now.
“Miss Sabrina,” Marietta said, hissing slightly and motioning for her coconspirator to join her at the closed double doors at the end of the hall.
When Sabrina had complied, the cook opened one door and poked her head into the study. “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s someone here who needs to speak to you, Mr. Theo.” Without waiting for a response, she stepped aside and swept her hand back in Sabrina’s direction. “A ghost from the past. And more beautiful than ever. Come give your niece a hug.”
Sabrina stepped into the room and had to smile at the stupefied look on Theo Howell’s face. Striding over to him, she opened her arms, murmuring, “Hi, Uncle Theo. Long time no see.”
“My God,” he whispered, yanking her into a bear hug. “Sabrina! After all these years. Is something wrong?”
“No. Not really.” She stepped back and gave an apologetic smile, noting that he was a little grayer around the temples than she remembered—and ten or fifteen pounds heavier. And he had switched from tortoiseshell eyeglass frames to wire rims. But otherwise, he hadn’t changed a bit. “I was probably crazy to come here, but Shelby and I met a guy recently, and I want to run a background check on him, just to be on the safe side. Since I don’t have the kind of connections Perimeter has, I decided to come here for help.”
“A background check?” came an accusatory growl from the shadows. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Sabrina turned toward the unfamiliar voice. “Pardon?”
The speaker—a dark-haired man in his early thirties—shook his head in apparent disgust. “For five full years we don’t hear a word. Then you just show up? Asking us to run an errand for you? After you practically drove the company into the ground?”
“Zack,” Theo murmured. “Don’t.”
“No. Let him talk,” Sabrina countered, her gaze fixed on the stranger. “How did I hurt Perimeter?”
The young man glared. “You left us with no money. No manpower. No soul. We couldn’t contact you, even when we really needed to. But you can waltz in whenever you please, asking to use our connections? Like we’re your goddamned errand boys?”
Sabrina turned back to Theo and demanded, “Who is this clown?”
Theo gave a nervous chuckle. “Sabrina Sullivan, meet Zack Lansing. Zack took your father’s place at Perimeter.”
“What?” She took a step back, physically repulsed by the suggestion that this unpleasant upstart could ever take Sully Sullivan’s place. It was ridiculous. Her father had been the world’s most positive, inspiring man. This guy was like a dark cloud!
And it wasn’t just the attitude. It was everything. Her father had been a big man—six and a half feet tall—with shoulders a mile wide. This lean young man was barely six feet in height, with scruffy black hair and a five o’clock shadow—in the middle of the afternoon.
And the biggest indictment of all—the truest contrast with Sabrina’s father—was that fact that it had only taken Sully eleven months to track and apprehend Pluto Zenner, arguably the most brilliant assassin ever inflicted upon the world.
Now under this new “leadership,” Perimeter had had five full years to catch Pluto’s son Adonis—by all accounts a less talented man than the elder Zenner. But Adonis was still free. Sabrina knew that for sure, because she had combed the newspaper every morning for those five years, hungry for some mention of the assassin’s arrest or death. And she had checked the FBI’s Web site daily, too, anxious for the day she and her sister could be Sullivans again. The day they could regain their old lives. The day Sabrina could stop hiding and start living, hopefully as an agent of the CIA—her dream since the first moment she’d learned the agency existed.
“Sabrina?” Theo said softly.
“This silence is her way of saying I’m not worthy,” Zack muttered. “Right?”
Sabrina shrugged. “I don’t know you. But so far, I’m unimpressed. Would you mind waiting outside so I can speak to my uncle in private?”
“I’m the errand boy who’ll be running the background check for you, so I need to hear the details. But if this is about some guy who said he’d call you after the first date, then never did, I can probably explain it to you. He ran screaming for the hills.”
“Zack!” Theo glared. “Sabrina’s right. You should wait outside.”
“No,” she murmured, holding up her hand to stop him. “He’s got a point. If he’s the best Perimeter’s got—and that’s a scary thought by the way—he needs to hear this.”
Zack walked over to Theo’s desk and sat on the edge. “Okay, let’s have it.”
Sabrina studied him, again trying to figure out what had impressed her uncle enough to give this guy her father’s job. Zack was dressed in faded jeans and a navy-blue polo shirt, barely disguising a good, lean build. His forearms in particular were pure muscle, all of which would make him a good bodyguard, she conceded. But head of Perimeter operations? No way.
It was discouraging, but she reminded herself all she really needed was background information, not “Sully level” skills. So she gave him a perfunctory smile and said, “The guy’s name is Johnny Miller. He’s an attorney. Supposedly with a tax firm. He’s been dating Shelby, aka Michelle, for a couple of weeks. They took off on a trip and I haven’t heard from her in almost four days. We’ve never been out of contact for that long.”
“She didn’t say where they were going?”
“Some sort of tropical island. He wanted to surprise her.” Sabrina bit her lip. “It all happened pretty quickly. And it seemed innocent. It probably is. I hope I’m overreacting, but, like I said, we keep in touch. Always. No exceptions. Four days for us is like a lifetime.”
Theo cleared his throat. “It sounds like she’s in love.”
“Head over heels,” Sabrina confirmed. “But even so, she’d keep in touch. She even told me she would. Listen.” Rummaging in her purse, she pulled out a recorder disguised as a pen. “She left two messages on my answering machine. I rerecorded them on this.”
“Wait!” Theo arched an eyebrow. “That’s Perimeter-issue. Where’d you get it?”
“It was a gift from my father.”
“You weren’t supposed to take anything with you to RAP that night. Clean slate, remember?”
“Dad trained me better than that,” she said with a shrug. “I took the things I needed to protect Shell. We couldn’t know for sure whether Adonis Zenner would come after us next. I had to be ready.”
Theo was clearly struggling not to smile. “I escorted you personally. All you had were the clothes on your back.”
“And the kitten,” she reminded him, biting back a smile of her own. “The pet carrier had a false bottom. Big enough to hide a few tools. And my gun, of course.”
“Are you armed now?” Zack interrupted, eyeing her purse.
“None
