Tessa didn’t have to fake a surprised reaction to that. Her response was completely natural. A week before at her preliminary screening, Fletcher’s medical technician had told her that once a couple was granted an actual appointment with the doctor, that meant they’d been approved for the procedure. The only thing left to finalize the deal should have been the quarter-million-dollar fee.
Had Fletcher changed his policy about that?
“You are going to help us?” she asked.
Fletcher didn’t respond right away. Nor did he look at them. He kept his gaze fastened to his computer screen. Unfortunately, Tessa couldn’t see what had garnered his attention, but it sent her heart pounding. Mercy. They’d come too close for him to stop things now.
“I always request background checks on potential clients,” Fletcher explained, ignoring her question. “You both obviously value your privacy. It took my assistants days to delve through the layers of cyber security.”
Okay.
That didn’t do much to return her heart rate back to normal. Especially since only hours earlier her father had assured them that Fletcher hadn’t taken much interest in their backgrounds.
Just how far had Fletcher’s “assistants” delved?
And what had they learned?
“Well?” Riley questioned. However, he didn’t just question. He took her by the hand and stood as if preparing to leave. “If you’re not going to help us, Doc, then we’ll have to find someone else who will. Come on, darling.”
Tessa stood, as well, wondering if they would have to fight their way out of here. If Fletcher was on to them, he wouldn’t just let them leave.
She watched Fletcher’s hand carefully. Bracing herself in case he reached for a gun in his desk drawer.
But he didn’t reach for anything. Fletcher motioned for Riley to sit back down. “Of course, I’ll help you, Mr. Tate. The background check was simply a square filler, and now that it’s complete, we can move on to the next square.”
Tessa hoped her sigh of relief wasn’t too audible.
So, they were in.
Whatever in entailed.
The doctor turned back to his computer. “I’ve gone over your wife’s lab results, and the best time for us to begin the procedure is three days from now. How does that fit into your schedule?”
Tessa looked at Riley. They both paused, pretending to think about it. And then both nodded.
“Good,” Fletcher concluded. “On the evening of the twelfth, I’ll send a car for you. You’ll be at the address you listed on your original paperwork?”
“Yes,” Riley and Tessa answered in unison.
It was an estate located in the heart of Dallas, just a few miles away. Their Justice Department agency, the SIU, had rented it for them to use to maintain their cover as the wealthy Tates. According to the latest intel report, Fletcher’s people had already gained access to the exterior of the property by posing as groundskeepers and had installed video-surveillance equipment in the back and side gardens. That meant any time Riley or she walked past a window, they’d need to play the part of the Tates.
“For the next appointment, you’ll be taken to a clinic where I’ll be waiting for you,” Fletcher continued. “I insist the location be kept secret. You’ll tell no one where you’re going. Please don’t let that alarm you. I ask this of all my patients.”
“Why all the security precautions?” Tessa asked, because she thought it was something any normal person would want to know.
The doctor drummed his fingers against his desk and eased his perfectly shaped mouth into another of those oily smiles. “There are those who object to the services I provide.”
A huge understatement, and not really a truthful one, but Tessa only gave him a sympathetic nod.
Fletcher returned the nod. “The clinic will be secure, and I’m certain all of us will be more comfortable in a secure location where we won’t be interrupted.”
Or arrested.
That was no doubt the real reason for keeping the clinic’s location a closely guarded secret. Since those medical procedures were illegal, Fletcher wouldn’t want to risk being caught while actually performing one.
“Before you leave today, we’ll need to do some blood work.” Fletcher then transferred his attention to Riley. “And for you, we’ll need semen. Your wife can accompany you to the private area of the lab to do the collection, but we do need the specimen inside the cup and not elsewhere.”
The doctor chuckled. Tessa and Riley added their own sounds of amusement, as well.
So, this was one of those “loving couple and all that” contingencies.
Riley brought her hand to his mouth and kissed lightly. When their gazes met, there was some mild humor in his eyes. “I’ll go solo for the collection. Having you in there with me would be a little too, uh, tempting.”
Relief washed through her. She was willing to do a lot to make sure this mission succeeded, but she truly hadn’t wanted to witness that.
“Will we be staying overnight at your other facility?” she asked the doctor.
“Absolutely. It might be several days before I can do the final surgical procedure with the modified embryo.”
A procedure that wouldn’t happen.
There was no way she could let things progress to the point where she was having actual surgery. If Riley and she didn’t have the evidence they needed by then, they’d have to come up with some excuse and get out of there. Surgery would basically immobilize her and make her highly vulnerable to just about anything Fletcher wanted to do to her.
Including murder.
“We’ll be able to take a tour of the facility first?” Riley questioned.
“No tours.” There wasn’t a shred of hesitation in Fletcher’s voice. “Again, for security reasons, I don’t even give out the address.”
Okay, that wasn’t the ideal scenario for an undercover ops, but it was what she’d expected. Now, at least, they were within days of identifying the location and getting inside it.
Not a bad start.
Fletcher reached across the desk and handed Riley a single sheet of paper. “That’s our agreement, which I’ll ask you both to sign. It spells out the issues we’ve already discussed.”
It also spelled out the fee. A hundred thousand dollars in advance, and it was to be paid with a cashier’s check to an unnamed representative who would be transporting them to the first clinic.
In other words, Fletcher was at least one step removed from the money trail. Ditto for the final payment. That was to be electronically transferred to a foreign bank account within six hours of the final medical procedure. And it was to be paid whether it was successful or not.
Fletcher handed Riley a pen. “If you agree, please sign at the bottom.”
Riley scrawled his fake signature and passed it to her. Tessa glanced over it. Not that she planned to object to anything and not that there was anything too specific for her to object to. The wording was vague—except for the payment part. Tessa signed it, as well, and placed it on Fletcher’s desk.
“We’re all set to go then,” Fletcher confirmed, returning his attention to her. “Once you two arrive at the clinic, you’ll immediately be prepped and tested for Phase One of Project Ideal Baby. After that, I’ll take you to the actual medical facility where we’ll be doing the remainder of the procedures.”
Tessa didn’t care much for those words, prepped and tested, especially when they were combined with the time frame of immediately.
Obviously, Riley picked up on it, as well. Their gazes met again. In the swirls of all of those shades of gray, she saw the same concerns that were no doubt mirrored in her own eyes. This was not a contingency they’d expected.
“What exactly is Phase One?” Riley asked the doctor.
Fletcher shrugged as if it were unimportant. “A simple artificial insemination.”
Tessa was absolutely sure she blinked.
She hoped that was her only visible reaction.
>
“Insemination?” she repeated. Not easily, either. “I thought there’d be some sort of egg harvesting?”
Which obviously would take longer than immediately.
In fact, egg harvesting would take weeks or even months. That’d give them more than enough time to search the clinic before having to come up with an excuse as to why they couldn’t have an in vitro, or any other procedure, done.
“Egg harvesting shouldn’t be necessary,” the doctor explained. “The insemination is a much simpler process. No anesthesia required, and it’s no more invasive than a routine gynecological exam.”
Fletcher stood and went to the door. Probably his cue for them to leave.
Tessa stood, as well, but she had no plans to leave just yet. Not until she had some answers. “But why would I even need to be inseminated?”
“To become pregnant, of course. Don’t worry,” Fletcher assured her. Coming from him, of course, it was no assurance at all. “Our goal is for you to conceive as quickly as possible. Then the real work starts. Well, for me, anyway, with the DNA manipulation. Within two weeks, maybe less, there’s at least a fifty percent chance that you’ll already be pregnant with the child of your dreams.”
Wrong.
There was no chance.
But that hasty insemination could jeopardize this entire undercover case.
Mercy.
“I’m probably stating the obvious here, but if my wife becomes pregnant through insemination, how will we get our perfect baby?” Riley asked, his voice sounding considerably sturdier than Tessa suddenly felt.
“I’ll remove the embryo, perform the DNA manipulation and then replace it in utero.”
Even though she wasn’t a doctor, Tessa was somewhat well versed in fertility procedure. And she was pretty certain that the DNA manipulation after conception wasn’t medically possible.
In other words, this was a scam.
Jeez.
That was both good news and bad news. Good, because it meant the doctor wasn’t really doing any DNA manipulation. Bad, because the scam still involved a medical procedure. It meant headquarters might not approve continuation of the mission once they learned she’d have to submit herself to artificial insemination to gain closer access to Fletcher’s facilities.
However, if she stopped things now, it might take another team months to get an appointment with Fletcher.
If at all. And he could end up walking away.
Tessa took another look at the doctor. Her instincts screamed that this man needed to be stopped. Somehow. Even if it was just on fraud charges.
And she was the one who could do it. “Couldn’t we just do this the old-fashioned way, Doctor? And call you once I’m pregnant?”
“Unfortunately, Mrs. Tate, this is a very time-sensitive procedure. Both on the embryo’s part and mine. It works best if you are carefully monitored from the moment of insemination and, hopefully, conception. Otherwise, when you discover you’re pregnant, I may not be available and/or the embryo may already be too old for the procedures.”
Tessa didn’t know how she could argue with that and still appear to be a woman desperate for one of Dr. Fletcher’s babies. “All right,” she said.
Riley’s gaze snapped toward her. “All right?”
“You heard what Dr. Fletcher said,” Tessa reiterated, adding a nervous laugh. She didn’t have to fake the nervous part, either. “The insemination’s necessary, and the end result won’t be…well, an ordinary baby. So, of course, we’ll do it.”
All that was left was to convince headquarters—and Riley—that the success of this mission hinged on her agreeing to this simple procedure.
No easy task.
Especially since the procedure would be performed by a killer.
Chapter Three
Riley stood in the marbled foyer of the estate and waited while Tessa ran the detector wand over every inch of her clothes.
Not once, but twice.
When she finished, she passed the detector his way and Riley did the same.
No telltale soft beeps, which he hoped meant Fletcher hadn’t managed to attach some type of monitoring device to either Tessa or him.
Other than a phony, laughter-punctuated conversation in the limo about the upcoming joys of parenthood, Tessa and he had yet to talk. Really talk. Unfortunately that would have to continue a while longer, even though he had some questions. Well, one question in particular. They also had to give a situation report to their mission commander.
Another potential problem.
The commander had no doubt monitored their limo conversation to ascertain if they were indeed safe, but since neither Tessa nor he had mentioned the insemination, no one back at headquarters had a clue as to what they were up against.
Soon, they would.
And this mission could be terminated.
The possibility sickened him. He desperately wanted to bring Dr. Barton Fletcher to justice, and that wouldn’t happen if the mission stalled. Of course, if it didn’t stall, there was that whole other issue.
A whopper of an issue.
A potential baby. A real one.
Oh, man.
Talk about the ultimate complication. That was something they’d definitely have to get straight.
He damn sure hadn’t signed on to this ops to become a parent.
“Wanna play in the shower?” Tessa asked, making it sound like a carnal invitation to her husband instead of a required security measure for her partner.
“I’d love to.”
Translation? Let’s wash any potential transmitter chips off before we talk.
Tessa took the modified suitcase from beneath the antique table in the foyer and started to shed her clothes. Riley turned his back to her and did the same.
Tossing in an occasional seductive laugh and more of those mumbled sweet nothings, they stripped down to their underwear and put their clothes in the suitcase. After they were in the shower, the rookie SIU agent, Chris Ingram, who was posing as the butler-housekeeper-chauffeur, would whisk the suitcase away so it could be analyzed.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Tessa purred. She headed toward the stairs. “I mean, after your, uh, little donation at the clinic?”
“The donation in no way lessened my appetite for you, darling.”
From over her shoulder she gave him a “good one” nod. Probably her idea of placating him.
It wouldn’t work.
He was still riled about that “all right” response she’d given to Fletcher about the insemination. They should have pressed the issue, then and there. They should have found a way around it, then and there. But instead, Tessa had closed down the discussion with her little “all right.”
And this from the woman who just that morning had raked him over the coals about bending rules.
What the heck had she been thinking anyway?
Riley intended to find that out as soon as they finished showering, but a confrontation with her was still minutes away. Minutes to think about how they were going to get out of this one.
He was still in the middle of his own personal but silent gripe session when he glanced at Tessa on the steps just ahead of him. Specifically he glanced at her underwear. Sturdy cotton. White, at that. No provocative lace or silk. No barely there swatches. No padded, push-up anything. Just a plain white bra and a pair of panties.
Hell.
And what was he doing noticing that?
Riley cursed.
Obviously he’d let the gripe session cloud his mind. This was an ops, he firmly reminded himself. And the woman he was gawking at was his partner.
He quickly got his mind on something else.
They walked through the master suite and into the bathroom. Their weapons and other assorted communications equipment were there; all the items they might need over the next few days. Agent Ingram had even hung some of their clothes and had placed their luggage in the adjoining dressing room.
Tessa turned on the shower f
ull-blast and, without removing her underwear—something Riley was truly grateful for—stepped inside the steamy spray. Since there was a showerhead in each corner, and since the space was large enough to accommodate an NBA team, Riley got in, too, to save some time.
He kept his attention focused elsewhere—on the ornate mosaic tiles, on the beveled glass of the shower door they’d left open.
On anything but Tessa.
He was pretty sure she was doing the same thing. Well, she was until she shifted to her right and bumped into him. How that happened, he didn’t know. After all, it wasn’t as if they ran short of space. But it happened. Her slick, wet, right butt cheek swished against the front of his slick wet boxers.
Man, she couldn’t have touched him in a worse place. That particular part of him was having a tough time accepting that showering with an attractive woman wasn’t anything less than foreplay.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Me, too,” he mumbled back.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Why are you sorry?” she whispered, her nearly silent words muffled even more by the shower.
“Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
He watched that register. Frowning, then scowling, and finally shrugging, she turned off the water. Tessa stepped out and snagged a couple of thick, white, terry-cloth robes from a nearby rack. She tossed him one.
“Start explaining,” Riley demanded before he even caught the robe.
Thankfully she didn’t ask for clarification. Riley was dead certain Tessa knew exactly what he meant. Well, hopefully she did. He didn’t intend to discuss their shower and his reaction to it. Nope. It was time to settle some business.
“If I’d refused the insemination outright, Fletcher would have canceled everything.” As if she’d declared war on it, Tessa latched onto her shoulder-length blond hair and squeezed it. Hard. The water snaked down her nearly naked shoulders and arms before she put on the bathrobe. Finally. “And you know it as well as I do.”
“I don’t know any such thing. But what I do know is that it didn’t solve anything by you agreeing to a procedure you can’t have.”
Mommy Under Cover Page 3