In Enemy Hands (2 page)

“No, thank you.”

He paused, nodded, and walked back to his desk. Vandergriff stretched across it and withdrew a manila folder from the top drawer. He handed it to Dante, then perched on the edge of his desk to watch Dante open it.

“That’s Nadia.” Vandergriff pointed. “I want you to bring her to me.”

Idly, Dante thumbed through the surveillance photos. The poor quality of the black and whites couldn’t disguise the girl’s beauty. Dante guessed her to be a little younger than himself, probably in her early twenties, with a lithe, athletic body she obviously liked to show off. In all the photos, she wore tank tops and short skirts.

But to be fair, it was summer, and a brutal one at that.

She had light eyes of some indeterminate color that were somehow shocking when framed against her dark hair. In short, she looked nothing like his usual quarry.

Dante closed the folder and held it out to Vandergriff. “I believe there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m a bounty hunter, not a procurer of mail order brides, Mr. Vandergriff.”

“I know who you are.” Vandergriff gave him a thin smile. He raked a hand through his brown hair and it fell perfectly back in place. “I know you’re the best and I need the best for this job. I’m prepared to offer you half a million dollars, plus expenses, if you can bring her to me unharmed.”

Dante blinked. With that much cash, he could set up the private investigation firm he’d be—n dreaming of and get out of the bounty hunting business for good. But Dante wasn’t the type of man to jump into something like this without knowing all the facts, a trait which had probably saved his life a time or two—

Vandergriff made no effort to accept the file Dante was trying to hand him, so Dante dropped it back in his lap. “I’m not sure I understand … why can’t your men handle this? I saw them outside. They look capable enough. Surely this one girl can’t be that hard to bring in.”

Vandergriff shook his head. “You’d be surprised. The man who’s threatening her did try a couple of months ago. Two of his men died. Nick Branson employs some very adept bodyguards.”

“Who is she, and what do you want with her?” Dante was curious now, could already feel his blood pumping. His adrenaline addiction was going to get him killed one of these days.

Vandergriff sighed. “She’s my daughter, and her life is in danger.” He stared at the folder on Dante’s lap and cleared his throat. “I haven’t seen Nadia since she was a baby, but I can’t sit by and let her die because someone wants to get back at Nick Branson.”

“Who is Nick Branson?”

“When Nadia was a baby, my wife ran off with Branson.” He gave Dante a cynical smile. “He was my chief of security here. What is it they say about the fox guarding the hen house?”

Dante ignored that, lost in his own thoughts. “You’re a powerful man, Mr. Vandergriff. Why didn’t you fight for your daughter?”

“Things were different then. The business was just starting out, and I didn’t have the resources I have now. I was foolish enough to think it was simply a fling, that Maria would come back if I only let her have her space. She didn’t, and they disappeared. By the time I finally tracked them down to that little hole-in-the wall in Tennessee, I’d lost my daughter.”

Vandergriff’s face was expressionless, but when he spoke next, his voice trembled with frustration. “For all I know, she thinks Branson is her father. She has his name. You don’t knowwhat it’s like, to have your only child stolen from you, to have another man strip every trace of you from her life and not even let her keep your name.”

Dante stiffened.

Was this some kind of game? Did this man know about Lara?

Vandergriff looked oblivious.

“Nick Branson has a lucrative business shipping illegal aliens from Mexico to work on area tobacco farms, and recently he’s branched out into the drug business. Mexican meth, they call it. My sources say that he’s involved in a turf war with a drug lord named Diego Cortez. Cortez has specifically threatened the lives of Nadia and my ex-wife if Branson doesn’t close shop immediately.”

Dante flexed his fingers. “You don’t think Branson can handle the situation?”

Vandergriff met his gaze. “I’m more afraid for Nadia in his hands than in the drug lord’s.” He walked around his desk and pulled out a silver framed photo. He handed it to Dante and said, “Our wedding picture.”

Dante looked it over. Vandergriff’s ex-wife was lovely. Her daughter resembled her a great deal. But Dante didn’t see what that had to do with anything.

Then Vandergriff handed him another photo from his desk drawer.

Involuntarily, Dante withdrew. It was hard to reconcile the fact that he was looking at the same face from the wedding photo. Thick, ropy burn scars marred one side of the woman’s face, leaving a countenance that was both strikingly beautiful and tragic.

Vandergriff studied Dante with bright blue eyes. “Branson did that to her, just a few years after they married. I heard that she was trying to leave him. He threw acid in her face. I can’t trust a man like him to protect a child that isn’t even his.”

Dante stared at the photo for a long moment. Finally, he cleared his throat. “I need a couple of days to check out—your story. I’m very selective about the jobs I take,” Dante said, but he knew already that he would do it if he found no discrepancies in Vandergriff’s story.

It was a case that struck close to home.

“Don’t take too long, Mr. Giovanni,” Gary Vandergriff said quietly. “My daughter’s life depends on you.”

Back at the office, Dante sat behind his scarred desk, flipped open the folder Vandergriff had insisted he take with him, and studied the pictures of his beautiful target. Extracting the top one, a body shot, he propped his boots on the desk and leaned back in his chair to examine it. The longer he stared at her, the longer he wanted to. He found himself wishing the photos were in color, just so he could tell if her eyes were green like her mother’s, or blue like Vandergriff’s.

He typically favored tall, curvy blondes. This girl wasn’t any of those things, but there was something about her that mesmerized him. Her body was tanned, toned, and athletic. She looked good in a mini-skirt, and he was willing to bet she looked even better in nothing at all. Although he knew he could never take it that far—never mix business and pleasure—he wanted to see her face to face. Wanted to see if the mischief in her eyes was real or just for show.

Man, he wanted to take this case.

The copy room door opened, tearing him from his thoughts. His research man, Harry Sanders, strolled in toting a stack of files.

“You wanted to see me, Boss?”

“Yeah, grab a seat.”

Sanders tossed the files on Dante’s desk, glanced at the open folder and whistled.

“Wowsa! Who is that?”

Dante smiled. “Potential bounty.”

Harry pulled out a chair and twisted it around. Straddling it, he picked up one of the photos. “What did she do? I hope it has something to do with taking advantage of middle-aged men, because I’ll be happy to volunteer as bait.”

Dante dropped the body shot in his lap and laced his hands behind his head. “She didn’t do anything. If the client’s story is true, she’s a bystander caught in the middle of her stepfather’s war.”

Sanders raised an eyebrow. “Beautiful
and
innocent? What’s wrong with this scenario?”

Dante laughed. “Tell me about it. I’m used to dealing with thugs like Red Davenport and Johnny Fortenay—”

“Don’t forget Bones Malone,” Sanders added with a smirk.

Dante snorted. “I thought we agreed never to mention that name in here again. I’ve seen enough of that scrawny little punk to do me a lifetime.”

Abraham “Bones” Malone had been his most recent—and most annoying—case. Dante had chased him from Times Square to Tijuana, and finally caught up with him after Bones was incarcerated in a Mexican jail. After a couple of nights in the company of his unconventional captors, Bones had begged Dante to bail him out. Dante had been so aggravated by that point, he’d made him spend an extra night in the hole before he paid Bones’ fine and took him back to the States.

After nearly a month of chasing Bones halfway through the country, through every seedy apartment building and snake pit biker bar along the way, Dante had felt like taking a two week vacation to Bora Bora.

But unfortunately, there were bills to pay. He’d gotten behind schedule after wasting all that time on Bones. This Branson girl assignment felt like a gift from the gods. Here was this rich dude, offering him more money that he’d made all year long, just to bring in some little princess. And she was gorgeous. Man, was she gorgeous. It didn’t get any better that this. The assignment would be a piece of cake. A working vacation.

Sometimes, life was good.

“Earth to boss, come in, boss,” Sanders said, waving his hand back and forth like a teenager at a Bon Jovi concert.

“Uh, sorry about that,” Dante said. “I was just thinking.”

Sanders tapped Nadia’s picture and grinned. “Yeah, and I know what you’re thinking, because I’m thinking it too.”

Dante laughed and swung his feet to the floor. Grabbing a pen from the chipped coffee mug he kept them in, Dante scrawled a list of names on a Post-It note.

“Check these people out for me, would you, Sanders? I want to know everything about them, and their connection to each other. What they do, where they live … anything you can get me.”

“Will do, Boss.” Sanders accepted the note. “When do you need this? I’m working on that Milburn case you gave me—”

“The Milburn case can wait. Make this one top priority.” Dante’s smile faded. “Her father thinks she’s in danger. If that’s true, I have to get to her and get her out of there as soon possible.”

Sanders nodded and stood to go. Dante waited until the door shut behind him to pick up the photograph again. He carefully placed it and the one Sanders had been ogling back in the folder. His gaze lingered on a close-up of her face.

Suddenly, he found himself thinking of Nadia Branson not as a woman, not as a case, but as a daughter. Gary Vandergriff’s daughter.

“Are you really in danger, princess?” Dante murmured.

He closed his eyes, remembering all the things Vandergriff had told him, the look of frustration in his eyes …

Dante knew all about that frustration, that feeling of helplessness. He lived with it every day.

He closed the folder and picked up the phone. After a moment’s hesitation, he punched in *67 to block his phone number. Doing that always made him feel guilty, like he was some punk kid making prank phone calls, and it was compounded by the fact that he had no intention of speaking with anyone on the other end of the line. But he figured there was no harm done. He only called once a month, and always in the middle of the day when he was sure no one was home and he never left a message.

The answering machine picked up on the third ring. They hadn’t changed the message in nearly two years, and for his part he hoped they never did.

It started with a giggle. Dante smiled and held the phone tighter when Lara’s sweet little girl voice came on the line.

“This is the O’Connor residence,” she began. “We are un … un …”

When he listened hard enough, he could hear Sharon coaching her in the background.

“… unavailable to take your call. Please leave your name and number, and we’ll—”

“Hello?” a woman said breathlessly.

Dante yanked the phone away from his ear and stared at it.

“Hello, is anyone there?”

He quickly disconnected the call, his heart thumping in his chest.

What was Sharon doing home in the middle of the day? Was something wrong with her? Maybe Lara was sick …

The hell of it was, there was no way to know. No one he could ask. He pictured his future and wondered if, years from now, he’d still be sitting in this dump, propped up behind this battered desk and making pathetic phone calls to his ex-wife’s answering machine because that was the only way he had of hearing his daughter’s voice.

Yeah, Gary Vandergriff didn’t have to tell him a thing about frustration. How much worse it had to be when you thought your child was in danger and there wasn’t anything you could do to help her?

But there
was
something he could do. He could make sure Vandergriff’s daughter was safe, even if he had no way of knowing the same about his own child.

Dante grabbed the file and headed back to his apartment. When Sanders called him a couple of hours later and confirmed the details of Vandergriff’s story, Dante already had his bag packed. After they finished talking, he asked Sanders to transfer him to his secretary.

“Nancy, hi … I’m going out of town. If you need me, you can reach me by cell. Hopefully, I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

“May I ask where you’re going?”

“I’m driving to Tennessee. I’m taking the Vandergriff case.”

He took one last look at the Nadia Branson file, though he knew the information and her face by heart now. He stood over his kitchen sink and, with a flick of his lighter, lit the edge of the manila folder.

It seemed a shame to burn such beautiful photographs, but he knew that within the next few days he might be under a lot of scrutiny. Who knew how far Nadia’s stepfather would go to check him out?