Deception

  Deception

  Tory Hayward

  www.escapepublishing.com.au

  Deception

  Tory Hayward

  A suspense-packed chase in pursuit of priceless gems leads from the beaches of New South Wales to the temples of Myanmar in Tory Hayward’s hot new romantic thriller.

  Merry Taylor nearly wept with relief, as she touched the canister that held the Piprahwa Jewels. Finally she could save her father. The kidnappers wanted the gems—now they would spare his life and return him to her.

  Lying in the dunes, Jack Jones watched Meredith Taylor dig up jewels so precious people would kill for them. Or, more specifically, people were planning to kill him for them. His panic eased. Meredith only loved money, everyone said so. She’d sell them to the highest bidder without hesitation, and he fully intended to be that bidder.

  It was practically a done deal. She had the jewels, and he had the money. What could possibly go wrong?

  About the Author

  Tory Hayward, previously published as Caitlyn Nicholas, writes romantic suspense.

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to acknowledge the lethargic state of Sydney Trains. Without a commute that lasts a minimum of forty-five minutes, twice a day, this book would never have been written.

  For Amazing You

  Sorry about the sweary bits

  Contents

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…

  Chapter One

  On my knees, high above the tide line of the beach, I scooped fine dry sand out of a shallow hole.

  They had to be here.

  On the treasure hunts of my childhood holidays, he always buried things here.

  ‘One hundred paces from the split Salt Gum, Merry, due …’ He’d hesitate and raise an unkempt white eyebrow, waiting for me to finish the clue.

  ‘East,’ I’d howl, loud as I could, pointing out to sea. Jiggling with excitement, beside myself that I had my treat. His undivided attention.

  The sand became damp and harder to dig. I threw my small shovel aside and dug with my hands, ignoring the dart of pain as it packed beneath my nails.

  I had to find them. The jewels.

  If I didn’t, Dad would be executed.

  The howling wind fired sand against my skin with enough force to hurt. My eyes watered, my nose ran, and the grains crunched between my teeth. But I didn’t stop digging, until a stomach-clenching shiver of awareness made me hesitate. I glanced up as my skin contracted across the bones of my forearms. Someone watched from the darkness of the dunes. I could feel it.

  Since I’d left Sydney I hadn’t been able to shake the sensation of eyes on me. I’d been careful. Few knew this place, and no one would think to look here.

  That’s why Dad had chosen it.

  The thin beam of my head-torch lit up the high-tech metal detector I’d used, and swirling eddies of sand.

  The beach was deserted.

  I rubbed my face on my sleeve, and looked again.

  Empty. No one there.

  I took a breath, but the sliver of fear twisted, sharp and insistent beneath my heart.

  What if the kidnappers were tracking me?

  What if they were there, just out of sight, waiting to grab me?

  Dad’s voicemail echoed in my mind.

  ‘Get the fucking jewels, Merry. Just get the fucking jewels. Hurry. I don’t have much time left.’

  Confident and optimistic in the face of irate tribal warlords, bombastic dictators, or shirty customs officials. Immune to even the most devastating dose of gastro. This time his voice had shaken with fear and he’d sounded like a sick, old, man.

  ‘There is nothing to fear but fear itself.’ I muttered the famous Roosevelt quote out loud. A favourite of the martial arts expert who’d taught me how to defend myself.

  Lying on my stomach, I scraped with my fingertips, scooping sand out by the handful. He’d buried them deep. But, after long minutes, I touched metal and hissed a sigh of relief.

  Found them.

  I dug the canister out gently. It could be dropped from the very edge of the atmosphere and land on granite without harming the contents, but I handled it with care.

  Dad’s life lay inside.

  It felt warm, as if it radiated heat through its titanium shell.

  As I put it in the khaki canvas bag I’d brought, a movement caught my eye at the edge of the torch’s beam. It could’ve been a trick of the swirling sand and my edgy nerves, but I didn’t hesitate. I threw the torch aside, scooped up the bag and took off down the beach in a flat sprint.

  The blackness was absolute. That afternoon boiling clouds had turned the dusk blood-red, and now they filled the sky, giving the half-moon no chance.

  I kept the hard sand beneath my feet. I knew this beach, its long graceful curve, the headland, sieved through with caves, and the short fat dunes that led into the scrubby woodland. I’d run along here every summer of my childhood. Faded memories haunted its shores, of my mother, and my father—a different man to the one he was now.

  The wind dropped and the sand loosened as I came up to the looming shadow of the headland. I slowed to a cautious walk. Hands outstretched, I felt along the rock until the wall curved away from me, and I followed it beneath the cliff.

  I counted the thirty-nine steps into the cave, more out of habit than a need to keep my bearings. As expected, the rough sandstone beneath my fingers changed to smooth metal. I pulled out an old-fashioned metal key from my cargo-pants pocket. Sliding it into the lock by feel, I turned it, grunting at the effort, and dragged the door open with a rusty screech. The noise set my teeth on edge and I glanced behind me, even though I couldn’t see a thing.

  A rotten, salt smell wafted out of the tunnel. I swallowed as my stomach heaved, and tried not to breathe through my nose. Fishing my pencil torch from a pocket, I grimaced in disgust when things with many legs scuttled away from the thin beam of light.

  The green slime-covered walls glistened, and in the gloom ahead I could just make out the dim outline of the stairs.

  I dragged the door shut, cutting off the roar of the sea and wind and leaving a claustrophobic silence behind. I locked it and checked twice it was secure, before hefting the bag onto my shoulder and hurried to the stairs.

  I climbed them quickly, until they stopped at a blank trapdoor in the roof. I shoved it, but it didn’t move. Worry nagged at my raw nerves, and I pushed again, this time with more strength. The door lifted a few inches. There was a crunching sliding sound and then a deafening crash of splintering glass.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Dad.’ I threw the trapdoor open easily as the rich aroma of red wine filled the air.

  Climbing into the dark cellar, I slammed the door shut and, torch between my teeth, squatted a
mongst the broken glass and fumes to lock it. I couldn’t look at the wine. It was part of my father’s Grange Hermitage collection, I could tell by the smell. The most valuable wine that Australia produced, and he had a case from every year it’d been made. But, typical of him, once he acquired it, he lost interest. It wasn’t treasured, or enjoyed, it was discarded to a dark cellar and forgotten. He found his thrill in the chase, not the possession.

  A fact that said a lot about my parent’s marriage and the tragedy that ended my mother’s life.

  Chapter Two

  Jack lay on the sand and stared into the blackness that swallowed Meredith Taylor. She couldn’t have seen him.

  Something had spooked her though.

  Blinking in the wind, he climbed slowly to his feet and scratched irritably at the sandfly bites that covered his belly.

  Spiders he could handle, snakes, or even a pissed-off hippo. But sandflies really really shitted him. Sneaky bitey buggers.

  She’d dug up the canister that held the Piprahwa Jewels. Gems so precious people would kill for them. Or, more specifically, people were planning to kill him for them.

  The canister was distinctive and he decided he was almost eighty-three per cent sure Miss Taylor had it.

  The other seventeen per cent was arguing that it made no sense that the jewels would be buried like pirate treasure on a remote beach. The Taylor family bought and sold antiquities, works of art, and rare jewellery worth millions of dollars. Meredith had any number of high-tech secure locations at her well-manicured fingertips to store a precious thing.

  But this was the closest he’d come in all the months he’d spent searching.

  His gut told him he’d found them. Eighty-three per cent of it.

  But then, his gut had also told him marriage to a twenty-three-year-old stripper after twelve hours of tequila-fuelled sex in Vegas was a good idea.

  Sometimes his gut was an arsehole.

  He glanced towards the headland. She’d be back at the old beach house by now. One of the many properties her family owned. But different to the others—the ones he’d unearthed in his research—in that it wasn’t hidden behind high walls topped with broken glass, and there weren’t garages filled with expensive cars, or staff waiting to pander to every one of her needs.

  It was remote, neglected, and the beautiful Meredith was, for once, alone.

  His plan, his only option, was to snatch her and hold her until her father exchanged her for the jewels. Kidnapping wasn’t generally his thing. Diving for lost Spanish gold in the Mediterranean was his thing. Unearthing a Nazi art horde in a remote monastery in Northern Italy was his thing. But kidnapping, not so much.

  Only total desperation had got him to this beach with this plan. Total, terrifying, non-sleeping, mess-with-your-head type desperation.

  He’d been parked near her Sydney harbourside mansion that morning, and had seen her come flying out of the garage in her fast, expensive car. She’d hurtled off alone and unprotected, and he’d followed. Partly elated, mostly horrified, when she’d led him along remote roads, further and further from civilisation to the weathered old beach house.

  Realising, with a sinking feeling, that his plan might actually work, he’d kept an eye on her, planning to lure her outside and grab her when it got dark.

  But at dusk she’d appeared on the beach with a distinctive titanium metal detector. Curious as to why this princess was scanning the empty beach in near pitch-darkness, he’d put his plan on hold for a while.

  Now Jack glanced up at the lights of the beach house, high above on the cliff, then walked back across the dunes to the road to where his jeep was hidden in tall dense scrub.

  He tried to decide the best approach. Should he turn up at Meredith’s front door, plead a buggered-up car and talk his way into the house? Then creep away with the jewels when he could find them. With her cloud of golden hair, pale skin and full lips, it wouldn’t be too much of a chore to turn on the charm and spend some time gaining her trust.

  But he let the idea go. Better to break into the house. The place was all wide verandas and weather-beaten peeling paint. It shouldn’t be hard to get in there.

  Guilt twisted in his gut. It wasn’t how he liked to do anything.

  But he was one hundred per cent sure he didn’t like the idea of being dead either. Breaking into an old shack whilst Miss Pampered Princess slept was a lapse he could live with.

  Chapter Three

  I hurried through the house to the library. Its walls were lined with ancient books slowly crumbling to dust, and the furniture cocooned in white drop sheets. The air hung around me, thick and musty.

  Above the boarded-up marble fireplace sat a portrait of Mum. The fine details covered by years of grime, though I could make out her serious expression and haunted eyes. I reached up and traced a fingertip along her high cheekbone.

  ‘I miss you.’ I whispered the words, and pressed a hand to the canvas, over her cheek. I closed my eyes and wished myself back in time. To my favourite memory. A perfect sunshine-filled childhood day, when the radio played quietly in the kitchen and my mother had called out, ‘Lunch is ready, Merry. Come on.’

  Nothing had mattered then. Nothing but sandcastles, swims in the sea, long sun-drenched days and happiness.

  ‘I wish you were here.’ My voice sounded dull in the silence.

  Blinking quickly, I pushed the past away and slid the painting sideways with a metallic screech. Debris showered down and a small, upset spider dropped to the floor.

  Behind the painting, built into the thick brick of the chimney, nestled an old-fashioned safe. I preferred the old ones. They were much more reliable than the new electronic types that could be messed about using power surges and pulse bombs.

  I twirled the knob left and right, entering numbers until the door swung open. Inside, neatly stacked, were wads of faded bank notes. My father had eccentric habits when it came to hiding cash, and every so often I’d find a stash like this, squirrelled away for a rainy day. Still legal tender, even if it was old.

  I lifted the titanium canister out of the bag and rested it on the mantelpiece as I scooped the notes into the holdall.

  Then, when the safe was empty, I dropped the bag to the floor and picked up the canister and turned it in my hands, examining it. The canister worked on fingerprint technology, and could be left in ‘open’ mode—which meant it would register my print and only work for me. I pressed my thumb into a dip in its base. With a barely audible click the chip registered my print, and then with the dull suck of a released seal the canister lid slowly opened.

  Blowing out the breath I’d been holding, I cradled it gently in both hands and gazed down at the Piprahwa Jewels.

  The canister had twelve foam-lined compartments, each containing a small crystal egg, nearly as big as a hen’s egg, but not quite. Inside each egg lay the most precious relics in all of Buddhism.

  The jewels were said to be the holy remains of Buddha. Some had been left behind in the ashes of his cremated remains, others lay for aeons with him in his tomb at Piprahwa, a tiny village that teetered on the border of North Eastern India and Nepal.

  Each egg was different. One held pearls flecked with gold, another gold nuggets with fine dark-red crystals laced over them.

  A sense of peace flowed over me as I stared at them. The knot of sadness that seemed to sit permanently in my chest faded, replaced with a feeling of contentment. I frowned at the strange mood shift and swallowed uneasily. There were strange stories about the jewels … But I was tired. It’d been a long, draining day. Jewels were things. Inert.

  Not responsible for mood swings.

  I closed the canister lid, waited for the telltale clunk that meant it’d sealed properly, and pushed it into the safe.

  ***

  In the kitchen—which had been state-of-the-art back in the late seventies—a computer perched on the bench, completely at odds with the pale green formica cupboard doors and their chunky white handles. The scre
en showed vision from infrared CCTV cameras; the driveway of the property, the surrounding gardens and down to the beach. The local community knew the house, and that it was never occupied, so the place was monitored off-site 24/7. It was the only reason it hadn’t been vandalised or burnt to the ground.

  All was clear beneath the night-vision cameras, and I knew I should sleep but my nerves were strung tight and I couldn’t relax. It wasn’t easy being here in this house, with its memories stalking me in every room.

  It’d be stupid to leave in the darkness. The jewels were too precious. The canister held Dad’s life. I wasn’t going to risk being caught alone on the road. It’d been one of the first things I’d learned from my instructors, choose where your battle will take place. It’s often the only advantage you need.

  I went back to the cellar and picked my way carefully through broken wine bottles until I found a bottle of Grange that had survived the fall.

  Back in the kitchen, I flicked off the lights, sloshed the red wine into a thick glass tumbler and settled to watch the CCTV and wait until morning.

  The house creaked and shifted as the relentless storm roared around it, but it sat staunch on its foundations, ready to protect anyone within, just as it always had. No draught disturbed the stillness inside.

  I sipped my wine. Memories crept up on me. Mum, crying as she sat at the melamine table, and reassuring me she was fine. I knew now, as an adult, that my father must have upset her. But, at the time, I was simply scared because she was so sad.

  I remembered too when she was happy. Dancing around the house, singing loud and confident in an off-key voice, running along the beach and splashing in the waves, then spinning around and around until she fell in the water. Even if it was cold. Even if it rained. Even if it was the middle of the night.

  Chapter Four

  He came just before dawn. I stayed still and unmoving, as I had through the night. Watching the CCTV. As if somewhere deep in the recesses of my psyche I’d been expecting him.