Captive Dove

Zigzagging to the sounds of gunfire, Nova sprinted to the helicopter, leaped into the pilot’s seat and shoved the key into the ignition. Blades began to churn.

Leaning out the window, she yelled, “Now, Joe.”

He stood, and then twisted and fell, his right leg collapsing under him. She couldn’t tell how badly he was hit, but he needed help. She opened the door, but before she could jump out, the three remaining thugs charged toward Joe.

The moment seemed to stretch out forever as she realized she must either take off without Joe, or all of them could be taken captive again.

He looked back at her. “Go!” he yelled.

I can’t leave you! she mouthed back.

“Go!” he yelled again.

Discipline took over—fear for the people in her care. She slammed the door and lifted the bird to get it out of the line of fire as fast as possible. All the while thinking, They’ll kill Joe. And I can’t imagine the world without him.

Dear Reader,

To be able to write and share with you this series of Nova Blair books has been a lifelong dream come true. For that, I’m grateful to Silhouette.

As a child I adored Wonder Woman—I wanted so much to be her. As an adult, I’ve created Nova, a modern-day Wonder Woman of beauty and courage. I’ve loved getting into Nova’s skin as she lays it all on the line to right wrongs and save good folks from evildoers. I’ve loved imagining that I’ve got her looks and talent. I’ve loved living her romance with her hero. I hope you find this latest adventure as exciting and fun as I did when writing it.

And as always, I’d love to have you visit my Web site, www.jhand.com, and find out about my other books and perhaps even send me an e-mail.

Cheers,

Judith

Captive Dove

Judith Leon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JUDITH LEON

has made the transition from left-brained scientist to right-brained novelist. Before she began writing fiction some twelve years ago, she was teaching animal behavior and ornithology in the UCLA biology department.

She is the author of several novels and two screenplays. Her epic of the Minoan civilization, Voice of the Goddess, published under her married name, Judith Hand, has won numerous awards. Her second epic historical, The Amazon and the Warrior, is based on the life of Penthesilea, an Amazon who fought the warrior Achilles in the Trojan War. In all of her stories she writes of strong, bold women; women who are doers and leaders.

An avid camper, classical music fan and birdwatcher, she currently lives in Rancho Bernardo, California. For more information about the author and her books, see her Web site at www.jhand.com.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to my friends and writing colleagues who read all or part of this story and whose comments and criticisms were vital to making me work to write the best story I could. I extend to all of them my grateful thanks: Chet Cunningham, Arline Curtiss, Barry Friedman, Donna Erickson, Pete Johnson, Al Kramer, Peggy Lang, Judith Levine, Bev Miller, Ellen Perkins and Tom Utts.

Special thanks go to two others as well. My agent Richard Curtis has been both friend and guide to the world of publishing. And gratitude goes as well to my talented Silhouette editor Julie Barrett. Without Julie’s appreciation for my work and her championing of it, none of my Nova Blair and Joe Cardone adventures would ever have seen the light of publishing day. I will always be profoundly grateful.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Epilogue

Chapter 1

N ova Blair drew in a breath of Colorado Rocky Mountain air, savoring its cold, pristine edge, wishing she could stop time. She was thirty-four. Staying thirty-four forever in beautiful Steamboat Springs could be fun.

But tomorrow, after six days of skiing, hot mulled wine, fabulous dinners, dancing, and good sex, she and David, who was skiing next to her, had to leave. Time did not stand still. In fact, only eight shopping days stood between her and Christmas and she still hadn’t found perfect gifts for the loved ones on her remarkably short list.

Dead ahead, the Storm Peak chairlift would drop the two of them at almost 10,400 feet at the top of this last run of their Steamboat Springs getaway. Every tree hunkered under the weight of glittering white crystals, soon to turn pink in the sun’s fading glow. Nothing here, at least in this moment, hinted at the dark side of human existence. How perfect it would be to remain in this moment, never doing a lick of work for the CIA again. Maybe the next time Smitty called, she would say no to him.

But go back to San Diego she must, to a tight schedule that would delay gift shopping still longer before flying out the next morning to New York to make an appearance at the latest showing of her photographs.

She took another deep breath as they neared the mountain’s crest, soaking up snow-capped peaks and the azure-blue sky. Life can be good. She felt complete freedom. Was this joy? Had she ever felt true joy? Yes. At least once. Making love with Joe.

Joe Cardone. Her partner for two missions. Just thinking his name planted an iron fist of pain in the center of her chest.

The lift chairs arrived at the summit. She pushed out of her seat, David beside her, and dropped onto the hardpack. Their skis hissed on the snow as they glided to the side of the slope to avoid skiers coming up behind them.

For a quiet moment they shared the spectacular view, the trails heading down the mountain filled with skiers and snowboarders wearing the pastel “in” colors of the season: pale yellows, greens, blues, pinks and violets. The rainbow of color against the white snow reminded her of spinnakers against a cloudy sky on a windy day in San Diego’s Mission Bay.

She wore a fuchsia jumpsuit. She looked good in cool, winter colors, and fuchsia especially complemented her black hair—French-braided at the back of her head at the moment. David, a skiing hot dog and oblivious to fashion, wore neon red.

As owner of David Lake Travel, a company with a dozen branches in resort cities, he spent significant time exploring exciting resort escapes. They shared a love of travel and adventure, one of the reasons she’d been attracted to him after breaking up with Joe six long months ago.

“Okay,” she said, forcing a smile. “Let’s make this a race.”

“Straight down to Christie Base and the Sheraton,” he said. “Triangle, Cyclone, Drop Out and then the easy cool-off on Right-O-Way.”

All black-diamond runs, except at the bottom.

“You got it.”

They shoved off. She hit her rhythm, right, left, right, reading the slope, reading the snow. Adrenaline pumping, heart racing. Freedom!

The Sheraton Hotel snuggled in the snow, right at the base of the mountain—ski in, ski out—with luxury accommodations to match the convenience. David waited for her, his ski poles planted in the snow, his goggles raised, his gloves hung over the tops of his poles. She side-slipped to a stop alongside him, out of breath and thighs burning.

“Outstanding,” she said, knowing she was grinning like she’d won a million bucks.

He slid her goggles onto the top of her forehead over her bangs and gave her a peck on the lips. “I love you,” he announced, grinning. “You are the most exciting woman I’ve ever met.”

She felt her smile freeze and she blinked, not sure what to say in return. Love? Love was a word they had agreed never to use.

Three hours later, showered, rested and dressed in the emerald-green, turtle neck cashmere sweater, a match for her eyes and her favorite, Nova looked into the bathroom mirror. She snatched the hairclip loose and her hair plummeted in a silky cascade to her shoulder blades. David loved to see her hair down, and, she reminded herself, it was David, not Joe, for whom she was dressing. She ran a comb through it as David stepped behind her. He moved her hair aside and kissed the back of her neck.

“We could skip dinner,” he said.

She let the comment pass. Instead, she turned and gave him a slow smile. Already wearing his topcoat, David helped her into her black, ankle-length faux shearling cloak, then followed her into the brightly lit and thickly carpeted hallway. The uniformed Sheraton doorman opened the outer door and they stepped from comforting warmth into the exhilaration of Mother Nature’s cold, thin breath. At the entrance stood a sleigh, complete with bell-bedecked horse and driver. David led her to it.

Joy suffused the child in her who had feasted on Russian fairy tales, read to her by a loving, handsome and doting father. “What a wonderful surprise, David,” she said, grinning.

He helped her aboard, tucked a red-and-green plaid woolen wrap over her lap and joined her. “Maddie Silk’s, right?” said their sleigh master, a man with rosy cheeks and nose and all bundled up in a black parka.

“Right,” David said. They set off surrounded by the music of silver bells in the cold, black velvet, perfect night.

The ride was as lovely as any fairy tale. He poured her a mug of wine, but before he let her drink, he kissed her. He smelled deliciously of spice himself. For a moment she wished with a familiar pang that she could love him, marry him and settle down into a normal life. She took a sip of wine and pushed the pointless longing for normalcy away. She could love a man—she already did love one—Joe—but thoughts of normalcy were a ridiculous indulgence in fantasy. She was with David, could be comfortable with him, because he agreed that their relationship was special but that it wasn’t ever going to be what most of his friends, and hers, thought of as normal.

The elegant dinner setting was a perfect ending for their week. For the first time they talked music. David loved Mozart, too.

“He’s my favorite,” she said. “When I die, I want them to play Mozart. His music is so radiant it seems wrong he wasn’t cherished all of his life and buried with great honor instead of in an unmarked pauper’s grave.” She stared at the bloodred of the wine in her glass and a deep sigh slipped out. “But then, life is often unjust.”

David put his hand over hers, his gaze gentle and understanding. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, for your sadness.”

She smiled and shook her head, regretting that she’d let some sliver of the past tarnish the beautiful evening for even a moment. “I’m not sad. Truly.”

David knew a lot about her now. Obviously the superficial realities: that she was a professional adventure travel guide and that her hobby—if you could call something she worked that hard at, a hobby—was nature and portrait photography. He had also met her sister, Star, on one occasion, and on their fifth date he’d confided to Nova that he’d paid someone to look into Nova’s history. It wasn’t personal, he explained. Because of his wealth, whenever a woman really captivated him, he initiated an investigation.

And so he knew about her diplomat father’s death when she was twelve and about her mother’s marriage to a wealthy Argentinean, Candido Branco. David knew that when she was sixteen, she’d killed the man to keep him from molesting Star. He knew she’d been incarcerated for five years. David knew all that, he said, and it didn’t affect how he felt about her.

What he didn’t know was that she took her first contract job for the CIA when she was twenty-two, and in the line of duty through the intervening years she had already killed six men, as well as a villainously insane woman and a misguided teenage Muslim boy-terrorist bent on killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. Her sadness didn’t come from killing Candido. That had given her nothing but release. Her sadness came from all the others she’d killed and all the evil she’d seen.

She was a contract agent for the Company, not an employee. She never took Company assignments that served the government, such as planting false information or stealing plans for troop maneuvers or for development of weapons. They knew to call her only if the lives of innocents were at stake. She had saved many people. That was true. Still, she often relived the up-close killings in bad dreams, and memories of them had a way of slithering into even the happiest moments.

Like now. But her smile and words seemed to have convinced David. He looked away and gestured for the check. Their feast was over. Time for another magic sleigh ride.

The moment they were back on the snow he slid his gloved hand under their wrap and took hers. He squeezed. She squeezed back. “I know we said no falling in love, no marriage,” he said, “but I want, I need, to change the rules of the game.”

The unnerving shock of his words caused her to gasp, a cold breath. Oh, David. Please, please don’t. You told me—we agreed.

He hurried on. “We are so good together, Nova.” He leaned closer and wrapped her gloved hand in both of his. “I desperately care for you.”

She pulled her hand free. She didn’t love him. Maybe she didn’t even love Joe since when he’d said the word marriage, she’d frozen, her feelings spinning, much like she felt right now. Joe was the only man in her life that she might…just might…love. But even for Joe, she hadn’t been able to wrap her emotions around giving up her dearly won freedom. She’d never do so for David.

She clasped her hands together in her lap. “I told you up front that I’m a difficult person with a difficult life and that love and marriage were to be off-limits. We need to keep it that way.”

“But you aren’t difficult, Nova. And your life, while it involves lots of travel and pressure, isn’t all that different from mine.”

Oh, she thought, how wrong you are.

“Please, David.”

He shook his head and thrust himself heavily back into the seat. She could feel his hurt coming off him like body heat. If she stayed in the relationship, she was going to hurt David terribly. She had thought, wrongly, that she could set up parameters to keep it all safe.

Her spirit, soaring for hours, deflated: a gay balloon slashed by a serrated Ka-Bar, a knife with which she was all too familiar. Sometimes life was good, but too often those times didn’t last long.

“Okay,” he said. “We stay with our original agreement.”

No. That isn’t possible now. You care too much.

Later, when he snuggled up beside her in bed after they’d made love, her heart aching with every kiss, guilty, sad, knowing that she was saying goodbye but unwilling to utterly destroy their last night together, she closed her eyes and sighed, dreading what she had to say to him tomorrow.

Chapter 2

The Amazon—Ten Miles Downriver from

Manaus, Brazil, near the Meeting of the Waters

A birding tour group of ten Americans intending to cruise the great Amazon River for fifteen glorious days, stopping each night at a different site, had rented a two-decker, forty-foot boat. This afternoon they had anchored at a wide spot on the Amazon’s north shore. Half a mile down lay the Meeting of the Waters, the point where the black Rio Negro and the reddish-brown Rio Solimões joined to become the mighty Amazon. A little like pouring molasses and water together, the two feeder rivers didn’t mix right away. For many kilometers they ran side by side, black and red, although eventually the red color would win. That marvelous natural phenomenon thrilled and fascinated them all.

But in the darkness, shortly before eight, their trip took a turn into nightmare. Fifteen heavily armed men boarded their boat.

One of the men, Carlito Gomez, had until now never been much farther than fifty kilometers from his own home in southern Brazil. He stood, bloody machete in hand, over the corpse of the man he’d just killed. The dead man, identified to Carlito and the others by a photo they had brought with them, lay face down on the floor of the cruise boat’s main cabin surrounded by the nine other terrified Americanos, also sprawled on their bellies. They had stopped screaming, but most of the women were crying.

The dead man’s arms were both pinned beneath him. Carlito reached down and pulled the left arm free.

“No, no!” his boss, Felipe Martinez, yelled. “The Eagle says it must be his right hand.”

Quick to obey, Carlito pulled the right arm free and used the machete to finish the job. The other passengers began screaming again. A woman, probably the dead man’s wife, shrieked, “Ellis!” so loudly it hurt Carlito’s ears.

Using his body as a screen, Carlito snatched up what looked like a real gold watch from the dead man’s wrist. Felipe didn’t notice. Felipe’s big concern was the black boy, and he had turned his attention to securing the boy’s hands. The Eagle’s other men were also occupied with binding and gagging their prisoners. Carlito felt a quick flush of greed rev his already adrenaline-fueled pulse. It looked like he could get away with keeping and then selling the watch for himself. He stuffed it into his pocket.

The other teenaged boy, the pretty blond one, attempted to be Mr. Macho and tried to stand. Felipe bashed him in the head with the butt end of his Beretta. The kid collapsed onto the deck, blood running down his forehead and dripping off the tip of his nose.

“Get it up to the iced package,” Felipe commanded. “Now!”

Carlito dropped the machete and gingerly plucked up the severed hand. He scrambled across the cabin, clumsily kicking the machete, and climbed the short flight of steps to the upper deck, which was covered but open on the sides. From the roof over his head came the heavy splatting of Amazon basin rain. He stepped around the boat captain, who was still out cold on the deck and now bound.

Carlito opened the white, insulated box. Felipe had brought it with them, already prepared to deliver this message from Manaus, Brazil, to the office of the vice president of the United States of America. The package, delivered by an untraceable courier, should arrive in Washington no later than tomorrow afternoon.

Carlito slipped the hand into a plastic bag and then took care, using a pair of gloves brought for the purpose, to arrange the dried ice around it before replacing the interior insulation. Finished, he taped the package shut. An address and postage were already on the top.

Felipe emerged from the cabin followed by the other men, shoving hostages. One by one, the men walked the captives on a makeshift plank across the black water onto their own riverboat, stolen earlier in the day for this purpose.

Carlito was now suffering a nagging worry about getting away. There were no roads between here and Manaus. In fact, there were no roads at all going south into Brazil from Manaus. The single road out went north to Venezuela. Plane fare being expensive, common folk left by riverboat, a trip to the coast taking four or five days.

But with their prisoners, they would cruise ten miles back upriver, running under cover of darkness to the small port of Ceasá. From there, a lorry would drive them to Manaus’s international airport, where a plane chartered by the Eagle, using a false name, would return them home. There would be no record of their arrival to or departure from here. Felipe had made it clear, when Carlito had asked about it, that money could buy anything in Brazil.

It would likely be some time, maybe not until midday tomorrow or even later, before anyone cruising the river became curious enough to stop at the boat. They would find the bound and gagged boat captain and notify the authorities, who would be pissed to learn they had a huge international mess on their hands: one dead American and nine missing tourists.

Soaked to the skin but still warm in the tropical night, Carlito watched the heavy drops of rain pour from the boat’s roof to batter the gangplank and shore and pock the surface of the water. Once the Eagle’s other men had all the hostages aboard, Felipe quickly cast them off, heading them back to Ceasá.

Their passage was slow, guided by three men at the front manning strong searchlights. The package would be on its way right on time out of Manaus, but, given the heavy rain, Carlito wondered as he wiped himself down with a dry rag if the visibility would be good enough for them to make their planned quick exit by air.

Chapter 3

S till sweating from a twenty-minute jog and anxious to find out if there were any last-minute disasters for the New York show, Nova made a final check of her answering machine. No new messages.

This latest show of her award-winning photos of the world’s most beautiful coastal drives seemed to be progressing without serious glitches. Putting on this show was costing a bundle and although her agent, Deirdre, was enthusiastic about the photos—she always was—Deirdre was worried for the first time that they might not be able to sell enough to cover costs, let alone make a profit. It had been a long time since Nova had had to take a loss in order to get her work into circulation. This time she was going to have to do more than just show up. She would need to put on the razzle and dazzle needed to sell.

In her kitchen, she rinsed and dried her favorite Florentine cappuccino mug and returned it to its hook, satisfied that she could leave knowing that the condo was in order. If she never returned—in her life, always a possibility—she could still hold her head up in heaven. She’d not left a mess behind.

A small, rueful smile touched her lips. Star had said more than once, “I think your problem with men is that you’re too damn neat. What man can relax and scratch his balls in comfort in such a neatnik home?”

Although they never discussed it, she and Star both understood just why Nova had such a “thing” about control. For four hellish years, their stepfather, Candido Branco, had controlled Nova’s existence while secretly molesting her. When Candido turned his attention to Star, Nova had instinctively reacted and threatened Candido with a knife. During their struggle, she had killed him. She’d not planned it, but she also hadn’t regretted it. And since she could not prove the molestation, a jury had convicted her of manslaughter. She’d served five years, from age sixteen to twenty-one. And in prison she’d been unable to decide things as simple as when to turn out her light at night. Between Nova and Star, Nova’s passion to be always in command required no discussion or explanation—or excuse. But it did have consequences. For Nova, living the rest of her life unmarried might just be one of them.

A sigh slipped out as she closed the blinds that let in generous swaths of western light and a stunning view of the Pacific Ocean. Last night in Steamboat Springs she’d said nothing to David, not wanting to spoil the end of their trip, but when he’d dropped her off at the condo early this morning, she’d told him it was over.