Fortunately for Owens, Derek’s contact in Washington didn’t want him arrested or charged. He merely wanted the blackmail material Owens had gathered on Congressman Galloway to be retrieved and destroyed. Owens was only the hired help, anyway. Derek’s contact didn’t know who had ordered the man to gather the blackmail material, and he didn’t care. Making arrests in this case would only bring out into the open what needed to stay firmly under the rug—namely, that Galloway had a fondness for dressing in women’s clothing. If Derek didn’t retrieve the DVD that showed the congressman’s fetish in action, one of two things was going to happen on Monday morning. Either Galloway would vote against the trade bill coming to the House floor, a bill that would greatly restrict the import of certain Chinese goods to America, or Galloway would release the DVD to the press, revealing that Galloway was one of those men who knew Victoria’s secret. Once his redneck, gun-toting constituency from east Texas got wind of that, Galloway’s chances of reelection were nil.
As the elevator neared the top floor of the building, Derek pulled a ski mask from his pocket and put it on. If something went wrong inside the apartment, the last thing he wanted was for somebody to give his description to the police, which could lead to an artist’s rendering of his face being splashed all over the evening news. His team worked independently from contract to contract, sanctioned by the federal government but with no traceable ties to it. Translation: if something goes wrong, you’re on your own.
Derek mentally reviewed the floor plan of the apartment. A study of the architectural drawings of the building had told him where the safe was and the most direct route to it. He couldn’t say for sure that the blackmail material would be there—nothing was one-hundred-percent certain—but the intelligence reports had all pointed to this man, this building and this safe. A pair of Derek’s men were tailing Owens right now, ensuring that he stayed on the golf course long enough for Derek to break in. The housekeeping staff maintained a rigid schedule, which meant that the maid had already come and gone, and with Kevin in the van opening doors and keeping watch, this job was going to go off without a hitch.
And, most importantly, his team’s perfect record would stay intact.
2
AS ALYSSA TOSSED the last piece of broken vase into a trash bag, she reluctantly upgraded the crisis from minor to major. The magnitude of the mess and the size of the empty pedestal beside it told her that the vase had been at least four feet tall. And judging from the quality of the rest of the art in Owens’s apartment, it had undoubtedly been worth thousands of dollars.
The moment she’d arrived back at the building, she’d taken the lobby elevator to the penthouse floor to find the housekeeper in tears in the master bedroom. The woman told Alyssa that she usually cleaned the penthouse in the morning, but she’d had a doctor’s appointment, which meant she’d been late getting to work. Then, because she was running behind, she’d been in a hurry when she was sweeping the hardwood floor and accidentally bumped the pedestal, sending the vase crashing to the floor.
Alyssa assured the poor woman that of course it had been an accident and of course they had insurance to cover such things, but the housekeeper had been so freaked out that Alyssa had sent her to work on another floor. Then she’d taken off her jacket, tossed it onto the bed and cleaned up the mess herself.
In her mind she was already formulating a plan. She’d phone Owens’s decorator for the name of the gallery that had sold him the piece to see if they had a similar one. With luck, she could have it in place before Owens returned from his golf game—a weekly appointment he kept without fail—and discovered the empty pedestal. A similar piece of art couldn’t replace the one-of-a-kind vase that had been broken, but at least it would let Owens know that she’d made an effort to rectify the mistake in the most expedient and effective way possible. Since he’d only lived in the building a short time, she was especially motivated to solve the problem to his complete satisfaction.
Then, as she was twist-tying the trash bag, she heard a soft whirring noise. The rear elevator?
She froze. It couldn’t be. Mr. Owens wasn’t due back for two hours. The man never cut short his golf game. Never.
Sensing that something wasn’t right, Alyssa stood motionless, the strangest chill skating across the back of her neck. She peeked out of the bedroom into the living room. A man came into view and her heart jolted hard. It wasn’t Gerald Owens.
It was a man in a ski mask.
Suppressing a gasp, Alyssa backed away. A burglar? How had he bypassed the security system?
Her jacket was lying on the bed across the room, her phone in the pocket. All she had to do was dial 9-1-1. She started in that direction, only to hear footsteps and realize he was coming toward the bedroom.
With no time to grab her phone, she shifted her gaze wildly around the room, looking for a place to hide. She hurried to the closet and slipped inside, closing the door silently behind her. The closet light was on. But just as she reached up to turn it off, she heard his footsteps and pulled her hand away from the switch. If he saw the light go off, he’d know someone was in the closet.
With every step he took, her heart rate escalated. She clasped her hands together to stop them from trembling, sure he could hear the slightest move she made.
Then she heard nothing. She felt a shot of relief, only to realize that the absence of footsteps indicated that he’d reached the bedroom rug.
Which meant he was right outside the closet door.
DEREK KNELT on the rug in the master bedroom, flipping the corner back to reveal the floor safe. Again, the state-of-the-art technology offered in this building was working against Owens. With the software Derek had access to, the electronic keypad lock was a whole lot easier to crack than a combination lock.
Derek took off his jacket and stuffed it into his backpack, then pulled out his small laptop computer and flipped it on. Using a wireless connection, in a matter of seconds he set up an interface with the lock at its programming port. He hit a few keys, then sat back to wait as the computer ran the possible combination sequences.
“It’s only a five-digit combination,” he said to Kevin. “We’ll be out of here in no time.”
“Good. That means I might be able to go fishing this afternoon after all. I hear they’re really biting up at Lake Dallas.”
Unlike Kevin, Derek was glad this job had come up at the last minute. If it hadn’t, he’d have been at a wedding rehearsal right now, of all things. Talk about dodging a bullet. What would have been the point of him being there, anyway? How tough could it be to stand up with Gus at the front of that church and hand him the ring at the right time?
Derek didn’t like weddings. They seemed like a whole lot of time and expense to accomplish something that had the same end result as going to a justice of the peace, assuming a man were crazy enough to get tied down in the first place. Unfortunately once Gus had met Sally, Derek hadn’t stood a chance of keeping him. Gus had quit the team a year ago, started a security business and then asked Sally to marry him.
Derek couldn’t imagine that kind of life. He thrived on the excitement of crisscrossing the country to solve problems that had to stay under the radar of standard law enforcement. He loved the autonomy he had to get the job done any way he saw fit. He had so many aliases for his undercover operations that sometimes he had a hard time remembering his real name. Because of his profession, he’d never even considered tying himself down to a lengthy relationship, much less a marriage. Likewise, was it really fair to expect a woman to tolerate his here-today-gone-tomorrow lifestyle?
Suddenly the words flashed on the screen: combination found.
“I’m in,” Derek told Kevin. “How’s