A Father's Desperate Rescue. Amelia Autin

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СКАЧАТЬ and the girls in a safe place? And Vanessa and Hannah, too, of course,” she added, referring to the women who had habitually accompanied Dirk on location ever since the twins were born.

      “Hannah couldn’t make the trip, after all,” he explained now. “She fell down the stairs and broke her leg three days before we were supposed to leave for Hong Kong.”

      “Oh, no!” Dirk knew Juliana’s concern was genuine. Hannah had been his housekeeper for years, and Juliana had met her every time she’d visited the DeWinters during their years-long friendship in Hollywood. “Is she going to be okay?”

      “Yeah. She’s recuperating in a nursing home. But Linden and Laurel ask about her several times a day. And we call her every night.” Hannah, a longtime widow with no children of her own, had taken on the role of surrogate grandmother for the twins in addition to her housekeeping duties, something for which Dirk was supremely grateful. His daughters adored Hannah—whom they called Nana—and she adored them.

      “Email me the address and phone number of the nursing home, please,” Juliana asked. “I’ll send her flowers and a get-well card.”

      “Will do. And don’t worry about us, Juliana. We’ll be fine. Thanks for calling, though.”

      “Kiss your daughters for me.” That was something Juliana said every time they talked, another thing that was genuinely meant—Juliana had her own child now, but was the twins’ godmother and loved them deeply. This time, however, she hesitated, then added in a voice tinged with pain, “I adore the pictures of them you’ve sent me, but every day they look more and more like Bree.”

      At first Dirk’s throat closed with emotion at the reminder of his wife, who’d been Juliana’s best friend before she died, but eventually he managed, “Yeah, they do.”

      Dirk disconnected just as Patrick pulled in at the hotel entrance. He drove past the fountain that had already been turned off, and would have dropped Dirk at the front door, but Dirk refused. “Just find a place to park,” he told his driver. “Call your parents, but I know what they’ll say. Then we’ll go up together.”

      It only took a minute for Patrick to receive his parents’ blessing to shelter at the Peninsula Hotel. More than a blessing, actually, Dirk thought with an inward smile as he heard Patrick’s side of the phone conversation. More like a parental command. But he didn’t say anything. He admired the old-fashioned deference the younger generation showed the older in Hong Kong. Once upon a time that had been common in the United States, too, but not anymore.

      The two men crossed the lobby, heading for the elevators, and Dirk was distracted for a moment by the Peninsula Hotel’s typhoon preparations. The beautiful arched picture windows had already been boarded up, and sandbags were being stacked along one wall, merely as a precaution. The hotel wasn’t that far from Victoria Harbour, and a strong typhoon-induced surge could bring the ocean to the hotel’s front door.

      “That reminds me,” Dirk told Patrick as he rang for the elevator, “we’d better find out what we need to do to make the suite’s windows safe from the typhoon, if the hotel staff hasn’t already done so. And we want to make sure we have plenty of food and drinking water in the suite—if we lose electricity, there’s no way I want to hike down all those floors and back up again.”

      They rode up in the elevator to the palatial Peninsula Suite on the twenty-sixth floor, with connecting bedrooms for the twins and their nanny. Dirk would have been just as happy in something less grand, but the movie studio was footing the bill for the suite, and he’d never stayed here when Bree had been alive—an important factor in his decision to accept the accommodations. The private gym, cinematic screening room and baby grand piano had also been contributing factors, not to mention the isolation. Before he’d become a father himself, Dirk had wondered why parents couldn’t do a better job keeping their children from causing disturbances. Now he knew how nearly impossible that was, but he still didn’t want to impose his daughters’ totally to-be-expected behavior on the hotel’s other guests if he could help it.

      He let himself into the suite and was puzzled at the unusual silence. His daughters might still be napping, although they were usually awake by this time, but Vanessa and the bodyguard—one of three in the entourage that had accompanied Dirk’s family from Hollywood to Hong Kong—were on duty today, and they were missing. Usually, at this time of day Vanessa, the girls and their bodyguard could be found in the living room. The twins were fascinated by the breathtaking sight of Hong Kong Island across the harbor, day or night, and the boats plying the waters, views they could easily see through the floor-to-ceiling windows. And the girls had a habit of standing right up against the windows and smearing whatever they could reach with invariably sticky fingers.

      The spacious living room was empty, but one of the chairs from the twins’ miniature tea table, set up in front of the central picture window, had been overturned...and left that way. Then Dirk noticed other things. The diaper bag, which Vanessa usually kept by the front door, stocked and ready to go should she leave the suite with the girls, was missing. But the double stroller was right where Vanessa kept it, and her purse was on the table by the door. She wouldn’t have left the suite without either of those things, Dirk realized in a flash. Vanessa might have been able to carry one toddler in her arms, but not two—not for long. And even if the bodyguard on duty today, Chet Ritter, had carried one of the girls against protocol, no woman ever went anywhere without her purse.

      There was a strange odor in the air, too—just the faintest trace of something sickly sweet. Dirk couldn’t put his finger on it, but it tugged at a chord of memory.

      Then he heard a sound. An odd, muffled sound, accompanied by sudden thumping, coming from the girls’ bedroom. He strode to the door with Patrick right behind him, and a zing of terror shot through him. Vanessa and Chet lay on their sides on the floor, hands bound behind their backs with duct tape. There was tape around their ankles, too, and across their mouths—the muffled sound was Vanessa trying to call out through the barrier. The thumping was her pounding her bound feet against the carpeted floor, trying to gain attention from the hotel room below.

      Linden and Laurel were nowhere in sight.

       Chapter 2

      “Chet” was the first word out of Vanessa’s mouth when Dirk removed the gag. She coughed and swallowed before adding, “Is he okay? They hit him and knocked him out, then they took the girls.” She gasped, “Mr. DeWinter—”

      “When?” Dirk demanded roughly, then said, “Hold still,” placing his hands on her arms just above the duct tape, making sure she didn’t move while Patrick sliced through her bonds with the switchblade knife he’d pulled from his pocket. When Vanessa’s hands were free, Patrick focused on her ankles. Dirk helped her to a sitting position once she was completely freed, then briskly rubbed her wrists to restore circulation while Patrick did the same thing to her ankles.

      Then both men turned their attention to Chet. A darkening contusion on his forehead showed how he’d been overpowered before he’d been gagged and bound, but he was conscious now. “What happened?” Dirk asked as he and Patrick freed Chet. “How long ago?”

      Vanessa answered his last question first. “About two hours ago, I think. I...I can’t be sure, but I think so. I thought it was room service with lunch when the doorbell rang.”

      Dirk frowned. “The front door to the suite?” he asked. “Not the butler’s entrance in the kitchen?”

      Vanessa looked startled for a СКАЧАТЬ