The latest chapter in the Man on a Mission series spotlights a film star in his darkest drama yet.

Widower Dirk DeWinter is a screen legend, but his favorite role is caring for his twin toddlers. So when his daughters are kidnapped while he’s on location in Hong Kong, the desperate dad enlists the help of private investigator Mei-li Moore to track them down. But digging up secrets from Dirk’s past unleashes something more potent—and dangerous—than either of them ever expected.

Mei-li knows Dirk is off-limits, both professionally and emotionally, yet she still can’t help but fall for the doting father. As their mission threatens to unravel, will they risk their hearts and lives to save the twins—and each other?

Dirk’s smile faded, replaced by an expression Mei-li had trouble reading at first. Then it came to her. Desolation. The way a man might look if all hope and light and faith had been extinguished. “You’re withdrawing from the case?”

“Not at all,” she reassured him. “I’m still willing to give it my best shot. But I won’t lie to you—I’ll be relying more on gut instinct than on past experience. If you still want me on the case…”

He didn’t hesitate. “I want you on the case.”

“Then I’m in, a hundred percent.”

He frowned suddenly. “Is that what you’re going to say in front of Vanessa and Chet? That you don’t have any experience in cases like this?”

She nodded. “If they’re involved, the more I downplay my credentials, the less likely they’ll worry about what I might uncover. The less worried they are about me, the more likely they’ll let something slip…assuming there is something for them to let slip. See what I mean?”

Dirk’s eyes warmed with admiration. “Damn, you’re good.”

Suddenly there was something more in his eyes, his face, something Mei-li responded to instinctively, and all at once she could hardly breathe.

Be sure to check out the previous books in this exciting miniseries.

Man on a Mission: These heroes, working at home and overseas, will do anything for justice, honor…and love.

* * *

Dear Reader,

When I wrote King’s Ransom, part of my Man on a Mission miniseries, Dirk DeWinter, movie star extraordinaire, threatened to hijack the story from King Andre Alexei IV of Zakhar—not an easy thing to do with an alpha male like Andre. So I knew I would have to write Dirk’s story, especially since heartbroken readers begged for Dirk to have his own happily-ever-after ending.

Now Dirk is back, a man at the top of his game professionally. But personally? His life is a shambles. His beloved wife of twelve years is dead, and the twin daughters she gave him before she died are a constant reminder of the worst day of his life.

It’s not until his daughters, Linden and Laurel, are kidnapped while Dirk is on location in Hong Kong filming a movie that he realizes keeping them at an emotional distance hasn’t protected them from the sins of his past. He’ll do anything—even trade his own life—to rescue them.

Enter Mei-li Moore, private investigator and hostage negotiator. Dirk is more than willing to pay the ransom—no matter how high—until he learns ransom isn’t the true motive. Can Mei-li help Dirk bring his daughters safely home in A Father’s Desperate Rescue, and at the same time rescue Dirk himself by breaking through the concrete shell guarding his bruised and battered heart?

I love hearing from my readers. Please email me at AmeliaAutin@aol.com and let me know what you think.

Amelia Autin

A Father’s

Desperate

Rescue

Amelia Autin

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Award-winning author AMELIA AUTIN is an inveterate reader who can’t bear to put a good book down…or part with it. She’s a longtime member of Romance Writers of America (RWA), and served three years as its treasurer. Amelia resides with her PhD engineer husband in quiet Vail, Arizona, where they can see the stars at night and have a “million-dollar view” of the Rincon Mountains from their backyard.

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For Andrew Marvell, who wrote, “The grave’s

a fine and private place. But none, I think,

do there embrace.” For my mother,

Lorraine Ruby Leydecker Autin, who set my feet

on the path, and who made my week when

she said I made her cry with one of my books.

And for Vincent…always.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Terrell Blackwood was picked up by a limousine and driver when he walked out of prison a semifree man on the second day of the New Year, experiencing two luxuries he’d once taken for granted. Not just the luxury of freedom to walk in the open air, but the luxury to once again enjoy the best that his money could buy.

His millions had availed him little while in prison...other than to have five years—for bribing three prison guards—tacked onto his two concurrent fifteen-to-life sentences for attempted murder. At least, that’s what the self-righteous prosecutor had called it when Terrell had gone to trial all those years ago, what the pompous judge had called it when passing sentence. Attempted murder. Terrell had called it attempted justice. Justice that had not been meted out to the man who’d murdered Terrell’s only child, or to the woman whose lies on the witness stand had gotten the man off.

Justice had been deferred for years while Terrell had rotted in prison...but now that he was finally free on parole, justice would most assuredly be carried out. Sabrina Weston had been struck by divine retribution—dying on a hospital operating table seventeen months ago—but Derek Summers would not escape that easily. Terrell would see to it. Summers would suffer the torments of the damned, just as Terrell himself had suffered for nearly twenty years.

“‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’” Terrell whispered to himself. God had been remiss where Summers was concerned—so Terrell would be the hand of God.

“What did you say, Mr. Blackwood?” the limo driver asked as he pulled away from the prison, heading for Minnetonka, Minnesota, where Terrell’s ancestral mansion awaited the return of its owner. A long-awaited return.

“Nothing,” he replied, settling back against the comfortable seat, luxuriating in the feel and smell of fine leather after all these years. “Nothing at all.” But he smiled to himself as he did so. A cold, calculating smile. A frightening smile that boded ill for Derek Summers—whom the world knew as Dirk DeWinter—and his twin daughters.

Chapter 1

She was the most exotically beautiful woman Dirk DeWinter had ever seen. Which was saying a lot, since he worked in the movie industry, where beautiful women were a dime a dozen. Not to mention he’d starred for ten years opposite the incomparable Juliana Richardson, acknowledged as Hollywood’s reigning queen long before she became a queen in real life by marrying the king of Zakhar. Even Sabrina’s all-American blond beauty had paled in comparison—though he’d loved Bree more for the beauty of her soul than for her looks.

But it wasn’t just this woman’s perfect Eurasian features, flawless skin, and gently curving figure in a red dress designed to tease and tantalize that had caught his attention. It was what she wasn’t doing. Unlike every other woman in the room, she wasn’t trying to catch his eye.

He knew she’d seen him when he walked into the exclusive jazz club near Causeway Bay in Hong Kong, a club that was a favorite with British and American expats as well as Chinese jazz aficionados. And he’d known by the slight widening of her eyes she recognized him as internationally famous movie star Dirk DeWinter, just as everyone else in the club had. But after that first moment she’d kept her attention riveted on the older man she was with and the jazz pianist on the stage. And Dirk had been intrigued.

The strong tug of sexual attraction was there, and that surprised him. For the first time in forever he was attracted to a woman enough to want to do something about it. But he wasn’t a wolf—never had been. The object of his interest was with another man, and that made her off-limits.

But looking never hurt anyone. Neither did a question. He took a long swallow of his Tsingtao beer—he always drank local brews wherever he went—and turned to the bartender who’d been hovering nearby ever since he’d realized whom he was serving.

“Do you know who she is? The woman in the red dress.” He didn’t have to be more specific. Even in a sea of red dresses, hers would stand out for its seeming modesty that only hinted at what was beneath.

The Chinese bartender put down the glass he was polishing needlessly and said, “The class act at the table front and center? That’s Mei-li. I don’t know her last name. She comes in here from time to time. Always with the same guy, a Brit. He drinks single malt scotch straight up. She drinks club soda with a twist of lime.”

Dirk liked that she wasn’t a drinker. He wasn’t much of one himself and didn’t really care to be around those who were. He could only see the back of the silver-haired man she was with, but couldn’t help thinking he was too old for her. Dirk didn’t voice that thought, however. He wasn’t naive. She wouldn’t be the first beautiful young woman to ally herself with a rich older man. But the thought didn’t sit well with him. Somehow she didn’t seem the type, especially since she’d ignored him after that first moment of startled recognition.

He watched her through the set, enjoying both the smooth jazz music and the sight of a woman who reminded him that he was still alive, even though his heart was in the grave. A woman who reminded him that he was a man who more than once had been voted the sexiest man alive by magazines that should have known better. A woman who set his blood racing as it hadn’t since Bree’s death.

Not even the reminder of his late wife dampened his desire for the woman in the red dress—another surprise. Bree had been gone for a long time, but until now he’d never been attracted to a woman enough to want to act on it, despite the lures thrown his way almost from the moment he’d buried his wife. In all that time he’d still been Bree’s husband in thought and deed. He’d been steadfastly faithful to her all the years they’d been married, too, easily resisting the temptations that came his way because of who and what he was—“until death do us part” wasn’t a vow he’d taken lightly.

Tonight was different. Tonight he’d walked into the club and had seen her. And he’d wanted. Craved. And if she’d been alone, he’d have done his damnedest to see if her skin was really as satiny smooth as it looked, if she was that same pale gold tone everywhere.

But she wasn’t alone. And he wasn’t the kind to poach.

* * *

He was watching you, Mei-li Moore thought to herself as her breath caught in her throat and her body responded in ways it hadn’t since...since Sean, her brain insisted. Just the expression in his eyes had made her nipples tighten beneath the red silk she wore. Had made her pulse race.

She recognized him—of course she did. Dirk DeWinter probably couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized. She was tempted to turn around and see if he was still watching her, but then she told herself not to be silly. She was long past the age of crushing on movie stars...even if he had been watching her with that certain something in his eyes.

She kept her gaze steadfastly on the stage, forcing herself to concentrate on the jazz music she loved. That’s the reason you’re here, she reminded herself firmly. But her racing pulse made the blood thrum in her ears so she could barely hear the music for the beat of her heart.

* * *

The set ended with enthusiastic applause from the crowd—the club was packed and the jazz pianist was more than good. The woman in red turned toward the bar for the first time since their eyes had initially met, and Dirk could tell by her expression she was surprised to find him still standing there, still watching her.

He smiled slightly, then raised his beer bottle in a silent toast. Even in the dim light he could see her reaction. I’ll be damned, he thought. As beautiful as she is, she’s honestly flustered by my attention. And that intrigued him even more.

She said something to the man she was sitting with—Dirk couldn’t hear what, and her lips moved too quickly for him to read—then the man turned around for the first time, spotted Dirk and broke out in a huge grin.

Dirk received another shock. He knew the man professionally—famed English producer/director Sir Joshua Moore was the main reason Dirk was here in Hong Kong, shooting the action-adventure flick he was currently working on. Dirk had jumped at the chance to work with Josh, even though it had meant packing up his household, including his toddler twin daughters, and moving to Hong Kong for three months. He’d always wanted to do a project with Josh, but the opportunity had never arisen before.

Isn’t Josh married? he asked himself, remembering what little he knew of the other man’s private life. Dirk tried not to judge, but a pang went through him as he momentarily pondered the unfairness of life. He’d give anything to have his wife alive, would gladly have sacrificed even his stardom to have her back. And here was a man who cheated on the wife he did have.

Josh was enthusiastically signaling for Dirk to come over to their table, but he hesitated. Not only did he not want to intrude—especially after the thoughts he’d been having about Josh’s date for the evening—but he really didn’t want to know any more about their illicit relationship. Professionally he admired Josh tremendously—his body of work was impressive. Dirk didn’t want that admiration tarnished by knowledge of the man’s personal shortcomings.

Eventually, though, Dirk picked his beer bottle up off the bar and made his way through the crowd. The closer he got, the more his body reacted to the woman in red, despite firmly telling it to stand down. No poaching, he reminded himself. Especially not on the preserves of a man he had to work with over the next few months. His body refused to listen. Which meant he was hard and aching by the time he arrived at the table, and he was glad for the dim lights in the club that would make his arousal less obvious.

“Dirk!” Josh said with enthusiasm, rising to his feet and shaking his hand. “I didn’t know you were a jazz lover, or I’d have told you about this place myself. How’d you hear about it?”

“I asked my limo driver,” Dirk explained. “The one you arranged for me, remember? Patrick Chan? He brought me here.” He’d politely kept his attention on the older man during the exchange, but despite himself his gaze soon wandered back to the woman still seated at the small table, watching the interchange between the two men with interest.

“Mei-li,” Josh said, his clipped British accent very obvious, “let me introduce you to one of the best screen actors in the business today—and a true professional—Dirk DeWinter. Dirk, this is my daughter, Mei-li.”

Dirk had already extended his hand, but he shot a sharp glance at Josh at his last words. “Your daughter?” The question slipped out before Dirk could prevent it, and Josh laughed as if this wasn’t the first time someone had misconstrued his relationship with her.

Before Josh could say anything, Mei-li shook Dirk’s hand and said, “Some women might take umbrage at your erroneous assumption, Mr. DeWinter.” Her voice was rich, cultured and bore the same British accent as her father. “I’ll just say if you ever meet my mother you’ll understand why I’m merely amused.” Her dark eyes didn’t hold amusement, however. He wasn’t sure what expression was reflected there. Disdain came swiftly to mind, as if she’d judged him and found him wanting—the same way he’d mistakenly judged her. “My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world in my father’s estimation...and in mine.”

Dirk resisted the urge to raise Mei-li’s hand to his lips. Instead he said, “Then you must take after your mother, Miss Moore.” The compliment rolled glibly off his tongue, but she didn’t react as most women would have.

“M’goy,” she murmured in Cantonese as she withdrew her hand—one of the few Cantonese phrases Dirk knew, which meant “thank you”—but he knew she was only saying it to be polite. She really didn’t appreciate the compliment, and he sensed her inner withdrawal.

Once again Dirk was intrigued. She’s not impressed with her own beauty, and she doesn’t care for men who are, either, he thought. But asking a man not to notice a beautiful and sexy woman was asking the impossible, especially when it came in a classy package. But that didn’t mean a man had to act on it. Circumstances and Bree had turned him into a gentleman, and Dirk wasn’t about to forget those hard-learned lessons. But Mei-li didn’t know it. Didn’t know him.

Despite the signals she was sending out that clearly indicated she wasn’t interested in him and was only being polite to an acquaintance of her father’s, he wanted to know more about her. “Are you in the movie industry, too, Miss Moore?”

She shook her head with vehemence. “One in the business is enough, don’t you think? And who could compete with a talent like his?” she added with a flash of a smile in her father’s direction that indicated nothing but daughterly pride. “No, I’m a pr—”

What she’d been about to say was cut off by a gaggle of young and not-so-young women who came up to their table. “May I have your autograph, Mr. DeWinter?” the first woman gushed, thrusting a pen and a piece of paper at Dirk.

Dirk had an unbreakable rule when it came to autographs. As long as he was standing—which he was now—he would sign. If he was seated at a table, either as someone’s guest or with guests of his own, he would politely decline, feeling it would be rude to the people he was with.

He glanced at Josh and Mei-li. “Excuse me for a moment,” he murmured, stepping a little away from them before scrawling his name on the seemingly endless supply of menus and scraps of paper offered for his autograph. But when one young woman with more gall than sense asked him to sign her bra and began tugging down the neckline of her dress, Dirk shook his head in refusal.

“Sorry,” he told her as gently as he could, even though he was disgusted that any woman would be so lacking in decency as to ask this of him in a public place. “That’s where I draw the line.”

It wasn’t the first time someone had requested something similar from him. Women had even asked him right in front of Bree, as if her feelings at having her husband accosted were unimportant, as if those women held his wife in contempt. As if their blatant sexual advances would be welcomed by a man in love with his wife.

And that reminder of his wife, more than anything else, was what made Dirk decide not to pursue this...whatever it was...with Mei-li any further. Because no matter how attracted he was to her, no matter how much his body wanted to make love to her, it could never be more than physical. It can never be what I shared with Bree, he told himself, believing it.

* * *

The streets of Kowloon, one of two mainland districts of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, or SAR, were nearly deserted when Dirk walked out of the soundstage two weeks later and approached the waiting black Rolls-Royce that would take him back to the Peninsula Hotel at the southern tip of the Tsim Sha Tsui neighborhood. The double-decker buses that ran constantly, day and night, and the people who normally swarmed the streets were nowhere to be seen on this first day of May. Everyone and everything seemed to be battened down in anticipation of Typhoon De-De.

“Thanks, Patrick,” he told his twenty-four-year-old Chinese driver, Shuài “Patrick” Chan, who held the door for him.

“Hotel, Mr. DeWinter?”

“Dirk,” he reminded his driver.

“Yes, sir,” Patrick said, closing the door firmly behind Dirk and climbing into the driver’s seat.

Dirk smiled to himself as he leaned back against the leather upholstery. He’d yet to break his driver of addressing him formally, and probably never would, any more than he’d been able to break his employees of that habit. His housekeeper, Hannah, insisted on calling him Mr. DeWinter, too, and the others in his household followed her lead. “And yes, the flags are out,” he said, “So I’d better hightail it back to the hotel.”

The flags were out. Not literally—actual flags to warn mariners hadn’t been hoisted in the Hong Kong SAR in years. But Signal Three had been issued early that morning—which meant schools were closed and the government was shut down, as well as the financial markets and a majority of the private sector. And the Hong Kong Observatory had issued a Signal Eight SE warning a half hour ago. That had caused the studio to reluctantly shut down filming for the day and send everyone home until further notice.

Typhoon De-De was bearing down on Hong Kong from the southeast—a month early for the normal typhoon season, which usually didn’t begin until June. All public transportation had ceased, especially the double-decker buses that were so susceptible to being blown over by strong winds. The ubiquitous red taxis were still running, as were a few green ones, but without the buses traffic was sparse, and the Rolls made good time as it headed down Kowloon Park Drive toward Salisbury Road.

A gust of wind out of nowhere slammed into the limo, causing it to swerve and throwing Dirk against the door. “Sorry, sir,” Patrick said, quickly bringing the Rolls back on course.

“Not a problem. Good thing we don’t have far to go.” He thought for a minute. “You live on the island, don’t you?” he asked, referring to Hong Kong Island itself.

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t think you’ll make it home safely today. Not now. You probably should just join me in the hotel—my suite is plenty big enough, and I’m sure Vanessa and the twins won’t mind.”

Vanessa Riordan was the woman who’d been his twin daughters’ nanny since the day they’d been released from the neonatal intensive care unit—or NICU—at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles. Dirk had tried calling Vanessa at the hotel earlier, but there had been no answer and he wondered absently about that now. He pulled out his smartphone and tried calling his suite again, then Vanessa’s cell phone, but still no luck.

Dirk’s eyes met Patrick’s in the rearview mirror, and he could tell his driver was of two minds about accepting the offer to take shelter from the typhoon with Dirk and his family. Patrick lived with his parents, and Dirk figured the young man was worried about them. “Call your parents,” he told Patrick. “I’m sure they’ll tell you the same thing. Better safe than sorry.”

Patrick Chan wasn’t a limo driver by trade—he was an engineering student at the University of Hong Kong, working on his master’s degree. The young man held down two jobs—teaching assistant at the university and driving the Rolls—to put himself through school and help out at home.

Dirk had done something similar, working three jobs to make ends meet—including movie stuntman—to support Bree and himself before he got his big break in the movies. He’d never been afraid of hard work. Neither had Bree. But Dirk had been too proud to ask her to marry him until he’d snagged his first starring role. Until he could support her in the style she deserved. Until his success meant Bree didn’t have to work at the menial jobs she’d taken in order to stay at his side through thick and thin as he chased his dream of movie stardom...and long before that.

Pain stabbed through him as it always did at the thought of Bree. He could never forget that, because God was punishing him for something that had happened aeons ago. Bree had died. And their daughters had nearly died, too. Only a miracle wrought by the doctors and nurses in the Cedars Sinai NICU had kept their premature twins alive.

Dirk’s phone sounded the tune he reserved for his closest friends, and when he swiped a finger over the touchpad and saw who the call was from, he smiled and answered. “To what do I owe the honor of this call, Your Majesty?”

The voice of Queen Juliana of Zakhar sounded in his ear, prefaced by a very unqueenly snort. “Cut that out,” she said. “How many times do I have to tell you I’m still Juliana to you?”

“Ahhh, but what would your husband, the king, say to that?” he teased gently.

They bantered back and forth for a couple of minutes, then Juliana said, “I hear there’s a typhoon expected to hit Hong Kong this evening, and I remembered you mentioned you were filming there. Are you and the girls in a safe place? And Vanessa and Hannah, too, of course,” she added, referring to the women who had habitually accompanied Dirk on location ever since the twins were born.

“Hannah couldn’t make the trip, after all,” he explained now. “She fell down the stairs and broke her leg three days before we were supposed to leave for Hong Kong.”

“Oh, no!” Dirk knew Juliana’s concern was genuine. Hannah had been his housekeeper for years, and Juliana had met her every time she’d visited the DeWinters during their years-long friendship in Hollywood. “Is she going to be okay?”

“Yeah. She’s recuperating in a nursing home. But Linden and Laurel ask about her several times a day. And we call her every night.” Hannah, a longtime widow with no children of her own, had taken on the role of surrogate grandmother for the twins in addition to her housekeeping duties, something for which Dirk was supremely grateful. His daughters adored Hannah—whom they called Nana—and she adored them.

“Email me the address and phone number of the nursing home, please,” Juliana asked. “I’ll send her flowers and a get-well card.”

“Will do. And don’t worry about us, Juliana. We’ll be fine. Thanks for calling, though.”

“Kiss your daughters for me.” That was something Juliana said every time they talked, another thing that was genuinely meant—Juliana had her own child now, but was the twins’ godmother and loved them deeply. This time, however, she hesitated, then added in a voice tinged with pain, “I adore the pictures of them you’ve sent me, but every day they look more and more like Bree.”

At first Dirk’s throat closed with emotion at the reminder of his wife, who’d been Juliana’s best friend before she died, but eventually he managed, “Yeah, they do.”

Dirk disconnected just as Patrick pulled in at the hotel entrance. He drove past the fountain that had already been turned off, and would have dropped Dirk at the front door, but Dirk refused. “Just find a place to park,” he told his driver. “Call your parents, but I know what they’ll say. Then we’ll go up together.”

It only took a minute for Patrick to receive his parents’ blessing to shelter at the Peninsula Hotel. More than a blessing, actually, Dirk thought with an inward smile as he heard Patrick’s side of the phone conversation. More like a parental command. But he didn’t say anything. He admired the old-fashioned deference the younger generation showed the older in Hong Kong. Once upon a time that had been common in the United States, too, but not anymore.

The two men crossed the lobby, heading for the elevators, and Dirk was distracted for a moment by the Peninsula Hotel’s typhoon preparations. The beautiful arched picture windows had already been boarded up, and sandbags were being stacked along one wall, merely as a precaution. The hotel wasn’t that far from Victoria Harbour, and a strong typhoon-induced surge could bring the ocean to the hotel’s front door.

“That reminds me,” Dirk told Patrick as he rang for the elevator, “we’d better find out what we need to do to make the suite’s windows safe from the typhoon, if the hotel staff hasn’t already done so. And we want to make sure we have plenty of food and drinking water in the suite—if we lose electricity, there’s no way I want to hike down all those floors and back up again.”

They rode up in the elevator to the palatial Peninsula Suite on the twenty-sixth floor, with connecting bedrooms for the twins and their nanny. Dirk would have been just as happy in something less grand, but the movie studio was footing the bill for the suite, and he’d never stayed here when Bree had been alive—an important factor in his decision to accept the accommodations. The private gym, cinematic screening room and baby grand piano had also been contributing factors, not to mention the isolation. Before he’d become a father himself, Dirk had wondered why parents couldn’t do a better job keeping their children from causing disturbances. Now he knew how nearly impossible that was, but he still didn’t want to impose his daughters’ totally to-be-expected behavior on the hotel’s other guests if he could help it.

He let himself into the suite and was puzzled at the unusual silence. His daughters might still be napping, although they were usually awake by this time, but Vanessa and the bodyguard—one of three in the entourage that had accompanied Dirk’s family from Hollywood to Hong Kong—were on duty today, and they were missing. Usually, at this time of day Vanessa, the girls and their bodyguard could be found in the living room. The twins were fascinated by the breathtaking sight of Hong Kong Island across the harbor, day or night, and the boats plying the waters, views they could easily see through the floor-to-ceiling windows. And the girls had a habit of standing right up against the windows and smearing whatever they could reach with invariably sticky fingers.

The spacious living room was empty, but one of the chairs from the twins’ miniature tea table, set up in front of the central picture window, had been overturned...and left that way. Then Dirk noticed other things. The diaper bag, which Vanessa usually kept by the front door, stocked and ready to go should she leave the suite with the girls, was missing. But the double stroller was right where Vanessa kept it, and her purse was on the table by the door. She wouldn’t have left the suite without either of those things, Dirk realized in a flash. Vanessa might have been able to carry one toddler in her arms, but not two—not for long. And even if the bodyguard on duty today, Chet Ritter, had carried one of the girls against protocol, no woman ever went anywhere without her purse.

There was a strange odor in the air, too—just the faintest trace of something sickly sweet. Dirk couldn’t put his finger on it, but it tugged at a chord of memory.

Then he heard a sound. An odd, muffled sound, accompanied by sudden thumping, coming from the girls’ bedroom. He strode to the door with Patrick right behind him, and a zing of terror shot through him. Vanessa and Chet lay on their sides on the floor, hands bound behind their backs with duct tape. There was tape around their ankles, too, and across their mouths—the muffled sound was Vanessa trying to call out through the barrier. The thumping was her pounding her bound feet against the carpeted floor, trying to gain attention from the hotel room below.

Linden and Laurel were nowhere in sight.

Chapter 2

“Chet” was the first word out of Vanessa’s mouth when Dirk removed the gag. She coughed and swallowed before adding, “Is he okay? They hit him and knocked him out, then they took the girls.” She gasped, “Mr. DeWinter—”

“When?” Dirk demanded roughly, then said, “Hold still,” placing his hands on her arms just above the duct tape, making sure she didn’t move while Patrick sliced through her bonds with the switchblade knife he’d pulled from his pocket. When Vanessa’s hands were free, Patrick focused on her ankles. Dirk helped her to a sitting position once she was completely freed, then briskly rubbed her wrists to restore circulation while Patrick did the same thing to her ankles.

Then both men turned their attention to Chet. A darkening contusion on his forehead showed how he’d been overpowered before he’d been gagged and bound, but he was conscious now. “What happened?” Dirk asked as he and Patrick freed Chet. “How long ago?”

Vanessa answered his last question first. “About two hours ago, I think. I...I can’t be sure, but I think so. I thought it was room service with lunch when the doorbell rang.”

Dirk frowned. “The front door to the suite?” he asked. “Not the butler’s entrance in the kitchen?”

Vanessa looked startled for a moment, as if she’d just realized something. “Oh, I...I didn’t think of that. But yes, the front door. Chet answered it, and before I knew it one of them had knocked him out and there were two men in the living room. One of them was Chinese—” Dirk started to ask another question, but she answered it before he could get the words out. “I didn’t recognize them. But I’d know them if I saw them again, especially the second man, the one who wasn’t Chinese. The one with a gun.” She shuddered. “His eyes. They were so cold.”

“Did they leave a ransom note?” Dirk’s brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, but icy fear trickled down his spine at the thought of his daughters—Bree’s daughters—in the hands of kidnappers. Your fault. His conscience was quick to judge. You failed to keep your daughters safe. Just as you failed to save Bree.

Vanessa shook her head. “They didn’t leave a ransom note with me. Did you find one in the other room?”

“No.” Dirk jumped to his feet, tuning Vanessa’s voice out as he pulled his smartphone from his pocket. He scrolled quickly, then selected the number for the US Consulate for Hong Kong and Macau, thanking his lucky stars he’d been advised to store the number in his contacts for the duration of his stay here.

“Mr. DeWinter!” Chet was trying to get his attention, but Dirk impatiently waved him to silence.

The phone rang and rang. Dirk started to heave a sigh of relief when the phone was finally answered, but the relief soon turned to despair when a recorded voice came on the line. “Due to the impending typhoon, the US Consulate for Hong Kong and Macau is closed until further notice. We expect to resume normal business operations as soon as the typhoon passes, but please call ahead before coming to the consulate. If this is an emergency, please contact the Hong Kong Police Force or the Public Security Police Force of Macau—” Dirk disconnected before the message ended, then caught Patrick’s eye.

“The US consulate is closed because of the typhoon,” he said roughly. “The message says to call the Hong Kong police in an emergency. You don’t happen to have their number, do you? Otherwise I—”

“Not the police!” Vanessa shrilled. “The kidnappers said if you call the police they’ll know, and they’ll kill the girls and dump their bodies in the harbor.”

Patrick reluctantly concurred. “She could be right, Mr. DeWinter. You don’t know anything about these kidnappers—they might have paid off someone on the police force to notify them if you call in the cops. And do you really want to take that chance?” He bit his lip. “Paying ransom in Hong Kong is a tricky business. It used to be illegal, in fact. But nowadays it’s usually handled by ransom negotiators and almost always done before the police are notified.”

Vanessa struggled to her feet, then put a hand on Dirk’s arm. “The kidnappers said the only way you’ll ever see the girls alive again is to wait for them to contact you and do exactly what they say.”

“They know I’d pay—” Dirk’s voice broke, and he had to stop a moment. “I’d pay anything to get my daughters back. But I can’t just do noth—”

“My cousin is a private investigator,” Patrick said suddenly, interrupting him. “And a ransom negotiator.” He pulled out his own smartphone, his finger hovering over the keypad. “Should I...”

“I don’t think—” Vanessa began before Dirk cut her off.

“Call,” he ordered Patrick after only a moment’s hesitation. No way was he going to go against the kidnappers’ orders and contact the Hong Kong police...not yet. But he was also smart enough to know that paying the ransom demanded, no matter how much, wasn’t a guarantee he’d ever see his daughters again—alive or dead. He had to do something. His life would be over if anything happened to Linden and Laurel.

Dirk gave a hand to help Chet to his feet, then led his daughters’ nanny and bodyguard into the living room while Patrick called his cousin. “What else can you remember about the kidnappers?” he asked Vanessa as he seated her on the sofa. He grabbed a notepad and pen from where they sat beside the phone and handed them to her. “Jot down every detail you can think of while it’s fresh in your mind.”

He turned to Chet, who was hovering beside the sofa, and brusquely indicated he should sit, too. “I know you were unconscious, but do you remember anything before they hit you?”

Chet shook his head as he sat. “I don’t even remember answering the door,” he admitted. “Vanessa says I did, so I must have, but...” He touched the swelling on his forehead, feeling it gingerly. “I just remember coming to on the floor in the girls’ bedroom, bound and gagged beside Vanessa. The twins were already gone.”

Patrick entered the living room saying, “My cousin will take a cab and be here in less than fifteen minutes—assuming they’re still running with the typhoon about to hit soon.”

Dirk glanced at Vanessa. “What have you got for a description so far?” Before she could answer, he turned his attention back to Patrick. “Linden and Laurel don’t like strangers. They’d probably have been crying at the very least, maybe even screaming, so how could the kidnappers get away without anyone noticing and calling the police?”

Patrick shook his head. “I’ll bet anything your daughters weren’t conscious when they were taken out of here. The kidnappers wouldn’t want to take a chance someone would notice them.”

“Chloroform,” Dirk said, a chill of recognition washing through him. “That’s what that smell was when I first walked in.” His anger went from white-hot to ice-cold. “Those sons of bitches chloroformed my little girls for money.”

His iPhone rang suddenly, and he answered immediately, even though the caller’s ID was blocked. “Yes?”

“Mr. DeWinter?” The voice was as American as his own, silky smooth, with menacing overtones.

“Yes?”

“We have your daughters.”

Dirk drew a deep breath, tamping down his sudden, overwhelming rage. “Whatever the price is, I’ll pay it.”

The voice on the other end of the line laughed softly. “Of course you will, Mr. DeWinter. Of course you will.”

“How much?” he demanded. He put a tight clamp on his emotions, trying to force himself to focus, as if this was happening to someone else. His brain was already operating at warp speed when he said, “But you have to give me time. Everything’s closed here—banks, everything—because of the typhoon. I can have the money wired from the States tomorrow, but—”

The cold voice cut him off. “You’ll be contacted with the details—how much, when and where. But don’t worry, you’ll have all the time you need. The only thing you need to know right now is, if you call the police, your daughters are dead.”

“I haven’t called them.” He thanked God that Vanessa and Patrick had stopped him.

Then everything else was driven from Dirk’s mind when the other man said, “Very good, Mr. DeWinter. Or should I say...Mr. Summers?”

All the strength went out of Dirk’s legs, and he sank into the nearest armchair. “What do you mean?” he whispered.

“Terrell Blackwood sends his regards.” Then the phone went dead.

Dirk’s eyes squeezed shut. “They’re dead,” he said under his breath, trying to take in the reality. “Oh, God, they’re dead.”

A long-ago memory surfaced, Terrell Blackwood screaming at him across the courtroom, “You’ll pay for this, Summers! You’ll pay in blood!”

He’d already paid, every day of his life. The scar on his body was nothing compared to the scar on his soul. He’d carried the knowledge of what he’d done with him, weighing on his conscience, making him the man he was. Until Bree had died, he’d managed to suppress his guilt, though, had managed to convince himself his motive had been pure.

But God had seen into his heart and had known the truth—and made him pay. He was still paying. That punishment he could bear. What he couldn’t bear was knowing Bree had also paid when she was totally innocent. Just like his daughters—totally innocent. A memory flashed into his mind, him wild with grief, telling Juliana the day before Bree’s funeral, This is my punishment. God is punishing me, but she paid the price.

And if anything happened to Linden and Laurel because of him...he wouldn’t be able to bear it.

Vanessa, Chet and Patrick all stared at Dirk strangely, but Vanessa spoke first. “What do you mean...they’re dead?” she asked in a halting, choked voice. “They can’t be dead. That’s—” She broke off suddenly.

Dirk’s brows drew together in a question, but the sound of the suite’s doorbell distracted him. Patrick turned to answer the door, but Dirk was faster. He yanked the door open, then stared in incomprehension at the beautiful, dark-haired Eurasian woman standing there. The woman in the red dress from two weeks before. The woman who’d haunted his dreams. Mei-li Moore.

“Yes?” He had no idea why she was there, but he strove for patience. “Can I help you, Miss Moore?”

“I think it’s the other way around, Mr. DeWinter,” she replied with a smile intended to put him at his ease. “My cousin said you need my assistance.”

Patrick was right beside Dirk, and now he said, “Mei-li! Thanks for coming so quickly.” He reached around Dirk and tugged her inside, then closed the door.

Dirk hadn’t been expecting Patrick’s cousin to be a woman. That’s all he could think of to account for his sudden inability to process what he was seeing and hearing. That, and his emotional turmoil over the kidnapping and the mention of Terrell Blackwood’s name. He wasn’t sexist. He really wasn’t. But when Patrick had said his cousin was a private investigator and a ransom negotiator, he’d immediately envisioned a man. Especially here in Hong Kong, where even now women were struggling for equality in many professions. It wasn’t as bad in Hong Kong as it was on the Chinese mainland, but women here still had a long way to go to achieve even what the women in the United States had.

And since Hong Kong had a stringent restriction on firearms possession—the three bodyguards he’d brought with him from the States had been forced to leave their weapons behind—many private investigators didn’t even carry guns, the great equalizer between men and women.

All those thoughts flashed through Dirk’s brain in less than a minute. And at the same time he realized this could actually work to his advantage. If the kidnappers were watching him—as the threats voiced to Vanessa indicated—they might not suspect Mei-li was a private investigator working the kidnapping case.

Assuming his daughters weren’t already dead.

That brought him back around to his immediate reaction to hearing Terrell Blackwood’s name. And it didn’t take him any time at all to realize that if Blackwood was involved, ransom probably wasn’t the sole motive for the kidnapping. Far from it.

“Mr. DeWinter?”

The strong, cultured voice belonged to Sir Joshua Moore’s daughter. “I need to find out everything you know as quickly as possible,” Mei-li continued. “Patrick couldn’t tell me much over the phone, just that the kidnappers warned you not to call the police, and you haven’t done so. Is that still the case?”

“Yes.”

“I think that’s wise at this stage.” She pulled a pen and notebook out of the capacious handbag slung over one shoulder, then indicated the sofa and chairs in the living room. “Can we sit down? I’d like to hear everything that happened from the beginning.”

It didn’t take long for Chet to disclaim any knowledge of the kidnapping since he’d been unconscious, and for Vanessa to reveal what little she knew. While she was telling her story, Dirk tried to marshal his own thoughts into some kind of order. He needed to tell Mei-li about the phone call from one of the kidnappers. About Terrell Blackwood. And why Blackwood had reason to want revenge.

* * *

Mei-li listened carefully to what Vanessa said—and what she didn’t—following her usual routine. She had questions, a whole slew of them, but sometimes you got the most answers just letting people talk. Especially when there was nothing but silence, and the person telling the story felt he or she desperately needed to fill that silence...with something. Sometimes the most amazing revelations were blurted out, and Mei-li never broke the flow.

But eventually Vanessa’s story petered out. Mei-li waited patiently until Vanessa said, “That’s it. That’s everything I remember.”

Mei-li knew the odds were against Vanessa’s statement. Witnesses—even cooperative witnesses, as Vanessa seemed to be—rarely told everything they remembered. They tried their best to recount what they thought were the important things, not realizing sometimes it was the little details that broke a case. Then again, sometimes witnesses remembered something important long after the fact. Especially if they weren’t required to repeat their story countless times, so that the story as they told it became their memory of the event.

Mei-li took copious notes in her own cryptic shorthand and asked a few questions when she needed clarification. She jotted Vanessa’s answers down as well, then said, “Would you do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Would you close your eyes? Sometimes events can be clearer in our minds if we close our eyes and think about them.”

A nearly imperceptible hesitation was followed by, “Okay.”

Mei-li noted the hesitation but didn’t comment on it, just filed it away for the future. “Thank you.” She waited until the other woman’s eyes were closed, then asked, “Where were the girls when Chet answered the door?”

“In the bedroom. They were...they were taking their afternoon nap.”

Mei-li’s sharp eyes glanced around the room, and she wrote a couple of things in her notebook. “So walk me through everything that happened the minute the door was opened.”

“I couldn’t really see the front door from where I was standing. One of the men must have struck Chet in the head, because I heard him cry out and saw him fall right at the base of the sculpture in the foyer. Before I could react both men were in the living room. One of them had a gun. He put it to my head and demanded to know where the girls were. He told me he’d kill me if I didn’t cooperate—and I believed him.”

Mei-li made another cryptic notation, but said in a matter-of-fact tone, “So you saw their faces?”

“No, oh, no,” Vanessa replied after a second. “Only their eyes. They both wore black ski masks.”

“But you could tell one of them was Chinese and one wasn’t,” Mei-li prompted.

“Right. Their eyes. You know, the shape. I could just tell.” Vanessa cleared her throat. “Well, one was Asian. I assumed he was Chinese, but...anyway, Asian.”

Mei-li’s voice retained its calm, reassuring tone. “Okay, you’re in the girls’ bedroom, where the kidnappers forced you to go. What next?”

Vanessa’s eyelids flickered, but she didn’t open her eyes. “They pushed me down on the floor and bound me with duct tape, then they taped my mouth.”

“Who did what?”

“The Asian man had the duct tape. The other man—the one with the gun—held me down.” Her face scrunched as if she were trying to remember every detail. “They left and came back a minute later dragging Chet. He was still unconscious, and I...” This part was obviously difficult for her. “I couldn’t even be sure he was alive.”

Vanessa took a deep breath, composed herself and continued. “They duct taped him, too, then the man with the gun rolled Chet over with his foot. He wasn’t...he wasn’t very gentle about it.”

Mei-li waited, but nothing more was offered, so she asked, “You’re on the floor, bound, but you can see the men. And you can hear them. Who was in charge?”

“The man with the gun seemed to be...he was giving the orders.”

“Did either of them speak a name when they addressed each other? Either when you were in the living room or when you were in the bedroom?” Vanessa’s eyelids flew open, but Mei-li quickly stopped her. “No, don’t open your eyes. Listen to the questions and answer as best you can, but keep your eyes closed so you can visualize what happened.” When Vanessa’s eyes were closed again, Mei-li asked, “Did either of them say a name?”

Vanessa shook her head.

“Did they chloroform the girls in their beds...or did they pick them up first and then chloroform them?”

“Chloroform first.”

“Who picked up which girl?”

Again Vanessa’s eyelids twitched. “The Asian man picked up Linden. The other man picked up Laurel.”

Mei-li waited for several heartbeats, then asked softly, “Why didn’t they chloroform you?”

Chapter 3

Vanessa’s eyes flew open, and she had that startled “deer in the headlights” look on her face, Dirk noticed, as if she hadn’t expected the question and was caught unaware. Mei-li waited a moment, but when no answer was forthcoming, she said, “Or knock you out the same way they knocked out Chet. It doesn’t make sense they’d leave you conscious, does it?”

“I...I have no idea why,” Vanessa stammered. Then she shrugged her shoulders and her voice firmed. “It might not make sense, but that’s what happened.”

Mei-li smiled, and if Dirk hadn’t been watching her so closely he would have been disarmed by that smile, the same way Vanessa was. “You never get all the answers,” Mei-li told Vanessa with a confiding air. “But it’s one of those questions I had to ask.”

She turned her attention to Dirk and started to speak when a tremendous gust of wind buffeted the hotel. As solid as the building was, it swayed, and everyone froze. The room had been darkening steadily as the sky did, but no one had really focused on it until now. Everyone turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room just as the sky opened up as if a faucet had been turned on full force, and torrential rain slashed against the windows.

Dirk cursed under his breath. He’d momentarily forgotten the typhoon, and now he said, “Those windows make this entire suite vulnerable...and dangerous.” He glanced at Patrick, regret coloring his words. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking of this when I said you’d be safer here than trying to get back to the island.”

Patrick shook his head. “I’m glad I stayed. Glad I was able to help with...” His hand motion encompassed Mei-li and the others, and Dirk understood what he was trying to say.

The phone in the suite rang suddenly, and everyone froze again. For a heart-stopping second Dirk was sure it was the kidnappers again, and he snatched up the phone. “Yes?”

“Mr. DeWinter?” said a voice with a decided British accent—not the voice of the kidnapper who’d called Dirk on his cell phone. “This is the hotel concierge.”

“Yes? What is it?”

“We are very sorry for the inconvenience, but the Hong Kong Observatory has just issued a T9 warning, indicating increasing gale-force winds. While there is no indication Hong Kong will sustain a direct hit from Typhoon De-De—that would be a T10—we’re asking all our guests to move down to either the lobby or the first floor temporarily...just until the worst of the typhoon has passed. We understand this constitutes a hardship for our guests, but we hope the complimentary meals and drinks we will be providing in any of our fine restaurants will mitigate the difficulty.”

“I understand.”

“We also recommend bringing any medications or other necessities with you, as well as a change of clothes, blankets, pillows—everything you might need in the short term. While we don’t want to anticipate the worst, we want our guests to be prepared, just in case. Should the power go out, it would be a tad difficult to reach your floor without an elevator.”

Twenty-six flights of stairs—yeah, not an easy hike, Dirk thought with a stab of mordant humor, the kind that sometimes hit in tense situations. The British sure have a knack for understatement. To the concierge he said, “Thank you, we’ll be down shortly.”

“Thank you, Mr. DeWinter. Do you and your family need any assistance? We understand this can be a trying situation for families with small children.”

The reminder that his daughters weren’t with him caused Dirk’s heart to clutch momentarily. He cleared his throat. “No, we don’t need assistance, but thanks anyway.”

“Please don’t hesitate to ask any of our staff should you need anything. Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience.”

Dirk hung up the phone and told everyone, “The typhoon has been upgraded from a T8 to a T9, and the hotel wants us all downstairs before the winds get any worse.” He moved purposely toward the windows, saying as he did so, “Those shades come down. They won’t protect us if the windows shatter and there’s flying glass, but it could minimize any damage if the windows break while we’re gone.” He started rolling the shades down, and Patrick began to help him, but Dirk said, “I’ve got this. Get the ones in the other rooms, will you?”

Patrick left and Dirk turned to Vanessa. “Better pack at least one change of clothes for yourself. You don’t want to have to trek up all those stairs if the elevators aren’t working. And grab the blanket and pillows from your bed—we’ll need them.” She left quietly, and Dirk said to Chet, “Your hotel’s a few blocks away, isn’t it?”

Chet nodded. “Just up Nathan Road.” His mouth twisted in a grimace. “But I don’t think I want to try to get there tonight,” he said, indicating the rain they could hear thrumming against the windows. “Not even in a cab.”

“I wasn’t suggesting it. I’ve got clothes to spare. Might not be a perfect fit, but in a situation like this I don’t think that matters.” Dirk turned his attention to Mei-li. “Sorry, my mind’s not working properly. Vanessa should be able to lend you a change of clothes. Let me go ask her—”

Mei-li shook her head and indicated the large purse she’d set down beside the sofa. “I came prepared,” she told him in her calm voice. “When Patrick called, I threw a few things in there, just in case. Don’t worry about me. But Patrick will probably need to borrow some clothes.” She smiled slightly, as if the thought of five-foot-nine Patrick wearing six-foot-two Dirk’s clothes amused her. But then her smile faded, and her eyes sent a message Dirk had no difficulty interpreting—she wanted to speak with him privately.

“Patrick’s welcome to whatever I have,” Dirk said deliberately. Then he looked at Chet. “Why don’t you get what you need from my bedroom and tell Patrick to do the same. I’ll grab a few things after you’re done. Oh, and Chet,” he added as the other man started to leave the room. “Call Rafe and Mike, would you?” he said, referring to the other two bodyguards he’d brought from the US, who weren’t on duty today. “Let them know what’s happened, but tell them to stay put until after the typhoon. I don’t want them trying to get here when there’s nothing they can do.”

As soon as they were alone Mei-li said in an urgent undertone. “I’ll make this quick. Don’t say anything in front of Vanessa or Chet. I’ll explain later, but Vanessa isn’t telling the truth. Not all the truth. I don’t know why—not yet. She might just be feeling guilty about something—perhaps that she didn’t do more to stop the kidnappers—that’s one possibility. But there are other possibilities. Until we know, it’s better to keep our conjectures and plans to ourselves. Because if she’s lying, it’s possible Chet is lying, too.”

Dirk’s brows drew together in a sudden frown. “Why do you say that? That’s not a fake contusion on his forehead—I’ve seen enough in my business to know the difference.”

“Shh,” she replied as Vanessa came back into the room, a small overnight case in her hand. Mei-li picked up her handbag from the floor, tucked her notepad and pen away, and hooked the strap over her shoulder. “I’m ready to go down as soon as you are, Mr. DeWinter.”

Dirk was perturbed by Mei-li’s statement that Vanessa was lying, and possibly Chet, as well. But he was too good an actor not to be able to hide what he was thinking when he wanted to. He glanced at Vanessa, then away. And in that brief instant he knew Mei-li was right—Vanessa was concealing something. What, he had no idea...but something.

* * *

The five of them had dinner in the Spring Moon Restaurant on the first floor while the storm raged outside. They could hear the howling wind and the slashing rain as the outer wall of Typhoon De-De came ashore, but the Peninsula Hotel had withstood typhoons before, and the staff carried on as if nothing were amiss. As long as they had power, guests were guests and needed to be fed.

The normalcy of it all seemed bizarre to Dirk, despite the bundles of pillows and blankets the restaurant patrons had stashed next to their tables. But it wasn’t just the preparations for a night to be spent in the hotel lobby that had him on edge, and at first he thought he couldn’t possibly eat—not when he was desperate to do something about finding his daughters. But Mei-li murmured for his ears only, “There is nothing we can do until the typhoon has passed—it would be suicide to go outside now.”

“I know.” His voice was rough with suppressed emotion.

When she added, “Refusing to eat accomplishes nothing, Mr. DeWinter,” and ordered the crispy rice with lobster in lobster bisque, he realized she was right.

The lobster sounded particularly good, especially with the lobster soup as a sauce, and he told the waiter, “I’ll have the same,” without even looking at the menu. He needed to keep up his strength, if for no other reason than to tear his daughters’ kidnappers apart when they were found. When, he reiterated to himself with grim determination. Not if. Because he would never rest until his daughters were found. Would never know a moment’s peace until their kidnappers—including Terrell Blackwood—were brought to justice...a father’s justice.

That thought reminded him he needed to talk privately with Mei-li, needed to tell her what had happened nearly twenty years ago and why Terrell Blackwood would have engineered this kidnapping. And why ransom might not be the reason behind it.

* * *

The disposable cell phone Terrell Blackwood kept by his bed when he was sleeping and in his pocket when he was awake rang once, twice, three times before he managed to shake off the dregs of a dream and answer it. He squinted at the clock and saw by the glowing red numbers on the clock that it was just past 5:00 a.m. “Yes?”

“We have your packages,” a cold voice informed him, and his heart leaped. The code phrases had all been worked out in advance, so he knew what the voice was referring to—Derek Summers’s daughters were now in his agents’ custody. “But there’s a problem.”

“Problem?”

“Nothing major, but we were unable to ship them as originally planned. Hong Kong is shut down tight because of an unseasonal typhoon. All flights are grounded.”

Hurricane, Terrell translated in his mind. Shipping the packages—that meant transferring custody of Summers’s daughters to the pilots who were supposed to whisk them out of Hong Kong in a private plane and take them to Manila in the Philippines, then to Jakarta in Indonesia, to Perth, Australia, and finally—the trickiest part of the plan—back to the United States. There the little girls would be sold for adoption on the black market. The income the sales would bring was a pittance compared to what this entire project was costing Terrell, but the money was meaningless. Revenge was all he cared about.

Terrell had tried to kill Derek Summers all those years ago...and had failed. And every day he’d spent in prison he’d dreamed of the revenge that would be his eventually, how he would kill Summers with his own hands...once he was free.

Until Summers’s daughters were born.

That’s when he’d had an epiphany. A revelation. That’s when he’d realized he could visit upon Summers the agony he’d experienced at the loss of his only child. And Summers would finally pay...endlessly...for what he’d done.

Terrell had originally thought to kill the little girls the way Summers had murdered Lyon—an eye for an eye. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He could kill Summers himself because that would be justice. Killing Summers’s daughters would be...well...it wouldn’t be justice.

Besides, horrible as their deaths would be to Derek Summers, their lifeless bodies would bring closure of sorts, the way the death of Sabrina Weston had done. And from the moment he’d conceived of his plan, that’s what Terrell had sworn Summers would never have.

No, this way was better. Far better. No bodies, no closure. Terrell could twist the knife endlessly, torturing Summers day in and day out, because he would never know. Summers could tear Hong Kong apart...to no avail. He could pay the ransom the kidnappers demanded—and he would pay, that was a given. But he would never have closure. And he would never see his twin daughters again...alive or dead.

* * *

Dirk put his fork down in the middle of his meal, then stood and excused himself. “Sorry,” he apologized to the rest of the table. “I need to call my housekeeper back in Hollywood, let her know what’s happening while my cell phone still works. If it still works.” He glanced at his phone and was reassured.

“You really think that’s a good idea?” Vanessa blurted out. “What if the news gets out? I thought you wanted to keep this a secret.”

Chet nodded his agreement. “Not that Hannah would deliberately say anything, I’m sure, but she might let something slip, and then—”

“Hannah has worked for me for a lot of years.” A lot longer than either of you, he thought, and his voice hardened. “In all that time she’s never—not once—leaked anything to the press, deliberately or otherwise. She loves Linden and Laurel as if she were really their grandmother, and there’s no way I’m not taking her into my confidence.”

Mei-li wiped her lips with her napkin and stood. “I need to use the ladies’ room,” she murmured, gathering up her purse. “Might as well go now.” Her emotive eyes sent Dirk a message that this was merely an excuse, that here was their opportunity to talk in private, outside the hearing of Chet and Vanessa. She smiled at Vanessa. “Don’t let them clear away our plates, please—we won’t be gone long.”

* * *

Dirk pulled out his phone the minute they walked out of the restaurant, but Mei-li shook her head. “Not here. Let’s go down to the lobby,” she said as she led him to a stairwell. When they walked out on the ground floor she glanced around quickly, then pointed to a quiet corner near one of the boarded-up, arched picture windows in the gilded, high-ceilinged lobby. “Over there.”

What Dirk had to say only took a minute, but the call took a lot longer than that because not only did transmission keep breaking up and they had to repeat themselves several times, but Hannah burst into tears as soon as she heard. “Oh, Mr. DeWinter,” she sobbed. “If only I had been there.”

He tried to reassure her. “What could you have done that Vanessa and Chet didn’t do?” Hannah started to respond, but her voice cut out, and Dirk said, “I didn’t hear that.”

“I don’t know,” she repeated, “but something more than just letting kidnappers take the babies without a fight!” Hannah was unforgiving of both herself for not being there and of Vanessa, whom Dirk knew she thought was too young. But Vanessa had come with stellar recommendations, and Dirk had been desperate at the time. She seemed honestly fond of her little charges—and they of her. Linden and Laurel weren’t as attached to Vanessa as they were to Hannah, but still...a bond existed.

“If only I hadn’t broken my leg!” Hannah bemoaned. “If only—”

“Accidents happen to the best of us,” he reminded her. “And old bones break easily, you know that.” He’d often teased a young-at-heart Hannah about not wanting to accept the limitations age was beginning to place on her, and he was hoping to distract her from blaming herself for not being there. Again Hannah’s initial response was staticky, and Dirk had to ask her to repeat it.

“I said, yes, but I’m not usually that clumsy,” she insisted. “I know old bones break easily, which is why I’m always so careful. I just don’t understand how I could have tripped and fallen down the stairs like that.” She didn’t stay distracted for long. “And the way this has turned out, you’d almost think I was deliberately gotten out of the way, although how that could have happened I can’t begin to imagine.” Then she returned to the news Dirk had just conveyed to her. “Oh, Mr. DeWinter, what are you going to do?”

Determination swept through him. “Whatever I have to.”

Dirk thought briefly about sharing with Hannah his fear that ransom wasn’t the motive, but then decided against it. There would be time to tell Hannah when he was certain. And besides, he wasn’t sure how long he would still have cell phone coverage—just their brief conversation had taken far too long and they’d had to repeat themselves several times. So all he said was, “The kidnappers already called me once, but they didn’t make a ransom demand...yet. And this damned typhoon—that’s why I called you now instead of waiting for the girls’ bedtime to call you, when you’d be expecting it. I know it’s super early there, but this typhoon could shut everything down soon, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to reach you until tomorrow or the next day. Assuming service can be restored quickly and doesn’t take days or weeks.”

“I know you’ll do whatever you have to do, Mr. DeWinter,” Hannah said stoutly. “I have confidence in you. If anyone can bring Linden and Laurel home safely, it’s you.” Then her voice broke and she pleaded, “Oh, please bring them home safely, sir, and soon. Please! I don’t even want to think about what they’re going through right now.”

Dirk couldn’t speak for a moment. “Me, neither,” he said finally, then disconnected the call. His eyes closed and he breathed deeply for several seconds, images of his daughters helpless in the clutches of heartless men who could do something like this to innocent little girls flashing through his mind in an endless filmstrip.

A soft hand touched his arm. “Are you okay?” Mei-li asked.

Dirk ran one hand over his face while the other tucked his phone back in his jeans pocket. “Oh, hell, yeah,” he told her roughly. “I’m just fine. My daughters have been kidnapped by a man who wants me dead, my housekeeper thinks I can pull off miracles and you tell me my daughter’s nanny just might be lying about exactly what happened.” He laughed without humor. “Oh, yeah, and I can’t get help from the US consulate or search for my daughters because a Cat-5 hurricane—excuse me, typhoon—has decided to hit Hong Kong a month too early in the season. Have I left anything out?”

Mei-li’s face held nothing but compassion. “I think that encompasses it.”

The backs of his eyes ached suddenly, and he squeezed his eyes shut to hold his emotions at bay. But when he opened his eyes again he knew everything he was feeling was right there on the surface. “They’re not even two years old,” he whispered as despair swamped him. “What kind of monster takes his revenge on little girls?”

Mei-li looked around, then dragged Dirk to a couple of unoccupied chairs a short distance away. She pushed him into the first one, and Dirk let her. Then she pulled the other chair closer to his and sat down. “There’s a story here you haven’t told me,” she said firmly. “You’ve dropped hints, but I need to know everything.”

After a moment Dirk nodded. “Yeah, you do.” He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, holding her gaze with his. “I killed a man.”

Chapter 4

Mei-li didn’t allow herself to gasp, even though she’d never imagined this was the secret Dirk was keeping. But after the first shock passed, she accepted it with nothing more than a blink. It made sense. It had to be something momentous. Something life altering. While she’d never killed anyone herself, she knew those who had. Sometimes killing was justified, and until she knew more...she wasn’t going to judge.

* * *

Dirk considered what to add to the bald statement that he’d killed a man. “Nearly twenty years ago now. I was sixteen. He was a year older. We had a...a history of animosity.” That statement didn’t even come close to describing the hostile emotions on both sides that had led to their final confrontation.

“What happened?” The quiet, nonjudgmental way she asked the question immediately reminded him of his court-appointed defense attorney from twenty years ago. And it allowed him to answer with a semblance of detachment.

“Bree was fifteen. We were... I guess you could say we were in love, as much as teenagers understand love.” Words couldn’t begin to encompass what he and Bree had felt at the time, so he didn’t even try. “Lyon Blackwood was...” A spoiled rich kid who thought he was entitled to take whatever he wanted.

“We’d had confrontations before,” he continued after a few seconds. “But what really started the whole thing was I caught him sexually assaulting a friend of Bree’s. The girl didn’t want to press charges, even though Bree and I begged her to—she didn’t want the stigma that would have accompanied it. Minnetonka—Minnetonka, Minnesota, where we lived—isn’t a small town, but something like that gets around. And high school kids can be particularly cruel when a not-very-popular girl accuses the star of the football team of sexual assault.” He grimaced. “The general consensus would have been that she only cried rape because I discovered them together.”

“That’s not unusual,” Mei-li said. “One of the many reasons women the world over don’t report sexual assault.”

“Yeah, well, she didn’t report it, but Lyon didn’t get off scot-free. I beat the crap out of him the next day. He was a couple of inches taller and a few pounds heavier, but I...I wasn’t about to let him get away with what he’d done and brag about it, as he was already starting to do with some of the guys on the football team. It wasn’t anywhere near what he deserved, but...” He clenched his jaw. “That’s when Lyon decided to get his revenge on me...by assaulting Bree.”

He stopped abruptly, because recounting this ancient history was a lot tougher than he’d imagined it would be. Mei-li waited silently, and Dirk realized she was using the same tactic on him she’d used on Vanessa that afternoon...waiting for him to become uncomfortable with the silence. And he mentally gave her bonus points as an interrogator.

“That night...the night it happened,” he finally said, “it was a beautiful evening in May, unusually warm for Minnesota, and the AC in my old beater of a car didn’t work. I’ve often wondered...” Back then he and Bree had thanked God for the warm night, because otherwise he wouldn’t have been driving with the windows rolled down. Wouldn’t have heard...

“Lyon must have stalked Bree for weeks, must have known she always went to the library on Wednesday and Friday nights, the nights I worked. I was supposed to be working that Friday, too, but my manager asked me at the last minute to switch shifts with another pizza-delivery guy who needed the following night off—I don’t remember why. I said sure and headed to the library to meet up with Bree—I thought I’d surprise her, take her to the movie we’d planned to see on Saturday.”

Dirk vividly remembered the rest of that night as if it had happened yesterday. “When I got to the library, the girl at the checkout counter told me I’d just missed Bree. So I hopped in my car and started for her house.” His pulse kicked up a notch and his breathing quickened. “There was an elementary school along the way. That time of night, the school yard was deserted, but as I drove past I heard what sounded like a scream. I stopped the car to listen and heard it again. Definitely a scream. And I knew it was Bree. I don’t know how I knew... I just...did.”

Fear had gripped him, but instead of paralyzing him, it had given his feet wings as he dashed from the car toward the sound of Bree’s last, desperate, choked-off scream, which had emanated from the parking lot behind the building. When the sound stopped, fear had turned to terror.

“When I found them, Lyon had Bree down on the ground, a knife to her throat as he tried to rape her.” He shuddered at the rage sweeping through him now, just as it had then, and his hands formed fists. “She wasn’t screaming anymore, but she was trying to fight him, despite the knife. When I pulled him off her, he turned his knife on me. We fought. He had hatred going for him, and the memory of the beating I’d given him the last time. And he had a weapon. But I’d seen what he’d tried to do to Bree. I had fury going for me, and a determination that—”

He broke off, and after a moment Mei-li touched his arm. “Then what happened?”

“We struggled for possession of the knife,” Dirk rasped, “and I killed him in self-defense.” He paused and took a deep breath. “At least...that’s what Bree testified to at my murder trial, and the jury believed her—they acquitted me.”

“If it was self-defense, why was there even a trial?”

“The police took me into custody that night—they pretty much had to, because Lyon was dead at my hands. And I’d had a few run-ins with the law the year before. Nothing major, just the usual teenage stupidity—staying out past curfew, getting into fights, stuff like that. It might have all come to nothing, but Lyon’s multimillionaire father, Terrell Blackwood, had political connections. He maintained I had it in for Lyon—he pointed to the fight we’d had before as proof.”

Dirk made a gesture of frustration. “I’d been arrested for that at the time, but Lyon had refused to press charges despite his father’s insistence. Even though the charges had been dropped, however, the arrest was still on my record. And the prosecution didn’t hesitate to use it against me. But, as I said, I was acquitted at trial. The judge announced I’d been exonerated, and—” his voice turned bitter “—I was leaving the court without a stain on my name.”

He waited, but Mei-li didn’t react at all, just stared at him with that same expression comprised of patience and compassion. “And?” she prompted.

Dirk didn’t know why, but he wanted to shatter her composure. Wanted her to know the very worst about him so she wouldn’t look at him that way. Compassion wasn’t pity—he’d been on the receiving end of enough of both after Bree died to know the difference—but he didn’t want either from Mei-li. And the reasons were as complex as the totally unexpected emotions she’d triggered in him two weeks earlier.

But he wasn’t quite ready to reveal all his secrets. “And Terrell Blackwood tried to kill Bree and me when I walked out of that courtroom a free man. Came damn close to doing it, too,” he said grimly. He slid a hand inside the unbuttoned collar of his polo shirt and tugged until the scar he carried over his heart was visible. “The surgeon said if the bullet had been an inch to the right it would have been game over for me. As it was, I spent three weeks in the hospital recovering, but it was worse for Bree. She was gutshot.”

Nineteen years and the rage was still there—directly, both internally and externally. First Lyon Blackwood attacking Bree twenty years ago, then his father, Terrell, shooting her right after the acquittal. And last but certainly not least, he himself. Every bad thing that had happened to Bree, including what she’d suffered at the hands of the Blackwoods, had been due to him in one fashion or another. “She developed a bacterial infection, despite the best the hospital could do. They were so sure she wasn’t going to make it, they called in a priest to give her last rites.”

But Bree had shocked them all by living. They’d wheeled a seventeen-year-old Dirk into the ICU at his insistence, and with tears running down his cheeks, he’d begged her not to leave him. Bree had always claimed she had no memory of those three days when she’d fought for her life, her temperature spiking to dangerous levels as the hospital staff pumped her full of antibiotics, but Dirk had remembered. They’d been the worst three days of his life...until twenty-one months ago.

Mei-li pulled him out of his introspection. “Last rites...but she lived.”

“Yeah.”

“What else?” she asked.

“Isn’t that enough?”

“I mean, what happened to the man who tried to kill the two of you?”

“Terrell Blackwood went to trial, and despite the best lawyers money could buy, he was convicted of attempted murder. There were more than a dozen witnesses in addition to Bree and me, and forensics had him nailed—the bullets were fired from a gun registered to him, his fingerprints were all over it, he had gunshot residue on his hand—it was an open-and-shut case. But...”

“But?” Mei-li prompted when Dirk didn’t continue.

“He received two sentences of fifteen years to life, to be served concurrently. Not consecutively. The judge took pity on Blackwood because he was a ‘grief-stricken father’ when he gunned us down.” Dirk was silent for a moment. “A few years later I heard they tacked on five years for bribery of prison guards.” He made a sound of disgust. “Concurrent fifteen-year sentences means only seven and a half years for each attempted murder conviction...but bribery got him five years.”

Mei-li’s lips twitched into a ghost of a smile. “I have heard about the...shall we say, inconsistencies...in the America jurisprudence system. Especially when someone has money. It’s not all that different here, Mr. DeWinter.”

“Dirk,” he corrected. “Please.”

She nodded. “Dirk.” Her dark eyes held his. “But if Terrell Blackwood is behind the kidnapping, he must be out of prison.”

Dirk nodded. “He was paroled in January. I was notified about his parole hearing last fall, but I...I didn’t attend. The reasons are complicated.”

Mei-li glanced at the boarded-up windows around them and cocked her head toward the wind and rain raging outside. “We have nothing but time.”

He thought about the best way to put it. “Part of me wanted him locked away forever. I could forgive him for trying to kill me—I’d killed his son, and in his mind I deserved to die. But I can never forgive him for trying to kill Bree, when all she did was tell the truth on the witness stand.”

“But you didn’t attend his parole hearing to give a victim impact statement.” At the look of surprise he couldn’t help but show, she explained, “We have something similar here in Hong Kong—we were a British colony for a long time, remember.” Then she said, “But you didn’t go. Why?”

“Because by that time I’d become a father,” he said simply, as if that said it all.

A glimmer of a smile returned to her face. “I see.” And somehow he knew she did see. That she understood it hadn’t been fear of the potentially negative publicity something like that would bring, but rather unexpected compassion for the man who’d loved his son so much he’d been driven to take the law into his own hands, to exact his own brand of justice. A father’s justice. The same kind of justice Dirk was envisioning now.

“After Blackwood’s trial, Bree and I headed for California. I legally changed my name from Derek Summers—the name I was born with—to Dirk DeWinter. Not just to leave behind the stigma that still attached to the name, but because my agent, Marty Devens, recommended it. Bree suggested Dirk. My agent suggested DeWinter. Said it was ‘euphonious.’” He laughed abruptly. “I didn’t even know what that word meant back then. He had to explain it to me.”

Then Dirk shifted gears. “So now you know why Terrell Blackwood wants me dead,” he said. “Now explain to me what you said earlier about Vanessa.”

“Inconsistencies in her story,” she said promptly. “Didn’t you spot them?”

“Not sure exactly what you mean.”

“Several things. First, there was the fact Chet was knocked out and the girls were chloroformed, but neither was done to Vanessa. Bound with duct tape, yes, but that’s all.”

“Yeah. She didn’t have an answer for that when you questioned her.”

“Second, she said she thought it was room service with lunch when the doorbell rang.”

Dirk snapped his fingers. “Right. If it was room service, why wouldn’t they have used the butler’s entrance and not the front door?”

Mei-li said softly, “That wasn’t actually what I meant, but that’s another inconsistency. They’re starting to pile up.”

Dirk frowned. “Then what did you mean?”

“She said the girls were in their bedroom taking their afternoon nap when the kidnappers arrived. But lunch would have arrived before their nap, not during it, so those two statements she made contradict each other—if she was expecting room service, the girls wouldn’t be napping. And if the girls were napping, she couldn’t have been expecting lunch to be delivered. Anyway, didn’t you notice the little tea table in front of the window? One of the chairs was knocked over...the way it might be if the girls were snatched in the middle of their lunch...not from their bedroom.”

“Is that important? Where they were when they were taken?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I don’t like inconsistencies in stories. Vanessa told one lie for sure, possibly two or three. We don’t know why she lied—I’ve had people lie to me for the damnedest reasons, even my own clients.”

“I’m not lying,” Dirk was quick to interject.

“I didn’t say you were, just that some clients do. Sometimes it’s a misguided effort to make themselves seem more heroic than they are. Sometimes it’s because they’re ashamed to admit something, or they don’t see it as relevant to the case. So Vanessa isn’t necessarily lying because she’s involved—her lies could have a perfectly reasonable explanation. But until we know for sure...”

* * *

No, Dirk’s not lying, Mei-li mused as she followed him back upstairs to the Spring Moon Restaurant. Academy Award–winning actor or not, she didn’t think he was acting when he’d told her the story he’d just recounted. But he’s not telling the whole truth, either. She wasn’t unduly perturbed—not about this. As she’d told Dirk, her clients often withheld information from her. But she had the basic facts behind the kidnapping now, understood the motivation of the man who’d engineered it—and that perturbed her.

Kidnapping for ransom—at least in Hong Kong—was a business of sorts, and most kidnappers played by the rules. Rule number one: receive the ransom, release the victim unharmed. That wasn’t to say the initial ransom demand was paid. As with most things in Hong Kong, the ransom amount was negotiable—which was where she came in. She was extremely skilled at negotiating with kidnappers and had an uncanny knack for knowing just how low the price could go before the kidnappers dug in their heels. And while her fee wasn’t tied to how much money she saved her wealthy clients on the ransoms they paid—that was an idea fraught with potential disaster for the victims and their families—bonuses from grateful clients weren’t uncommon.

But kidnapping for revenge was a completely different animal, and something with which she had no experience. There were no rules that both sides adhered to, because the motivation wasn’t money. She’d be flying blind on this case. If she were wise, she’d bow out with her record intact and let Dirk find someone else. Problem was, she couldn’t think of a single ransom negotiator in Hong Kong who had any more experience in this kind of situation than she did. Even worse, the kidnap victims in this case were little more than babies. If you walk away and anything happens to them...

She couldn’t do it. She’d gone into this line of work for a very personal reason, and she couldn’t walk away now any more than she could change what had happened eleven years ago. But she owed it to Dirk to tell him and let him make the decision. She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped as an idea occurred to her. If Vanessa and/or Chet were involved in the kidnapping, a little misdirection could work in her favor. But she needed to warn Dirk of her plan ahead of time.

She put a hand on his arm to stop him just as he was about to enter the restaurant. “I have to tell you something,” she said in an urgent undertone. “But before I do, how good an actor are you?” She laughed suddenly and hit the heel of her hand against her forehead before he could say anything. “Sorry,” she apologized. “You are an actor—an award-winning actor. I wasn’t thinking of that, honest. I just want to tell you something in front of Vanessa and Chet, and I want you to pretend you don’t already know what I’m going to say.”

One corner of Dirk’s mouth quirked upward in a travesty of a smile. “I think I can manage that. So what are you going to tell me?”

“I’m not going to beat around the bush. I’m the best ransom negotiator in Hong Kong. I’ve never lost a kidnapping victim in all the years I’ve been doing this—not one.” Okay, a couple of times she’d needed an assist, but now wasn’t the time to bring up that detail and go into a long and involved explanation, because that wasn’t her point. “But I’ve never had a case that involved kidnapping for revenge.”

Dirk’s smile faded, replaced by an expression Mei-li had no trouble reading. Desolation. The way a man might look if all hope and light and faith had been extinguished. “You’re withdrawing?”

“Not at all,” she reassured him. “I’m still willing to give it my best shot. But I won’t lie to you—I’ll be relying more on gut instinct than on past experience. If you still want me, knowing that...”

He didn’t hesitate. “I want you on the case.”

“Then I’m in, a hundred percent.”

He frowned suddenly. “Is that what you’re going to say in front of Vanessa and Chet? That you don’t have any experience in cases like this?”

She nodded. “If they’re involved, the more I downplay my credentials, the less likely they’ll worry about what I might uncover. The less worried they are about me, the more likely they’ll let something slip...assuming there is something for them to let slip. See what I mean?”

Dirk’s eyes warmed with admiration. “Damn, you’re good.”

Suddenly there was something more in his eyes, his face, something Mei-li responded to instinctively, and all at once she could hardly breathe. It was crazy—she never got involved with a client. Never. But this man was different, somehow. And the admiring way he was looking at her now contrasted markedly with the way he’d looked at her in the jazz club when she’d first met him two weeks ago. Tearing her eyes away from his eyes now was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Hardest. Thing. Ever.

* * *

They slept—if you could really call it sleeping—with hundreds of other guests in the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel. All the chairs were taken when the five of them finally made their way downstairs from the restaurant. So they selected a corner of the spacious, high-ceilinged lobby and settled down to try to sleep as best they could, given the uncomfortable marble floor and the storm outside. Mei-li shared a pillow and blanket with her cousin Patrick. Vanessa, she noticed with curiosity, shared one with Chet. And though the two of them tried to hide it, it was obvious to anyone who really looked that it wasn’t the first time.

Hmm, she thought, making a mental note for the future, I wonder what that signifies. It could be nothing. It wouldn’t be the first time men and women working in close proximity fell for each other. But it also added credence to her theory that neither Vanessa nor Chet could be trusted...yet. Because if the two were romantically linked, it was highly unlikely Vanessa was involved in the kidnapping without Chet’s knowledge or assistance.

Mei-li turned over, careful not to disturb Patrick, who was already asleep. That’s when she saw Dirk was sitting up, wide-awake, his back pressed against the wall. From time to time he glanced down at his hands, then up again, staring at nothing in particular. She hesitated, not wanting to intrude, but eventually she slipped from beneath the blanket and made her way quietly the few feet to where Dirk sat.

She settled against the wall next to him, and in a voice pitched so low it wouldn’t disturb any of the sleepers, she said, “You really should try to sleep, Dirk.”

The grief-stricken face he turned to her shredded her heart. “I tried.”

She desperately wanted to reassure him that his daughters were safe and sound and would eventually be recovered once the ransom was paid. But they’d both know it was a lie. Dirk didn’t need platitudes, and from the little she knew of him he didn’t want them, either. Only the truth would serve with a man like him. But he didn’t need to hear the unpalatable reality spelled out.

“Every time I close my eyes, I see my little girls,” Dirk continued in a hushed voice. “They look so much like Bree it breaks my heart sometimes.”

“Tell me about her.”

“What’s to tell?” He shrugged as if his wife’s death hadn’t been the defining moment in his life, but she knew differently. Infidelity was rampant in the movie industry, but there were a few notable exceptions—her father was one. And by all accounts Dirk was another. “I loved her,” he said distantly, as if he were talking about another man, not him. “She loved me. She got sick. She died.” His voice roughened. “But she left me Linden and Laurel. She trusted I would take care of them...always.”

“You have. To the best of your ability you have.”

He made a self-derisive sound. “Oh, hell, yeah. So why am I sitting here wondering where the hell they are? Wondering if they’re even—” He broke off, as if by uttering the unimaginable he would make it occur. Then he continued in harsh tones, “I’m such a good father I let my little girls be kidnapped.”

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