by Dana Marton
And he’d decided that he would keep Cal. He was a useful sort of chap, as the British said, and he was family. He was a good businessman. He wasn’t afraid of a little foul play, as proven by that unfortunate incident with the London Stock Exchange.
“The island is fine. It won’t be all about work. You can bring a girlfriend if you’d like.”
His invitation was for a prolonged visit to his small private island in the South Pacific under the pretext of him needing Cal’s advice for starting up a shipping-and-storage business in the region. Cal seemed happy to provide his expertise, pay back the favor he owed. He had no idea he was about to receive another gift, his life. On the island, cut off from the world, he would be safe.
“Don’t have a girl, I’m sad to say.”
“Even better, there’ll be plenty of them there. Nice Russian girls, too.” He was even considering inviting the four women of Savall, Ltd. Cavanaugh just couldn’t shut up about them. And he did need their money-laundering services; he had a few small fortunes he needed to move before the widespread collapse of the banking system in the West.
The ladies of Savall, Ltd. would make a useful addition to the group of gorgeous women he had already invited to the island. Alexandra was charming. She was all he had hoped and more. Pliant, eager to please, full of youthful enthusiasm. She looked up to him, and the open adoration felt wonderful. And she was grateful to him, so gratifyingly grateful for everything.
He had already sent her to his ranch in the Andes where he would ride out the storm. He didn’t want to be on the island with the people he’d decided to save. He wasn’t sure what their first reaction would be when they found out he’d had a hand in the coming disaster. And they would be suspicious; they weren’t stupid. They wouldn’t buy that it was sheer luck that left his interests unscathed. They would grieve for their families and blame him. Hell, he couldn’t save everyone.
The virus wasn’t that bad, anyway. It wouldn’t kill everyone, just cull the weak.
Once the men and women he’d chosen settled down and accepted the way things were, once they realized what they owed him and that there was no way out, he would tell them what he expected of them. In a couple of months, they would be ready to do his bidding.
Chapter Eleven
Sam walked without hurry, smiled at the guards who were now lounging outside the front door. Everything looked normal. She wouldn’t let the relief show.
“Philippe ask for me yet?” She twirled her handbag, as if her heart wasn’t beating a mile a minute.
One of the men shook his head.
She just sashayed into the house.
Roberto was in the living room, watching TV, the only guard in there. He looked up as she came in, and a dark little gleam entered his eyes. “Come keep me company.” He patted the couch next to him.
“Philippe is waiting for me.” She headed for the stairs.
He was up, moving faster than she would have expected of him, cutting off her passage, grabbing for her wrist. “What’s the hurry? You think you’re too good for me?”
The smell of alcohol hit her. She tried to tug her hand free, but he held tight. “We were discussing business. He is going to look for me. I told him I wouldn’t be long.”
He sneered at that. “You can discuss business with me first.” He yanked her hard against him.
If she called out for Reese, the men in front of the door outside would hear her, too, and rush in.
“Later. First let me finish what I started upstairs.”
That seemed to anger Roberto. He held her even tighter. “Philippe must get first taste of everything. Is that it? You don’t know how sick of him I am.”
“You had a little to drink. Don’t do anything you might regret later.” She held his gaze. “You know how he is.”
But Roberto had obviously passed the point where he could clearly recall just how tough Cavanaugh could be with employees who displeased him. “Come with me for a second.” He leaned closer, and she held her breath. “Give me a little something to convince me to wait for the rest.”
Oh God. This was the absolute worst time for him to go crazy like this. He was tugging her toward the door under the stairs, one of the doors Cavanaugh had never shown her. If she went with Roberto, she might find something important. Also, she could fight him off behind closed doors, which she didn’t want to do here for fear that the sounds of struggle would alert the men outside.
She let him drag her behind him.
The room they entered was maybe fifteen by fifteen, with a cot and a table and a small TV. Did the guards take turns crashing here? She didn’t get a chance to have a better look around. Roberto pushed her against the wall roughly, knocking the air out of her lungs.
She pushed her shoulder bag out of the way. The idiot was going to break the vial with the drug in it if she wasn’t careful.
“Later,” she said as forcefully as she could and shoved against him.
He didn’t budge an inch. “Now. I told you, it won’t take long.”
“Get off me.” She struggled for air, which seemed to be in short supply all of a sudden.
He crushed against her, shoving his mouth against hers, his full weight pinning her to the wall. Panic rose from within. She banged her fists into his shoulders and twisted her head wildly. “Stop it!”
She fought against him with everything Nick Tarasov had taught her at Quantico, but he was too heavy to shove off. She butted her forehead into his nose with all her strength. He gave an outraged growl and moved back an inch or two, just to slam her into the wall again.
She struggled to knee him in the groin, but he was standing too close for that. She couldn’t bring up her knees. Panic pushed her to fight without thought, to claw her way away from him, but after a few seconds she realized that wasn’t going to work. She was seriously outpowered. She had to calm down and use her brains.
She went slack as he put a hand between them and squeezed her breast until it hurt. Then she made herself lower her hand between them, as well, and reached for the buckle of his belt.
“Knew I could convince you. You’re a smart girl.” Roberto slobbered into her neck. “I’m a big man. You’ll see. Much bigger than Philippe.”
Her hand hesitated on the buckle. She drew in some air then tugged on the metal. He moved back a little to give her room. She’d been hoping for that.
Sam brought up her right knee as hard as she could, then, as he folded, she brought the other knee into his chin.
“You bitch,” he groaned, going down hard. And still he wouldn’t give up. He was grabbing for her ankle.
Dark memories rushed to immobilize her with fear as his fat fingers closed around her, bruising her skin. She dragged herself away, her body trembling. Roberto was coming up already. “I wasn’t going to hurt you, but you’re going to pay for this.” He lunged at her.
No, not again. Not ever again. She wasn’t a victim. She was strong. She was a survivor. Reese’s words came to her and held back the darkness. She could win over Roberto if she found a way to beat back the memories that gripped her inside, making her stiff with fear.
She was a survivor.
She hooked her leg behind Roberto’s as he was clinging to her. The man went down a second time, with a bone-rattling crash. Wasn’t as quick to get up again. There must have been some truth to the bigger-they-are-the-harder-they-fall adage.
“I’ll kill you for this,” he hissed between his teeth.
“You as much as look at me again and you’ll deal with Philippe.”
“You think I’m afraid of him?” he boasted as he struggled to stand. “I’ve been with him for ten years. He tosses whores like you aside every day.” He spat the words at her.
She was at the door already, but a second too late. He had a gun out and pointed at her.
“You get back.”
All she could think of was that she couldn’t die here. Reese needed her upstairs. Her team needed her to come through with the mission.
She took one cautious step toward Roberto then another.
“Look, things shouldn’t have gone this far. I lost my head. I don’t want to get Philippe mad. My company can’t afford to lose the business, that’s all. Just let me go up there for a while. I’ll come right back.” She stopped just outside of reach.
“Get down here.”
She moved forward slowly, another few inches.
His hand shot out and grabbed her, pulled her down hard on her knees. He was sitting with his knees up and his legs spread. He pulled her closer and put the gun in the middle of her forehead. “Forget Philippe. I’m the damn boss now. You do what I say you do.”
She had come eye to eye with death before, but it wasn’t one of those things a person got used to. Adrenaline pumped through her blood, and mind-numbing fear, making it impossible to focus on anything but the cold metal pressed against her skin.
“I’ll do what you want.”
“Damn right you will.” He reached up with his free hand and pulled her tank top up to reveal her abdomen. “Take it off.”
She reached up with trembling fingers and pulled the thin material over her breasts. He seemed too impatient to wait any longer. He shoved her to the floor and turned to fall on her, lowering the gun in the process.
He was with his back to the door now, didn’t notice as Reese quietly came in. The fury of hell was in his eyes as he took a step forward. Sam sent him a look of desperate pleading. Stay.
The mission was more important than she was. Reese couldn’t blow his cover. He wasn’t supposed to be in the mansion. Philippe’s goons by the front door would have never let him in. If Roberto saw him, he’d know something was up.
He moved forward anyway.
Roberto lifted his head a little, maybe hearing some noise. Sam didn’t give him time to turn around. She twisted and slammed her elbow into his temple. Then, as he went limp, she grabbed the gun and hit him over the head with it for good measure.
Reese was there to roll him off her.
“I could handle him.”
“So I see.” His face was dark as he watched her, then in the next second crushed her to him. “Sorry, sorry.” He pulled away then. “I didn’t mean to.”
“No.” She burrowed back into his arms. She needed the comfort he offered. Her only regret was that they had to rush.
She pulled away after a few seconds. “Cavanaugh?”
“He’s tied up as best as I could, but we’d better go, anyway, before someone goes looking for him,” he said. “You got a plan for what to do with him?”
She picked up her purse from the floor. “I have an excellent plan.” She gave him a brief update then looked out the door. The living room was still empty.
They left the guards’ room and stole up the stairs, watching their backs the whole time.
“How did you know to come and look for me?” she asked when they were inside the room and she could see that Philippe was still there and everything was okay, for now.
“Saw you arrive through the window. Wondered what was going on when you didn’t come up.”
“Thanks.”
“He was lucky you dealt with him. I wouldn’t have been that gentle.”
The cold anger in his voice was scary, making her wonder just what he would have done to Roberto if she hadn’t managed on her own.
Cavanaugh growled around the cloth in his mouth. He was probably swearing at them.
“Did he say anything new?” It was great that they had a date, but in itself it was little more than nothing. They needed a lot more information than that if the attack was to be preempted.
“No. And I did try. I don’t think he knows much beyond the date. You’re bleeding.”
“What?” It took her a second to register that last part.
He was holding her arm. Sure enough, blood trickled down her skin.
She had slammed against several things downstairs, but she didn’t realize in the excitement that something had torn her skin. Now that she saw the wound, however, she immediately began to feel the pain, too. Not for long.
“Give me your tank top.” He drew a finger along the wound as he examined it. “I don’t think it’s dangerously deep.”
Maybe. But he sure seemed dangerously close. She felt embarrassed all of a sudden about pulling her tank top over her head, and how insane was that? She had a bra on, no different than the dozens of times he’d seen her in a bikini.
The way he studiously avoided looking at anything but the wound told her that he, too, was feeling some of the warm tension that sprung to life between them. He wrapped her arm in the soft material, nice and snug to stanch the flow of blood. Then he strode to Cavanaugh’s closet, pulled out an island-print shirt and handed it to her.
She slipped into the shirt, eager to put that thin barrier between them.
“This shouldn’t make anyone suspicious,” he said.
He was right. Being in a state of semiundress would be natural for a woman in Cavanaugh’s suite, and the shirt covered the makeshift bandage.
Philippe was growling something from behind the gag. Reese walked toward him.
She followed and pulled the paper bag out of her purse. Time to get on with the show. “Hold his arm.”
Cavanaugh thrashed when he saw the syringe.
“This is not going to kill you,” she told him.
Apparently, he didn’t believe her. He threw his weight forward and crashed his chair to the floor. They had to have heard that downstairs.
“His arm.” She put her weight on him to hold him down.
Reese finally got his arm. “Hurry.”
Philippe howled around the gag as she injected him. Then he began to shake, his eyes rolling back in his head.
People were coming up the stairs.
“Quick.” Reese took off the gag as she shoved the syringe into her purse.
They untied him from the chair. Reese bunched the straps into his pants pocket before dropping and rolling under the bed.
A knock sounded at the door. “Are you all right, monsieur?”
Sam rubbed the tie marks around Philippe’s wrists and face. There. Barely visible now. The drug was turning him red, anyway.
“Help me!” she screamed.
The door burst open and three men poured in, all with gun in hand.
“A stroke.” She shook Philippe. “I think he had a stroke. He was having trouble moving his arm. Said he had a headache. Then he fell down.”
The guns were put away as one of the guys called for an ambulance.
“You’d better go back to your room,” another one told her, kneeling down to Philippe. “Call the front gate to make sure they let the ambulance through.” He barked the order at one of the others.
Roberto skulked in, rubbing his head, and stared daggers at her. He would go after her again if he got half the chance.
It didn’t matter. He couldn’t do anything now. “Wake up, honey. Wake up.” She wouldn’t let go of Philippe’s hand, doing her best to appear hysterical.
“You two take anything?” the other security guy asked, his eyes narrowing as he watched her.
She shook her head. Looked away. “I told him about something new I tried and he wanted a sample, but—I just got back. He was still on the phone. He was angry with somebody—And then he just dropped.” She wailed.
The third guy came over and dropped next to Philippe, put a hand on the man’s chest and started CPR.
“He’s breathing. He’s breathing.” She put a hand out to stop him and sobbed for good measure. The idiot was going to kill him. Giving CPR to someone who didn’t need it could actually stop their heart. She’d watched plenty of hospital soaps in the can.
The guy moved back.
“I’ll walk you back to your room,” Roberto told her as she stood. There seemed to be a slight limp to his step as he moved around.
She pressed a hand to her chest, swallowed. “Oh God. I think I’m going to be sick.” She sat down and pulled up her k
nees, put her head between them.
“Breathe deep,” the other man said, and it looked as if, for the moment, he was willing to give up on the idea of evicting her. “We should at least put him in the bed.”
And for a minute or two that kept them busy.
Then, finally, the ambulance arrived, the crew coming up the stairs and into the room with the stretcher.
“Could you give me name and date of birth?” Anita, in an EMT uniform, was holding a clipboard.
One of his men supplied the information.
“Any medical conditions?”
“None.”
“Drug allergies?”
“None. Isn’t he too young for a stroke?”
Carly was taking his blood pressure and feeling his pulse. “Average age for stroke is fifty-six.” For once her knowledge of odd trivia came in handy, making her look like she was a true professional.
Cavanaugh was fifty-one if the data the FBI had on him was correct.
“Can’t you do more to help him?” the security guard demanded.
“We’re working on it,” Gina soothed him. “Please, let’s give the man some air. Everyone who is not working on him, please leave the room.”
“I think I’m going to faint,” Sam said weakly.
“Okay.” Gina went over to her and took her pulse. “She stays. Everyone else, please get out. You can watch from the door.”
The men did as she said, and as soon as they were out, Gina and Anita positioned themselves to give cover to Carly, who moved toward the nightstand. With a couple of swift moves, she had the hard drive out of Cavanaugh’s laptop and a blank one put in.
Gina started an IV on Cavanaugh. She’d been a volunteer medic during her police academy days.
“Looks like a stroke,” Anita told the men. “We are taking him to Georgetown Municipal Hospital. If someone wants to come in with him, they can follow the ambulance. Please bring his insurance card and ID.”
“What about her?” Carly checked Sam’s pupils like a pro.
“Better keep an eye on her for a couple of hours. Might as well take her in, too.”
Roberto glared at her.