No Risk Refused

Especially Adair.

He strode to the window of his office, but it wasn’t the scenery that he saw. It was Adair MacPherson’s face. The image of her standing beneath that stone arch during his mother’s wedding to A. D. MacPherson had been popping into his mind lately. It had been a late-fall wedding. He and his brothers had been tied up in classes so they’d booked flights that arrived on the morning of the ceremony and left that evening.

The picture he’d carried in his mind before that had been of a little girl with red curls and freckles, a face that had frowned easily when he’d teased her, and a temper that he’d enjoyed igniting. Calling her “Princess” usually succeeded in eliciting both responses. But she had a smile that he’d wanted to trigger almost as much as the frown.

What he’d enjoyed most about her during those long summer afternoons when they’d played together was the fact that she was willing to try anything. Eager, in fact. She’d been fun—for a girl.

But what he’d felt at his mother’s wedding had been something else. And that was the image that still lingered in his mind. Her red-gold curls were tied back with a green ribbon. He’d wanted to run his hands through those curls. At nine, her body had been sturdy and athletic. At twenty, it had been slim as a wand, and he’d wanted to explore every single inch of it. Desire was far too tame a word for what he’d felt. But it was her eyes that had nearly finished him off that day. He had no clear idea of how long he had looked into them. But he’d never forget the color—a pale and misty green that he could have sworn he was drowning in.

Cam drew in a deep breath and let it out. He’d wanted her that day in a way he’d never wanted anyone or anything before. In a way he’d never wanted anyone since. And he’d been rash enough to ask her to dance. If she’d agreed, if he’d held her in his arms, he still wasn’t sure what would have happened. Perhaps she’d had some idea of the possible consequences because she’d turned him down flat.

He wasn’t sure why she was popping into his mind more frequently lately. Perhaps because he was back in the States. Perhaps because she’d never really left his mind. Perhaps because it was only possible to avoid something for so long and then …

“Got a minute, Sutherland?”

Cam turned as his boss walked into the room. Seven years ago Daryl Garnett had recruited him to work for the CIA. Cam had trained under the man at the farm and Daryl had been one of his mentors ever since, and he’d invited Cam to join the Domestic Operations section he headed up in D.C.

“I think I just got something on my old nemesis.” Daryl moved around Cam’s desk and taped two photos on the whiteboard that covered nearly one wall. “Meet Gianni Scalzo.”

Cam turned to study the photos. He’d seen one of them before because Daryl carried a smaller version in his wallet, the way a man might carry a photo of his family. But Gianni Scalzo wasn’t family. He was a con man extraordinaire who’d put a bullet in Daryl’s knee and limited his career as a covert field operative.

Since then, Daryl had been steadily working his way up in the training and management side of the Agency, but he’d made a hobby out of tracking Scalzo down.

In the photo that Cam had seen before, Scalzo had long, curly, shoulder-length hair—Mel Gibson in the first Lethal Weapon. In shorts and sunglasses, he looked very much at home on the prow of a sailboat. The man standing next to him in the picture was shorter, less athletic in build, the kind of man that you wouldn’t notice if you passed him on the street. Interpol believed he was Scalzo’s partner. Daryl agreed. Both men were masters at disguise, but the partner had always stayed in the shadows.

The man in the second photo was older. His short dark hair boasted just a sprinkle of gray and he had a well-trimmed mustache and goatee. Not Mel Gibson but he still had a sort of middle-aged movie star quality. Next to him stood a pretty young blonde.

“What do you think?” Daryl asked.

“It’s a difficult call. The more important question is what do you think? You’re the one who met him in person.”

“Allowing for the passage of time, I’m betting they’re one and the same,” Daryl said. “I felt it as soon as I saw the picture. I had one of our techs run a facial analysis of the two photos.”

Cam moved closer to study the two images more closely. “What were the results?”

“Inconclusive.” A tall lanky man in his mid-fifties, Daryl stood shoulder to shoulder with Cam at the whiteboard. “Right now, I’m having someone age the photo of Scalzo on the sailboat.”

“How long have you been looking for Scalzo now?” Cam asked.

Daryl tapped the leg that had retired him from the field. “Fifteen years, three months and nine days.”

“The age difference is about right. Who tipped you off to take a look at the guy?” Cam asked.

“Ben Slack contacted me an hour ago and I asked him to email me the photo,” Daryl said. “He was in your class at the farm.”

Cam remembered Ben, and anyone who had been trained by Daryl would know of his interest in tracking Scalzo down.

“Ben says the Securities and Exchange Commission is ‘looking at’ this guy,” Daryl said. “One problem I’ve always had in tracing Scalzo was that the man avoids getting his picture taken. But this guy is getting married, so he couldn’t very well refuse to have an engagement picture published.”

“What else have you got?” Cam asked.

“If the Securities and Exchange Commission is sniffing around him, he could be using the same M.O. as Scalzo did in Italy, and the same one that he used in Portland a few years ago. I was nearly in time to get him. He changes looks, identities and locations, but the scam he and his partner run remains the same. They target financial planners—some who handle select clients as well as others who manage pension funds. Scalzo is always the front man. He infiltrates the social strata first—buys an estate, joins the right clubs. That’s exactly what this guy has been doing in the Long Island area for the last year and a half. He promises huge returns to his investors and he delivers them. After the recent scandals, that’s enough to bring him to the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

“It sounds like the same kind of scam my father tried to run, but your nemesis is much better at it.”

Daryl’s hand settled on Cam’s shoulder. He didn’t have to say a word. As the man who’d recruited Cam, Daryl had accessed all the details on his father’s background. A rich and pampered young man, Cam’s dad, David Fedderman, had relied on his parents to buy him out of scrapes all of his life. Once he’d joined Fedderman Trust, he’d spent all of his time wining and dining clients and traveling to locate new investment opportunities. When it had finally been revealed that he’d been dipping into clients’ accounts to the tune of hundreds of thousands, his parents hadn’t been able to buy Davie out of serving jail time. They had, however, tried to get custody of Cam and his brothers in a brutal lawsuit. But Beth’s lawyer had finally prevailed and she’d immediately changed their last name to hers—Sutherland. They hadn’t heard from any of the Feddermans since.

What wasn’t in all the files was the fact that his father hadn’t been any more skilled at being a father or a husband than he’d been at being a crook. Cam had been ten when it had all gone down, and what he recalled most was that after the arrest, he’d never heard his mother cry herself to sleep anymore.

Daryl looked at him then. “Any chance you could help me out with this?”

Cam smiled at him. “I thought you’d never ask. Do we have any way to connect this guy to the Portland crime?”

“That’s what I’ll start on next. Scalzo’s good.” His smile widened. “But the Portland police have a set of prints for the alias he operated under there. I’ve got a call into the P.D. there right now.”

Cam tapped the second man in the sailboat photo. “What about his partner?”

“There’s no sign of him. He stays out of sight, out of mind.” “What’s your plan?”

“I’ve got some vacation time coming, so I’m going to take a few days to see what I can dig up on Long Island,” Daryl said. “Maybe I can get a whiff of the partner or a glimpse of Scalzo. I think I can recognize him in person.”

“Let me know what you need on this end.” Then he remembered Reid’s text. “But I may have to make a quick trip up to the Adirondacks to check out a family thing.”

Daryl grinned at him. “Luck is on my side.” He pointed to the engagement photo of the man he was sure was Scalzo. “My friend here is getting married in this little place in the Adirondacks this coming Saturday. Castle MacPherson. Ever heard of it?”

Cam stared at him. “Yeah. As a matter of fact, I have. That’s my stepfather’s place.”

“So you’re familiar with it?”

“Somewhat.” Not enough to know that people were scheduling weddings there. He turned to his desk, did a quick search for Castle MacPherson on his computer and found himself looking at Adair’s smiling face. The impact of just seeing her stopped him short for a minute. The fancy wedding hairdo was gone. But the eyes were the same pale, mysterious green. He had to remind himself to take a breath.

“A wedding destination spot, huh?”

Realizing that Daryl was leaning over his shoulder reading the computer screen, Cam reined in his thoughts and scanned the web page. By the time he finished, he’d noted Vi’s photo also, along with a shot of the castle, the gardens and the stone arch. And he’d clicked on a link that led to a small feature article in the New York Times that provided a brief history of the castle as well as the story of the legend and Eleanor Campbell MacPherson’s missing sapphires.

“And here I thought that wedding destinations involved sandy beaches and drinks with little umbrellas in them,” Daryl remarked. “But I guess a stone arch with the promise of a happy-ever-after would have a definite draw. Do you know if the two women are alone up there?”

“They won’t be for long.” Turning, he glanced back up at the photos on his whiteboard. “I’m going to be an unofficial guest at the upcoming wedding.”

“Thanks.” Daryl patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll need a day to get my ducks all in a row and make sure he’s my guy. Then I’ll get in touch.”

BY THE TIME five-thirty rolled around, Cam had his own ducks lined up and he was ready to hit the road for the castle. He answered Reid’s call on the first ring and once he and his brothers had exchanged greetings, he said, “Problem solved. I’m about to give Vi a call to let her know that I’ll be leaving later tonight.” Suiting the action to words, he stepped into the elevator and pushed the button to the garage.

“How did you know Mom and A.D. wanted one of us to go up there?” Reid asked.

“I called her,” Cam said. “You sent me the text an hour ago. Just because you’re the oldest and Mom always calls you doesn’t mean Duncan or I can’t take the initiative.”

“You tell him, bro,” Duncan said, laughing.

“I thought we should discuss it first. What if we all took the initiative and we’d all dropped everything to run up there?” Reid asked with just a trace of annoyance in his tone.

“I checked,” Cam explained. “Duncan’s in Montana and you’re on the way to Dulles right now because the Vice President is flying to Paris.”

“How did you—?” Reid began.

“He’s CIA,” Duncan said. “And, as the middle brother, he always has to show off.”

“And I’m usually the one who gets the field assignments,” Cam pointed out. “I figured I’d get started.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” But Cam could hear the smile in Reid’s tone.

“Plus, you knew I’d jump at the chance once Mom told me that Vi and Adair had discovered an earring from Eleanor’s missing dowry.”

“One of the sapphires?” Duncan asked. “Wait. Time out. We’re talking about one of the sapphire earrings that was probably worn by Mary Stuart on her coronation day?”

“That would be correct,” Cam said.

“If I’d known that, I could have gotten away. The local police made an arrest yesterday, and I’m just hanging around to get some fishing in. Remember all the games we played that summer pretending to find those jewels?”

Cam remembered them well, and the discovery of one of them would allow him the perfect cover to visit the castle. There was no need to let his brothers know that the castle might have other problems, not until Daryl had identified Saturday’s groom-to-be as Gianni Scalzo.

“When can you get there, Cam?” Reid asked.

Always the organizing big brother, Cam thought. But all he said was, “My ETA will be early morning. I’ll check out the security system and find a better place to secure the earring than Angus One’s secret cupboard inside the house. That’s were they’ve put it, and I’m betting that most of the population of Glen Loch knows all about that cupboard, including how to pull the lever to get into it. Have a safe flight, Reid. Catch a fish for me, Duncan.”

He ended the call and walked toward his car. He had no doubt he could handle providing security for the earring Adair and Vi had found. The real problem he was facing was how he was going to handle Adair.

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