The Fifth Profession Read online

  12

  The bedroom was luxurious, but Savage barely noticed its expensive furnishings as he scanned them in search of Rachel Stone. A bedside lamp was on. The bed had been slept in; its rumpled covers had been thrown aside. But the room was deserted.

  Savage checked beneath the bed. He peered behind closed draperies, finding bars on a window, then searched behind a settee and a chair.

  Where the hell was she?

  He opened a door, found a bathroom, and turned on the light. The shower door was closed. When he looked inside, the stall was empty.

  Where … ?

  He tried another door. A closet. Dresses. Rachel Stone lunged through the dresses. Scissors glinted. Savage clutched her wrist an instant before she'd have stabbed his left eye.

  “Bastard!”

  Her anger-contorted features suddenly changed to a frown of surprise. Noticing Savage's black camouflage-greased face, she struggled backward.

  “Who—?”

  Savage clamped a hand across her mouth and shook his head. As he yanked the scissors from her grasp, his lips formed silent words. Don't talk. He pulled a card from his pocket. The card was sealed in transparent, waterproof plastic.

  She stared at its dark hand-printed message.

  YOUR SISTER SENT ME TO GET YOU OUT OF HERE.

  He turned the card, revealing a further message.

  THIS ROOM MIGHT HAVE HIDDEN MICROPHONES. WE MUSTN'T TALK.

  She studied the card … and him … subdued her suspicion, and finally nodded.

  He showed her another card.

  GET DRESSED. WE'RE LEAVING. NOW.

  But Rachel Stone didn't move.

  Savage flipped the second card.

  YOUR SISTER TOLD ME TO SHOW YOU THIS.

  TO PROVE SHE SENT ME.

  He held up a wedding ring, its diamond enormous.

  This time when Rachel Stone nodded, she did so with recognition and conviction.

  She grabbed for a dress in the closet.

  But Savage squeezed her arm to stop her. Shaking his head, he pointed toward jeans, a sweater, and jogging shoes.

  She understood. With no hint of embarrassment, she removed her nightgown.

  Savage tried to ignore her nakedness, directing his attention toward the door through which guards might any moment charge.

  Hurry, he silently pleaded. His pulse hammered faster.

  Glancing again in her direction, he was too preoccupied to dwell on the jeans she tugged up over smooth, sensual thighs and silken bikini panties that revealed her pubic hair.

  No, Savage's attention was directed solely toward two other—the most significant—aspects of her appearance.

  One: Rachel Stone, though ten years younger than her sister, looked like Joyce Stone's twin. Tall, thin, angular. Intense blue eyes. A superb oval face, its magnificent curves framed by spectacular shoulder-length hair. There was one difference. Joyce Stone's hair was blond whereas Rachel's was auburn. The difference didn't matter. The resemblance between older and younger sister remained uncanny.

  Two: while Joyce Stone's face was smooth and tanned, Rachel's was swollen and bruised. In addition to repeatedly raping his wife, Papadropolis had beaten her, making sure his fists left marks that couldn't be concealed. Humiliate— that was the tyrant's weapon. Subdue and dominate.

  Not any longer, Savage thought. For the first time, he felt committed not just professionally but morally to this assignment. Rachel Stone might be—probably had been—spoiled by luxury. But nothing gave anyone the right to brutalize her.

  Okay, Papadropolis, Savage thought. I started this for me, to prove myself. But I'll end this to get at you.

  You son of a bitch!

  His skull throbbed with anger.

  Turning from the door, he saw that Rachel Stone was now dressed.

  He leaned toward her ear, his whisper almost soundless, conscious of her perfume. “Take the few things you absolutely need.”

  She nodded with determination and leaned close to him, her words as soft as her breath. “I'll give you anything you want. Just get me out of here.”

  Savage headed toward the door.

  13

  With the grace of a dancer, Rachel Stone rushed soundlessly down the stairs. In the shadowy vestibule, Savage touched her arm to guide her toward the living room, intending to reach the hallway near the kitchen and leave the mansion through the same door he'd used to enter.

  But she twisted away from his grasp, her long, lithe legs taking her quickly toward the front door.

  Savage rushed to stop her before she opened the door and triggered an alarm.

  But she didn't reach for the door, instead for a switch above it, and Savage understood abruptly that, despite her compulsion to escape, she retained sufficient presence of mind to deactivate the alarm.

  She opened the door. Rain lashed beneath a balcony. Savage followed her onto wide white steps and gently shut the door. Feeling exposed by a misty arc light, he turned to give her instructions.

  She was gone, racing past pillars, down the steps, into the storm.

  No! He ran to catch up to her. Christ, doesn't she realize there might be guards out here? She can't just scramble over a fence. She'll trip an alarm!

  The rain was stronger than when he'd entered the mansion, and colder. But though he shivered, he knew that some of the moisture streaming down his face was sweat. From fear.

  He reached her, about to tackle her, intending to drag her toward the cover of a large statue to his left. At once he changed his mind. She wasn't fleeing at random. Rather she stayed on a concrete driveway that curved in front of the mansion. Constantly heading toward the right, she reached a short lane that intersected with the driveway. At the end of the lane, a storm-shrouded arc light revealed a long, narrow, single-story building with six large doors of a type that opened upward.

  The estate's garage. That was her destination. They could hide behind it while he explained how he planned to get her past the sensors.

  Gaining speed, Savage flanked her, his voice low but forceful. “Follow me. Toward the back.”

  But she didn't obey and instead lunged toward a door on the side of the garage, in view of the mansion. She twisted the knob. It didn't budge.

  She sobbed. “Jesus, it's locked.”

  “We have to get in back—out of sight.”

  She kept struggling with the doorknob.

  ”Come on,” Savage said.

  He spun toward a shout from the mansion.

  A guard charged out the front door, pistol raised, scanning the storm.

  Oh, shit, Savage thought.

  A second man charged out.

  Savage hoped that the rain was too dense for the men to see the garage.

  Then a third man charged out, and Savage knew the entire guard force would soon be searching the grounds.

  “No choice,” he said. “Your idea's lousy, Rachel, but right now I can't think of anything better. Stand back.”

  Rain drenched him as he frantically picked the lock. When he opened the door, Rachel shoved past him, reaching for a light switch. He managed to shut the door just in time, before the sudden illumination would have attracted the guards.

  He faced a long row of luxury cars. “Is it too much to hope you brought keys? I can hot-wire one of these cars, but it'll take me a minute, and thanks to you, we don't have that much time.”

  Rachel darted toward a Mercedes sedan. “The keys are already in them.”

  “What?”

  “No thief would dare to steal from my husband.”

  “Then why was the door locked?”

  “Isn't it obvious?”

  “No.”

  “To stop me from taking a car if I somehow got out of the house.”

  As they spoke, Savage ran after her toward the Mercedes. But she got behind the steering wheel and slammed the driver's door before he could stop her. She twisted the ignition key she'd predicted would be in place. The car's finely tuned engine purred; acrid exh
aust spewed into the garage.

  At once she pressed a button on a remote control attached to the dashboard. A rumble reverberated. The door ahead of the Mercedes slid smoothly upward.

  Savage barely managed to open the passenger door and scramble inside before she stomped the accelerator. His head snapped back. He slammed the door shut an instant before it would have smashed against the garage exit's frame.

  “You almost left me behind!”

  “I knew you'd manage.”

  “But what if I hadn't?”

  Rachel spun the steering wheel to the left and skidded down the lane away from the garage. A brief glare from an arc light revealed her braised, swollen face. She pressed harder on the accelerator and spun the steering wheel again, this time to the right, toward the driveway that led away from the mansion.

  Before he could put on his seat belt, Savage was jerked in the direction of her steering.

  “What if you hadn't got into the car before I sped away?” Rachel asked. “I've got the feeling you're resourceful.”

  “And I've got the feeling you're a bitch.”

  “My husband calls me a bitch quite a lot.”

  “I apologize.”

  “Hey, don't get sentimental on me. I need a savior who kicks ass.”

  “No, what you need right now”—Savage reached toward the controls and pressed a switch—“is to turn on your windshield wipers.”

  “I told you, you're resourceful.”

  Savage glanced all around, seeing guards try desperately to intercept the car. They carried weapons but didn't aim them.

  Why?

  It didn't make sense.

  Then it did.

  They'd be glad to blow my brains out, Savage thought. They'd get a bonus. But they don't dare shoot for fear of hitting Papadropolis's wife. In that case, the guards themselves would not be shot. Papadropolis would feed them to the sharks.

  As Savage stared forward, lightning flashed, and in the stark illumination, he saw a man on the driveway ahead. The man held a rifle, and like the other guards, he refused to raise it and fire.

  Unlike the others, he held up a powerful flashlight, aiming its fierce beam toward the driver's side, hoping to blind Rachel and force her off the road.

  Rachel jerked up a hand to shield her eyes and steered toward the man with the flashlight.

  The guard jumped out of the way, his leap so smooth that Savage wondered if he'd had gymnastic training. Landing safely on Savage's side of the car, the guard continued to aim the glaring flashlight.

  And that, too, didn't make sense. The guard couldn't hope to blind Rachel from the side.

  Then the logic was obvious.

  The guard directed the flashlight not toward Rachel but Savage.

  To get a good look at me! So he can describe me to Papadropolis, and maybe someone can identify me!

  Savage quickly covered his face with his hands. At the same time, he slumped, in case the guard decided to risk a shot at the passenger window.

  The moment the car sped past the guard, Savage stared backward. Other guards ran down the road from the mansion. Every light was on in the house, silhouetting the guards in the night and the rain. The man who'd aimed the flashlight stood with his back to the house, scowling toward the Mercedes. The flashlight had prevented Savage from seeing his opponent's face, but now as the man shut the beam off, a further bolt of lightning revealed the guard's features.

  The glimpse was imperfect. Because rain streaked down the back window. Because Savage's vision had not fully recovered from the glare of the powerful flashlight. Because the Mercedes was speeding away from the man.

  But Savage saw enough. The guard was Oriental. His deft leap away from the car—had it been due to gymnastic training, as Savage had first suspected, or to expertise in martial arts?

  Four seconds. That was all the time Savage had to study the man. The lightning died. The night concealed.

  But four seconds had been enough. The man was in his midthirties: five feet ten inches tall, trim, and solid looking. He wore dark slacks, a matching windbreaker and turtleneck sweater. His brown face was rectangular, his rugged jaw and cheekbones framing his stern, handsome features.

  Oriental, yes. But Savage could be more specific. The man was Japanese. Savage knew the man's nationality as certainly as his four seconds of shocked recognition had made him shudder at the eerie resemblance the man bore to …

  Savage didn't want to think it.

  Akira?

  No! Impossible!

  But as the Mercedes sped farther from the mansion, Savage analyzed his brief impression of the guard, and the major detail about the man wasn't his wiry frame or his stark rectangular features.

  No, the major detail was the melancholy behind the intensity on the Japanese sentry's face.

  Akira had been the saddest man Savage had ever met.

  It couldn't be!

  In shock, Savage pivoted toward Rachel. She supposedly was in his custody, but her hysteria controlled her. “You'll never get through the gate.”

  “Just watch me.” She increased speed.

  “But the gate's made of steel. It's reinforced.”

  “So is this car. Armor-plated. Grab the dashboard. When we hit the gate, the Mercedes'll be a tank.”

  Ahead, guards scrambled away. The chain link gate loomed quickly. With a jolting concussion, the sedan crashed through the barrier.

  Savage swung to stare through the rain-drenched rear window, seeing headlights pursuing them.

  He brooded.

  With terrible certainty.

  The man who drove the car would look impossibly like Akira.

  “Did I scare you?” Rachel chuckled.

  “Not at all.”

  “Then why do you look so pale?”

  “It could be I've just seen a ghost.”

  14

  Savage had planned several ways to get Rachel off the island. Under ideal circumstances, they'd have rushed to a motorcycle that a member of Savage's team had hidden among rocks on a slope a half-kilometer away. From there, they'd have had a choice of three widely separated coves, in each of which a small, powerful boat was waiting to speed them to a fishing trawler that circled the island.

  One of the contingencies Savage had to worry about was the weather. While he'd invaded the estate, the storm had been to his advantage—the harder it rained, the better he'd been concealed. But he'd hoped that the storm would lessen during the evacuation, and instead it had strengthened. The wind would be too powerful, the sea too rough for a boat to take them to the fishing trawler, which itself would be in danger and need to seek shelter.

  Of course, Savage never based a plan merely on the chance that the weather would improve, even if the forecasts were in his favor. One of his scouts had found a secluded cave in which they could hide till conditions permitted them to use a boat. Savage hadn't worried about dogs following their scent, for Papadropolis had a phobia about dogs and refused to have them on his property. But even if there had been dogs, the rain would have impaired their sense of smell.

  Savage took into account that guards might find the boats in the coves, so he'd arranged for a helicopter to be waiting on the neighboring island of Delos. All he had to do was signal it with a radio transmitter in his pack, and the chopper would rush to pick them up at a prearranged rendezvous.

  But suppose the weather stayed bad, and the chopper couldn't fly? Suppose Papadropolis's men were in the rendezvous area? Pursued, Savage had no opportunity to get Rachel to the cave. That left him with one final variation in his plan. The most desperate alternative.

  “Ahead, the road soon forks. Turn left,” he said.

  “But that'll take us northwest. Toward—”

  “Mykonos.” Savage nodded.

  “The village is a labyrinth! We'll be trapped before we can hide!”

  “I don't plan to hide.” Savage stared back toward the headlights enlarging in rapid pursuit.

  Akira? No! It couldn't be!


  “What do you mean, you don't plan to hide? What will we—?”

  “Here's the fork. Do what I tell you. Turn left.”

  When they'd crashed through the gate, the concrete driveway had become a dirt road. The rain had softened the dirt. The heavy armor-plated Mercedes sank into muddy puddles. Tires spinning, rear end fishtailing, the car struggled forward. At least the pursuing car will have the same trouble we do, Savage thought. Then he noticed that farther back the headlights of other cars had joined the chase.

  The mushy road had slowed the Mercedes to thirty kilometers an hour. Even then, Rachel had trouble controlling the steering wheel and keeping the car from sliding into a ditch as she obeyed instructions and took the left fork. “Satisfied?”

  “For now. You drive well, by the way.”

  “Trying to bolster my confidence?”

  “It never hurts,” Savage said. “But I wasn't lying.”

  “My husband lies to me all the time. How do I know—?”

  “That I'm not? Because your safety depends on me, and if you couldn't control this car, I'd insist on trading places with you.”

  “Compliment accepted.” Frowning with concentration, she managed to increase speed.

  Savage stared again toward the headlights behind him. They weren't gaining. The trouble was, they weren't receding either.

  “My husband hired fools. When they had the chance back there, they weren't smart enough to shoot at the tires.”

  “It wouldn't have mattered.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “The tires on a car this heavy are reinforced. They can take a shotgun blast or a bullet from a forty-five and still support the car.” A gust of wind shook the car.

  Rachel almost veered off the road. Voice trembling, she asked, “What happens when we get to Mykonos?”

  “If we get to Mykonos. Pay attention to the moment.”

  They reached the village of Ano Mera. At this late hour, the village was dark, asleep. The Mercedes gained speed on its rock-slabbed road. Too soon, with the village behind them, the route became muddy again and Rachel eased her foot off the accelerator.

  Savage exhaled.

  Rachel misinterpreted. “Am I doing something wrong?”

  “No, I was worried that the guards would have phoned ahead to warn the men your husband pays to watch for strangers passing through the village toward his estate. We might have faced a roadblock.”