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Kane McNabb was just as sinfully handsome now as he’d been five years before. The two of them had made a terrific team. Like synchronized swimmers, they’d worked with one mind, swimming the waters of danger in perfect rhythm.
They’d spent two weeks in Libya posing as husband and wife scientists in an effort to learn how close Qaddafi really was to obtaining nuclear weapons. They’d pretended to be brother and sister for several weeks to infiltrate a cult in South Carolina.
Their assignments took them far away from home or as near as their own city as they took care of problems that fell through the bureaucratic cracks of other agencies.
He’d also been the best lover she’d ever had. But that was the past and the past was best left alone.
After two cups of coffee she felt lucid enough to get behind the steering wheel of her car. Max would be expecting her between now and noon for their ritual Saturday morning breakfast. If anyone could put her right with the world again it was Max Monroe.
Before she left the house, she grabbed the address that Kane had left on the table the night before and shoved it into the bottom of her tan purse.
The June sun was already hot despite the early hour as Cassie left her house by the front door. As if on cue before she could reach her red Mustang in the driveway the sound of the lawn mower came to an abrupt halt.
“Ms. Newton…Cassandra.” Ralph hurried toward her, his bulldog features in a pregrowl expression.
Cassie hesitated. She had two choices…quickly jump in her car and drive away or stand and bicker with her pesky neighbor. Before she could make a choice he stood directly in front of her. Procrastination would one day be the death of her, she thought with a sigh.
“I’ve been trying to speak to you for the past week,” Ralph exclaimed, his jowls flopping with each word. “Haven’t you received any of my notes?”
About every other day for the past two weeks Ralph had been taping notes to her front door. She could wall-paper her bathroom with all the notes he’d left.
“Mr. Watters, I’ve read your notes, but we have nothing more to discuss.” Cassie tried to keep her voice pleasant.
“I want that tree cut down.” The tree he referred to was a lush sugar maple just inside her property line in the backyard. Ralph was obviously not a member of the Hug a Tree Association.
“We’ve been through this a dozen times. I’m not cutting down that tree.” She smiled in an attempt to soften her words.
“That tree is a nuisance. It sheds seeds all over my property in the spring and leaves in the fall.”
“But it’s a beautiful tree and it provides wonderful shade,” she replied.
“Then what about that bush?” He pointed to the bush next to her front porch.
“What about it?”
“It’s dead,” he exclaimed.
“It’s dormant,” she countered.
He snorted. “If I was that dormant they’d have me in a coffin and buried six feet under.” A spot of spittle flew out of his mouth and landed on his chin. He swiped at it with the back of his hand and drew a deep breath. “I’m just trying to be a good neighbor here, you know, keep the neighborhood looking nice.”
Cassie had to fight the impulse to snort back at him. “And I appreciate it. Have a nice day, Mr. Watters.” Before giving him an opportunity to reply she slid into her car and started the engine with a roar.
She backed down the driveway, then threw the car into first gear and popped the clutch. Tires whined, then grabbed with a squeal as she peeled down the street.
An utterly childish display, Cassandra Marie Newton. Still, she smiled in satisfaction as she imagined Ralph’s outrage at her antics. Sometimes being childish was mentally healthy.
She shoved thoughts of Ralph Watters out of her mind as she made the fifteen-minute drive from her home to Good Life Gardens, the assisted-living facility where Max lived.
Built with a flair of Spanish-flavored architecture, Good Life Gardens was an immense sprawl of buildings on twenty acres of lush, treed acreage. When Cassie had moved Max from California, it had taken her months to find a place she thought worthy of Max’s presence. Good Life Gardens had lived up to her expectations.
The complex was enormous, but Max was never difficult to find. If he wasn’t in his apartment, all she had to do was check the common areas, and wherever there was the biggest gathering of little old women, Max would be in the center.
Max loved the women, but Saturday mornings were devoted to the little girl he’d met on the streets of Los Angeles, the teenager he’d taught everything he knew, the woman he loved like a daughter.
Cassie could smell the scent of cooked breakfast sausage before she reached his door. The savory scent brought back memories. The first meal Max had ever cooked for her had been sausage and eggs.
She’d been almost fourteen and after three years of living on fruit swiped from an open market and whatever could be found in Dumpsters and trash cans, those eggs and sausage had seemed like a gift from a God she’d begun to think had forgotten her.
She rapped on the door twice, then turned the knob as Max’s deep voice boomed a welcome. She found him in the kitchen pulling a tray of golden-brown biscuits from the oven.
“Juice is in the fridge, coffee’s made and breakfast will be ready in another ten minutes or so.”
“And good morning to you, too.” Cassie walked over to him and bent to plant a kiss on the top of his head.
He grinned at her. “It will be a good morning if this new egg casserole recipe lives up to its ingredients.”
Cassie poured herself a tall glass of orange juice then sat at the small oak table and watched him finish the breakfast preparations.
Max Monroe, known as “Mad Max” in his Hollywood stuntman days was still handsome at almost seventy years old. His hair, so black and shiny when she’d first met him, now sported shiny strands of silver. His features were ruggedly handsome and his brown eyes snapped with the gift of laughter and an exuberant love of life.
Too many movie stunts had put him in a wheelchair. Although he wasn’t paralyzed, crushed and shattered discs in his back caused him excruciating pain when he tried to stand on his feet. A yearlong bout with a whiskey bottle had made him nearly lose his mind.
He’d always said that finding Cassie had saved his life, but she knew the truth. If it hadn’t been for Max Monroe Cassie would have probably been in jail, or on drugs, or a prostitute…or dead.
Although Cassie had continued to live on the streets of L.A. until she was seventeen, Max had taken her under his wing. He’d taught her everything he knew about physical strength and skill, about martial arts and achieving death-defying feats.
He’d also educated her so that she could get her GED and build something of her life. He’d been her savior and she would die for him.
They didn’t speak until breakfast was ready and Max had wheeled himself to the table opposite where she sat. “You got that look,” he observed as he passed her the plate of biscuits.
“What look?”
“You know, the one where you look like you want to tear somebody’s head off and spit down their neck. Old Ralph giving you a hard time again?” he guessed correctly.
Cassie laughed, already feeling her foul mood transforming into something more positive. “The man is relentless.” She pulled apart a biscuit and began to slather each half with butter. “Out of all the neighborhoods in Kansas City, out of all the people I could live next to, I get Mr. Rogers with an attitude.”
Max laughed and shoved the plate of sausage patties closer to her. “You take the man too seriously.”
“Too seriously? He wants me to cut down that beautiful tree in my backyard. Now this morning he asked me what I was going to do about one of the bushes by my front porch.”
“You mean that dead bush?”
“It’s dormant, not dead.”
Max raised an eyebrow and eyed her wryly. “He’s a lonely old man.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t be so lonely if he wasn’t such a pain in the neck,” she retorted.
The last of her irritation faded as they began to eat and indulged in small talk. Max told her about his lady friends and the most recent social activities he’d attended and she talked about her plans to redecorate her living room.
It was the kind of benign chatter between two old friends that was comforting in its utter banality.
It wasn’t until they were clearing the table that Cassie decided it was time to move out of the small talk arena and into what was really on her mind. “I had a late-night visitor last night.”
Max made no reply. He knew her well enough to know she’d tell him what she wanted him to know in her own time.
“I thought it was a burglar and almost took his nose off with my knife, but it was Kane.” Even just saying his name aloud caused a wistful regret to sweep through her.
“Been a long time,” Max said.
“Yes, it has.” She sighed. “The agency wants me back.”
Max motioned toward the coffeepot. “Pour us each a cup and let’s go into the living room and you can tell me all about it.” He disappeared out of the small kitchen.
Cassie poured the two cups of coffee and followed Max into the bright, airy living room. One entire wall held an entertainment system that contained a huge television set and Max’s movie collection.
In the sixties and seventies Max had worked as a stuntman in over a hundred action-adventure and Western films. No matter how small or large his part, he owned a copy of every movie he’d ever been in.
The little old ladies who lived in the complex loved movie night when they all gathered in a great room and watched one of Max’s movies as he narrated his part in the film.
Cassie set his coffee cup on the tray next to where he sat, then placed her own on the coffee table. But she didn’t sit. Talking about Kane, talking about the agency made her far too restless.
“Tell me,” Max said as she paced back and forth before him. “What do they want from you?”
Briefly she told Max what Kane had told her the night before, about Adam Mercer, his suspected plans and his deadly drug called Blue. It sounded just as crazy now as it had when Kane had explained it to her the night before. It sounded so crazy it had a terrifying ring of truth to it.
Max listened without expression, occasionally taking a sip of his coffee and nodding his head. “So what exactly do they want from you?” he asked when she’d finished.
“They want me to go undercover, get close to Adam Mercer and find out when and where the tainted drug shipment is to arrive.” She flopped down on the sofa.
Max finished the last sip of coffee and set his cup down. “I wish you were still doing stunt work. I’d worry much less about you.”
She smiled at him affectionately. “You know I just did those movies to pay for college. I never really wanted to be a movie stuntwoman,” she replied. Between her eighteenth and her twenty-first birthday, Cassie had done stunt work in a number of movies thanks to Max’s training. “You know my goal was always to be a cop.”
“I know, but you would have been one of the best stuntwomen in the business.” Max shook his head, his eyes filled with reflections of the past. “I’ll never forget that first time I saw you. I’d heard about you for weeks. All the security guards were talking about the kid who kept sneaking onto the lot.”
Cassie smiled at the memory. Max had been working as a stunt coordinator on a movie on the Embassy Pictures studio lot where Cassie had been hanging out.
She loved the lot, where magic abounded in warehouses filled with furniture and scene backdrops, old costumes and various props. Although security was tight around the lot, Cassie always managed to find a way inside.
She’d watch the action as the various movie scenes were shot, join the lunch lines for the hearty fare served in the cafeteria and pretend to be one of the extras until somebody caught on to her. Then she’d scamper like a rat, afraid that if she were caught, afraid that if somebody found out she had no parents, no home, she’d be sent to a foster home. She had heard too many horror stories about foster care from other kids living on the streets to want to try that avenue.
“That first time I saw you running down the lot, then darting into that alley and climbing the fence like a monkey, I knew you were something special. You had physical abilities I’d only dreamed of possessing.”
She smiled. “And the first time I saw you I thought you were some kind of pervert trying to pick me up for nefarious activities.”
Max laughed again then sobered and clasped his hands together in his lap. “Don’t forget, it was your stunt work that brought you to the attention of the agency.”
“I know.” She frowned thoughtfully. It hadn’t just been her stunt work alone that had brought her to the attention of SPACE. She’d just finished the police academy and was enrolled in criminology courses at the community college when a man from SPACE had contacted her about working for them.
“So when do you start?”
She stood once again. “I haven’t decided if I’m going to do it yet.”
“Yes, you have.” He smiled, the smile of a man who knew her too well. “If you hadn’t already decided to work with the agency, you wouldn’t have told me about any of it.”
He was right. She walked over to the sliding glass doors that led out onto a tiny patio. Beyond the patio was a tall wooden privacy fence.
She stared at the fence for a long moment as she contemplated going back to work for SPACE. She knew the kind of calculation that went into each assignment the agency made. If they had tapped her it was because they believed she was the best agent for this particular job.
She was a cop, sworn to protect her community and this was even bigger than her community. How could she turn her back and walk away? The possibility that she might discover something about her mother and brother’s whereabouts would be a nice by-product.
“Kane thinks it’s possible Adam Mercer might have information about my mother,” she finally said.
“Is that possible?”
She turned from the sliding door to face Max. “I suppose. We know that ten years ago she left California and came back here to her roots. We also know that she was arrested on possession charges here in Kansas City. But no one has heard from her since. I’d say it’s quite likely she and Adam Mercer could have crossed paths at one point or another, though. It’s also a rumor that Mercer keeps records of all the addicts he helps.”
“Then you have to do this, Cassie,” Max said. “You might finally get the answers you’ve been seeking.”
“Maybe.” She knew better than to get her hopes up. She’d gone into police work in the first place in the hopes that the job might help her find her missing family. She needed to know that they were okay, especially the baby brother she’d adored.
She’d hired a private investigator just last year to try to find her mother and brother, but his search had yielded no results. Even though she was angry with her mother’s choices, she needed to know why she’d been thrown away.
“You’ll never be completely at peace until you resolve the issues from your childhood.”
“Have you been watching Dr. Phil again?” she teased.
“You need to heal the wounds of your inner child.”
“Okay, enough already.”
“You also need to resolve your feelings where Kane is concerned. You need closure on several levels,” Max finished.
Cassie wanted to argue with him, to tell him that he was espousing a bunch of psychobabble. But his words shot straight to her heart, to all the wounded areas that existed inside her, and as much as she hated to admit it, she knew he was right.
Chapter 3
Cassie compared the address on the slip of paper Kane had left her to the one on the front of the downtown brick six-story building. The addresses were the same although the sign on the building proclaimed the establishment on the ground level to be Eddie’s Employment Agency. The floors above the employment agency appeared to be empty.
The building was in an area of Kansas City that hadn’t yet seen the efforts of revitalization of the downtown area. The buildings on either side appeared abandoned, storefronts boarded with plywood that sported the usual colorful and obscene graffiti.
The street was relatively deserted considering it was just after noon, but she wasn’t surprised that SPACE would choose this kind of area for a mobile base.
During the four years that Cassie had worked with the agency, she’d frequented a number of “fronts” in a number of cities used for conducting business. They
were usually set up in areas where there was little foot traffic and where it wasn’t unusual for stores to appear and disappear in short time.
