Attack Man’s gun sounded and his helmet light went off.
“Got you, sucker.” I punched the air with my own gesture of victory.
Evil Attack Man started and spun to face me.
“Fry?”
“Domino?”
Was that relief or irritation in his voice?
“I need y’all’s help. Max’s taken a spill.” Hard to tell over his stoic, tough-guy exterior exactly what he felt as he pointed to the spot where I’d seen Max fall off into oblivion. He looked a little pale. “We need nine-one-one.”
I hesitated, confused. Max wasn’t just hamming it up?
“Domino? Y’all okay?” Fry frowned and took a step toward me. “Buck up and pull it together, CT. This is no time to panic. We need to radio for help … now!”
I took a step back from him, not exactly cowering, but not a tower of heroism, either.
“I yelled at him to stop, but the fool ran right over the ledge,” Fry said softly. “I can’t get anyone on my radio. We’ll have to try yours. I hope to hell he didn’t break his neck. Toss me your radio, Domino.” He prepared to make a catch.
“No. I’ll call.” No way was I giving up my one line of communication to Fry.
Fry seemed to hesitate. “Tell them we need the cops.”
“The cops?”
Without thinking, I dashed to the ledge. Fry lunged for me, trying to stop me, but I dodged him. My fear for Max temporarily overrode my fear of falling from heights.
“Ohmygosh.” Looking down at Max, I felt as if I’d lost all my breath.
He lay at the bottom of a twenty-foot drop, his body sprawled at an unnatural angle.
And beneath him, cushioning his fall, was a very dead Davie.
Fry put his arm around me and pulled me away from the edge. “Y’all shouldn’t have seen that.”
I couldn’t get the image of a dead, bloodless Davie from my mind. Someone had taken a knife to him. I shivered in the Arizona sun.
Torq pulled up, jumped from an FAV, and sprinted to the ledge next to us. I watched his back as he stared over the edge. Finally, he turned toward us, seemingly unfazed by the death below him. “It’ll take the cops from Surprise half an hour to get here. Let’s go get Max.”
By the time we reached Max with the FAV, he was slowly coming to, and I was weak with relief. As weak with relief as a person who’s just seen her first dead body outside of a funeral can be. Torq snapped a quick shot of the scene with his cell phone before he and Fry loaded Max into the waiting FAV.
Fry stayed with the body while Torq drove us back to camp and waiting medical help.
Mercifully, Max didn’t gain full consciousness until we’d pulled out of sight of Davie’s body.
“Don’t tell me I fell off a cliff,” he said, blissfully unaware of what had broken his fall and probably saved his life.
If he could joke, he must have been feeling better.
I’d calmed down enough to give him an encouraging return grin. “You fell off a cliff, Max.”
Emotion stole my voice as I sat beside him. Two days. Three close calls. Davie dead, and not by accident. I shuddered in the heat.
“I asked you not to tell me that!” He tried to laugh. “Ouch! That hurts.” He quieted into a smile. “I missed certain death by that much!” Max held up his finger and thumb to show us just how narrow his escape had been.
Torq and I exchanged a look. We let Max chatter on happily. He’d find out about Davie soon enough.
The mission was a total and utter failure for those of us on the CT side. The enemy ambushed FAV1 and took everybody out in less than a minute. And Max, facing every kind of danger imaginable on this mission, and loving it, was going to make a full and complete recovery with only a sand burn or two as souvenirs. Davie, however, was not.
I was the only CT left standing in either FAV, probably because no one had thought to shoot me after Max’s accident and word got out about Davie. A hollow victory for me.
The cops were waiting for us when we arrived at camp. They interrogated Torq and me separately. There was nothing I could tell them. I’d seen Davie lying dead. That was it.
They were scouring Davie’s room and the common areas of the FSC main building when I met Torq in the lobby after talking to the cops.
“You going to be okay?” he asked, regarding me closely, probably for signs of stress and trauma.
I felt tapped out and in shock, but I nodded anyway. I don’t think I convinced him. “Will they send us home now? Davie was obviously …” I couldn’t say the word.
“We have one more day of camp,” he said circumspectly. “The cops will probably want everyone around for at least that long. We may as well finish out your vacation.”
“But Davie—”
“Rockford has already talked to the police about tightening security measures. I don’t think anyone else is in danger. For the rest of camp, FSC is the safest place to be.”
I nodded again. I wanted to ask him who he thought did it. But now didn’t seem to be the appropriate time.
He put a gentle hand on my arm. “I have to get back to work.” Then he leaned in and whispered, “Eight. My place.”
He winked and was off, leaving me suppressing a heavy sigh of high anxiety and anticipation in his wake for so many reasons. His tone could’ve been taken several ways—"I’m looking forward to some Bond-type fun” (and the billions of us who’ve ever watched a Bond movie know what that means) or “Let’s put our heads together about this Davie thing,” or “I’m looking forward to interrogating you about the fire alarm affair until you reach the hardboil-and-crack stage.”
Call me bad for going giddy and excited about Torq, especially in light of Davie’s traumatic death and Max’s only hours-old preempted date with death in the desert. Where was my sympathy? My compassion? My sense of timing? My fear, for heaven’s sake?
Lost somewhere to my lust drive, I suspected, along with my good sense. ‘Cause my Torq fantasies were strictly X-rated. But for now, I needed to get back to business.
I needed to talk to Max. What, exactly, did he remember?
An hour later, they brought Max back to his room and I popped by to check on him.
Max looked tired, but his color had returned. A bruise I hadn’t noticed before discolored his right cheek and he had a cold compress pressed against the side of his head, concealing a nasty bump.
“You’re looking much improved.” I tried to hide my worry by going overly perky. “How are you feeling?”
“I have one hell of a headache, but I’ll live. You didn’t think the old fall-off-a-cliff trick would do me in, did you?” He gave a weak grin and propped himself up on his pillows. “Sit down. I could use the company.”
I pulled a chair next to his bed, but before sitting, I played Florence Nightingale and fluffed his pillows for him. “What did Rockford’s doc say?”
“I’ll be stiff and sore, but I’ll live. He gave me some extra-strength painkillers to get me through the night and told me to rest.”
“Maybe I should go, then … .” I was just being polite but hoping he’d ask me to stay.
“Sit. Talking isn’t going to wear me out. Maybe it’ll take my mind off …” Max paused. We both knew he was thinking of Davie. “Just promise that if I fall asleep on you, you won’t take it personally. As soon as these painkillers kick in, I won’t be able to keep my eyes open.”
“I’m surprised the reading material in the sickroom didn’t anesthetize you already. I don’t suppose Rockford’s picked up any new magazines since yesterday?”
“I couldn’t tell. Double vision.”
“Damn that double vision.” I held up one finger. “I’ve always wondered how that worked. How many fingers am I holding up?”
He forced a weak grin. “One. You can quit with the doctor games. I’m better now.”
“Max, something’s been bothering me… .”
“Yeah?”
Figuring his memory of events was never going
to be better, I bludgeoned away with my rude question. “Why did you fall over that ledge? What distracted you so much that you didn’t notice it? From where I was, your fear looked real.”
“A rattler, that’s what they tell me.” He winced and reached for a glass of water on the nightstand as he readjusted himself and set down the compress he’d been holding against his head.
I leaned over and handed the glass to him. “A snake?” They were certainly sticking to the party line. “Are you sure? Who told you? How did they know?”
“Hold up with the rapid-fire questions. My head hurts enough as it is and my mind isn’t up to full speed.” Max paused, clearly trying to concentrate and gather his thoughts. “Fry told me. Said he saw the markings in the sand above the ledge. And, no, I’m not sure. I can’t remember a thing after getting out of the FAV until I woke up with you all crowding around me. Perfectly natural with a minor head injury and concussion. And to quote Indiana jones, ‘I hate snakes.’ Would I rather jump off a ledge than face a rattler poised to strike? Probably. But I think I just tripped.”
I frowned.
“What? What did you see?” Max looked interested, not worried.
I told him what I remembered, how he’d been looking back at Fry. Privately, I wondered if Fry could have been threatening him with a real gun, something that would definitely scare Max over the edge. In my estimation, Max had nearly been run down twice and now he’d been scared off a cliff onto a dead body. Fry could have been driving the car at Hal’s. He could have shot my tire out on the driving range, and he’d certainly scared Max over the edge. Anyone could have killed Davie, but I still hadn’t figured out why. Who’d want to kill a driving instructor?
Back to Fry—what if he was a hired assassin? Didn’t old spies go bad for money every day? They did in Bond flicks.
“Could Fry have been testing you?” I asked.
Max shook his head. “I don’t remember. Maybe. But why would Fry lie?”
“To avoid a lawsuit,” I said, but that’s not what I was thinking. “Max, how much money did you win in the lottery?”
He laughed and then winced, putting the compress back to his head. “Thinking about becoming a gold-digger and going after me for my money now?”
“In your dreams,” I said. “No, Max, I’m just trying to piece things together and I’m curious.”
“A hundred and fifty million.”
I whistled under my breath. “Wow!” One hundred and fifty million reasons for murder. Max had to be the richest guy at camp by a mere hundred million or so.
“What are you thinking?” Max asked, watching me closely, probably trying to use his mind-reading training to see where my little gray cells were leading.
“Three accidents in two days. Three near misses …”
“You think someone’s trying to kill me for my money?” He sounded more amused by the idea than upset.
“Why not? It’s happened to other lottery winners.”
“Not to me,” he said emphatically. “I don’t have any enemies.” He grinned. “And I made damn sure that everyone listed in my will has plenty of their own money … just to guard against this kind of thing.”
“But how can you be sure one of those people hasn’t already blown through their wad and wants more?” I argued.
“No one’s trying to kill me. You’d be better off figuring out who’d want Davie dead,” he stated in a tone that said case closed, discussion over. He yawned and I took that as my cue to leave. But that didn’t mean I agreed with him. Davie may be dead, but I was still convinced that Max had been a target. I just couldn’t figure out how Davie fit in. Yet.
In our collective opinion, Emma’s and mine, Bond girls wore only a few selections of outfits: black leather—definitely too hot for an Arizona summer; evening gown—sorry, didn’t bring one; short shorts; or bathing suits. Probably there was at least one bathing suit-clad babe per movie. So we settled on my prop bikini and a sarong for my evening visit with Torq. Obvious? Maybe.
But, as Emma said, “Why did FSC send you that bikini if they didn’t want you to wear it? If now’s not the time to be in character, I don’t know when is. Plus, he has to see you in a bikini at least once. How else are you going to work up to a hot spy-sex evening?”
“I’m not sure that’s what he has in mind,” I said, thinking the evening could be more like heavy interrogation than heavy petting.
Emma rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”
I wasn’t sure that was what I had in mind, either, but there was that recurring “satin sheet, rolling around in a fancy hotel bed with a tousled Bond” fantasy of mine. Camp had fulfilled many of my Bond fantasies, so why not go at least a few bases toward that one?
Nervous as I was about showing off my bikini-clad body, Emma made a good point. And thanks to Logan and her insistence on buying me silicone bra inserts, I now filled my glamorous, gorgeous, hot-pink FSC number. Plus the inserts made for maximum jiggle value. The bottoms were pure string bikini. Tie the matching sarong low around the waist, add my pair of heeled, jeweled sandals, and I may as well have been wearing an evening gown. Two Bond girl outfits killed with one. Double the value!
And wearing a swimsuit both allowed for an evening swim and eliminated the need for matching underwear, something I’d always been self-conscious about. Until this latest birthday shopping spree, I don’t think I’d even owned a matching lingerie set. I mean, I tried to do my best to wear white panties with white bras, but that was as far as I ever took things. Because, come down to it, in the underwear department, I voted for serviceability and function over style almost every time.
Emma had straightened my hair so that it hung long and shiny around my shoulders like a model’s in a shampoo commercial.
“Like the mates like it,” she said.
My lips were plumped, my makeup primed so that it wouldn’t melt off in the still insufferable heat, and a light, natural coat of foundation, blush, eyeliner, mascara, and shadow applied.
I squirted a dab of the fuck-me perfume on my wrists and rubbed it on my neck, behind my ears, and between my cleavage. just in case I had to resort to using my sex appeal to gain information. Emma grabbed the bottle to douse me again. I pulled it out of her grasp before she could make her move.
“Careful with that! It’s potent stuff.” I grinned.
She returned my grin and stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Damn, I’m good. I should’ve been a makeup artist.” She handed me my purse. “Now off with you. Have fun and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I shook my head and shot her a look. “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
She grinned back. “I wouldn’t be so sure. If you’d just let the inner Bond girl out …”
Chapter Sixteen
Torq answered the door before I had a chance to knock. In direct opposition to my Bond fantasy, he wasn’t wearing a tuxedo, or even a white linen suit, but cargo shorts and a T-shirt, Arizona casual. Arizona dressy, for that matter. On him, the look was simply scorching hotness. Still damp and curling over his forehead and ears, his hair had obviously been freshly washed. His face had that just-shaved smooth softness that I so love in a man; that makes me fantasize about kissing him all over … with a lot of tongue and sucking and licking involved. Even nervous and possibly about to be interrogated, I had to clench my fists, which tingled with the urge to run my fingers over his firm jawline and stroke his cheeks.
Torq invited me in with a sweep of his arm and a long, slow perusal of my outfit, followed by an appreciative smile that sent my heart fluttering and gave me hope that his thoughts had drifted toward my version of shower fantasies. “You look gorgeous tonight. That pink"—he paused—"outfit is very flattering.” His tone said “sexy.”
“Thank you.” I suck at retorts—seductive, snappy, or otherwise. Nothing short of a miracle was going to change that. At least I’d learned the two-word art of graciously receiving a compliment and not denigrating myself or explaining t
he compliment away as I was prone to do. “Have you heard anything more about Davie, the poor man? Any suspects?”
Torq shook his head no. “Let’s forget about Davie tonight and just enjoy ourselves.”
Torq and Davie had been coworkers, maybe even friends. I decided to respect his wishes. He didn’t need me throwing salt on his wounds.
Torq ushered me in and offered me a seat on the sofa. His cottage was decorated in muted Southwest colors, obviously done by a decorator, and had more of a hotel than homey feel. The only inklings of his personality were the wide array of electronic toys splashed around the place—the large plasma TV, an Xbox gaming system, a Bose stereo system … the list went on.
The cottage was open and spacious but couldn’t have been over seven or eight hundred square feet. His great room linked to a small dining area and kitchen. He walked to the kitchen and returned with a bowl of tortilla chips, a dish of guacamole, and another of salsa. He set them on the coffee table in front of me, along with a handful of napkins and several small plates.
“Help yourself. I made the guacamole myself.”
“A man who can cook?” I was wondering about his hospitality. When did the grilling begin? And I didn’t mean on the barbecue.
“A man who can squash avocados.” He grinned again and walked back to the kitchen counter, where he had a row of mixers and bottles of alcohol displayed in a makeshift bar. “I promised you a drink. What can I get you? I have Hal’s Flirtini recipe.”
Remembering my mission, and my last drinking binge with him, I reluctantly decided to play it safe, though I really could have used a drink to loosen me up. “No thanks. I don’t think I’m up for another encounter with the KGB.”
He laughed. “Too bad. Once I finally found it, I realized I have plenty of it. That KGB is elusive, but damn effective.”
“Yes … it is.” I smiled and wondered when the real interrogation would begin. “Can you make a Shirley Temple version of the Flirtini? That, I could go for.”
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