumbling blocks in Andreas’s way?”
“What do you think? Galen is good, but the odds were pretty much against us.”
“Are you going to tell Andreas about Danley?”
“Hell no, I might need him. You never compromise a source.”
She shook her head in amazement. “You’re incredible.”
“Well, Karlstadt might demand that I get him those diamonds locked in the CIA evidence room. Danley has access.”
“And what if Danley decides to sell those three diamonds you gave to him?”
“I’ll just drop him a word, tell him what Karlstadt will do to him if the diamonds surface.” He smiled. “So stop worrying. Like I said, I’m handling the problem. We don’t have to hide at Juniper. We have to think about you.”
“I am thinking about me.” She opened the door. “I’ll see you downstairs.”
26
“My God, what a pair of crocks.” Galen watched from the pilot’s seat as CIA agents lifted Travis’s stretcher into the helicopter. “It’s hard to believe that you—”
“Take off, Galen,” Travis said. “I’m not interested in your insults.”
“You should be. I do it so well.” He glanced at Melissa. “You should really watch who you hang out with. I’d have kept you from being hurt.”
“Hush,” Melissa said. “Go.”
A moment later the helicopter was rising and turning south.
Melissa looked down to see Andreas and Cassie coming down the steps. Cassie lifted her hand and waved. Melissa waved back.
“Cassie?” Travis asked.
She nodded. “m glad he brought her to say good-bye.” She wrinkled her nose. “At least he won’t order a rocket launcher to take out the helicopter while she’s around.”
“He wouldn’t do that. I’m the only one he’s having a problem with.”
“You might be able to solve it sometime. Who knows, you may be able to tap one of your sources and give him a tidbit of valuable information.”
“Possibly.”
“And Cassie is going to prove a shock to him when he finds out she’s brought back the same kind of psychic baggage I did. He may need help with her.”
“ We’re not sure she has. You haven’t been able to bond with her since she woke, have you?”
“Once.” She paused. “And I found she’d already picked up some very interesting info when she was in the tunnel. Now that she’s out, her ability may grow like wildfire.”
“What kind of info?”
“When you were unconscious, she said, ‘If I stay out, he has to stay out too.’ ” She looked him in the eye. “Now, what do you think she meant by that?”
He stiffened. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“I thought a lot about it last night.”
“I’m sorry to have kept you awake.”
“Perhaps we should ask Dr. Dedrick.”
“That’s one solution.”
“Except, dammit, there’s no Dr. Dedrick, is there? You made him up. What would you have done if I’d called your bluff when you offered to lend me your book?”
“I didn’t think it was likely. You were too involved in Jessica’s problems.” He shrugged. “And I wanted to help you.”
“I should have guessed. You were so blasted understanding about what was happening to me. Your information sources weren’t the same as Galen’s. You knew about the attack on Vasaro but not about Deschamps. And you were able to help Cassie when she was rejecting everyone else. We just assumed it was because you’d saved her at Vasaro, but there was something else too, wasn’t there?”
“I don’t know. I’m not an expert on how it works. It could have been for either reason.”
“No wonder you were so interested in Cassie. You identified with her. You were struck on the head and unconscious in that hospital for months after your father died. Where were you during that time, Travis? A tunnel, a cave, a forest?”
“No, a boat, a very strong, well-built cruiser with the speed of light that could run away from anything or anyone.”
“Monsters?”
“I had my share of them. But I had an impetus that sprung me free of the trauma. I’d seen my father murdered, and hatred is a very powerful goad.” He looked away from her. “Then the dreams started. And a little later I’d occasionally see . . . things. I never joined with anyone like you did with Cassie. Evidently, it doesn’t work the same with everyone. In the first year, I realized what a tiger I had by the tail. I couldn’t see something when I wanted to see it. I felt like it owned me.”
“Did you tell Jan?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t tell Jan or anyone else. I just bottled it up inside. Sometimes I could stop what I saw. Sometimes I couldn’t. Sometimes I didn’t want to stop it. I thought I deserved a little profit from all the hell I was going through. When I was old enough, I went searching for answers and I found a few, but we belong to a very exclusive club. Which was why I was so fascinated when I found out about Cassie . . . and you. It’s almost enough to make you believe in fate.”
“It wasn’t fate that made you step in and involve yourself with Cassie.”
“No, it started out as curiosity and then I got pulled in.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me? Why couldn’t you share it with me?”
“At first, we weren’t exactly friends. No, that’s not the reason. It’s . . . difficult for me to talk about it. I’ve become accustomed to handling it by myself.” He grimaced. “Okay, you said once that maybe I was in a tu
nnel just like Cassie. You didn’t know how close you came. Maybe you were right. Maybe I haven’t learned to deal with it in a sane, healthy way. I just did the best I could.”
“Were you ever going to confide in me?”
“Sure. Maybe. I hope so. It wouldn’t have been easy for me. I’m not like you. You’re open and you reach out to everything and everybody.” He met her gaze. “If you needed me to do it, I would have told you. I’ll give you anything that you need from me.”
“Travis, I could strangle you.”
“Does that mean you’re going to throw me out of your life?” His tone was light, but his expression wasn’t. “I’d find that very difficult to accept. So difficult that going back into a trauma state would be easy by comparison.”
She had never seen him this vulnerable. There was so much she didn’t know about him. So much still to learn. He was constantly thinking, moving, planning. He’d lived a life of which she had no real conception. This might be only the first of the secrets she’d find out about him. Travis was definitely no angel.
What the hell. He’d never be boring.
“Why should I throw you out? You’re probably the only man in the world who understands me. But you do have a few faults that are going to cause us some big headaches.” She took his hand and smiled at him. “Oh, well, I guess we’ll just have to work on it.”
Dear Reader,
If you’ve read any of my recent suspense novels, such as The Search or Final Target, you’d probably be surprised to learn that I actually began my career writing historical romances. Several years ago I began thinking of writing a book centered on a magnificent ancient statue with mystical powers. But the more I thought about the book, the more complex the concept grew, and I realized it could not be contained in one book. It was soon clear this was to be a trilogy— the story of a family whose fate was intertwined with the Wind Dancer through the centuries—and although they were love stories, they were also filled with suspense and adventure. The books stand alone, but the Wind Dancer is central to the thread of suspense that runs through each of them.
The first book, entitled The Wind Dancer, is set in Renaissance Italy during the reign of the Borgias. It’s a story of ambition and revenge and the statue that sent the mighty Borgias spiraling downward. Interestingly enough, Lorenzo, the Assassin, is probably my favorite of all the secondary characters I’ve ever created.