The firm warmth of his mouth, the glide of his tongue between her lips, the pressure of his body against hers, all caught her by surprise. Focused as she was on the urgent need to get out of there, she still felt an unexpected tingle of electricity, a shaft of heat, a pulse spring to life deep inside her body. He tasted faintly of whiskey, his body radiated heat even through his clothes and either his job kept him very fit or he was religious about working out. He was all long, powerful muscle.
He was also turned on. As he kissed her, she could feel his erection through his pants, growing larger by the second, bulging against her stomach.
Nice. But she could hardly complain. Not without reason, he was clearly under the impression that she was majorly on board with the program. And he was tall and broad enough so that now she was almost completely blocked from being seen by whoever was looking in on them from the door.
Fair enough.
She answered the probing of his tongue with some serious tongue probing of her own. She kissed him like he was sweeping her off her feet, like she was maybe five minutes away from slithering out of her remaining clothes and getting down and dirty with him on the restroom floor.
“Maazrat chahta hun.” I’m sorry, a deep male voice said in Urdu from the direction of the open door. It took Bianca a second to process the translation, and that would be because her blood was pounding in her ears, and that would be because, whatever else this guy was, he was a really good kisser.
He still held her hand. It was pressed against his chest. She tugged, and—hello, masculine brain fog—he let go. Still kissing him, she wrapped both arms around his neck and arched up against him—
The intruder left. The restroom door closed. She heard the swish of its movement followed by the click of the latch. A quick peek through barely parted lids confirmed it: she and Mickey were once again alone.
Relief bubbled up inside her. Having heard the language in which the intruder had spoken, she’d braced for an imminent invasion by the palace security guards, and she hadn’t been at all sure that her current (lack of) disguise would be enough to save her. But now the intruder was gone.
Cue Operation Get Out of Here.
As quickly and quietly as possible.
Mickey didn’t seem inclined to stop what he was doing to attempt to apprehend or do whatever it was she was ninety-nine point nine percent sure he was there to do to her, proving yet again that men came equipped with two brains but could access only one at a time.
Which was fine by her. Keeping the make-out session going was as good a distraction as any.
She stroked the nape of his neck, ran her hand down the strong muscles of his back—if he was carrying a gun, it wasn’t anywhere on his torso.
“You taste like sugar,” he murmured, lifting his lips from hers to slide his mouth along her cheek toward her ear. He had one arm braced against the wall beside her head, presumably to keep his weight from crushing her. His other arm was wrapped around her waist.
“Margarita.” Her reply referred to the cocktail she had drunk with the prince just prior to slipping away to open the vault. The glass had been rimmed with sugar.
The warm crawl of his mouth down the sensitive skin at the side of her throat had her tilting her head to grant him greater access and making sexy sounds.
Her stroking hand slid down over what was, actually, a really nice, tight ass.
“I bet you taste like sugar all over.” His voice had a growly quality now.
“Um.” It was a soft, sensuous sound that could mean whatever he took it to mean. Her hand stroked its way down his hard-muscled thigh. Sensuously she slid her leg up the outside of his to meet her hand.
“I want you,” he said.
“Do you?”
Even as his lips found hers again, kissing her with the hungry intensity of a man who was getting down to better things, she slid her leg back down his until she was once again standing firmly on both feet. Then she slipped her questing hand around his neck, found the vulnerable skin of his nape—and let him have it with her stun gun.
A sizzling sound. An electric tingle in the air. The slightest of burning smells.
As the voltage hit him, Mickey’s head jerked up. His eyes widened, collided with hers. In that split second in which their eyes locked, Bianca saw comprehension, fear and fury flash into his. Then he gasped, stiffened, shook. His eyes rolled back in his head. He went limp, collapsing on top of her and nearly taking her down with him.
Staggering under his weight, conscious of a momentary twinge of regret—how long had it been since a man had kissed her like that, anyway?—she grabbed him around the waist and lowered him carefully to the floor.
If there was anyone out there listening, the kind of thump he’d make crashing down on his own might be all that was needed to bring them in here.
Snapping her stun gun back into place, dragging her dress out from under his head, she sized him up as he sprawled facedown at her feet. She saw no reason to doubt her previous assessment of him: he was almost certainly some kind of law enforcement type, probably working for Durand.
Not that it mattered now. He was handled. And it was one minute, twenty-six seconds until midnight.
She had bigger fish to fry than Mickey.
She took ten seconds to frisk him—useless: no ID, no gun, nothing—then whipped her dress lavender-side out and pulled it on. There was a trickle of blood on one of her knees, she saw as she zipped the dress up and adjusted the skirt so that the few wet splotches that had soaked through weren’t so visible. She must have scraped it coming through the vent. It didn’t hurt, and she had no time to deal with it. Later, when she was safe, she could slap on a Band-Aid. The wine smell—it wasn’t that noticeable, she decided as she snatched her clip from the fallen grate, pushed the button to rewind the cord and restored the clip to its place on her garter belt. Grabbing her purse, she stuffed the red wig inside.
Time to go. Fluffing her hair with one hand in hopes that it wouldn’t look quite so much like it had spent most of the night smashed under a wig, she headed for the door.
The Urdu-speaking guy who’d popped in on them—was he gone, or waiting nearby? What about King Kong? Was he still outside the ladies’ room door or—
Behind her, Mickey stirred and groaned, causing her head to whip around. The long fingers of his right hand, bronze against the white marble, flexed warningly.
Oh, God, was he regaining consciousness? It usually took much longer.
She couldn’t have him waking up and raising the alarm, so she took a second to run back and zap him again. As he spasmed, she hurried back to the door, listened briefly—nothing—and eased the door open just enough to make sure the coast was clear.
It was. At least, the alcove outside the men’s room was clear.
Nervous tension tightened her stomach as she made for the ballroom. In the alcove next door she could hear the lowered but urgent-sounding voices of King Kong and several other men. From certain unmistakable sounds that accompanied the voices, she gathered that they were at that moment forcing their way into the ladies’ room. Had it been one of their number who’d surprised what he’d clearly thought was a couple getting it on in the men’s room moments earlier? If so, it was evident that he hadn’t recognized Jennifer Ashley in the half-naked blonde he’d seen. But as soon as he beheld the empty ladies’ room, he might well make the connection.
Her number-one worry was that Mickey would recover his senses and stagger out of the men’s room shouting for help before she was safely away.
There wasn’t time to go back and take additional precautionary measures, like, say, tie him up and gag him. There wasn’t time to create a diversion, or do anything except make for the exit as fast as she could go.
Stepping out into the ballroom, she instantly ducked her head. She knew where the survei
llance cameras were, and she chose her route to avoid most of them. For those she couldn’t avoid, keeping her face down was standard tradecraft. For foiling the unexpected, like, say, a new installation or a stray snap from a cell phone camera, she assumed a wide smile. What most people didn’t know was that smiling was one of the simplest, most effective techniques for defeating facial recognition software that existed, because it significantly altered the contours of the face.
Of course, you might look like a grinning fool on the playback, but they wouldn’t know who you were.
Thirty-one seconds until midnight, and she still had a quarter of the crowded ballroom to bob and weave her way through before she reached the doors.
Clenching her fingers tight around the strap of her purse, moving as fast as she could without calling attention to herself, Bianca felt pulses of anxiety fluttering through her bloodstream as it became clear that she wasn’t going to make it out of the ballroom in time.
7
Bianca kept a wary eye on the top of the ballroom, where the prince still stood with Durand. The ebb and flow of the crowd around the pair interfered with her view, but she was able to see enough to discern that they were still talking, still seemingly unaware that anything was wrong, as her watch ticked down the seconds until midnight.
When it happened, when the little digital numbers on her wrist proclaimed the hour, she was still maybe thirty yards shy of the door.
Down in the vault, security guards would be making their regular check and discovering that it was empty.
All hell would be breaking loose, but it would be breaking loose discreetly. More guards were no doubt swarming the cellars at that very instant. The prince would be notified. Under some seemingly innocuous pretext—an outbreak of violence in the streets, say—the palace would be locked down tighter than a maximum security prison.
No one would be allowed to leave.
The hunt would be on.
She had to get out—of the palace, of the grounds—before then.
As Tony ended his set and the room erupted into applause, Bianca found that her nails were digging into her palms.
The crowd largely stopped in place as they clapped, their attention focused on the stage. She had to edge sideways, bump shoulders, push to get through.
She was maybe ten yards away from the French doors when she caught a glimpse of a small wedge of men in traditional robes and white kaffiyehs emerging through an interior door on the same side of the ballroom as the kitchen and slicing across the assembly toward the prince. The speed and determination of their advance made her stomach drop toward her toes. She had no doubt, no doubt at all, that this was the contingent sent to inform the prince that his money was gone.
Cheshire cat smile firmly in place, blond head down and legs flashing in and out of her silky lavender gown, she made for the nearest set of French doors like a Walmart shopper zeroing in on a Black Friday bargain.
The men reached the prince, pulled him aside, spoke rapidly. At the same time, she saw to her horror, King Kong and his crew burst out of the restroom alcove, looked wildly around—
She reached the French doors.
Security guards posted inside near the exits, clearly not yet alerted to the disaster, glanced at her incuriously as she pushed through the doors and strode out onto the terrace.
A blonde in a lavender dress: no one was looking for that woman—yet.
All it was going to take for that to change was for Mickey to recover his senses and start talking. In retrospect, she should probably have done something to make sure he wouldn’t wake up for hours. Like stomp his head.
The heat, the smells, the flickering flambeaux—nothing about the terrace had changed since she’d tried escaping across it the last time.
Fearing to find King Kong or one of his ilk on her heels with every step, she kept her head high and her pace fast but steady as she headed toward the stairs. Every atom of her being urged her to run, but she was afraid of the attention that might attract. It would take just one guard, one worker, one curious observer, to spot a woman sprinting across the terrace and report it.
She could only trust that Doc hadn’t gotten cold feet at her detention and would still be waiting for her. If he wasn’t, well, she would improvise. If nothing else, she would lose herself in the dark of the gardens until she could figure a way out.
Whatever happened, she could not allow herself to get caught. There would be no bluffing her way out this time. With the money gone, and her impersonation of Jennifer Ashley obvious, if she was hauled in front of the prince, she was as good as dead.
A prickle of fear slid over her skin.
There’d been no way to alert Doc that she was coming. Reaching the stairs, she ran down them, her shoes barely touching the steps, her gown billowing behind her. A line of limos snaked around the fountain at the center of the motor court. A thousand pinpricks of stars twinkled in the night sky. The moon hung directly above the immensely tall, sail-shaped towers of the Bahraini World Trade Center near the center of downtown. Traffic was lighter on Bani Otbah Avenue than it had been earlier, but it was still heavy enough so that the limo would blend in.
Assuming the limo was there.
To her huge relief, she spotted the vehicle with Doc behind the wheel before she reached the bottom step. It was first in line.
He must have seen her coming, too, because the headlights came on, the motor revved and the limo pulled forward to meet her. As she reached the motor court, Doc got out and hurried around to open the rear door for her.
His eyes moved over her anxiously.
“So, like, you changed your hair,” he said under his breath when she reached him. “And didn’t your dress used to be, like, black? I almost didn’t recognize you. Except, you know, who else is gonna come running down the stairs at midnight?”
Doc had known her only in her red-haired Jennifer Ashley incarnation, Bianca remembered. To see her as herself was a surprise to him. Only she and her father knew the real identities, etc., of the rest of the team—no one knew theirs. It was Security 101: people couldn’t reveal what they didn’t know.
“Later,” she responded, looking back at what she could see of the still-closed French doors before ducking into the car. A glance confirmed that Doc had done as instructed and moved her small duffel from the trunk to the back seat. “We need to go.”
Doc looked in at her, his bushy black brows drawn together. “You’re tripping me out here.”
“Now.”
“Going.” Doc obediently shut the door and walked around the car. It couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, but by the time he clambered behind the wheel, Bianca was ready to jump out of her skin.
“Don’t drive too fast, but we have to get through the gates as quickly as we can.”
The stretch limo was sized to seat twenty. The interior was beige leather and carpet and still had that new-car smell. The rear windows were tinted. No one could see her in the back. Having moved into the long, rear-facing seat closest to the driver, she turned and leaned forward, one hand on the back of Doc’s seat as she spoke to him through the open partition that separated the two sections of the vehicle.
“O-kay,” he said, putting the car in gear. His black-gloved fingers flexed as he gripped the wheel. “Drive slow but fast.”
The limo pulled away from the steps and started around the wide circle at a stately pace. They still had to make it down the long driveway and get through the closed, guarded gates.
Glancing back at the palace, Bianca felt her stomach twist. Its domed beauty was deceptively serene. Inside, a volcano of fury would be erupting. Looking forward again didn’t help. At the end of the palm-lined drive, the gates waited under bright white security lights. It was—Bianca glanced at her watch—one minute, fifty-three seconds after midnight. How long would i
t take before word to stop all exiting vehicles reached the guards at the gate?
She couldn’t count on it being much longer.
She wanted to scream at Doc to drive faster. She didn’t dare.
“So what happened?” Doc asked.
“The vault was empty.”
“Empty?” He looked at her through the rearview mirror.
“Empty. As in, the money was gone when I got it open.”
“The money was gone? Gone where?”
“No idea.”
“We don’t have it?”
For a smart man, Doc was being remarkably slow to catch on.
“No, we don’t have it,” Bianca said. “That’s what I meant when I said it was gone.”
“So who has it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You kidding me?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding you?” Their eyes met in the rearview mirror.
What Doc saw there must have convinced him, because he said, “No! No, no, no! I was supposed to walk away from this and never have to work again!”
“Life’s a bitch,” Bianca said. Actually, she knew where he was coming from. She just hadn’t had time to process it yet.
“We did all this for nothing?”
No point in sugarcoating it. “Yes.”
“Shit!” Doc sounded as poleaxed as she felt. “Wait. If we didn’t steal the money, why are we running away? We didn’t do anything.”
“Because the money’s gone. It’s possible that someone else beat us to it, and we were set up to take the fall. At this point I don’t know for sure. Anything’s possible. But the prince knows our team is here, and he knows the money’s missing. He’s going to blame us. He’s going to come after us. He’s going to shut the palace down at any second, and if we’re not out of here...”
“We’re all gonna die.” Doc’s voice was hollow. Under better conditions Bianca might have smiled, but these weren’t better conditions. She was just glad she didn’t need to spell things out. Like the rest of the team, Doc had been well briefed on possible consequences if the job should go wrong.
The Ultimatum--An International Spy Thriller Page 7