Ransomed Dreams Read Online Free PDF

moved in, to take in the view. These few meters between here and that kitchen door seem absolutely insurmountable.”
    As Eliot rambled on, Sheridan saw Luke aim a questioning glance at her. She imagined that he wondered if Eliot had heard him or if Eliot was still lost in a medicated haze.
    Yes and no. No and yes. It depended on the day.
    She merely blinked in reply. Welcome to my world, Luke. Casa de not what I signed up for.
    * * *
    After Mercedes had served them tea and gone back into the house, Eliot ended his polite chitchat. “Well, Traynor, what brings you all this way? What news do you have for my wife?”
    Luke eyed both of them from across the table before replying. “I want you to know, Eliot, that I would not have come if it weren’t necessary.”
    “I presumed that, of course.”
    “But it’s personal. The fact is, I’m not here as an employee of the government.”
    Sheridan flinched. Luke was all about government. He worked as a diplomat in foreign embassies. He most likely did all sorts of dirty work for the government. If the government hadn’t sent him, then who?
    He was watching her closely. “Calissa.”
    “My sister?”
    “She asked me to find you. Your father suffered a stroke.”
    “When?”
    “Ten days ago.”
    “I was in Mesa Aguamiel a week ago yesterday. There was no e-mail from her.”
    “She didn’t want you to read it in an e-mail.”
    “Ask me if I care.”
    “That’s what she said you would say.”
    “Ask me if I care if he’s even dead. Go ahead. Ask me.” Sheridan put a hand to her mouth and shut her eyes. When had it become so easy for her to spew out such filth?
    That was an easy one. The seed was planted just before moving to Topala, the last time she spoke with Harrison Cole, her so-called dad. Hidden away inside of her, the seed grew, nourished by a constant diet of stress. Now she was giving birth to a vileness she never would have imagined possible.
    She looked at the men and lowered her hand. “The last thing he said to me was that I’d gotten exactly what I deserved. That if I hadn’t insisted on doing my own thing in Caracas, if I had just stayed put and stuck to the wifely script, Eliot never would have been shot.”
    Her husband’s mouth was a grim line. “You cannot, absolutely cannot, give any credence whatsoever to his words. I’ve told you that time and time again.”
    She nodded. Still, she and Eliot had been at her place of business when the attack occurred. How could she ignore that fact? They weren’t anywhere near the embassy. They weren’t at some state affair. They weren’t at the airport. They weren’t doing any sort of government business whatsoever. The United States ambassador to Venezuela was with his wife in a seedy neighborhood, doing what she wanted to do.
    “Sheridan—” Luke leaned across the table—“he will probably die within days if he hasn’t already. Calissa said he’s left a raft of unfinished details, that she’s in over her head.”
    “She’s one of his assistants and has a dozen of her own assistants to take care of details.”
    “She said that what she most desperately needs right now is her sister.”
    “Calissa has never needed me in her entire life. . . .” Her voice trailed off. Calissa was seven years older and had seemed to Sheridan to be a strong, independent woman for almost as long as Sheridan could remember. Growing up together with a mother who adored them and a father who apparently didn’t had forged a special bond between the sisters, but it had been severed years ago. When their mother died, Sheridan was thirteen; Calissa stepped effortlessly into the matriarchal shoes. Sheridan lost her sister as surely as she’d lost her mother.
    It was too much to take in. Luke, her father, her sister had all violated her safety zone. She jerked as if a long bandage had been ripped from her flesh.
    Luke slid a small white envelope across the table. Nothing was written on it. “It’s for you, from