Group were essentially free-lancers. It gave his uncle the privilege of being able to turn down whatever work he didn’t choose to do.
When all was said and done, the causes they took up, the people they aided, could all be found on the side of freedom and democracy.
With the possible exception of the time eighteen months ago when he’d had to save the wife and son of the Chinese ambassador from a radical fringe group of would-be terrorists. It had been touch and go for a harrowing thirty-six hours before he brought them both to safety. Since then an expensive bottle of vintage wine had arrived at his door the first of every month like clockwork.
He liked to think that he had accomplished a bit of détente in rescuing the ambassador’s family. Not to mention sending up the price of vintage wine.
“Maybe you’re not as worthless as the old man says you are,” he murmured under his breath, sticking his head under the steady stream of water and removing the shampoo from his hair.
The old man, of course, was his father, who had never had a good word to say to him from the time when such things had actually mattered. Now, all his father’s disdain meant to Joshua was that he was doing something right with his life. He knew that his father found it particularly galling that he was working with his uncle and that he quietly admired the man. There was no denying that Edward Lazlo was a jealous man, jealous of any attention not sent directly his way.
The pulsating noise slowly wove its way through the sound of the shower’s running water.
Joshua stopped, listening. Shutting off the water, he angled his head to hear better.
Ringing.
It was his cell phone.
The next second, Joshua swiftly left the confines of his shower, marking his path with splotches of water that dripped off his body as he retrieved his phone from the nightstand where he’d left it. Day off or not, he knew better than to ignore the phone when it rang.
He’d had the presence of mind, just before falling into bed last night, to plug the phone in. It was still tethered to his charger.
Joshua didn’t bother disconnecting the device as he picked it up. Flipping the phone open, he pressed it to his ear.
“Lazlo.”
“Where are you?”
The sound of his uncle’s voice took him aback for a second. Ordinarily, the man had one of his people do his calling.
Joshua disconnected the phone from its charger and walked back into the bathroom.
“My place.” Taking a towel from the rack, he began drying himself with one hand. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be climbing back into the shower. “It’s my day off,” he added needlessly. His uncle was on top of everything that happened or didn’t happen at the agency, but it didn’t hurt to add that little fact in.
“Not anymore.”
The finality of the tone was familiar. Something was up. His uncle didn’t pull strings just to watch people jump.
“I’m listening.”
“If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be working for me,” Corbett replied crisply. “The British prime minister’s daughter is missing. She was apparently kidnapped sometime this morning.”
“Why?”
The question was a spontaneous response to the information. He could think of a lot of other people who would have been easier to kidnap than Prudence Hill. The kidnappers obviously hadn’t realized what they were in for when they took the young woman. The tabloids, who loved to hound people of prominence, to build up and then tear down the same person within the space of a few paragraphs, had dubbed Prime Minister Jeremy Hill’s older daughter “Pru the Shrew.”
According to so-called “friends”—most likely disgruntled hangers-on that she’d had no patience with—Prudence Hill had a waspish disposition and never minced words. Word, among people who supposedly would know about such things, had it that the diplomatic corps would not be calling the prime minister’s daughter any time soon with an invitation to join their ranks.
“You’ll be briefed when you arrive.” Joshua knew that his uncle didn’t believe in saying any more than absolutely necessary over the telephone, even if the lines were secured and tested on a daily basis. “The rest you will find out and cover in the report that you will give to me after you bring the young woman back.”
Complete faith, that was what he liked about his uncle. The man did not waste words, did not heap accolades of any kind for a job well done. Nonetheless, you knew what he thought, knew where you stood with him. In Corbett Lazlo’s case, a simple nod spoke volumes and was all but euphoric for the recipient.
“Yes, sir,” Joshua responded. He finished drying himself and draped the towel haphazardly over the rack then padded back to his bedroom. Time was ticking away.
“There’s a jet waiting for you at the airport. Be there in forty minutes. Murphy is compiling a dossier on the woman for you. It’ll be waiting for you when you get to the airfield.” There was an infinitesimal pause. “I don’t have to tell you to be discreet.”
“No,” Joshua agreed amicably, opening his closet, “you don’t.”
He knew the rules. He was to get in and out without leaving a mark, retrieve the girl and bring her home—alive—as swiftly as possible. To aid him he had complete access to all the latest electronic gadgets and available technology, not to mention the considerable standard resources of the Lazlo Group, both human and otherwise, the caliber of which would have made James Bond salivate had the character actually existed.
In exchange for the faith placed in him and the arsenal at his disposal, he could never protest that an assignment found him at an inconvenient moment, nor that he might need more than the allotted amount of time to arrive at the appointed place. Corbett expected loyalty, compliance and agents who were as close to perfection as humanly possible. For this he paid extremely well. But there were rewards beyond money to garner.
He was just now beginning to find that out, Joshua thought, taking out a casual pair of cream-colored slacks and a navy jacket. A light blue shirt followed, along with whisper small briefs and dark, thin socks. All his clothes were aerodynamically light. You never knew when you had to flee and maximum speed was always good if your vehicle was “accidentally” destroyed.
The satisfaction of a job well done was nothing compared to the slight glimmer of approval occasionally seen in Corbett Lazlo’s eyes. And because he’d found himself such a student of his uncle, Joshua had become acutely attuned to the various nuances in the older man’s voice.
There was something more there now, something that Corbett Lazlo was not saying. Had he been the perfect agent, he would have refrained from asking. But Joshua had not yet completely morphed into a junior version of his uncle and so allowed himself to press the issue a little.
“Is something wrong, Uncle?”
He heard annoyance when his uncle answered. “Other than the fact that the older daughter of one of the most influential men in the entire free world has been kidnapped?”
His uncle made it sound as if that was more
