Page 4

B jorn Anders sat outside his gated home and called a number. Waited impatiently for the man to answer. He was balancing on a delicate tightrope with crocodiles beneath him and vultures circling overhead. Either one would tear him apart if they thought he was holding out on them.

He didn’t know who the woman who’d been following him worked for.

Maybe Montana had paid her to watch his back, but it didn’t seem like his style.

She looked vaguely familiar. He’d stopped her amateur antics with a large nail he’d spotted in the car park.

Now he needed to confront a much larger problem.

“What is it?” Leo Spartan, the Zimbabwean ambassador to the United Nations snapped. “You know I can’t be linked to you.”

“I met with the FBI agent.” Something Spartan would already know from his large network of spies.

There was an interested silence.

Sweat broke out on Bjorn’s brow. “I gave him Dougie Cavanagh’s name.”

The voice hissed dangerously in his ear. “You did what?”

Trying to keep all these powerful people happy was going to be the death of him. “He put pressure on me, insisting he wasn’t going to leave the country until he had some new piece of information. You said you wanted him gone.”

He heard muffled sounds as the man presumably gave orders to one of his minions.

Spartan came back on the line. “If you told him anything else, I’ll?—”

“I didn’t. I wouldn’t.” Sweat rolled down Bjorn’s temples, and he wiped it away.

“But it’s not a bad thing, surely? Cavanagh has been dead for years.

If Dougie told anyone about his relationship with you, someone would have come forward by now, and it would be public knowledge.

Even if someone claimed to know something, there’s no proof. Not anymore.”

After Dougie’s death, Bjorn had been ordered to go through the man’s belongings, send everything non-incriminating back to his family in Glasgow, and burn everything else.

Almost everything else.

Bjorn had saved one thing—a single photograph. If Spartan knew about it, he’d already have been dead.

“He’s definitely leaving tomorrow? The FBI agent?”

“In the morning.”

“Good.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. Most of the people from back then are gone.

The ones who are left would never say anything, especially if they get that contract they tendered for last month for the work in Ukraine.

” He laughed, making it a joke rather than a bribe.

His company needed that contract. It would allow him to sell up and retire.

He was too old to be chasing around the armpits of the world, clearing up other people’s messes.

As tempting as the FBI’s one hundred thousand dollars was, there was no guarantee it would be enough, nor that he’d live to claim it.

“Hmm.” Spartan sounded thoughtful now.

“Kurt Montana will head back to the US, and the FBI analysts will have no more luck discovering what happened to Dougie than they did Hurek. Cavanagh’s family are all dead. You have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

The silence went on for longer than was comfortable. Spartan had put him on mute and was probably talking to one of his goons.

Finally, “I’ll contact someone in that department tonight. Expect Sabelo at your office tomorrow morning with a contract for you to sign.”

Bjorn grimaced at the thought of having to be pleasant to Spartan’s head of security, but the contract would make it worthwhile. And being able to retire would make his wife very happy.

“If anyone else finds out…” The man’s voice got hard.

Spartan was not someone to fuck with. “No one will. I’ll send the managers and office staff for coffee. My treat.”

“Make sure you do. I don’t want any witnesses.”

Bjorn grinned and dabbed his forehead with a cotton handkerchief. He didn’t want any witnesses either. Backdoor deals weren’t uncommon, but they left a sour taste in his mouth. His people risked their lives and did good work.

“Not a problem. Not a problem at all. Thank you, sir. For your business and your trust.”

He hung up and climbed outside his vehicle, feeling as if a heavy weight had lifted.

He headed inside, greeted his beautiful, patient wife, and hugged his kids.

Their life was finally coming together the way he’d promised when she married him, and he hadn’t even needed to play the ace hidden up his sleeve.

Row drove slowly back to her uncle’s house, making sure she wasn’t followed before entering the code for the gates and driving inside.

Frustration ate at her. She’d learned almost nothing after three weeks of searching for answers.

“Joe”—highly doubtful that was his real name—had turned up twice now with Bjorn Anders, and she’d taken his photo in the hope of figuring out his identity.

He was American from the cute accent, and good-looking with it, in that confident, casually macho way some men had.

She’d always had a weakness for a little danger, always watched the bad boys in school with rapt fascination even if she was too reserved to ever act on it.

Not that it mattered.

She rolled her eyes at herself. He thought she was a prostitute, and while she respected workers in the sex trade, she wasn’t sure her jeans and black blouse quite fit the bill even if it did have some very cute cutout netting details.

Perhaps “Joe” wasn’t the best judge of character.

She was grateful he’d assisted her with the tire because the nuts had been fused solid, and she had not wanted to call her uncle to admit she needed help. Uncle Gamba already disapproved of her traveling alone around the country.

Joe had helped her as much to glean information as to be kind. He’d spotted her watching him talking to Anders, which was sloppy on her part, but it wasn’t as if she had a lot of experience with this sort of thing.

Bjorn Anders hadn’t seemed to notice her or care about being followed from his home.

Tomorrow, she was going to have to confront the guy face-to-face and see if he actually knew anything.

It was entirely possible he didn’t have the answers she needed or would refuse to tell her if he did.

But she had less than a week of vacation left before she had to be back at work.

She was out of time.

She’d discovered Anders was attending the diamond conference from her online research, same way she’d figured out where he lived and worked. She’d tried to gather the courage to talk to him there but had failed miserably.

She headed through the locked back door and into the kitchen and straight into Uncle Gamba who stared at her with disapproval and a pointed look at his watch.

She grimaced. “Sorry. It took longer than I expected. I had a flat tire. ”

The disapproval vanished. “Are you all right? You managed to change it okay?” His skeptical frown annoyed her, and yet she wouldn’t have managed alone.

“I was still at the restaurant. Someone there helped me change it. I can go to the garage and get it replaced tomorrow.”

He waved her offer aside. “I’ll get Charles to do it.” He shook his head as he poured himself some water out of the refrigerator. “I was worried.”

“I’m fine.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “You know I love you, Row, but you’re up to something and that makes me nervous. What’s going on?”

Her mouth went dry. She hated deceiving him even by omission, but he wouldn’t approve of her quest. Unlike Uncle Gamba, Row was white and had no real roots to this beautiful land. She’d been conceived here, but she didn’t fit in, and she didn’t fit in back home either.

She needed answers. So did he.

“I wanted to revisit some of the places Aunt Anoona and Uncle Peter said mom stayed.”

“Hmm.” He turned away and put the kettle on.

Her mother had spent twelve months in Africa prior to Row being born.

Originally her mom had been visiting her brother, Peter, who worked as a doctor in remote areas all over Africa.

He’d met Anoona, Gamba’s little sister, who’d been a nurse, and they’d immediately fallen in love and gotten married.

Meanwhile, her mom had gone traveling with some people she’d met while backpacking.

Rowena wasn’t sure who her father was, but she suspected it was one of those traveling companions—that’s what her Uncle Peter and Aunt Anoona had let slip before they’d clammed up like a couple of, well, clams .

Thoughts of her aunt and uncle brought on another intense wave of grief.

They’d died in a fire late last August, and she’d been struggling to deal with their deaths and the stark reality she had no known blood relatives left alive anywhere in the world.

So she’d decided to try to track down her father.

The main contender was a man named Dougie Cavanagh who’d written letters to her mother that Row had found in a box in her grandmother’s attic.

Unfortunately, Cavanagh had also passed away, not long before her mother.

Row had been unable to track down any of his living relatives—yet—in order to run a DNA comparison to verify.

In the letter, she’d found a photograph of a handsome young white guy who had dark brown hair just like hers.

He’d been standing in the bush somewhere next to a much younger Bjorn Anders, whom she’d identified using facial analysis software she’d bought off the web.

Hence her trying to get up the nerve to speak to the guy for the past few weeks.

Was Dougie Cavanagh the reason her mother had run home to England without even letting her brother know she was leaving Africa?

Had he broken her heart? Had Dougie known Allie Smith was pregnant?

The letters suggested not. Her mom had died not long after Rowena was born.

Peter and Anoona had immediately returned to England and settled down in Shropshire, where Peter found a job as a GP and Anoona as a nurse in the NHS.

They’d raised her as their own, and she’d loved them fiercely.

They’d been the most amazing stand-in parents she could have asked for, but she’d never stopped wondering about her biological parents.

Uncle Gamba finished making the pot of tea, then cleared his throat and raised two thick brows. “I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but some of your mother’s choices were a little…reckless by all accounts. It does no good to dwell on the past.”

Her uncle and his family were pretty conservative, although he was probably right about the dwelling on the past. Dwelling had done her no good at all.

Hence the action she was trying to take, if only she could get up her nerve.

Gamba was a good man. A kind man who loved her despite her lack of blood connection and despite her many flaws. And she loved him. She owed him an explanation, but he wouldn’t approve of her trying to track down her father this way.

“No one ever really talked about her, and now everyone who knew her is gone…” She’d always thought there’d be more time to badger Anoona and Peter for answers.

“Her death was tragic, especially as she left you behind, a tiny baby.” Gamba swallowed thickly. “No one wanted to remind you of your loss. Anoona and Peter tried to do what was best for you.”

“And I appreciate that so much.” She rubbed her cold arms. “I don’t mean to be a burden.”

He looked at her sharply and took her by her upper arms. “You have never once been a burden. My sister loved you as her own child, and you know we all feel the same.” His eyes grew glassy with unshed tears.

Row blinked to hold back the emotion. “I do know. I guess losing Aunt Anoona and Uncle Peter hit me pretty hard.”

“It hit us all hard.” Gamba visibly struggled. His wife had also died two years ago. It was a lot to deal with. “But we have to accept God’s will.”

She nodded but silently disagreed. She didn’t have to accept anything.

He let her go. “I have a proposition. I have to go to Jo’burg for the week. I leave first thing tomorrow. After my meetings, I plan to meet Amara and Faith for a few days’ vacation and take them shopping. Why don’t you come with me?”

She’d love to spend more time with her vivacious cousins, but she still needed answers.

Except what happened if Bjorn Anders refused to see her or, worse, didn’t know anything?

Who knew better than she that life was short and that she should enjoy what was left of her family while she could?

“I have plans to meet someone tomorrow. I could fly down after that?”

He looked like he wanted to ask questions about who she was meeting but he held back. “Promise?”

“I promise. ”

He smiled then turned serious. Squeezed her arm again before handing her a mug of tea. “I worry about you.”

She put the mug down and embraced him in a fierce hug. “I’m okay.”

She wasn’t. Once she found the answers she was looking for, then she would be.