Chris asked. “Told him you don’t like having a guard?”
“He won’t listen. I can’t get through to him.”
Just like their grandfather. “What are your plans?” Chris asked.
“We’re spending another three weeks or so in Europe, then flying to some private island one of his business associates owns.”
“Private island? Where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere south of Florida. I don’t really care about it. Just a bunch of guys drinking and fishing.”
“Visit me instead, then. It feels like forever since I’ve seen you. Let Jerome go to his buddy’s private island and you come here.”
“I can’t. I mean, I want to, but Jerome…he has plans and we have to keep to his schedule. He’s doing a lot of business and I need to be with him. You know.”
No, I don’t, Chris thought, annoyed with this man she’d only ever seen at a distance. Why did they have to get married in London? Without family present? Why would he care if Natalie saw her sister? “Can’t he give you a couple of days to see me? It’s not much time. And it’s not like it’s a horde of people. Just me.”
“You don’t know Jerome very well.” Then the connection echo was so bad Chris heard her say, “Neither did I” twice.
Chris suppressed a sharp retort. Yes, Natalie had acted, as usual, on impulse. Last year, it was the Jaguar. The year before that, the high-priced condo. In both cases, Chris had managed to get Natalie out of the deal during the three-day grace period. But buyer’s remorse wasn’t so easy to remedy when you suddenly realized you were married to the wrong man. And bitching Natalie out about it now wouldn’t help.
“Listen,” she said instead, “why don’t you and Jerome stop here before going to the island?”
“That’s not a good idea.” The strained note was back.
“Why not?” When Natalie didn’t answer, Chris’s stomach felt heavy. “Why not?” she asked again.
“I told him I wanted to see you and he…didn’t like it.”
Chris took a deep breath. “What do you mean?”
Silence.
“Talk to me, Natalie.”
After a moment, she said, “He…really…didn’t like it. Look, it’s nothing.”
“Nat,” and Chris’s breath curled with dread as she forced herself to say the words, “is he hitting you?”
“I—I should get off the phone.”
Fighting down the rage threatening to boil up in her chest, Chris made an effort to speak calmly. “Listen to me. Are you listening?”
“Y-yes.”
“Is he hitting you?”
Natalie’s indrawn breath shuddered over the line. “Just that once.”
“Goddammit!”
“It was just one time, Chris,” she cried, her voice high, rattled. “He didn’t mean it. And it’s not like he broke anything—”
“There’s no excuse. None.” Chris gripped the mahogany railing so tightly her finger bones ached. “Do you want to come home?”
“He’d never—”
“I don’t care about him. I’m asking about you. Do you want to come home?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Natalie said in a low voice, tears clogging her voice. “He won’t let me. I tried once. That’s when he got so angry and he…” She hiccupped a sob. “He’s jealous of everybody. Even you. He knows how close we are.”
“Oh, God, Nat.”
“I have to get off the phone before he comes outside. We have to move again.”
“Move again? What do you mean?”
Natalie’s breath hitched as she inhaled. “He won’t stay in one place for more than one night. I never know until he comes home and then we pack up and go. Or sometimes he just calls and I have to go meet him.”
“What the hell does he think’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know. But I hate this! I hate living out of a suitcase.” A loud sniff sounded. “Look, it’s been long enough for me to have a cigarette. I have to go back inside.”
“Answer my question, Natalie. Do you want to come home?”
“You don’t understand. Jerome will never let me leave.”
No, Chris thought. There was always a plan. There was always a way of getting out of places you didn’t want to be. It just sometimes took brainpower and usually needed guts.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Chris’s voice was calm as she said, “Fuck Jerome. I’ll come get you.”
Chapter 2
“What you’re proposing, Ms. Hampton, is suicide.”
Chris lifted her chin, annoyed by Antonio Garza’s pronouncement. As a private investigator, he was there to inform, not to advise. “What I’m proposing is saving my sister from an abusive husband.”
She surveyed Garza’s small conference room where she sat with her friend, Gus Perkins, Antonio Garza and an innocuous-looking man who’d been introduced to her as Special Agent Smith of the DEA. “The fact her husband is an extremely dangerous drug smuggler is news, but it doesn’t mean I’m giving up.”
She clasped her hands together on the conference table’s edge and willed them to stop trembling. The shoulder squeeze Gus gave her felt affectionate, supportive. As well it should, all the years she’d taken sailing lessons from him after he retired from the Houston Police Department. She trusted him, at first with her safety on the water—he had never let her down—and now with this.
When Gus had told her his old partner had become a P.I. based in Galveston, she’d hoped to get some information about Jerome Scintella before she headed out after Natalie. Did he, for example, have a history of violence? Have an arrest record? Own a gun?
“Extremely dangerous drug smuggler” pretty much had all of that covered.
Suddenly she wasn’t just talking to a P.I. about snatching her sister. The minute Gus and Antonio Garza heard Jerome’s name, they’d been on the phone to old contacts at the DEA. Hence Special Agent Smith, who reminded her of the boy who used to live next door.
“It’s clear we can’t take him in Rome.” Smith rose, tall and lean, to pace to the window. He braced his arm in the window casing as he said, almost to himself, “With Scintella so jumpy, moving around every night, it’ll be next to impossible to get a fix on him.”
“That’s why I’m proposing my ‘suicide’ mission,” Chris retorted. “Natalie’s too hemmed in by her bodyguard to ditch him, so I couldn’t go to Rome myself and have any chance of getting her.”
“And you think taking your motor yacht to this private island improves your odds?” Smith asked the window. “It’ll be covered up with armed guards.”
“It’s a very long shot. And dangerous.” The private investigator’s deep brown eyes were soft with concern, as though he was practiced at cautioning others. Given that Garza specialized in finding missing children, Chris suspected he might be.
“I knew it was going to be difficult before you told me about Jerome,” she said. “But I can’t just let this chance go by without acting on it.” Smith’s longish blond hair raked his collar as he turned to look at her. She continued, “Natalie phoned again