Brow furrowed, she looked at him as they started walking back the way they’d come. “What exactly do you mean when you say we’ll pick you up?”
* * *
Derek Norris sat on a sofa in the living room of the house he shared with Danielle. A tall glass of Bacardi and Coke in one hand, he scratched his head with the other and stared at his housemate. The black dress, shot through with silver threads clung to her body. Silver earrings sparkled through the dark red hair floating around her shoulders. Slender legs in black heels completed the image and took his breath away.
She would have an even more deleterious effect on Rowan Milani, he thought, feeling churlish. “Please tell me you’re not getting involved with that guy. Hey, do you want to know what my buddy at United Operations in Denver told me? The FBI called them – the FBI, Dani. They said he was dangerous, and that’s why the captain kicked him off the plane. Then he deliberately implied that his luggage was a problem, too.”
The blissful look on her face irritated him. “Oh please, Derek. You’re overreacting, just like everyone else at the airport. Rowan is with the FBI, and besides, his boss explained to all the station managers how he’d been mistaken for someone else. You know as well as I do how easy it is for misunderstandings to occur, especially for someone who’s Middle Eastern.”
How could he explain the alarm bells going off in his mind? Watching Rowan Milani zero in on Danielle at the airport that morning had scared him to death. That the man was a ruthless predator had been obvious to him, and he couldn’t figure out why she’d be interested in someone like that. “All I’m saying is that you don’t know anything about the guy. Why would you go out to dinner and spend time with him after what’s happened? He’s a dangerous man who caused major problems for all of us and that concerns me – a lot.”
When she sat down beside him and ruffled his rusty brown hair and kissed his cheek, it took all his willpower not to kiss her back. Knowing she wouldn’t understand that either, he gave up and took another swallow of his drink. Intoxicated as much by her perfume as the rum, he thought that if she knew what was good for her, she’d move to the other sofa, but instead she patted his knee and stayed unbearably close. “Derek, you’re my best friend, and I know you care about what happens to me, but you have to trust me on this. I like him. Believe me, when I’m with him, I’m safe. I just know that.”
Thinking she was acting deliberately naïve, he started to speak, but stopped when her one hundred-twenty pound Rottweiler stood and growled at the door. Danielle squeezed his knee and jumped eagerly to her feet. The excitement in her eyes and the color in her cheeks told him he’d been on a futile mission. “Shasta, who’s here? C’mon girl, let’s go see.”
Planning to head upstairs so he didn’t have to meet Rowan Milani, he stood up. But he was too late. Danielle opened the door, and the man stepped into the house, shivering inside an overcoat, brushing snow out of his hair and off his shoulders. Watching Rowan lean close to give Danielle a private smile and a kiss didn’t do anything for his humor, and Shasta committed the final insult, leaning into the disturbing man’s legs and woofing until he bent down and scratched her head. When Rowan Milani’s gaze flicked over him, the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up. The man had the coldest eyes he’d ever seen.
Of course, Danielle remained oblivious. Grasping Rowan’s hand, she smiled at both of them. “Rowan, this is my friend Derek Norris. He’s a supervisor for Delta. Derek, this is special agent Rowan Milani.”
Watching the two of them together was pure hell and enough to send him deep into the bottle of Bacardi. While he stood there feeling like an overprotective father, Rowan grabbed Danielle’s long, down coat from where she’d laid it across the table and glanced at him as he helped her into it. “It’s nice to meet you, Derek. Well, we better get going.”
Trying to cover his increasing antipathy, he gave the man a grudging smile. “Yeah, it’s nice to meet you, too. Have a good time. See you later, Dani. I’ll get the door.” Pausing on the threshold, he watched Rowan put his arm around Danielle and walk close beside her down the snowy sidewalk to a waiting Lincoln Town Car. Shaking his head, wallowing in private misery, he saw a tall man open the back door of the car for the two of them. Frustrated because he knew he could never compete with Rowan Milani, and irritated at his inability to tell Danielle how he felt about her, he slammed the heavy door and leaned against it. Shasta moved close and sat on his foot, gazing up at him with a tongue lolling, doggy smile that pissed him off. “You’re as smitten with that guy as she is, you worthless mutt. What kind of protector are you, if you can’t tell a creep when you see one?”
* * *
Grunting with the effort, Seth finished screwing the heavy-duty eye bolt into the stud he’d painstakingly located in the wall. Teetering on the slippery seat of a metal folding chair, he gave the meat hook attached to the eye bolt a perfunctory yank and stepped down. Wiping his forehead, he glanced at Lucien. “Think that eye bolt will support his weight?”
A sneer twisted the lips of his muscular cohort. “It’ll work just fine.” Mashing wide hands together, Lucien looked at him. “I can’t wait to get a hold of this raghead poser and teach him a lesson.”
He nodded. “That makes two of us. That guy is the worst of the worst – born and raised here – benefiting from all this country has to offer and then selling it and all of us down the river. But this time, he’s not going to slip through our fingers like he managed to do in Denver. I’m going to make sure of that. When we get back to the Sheraton, we’ll set up a surveillance schedule, so we can track his movements. I want him bad, Lucien. Not just for the money, either.”
After fighting along with Lucien as a young Marine in the first Gulf War, becoming CIA field agents enabled him and his friend to play an ongoing role in defending their country. Apprehending a clever traitor like Rowan Milani would be a feather in both their caps. Their other employer, the mysterious Egyptian Muusa Shemal had offered $250,000.00 apiece for their assistance in bringing an end to Rowan Milani’s deception. Instead of handing him to the FBI for federal prosecution, they planned to transport the miscreant directly to Torah Prison in Egypt.
But first, he and Lucien intended to separate their prey from his colleagues and conduct their own private interview. The small warehouse they’d rented on the north end of Sioux Falls had a back office with no windows, deep inside the old building. No one would see or hear them. By the time he and Lucien finished with Rowan Milani, the man would understand that betraying the United States of America would not go unpunished.
* * *
CHAPTER FOUR
Head throbbing, Danielle tried to focus on making coffee. Squeezing her eyes shut and then blinking, she hit the switch on the coffee maker. The clock on the wall in her kitchen said three-thirty in the morning. Her employees would be expecting her in exactly ninety minutes, and it was going to take some serious coffee drinking to make that happen. Why had she kept saying yes to the wine? Because she’d never been with a man so solicitous to her every need.
After spending the evening – well, most of the night with Rowan, she had fallen for him – hard. None of the men she’d dated over the years had ever treated her the way he did. From the moment he put his arm around her when they left for the restaurant until they came back at midnight and snuggled up together on the cozy love seat in her living room, he’d been focused on what she wanted.
At the restaurant, he’d flashed a thousand-watt smile at the maitre d’ and acted like they were old friends. A mixed bouquet of red roses, white carnations and stargazer lilies waited at their table. The wine was the best she’d ever tasted, a 2007 Italian red, Bolgheri Sassicaia – he’d picked it out at The Market, down the street from Minerva’s, just for her. How had he known she’d like it? Their server had been tongue-tied when he pulled five one hundred-dollar bills from his wallet and handed them to her, because he’d reserved the booth for the entire evening.
She could barely recollect the meal. They’d talked about security and decided to work together. Beyond that, she only remembered staring at his lips, thinking how much she wanted them pressing against hers. How much she wanted to explore the athletic body beneath the black Armani suit, white shirt and silver striped silk tie. And the way he looked at her…the overt, untamed desire in his eyes should have given her pause, but instead anticipation left her breathless. When he smiled at her, she melted.
The aroma of French roast drew her back. She poured a cup and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. Her thoughts continued to meander, and she closed her eyes, remembering how she’d finally had a chance to check out the hard body beneath his clothes. She giggled, thinking about how much fun she’d had loosening his tie and unbuttoning his shirt while he tried to concentrate on her dress. Good Lord, how could she handle working with him in her office all day?
Brisk footsteps on the stairs woke Shasta, who’d been snoozing next to the patio door. The big dog growled and then woofed when Derek, dressed in his Delta ramp uniform, strode into the kitchen. “Morning, Derek. Hey, can I catch a ride to the airport with you when you leave?” Watching while he grabbed a cup of coffee, she couldn’t miss his frown of disapproval. Oh geez, what was that about?
Derek plopped down across from her at the table and sipped his coffee. “Sure I can give you a ride, no problem. Is something wrong with your Explorer?”
Taking a hefty swallow of coffee, she looked at him, wondering if he could smell the wine. Twirling strands of hair between her fingers, she smiled artlessly. “No special reason I guess. Well, I did have more wine than I should have last night.”
Derek frowned again. “Have you even been to bed yet?” His voice turned bitter. “Or maybe I should be asking – did you get any sleep?”
The heat crawled up her face. He was way out of bounds. Why was he being such a pig? “You know, Derek, I don’t think you’ve ever asked me anything like that before. Really – it’s none of your business whether I’ve been to bed yet or whether I’ve slept. And you know what else? You can forget about the ride. I’ll take a cab.”
Her irritation seemed to cut through his angst. “Whoa, wait a minute, Dani. You’re right and I’m sorry. It’s just – I don’t know. Rowan Milani seems to bring out the worst in me. I think it’s because I get so worried about you. But don’t call a cab. I’ll give you a ride whenever you’re ready.”
* * *
Rowan stared at Ralph. “What?” He couldn’t seem to please his boss. Ralph should be applauding his efforts, not doubting his motives. At least he’d made it to the seven o’clock meeting.
“Rowan, you’re telling me you went out to dinner with the Legacy station manager – that classy red head I met – and now you’re going to work together? God almighty son, that’s great…I think.” His boss shot a suspicious glance at Chad. “Special agent Cantor, were you at this dinner party?”
Chad looked up with bleary eyes and smiled at Ralph. “Yes boss, I drove to the restaurant and hung around for a drink, and then I left so Rowan and Danielle, I mean Ms. Stratton, could talk privately. You know my efforts are best utilized on hacking. Once Rowan gathers some names, I’ll be in business. Digging into travel records via the airline is a brilliant idea. Oh – and of course, I drove them home. Uh, I mean we dropped Ms. Stratton off at her house.”
Rowan gave Chad furtive thumbs up around the corner of the table and sneaked a glance at Ralph, who chewed on a slice of toast while he listened, a skeptical look on his face. Did their boss know about Mandy, for God’s sake? Not that it mattered. The Denver incident had hyped Ralph’s instincts about every feasible or infeasible ramification of his behavior, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. In short, his boss cared way too much about his special agents and about him in particular. “Ralph – boss, don’t worry about it. We had a nice dinner, and Ms. Stratton offered to open up the airline’s passenger records.”
Pausing to yawn, he stared at his hands and thought about the three hours he and Danielle had spent in her living room after dinner. That had been fun. At the end, he’d stood and kissed her and then twisted away laughing, trying to button his shirt while batting away her persistent fingers. Slipping his tie around his neck, he’d given up and left the shirt half buttoned and the tail hanging out when he’d said good-bye on her doorstep at three o’clock.
Throwing on his overcoat and skidding down the icy sidewalk to the waiting Lincoln, he’d chuckled at Chad’s only comment when he slid into the warmth of the front seat. Man, you didn’t waste any time with her, did you? It was none of Chad’s business, so he didn’t bother to tell his colleague that when he and Danielle made love for the first time, it wasn’t going to be on a sofa in the same house where her jerkwad friend was sleeping. It dawned on him that he’d left his suit jacket on the coffee table between the two sofas in her living room. Damn it. If her badass dog didn’t trash it, Derek sure as hell would.
Lost in the private thoughts, unsure whether Ralph had said something else, he looked up. “I’m heading to the airport as soon as we’re done. Ms. Stratton told me she would compile a list of Middle Eastern travelers in and out of Sioux Falls. What I’m going to look for is a pattern of movement around the country. I’d also like to work on a plan for infiltrating the mosque in town. It’s entirely possible that whoever is traveling in and out of Sioux Falls is networking with a radical element in the mosque, but I won’t know for sure until I’m in there.”
He sat back and watched as Ralph guzzled coffee and patted his mouth with a crumpled napkin. Chad covered a yawn behind his hand. In the kitchen someone dropped glassware. The tinkling crash turned heads across the busy dining room. Tucked into a far corner of the dining area, the cacophony of voices and clanking silverware sheltered their conversation. In spite of that, Ralph leaned forward and lowered his voice. “All right Rowan, what’s your timetable for this project?”
First scratching his fingers through the burgeoning whiskers on his jaw and then tugging on his hair, he gazed at Ralph. “It’s going to be a couple weeks or so before I’ll look the part. In the meantime, I can put together a lot of information from the airline records. Chad can help me with that as I collect names.” Pointedly ignoring the concern in Ralph’s eyes, he shrugged. “You know how it works, boss. I like to get in and out, but it takes as long as it takes.”
* * *
Marta Pinella couldn’t take her eyes off the man sitting in her manager’s office, poring over the passenger itineraries she’d printed at Danielle’s request. This was the kind of man she dreamed about doing kinky things with – the kind of things that got the juices flowing down low inside and made her all hot and horny. Drawing glossy, ebony hair through her fingers and letting it cascade down her back, she thrust her boobs forward in her black and white gate agent uniform and slipped around the desk.
Leaning against it, planting her body directly in front of his chair, she ran her tongue around her lips when he glanced up. “Hi, I’m Marta. If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can help you. I’ve been an agent here with Legacy for over five years. Are you looking for a certain passenger?”
Impatience flickered in his face, and the sexy man leaned back in the chair, perusing her body with his eyes before speaking. “Hello, Marta. It’s nice to meet you. I’m special agent Milani, with the FBI. If I need any help, I’ll be sure to ask. Thanks for the offer.”
When he bent his head back to the papers in his lap, obviously not interested, she could only stare in rage. What an arrogant man. Fingers clenching the edge of the desk, she blinked green eyes and took a deep breath. Maybe he’d respond to a more direct approach. “It’s nice to meet you too, special agent Milani. Do you have a first name?”
This time the dark head jerked up and he looked at her with an insolent smile curling his lips. “Special agent Milani works just fine. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got quite a bit of information to digest.�
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Furious, wishing she could slap the sneer off his face, she leaned forward and lightly touched his shoulder, eyes widening when he looked at her again. Oh yes, he had a temper and that was the biggest turn-on ever. “You know, if you’re looking for information on Middle Eastern people traveling to Sioux Falls, I can help you. I’m familiar with most of our frequent travelers.” Giving him a lascivious smile, she continued. “A special friend of mine comes every few months to teach at the mosque. His name is Muusa Shemal. I could introduce you the next time he flies in, if you’re still around.”
This time she saw a glimmer of interest in the seductive eyes. When he stood up in front of her, ditching the papers he’d been examining into the chair behind him, she turned so he could see her profile. Did he finally get it? Would he kiss her now? When she looked at him again, the contempt she saw on his face surprised her. Reaching out to touch his arm, she gasped when he grabbed her wrist. Wow – he was quick. His hold was tight and his eyes were cold. “Like I said, thanks for the offer, Marta, but I’m not interested.”
How had she misjudged him so completely? Almost all of the hot men she ran across liked her – wanted her and had no qualms about a night in the sack. But she appeared to have no effect on this one. He’d better rethink, because she didn’t like rejection. The last man who’d ignored her advances, a fellow Legacy gate agent in Chicago, had learned the hard way. His career lay in ruins after she was finished. This man had no idea how creative she was – or how vindictive. When he let go of her wrist, she massaged it and stared at him, hoping he couldn’t see the malice she felt. “That’s OK, special agent Milani. But if you want some help later on, let me know.”
Consummate Betrayal Page 7