Czytaj książkę: «To Catch A Thief»

CHAPTER ONE

CAROLINA INHALED, CLOSED her eyes and poured her heart into the last eight measures of music. “Baby, baby, I’m in love with you.”

She held the note, riding the vowel. Let it crescendo with the piano.

Applause thundered through the room. People in the back stood.

Raising both arms, she finished with a flourish.

The adulation washed over her. Tonight was her best performance—ever. Each note, each phrase, had emerged exactly how she’d imagined and practiced.

Perfect timing. Her business manager, Gar, sat near the stage, two record producers at the table with him. Gar gave her a thumbs-up, making her smile.

“Good night. You’ve been a great audience.” She waved and left the stage.

In the wings, she grabbed her water, glugging down half the bottle. Then she snatched a towel and wiped under her arms. Good Lord, she hoped the audience hadn’t noticed the sweat. Between the stage lights, August in Nashville and the bar’s half-hearted air-conditioning, she’d worried she would drown in a puddle of perspiration.

“Incredible! You got a standing O!” Ella, her accompanist, pushed into the small backstage and hugged her.

“I’m soaking wet,” Carolina complained. But she hugged Ella right back.

“Stars don’t sweat, they glow.” Ella pulled away, grinning. “Now, say thank you.”

“Thank you?”

“I pretended to straighten sheet music so I could eavesdrop on Doofus and the record producers. They loved your voice. Loved you.”

“Don’t call Gar a doofus.” Carolina bit her lip to contain her grin and sneaked a peek at the audience through the wings. “They really loved it?”

“Oh, honey, yes. And Gar is a doofus.” Ella pulled a water bottle from her bag. “He’s lucky to have you as his talent.”

“He did get the producers here tonight.” Carolina headed to the closet that served as her dressing room. Or maybe it was a dressing room that doubled as a closet. “I was nervous. Thanks for covering when I missed my cue.”

“No problem.” Ella settled on a barstool tucked back with the buckets and mops. “You have to take me with you when you rocket to the top of the charts.”

“If I have anything to say, we’ll do this together.” She’d never worked with a pianist as talented as Ella. When Carolina first moved to Nashville, they’d found each other through a roommate ad. Now Ella was her best friend.

While Carolina wiped off her makeup, she turned on her phone. Three missed calls. All from Mamá. Shoot. After rehearsing this afternoon, she hadn’t turned her phone back on.

Now what? Her mother had returned from a cruise a few days ago, but they’d talked since then.

She checked the time. It was close to midnight. Back home in Tybee it would be one in the morning. She opened her voice mail, but saw no new messages. She sighed.

“What’s wrong?” Ella asked.

“I’m not sure.” She checked whether her mother had left a text, but Mamá never did. She preferred conversations. “I need to call my mother.”

She waited as the phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times.

“Carolina!” Mamá wailed. “Thank God.”

The water in her stomach churned. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s back,” her mother sobbed. “It’s back.”

Carolina swallowed. No. “What’s back?”

But she knew. Her fingers squeezed the phone.

“The cancer. The maldito cancer.”

Mamá’s sobbing gulps had tears filling Carolina’s eyes. She bit her lip. No. No. No. “What happened?”

Ella’s fingers pressed into Carolina’s shoulder. She leaned into her friend’s strength.

“Dr. Laster says I’m dying. The cancer is killing me.”

“Breast cancer? Again?”

“In my head,” her mother wailed. “The tumors are in my head.”

Her mother’s breast cancer had metastasized.

Carolina’s joy slid away. She whispered, “Mamá.”

“I need you,” she whimpered. “Come home. I don’t have much time left. I need my baby with me.”

“Of course. Yes.” Her mind whirled. “I’ll... I’ll come home.”

She wanted to ask more questions about the diagnosis, but couldn’t force words past the lump in her throat. She choked out, “I’ll get home as soon as I can.”

“Hurry.”

Ella handed her a tissue. At Carolina’s confused look, Ella blotted Carolina’s wet face.

“I’ll... I’ll...leave tomorrow.” There was so much to do. “Get some sleep, Mamá.”

“How can I? I have no one. If only your father...”

“Mamá, think positive.” She couldn’t let her mother dwell on the past or on the wrongs Rosa Castillo felt the world had dealt to her. “I’ll be home tomorrow.”

After teary goodbyes, she dropped her phone on the makeup table. There was so much to do, but her heavy body wouldn’t move.

“I’m sorry.” Ella hugged her. “I’ll...help you pack, do whatever needs doing.”

“Thanks.”

“Great show.” Gar pushed into the tiny room.

“You need to knock,” Ella snapped. “What if we’d been changing?”

“Who cares?” Gar waved Ella’s anger aside. “Why the hell are you crying? Someone die?”

Ella gasped. “Carolina’s mother is sick.”

“She’s always sick.” Gar’s diamond ring flashed as he waved his hand. “We’ve got a meeting with the execs who were here tonight. They loved you. I need both of you. They want to hear a different set.”

“They’re interested in me?” Carolina covered her mouth.

“Of course they are. Great performance.”

“Thank you.” But Carolina couldn’t push any enthusiasm into her voice. Her mother’s cancer was back.

Gar nodded. “Tomorrow afternoon at two.”

“I... I can’t.” Her ribs squeezed against her tortured stomach. “I have to go back to Tybee.”

“What?” Gar shouted.

“I have to go home for my mother.”

“You can’t leave.” He jabbed his thumb toward the stage. “They’re looking for a new artist. They have an open slot they can fill in a heartbeat but they gave you an audition. You can’t leave.”

“My mother’s cancer is back. Can you explain that to them.” She pushed her hair off her face. “I’ll... I’ll let you know when I can get back to Nashville, but I have to go home.”

“Damn it, Carolina.” He leaned over, his face inches from hers. “I put too much energy into getting them to come listen. They won’t wait. You can’t do this to me.”

“To you?” She pulled away. “It’s my mother!”

“What was wrong the last time she begged you to come home?” His jaw clenched so tight the bone stuck out. “And the time before that? You’re a yoyo, always bouncing home at your mother’s demand.”

Was her mother crying wolf? She’d done it before. The last time had been on the anniversary of Daddy’s death. She’d been lonely. “This is different. This is cancer and it’s spreading.”

“Call her.” Gar shoved her phone at her. “Tell her this is your big break.”

Ella gnawed on her knuckle.

Carolina snatched her phone from Gar, but instead of dialing she shoved it in her purse. “I’m sorry. I’m going home.”

“This was your big break and you blew it.” Gar jerked the door open. “Find yourself a new manager.”

* * *

CAROLINA OPENED THE window as she drove down the causeway. Pungent marsh air filled the car. It was so humid, she could almost drink it in.

She was home.

A container ship headed through the channel on her left, bound for the port of Savannah. On her right, water and reeds filled the flat landscape. River channels twisted through the marshlands.

She checked the time. Five o’clock. She should have met the record people at two. If she’d stayed in Nashville, would the label have signed her?

Instead she was heading to Tybee Island, Georgia. What if Gar was right? What if her mother was faking—again? Carolina might have blown her best chance at getting a label to back her career.

She couldn’t think that way. Time to call Mamá.

“I’m almost there,” she said when her mother picked up.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t leave last night,” her mother complained.

“I had to pack.” And sleep. And cancel her other singing engagements, but she’d done that while driving. “I’ve been on the road for almost ten hours.”

“You’ll have to let yourself in. I’m at the mall, but I’ll leave now.”

Her mother was shopping? “Mall?”

Mamá hung up.

Carolina gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles ached. Each month she sent money to her mother. She’d eaten a lot of peanut butter and oatmeal so she could help her mother cover her expenses.

Maybe Mamá was at the grocery store? No. She’d said the mall. That meant she was in Savannah.

With her lips pinched together, Carolina slowed for the turn into the neighborhood and her grandparents’ home where she’d grown up.

Poppy had run a charter fishing boat out of Tybee. When she was little, she’d loved sitting on her grandfather’s lap as the wind tangled her hair and they flew across the waves. He’d smelled of salt, sunshine and fish. Love.

The white shells on the drive crunched under her Ford Focus’s tires. She stared at the yellow house on its white stilts. Two drives flanked the central staircase and led under the house to carports.

The trim on the windows, steps and railing needed a fresh coat of white paint. So did the porch. The two-story house wasn’t big, but her mother didn’t need more space. And Carolina had always loved the small widow’s walk off the attic. As a child, the house had looked like sunshine. At least she’d convinced her mother to put up vinyl siding so the yellow looked fresh.

Sighing, she pulled into the right-hand drive, but couldn’t park her car completely under the overhang because boxes filled the parking space.

After unloading her bags, she headed up the steps. In the screened-in porch, she found the spare key hidden in a small case under Poppy’s rocking chair.

Taking a deep breath, she turned the key and pushed open the door. A wave of cold from the air-conditioning hit her first, making the skin on her arms pebble. But then the sterile furniture her mother had bought to replace her grandparents’ warm sofas and chairs chilled her heart. Gone were the blues of the ocean and yellows of the sun. Mamá had replaced everything with black, gray and metal.

She hauled her cases to her bedroom. Even here, her mother had taken out the colorful quilt Yaya had made for her. Now a black comforter covered her bed. Carolina couldn’t hold in another shiver. “Oh, Mamá.”

She opened her suitcase but couldn’t dredge up the energy to unpack.

Down in the kitchen, she made a cup of calming tea, a box she’d bought the last time she’d visited. Then she turned up the temperature so she didn’t freeze. She tried to sit in a gray chair in the living room, but her legs stuck to the cold leather.

It was hotter than a skillet outside, but she headed to Poppy’s porch rocking chair. She flipped on the ceiling fan and waited, cuddling her mug.

A half hour slipped away. Her tea cooled. She sipped and rocked, her life on hold, waiting for her mother. Always waiting. Her eyes closed.

There was a crunch of tires on the drive and she jerked awake.

Her mother pulled up in a new car. A BMW? How could her mother afford a new car on a legal assistant’s wages? Carolina’s eight-year-old Focus looked out of place next to the sleek foreign vehicle.

“Carolina,” her mother called as she climbed out. “Help me!”

Carolina pushed open the door and hurried down the steps.

“Mamá.” She wrapped her mother in a hug. “How are you feeling? Should you be running around?”

Her mother air-kissed her cheeks. “Right now I’m fine, more than fine. I can’t believe these doctors. Always trying to scare me to death.”

Her mother’s black hair was long and curly. When it had grown back after her breast cancer treatments ten years ago, it had gotten curlier. Chemo curls. She smelled of—amber and sandalwood. Her blue eyes sparkled. There were lines around her mouth and eyes, but she was still beautiful.

And didn’t seem sick—at all. The tea churned in Carolina’s stomach. She’d run home from Nashville and missed her chance at a record contract. She bit her lip. “Is your cancer really back?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Her mother waved at the bags in the back seat. “Can you grab those, dear?”

Carolina gathered the bags. “I thought you were hurting for money.”

“I deserve some joy.” Her mother’s heels clicked on the steps. “I’m dying.”

Dying. The word smashed into her diaphragm, knocking the air out of her lungs. Her mother was her only family. If she died, there would be no one. She’d be alone.

“Come on.” Her mother held the door open. “Let me show you what I bought.”

Carolina dragged the bags up the stairs and into Mamá’s colorless living room.

“I found this incredible scarf so I had to find a dress. And, of course, I needed new sandals.” Her mother tugged the bags out of Carolina’s hands.

Carolina sank into the chair for the fashion show. How many times had her mother modeled beautiful clothes—clothes she couldn’t afford. The scarf was gorgeous—and expensive. But then, so were the dress and sandals. “Can you afford all this?”

Her mother twirled. “I deserve this. After I got pregnant with you, I had to give up everything—my career, my travels, my fun. Since my cancer is back, I refuse to go out looking like a hag.”

“Mamá.” She didn’t want to hear the tirade again, the one she’d heard all her life. She wanted the time they had left to be special. “Tell me exactly what the doctor told you.”

“There’s a big word.” Her mother waved her hand. “All it means is the cancer moved from my breast to my brain.”

Carolina released a heavy breath. “Metastatic?”

“Maybe.” Her mother spun around, holding up the dress. Then stumbled.

“What does Dr. Laster want to do?”

“Oh...stuff.” Mamá staggered to the sofa. “Not again.”

Carolina pushed out of the chair. “What’s wrong?”

“Maldición.” Her mother collapsed, holding her head. Her eyes filled with tears.

Carolina shot over to her mother. “Are you all right?”

“Headache.” Blood dripped from her mother’s nose.

“Mamá!” Carolina snatched up tissues and pressed them under her nose as her mother tipped her head back.

“How often does this happen?” Carolina grabbed more tissues.

“Headaches? Daily.” Her mother pinched her nose and moaned. “Bloody noses? Off and on.”

This was bad. “What can I do?”

“Shut the blinds.” Her mother sank into the pillows, closing her eyes. “Medicine. In the bathroom.”

Carolina ran around the room, pulling the blinds. Her mother winced at each clank. Dashing up the stairs, she stared at the bottles lining the bathroom counter. One after the other, she picked them up until she found one that talked about headaches. Shaking out a pill, she took the stairs two at a time and headed to the kitchen. After sniffing the milk, she poured a glass and hurried to her mother’s side. “Here you are.”

“Milk?” her mother waved her hand at the glass. “I want water. Or better yet, wine.”

“This is better for your stomach.” She helped her mother sit, forcing her to take the pill with the milk.

Mamá sank back, her fingers pushing into her temples.

Her mother hadn’t been faking. She was sick.

* * *

“AGENT CORNELL?” someone called. “Agent Cornell?”

Sage’s foot jerked from something poking his instep. He waved his hand, hoping whomever kept waking him would go away.

His hand wouldn’t move. What the...?

He forced his eyelids open, though grit sealed them together. Light drilled behind his eyes like a steer’s horn. His head pounded with each beat of his heart. Damn. Even his teeth hurt. “Turn. Light. Off.”

“You’re back.” A woman in nausea-inducing pink scrubs patted his leg. She ignored his request. “Hopefully, for good this time. Happy Labor Day.”

“Back?” he croaked. An antiseptic smell invaded his nose. Hell. He was in a hospital. “Labor Day?”

She brought a cup with a straw to his mouth. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for two days.”

The water eased the dryness. Damn—two days? What had happened?

The nurse puttered near his bedside.

He lifted his hand but it wouldn’t move. “What the—?”

She unstrapped his hand. “I don’t think you need these anymore.”

“Why?” He pushed the word out. Exhaustion closed in on him like a tornado across the prairie.

“You pulled out your IV. And catheter.” She moved around the bed and released his other hand. “We couldn’t have that.” She checked his blood pressure, listened to his heart and lungs. He could barely sit up for her. And when he did, he swore his head would explode.

“Do you think you could eat?” she asked.

He wasn’t sure he could hold a fork. “Sure.” “I’ll order food.” She made notes on a computer. “There’s another agent who’s been waiting for you to wake. I’ll call him.”

Sage closed his eyes. If he didn’t move, his headache receded—a bit. He slowly raised his hand. Lifting his arm had him gritting his teeth and moaning. Bandages. Covering the left side of his head. Yet he couldn’t remember how he’d been hurt.

Shoes squeaked on the floor. “Pain?”

“Oh, yeah.” If he could call a cattle stampede in his head pain.

The nurse clicked away on a computer. “You have standing orders for meds when you wake. I’ll be right back.”

The door squeaked as it opened and closed.

He focused on the pain as it pulsed with his heartbeat. Each beat was an ice pick in his head. He counted. Got to four hundred and eighty-three before the door squeaked again. The nurse bustled back into the room, a syringe in her hand. She pushed the meds into his IV. “That should help.”

Warmth ran up his arm from the IV site. He should be asking what she’d given him. He should be asking her name. He should be asking what the hell happened. But words wouldn’t move from his brain to his lips. Too much effort.

Sage’s body melted into the thin mattress.

He must have slept, because when he cracked his eyes open, Kaden was sitting next to his bed working on a laptop.

Sage grunted.

“How’re you feeling?” Kaden asked.

He swore.

“That good?”

“What happened?” Sage shifted and the pain in his head didn’t roar to life. The meds must have taken it down a bit.

“What do you remember?” Kaden asked.

“Woods.” Sage remembered crouching in the woods. “Mosquitoes. Friggin’ sweat.” He frowned. Pain drilled behind his eyes. “They’d opened a window, so I wanted to find out how many perps. Dog. There was a dog.”

“Anything else?”

His memory was blurry. “Did the dog attack me?”

“Yeah.” Kaden got up and paced. “Bullmastiff. Over a hundred pounds.”

Sage touched his head. Two days unconscious? “This is from a dog?”

“Well, a dog and a bullet.”

“I took a bullet?” Sage cursed.

“It winged you.” Kaden’s gray eyes narrowed. “The dog smacked you into the cement block of the house. Not sure why he didn’t rip out your throat.”

Why couldn’t he remember? “Did the team get the heroin?”

“Yeah. But the one who shot you escaped.” Kaden leaned on the windowsill, a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth. “I told you to wait.”

“Wait?”

“I was moving to cover you, but you charged in.” Kaden paced back to the bed. “Again.”

“But we got the drugs off the street?”

Kaden set his fists on the edge of Sage’s bed. “Of the three men, one is in custody, one is in this hospital, but the leader escaped.”

Sage closed his eyes, trying to recall anything besides the memory of heat and humidity. His stomach roiled. “I... I can’t remember.”

“Rest, kid.” Kaden moved away from the bed. “Margaret’s stopping by later.”

Kid. Sage cringed at the nickname. But when Sage had joined the Savannah FBI office, Kaden had taken him under his wing. “Am I in trouble with the boss?”

“Maybe. She’d have preferred to capture all three, but one of the guys has already given up the next level.” Kaden rubbed his hand through his short hair. “And they’re new names in the drug distribution business. The hole that Bole and Salvez left when we picked them up has already been plugged.”

“I...” It took too much effort to make his words and thoughts come together.

“You’ve got to start listening, Cornell. When you have a team—use the team.”

“Uh-huh.” Unfortunately he’d heard that before. But to be effective, to be of service to his country, he needed to take risks. It was the Cornell family way.

Damn, what would his father say?