Deny Tomorrow Read online

  “Why, thank you so much, Andre, for that wonderful compliment,” Arianna chuckled. Then turning serious, she said, “I know you’re right, but how is one supposed to forget going to sleep in one place and waking up in another, half way around the world? That’s not exactly an everyday event in someone’s life. ”

  “I don’t know, love,” he said. “Maybe you should try getting laid.”

  Arianna spit her drink all over her lap. Coming from a gay man, this sounded especially funny. It wasn’t a bad idea though. It had been a long time.

  “You tell her, Andre,” Lisa chimed in. “Do you know how many cute guys she’s turned down at the club lately? God, Arianna, you’ve been so caught up in this abduction thing, you’ve passed up a zillion chances to meet someone.”

  “Come on, you guys. You know trying to find my kidnapper is important to me. Give me a break. Anyway, none of those guys at the club were my type.”

  It was mostly true. In fact, she hadn’t met her type in a long time, but then, that was the problem. She didn’t know what her type was. She had known, at least at one time she thought she knew the perfect guy for her, but that was a painful memory now. So as she’d always done, she lost herself in her work. She found staying busy was the perfect balm for a restless soul. For now she would continue working and enjoying her new friends while she waited for Kevin’s arrival.

  LATER IN the week, Arianna stopped by the club to pick up her check. On her way out, she was greeted by a man wearing a white shirt, khaki pants, and dark sunglasses.

  “Excuse me, Miss,” Karl Reichter, mole with the CIA said. “Are you Arianna Garrett?”

  “Yes,” she answered, curious as to how this stranger knew her name. “I’m Arianna. How can I help you?”

  “Agent Dan Jeffers, FBI.” Reichter flashed his fake badge. “Can we go someplace quiet to talk? I have some information about some fingerprints that were sent to our lab.”

  Arianna was speechless. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This guy had information about the prints. Could this be the break in the case she’d been looking for? Maybe the FBI knew more than they had originally told her.

  “Hey, you ready to go?” Lisa said, joining Arianna, having also come to pick up her check.

  “Lisa, this is FBI Agent Dave…”

  “Dan,” the agent corrected her. “Dan Jeffers.”

  “Dan Jeffers,” Arianna repeated. “He has some information about the fingerprints. This is my roommate, Lisa Calder. She’s been following this case with me.”

  “Miss Calder,” Reichter said, a tinge of irritation in his voice. Damn! Two witnesses to get rid of now.

  “Ladies, is there some place quiet we can go talk? How about that pavilion down the beach a bit? It looks like a nice, private place where we won’t be disturbed.”

  The pavilion was a bit out of the way and rather obscure which caused Arianna to think the information the agent had must be highly sensitive. This only added to her heightened sense of anticipation.

  “I wanted to meet someplace where we could be alone and not be overheard. Your place is not safe. I fear it might be bugged, plus the man you’re looking for is a dangerous man.”

  “Does that mean you’ve identified the owner of the fingerprints?” Arianna looked at the agent who seemed a bit nervous and had a slight facial tick. She was the nervous one. She didn’t know what he had to be nervous about. She’d just learned a dangerous man had bugged her house and was after her. If anyone should be anxious, it should be her.

  “Yes, I think so,” Reichter lied. “He is an international fugitive. You might be in grave danger. But first things first. How did you happen to meet this guy?” He pulled out a notebook to take notes.

  “Well,” Arianna said, noticing a black dagger tattoo on his inner wrist as he opened the notebook, “you see, I’m a journalist who was on assignment in Kervistan about a month ago. I have no memory of how I got to this island. I don’t know the name of the man that brought me here.”

  Reichter stepped back a minute, a surprised look on his face. “But the room key and money with the prints? You had to be at least close enough to get this man’s fingerprints. Perhaps you had a little romantic tryst with him in a hotel?” the agent asked, probing for more information.

  “Not likely. I must have seen him. I know there is a connection somehow. I might recognize him if I saw him again. He had some interest in me, that’s for sure.”

  The agent stared at her, becoming agitated. These weren’t the answers he expected to get. Also, he didn’t know if he believed her. It was a wild story, but he was confident it had to be the Phantom since Fasi was assassinated the very day she had been abducted. She must have seen something she shouldn’t have or else he would never have brought her out of the country, if in fact that is what happened.

  “You say you’re a journalist. Is it possible you’ve captured something on film that may shed some light on this?” God, having a picture of this guy would be too good to be true.

  “My partner has all the footage we shot, but he’s stuck over there. We could have film, but I’m not aware of it.”

  “Ah, yes! So what is your friend’s name and the name of the company you worked for?” Karl asked.

  Arianna hesitated. Something about this guy bothered her. He seemed extremely interested in her case, but so far he’d had more questions than answers. “His name is Kevin Baxter, but going back to what you said earlier, you said this guy was a dangerous person, so does that mean you know who he is or not?”

  Reichter fidgeted with his notebook, his nervous tick becoming more pronounced.

  “I understood all the information about him was classified, “Arianna continued, “so you must have special clearance to check his file. Who is this guy?” Also, she was curious. Why would a real FBI agent be sharing classified information with her? Something wasn’t right about this guy or was it just her imagination.

  “You ask a lot of questions, Miss Garrett,” Reichter said. “That could be bad for your health, and… oh, shit!” He snapped his notebook shut, startled by something he saw in the distance. Getting up, he bolted out of the pavilion. “We’ll talk more later,” he yelled back over his shoulder, as he dashed down the street and into one of the hotels on the beach.

  Arianna spun around to see two men moving up fast, apparently chasing after the agent. “Whoa! What in the hell is going on?”

  Lisa stood there with her mouth wide open. “That FBI agent looked like he was running for his life. Did I see that right? Were those two guys really chasing him?”

  “That’s what it looked like to me. Wow! This is wild!” Arianna said, still staring off in the distance. “Maybe I should just leave well enough alone. For all I know, he could have been my kidnapper, just trying to see if I can identify him. The more I dig into this, the scarier it gets. These are dangerous men.”

  “Well, let’s get the hell out of here before anything else happens,” Lisa said, hurrying toward the car.

  Arianna hustled along behind her. “I’m going to call Paul and tell him what just happened. I’d like to hear his take on this.” She tried calling him, but there was no answer.

  “Keep trying,” Lisa said as they sped down the street toward home. “We need his advice about what to do.”

  “I don’t mean to make light of this,” Arianna said, “but as scary as this situation today is, I think I must be getting close to solving the mystery. All this action leads me to believe that I’m going to meet my abductor soon.”

  “I hope not,” Lisa said. “The FBI agent said your kidnapper is a dangerous international fugitive. I don’t think I want to know who he is now. If this is what it’s going to be like, you’re better off not finding him. Of course, like you said, maybe this guy today was your abductor? He could have been lying about who he was, you know. Maybe the next time the guy will kill you instead of just drugging you. I think it’s dangerous to know his identity. Maybe we’ll both get killed. Maybe….”r />
  “Lisa!” Arianna snapped, seeing that she was starting to freak out. “Relax! We’ll go home and wait until we can talk to Paul. He’ll know what to do. In the meantime, we need to stay calm. Take a deep breath and relax.”

  “You’re right,” Lisa said, exhaling deeply. “I need to calm down. We’ll talk to Paul, and he’ll guide us through this. Everything will be all right. I need to relax.”

  “DAMN, WE just missed him,” Juan said to Zach, describing the scene on the beach. “If we’d gotten there five minutes earlier, we would have had him. He disappeared into one of the hotels, and we couldn’t find him. We didn’t really get a good look at him.”

  “I don’t know what the girl told him if anything,” Zach said when he heard what happened. “Just the fact that she saw his face is enough to get her killed. He’s not going to leave those women around to blow his ten year cover as a double agent. ”

  “So what do we do now?” Tony asked.

  Zach stared out the window of his office. He didn’t need this complication in his life. It had seemed so simple in Kervistan. Get the girl out of there. Save her live. Give her some cash, and she’d be on her way home. That should have been the end of the story. Now, it had all changed.

  “We need to pick her up and bring her here,” Zach said. “We’ll keep her out of sight until we can personally find this mole and eliminate him. When he’s dealt with, she can go safely on her way with no fear for her life.”

  “Aren’t you afraid she’ll recognize us?” Tony asked.

  Zach continued to stare out the window of his office. He had a beautiful view of the Caribbean Sea from the first floor of his seaside mansion. It was so peaceful and calm here. This compound was his haven from the violence of the other world he lived in. Now, he knew it would change. No matter the complication, he hadn’t brought that girl half way round the world to safety only to throw her to the wolves. He’d do what he must to keep her safe once more.

  Zach turned and said, “Yes.”

  Tony and Juan just stared at him, not moving.

  “Okay,” Zach said, irritation just under the surface. “We had long beards and wore turbans so not much of our face was visible, but yes, I know this is still risky. There’s always a chance she can recognize us, but do you guys have a better idea? This is not a game for Christ’s sake. People in our world play for keeps. They’ll snuff these two out and not give it a second thought. Is that what you want?”

  “No. No. We get it,” the men said, talking over each other.

  Tony knew Zach well enough to know his mind was made up. “You’re right, Zach. We’re with you. I’ll get the men together, and we’ll work out a plan to bring her here.”

  “Them. Get her roommate, too. She saw his face also.”

  “Yes, both women. What do we tell them?” Juan asked.

  Zach shrugged his shoulders. “What can we tell them? Not the truth for sure. We tell them nothing. They won’t have a clue about what is going on, but that can’t be helped. Now, get moving. This guy won’t wait very long before he comes back for them. We need to grab them fast.”

  “Roger, that,” Tony said. “I’m on it.”

  The sun was setting as Lisa’s yellow Volkswagen came to a sudden halt in the carport. “Still no word from Paul,” Arianna said, dropping her cell phone back into her purse. “Damn it! We really need to talk to him.”

  “Yeah, I’ll feel much better once we hear what he has to say.” They jumped out of the car and rushed into the house, locking the door behind them. “It’s getting hard to tell the good guys from the bad. I think we could be in a lot of danger, but I’m not sure why. I just have an eerie feeling about all this.”

  Arianna double checked to be sure the door was locked and then picked up the phone on the desk and examined it. “The FBI agent made it sound like we’re in real danger, and he told us our house might be bugged. How in the hell do you tell if someone bugged the phone?”

  Lisa shrugged her shoulders. “Beats me. Maybe it will have something that looks like a small microphone in it?”

  Arianna opened two beers and offered one to Lisa. “I think we should look around and see if we can find anything that looks like a recording device. I’ll check here in the kitchen and living room. Why don’t you have a look in the bedrooms and bathroom?”

  After searching for about twenty minutes, Lisa came back into the kitchen. “Nothing. I didn’t find anything I thought was a bug.”

  “Me either.” Arianna grabbed another beer. “Just to be on the safe side, don’t use the house phone. I can’t tell if it’s bugged or not.”

  Lisa plopped down on the sofa and pulled her feet up around her. “Well, me either. I could take the entire phone apart, piece by piece, and I wouldn’t know a bug if it bit me.”

  Arianna checked her cell phone once more, but still no call from Paul. She moved over and sat down across from Lisa. “I don’t know why anyone would want to bug our house anyway. I’m a just a simple journalist from Milwaukee. I don’t know anything that could be of any interest to anyone. Actually, I’m a victim. I’m the one who was kidnapped and brought to this place, so why are all these things happening around me?”

  Lisa finished her beer and went to the kitchen for another. “Maybe if we had more time to talk to the FBI agent, he could have cleared all this up for us.”

  “If he actually was an agent,” Arianna said. “For all I know, he could be the guy who abducted me, and he doesn’t want the FBI to find out who he is. Him running off like that was kind of strange, don’t you think? But if you believe Paul, my kidnapper’s identity is classified, so why would he worry about being identified?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Lisa said, coming back to the sofa. “I’m as confused as you. Since your kidnapper’s prints are classified, he must be a government agent, but why would a government agent kidnap you? And, if he’s a government agent, then there could be other government agents chasing him, but what possible reason in the world would they want you? You’re not leading some secret life that you’re not telling me about, are you?”

  Arianna laughed. “Hardly. You know I’ve been thinking. Why would this man today contact me about this matter unless he was looking for the kidnapper, too? The strange thing about that is, why contact me? I’m the one trying to find out who the kidnapper is. If I knew who he was, I wouldn’t have contacted them in the first place. Something’s not adding up here.”

  For a moment, they just sat there and stared at each other, not speaking. Finally, Arianna said what they were both thinking, “We don’t have a clue what’s going on, do we?”

  Lisa shook her head. This circular conversation was going nowhere and with so little information, all they could do was continue to take wild guesses.

  “So, how about going to the police?” Lisa asked, again.

  Arianna knew it was time. In hindsight, she probably should have gone to the police the first morning she woke up in the Cass Hotel. This situation was not getting better. In fact, it was getting more complicated by the minute.

  “As soon as Paul calls us back, I’ll talk to him about going to the police. I don’t want to rush ahead here and get him in trouble.”

  Lisa let out a long yawn. They’d been talking for hours with nothing resolved. “Boy, I’m starting to crash. Those beers relaxed me, but this is emotionally draining. I’m going to bed.”

  “Me too,” Arianna said. She checked the door one last time to be sure it was locked. “I’ll wake you up if I hear from Paul. Try to get some sleep. I’m sure things will look brighter in the morning.”

  A hand covered Arianna’s mouth, and a knee pressed into her chest, pinning her to the bed. She tried to yell for help, but the only sounds out of her mouth were muted little moans.

  “Shh!” the intruder said, putting his finger to his lips. “I’m not here to hurt you, but you have to come quietly with me.”

  Fighting off the fog of sleep, Arianna blinked rapidly and willed herself fully awake. S
he didn’t for a moment believe this guy was not there to hurt her. She fought to stay calm even as she struggled to quell the panic welling up inside of her.

  In the dim light of the bedroom, she could barely make out the form of the man hovering over her… his face not covered, but his features indistinguishable. He slowly removed his hand from her mouth and lifted his knee from her chest, bringing momentary relief from the crushing weight. But this relief was fleeting, for as he threw back the covers of the bed, a new sense of vulnerability swept over her. The thin material of her pajama top revealed the clear outline of her breasts, and the skimpy bikinis she slept in barely covered her bottom. Suddenly, she felt precariously exposed and imminently susceptible to being ravaged.

  Grasping her wrist, the intruder pulled her out of the bed and wrestled her toward the door. Grabbing a lamp off the nightstand, Arianna swung it at the assailant with all her might. As he deflected the blow, she bent down and bit the hand holding her, affecting a momentary release.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” he cursed, as he snatched her back with his other hand. Pressing her against the wall, he held her there at arm’s length. He alternated between sucking the blood off his hand and shaking it in an attempt to stem the pain. Letting out one last son-of-a-bitch, the man threw Arianna over his shoulder and headed out of the bedroom.

  “Let go of me!” Arianna yelled as she thrashed about and beat the man’s back, the blows having absolutely no effect. The next thing she knew, she found herself in a heap on the living room sofa. Quickly righting herself, she turned to find Lisa sitting next to her.

  “Oh, my God, Arianna! Who are these guys and what do they want?” Lisa asked, leaning close to her.

  Arianna grabbed a throw pillow, hugging it for security and to cover what her revealing pajamas failed to. She looked around the room and saw three Hispanic men huddled in the kitchen area, whispering softly to each other. She thought they were speaking in Spanish but wasn’t sure.