Heart of the Dragon Read Online Free PDF Page A

defensive about intimacy was to become brutally insensitive. He preferred loneliness to that.
    He rubbed his forehead, feeling the throbbing in his temples. Thailand stirred up old memories of Vietnam, where, thirty years ago, he’d been born, and where he’d spent the first eight years of his life. On his mother’s side he was one-fourth Vietnamese and one-fourth Egyptian; on his father’s he was half American. He’d never known his biological father. His adopted father, Audubon, loved him and was loved in return, but even the powerful and wealthy Audubon couldn’t change some of life’s crueler realities.
    After the masseuse left, he placed a call to Audubon, in Virginia. His father’s longtime assistant, Clarice, quizzed him about his eating habits, whether or not he was behaving himself, and generally treated him as she always had, as if he were still the stony-faced eight-year-old who’d arrived in Audubon’s home straight from the streets of Saigon, in great need of a motherly person to order him around.
    Smiling, he affectionately chided her for talking about personal subjects when they were supposed to be conducting business. His father’s highly organized network of private security people owed its smooth communications to her, but he enjoyed teasing her, and she enjoyed telling him to mind his elders.
    “Audubon and Elena are in Richmond at the symphony,” Clarice said. “But I can page him. Is it urgent?”
    Kash smiled to himself in approval. His adoptive father, now happily married after many years of devoting himself to his unique security service, deserved the privacy and leisure. “No, I only wanted to discuss tactics with him. It can wait. Give him and Elena my love. And if you don’t mind, start checking background on someone for me.”
    “I live to serve, boy,” Clarice said with her cheeky Texas twang. “Who’s the subject?”
    He told her all he knew about Rebecca Brown. Clarice sniffed smugly. “If she’s for real, I’ll find out.”
    “She may be for real, but she may also be working for the Nalinats.”
    “Have a little faith, Kash. Some people
are
what they seem to be.”
    He was debating that philosophy seconds later when the phone rang. Kash listened to his Thai assistant, who’d been instructed to follow Rebecca Brown any time she left her hotel. When the man told Kash where the intrepid Ms. Brown and her mysterious escorts had gone, and that she hadn’t gone willingly, he was bewildered. He dressed quickly, almost jerking on his clothes in haste. A surprising sense of protectiveness shot through him, along with some guilt. Only
he
had the right to torment Rebecca Brown.
    “What do you want from Mayura Vatan?” the wiry man demanded again.
    “Nothing,” Rebecca said grimly. Now that they’d takenthe blindfold off, her gaze darted to the walls of the tiny room. They were covered in red velvet and painted with gaudy murals of men and women making love in a variety of badly painted but explicit positions. Her stomach twisted in disgust at the raw sleaziness of the room, with its smell of stale incense, its faded couch and battered table, and most of all the squeaky bed with its bare mattress. She sat as close to the edge as she could. They’d tied her hands behind her and her feet to the bed’s foot. The man who kept asking her questions was seated close beside her. He smelled of sweat and fish. The other man sat on the couch, twirling the knife in one hand.
    This was the last straw. She didn’t know where she was, or who they were, or what might happen next. But they worked for Kashadlin Santelli, and she’d rather suffer than cooperate with
him
.
    The man beside her ripped the necklace off. She sucked in a sharp breath as pain zipped along the back of her neck. “This is Thai workmanship,” the man said in heavily accented English. “Where did you get it?”
    “The jewelry section at the five-and-dime in Dubuque, Iowa.”
    The men traded puzzled, then angry,