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When she told him she couldn’t spend Thanksgiving or Christmas with him, that she had to be with her family, Tanner had taken a deep breath and said, well, yeah, he understood that…and maybe one of those holidays would be a good time for her to let her family get its first look at him.

“They don’t know about us yet,” she’d said. “I’m just waiting for the right time.”

Chay had tried to warn him that he was in over his head. In fact, it had been the first occasion their whole life that he and Chay had almost ended up decking each other.

Idiot that he was, he’d bought into the rationalization, gone on believing she wanted him for himself, not for the image he represented—until the night he’d been deep inside her and she’d cupped his face between her hands, wrapped her long legs around his hips and whispered, “Sugar? Tell me how many men you’ve killed.”

Since then, he’d never been foolish enough to forget what women like that wanted from men like him. And, what the hell, why not? It wasn’t as if he was looking to settle down, not with the life he led.

It was just increasingly difficult to play the game. Not the sex part. That was easy. What was tough was the part that involved listening to rich, spoiled babes call themselves designers and consultants and decorators.

Those seemed to be their favorite occupations.

He’d met one bubblehead who called herself a color designer.

“It’s like feng shui?” she’d said in what he thought of as West Coast Speak, where every sentence was a question, “but with colors?”

Tanner had nodded and kept a serious look on his face when what he’d wanted to do was howl.

Now, here was this one, a four-star’s daughter, and she was into furs.

Nasty.

You killed an animal for food, or because it was trying to kill you. You didn’t kill it so some rich broad could wear it—but his opinion of Alessandra Wilde or Alessandra Bellini or whatever she called herself didn’t mean he could just let her die.

“Lieutenant. Please. You have to find her before they—they hurt her.”

Tanner suspected please was not a common part of John Wilde’s vocabulary.

And that photo. The bruised face. The men touching her. She’d been hurt already, he thought, and his stomach rolled. The only question was how much more would they do before they killed her, because killing was what Bright Star was all about—assuming this was a Bright Star kidnapping, and his gut was telling him maybe not.

Should he tell that to Wilde? No. For one thing, he didn’t have any facts to support the supposition. A low ransom figure, a poor drawing… It wasn’t enough.

For another, he’d have to also tell him that if Alessandra had been taken by two bandits working on their own, she might well be in even greater danger.

As vicious as it was, Bright Star at least operated under an organizational umbrella.

“Okay,” Tanner said briskly. “Give me the name of your man at State. I’ll speak with him, make some suggestions.”

A flush rose in Wilde’s face. “State’s not involved.”

“But you said your contact there…”

“I said he sent the information to me. Privately. Not officially.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I told you. State isn’t involved.”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean, State isn’t involved? I’d have thought your first action would have been to pull at the strings you could.”

“They don’t… That Alessandra is my daughter is not public information.”

Tanner folded his arms over his chest. “Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning it’s a long story.”

The general’s tone had hardened. He’d gone into command mode. Screw that, Tanner thought. If he was going to take on the job of collecting information and formulating a plan to rescue the woman, he needed to know what was going on.