The Ultimatum--An International Spy Thriller

by Karen Robards

  All eyes were on Greg, who was saying something schmaltzy about a grape arbor and violins. A lightning glance around confirmed it: no one was paying the least attention to her.

  Hold the briefcase steady. Only touch it with your left hand so as not to leave fingerprints.

  Quick as the thought, she steadied the briefcase and slid the tracking device into the small crevice created by one of the two hinges that attached the handle to the briefcase. The smooth metal surface would have made any other placement too obvious.

  Then she tucked her purse beneath her arm and stood up again, pulling her glove back on as she rose.

  To find that she was being watched from across the room.

  By a frowning pair of caramel eyes set beneath straight black slashes of brows. In a deeply tanned and handsome face. Atop a leanly muscled, broad-shouldered, six-foot-three-inch frame.

  His hair was coal black, wavy, but shorter than she remembered. He was looking at her like he thought he recognized her from somewhere.

  The terrifying part was, Bianca definitely recognized him. She was locking eyes with the guy she had kissed, then zapped in the men’s room in Bahrain.

  Mickey.

  17

  For a moment Bianca felt as if she’d just been kicked in the stomach. She felt blindsided, off balance, thrown off her game.

  She’d never been made before.

  The circumstances were less than ideal. She was on a boat. The only way she was escaping was to immediately dart through three crowded rooms and take a flying leap into the bay—

  But wait. She recognized him because except for the shorter haircut he looked exactly the same.

  He might be staring at her with interest and looking like he was trying to place her in his memory, but that didn’t mean he recognized her.

  She’d been a short-haired blonde with Jennifer Ashley’s vividly exotic makeup the last time they’d encountered each other. In slutty undies, yet. To which he’d paid an inordinate amount of attention.

  What were the chances that he actually remembered her face?

  Her black wig concealed her forehead and ears and hopefully visually lengthened her face and neck. Combined with her softer, pinker, more naturalistic makeup, it gave her an entirely different look.

  Her eyes were the same, although last time he’d looked into them they’d been framed by the lashings of mascara and eyeliner that had belonged to Jennifer Ashley.

  How likely was it that he would remember the exact shade of her irises?

  Or that he could even discern their color while staring at her from across a crowded room?

  The good news was, she’d tagged the briefcase. She didn’t have to stand around and babysit it. Time to take herself out of Mickey’s orbit. Get out of the room and lose herself among the crowd.

  Now.

  Because their eyes were locked, she gave him a slight, polite smile of disinterested acknowledgment and let her gaze seemingly wander away.

  Her feet followed her gaze. Slowly, casually. Not as if she were escaping or anything. Skirting the perimeter of her side of the room, heading for the door she’d entered by, because the other door might lead to a stateroom and a dead end.

  The goal was to put as much distance as possible between herself and Mickey, who was on the opposite side of the room. The side she’d never gotten around to vetting because she’d spotted the briefcase and thereafter focused all her attention on getting to it.

  Mistake.

  Greg was still holding the floor and creating a nice little barrier that prevented Mickey from crossing the room directly to get to her as he rhapsodized about how unbelievably wonderful it was that Gemma had said “yes.” Most everybody in the room was listening raptly to him.

  Most everybody did not include her. A stealthy sideways glance informed her that it also did not include Mickey. He was moving, too, around his side of the room, with a little more obvious purpose than she was. In fact, his purpose seemed to be intercepting her at the door.

  Maybe he thought she was hot. Maybe he wanted to make her acquaintance, try a pickup line, see if he could score. A typical guy wanting to hit on a random girl.

  Or maybe not.

  She could feel adrenaline flooding her system as it occurred to her how unlikely it was that Mickey was even here. From Gudaibiya Palace in Bahrain to this particular yacht in the middle of San Francisco Bay?

  What were the chances?

  Yeah. The proverbial snowball in hell came to mind.

  On the other hand, Mickey couldn’t be here because of her, because there was no way he could have known that she would show up. So why was he here? For her father? Was this whole thing a trap? She’d suspected from the beginning that Mickey was some kind of a cop.

  Durand—was he with Durand? As soon as she had the panic-making thought, Bianca cast a harried glance around. But Durand wasn’t in the room. Was he somewhere on the yacht? She hadn’t spotted him, but then she hadn’t spotted Mickey until just now.

  Her alarm subsided only marginally as she reminded herself that Durand was hunting her father, not her. The trap, if a trap it was, was designed to catch Richard St. Ives.

  The kicker was, it was one hundred percent guaranteed to fail, because her father wasn’t present. Or, um, alive.

  And, Mickey or no Mickey, she could slip discreetly away.

  Without the prototype? That was the question that she needed to answer.

  If this was a trap, was the prototype even real? Was the threat to expose her father real?

  The yacht, the party, Greg and Gemma and the engagement announcement in the San Francisco Chronicle—the setup was too elaborate. That had to be real.

  Walt Sturgeon and his company were real.

  Justin Lee was a known entity in the circles that were aware of such individuals. He was real.

  The theft of the prototype was known in those circles, too. That was real.

  Okay. So whatever this was, it was definitely not entirely a setup.

  Had Durand/Mickey/whoever somehow learned that Richard was going after the prototype, tracked it themselves and decided to show up here, too, to catch him?

  That seemed possible. Even plausible. If so, though, the plotters were screwed, because she, not Richard, was the mouse taking the cheese. If Mickey et al. were after the fame and glory, or the large monetary reward, that went along with capturing Traveler, they were destined for disappointment. There would be no fame and glory from capturing her. Likewise, she didn’t have a price on her head. Oh, and one more thing—she had no intention of being captured.

  Bad luck, buttercup, she said silently to Mickey.

  The way Bianca saw it, she had two choices. She could abandon the job, leave without the prototype, retreat to Savannah by the most circuitous route possible, hunker down and hope for the best.

  Or she could steal the prototype, follow the tracker back to wherever it led, get some answers and, depending on what they were, go ahead with what she’d planned and eliminate the threat.

  She wasn’t a big believer in hoping for the best.

  If Mickey and whoever he was with were here to prevent the prototype from being stolen and/or to catch the thief, it would actually be kind of fun to steal it out from under his/their noses.

  Which she could do. She really was very good at her job.

  Bottom line: running scared wasn’t her style. And in this case there was a lot at stake. She was going to go for it.

  Eluding Mickey was the first step.

  Shooting another sideways look at him—he was maybe three steps behind on the other side—it hit her that he was wearing the same kind of black suit, open-collared white dress shirt and name tag on his breast pocket as the security team.

  Mickey was security?

&nbs
p; Her mind boggled at the possibility. She thought, No.

  Even if by some wild stretch of the imagination she was willing to accept that he was acting as security here, it didn’t explain his presence in Bahrain. No way had he been security there, too. What, Walt Sturgeon and Prince Al Khalifa shopped in the same security provider store?

  Anyway, he didn’t look like security. He looked like a thug in a business suit.

  Pure bad news. On the hoof.

  Mickey had longer legs and he wasn’t trying to pretend he wasn’t moving with purpose toward the door. Bianca realized with some dismay that that gave him an advantage. Unless she broke into a run, he was probably going to beat her to it.

  She needed a plan B now.

  Greg concluded his story by saying, “I’m so happy we’re getting married,” with a disarmingly sweet smile. Applause filled the room.

  Everyone was still oohing and aahing over Greg as the pulsing music rolling into the room changed styles, growing appreciably louder while transitioning to a staccato beat she vaguely recognized. Bianca glanced through the open doorway in the direction of the music’s source, which was the Sky Lounge, and instantly was struck by a way to escape Mickey without making it look like that was what she was trying to do.

  “Conga line,” she cried with a gleeful clap of her hands, in anticipation of the one that was already snaking toward her through the galley. Making a come-on-in-here gesture at the guy shuffle-kicking at the head of the twisting line, she grabbed the hands of the nearest male—one of the wedding party boys—and whipped around so that her back was to him, placing his hands on her hips and holding them there as she shook her booty and danced away from the door.

  “Oh, yeah, conga line,” her victim echoed happily, getting into the spirit of it. His hands molded the sides of her hips with loving attention and he danced along behind her, a little closer than she might have liked but doing what she needed him to do.

  One, two, three, hip bump. One, two, three, hip bump.

  “Conga line!” Sounding thrilled, two of the young women grabbed partners and fell in just as the dancers from the galley conga’d into the room.

  One, two, three, hip bump. One, two, three, hip bump.

  In minutes most of the room had linked up with the weaving, hip-swiveling line. Mickey wasn’t one of them, although another of the young women had tried to pull him in. Big surprise, he was a good-looking guy. As the dancers circled the room, he’d been forced to move back against the wall. Bianca was conscious of his eyes on her as she led the line in an S-shape away from him, then circled back until she was exactly where she wanted to be: conga-ing on out the door.

  Of course, she had about five dozen boozy, laughing, swaying revelers attached to her like a tail to a kite, but that was a mere detail.

  The good news was, as they passed through the doorway their hip-swinging moves blocked it so no one else was getting out.

  The better news was, once they’d danced their way into the galley, she was able to detach wedding-party-boy’s way-too-feely hands from her hips. With an encouraging “Keep it going!” she fled toward the Sky Lounge, where she was immediately swallowed up by the identity-obscuring blue light.

  A moment later the conga music ended with a flourish and a shout.

  The conga dancers started spilling into the Sky Lounge.

  Thus adding the whole safety-in-numbers thing to the protection of the wonky blue light.

  The music started up again. This time it was another throwback to the fifties: “Love Is Strange.”

  In a hurry to get gone, Bianca cut across the middle of the floor, dodging around the dancers, taking the most direct route possible toward the door that led to the outside stairs, meaning to go down to the main deck and lose herself among the partygoers there until she could figure out her next move.

  A hand caught her arm. She was maybe six feet from the door. All around her couples swayed and dipped to the music, but she was pretty darn sure she hadn’t just been grabbed by a Mr. Lonelyhearts meaning to ask her to dance.

  Her stomach sank.

  She knew in her gut who it was. Everything from the size of the long fingers to the strength of the grip on her arm to the prickly warning of danger that ran down her spine gave her the bad news.

  Short of throwing him over her hip—tempting!—there was no avoiding the encounter.

  Maybe, she thought without much conviction, she could bluff her way through it.

  Pasting a surprised smile on her lips, she turned. It was Mickey, all right, way too close, looming over her like she was Red Riding Hood and he was the Big Bad Wolf. She lifted her eyebrows at him. Questioningly. A little haughtily. As in, Hey, stranger, why would you think it was a good idea to grab my arm?

  He was considerably taller, even with her in her spike heels. She had to tilt her head back to look up at him. That was a good thing actually. She wanted him feeling all strong and powerful. That predatory thing he had going on? It worked for her. He just had the wrong idea about who, ultimately, was the predator and who was the prey.

  The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

  A maddeningly cocky smile appeared as his eyes slid over her face. He said, “Well, hello there, beautiful.”

  It was the exact same thing he’d said to her before. Was he repeating himself on purpose, to remind her? She thought so, but she couldn’t—totally—be sure. It was always possible that that was his standard pickup line. The words, the husky voice, the barely there accent that she couldn’t quite place, gave her a bad case of the déjà vu’s.

  Her fingers itched for her stun gun.

  His gaze slid from her eyes to her lips. Despite the pulsing blue light, she could see the hot gleam in them.

  Was he remembering how he’d kissed her? How she had kissed him?

  Damn it. Her heart picked up the pace, and she realized that she was remembering. Not what she wanted to be doing.

  “I bet you say that to all the girls.” If they hadn’t been standing so close, he wouldn’t have been able to hear her over the throbbing music. She suspected that one of the reasons they were standing so close, besides the fact that the dance floor was crowded, was that he was bent on intimidating her with his size. Fat chance, but he didn’t know that.

  “Only the beautiful ones. Although I confess I liked you better as a blonde. Without your clothes on.” He looked her over assessingly before his gaze returned to her face. The tingle of attraction she felt as their eyes met? She hated that. “Sylvia, isn’t it?”

  So much for him not recognizing her. She considered pretending she had no idea what he was talking about, then thought, To hell with that.

  “My goodness, is it—Mickey?” Her eyes widened in fake astonishment even as her smile mocked.

  “Good memory. And here I was thinking you might have forgotten.”

  “Yes, well, some things are unforgettable.” She reached up to give his cheek a playful pat. It was shadowed with maybe half a day’s growth of stubble and felt warm and faintly rough even through the lace of her glove. The blatant masculinity of it made her fingers curl in an unexpectedly sensual reaction as she withdrew her hand. The displeasing discovery of how that small contact affected her put a little extra snark in her tone as she added, “Such as the sight of you twitching on the bathroom floor.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Probably not smart to remind me of that.”

  “I doubt you needed reminding. Like I said, some things are unforgettable.” She gave her arm a tug. “Let me go, please. I have somewhere I need to be.”

  “An urgent appointment with your confederates?”

  She lifted her chin. “Confederates?”

  “The gang you came here with to steal our Mr. Sturgeon’s newest acquisition.”

  Bianca felt a chill slide down her spine. So he kn
ew. Well, she’d suspected as much. She thought about saying, I have no idea what you’re talking about. But that was clearly a waste of breath. Anyway, something about this guy made her want to get all up in his face.

  She batted her lashes at him in exaggerated flirtation. “If I tell you where my confederates are, will you summon your confederates and hurry off and arrest them? Or do security guards actually have the authority to arrest people?”

  “Security guards have the authority to do whatever they need to do.”

  “But you’re not a security guard, are you? You’re just posing as one. What are you really, some kind of undercover cop?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  She nodded as her tangled thoughts on the ramifications of his presence here started to unknot themselves. “I don’t think Sturgeon has any idea who you really are. He wouldn’t have you around if he did. What, are you here to bust him and catch a thief? A two-for-one deal?”

  “Depends. Would that thief be you?”

  She laughed, a throaty, deliberately sexy sound. “Let’s not forget my confederates.”

  “Not even going to try to lie your way out of this?”

  “Why should I?”

  “To save your beautiful ass?”

  “Believe me, it’s not my beautiful ass that needs saving.”

  His eyes widened in surprise, and then to her annoyance he looked amused. “A woman who appreciates a nice set of buns. I like that! Just between you and me, kumquat, it’s all in the squats.”

  “Kumquat?” she repeated, revolted.

  “Beautiful fruit, slightly sour.”

  “I know what it is.” Recovering from the unexpectedness of his little foray into stupid humor, she got back to the business at hand: figuring out how best to get away from him and make off with the prototype. “What do you suppose would happen if somebody told Sturgeon that one of his security guards is actually a cop looking to bust him?”

  “About the same thing that would happen if somebody told him that one of his party guests is actually a thief looking to rip off his newly acquired merchandise.”