Seduction Game

by Pamela Clare

  Beneath Dudaev, a pool of crimson began to soak into the sheets.

  For two long years, Nick had thought of this moment, imagining the sense of triumph he would feel as he glared into Dudaev’s eyes, spoke Dani’s name, and pulled the trigger. He waited for the elation to come. But nothing inside him seemed to have changed. And it occurred to him as he stared down at Dudaev’s corpse that the fucker had suffered a much less painful death than Dani.

  It’s better than you deserved, you son of a bitch.

  He picked up the shell casings, glanced at Ms. Bradshaw, lying unconscious and all but naked on the other side of the bed, and immediately felt a tug of regret. He quashed it. Why should he care if she woke up next to a corpse, blood spatter on her skin? It hadn’t been his idea for her to go to bed with the guy. Besides, he had probably saved her life. There was nothing he could do about the mess anyway.

  Shit.

  He slipped the pistol back into his shoulder holster, then took Ms. Bradshaw’s wrist and felt for a pulse. It was slow, but steady, her breathing even. He hadn’t been sure who would drink from which glass, so he’d dusted each with enough drug to subdue a two-hundred-pound male. Relative to her weight, Bradshaw had ingested a dangerously high dose.

  Nick found his gaze traveling along her legs to the apex of her thighs, and over the curve of her hip to the fullness of her very real breasts, the tassel of diamonds draped over one pale pink nipple, cold, glittering ice against soft, warm skin.

  He jerked his gaze away.

  You’re an asshole, Andris.

  He needed to knock this shit off and get to work. He’d already compromised part of his mission to save her life. He wasn’t being paid to stare at her tits. And, no, looking her up and down did not constitute a search.

  He grabbed a throw blanket from a nearby chair and draped it over her to keep her body temp up, then went to work, searching for the missing flash drive.

  Dudaev was cocky and not terribly smart, so Nick went straight to the safe, punched in the hotel’s override code, and opened it. There, next to a mean-looking Makarov PM and thirty grand, sat an RFID-safe case. Inside was the USB drive.

  Gotcha.

  Nick put it back inside the case and pocketed it, leaving the pistol and the jack.

  He had the most important thing he’d come for, but there was more.

  He walked out into the living area. A copy of the open New York Times sat on the coffee table beside Ms. Bradshaw’s clutch, which held exactly what he’d expected it would—makeup, house keys, cell phone, a couple of credit cards, and tampons. Careful not to step in the dead bodyguard’s blood, he searched the chairs, the couch cushions, the cabinets, and shelves, just being thorough.

  He found a listening device on the back of the frame of the portrait of Teddy Roosevelt, one he didn’t recognize.

  Who the hell put you there?

  He deactivated it and examined it, turning it over in his gloved palm. It closely resembled a black button and appeared to be similar to technology used by the Agency. He pocketed it as well, knowing the experts at Langley would want to examine it.

  In the office area, he found a laptop sitting open on the desk, a leather briefcase beside it. Dudaev had left the computer running.

  Nick tapped the track pad to awaken the display.

  Images flashed across the screen.

  They were all there—Kramer, Daly, Carver, McGowen, even Bauer and Nick’s old buddy Lee Nguyen.

  And Dani.

  What the . . . ?

  Then the laptop seemed to realize it had drifted off. The images on the screen disappeared, and a small white box popped up, prompting him to enter the password.

  So Dudaev did have intel on all the missing and dead officers. That’s probably what was on the stolen flash drive. Somehow, Dudaev had managed to decrypt the files.

  But something didn’t feel right.

  Why did Dudaev have intel on Dani? She’d been dead for two years now. The Agency would have purged any files it had on her long ago.

  The Batumi op.

  Dudaev had been there. All of the officers who’d disappeared or been killed in the past six months had been there. Now Dudaev had files about them on his computer, files he’d most likely taken from the stolen Agency flash drive.

  The internal investigation.

  Was the Agency investigating that operation?

  Nick had always had questions about that night. He’d handled the security personally, prepared for every contingency. Or so he’d thought.

  Kramer’s words echoed through his mind.

  Trust no one.

  Something was wrong.

  It’s above your pay grade, Andris.

  The best he could do was get these files back to Langley and let the people who got paid the six-figure salaries sort it out.

  He picked up the computer then left the room, concealing the laptop on the room service cart. He made his way down the service elevator, through the kitchen, and out into the alley, an image of Ms. Bradshaw lying helpless and all but naked beside Dudaev’s corpse trapped in his mind.

  * * *

  It was pain and bright light that roused Holly.

  “She’s alive. We called for an ambulance.”

  She tried to open her eyes, but couldn’t, pain ricocheting through her skull. She tried to sit up, but couldn’t move, her body limp. She heard herself whimper, her head throbbing so hard she thought it might shatter.

  “The cops are on their way, too.”

  “You ever seen anything like this before?”

  “No, man, never.”

  Men’s voices.

  An ambulance? The cops? What had happened?

  A car accident? A migraine?

  Thirsty. She was so thirsty. And her head . . .

  Oh, God!

  Holly willed herself to open her eyes, and found herself in a hotel room, two men in hotel security uniforms standing over her.

  “Where . . . ?” She tried to ask the question, but couldn’t muster the strength.

  A wave of nausea rolled through her, a strange chemical taste in the back of her throat. Moaning, she turned onto her side, something cool and heavy brushing against her breast. She glanced down at it through half-closed lids.

  A diamond necklace with a sapphire.

  What . . . ?

  If only her head didn’t hurt so much. If only she could think clearly.

  Was she hungover? That would explain the headache and her thirst.

  She opened her eyes. When had she closed them again?

  She heard shouting in the distance, two men, their voices angry.

  “You’ll stay out here till the police say it’s okay for you to enter. That’s hotel policy, and that’s my policy.”

  Two men were still standing there, but they weren’t looking at Holly. They were staring at the bed beside her, a look of stunned revulsion on their faces.

  Holly followed their line of vision.

  She heard a strangled cry and realized she was screaming, her heart thrashing in her chest as adrenaline hit her bloodstream.

  A man lay dead beside her, two holes in his forehead, blood everywhere.

  In that moment, she knew only that she needed to get out of the bed, away from him, away from the stench of blood, and . . .

  Oh, my God!

  It was on her.

  Blood had soaked into the sheets, spattered the right side of her face and body, bits of brains on the sheet like curds of cottage cheese.

  On a burst of adrenaline, she sat bolt upright—and then her training kicked in, clearing her mind, overcoming for a moment the pain in her skull.

  Sachino Dudaev.

  The dead man was Sachino Dudaev.

  The necklace was a gift from him.

  She’d been on a job. She’d found the USB drive Dudaev had stolen and had downloaded the info into her cell phone. They’d had some champagne, and he’d undressed her. And then . . .

  She couldn’t remember anything a
fter that.

  Dudaev must have drugged her.

  And then someone had killed him.

  Someone had been here in this room. Someone had killed Dudaev and left her all but naked in bed with his corpse.

  Perfect. Just flipping perfect.

  For a moment she thought she might throw up—which would be gross.

  Then her heart gave a hard knock.

  The cell phone!

  It held extremely important classified information, stolen intel she’d been sent by the Agency to retrieve. Had the killer taken it? She tried to remember where she’d put it. If only the throbbing inside her skull would stop.

  Damn it!

  “Please.” She pointed toward the living area, struggling to piece words together, her mouth dry, her mind sluggish. “My clutch. In the other room. My cell phone. I . . . I want to call my mother.”

  One man looked to the other, who nodded, then hurried off to get it for her.

  It was then Holly realized she was covered to the waist by a throw blanket. It had probably slipped down when she’d tried to sit up. She took hold of the end and covered her bare breasts, just as the man returned with her clutch.

  “Thank you.” She took it and fumbled with the clasp.

  The cell phone fell out, landing on her lap.

  Thank God!

  She closed her eyes, drew a slow breath of relief.

  Aware the men were watching her, she typed in her password and activated the emergency retrieval beacon, assuring that no matter what happened to her or where the cell phone went, her case officer would be able to find it.

  But what about the computer? She still needed to plant that virus before the police arrived. The moment they got here, this would become a crime scene. She could already hear sirens down the street.

  “My computer. It’s in the office. On the desk. Can you bring it to me?”

  One of the men left the room only to return a few moments later. “There’s no computer anywhere. The office is empty.”

  Oh, God! Damn! Damn!

  Whoever had murdered Dudaev had probably been after the same information as she. She’d bet the USB drive was gone, too. Well, they wouldn’t be able to retrieve anything from it. She had destroyed that data. But the computer . . .

  For the first time in almost a decade, she had failed.

  And then it hit her.

  The listening device she’d planted.

  Wouldn’t her team have realized already that something had gone terribly wrong? Wouldn’t whoever had been monitoring the audio feed have heard the gunshots? Even if the killer had used a suppressor, which he almost certainly had, there was no way to silence the sound of a pistol firing completely. If they’d left her here . . .

  Had she been discarded?

  The thought brought with it a wave of panic, her head spinning.

  No. No! They wouldn’t abandon her unless her connection to the Agency had somehow been exposed. If the killer had known why she was really there, wouldn’t he—or she—have killed Holly, too? The situation was probably too hot for anyone to get in and get her out without making things worse.

  The thought gave her some comfort.

  You’re supposed to be calling your mother.

  She remembered what she’d told the security guards, but the last person in the world she wanted to call was her mother. Still, Holly did need help. She needed help here and now, in the real world, where, apparently, her case officer and team couldn’t reach her. But she knew someone who would help.

  She tapped his cell number into her keypad, certain he was still asleep. It wasn’t daylight yet, and it was a Saturday. She hated to bother him, but she had no choice.

  “Darcangelo.” Julian’s voice sent a surge of relief through her.

  With relief came a rush of tears, words spilling out of her in senseless babble. “It’s H-Holly. Someone killed my date last night. Someone drugged me. Maybe he drugged me. I don’t know. But someone murdered him while I was next to him in his bed. I woke up, and he was dead. There are blood and bits of brains and—”

  “Are the police there? Is medical there?”

  “N-not yet. I can hear sirens. Hotel security guards are with me.”

  “Hang tight. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t answer any questions. Don’t touch anything. Where are you?”

  “The Roosevelt Suite at the Palace.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Chapter Four

  The room around Holly seemed to explode into questions and camera clicks as first the police arrived and then EMTs and the medical examiner.

  “What’s your name?”

  “How did you get here, Holly?”

  “What do you remember?”

  Holly had done the so-called Walk of Shame before, heading home in the morning wearing a cocktail dress and heels after a night of fun and sex. She’d never once felt the way she felt now—raw, humiliated, exposed.

  Holding a blanket against her chest to cover herself, she deflected the barrage of questions as best she could, the noise and light making her headache worse, until she truly feared she would throw up or pass out.

  Then Julian walked in.

  Wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, his dark hair pulled back into a short ponytail, he flashed his badge, then slipped his hands into nitrile gloves and his shoes into blue booties before approaching her. His gaze moved from her to what was left of Dudaev and back again, and she saw his expression darken.

  “What was your relationship with . . . ?” a detective asked her, his words trailing off when he saw Julian. “Hey, Darcangelo. What’re you doing here?”

  Julian shook the man’s hand. “Holly’s a friend of mine. Can you cut her a break, man? She needs medical attention. Let’s move her out of your way so the EMTs can do their job. You can question her later.”

  He stood back and held up a blanket to shield her from view while the EMTs lifted her to a gurney and covered her with a sheet. They wheeled her into the spacious bathroom, where it was quieter.

  Julian stood beside her while an EMT took her vitals. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I have the world’s worst hangover.”

  “I bet.” He gave her hand a squeeze. “Do you remember anything?”

  “We were talking, sipping champagne. We went to the bedroom. He . . .” This was harder to talk about than she’d imagined. “He undressed me, and then . . . that’s it.”

  “BP is eighty-eight over sixty. Oxygen saturation is ninety-two.”

  One of the EMTs produced an oxygen mask. “We need to give you some oxygen, okay? We also need to start an IV.”

  “Really? Do you have to do the IV? Can’t we just skip that? I hate needles.”

  Julian held her hand and tried to distract her while they jabbed the biggest needle Holly had ever seen into her arm and got the IV going. “Police are probably going to take your clothes and shoes into evidence. They will likely also request a forensic exam once you get to the ER. You can refuse, of course. I know it won’t be easy, but it might turn up evidence that will help police catch this killer.”

  “You mean . . . Ouch! A rape kit?”

  There was nothing like a vaginal exam to make a horrid day better.

  “You were drugged and unconscious and alone with a killer, Holly. You can’t be certain he didn’t do other things while he was there. Even if all he did was touch you, he might have left a fingerprint or DNA. There could be evidence on your body that might help us catch him.”

  She started to tell Julian that a man who hadn’t had time to steal a gazillion-karat diamond-and-sapphire necklace probably hadn’t had time to whip out his weenie and rape her, but thought the better of it. Instead, she nodded and closed her eyes, her tears returning, sliding down her temples. “This sucks.”

  He gave her hand another squeeze. “Yeah, sweetheart, it really does.”

  Outside the bathroom door, detectives compared notes with the ME, telling one another what Holly already knew. “It looks
like a professional hit to me. We got a DB by the sofa, a DB in here. Both were killed by a double tap to the head from a twenty-two at point-blank range. She could have killed them, then drugged herself, but the blood spatter on her skin shows she was lying on her back right there when the victim was killed. Unless her reach is longer than a fucking orangutan’s, there’s no way she could have fired those shots.”

  Holly must have drifted off because the next thing she knew they were in the elevator. Julian stood next to the gurney, talking to dispatch on his radio. “Eight-twenty-five. We’re heading to the hotel’s rear entrance. I want a wall of uniforms between the public sidewalk and the alley. Over.”

  “Copy, eight-twenty-five.”

  He noticed her watching him. “They’ve moved the ambulance to the rear entrance, and we’ve got units in place to hold the press and gawkers back.”

  “Thank you.” Holly’s voice was muffled by the oxygen mask. “For everything.”

  He looked down at her, smiled, his blue eyes full of concern. “You just rest.”

  Guilt niggled at her. If Julian knew the whole truth . . .

  She fought to put the guilt aside. These were her friends, the closest friends she’d ever had. They cared about her, even if they didn’t know everything about her. She did what she did in part for them. She did it for her country. If that meant the occasional lie or letting them believe things about her that weren’t true, that’s just how it was.

  But this felt different. She had crossed a line.

  She’d gotten into trouble on the job, and she’d called Julian, knowing he would come. She hadn’t thought for a moment that she would be exposing him to the horror that was in that hotel room. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For dragging you out of bed on a Saturday. For taking you away from Tessa and the kids. For making you see . . . that.”

  “I’m just glad I was able to be here.” He gave her a rueful grin. “Believe it or not, I’ve seen much worse.”

  “Really?” She felt tears sting her eyes again, her voice breaking. “I haven’t.”

  She’d never seen a dead person, much less one with holes in his head. Her job entailed serious risk, but it was well managed. It wasn’t like the work done by other operatives. She didn’t even own a firearm. She was only called up a handful of times a year, and when she was, it usually just entailed going on a few dates with someone so she could slip a GPS tracking device or listening devices into his car, condo, or hotel room. Last night had been unusual in that she’d also been tasked with recovering the intel on the USB drive. Most of the time, however, she set up people of interest—mostly foreign visitors who posed a potential security threat to the country—for surveillance.