Peg Sutherland - All-American Baby

“... to marry her off, and I personally am convinced that the only man in Hollywood worthy of her...”

“...career as a model. Have you seen that bone structure? Darling, she’s a natural.”

“... get our hands on her and get her out of the country, half our problems will be over.”

“...say she runs away about twice a year. Can you imagine? Everything one could ever want and all she can think to do is behave like a spoiled...”

Ash frowned. What was that? A snippet of conversation about getting our hands on her? Getting her out of the country? He began to cast about in the din of gossip for that particular conversation. He located it and realized it was coming from the corridor behind him.

“...a plane is waiting.”

“And then?”

“Then she disappears for a while.”

The voices goaded Ash’s memory. He strained to place them, but he’d heard too little. More disturbing, however, than their faint but unidentifiable familiarity, was what they were saying.

“For a while?” the second man said. “But not for good?”

There was a silence. Ash could almost see the first man shrugging and it was then he pinpointed their voices.

He was listening to the two men who had hired him. And the scheme they were discussing sounded alarmingly unlike the innocuous plan they’d outlined for him. A headstrong young woman, a worried father who wanted nothing more than to keep her safe during her stay in the U.S., and government officials with orders from way up the food chain to do anything to keep Tom Somerset happy. That’s the way it had been explained to Ash, by the two men claiming to be government operatives.

Something wasn’t adding up and Ash couldn’t decide exactly what it was. Was the government pulling a fast one on Tom Somerset? Was Somerset the one with the extra card up his sleeve? Was the government playing Ash Thorndyke for a fool?

“Hard to say,” the first man replied. “We can’t anticipate every eventuality.”

“Can we trust this Thorndyke character?”

“To get the job done? Sure. We’ve got what he wants, tight?”

The two men laughed. There was little humor in the sound.

They began to move away then, their voices retreating. Ash remained still. Never act rashly, Grandfather Thorndyke always said. Make a plan. Then execute it.

Maybe the men who’d hired him were feds and maybe they weren’t. Maybe Tom Somerset knew what was happening and maybe he didn’t. Maybe Melina Somerset was in danger and maybe she wasn’t.

All that really mattered to Ash was the one thing he did know for sure. He’d been duped. Nobody duped Ash Thorndyke.

He located Tom Somerset again and began to make his way through the jungle of dueling perfumes and clashing voices. Somerset, when Ash reached him, was encircled by fawning men, men who rarely fawned over anyone, movers and shakers in business and entertainment and government. But Tom Somerset had more money than Hollywood had phonies and that meant everyone loved him.

Ash eased up behind the circle of people, planning his approach, knowing that getting the man alone long enough to ask about his daughter and her safety would be one of Ash’s more difficult heists. But as he studied the problem and formulated a plan, two gray-suited men whom Ash pegged instantly as private-security types came up behind Somerset and captured his attention. Ash moved in closer.

“... insists she’s coming down.”

Somerset looked like a man with dwindling patience. “Then lock her up. God knows what she’ll say if we let her out. I won’t have her exposing...”

A peal of laughter drowned out the rest of it, but the tenor of that exchange curdled Ash’s guts. For someone labeled America’s princess, Melina Somerset was not receiving royal treatment at anyone’s hands. Something was wrong with this picture, and Ash didn’t have enough information to figure out what it was.

He told himself the best thing he could do was walk away.

Then he remembered his father. What if those men who’d hired him really could help his father?

Thinking of his father made him think of something else, too. Honor. Both Grandfather Thorndyke and Bram Thorndyke had taught Ash and his brother a code of honor. And Ash was fairly certain there was something in that code about damsels in distress.

Shrugging it off as not his problem, Ash headed for the foyer. He would walk away. He reached the foyer about the time the two men who’d spoken to Tom Somerset reached the top of the marble stairway leading to the second floor.

“...break her pretty little neck.”

The words echoed in the cavernous foyer. Both men laughed. Ash told himself it was just the kind of flippant remark that family employees would make. Not a serious threat at all.

But after what he’d heard tonight, could he really be sure of that?

IN HER SECOND-FLOOR SUITE, Melina Somerset stood at the bank of windows overlooking the city of San Francisco. The city was built on hills, and this mansion was obviously atop one of them, for the view was panoramic and spectacular. To her left was the Golden Gate Bridge, shrouded tonight in fog and the mystique of legend. As her gaze swept right, she saw Coit Tower, then the lights of the city.

It had been more than a dozen years since Melina had set foot in America. After her mother and sister were killed, she and her father had moved to Europe, moving from one isolated town to another. Eventually, he’d placed her in private school under an assumed name. Then another. And another. Melina had missed the country of her birth. She had missed having a home, any kind of home.

She tried to imagine all the fun that was to be had beyond these walls if she could only make her way from this elegantly appointed suite—one more in a long line of luxurious prisons—to the places where all those lights twinkled.

Out there somewhere were hamburgers and French fries. Stores where blue jeans could be bought. Friendly coffeehouses where people wore those jeans and talked about movies and music and the baseball season. And somewhere, beyond all the lights, were split-level brick houses in the suburbs. Although Melina had missed all that went with being young and free, and regretted that, she now had different priorities. She was ready to grow up.

“Someday I’ll get a station wagon,” she said wistfully to the faint reflection of her own face in the window. “I’ll eat at McDonald’s every day and have my chauffeur drive me to aerobics class in my very own station wagon. I’ll be just like normal people.”

But tonight, she was still a prisoner to her father’s success, hostage to his fears. Tonight, she’d been locked in her room because she’d wanted to attend the party below. She’d wanted to dance and meet people and take just one sip of champagne, not enough to hurt anything, just enough to feel the bubbles on her nose.

Instead, she was locked away from life, as she had been locked away almost her entire life. Under guard and incognito, that’s how Melina had lived her life.

But no more.

Melina had run away before, and they’d always found her. But this was America, a country so sprawling that a person could vanish and never be heard from again. Here, millions of people lived their lives without a lot of fanfare.

This time, she wouldn’t fail. This time, there was more at stake than Melina’s own happiness. There was even more at stake than her father’s happiness. Yes, leaving this way would cause him pain. But he’d left her no choice. She’d tried reasoning with him, threatening him, pleading with him.

He was adamant.

Well, now, so was she.

Forcing a smile, Melina took a halfhearted spin around the room in her evening dress, trying to recapture the pleasure she’d had a few hours earlier in the feel of the silky fabric swirling around her calves and ankles. She knew she looked pretty in the dress and she regretted no one would see her in it. She unzipped the dress. Maybe she would take it with her. Surely even average American housewives wore evening dresses sometimes.