Dana Mentink - Dangerous Melody

Fingers suddenly icy, Stephanie clutched the phone. “Victor?”

Her heart fractured, along with the sound of shattering glass. “Victor!” she screamed. “Dad. What’s happening?”

A hideous scraping tore at her ears. She yelled something into the phone, incoherent syllables, fear and helplessness making her words shrill. Tinkling glass, the protest of distressed metal, a massive thunk and the sound of tires sliding over gravel. She thought she heard her father cry out, and she squeezed the phone in a death grip.

“Answer me,” she screamed, heart thundering against her ribs.

Then the noises faded into a soft crunch of gravel. Quieter, softer until there was no sound at all. No sound, except the violent hammering of her own heart. Her mouth would not form the words for a long moment. “Victor? Dad? Are you all right?”

Metal creaked, the sound of a door opening. Hope rose inside her. “Tell me you’re all right,” she whispered.

A voice came on the line. Cold, musical and chillingly familiar. “Stephanie, I have your father. There’s something I need you to do for me. I will call you back in exactly four hours,” Bittman said. “Mention me to anyone, and Wyatt Gage will die.” The phone clicked off.

Her frantic call to the police revealed that a passing motorist had reported the wreck and a Lifeflight helicopter was transporting Victor to the nearest trauma center. Another call to her father’s cell phone went unanswered. With numb fingers, she dialed Luca.

Joshua Bittman could not have her father.

Because if he did...

“Hey, sis. What’s up?”

She pictured him, a bigger, blonder version of their dark-haired older brother, his green eyes sparkling with mischief.

What’s up?

She knew Luca. She knew without question that if she told him the truth, he would summon the police and personally storm Bittman’s Hillsborough mansion. But she also knew Joshua Bittman. He would not hesitate to kill Wyatt Gage and Luca in a heartbeat to get whatever it was that he wanted. “Victor was on the phone with me and he crashed,” she said, stomach twisting. She gave him the details, leaving out any mention of their father being in the car.

Luca exhaled, voice tight with emotion. “Did you call Dad?”

There’s no use, she wanted to shout. Bittman has Dad. The words stuck in her throat, but she finally choked out a reply. “No answer.”

“My buddy’s on duty today, he’s a Lifeflight nurse. I’ll call him on my way to the hospital and call you back.”

He hung up, and she began to pace in frantic circles. The minutes slowed to a crawl as she tried to decide what to do that wouldn’t make the situation worse. After what seemed like an eternity, Luca called again.

“My buddy said they admitted Victor and took him in for emergency surgery. He’s...been badly hurt.”

The words lanced through her. Brooke and Victor were supposed to be starting a new life together, and Brooke deserved it as much as Victor, having seen her ailing father narrowly escape false imprisonment for a robbery. The Treasure Seekers Agency had recovered all manner of rich prizes, but their last adventure to locate Brooke’s father’s missing painting was far more treacherous than any they’d undertaken. Floods, tunnel collapses and a murder seemed like distant memories now.

Victor was the backbone of the agency. She flashed on a memory of him and their father, knee-deep in piles of old books, hunting out references to a priceless stamp. Terror about Victor’s prognosis and her father’s whereabouts made her hands ice cold, her breath short.

She realized Luca was talking.

She jerked. “What?”

“I said I’ll call Brooke and meet you at the hospital.” He paused. “Keep it together, Steph. You’re strong. Remember that.”

“We both know that’s not true.” She’d collapsed when Tate Fuego had walked out of her life, descending lower and lower until she found herself fully entwined in Joshua Bittman’s nightmare world.

“Steph? Are you there?”

She heard the edge of a deeper concern written in Luca’s voice, underneath the calm exterior.

Could it be that her father had been injured but made it out of the car? Was he wandering around the crash area in need of help? Her heart leaped. Maybe Bittman was bluffing. Maybe he hadn’t snatched him after all, and she was wrong.

The hope lasted less than a minute before it dried up and disappeared. The truth left a sour taste in her mouth.

Bittman did many things, but one thing he did not do was bluff.

He also did not threaten.

He punished. He was a billionaire many times over, and she’d suspected he’d paid officials to look the other way on his business dealings. Worse, she’d known people who’d crossed Bittman to simply disappear with no evidence on dirty Bittman’s well-manicured hands—vanished as if they’d never existed.

She checked her watch. Three-and-a-half hours to go. As the little hand ticked away the seconds, something shifted inside Stephanie. The fear coursing through her body coalesced into another emotion, white-hot and razor sharp. She would not sit by while Bittman turned her life upside down again. She was done running, done hiding. He would pay for what he had done to Victor. He would deliver her father unharmed.

“I have to go somewhere,” she said.

“Come again?”

She braced herself. “Go to the hospital. I’ll call you when I can.”

“Steph,” he said. “You’re in trouble. I can hear it in your voice. Whatever it is, let me help you.”

Not this time, big brother.

* * *

A few minutes after two o’clock, Tate Fuego pulled his motorcycle to a stop in the shelter of massive trees lining the gate that circled Joshua Bittman’s mansion. The building itself was a domed-top monstrosity of white stone, flanked by stretches of impeccably manicured lawns and a rectangular pond that reflected the building. A long driveway was empty except for a mint condition Mustang GT 350 and a black Mercedes.

Tate saw no sign of his sister Maria’s car, though he knew she’d been a regular at Bittman’s place. Her phone call three days prior scared him. Her normally upbeat personality was gone, and the woman on the line sounded irrational and unsteady, though she would not tell him why. Then nothing. No response to his texts, and no one answering the door at her apartment. He ground his teeth. She shouldn’t have gotten involved with Bittman in the first place, and if he ever got a chance, he’d take Stephanie to task for introducing them.

The breeze teased ripples into the water of the pond, mirroring the discomfort in his own gut at the thought of Stephanie. Her dark eyes flashed in his memory, and he blinked away the pain. At the sound of an approaching engine, he rolled his bike farther back into the shadows. A van rumbled slowly by with American Pool Company printed on the exterior. When it pulled to a stop at the intercom, the driver, a stocky, crew-cut man with a face corrugated by wrinkles, leaned out to speak into the box.

“Pool service,” he heard the driver bark, with a Spanish accent.

Tate grabbed the handle to the rear doors of the van and eased it down, wondering if he would be caught. In a moment he was safely inside. The guy parked the van and headed for the pool with a water test kit. Tate slipped out the back and ran for the nearest side entrance. In a place this ritzy, he knew interior security cameras would pick him up quickly, but he didn’t need much time. One minute with Bittman, he thought grimly, was all he’d need.

He found himself in a gleaming kitchen, which was thankfully empty. The place was quiet, eerily so. Not one housekeeper in sight? No butlers or maids? Strangest of all, no burly security personnel barreling toward him.