Cesar Morell was here surprised Dennison. “Mr. Midas,” as he was known, was money, not power.
The door clicked shut behind him as a fourth figure rose to his feet and Dennison’s stomach contracted.
Becoming Alex Lopez’s mole in the FBI had always been a risk. He had negotiated the money; the initial down payment alone had made him a wealthy man and had relieved the financial pressures that had squeezed him dry. The money had enabled him to make ample provision to get out. He had formulated three separate identities. The passports were secured in a safe-deposit box, and he had deposited large sums of money in offshore accounts. He had done everything possible to ensure his survival and the survival of his wife.
Now the fail-safe escape plan he’d formulated seemed entirely useless.
Lopez had been a step ahead of him all the way. The man who had just risen to his feet knew everything there was to know about Dennison practically from the moment of his birth, including fingerprint records and his blood type. For all he knew he had Dennison’s inside thigh measurement.
And he knew where Anne was.
Dennison could escape. He could alter his identity and leave the country within a matter of hours, but Anne couldn’t. There was no way he could organize a quick flight out and a change of identity for a woman who needed around-the-clock care and a nurse in attendance at all times. There was no way Anne could even be moved without risking her life.
His wife had been a quadriplegic for almost three years. The accident that had caused her disability had been relatively minor, an intersection snarl that hadn’t done much more than shunt her car a few feet, but somehow the jolt had broken her neck. With only partial mobility in one arm, she needed help to feed herself, to wash and dress and go to the bathroom. She needed help to turn over in bed and, periodically, to clear fluid from her lungs. Some days she needed help to breathe, and only twenty-five percent of the costs were covered by insurance.
Lopez made the introductions. The tall, clean-cut man stepped toward him, and Dennison wondered that he’d ever thought of him as a straight-down-the-line career man.
He held out his hand and accepted the handshake. The eye contact was acute and faintly amused, reinforcing the facts. Dennison wasn’t the pinnacle of Lopez’s incursion into the FBI. He was just a subordinate.
Two
The afternoon sun slanted through open French doors, gleaming on cut crystal and silver cutlery as Esther Morell checked the place settings for dinner. Eyeing the lush arrangement of scarlet roses and glossy green leaves in the center of the long table, she paused to straighten a fork. As she continued on through a large, airy sitting room, she glimpsed her ten-year-old daughter, Rina, sitting out on the patio, eyes half-closed and dreamy as she stared at the setting sun, the ever-present easel and paints beside her.
Stepping out onto the patio, Esther paused to ruffle Rina’s dark hair and examine the unfinished watercolor. As always, she got lost in the image. She had an analytical mind, a mind that grabbed numbers and chewed them up. Usually she got caught up in financial reports and stock options, occasionally in the purity of Mozart, but when she looked at Rina’s paintings something else happened. Her mind stopped and her chest went tight. As adept as she was at grasping concepts, she couldn’t understand the ephemeral, ever-changing quality of the way Rina arranged paint on canvas. It simply grabbed her inside.
Somehow, she knew that if she could explain what happened, if she could break down the spectrum of light and turn the transparent drifts of color into an equation, she wouldn’t feel it. And lately, feeling something—anything—had become increasingly precious. “What are you looking at, honey?”
Rina’s finger traced a shape in the air, as if she could see something that Esther, and everyone else, couldn’t. “The light.”
“Why don’t you paint it?”
“Can’t.”
Esther didn’t try to extract a logical explanation. Rina was special, so gifted that sometimes Esther panicked that she wasn’t doing enough, providing enough, to feed and stimulate her talent. Cesar had money and he lavished it on his only child, but expensive day school and tutors aside, for the most part Rina remained oddly separate, her focus inward. When she was a toddler, Esther had taken her to a specialist, worried that she might be autistic, but the specialist had put her fears to rest. Gifted children were often misunderstood, and Rina was gifted on more than one level. She was normal, as far as “normal” went; she just had a different way of viewing the world, and a different agenda to most people. The reason she retreated was the acute sensitivity that made her gifted. Parts of her brain were highly developed. In essence, the incoming data could be overwhelming. She could see more, feel more, than most people. With time and a more adult perspective, she would adjust more fully to the “normal” world, but in the meantime they should hang on to their seats. Esther’s daughter would never be Joe Average.
Rina stretched and straightened, the dreaminess abruptly gone. “You look nice. Red suits you, but you need different earrings. Those long dangly ones with the diamonds.”
Esther lifted a brow at the autocratic assessment. Rina might be gifted and a little introverted, but more and more she was being reminded they had a precocious almost-teenager in the house. “I’ll tell you what. You go and get changed, then we’ll discuss earrings. Don’t forget we’ve got guests.”
Rina’s dark gaze sharpened, reminding Esther of her husband, Cesar: demanding, and with a stubborn, ruthless streak. “I’ll eat in my room, thanks.”
“Not tonight. Your father wants you at the dinner table.”
Which reminded Esther that she needed to check on the kitchen. Carmita was short-staffed tonight and Cesar wanted to make a big impression.
Frowning, she strolled back through the dining room and headed for the kitchen, not for the first time uneasy about the new business partnership Cesar was researching. She’d met Alex Lopez once, very briefly, and she didn’t like him. There was nothing logical about her response to Lopez, like the effect Rina’s paintings had on her, the emotion had simply been evoked.
But there was something more. It had been nagging at the back of her mind for days. She was certain she had seen Lopez before, and she was equally certain Lopez wasn’t his name.
Normally it didn’t take her long to track down the reference and figure out what was wrong. Before she’d married Cesar, she’d worked as a consultant for a Swiss international banking conglomerate that dealt with billions of dollars of offshore funds. Her job had entailed investigating business connections and clients, anything that could threaten the bank’s reputation. Esther’s success at her job came from more than just having a knack with figures. She had a photographic memory. It was a detail that her employers, and Esther, had made sure was kept secret.
It had been more than twelve years since she’d worked in international banking, but she never forgot a number, and she never forgot a face.
The sun had set, but the air was still warm and pleasantly laced with summer scents as their dinner guests filed into the foyer.
Cesar made introductions and Esther moved smoothly into her role as hostess. Lopez was young, definitely Latino, as his name suggested. He was no more than mid-twenties at most, and on the surface he was charming, personable and obviously wealthy. According to Cesar he was also a little on the reclusive side, which Esther had to assume was the reason she hadn’t yet been able to track down
