by Dana Marton
“How about if we just watch some TV?” he asked after a while. “You can sit by me and we’ll hold hands. You can put your head on my shoulder when you get comfortable.”
She nodded and sat.
He plopped down next to her and took her hand. “We can’t have you jump and look ready to run every time we brush up against each other.”
“I know. I can do this.” She didn’t want him to think she was a total incompetent idiot who was unsuitable for the mission.
“I know you can. Just relax.”
It helped that he was doing just that, leaning back and surfing through the channels as if he were in his own living room—wherever he lived when he wasn’t sleeping in the bush.
He settled on the National Geographic Channel. “Okay with you?”
“Sure.” She watched an interview with a woman who took in orphaned lion cubs.
They were cute feeding from a bottle. She let her tightly wound muscles loosen up a little. The cubs grew and needed to be taught to hunt. That took a while. Life was a learning experience for everyone, everywhere. Sam made herself lean against the man next to her, conscious of their bodies touching, not the least comfortable, but making herself do it all the same. If she could learn to pretend, she would be happy with that.
She didn’t think she could ever forget enough to have the real thing, to be able to relax around a man.
TSERNYAKOV GLANCED at his timetable and ticked off another task done. Next was calling in all debts people owed him. If they didn’t pay now, they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to pay next month this time. The clock was ticking.
He needed all that he could get his hands on, and not just the many currencies he did business in. After the terrorist attack, as economies collapsed, inflation was likely to soar. Whoever couldn’t pay up, he would persuade to substitute hard cash with land, equipment, gold, anything potentially valuable.
He looked at his mile-long to do list, resenting that he had to handle all the work when he employed thousands. But this was information he couldn’t trust to anyone.
COME ON, SAM. Where are you? Reese glanced toward the main house while keeping a smile on his face and his full attention, seemingly, on the blonde in front of him. The beach party was a lot smaller than they had expected. They’d figured over a hundred people. There were only about thirty, scattered in small groups on the sand.
“So what more could I do to avoid taxes?” Eva Hern didn’t bat her eyes, but made long, sweeping moves with her eyelashes, many of which were the glue-on kind.
Who wore fake eyelashes to the beach? And for heaven’s sake, why? He tried not to look at the little clumps of adhesive on her eyelids. Maybe he was out of step with fashion. He had no time to socialize.
“You could give all your money to charity,” he said smoothly.
They both laughed. Then he did his best to give an answer like his brother, David, the attorney whom he was impersonating, would. “I can’t really tell you anything without looking at your particular situation. I’d be happy to get together with you sometime next week in your office to chat about this.”
Judging from the woman’s widening smile, he’d given the right answer.
“I’ll call you. Definitely,” she said and wiggled her shoulders. She swam topless like most of the female guests, but had put on a see-through beach shirt when she’d decided to come over and chat him up.
He made a point not to look below her eyes. It seemed to disappoint and frustrate her enough to keep her constantly moving, from pose to pose.
He glanced at his watch. Sam had been gone for twenty minutes.
Too long.
She was supposed to get in and out as fast as she could. The plan was for her to take pictures of the Cavanaugh mansion’s back entry and kitchen with the micro camera she wore disguised as a large ring. She was pretending to be searching for a bottle of mineral water as they were out of “gentle” at the grass-hut bar outside.
Another thing he had missed somehow, that mineral water now came in three varieties: still (pink cap), carbonated (blue cap) and gently carbonated (green cap)—some weird stuff Cavanaugh had apparently brought in from Europe. He thought of all those times when he and his men had drunk from puddles in the jungle or sucked moisture out of roots in the desert. Different worlds for sure.
“How long are you staying on the island?” Eva was asking.
“Maybe another week,” he said. He certainly had enough work to get back to.
Except for Sam, who’d turned out to be okay, he couldn’t wait to be rid of this job. Going into an operation without a gun left him unsettled. They were armed only with a cell phone and a “secret weapon” that had come from one of the men on his team, Tony Ferrarella, who, in between missions, spent a lot of time in his lab, exercising his inventor genius. The can was a prototype, only with Reese by chance when he’d gotten the call from his brother and hopped the first plane to the island. He wished they had used it today. He couldn’t stand not knowing what was going on in there.
The small can of what looked like breath-freshener spray contained microtransmitters too small to be seen by the naked eye. Each were too weak to work alone, but sprayed on a smooth surface they worked together to transmit voice over a hundred feet or so. They were undetectable, but highly vulnerable, good for about twenty-four hours, after which the fine sheen of dust that would naturally accumulate silenced them forever.
He caught movement from the corner of his eye at the mansion. Cavanaugh was walking out with Sam.
Reese was poised to come to her aid if she needed him, but then Sam laughed and linked her arm with Cavanaugh’s.
Didn’t they just look like the best of friends? What in hell had she been doing in there all this time? He reached to his chest and pretended consternation at the fact that his cell phone wasn’t hanging there. He glanced toward the beach and the towel he’d been occupying, then flashed an apologetic smile to Eva.
“I’m sorry. I seem to have left my cell in the room. I’d better go up there and get it. I’m expecting a call from a client.”
“You couldn’t stop working just for a day or two?” Her eyes promised all kinds of incentives, although she was here at the party with her boyfriend, Derrick something or other.
“Occupational hazard,” he said. “See you around?”
“You bet.” She looked only slightly put out as she headed toward the beach.
She had checked out legit. He’d called in the names of the guests to Brant as soon as he’d had them.
Reese set his course toward one of the two guest bungalows that stood on either side of the Cavanaugh estate. Sam and he had been housed in the upstairs suite of the smaller. He’d seen plenty of fancy before: most of his clients had been big-time businessmen, and he’d spent time in their homes. Sam seemed uncomfortable, however, by the effortless splendor.
Not that she needed anything more to make her feel self-conscious. The woman was a bundle of nerves as it was. He wished he could think up something that would set her at ease and give her some sense of security even if just for half an hour. Then again, the middle of a dangerous recon mission was probably not the right time to relax. He really hoped she was going to be able to work out her issues and move beyond her past. When he looked at her, beyond the beauty, he saw plenty of courage and potential.
He wished he hadn’t let his distaste for the FBI’s strong-arm tactics show at the beginning, behaving like the morose bastard he could be when something rubbed him wrong. But he had a new client halfway across the world he was supposed to save. And would the FBI just give him the information he needed to do his job? Hell, no. They dangled it in front of him, forcing him to take on this mission first, stuff that had nothing to do with him. He’d been annoyed and let it show, and had probably scared her, which had been the flat-out stupidest thing to do considering her past and the fact that they were supposed to be a team.
He slipped inside the house and went up the stairs, waited for her in
the living room. Be nice.
But then he laid eyes on her slim figure as she came in and it hit him what Cavanaugh could have done to her, alone in the big house. How the hell was he supposed to protect her when his hands were tied by the instructions he’d been given—protect without interfering. What kind of insane guideline was that?
“What took you so long?” He could have kicked himself at how harsh his voice sounded.
She cast him a wary glance. “I ran into Philippe.”
He had checked their room for listening devices the first day they’d gotten there and rechecked again every single day. So far it seemed their host wasn’t snooping on his guests, so they could speak freely.
“I saw.” He hadn’t missed the prolonged looks earlier either and the always too-bright smiles, Cavanaugh’s frequent excuses at conversation. He couldn’t blame the man, but he wasn’t going to let whatever the guy thought would happen go anywhere. Sam didn’t need that kind of harassment.
He hadn’t been too fond of the mission at the beginning, but he was really starting to hate it now that he’d met Cavanaugh and his goons. Any way he looked at it, the women were being used in a dangerous game.
Sam skirted by him toward the kitchen, and his gaze fell to her lower back, to the tattoo of a rose closed tight in a bud, the short stem having some pretty nasty-looking thorns. She stopped and drew a breath, turned to look him in the eye. He recognized the moment for what it was, her decision not to let him intimidate her. She had plenty of sheer guts, this one. He put the frown away.
“So I saw Eva keeping you company,” she remarked with a smirk before continuing to the kitchen to search the fridge. She ate on the hour, every hour. Not that any of it stuck to her.
“She wanted free tax advice,” he said, meaning to move away, but his attention stayed fixed on Sam.
She wore a tasteful bikini that covered everything and still managed to entice more than all the bare flesh on the sand. She had hair a startling color of Irish red, falling in soft waves to just below her ear, as well as big, luminous green eyes shining out of her face. She had no shortage of guys coming over to meet her on the beach.
She played along, even flirting on occasion, although he was pretty sure that was all bravado and she couldn’t have followed through if her life depended on it. She was uncomfortable around men with hunger in their eyes, but was good at hiding that fact and never let her unease stop her from doing her job.
He made a point of sticking by her as much as he could. He would have thought the two of them coming together, rooming together, sent a message to the others, but it seemed the standard rules of society were not strictly kept on private beaches.
“So what have you got?” he asked, returning to the business at hand. He tossed himself into the armchair by the window, slumped deep, arms and legs open, his body language as easygoing as he could make it.
She seemed to relax in response, leaning against the counter. “He showed me around downstairs.” She grinned, looking pretty pleased with herself.
“Pictures?”
“I got everything.” She licked some thick sugary cream off her bottom lip. “You sure you don’t want one?” She extended the plate of goodies toward him.
He shook his head.
“Okay, almost everything.” She stuck the plate back into the fridge. “There were a couple of closed doors he didn’t elaborate on.”
“We’ll start our search there. You should put on more sunscreen.” Her shoulder was getting a pink tinge to it. She was fair skinned. He looked away.
“I should try to get back in. I could pretend to need extra towels.”
“The guesthouse has its own linen closet.”
“I’ll say I couldn’t find it.”
They’d been shown around a couple of hours ago, upon their arrival, but the place really was big enough to forget some of it. Still, if she kept coming up to the mansion, someone might think it suspicious.
“We do it together. Tonight,” he said.
THE DRINKING PICKED up as the sun went down. Cavanaugh had brought in a local band to play Caribbean tunes mixed with popular French music. He spent a fair amount of time with his guests, but disappeared inside his house now and then.
Was he conducting business? Did he have something big going down? Was it connected to Tsernyakov?
Sam glanced across the sand and her gaze met Reese’s. He nodded slowly. It was near midnight. Time for them to get started.
She walked up to him and stepped behind him as he chatted with a small group, put her arms around his waist and leaned against his back. She was comfortable with this much.
He covered her hands with his own. “Hi.”
She tugged on reflex, expecting to feel trapped, then caught herself and went still. “Want to go for a walk on the beach?”
He turned and smiled at her. “Sure.” He extricated himself from the conversation and grabbed on to her hand as he led her toward where the waves met the white sand glowing in the moonlight.
“Have you seen Cavanaugh?” she asked. She’d been wandering around the property, trying to spot him for the last hour.
“He went out on the speedboat with a couple of women a while ago.”
So that had been him. She’d been too far away at the time to see.
The breeze was gentle and still warm, the sand soft under her bare feet. Now and then she had to jump to get out of the way of an overreaching wave. The flower print, wrap-style skirt hung to her ankles, stroking her skin with each step.
That she would feel comfortable in clothes like these surprised her, having dressed for years in nothing but black, accessorizing with chains, spiking her hair, building an armor around her from clothes and attitude. She didn’t miss the whole Goth look. Odd that she couldn’t remember when she’d begun feeling comfortable without it.
The breeze blew the material of her skirt against Reese’s legs from time to time. She adjusted her hand in his. Now that she was more comfortable around him, she didn’t mind the physical contact as much. She could see why some women thought it nice.
A sense of contentedness filled her without warning. Then, self-consciousness. Was this how normal people felt when they were out on a moonlit night? The thought brought a sudden, breathtaking need for life, her life, to be as normal as that. Could she ever achieve it? What would it take to make it happen?
“Let’s start walking up.” Reese led her toward the line of palm trees that separated Cavanaugh’s property from his neighbor’s ostentatious palace.
The trees widened into a little grove with a few hammocks strung between the trunks. If anyone was watching them, a man and a woman heading that way would look anything but suspicious.
Another couple had thought of utilizing the area already, it seemed. One of the hammocks was occupied and swaying suggestively. They passed in a wide arc around it.
A stone path began at the other end of the grove, leading to the pool. They took it.
“Should we spend a few minutes here?” she asked, nervous all of a sudden.
He put his arms around her and turned her in a circle, pretending to pay attention only to her, while effectively surveying their surroundings. “I don’t think that’s necessary. Nobody seems to be watching.”
They rounded the pool and reached the terrace attached to the main house. It was circled with stone columns and potted palms and was set up for dining, with elegantly carved teak chairs and tables.
“Let’s settle down here for a second.” Reese pulled a chair out for her. “See any of Cavanaugh’s men?”
She scanned the area. “No.”
“Good. Me, neither.” He nodded toward the French doors upstairs, which opened onto the balcony. Sheer white curtains moved in and out in the breeze. “Point of entry?”
She glanced to the downstairs entrance and the camera above it. There was nothing above the upstairs door. They probably figured anyone trying to get up there would be recorded by the downstairs system anyway.
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br /> Reese reached over the table and took her hand, rubbed his thumb over it before he stood. She got to her feet and let him pull her against him.
“So, what’s the plan?” she asked into his neck.
“We’re going to make out behind that column.” He turned her a little then was moving that way already.
Even knowing he didn’t really mean it, her blood sped to a rush. She swallowed and tried to act nonchalant, knowing that she could fool the cameras, but she wasn’t fooling him.
He began by rubbing his lips along the side of her cheek. She stopped in her tracks from the shock of sensation and realized that was just what he wanted. He nudged her against the column gently, keeping his gaze on hers, making sure he wasn’t pushing her panic button. And she couldn’t be scared knowing just how much energy he spent on making sure she was comfortable.
He looked up then stood still for a second, seeming to be plotting something.
“The column and this potted palm are keeping us from view of the camera,” she said.
“Right. You’re going to climb me to get up to the balcony.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t mind the breaking-and-entering part. Climbing Reese Moretti was another matter. A couple of seconds passed before she could say, “Okay.”
“Be careful,” he said and put his hands on her waist, then he was lifting her.
The wraparound skirt opened conveniently, giving her plenty of room to maneuver with her legs, using her feet for support on Reese’s shoulders. Then her hands closed around the railing and she pulled. He pushed his palms under her soles and helped her up.
“Okay,” she whispered and crept to the French doors for a look before returning to him. “Nobody’s here.”
He stood by the column, his hands braced on each side. His shoulders were wide enough so the camera would see those. As long as he stayed that way, anyone watching on the security monitor would think he had her in front of him, pinned.
“I’ll be right back.” She crossed the balcony again and went in low, finding herself in what looked to be a spare bedroom for the mansion.