She had stood at the window and watched as they strolled across the grounds. Watched and wondered. Was he telling Nick about her dumb plea for help? God, she felt like such a…

But he did seem…

Well maybe he was just being diplomatic. What did protocol mean? Family spat. Ha! Family spat!

The dirty bastard had taken her over. Some spat.

Had he really meant to make her think that he was going to intervene? And, if he had, was it diplomacy-protocol-or was it just…?

Whatever, the place had become a funeral parlor very quickly. First, he left. Then Gordy and his funky legion. Then Nick and practically everybody on the place.

So what was going on?

Did it involve her?

She'd gone to her room and crammed the largest purse she could find with cosmetics and other dire necessities, then straight back to the garden. He was different. He was going to help. All this was some kind of protocol being worked on her behalf.

"You've got to pick your time and place," he'd said. "I always do that."

So do it, beautiful. This is the time and this is the place. Everybody's gone. So where the hell are you?

But she was just being dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb! Nobody was going to help her! What the hell could anyone do, if Nick didn't want it done? Nothing! No, nothing!

She sat down beside the pool and drew her knees up to her chin, feeling desolate and alone.

Lenny came out and looked at her, started to say something but changed his mind, then sat down at a table and started toying with a dirty glass. Watching her. Someone was forever watching her!

She called to him, "What's going on, Lenny?"

"Just taking a breather, ma'am," he replied boredly. "Can I get you something?"

"You can get me the hell out of here!" she yelled.

The house boss just chuckled at that. He'd heard it often enough. She'd even tried seducing him, once. Hell, she'd do anything to get out. Anything. She'd kill. Damn right. She'd kill.

"You need a drink," he said to her.

"Go to hell!" she yelled at him.

He chuckled again.

Then she heard it. Lenny heard it, too. The helicopter was coming back. She lay on her back to get a better angle at the sky. Lenny got to his feet and took a couple of nervous steps to ward the house.

He asked her, "Do you hear a chopper?" She said, "I didn't hear anything."

"You'd better get inside."

"Go to hell, Lenny. I'll go inside when I want to go inside. Who're you expecting? The inspector-general?"

He ignored that and said, "Yeah, it's a chopper, all right."

She yelled, "Cheese it, Lenny, it's the cops! You'd better get your gun and hurry out there! They left you holding the bag, dummy What're you gonna do now?"

He growled, "Please settle down, ma'am. This ain't no joke."

A man with a submachine gun jogged around the corner of the glass-enclosed gardens. Lenny yelled at him. "Cover the pad, Jimmy!"

The man yelled back, "S'where I'm headed." "You stay put!" Lenny snarled at her as he hurried into the house.

"You go straight to hell," she said, under her breath.

She stood up and hung the purse from her shoulder.

She was ready to go. Dumb, maybe, but she was ready for anything. Or so she thought. But she was not quite prepared for that which immediately happened. It startled her-scared hell out of her is what it did. She did not know where he came from or how he got there. But suddenly there he was, at her side, a hand on hers and that soft voice telling her, "Let's go. Quietly."

You bet.

Damn right.

And, scary or not, she just loved his protocol.

CHAPTER 15

As was so often the case, getting out was a bit more difficult than getting in. Time had a way of working for the other side in such situations. You can fool all the people anytime, sure-but not for very long at a time. So Bolan was not all that surprised to find an obstacle in the path of withdrawal.

They were halfway down the slope and moving swiftly through the timber when Bolan abruptly came eyeball to eyeball with that obstacle. The guy was packing a grease gun close to the chest, and those eyes were both electrified and confused in the sudden confrontation.

Bolan's reaction was quicker and more positive. He doubled the guy over with a knee to the gut and snapped his neck in the spontaneous follow-through. The only sounds of the encounter were a grunting whoof from the midriff slam and the unmistakable pop of separating vertebrae.

The woman gasped with horror and fell to her knees in the underbrush.

Bolan set the safety on the grease gun and wordlessly handed it to the woman, then draped the dead man over his shoulder and continued the descent.

He heard her scrambling along close behind, breathing hard and beginning to come unglued. The grimness of her little adventure was settling in. He paused and turned back to tell her, "Come on. We're almost clear."

Those haunted eyes were now saucer-wide and inching toward hysteria-but she was fighting it. "I'm okay," she puffed. "Keep going."

Grimaldi was pacing the turf beside the helicopter with a. revolver in hand. He wasted no time with greetings, but hopped aboard at first sight of them and fired the engine.

Bolan stowed his dead cargo behind the seat then lifted the lady aboard and moved quickly in behind her. The little craft leapt off immediately and resumed the ground-hugging flight along the base of the ridge. Seconds later they were around, the bend, and lifting toward a more comfortable altitude.

Molly Franklin Copa, wedged small and shrinking between the two men, an automatic weapon on her lap, sat quietly with both hands covering her face.

Bolan donned his headset and told the pilot, "That was some kind of flying, Jack. Thanks."

"Say it again when I quit shaking," Grimaldi requested. "What's the cargo?"

"A Bad Luck Charlie," Bolan explained. "I couldn't leave it behind. Dead men do tell tales."

The pilot grunted an unintelligible response to that and turned a disturbed look toward the woman. "So do live women," he said with some discomfort.

"I think we'll enjoy her tales, Jack," Bolan replied. "Protect yourself, though."

"Yeah, sure." Grimaldi slipped on a pair of smoked glasses and donned a baseball-style cap. He grinned. "Think she'll give me an autograph?"

Bolan said, "I'm expecting much more than that." He plugged in another headset and placed it on Mrs. Copa's pretty head.

Yeah. A hell of a lot more than that.

So often, success is harder to live with than failure. Especially when success seems to come so easily. It had come to young Molly Franklin like a hand from heaven. She had "paid no dues," as the showbiz folk liked to put it. But it seemed that she'd been a good kid with warm ideals and a strong sense of gratitude-and that was the chief source of all her problems. She'd been a pushover for every sob story in town, an easy mark for sponging friends and relatives, and a sitting duck for all the vultures of the business who saw nothing but dollar signs when they looked at her.

So she'd had failure in success, agony with her joys, frustration with triumphs. Ten years of that had set her up perfectly for Nick Copa. He caught her on the rebound from a second miserable marriage-at a time when her career was being threatened by a growing drinking problem and an incompetent business manager.

They were quietly married in Vegas following a whirlwind, sixty-hour courtship. And Copa immediately set about putting the Molly Franklin Company in order. Apparently he'd made a few offers which certain people could not refuse, because he cut through a stultifying legal process which could have taken years to accomplish, Almost overnight he fired her manager, switched her to a different booking outfit, killed an exclusive recording contract, and took over the whole works himself. Several days later he ran off all the loungers and spongers from Franklin Place, the ridge-top estate which had been Molly's home for several years, replacing them very quickly with his own cadre.