a new life together, and Brooke deserved it as much as Victor, having seen her ailing father narrowly escape false imprisonment for a robbery. The Treasure Seekers Agency had recovered all manner of rich prizes, but their last adventure to locate Brooke’s father’s missing painting was far more treacherous than any they’d undertaken. Floods, tunnel collapses and a murder seemed like distant memories now.
Victor was the backbone of the agency. She flashed on a memory of him and their father, knee-deep in piles of old books, hunting out references to a priceless stamp. Terror about Victor’s prognosis and her father’s whereabouts made her hands ice cold, her breath short.
She realized Luca was talking.
She jerked. “What?”
“I said I’ll call Brooke and meet you at the hospital.” He paused. “Keep it together, Steph. You’re strong. Remember that.”
“We both know that’s not true.” She’d collapsed when Tate Fuego had walked out of her life, descending lower and lower until she found herself fully entwined in Joshua Bittman’s nightmare world.
“Steph? Are you there?”
She heard the edge of a deeper concern written in Luca’s voice, underneath the calm exterior.
Could it be that her father had been injured but made it out of the car? Was he wandering around the crash area in need of help? Her heart leaped. Maybe Bittman was bluffing. Maybe he hadn’t snatched him after all, and she was wrong.
The hope lasted less than a minute before it dried up and disappeared. The truth left a sour taste in her mouth.
Bittman did many things, but one thing he did not do was bluff.
He also did not threaten.
He punished. He was a billionaire many times over, and she’d suspected he’d paid officials to look the other way on his business dealings. Worse, she’d known people who’d crossed Bittman to simply disappear with no evidence on dirty Bittman’s well-manicured hands—vanished as if they’d never existed.
She checked her watch. Three-and-a-half hours to go. As the little hand ticked away the seconds, something shifted inside Stephanie. The fear coursing through her body coalesced into another emotion, white-hot and razor sharp. She would not sit by while Bittman turned her life upside down again. She was done running, done hiding. He would pay for what he had done to Victor. He would deliver her father unharmed.
“I have to go somewhere,” she said.
“Come again?”
She braced herself. “Go to the hospital. I’ll call you when I can.”
“Steph,” he said. “You’re in trouble. I can hear it in your voice. Whatever it is, let me help you.”
Not this time, big brother.
* * *
A few minutes after two o’clock, Tate Fuego pulled his motorcycle to a stop in the shelter of massive trees lining the gate that circled Joshua Bittman’s mansion. The building itself was a domed-top monstrosity of white stone, flanked by stretches of impeccably manicured lawns and a rectangular pond that reflected the building. A long driveway was empty except for a mint condition Mustang GT 350 and a black Mercedes.
Tate saw no sign of his sister Maria’s car, though he knew she’d been a regular at Bittman’s place. Her phone call three days prior scared him. Her normally upbeat personality was gone, and the woman on the line sounded irrational and unsteady, though she would not tell him why. Then nothing. No response to his texts, and no one answering the door at her apartment. He ground his teeth. She shouldn’t have gotten involved with Bittman in the first place, and if he ever got a chance, he’d take Stephanie to task for introducing them.
The breeze teased ripples into the water of the pond, mirroring the discomfort in his own gut at the thought of Stephanie. Her dark eyes flashed in his memory, and he blinked away the pain. At the sound of an approaching engine, he rolled his bike farther back into the shadows. A van rumbled slowly by with American Pool Company printed on the exterior. When it pulled to a stop at the intercom, the driver, a stocky, crew-cut man with a face corrugated by wrinkles, leaned out to speak into the box.
“Pool service,” he heard the driver bark, with a Spanish accent.
Tate grabbed the handle to the rear doors of the van and eased it down, wondering if he would be caught. In a moment he was safely inside. The guy parked the van and headed for the pool with a water test kit. Tate slipped out the back and ran for the nearest side entrance. In a place this ritzy, he knew interior security cameras would pick him up quickly, but he didn’t need much time. One minute with Bittman, he thought grimly, was all he’d need.
He found himself in a gleaming kitchen, which was thankfully empty. The place was quiet, eerily so. Not one housekeeper in sight? No butlers or maids? Strangest of all, no burly security personnel barreling toward him.
His instincts prickled.
Muscles taut, he crept up the stairs and heard a murmur of voices. Heading swiftly along the hall, he came to a large window that looked down on an atrium. Trees that had to be at least twenty feet thrust upward toward the enormous skylights that bathed the space in pale sun. He was startled when a blue blur whizzed by his face. A parrot with feathers the color of the sky and intense yellow eyes peered at him from a branch. Below, through the screen of foliage, something else moved, this time of the two-legged variety.
Tate retraced his steps downstairs, skirting the lower floor hallway until he found the entrance to the atrium. The glass door was closed but not locked. Opening it as quietly as he could, Tate entered the warm, humid enclosure.
The parrot noises were varied and loud. Shrieks, raucous squawks and even some words rang through the space. An Elvis song, Maria’s favorite.
Teeth gritted, he ducked between the spiked leaves and headed deeper into the bizarre tropical room. Branches crackled on his left, and he froze. Bird or Bittman, he could not tell. He passed a long metal pole with a mirror affixed to the end, leaning against the wall. Some sort of device so Bittman could check on his nesting birds? He turned to head back to the door when he felt a cold circle of metal pressed to his neck.
“Turn around,” a voice growled.
A burly man, a head shorter than Tate, held a gun level with Tate’s chest. He spoke into a radio. “I’ve got a guy in the aviary, and the girl is breaking down the door on the second floor.”
Breaking down the door.
His brain filled in the rest. His sister. Kept here. That explained why she didn’t return his calls, why she was no longer using her cell. The man was pointing him toward the door, and Tate could see the muscled arms under the suit coat.
He stepped back and raised a hand. “I don’t want trouble. I’ll go.”
After I find my sister.
He moved toward the door, Suit Guy a couple of paces behind him. Tate edged closer to the glass wall until he was alongside the pole he’d seen earlier.
“Get going,” the man grumbled.
Tate did, as he grabbed the pole and swung it in a wide circle, knocking the man to his
