Falco: The Dark Guardian Read online

  “Is this what you wanted to talk about? To tell me you’ve come up with absolution for yourself by pretending your genes are my destiny? Well, it won’t work. I am not you. And this so-called discussion is at an—”

  Cesare took something from the folder on his desk and pushed it toward Falco. It appeared to be a glossy page, an advertisement, torn from a magazine.

  “Do you know this woman?”

  Falco barely spared the picture a glance.

  “I know a lot of women,” he said coldly. “Surely your spies have told you that.”

  “Indulge me. Look at her.”

  What the hell did it matter? Falco picked up the photo. It was an ad for something expensive. Perfume, jewelry, clothing—it was hard to tell.

  The focus of the page, though, was clear enough.

  It was the woman.

  She was seated crossways in an armchair, one long leg on the floor, the other draped over the chair’s arm, a shoe with the kind of heel that should have been declared lethal dangling from her toes. She wore lace. Scarlet lace. A teddy. A chemise. He had no idea which it was, only that it showed almost as much cleavage as leg.

  A spectacular body. An equally spectacular face. Oval. Delicate. The essence of femininity. High cheekbones, eyes as amber as a cat’s, lashes long and thick, the same ebony color as her long, straight hair.

  She was smiling at the camera. At the viewer.

  At him.

  It was, he understood, a deliberate illusion. A damned effective one. Her smile, the tilt of her head, even her posture, dared a man to want her. To be foolish enough to think he could have her. It was a smile that offered as much sexual pleasure as a man could want in a lifetime.

  Something hot and dangerous rolled through Falco’s belly.

  “Well? Do you recognize her?”

  He looked up. Cesare’s eyes locked on his. Falco tossed the photo on the desk.

  “I told you I didn’t. Okay? Are we done here?”

  “Her name is Elle. Elle Bissette. She was a model. Now she is an actress.”

  “Good for her.”

  Cesare took something else from the folder. Another ad? He held it toward Falco, but Falco didn’t move.

  “What is this? You expect me to spend the next hour playing Name the Celebrity?”

  “Per favore, Falco. I ask you, please. Look at the photo.”

  Falco’s eyebrows rose. Please? In Italian and in English. He had never heard his father use those words or anything close to them. What the hell, he thought, and reached for the photo.

  Bile rose in his throat.

  It was the same ad but someone had used a red pen to X out her eyes. To trace a crude line of stitches across her lips. To draw a heavy line across her throat and dab red dots from her throat to her breasts. To circle her breasts in the same bright, vicious crimson.

  “Miss Bissette received it in the mail.”

  “What did the cops say?”

  “Nothing. She refuses to contact them.”

  “She’s a fool,” Falco said bluntly, “if she won’t go to the authorities.”

  “The parents of the Turkish boy went to you, not the authorities. They feared seeking official help.”

  “This is America.”

  “Fear is fear, Falco, no matter where one lives. She is afraid or perhaps she does not trust the police. Whatever the reason, she refuses to contact them.” Cesare paused. “Miss Bissette is making a film in Hollywood. The producer is, shall we say, an old friend.”

  “Ah. I get it now. Your pal’s worried about his investment.”

  “It concerns him, yes. And he needs my help.”

  “Send him some of your blood money.”

  “Not my financial help. He needs my help to safeguard Miss Bissette.”

  “I’m sure your goons will love L.A.”

  Cesare chuckled. “Can you see my men in Beverly Hills?”

  Falco almost laughed. He had to admit, the idea was amusing—and, suddenly, it all came together. The talk of what had happened in Turkey, this conversation about Elle Bissette…

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  Falco nodded. “I know some guys who do bodyguard work for celebrities. I’ll call around, put you in touch—”

  “I am already in touch,” Cesare said gently. “With you.”

  “Me?” This time, Falco did laugh. “I’m an investor, Father, not a bodyguard.”

  “You did not say that to the people you helped in Turkey.”

  “That was different. They turned to me and I did what I had to do.”

  “As I am turning to you, mio figlio, and asking that you do what must be done.”

  Falco’s face hardened. “You want some names and phone numbers, fine. Otherwise, I’m out of here.”

  Cesare didn’t answer. Falco snorted, turned on his heel, headed for the door again, changed his mind and decided to exit through the French doors hidden by the heavy drapes. The mood he was in, the last thing he wanted was to risk running in to his mother or his sisters.

  “Wait.” His father hurried after him. “Take the folder. Everything you need is in it.”

  Falco grabbed the folder. It was easier than arguing.

  By the time he’d taxied to his mid-sixties town house, he’d come up with the names of four men who could do this job and do it well. Once home, he poured a brandy, took the folder and his cell phone and headed outside to his walled garden. It was close to sunset; the air was chill but he liked it out here, with the noise of Manhattan shut away.

  There was nothing of much use in the folder. Stuff about the movie; a letter from the producer to Cesare.

  And the pictures. The one with her in lace. The marked-up duplicate. And another that his father had not shown him, a photo of Bissette standing on a beach, looking over her shoulder at the camera. No lace. No stiletto heels. She was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts.

  Falco put the three pictures on the top of a glass table and looked from one to the other.

  The one of her sexy and mysterious was a turn-on if you liked that kind of thing. He didn’t. Yeah, he liked crimson and lace and stiletto heels well enough; was there a man who didn’t? But the pose was blatantly phony. The smile was false. The woman looking at the camera had no substance. She might have been looking at a million guys instead of him.

  The mutilated picture made his gut knot. It was an outright threat, crude but effective.

  The third photo was the one that caught him. It was unselfconscious. Unposed. A simple shot of a beautiful woman walking on a beach, needing no artifice to make her look beautiful.

  But there was more to it than that.

  She’d sensed someone was watching her. He’d been the watcher often enough in what he thought of as his former life to know how subjects looked when they suspected the unwelcome presence of an observer. He could see it in her eyes. In the angle of her jaw. In the way she held her hair back from her face. Wariness. Fear. Distress.

  And more.

  Determination. Defiance. An attitude that, despite everything, said, Hey, pal, don’t screw with me.

  “Goddammit,” Falco growled.

  Then he grabbed his cell phone and arranged for a chartered plane to fly him to the West Coast first thing in the morning.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ELLE HAD spent most of the morning in bed with a stranger.

  The stranger was tall and good-looking and maybe he was a good kisser. She didn’t really know.

  The thing was, she didn’t like kissing. She knew less about it than, she figured, 98 percent of the female population of the United States over the age of sixteen, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know how to make kissing seem fantastic, especially with a guy who looked like this.

  Kissing, the same as walking and talking, laughing and crying and all the other things an actress did, was part of the job. She had to remember that. This was a movie. Kissing the man in whose arms she lay was, yes, part of the job.

  No question that women everywhere would change places with her in a heartbeat. Fans, other actresses… Chad Scott was world-famous. He was box office gold. And, for this scene, at least, he was all hers.

  Elle knew how lucky she was. She hated herself for not being able to get into character this morning. Love scenes were always tough but today…

  Today, things were not going well at all.

  It wasn’t her co-star’s fault. She’d worried he might be all walking, talking ego, but Chad had turned out to be a nice guy. He’d shaken her hand when they were introduced days ago, apologized for arriving after everyone else. She knew he hadn’t had to do that. They’d spent five minutes in small talk. Then they’d run their lines. Finally, they’d shot their first scene, which was actually a middle scene in the film. Movie scenes were rarely shot sequentially.

  Today, they were shooting their first love scene. It was, she knew, pivotal to the story.

  The set was simple, just a seemingly haphazard sprawl of blankets spread over the sand near a big Joshua cactus. She was wearing a strapless slip; the camera would only catch her head, her arms and her bare shoulders, suggesting that she was naked. Chad was shirtless and wearing jeans. They were surrounded by a mile of electrical cable, reflectors and boom mikes, and the million and one people it took to film even the simplest scene. Antonio Farinelli, as hot a director as existed, had told the two of them he hoped to do the scene in one take.

  So far, there’d been four.

  A sudden gust of wind had ruined the first shot but the three others… Her fault, every one. She’d twice blown her lines; the third time she’d looked over Chad’s shoulder instead of into his eyes.

  Farinelli sounded angrier each time he yelled, “Cut.”

  Elle sat up, waiting while the direct
or spoke with the lighting guy. Her co-star sat up, too, and stretched. Chad had been really good about all the delays. He’d obviously sensed she was having a problem and he’d made little jokes at his own expense. She knew they were meant to put her at ease. Heck, he said, I’m pretty sure I shaved this morning. And don’t feel bad, kid, my wife once told me the ceiling needed paint at a moment just like this.

  Everyone who heard him laughed because he was not just a hot property, he was a hot guy. Elle laughed, too. At least, she did her best to fake it. She was an actress. Illusion was everything.

  In real life, she could never have lain in a man’s arms and gazed into his eyes as he brought his mouth to hers, but then, reality was a bitch.

  And reality was the phone call that had awakened her at three o’clock that morning.

  “Darling girl,” the low male voice had whispered, “did you get the picture? Did you get my note?” A low, terrible laugh. “You’re waiting for me, aren’t you, sugar?”

  Her heart had slammed into her throat. She’d thrown the telephone on the floor as if it were a scorpion that had crept in under the motel room door. Then she’d run to the bathroom and vomited.

  Now, all she could hear was that voice in her head. All she could see was that mutilated ad from the magazine, the note nobody knew about. Bad enough Farinelli knew about the ad. If only he hadn’t walked into her on-set trailer just as she’d opened the innocent-looking white envelope she’d found propped against the mirror of her makeup table.

  “Elle,” Farinelli had said briskly, “about tomorrow’s schedule…”

  But she wasn’t listening. The blood had drained from her head. She’d been as close to fainting as she’d ever been in her life.

  “Elle?” Farinelli had said, and he’d plucked the envelope and what she’d taken out of it from her hand.

  “Madre di Dio,” he’d said, his words harsh with fury. “Where did this come from?”

  She had no idea. Once she got her breath back, she told him that. A crazy person must have sent it. She’d had nasty little notes before, especially after the Bon Soir lingerie ads, but this marked-up photo…

  Still, anything was possible. Her face was out there. In those two-year-old ads and now in stuff the publicity people for Dangerous Games had started planting. It was nothing, she and Farinelli finally agreed, but if she received any more things like this, she was to tell him and they’d go to the police.

  Elle had agreed. She’d told herself the photo was a one-shot. Whoever had sent it would surely not contact her again.

  Wrong. A few days later, a note arrived in her mail. Its message was horrible. Filthy. Graphic. And it was signed. The signature stunned her but it had to be a hoax. She told herself she would not let it upset her. She was an actress, she could pull it off.

  Evidently, she was not as good an actress as she thought.

  Farinelli had taken to asking her if she was okay and though she always said yes, certainly, she was fine, she knew he didn’t believe it. He’d proved it two days ago when he stopped by her trailer during a break. Was she ill? No, she assured him. Was she upset about her part? No, no, she loved her part. Farinelli had nodded. Then he could only assume that the photo he had seen was still upsetting her because she was most assuredly not herself.

  Elle had tried telling him he was wrong. He silenced her with an imperious wave of one chubby hand. He had given the situation much thought. The photo had been of her but it had been meant for him. She had been in, what, two, three films? She was almost unknown. He, however, was famous. He was taking a big chance, starring her in Dangerous Games. Obviously, someone understood that and wished to ruin his film.

  But, by God, he would not permit it. He had millions of his own money tied up in this project and he was not going to let someone destroy him. He was going to contact the police and let them deal with the problem.

  Elle couldn’t let that happen. The police would poke and pry, ask endless questions, snoop into her past and find that the story of her life that she’d invented had nothing to do with reality.

  So she’d resorted to high drama. She pleaded. She wept. She became a diva. A risky gambit but she had not come as far as she had by playing things safe. No guts, no glory. Trite and clichéd, maybe, but true. Besides, really, what did she have to lose? A police investigation would destroy the burgeoning career she had worked so hard for. She was twenty-seven, a little long in the tooth to go back to modeling….

  More to the point, she could not face her ugly, ugly past all over again.

  In the end, Farinelli had thrown up his hands. “Basta,” he’d said. “Enough! No police.”

  A disaster avoided. She’d forced herself to forget the ad, the note, to keep focused on the movie. And then that phone call at three this morning…

  “Okay, people” Farinelli said. “Let’s try it again.”

  Elle lay back. Chad leaned over her, waiting for the camera to roll. She felt his breath on her face….

  “Hey,” her co-star said softly. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, with no conviction at all.

  Chad sat up and looked at Farinelli. “Tony? How ’bout we break for lunch?”

  The director sighed. “Why not? Okay, people. Lunch. Half an hour.”

  Chad stood up, held out his hand and helped Elle to her feet. One of Farinelli’s gofers rushed over and held out an oversized white terrycloth robe. Elle snugged into it and Chad squeezed her shoulder.

  “Sun’s a killer, kid,” he said softly. “Some shade, some water and you’ll be fine.”

  Her smile was real this time. He truly was a nice man, a rare species as far as she was concerned.

  “Thank you,” she said, and she knotted the belt of the robe, slid into the rubber thongs the gofer dropped at her feet and made her way quickly to the half-dozen Airstream trailers clustered like Conestoga wagons awaiting an Indian attack a couple of hundred yards away.

  Chad Scott was right, she thought as she went up the two steps to the door of her trailer. Cool air, cool water, some time alone and she’d be fine.

  “Absolutely fine,” she said as the door swung shut…

  A man was standing against the wall just beyond the closed door. Tall. Dark-haired. Wraparound sunglasses. Her brain took quick inventory…and then her heart leaped like a startled cat and she opened her mouth to scream.

  But the man was fast. He was on her, turning the locking bolt, one hand over her mouth before the scream erupted. He gripped her by the shoulder with his free hand, spun her around and hauled her back against him.

  She could feel every hard inch of his leanly muscled body.

  “Screaming isn’t going to help,” he said sharply.

  A waste of time.

  Falco could damned near feel the scream struggling to burst from her lips.

  To say this wasn’t exactly the reception he’d expected was an understatement. He’d spoken with the director, Farinelli, on his cell from the plane. He’d told him when he’d be arriving, more or less, and the director had said that was fine, it gave him lots of time to brief the Bissette woman and that it would be best if he, Falco, met with her in private because she’d probably want his presence on the set kept quiet, so—

  “Hey!”

  She had kicked him. Useless, as kicks went, because she was kicking backward and wearing ugly rubber beach thongs, but it told him what he needed to know about whether or not she’d calmed down.

  Okay. He’d try again.

  “Ms. Bissette. I’m sorry if I startled you but—”

  She grunted. Struggled. Her backside dug into his groin. It was a small, rounded backside and under different circumstances, he’d have enjoyed the feel of it—but not when the backside might as well have belonged to a wildcat.

  “Dammit,” Falco said. He swung her toward him, one hand still clasping her shoulder, the other still clamped over her mouth. “Pay attention, okay? I. Am. Not. Going. To. Hurt. You.”

  Mistake.

  She slugged him. Two quick blows, one to the chest, one to the jaw. He was damned if he knew what to do with her now. He had only two hands and she was already keeping both of them occupied.

  “Okay,” he said grimly. “You want to play rough? That’s fine.”

  He shoved her, hard. She stumbled back against the door and he went with her, pinned her there with his body. Her hands were trapped against his chest; her legs blocked by his. She was tall but he was a lot taller; her head was tilted back so that she was staring up at him with eyes even more tawny than they’d seemed in the defaced magazine ad.