Dash felt another wave of desire. No. He couldn't give in. Lose. "Uh...what's for dinner?" he croaked.
Shana smiled. Her eyes were veiled by thick, brown lashes, her lips looked amazingly soft and inviting. "Dinner?" she asked.
Heat spiked under Dash's suit. He felt an almost irresistible urge to reach out and grab her.
He sprang from his seat. "Yes, dinner," he choked out. "I'm hungry."
Shana's heavy-lidded eyes popped open.
Dash didn't wait to see how she would respond to such an asinine statement. He stalked out of the living room and toward the front foyer. From there, he accessed his knowledge of the basic layout of most homes and headed toward the back.
Thank God, he actually found the kitchen, a bright, surprisingly homey place with a breakfast nook facing the backyard. It was done in white tiles accented with red and black. And it was clean. Spotless, in fact, except for a colorful, designer-looking scarf tossed on top of the white tile counter. It was clear there was nothing cooking.
"We are going to have dinner," Dash muttered. He took a deep breath and struggled to cool down the heat that still simmered under his suit. "She asked me to dinner. I'm owed dinner." Though it looked as if he was going to have to prepare the meal himself.
Dash approached some shelves built in next to the oven. He scanned them for a cookbook even as he heard Shana's high heels clipping down the hall toward him.
He found a cookbook, the sole cookbook on the shelves which were filled with all sorts of irrelevant knick-knacks. It was an apparently untouched paperback entitled 100 Meals in Under 10 Minutes and he pulled it off the shelf just in time. Shana appeared in the doorway.
She struck a screen actress pose, an arm stretched on the doorpost high above her head, one hip cocked. "What," she asked, in a tone between amusement and seduction, "are you doing?"
Dash managed to close his opened mouth. "Ahem. Making dinner." He did not have to end up in bed with her. He did not, he did not, he did not. He didn't even have to make friends with her. She didn't know anything about Anja. Come on.
Then, to prove to the woman he was absolutely serious about cooking dinner, Dash opened the cookbook. Propelled by the action, a loose piece of paper sailed out of the opened book and floated, in lazy rocking motions toward the floor.
Dash bent to pick up the paper even as Shana stalked purposefully toward him. His glance toward the paper was cursory, his mind on other things, namely survival. Yet his eyes were caught by the name scrawled under the title of a handwritten recipe.
Anja Andropov.
Well...hell.
Shana prowled forward as Dash stared at the handwritten recipe, something called Caribbean Chicken. Individual letters of the recipe were darkened by an apparently leaky fountain pen, letters that always happened to be A, C, G, or T.
Good God, it was a code, the code, the DNA code for the virus. A, C, G, and T were the first letters of the four chemicals that, in various sequences, made up the spine of a DNA molecule.
Dash managed to breathe again. Breathing was no doubt a good thing, for Shana had reached his position. She put one hand on his shoulder and let her body brush enticingly against him.
"We don't need to cook dinner," she told him, sounding soft, if amused. "I thought we'd order something. You know, so we'd have more time to...talk."
The recipe trembled in Dash's hand. "Um...but this looks good."
Shana deigned to glance at what Dash held in his hand. She laughed. "Oh, that. My neighbor gave it to me a few weeks ago, though I can't imagine why. Anja knows perfectly well I don't cook."
Dash's fingers tightened on the recipe. He turned to glare at her. "Then why did you invite me to dinner?"
Her sparkly green eyes got all soft and warm again. Deadly. "Why, I wanted to get to know you."
In the biblical sense, she meant. And yet despite how this thought should have terrified him, he could feel himself get all hot and tight and wound up inside. Meanwhile Shana reached out. With two fingers she managed to tug Anja's recipe out of Dash's suddenly nerveless hands.
This was not good. Dash's gaze followed the recipe as it landed on the counter near the scarf. He needed a closer look at the thing. He needed to get it to Gideon...somehow. Meanwhile Shana's body pressed closer, warm and soft and...smelling really good.
Dash dared to look at her. She had an utterly inviting, even reassuring, expression on her face. He could — Maybe this was — As the heat continued to build inside, he could feel himself go rock hard.
Drawing in a sharp breath, Dash tried to pull away. Kind of. Maybe. One of her hands was under his suit jacket, roving across his chest. It felt like a burning iron. He wasn't pulling away. He was leaning closer. His lips were seeking hers. And finding them. He opened her mouth and plunged in his tongue for the deepest, hottest, most carnal kiss of his life.
He nearly lost it right then, but fear wasn't far under the surface. This wasn't going to work. He was no good at it. Or at least, he wasn't in Shana's league. To make matters worse, the damn recipe was getting further and further from his reach. Shana was tugging him toward the door, probably intending to drag him up to her bedroom.
Dammit, any embarrassment he was going to undergo would be for naught if he didn't manage to get his hands back on that recipe. At the same time, how was he going to disengage himself from the clinging, intimate kisses they were giving each other as she pulled him from the room? Even if he could stop kissing her, he couldn't exactly walk across the room and pocket the recipe.
Dash was racking what was left of his brain for a believable excuse when a female hand slipped through the placket of the trousers he hadn't even realized had been unzipped. The hand expertly closed around his erection. What had been left of his brain dissolved. God, that felt good. And why was he afraid of this again...?
But then, just as abruptly as the excitement had picked up, it stopped. She froze. All her amazing softness went very stiff. Her voice whispered in his ear, "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Dash mumbled, his lips against her neck.
"That," Shana said, and whipped her hand out of his pants.
Now Dash could hear something, a low and admittedly ominous rumble.
"Oh, my God," Shana whispered, clearly terrified. "It's the dog."
A dog. Like an engine sputtering back to life, Dash's brain came on line again. He'd received a message from Peter about some dog, one that might have something to do with Anja. It was reportedly odd in its behavior, if not dangerous.
The low rumble behind Dash turned into a louder, and more threatening sound.
Dash lifted his head slightly, so that his lips were next to Shana's ear. Under his breath, he said, "I'm going to turn around."
"No, don't." Her hands tightened around his upper arms. "Oh, no, he must have come in through the back door. I must not have closed it all the way when I came inside to let you in."
"It's okay, Shana." Dash made his voice soft and reassuring. "I can deal with the dog. But you need to let me go." Very slowly, he struggled to pry her fingers off his arms.
"No, you can't." Shana gulped in a breath. "There's something wrong with him. God, he's coming closer. He's — I think he's — "
Dash managed to wrest himself from Shana's hold. He turned around. The dog was a nasty-looking pit bull mix. It's hackles were up, its teeth bared. Froth drooled from its mouth. Rabid, Dash wondered?
"Nice dog," Dash said.
The animal sprang.
What happened next was attributable to reflex born of thousands of hours of brutal training. Dash whipped his service revolver out of the holster at his back and shot the sick dog square between its eyes with one short, efficient pop.
He'd long held the record at the Agency for target accuracy.
The dog silenced mid-bark and landed in a heavy heap just in front of him and Shana. For a moment there was utter silence.
Then Shana said, squeaky, "You — you shot it."
Dash turned t
o look at her. Gone was the come-hither, sexual mistress of all desire. In her place was a stay-right-there-buster woman of fear and suspicion.
"I had to do it," Dash told her. "I think it was rabid."
Her eyes flicked down toward his hands. "With a gun," she whispered.
"Um..." Dash hastily stashed the weapon back in its holster. A stupid habit it had been to strap it on, considering the probability of losing his pants that evening. "Let's see," he said, aiming for a matter-of-fact tone. "I'm going to call my — that is, the animal control center. If it does turn out to be rabid, they'll want to know."
His calm tone wasn't working. She was looking at him as if a rabies epidemic in the area was the least of her concerns. "You shot it," she repeated, still speaking unnaturally high. "With a gun."
"That's right." Dash maintained the matter-of-fact tone, though he was coming off the adrenaline rush of having shot the dog, and dropping into a low from the look she was giving him. It was a fearful, accusing — and definitely not interested any more — kind of look. "Now, why don't you go upstairs," Dash serenely suggested, "while I deal with cleaning this up?" Unaccountably, disappointment was crashing through him, but he kept the appearance of an even keel.
It was his trademark: Agent Dashwood, the Ice Man.
Only he hadn't been feeling exactly like ice before the dog had broken up the party.
"You are going to clean this up?" Shana asked. "Well, I — " She didn't finish the thought. With a last glance of horror toward Dash, she appeared to have reached her limit. She tiptoed around the corpse and then sprinted the rest of the way out of the room.
Dash released a deep sigh as he heard her feminine footsteps hightailing it up the stairs.
What a mess.
He had a dead dog at his feet. The target whose confidence he was supposed to gain had seen him take out, and use, a concealed weapon. And to top it all off, he was leaching disappointment that he wasn't going to have to sleep with her tonight, after all.
"Crap," Dash muttered.
But then, proving he was, indeed, the Ice Man, he remembered to pick up the recipe handwritten by Anja. He folded it carefully and placed it in his jacket pocket.
After that, he called Gideon.
CHAPTER SIX
"So, the dog didn't have rabies. Well, that's something, anyway," Olivia said. They were sitting at the glass-topped table on Shana's back patio, sipping iced tea and not reading the Sunday paper, which lay in jumbled piles about them.
"No, the dog didn't have rabies." Shana picked up the iced tea pitcher, gave it an absent shake, and put it down again. "But I am completely freaked. I almost slept with this guy. And you should have seen the way he shot that dog — " Shana pantomimed a two-handed gun hold, eyes narrowed to slits, then shuddered. "With extreme efficiency."
Brittany scratched her cheek. "But...wasn't that a good thing? His efficiency, that is? I mean, he did kinda save your life, right?"
Shana gave Brittany a dark glare.
Olivia cleared her throat. "Well...but he did, didn't he?"
Shana threw her weight back in the wrought iron chair. "Okay, fine. All right. So he kinda saved my life by shooting the dog, but still... He had a gun."
"True," Brittany drawled. "Did ya think to ask why he had a gun?"
Shana shot her another glare. "I did not stop to ask questions. Lord! He is not at all what I thought he was. Not shy, or defenseless, or..." Shana spread her hands. "On the contrary, he's...vicious."
"Hmm." Olivia frowned over her glass of iced tea. "I'll admit the dog was definitely vicious. Whatever was its problem, and why did it come into your house? But as for your neighbor... His behavior was..."
"Vicious," Shana insisted.
"I don't know about that." Olivia frowned harder. She'd met Shana's neighbor the day before when he was out checking his sprinklers. Her impression was that he was shy, serious, and introverted. And she'd liked him. Her intuition was one of her greatest strengths, and she simply couldn't believe Dash was a criminal, or any other undesirable. Slowly, she said, "I can't help thinking there's a reasonable explanation."
Shana barked a laugh. "A reasonable explanation for being a crack shot?"
Olivia lifted her palms. "He didn't get arrested for having a gun, did he? He must have had a license."
"I don't care if he had a medal from the sheriff's office, it was freaky."
"Maybe not so freaky," Brittany said. "Having a gun could be a form of, oh...compensation."
"What?"
"Actually, that makes sense," Olivia murmured.
"Well, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to explain that one." Shana crossed her arms over her chest.
Olivia leaned forward to set her glass on the tabletop. "Think of how he seemed to you at first, Shana, before this...incident. You said yourself you thought he was harmless. You thought that with him you'd be the one in control."
Shana's eyes averted.
"Maybe other people see him that way, too," Brittany went on, picking up Olivia's train of thought. "Maybe at some point he had enough of it. He took up shooting and became a crack shot so he could feel like he was the one who was in control."
"It's his way of compensating for the fact he comes off as harmless, somebody other people can push around," Olivia added.
Shana huffed. "Well, I certainly wasn't pushing him around. He had no excuse to bring that gun into my house. None."
"You weren't pushing him around," Olivia said dryly. Both she and Brittany gave Shana disbelieving looks.
"I wasn't!" But Shana's cheeks flushed.
Olivia coughed to cover her amusement, then changed the subject. To Brittany, she said, "I see your painter is working on a Sunday."
"Yeah." Brittany turned to glance in the direction of her house. The place resembled a speckled goat with its paint partially sanded off.
The painter, dressed in a baseball cap and white painter's pants, was on a ladder busily sanding around a window on the second story.
Brittany turned back to the table and reached for the pitcher of iced tea. "He's quite the eager beaver."
Shana craned to look at Brittany's house. "Your kids seem to have taken a shine to him."
Brittany poured herself a full cup of tea. "The unfortunate consequence of having a father who's too much of a rotten bum to spend any time with them. They've got to seek male role models in the odd plumber or house painter."
"Do you think that's what they're doing?" Olivia asked, although it was clear as day. While the painter was on his ladder with his electric sander, the two boys were using a step stool to go at the frame of a window on the ground floor with hand sanders.
"Is he a nice guy?" Shana asked, and her gaze turned speculative.
"Who's to say?" Brittany grinned at Shana from over the rim of her glass. "For all I know, he's got a gun in a hidden holster, too."
Shana scowled. "That isn't funny."
"Well, actually, it kinda is."
Olivia sighed and put her hands on the arms of her chair. "Well, much as I hate to break up the party, I've got to get going. Things to do."
Brittany yawned. "What, got a big commission?"
"Well, no, actually." Olivia did her best to sound off-hand. "I have to do some shopping."
"Ah." Shana's smile was knowing. "For the big date."
It was all Olivia could do not to groan. "It's not a 'big' date. But yes, I'm going to see Gideon tomorrow." And yes, she did want to wear something new, something...powerful and...intriguing. "All we're going to do is talk," she told her friends.
Shana was grinning, pert and herself again. "Who are you trying to convince, dear: us or yourself?"
Olivia shook her head with a smile. She didn't have to convince anybody. Talk was what her relationship with Gideon needed, and talk was what they were going to give it...until he 'fessed up to whatever was really going on with him.
Although she had to admit the mere thought of seeing him the next day was causing her body to hu
m with anticipation as she walked through the gate and into her backyard.
She sure hoped Gideon would 'fess up soon.
~~~
The air felt like warm velvet, despite the sun having set several hours before. The Caribbean stars shone in the sky. Anja walked into this smooth night from a clapboard building near the beach. Behind her, the lights in the building shut off.
For a variety of reasons, Anja had not been willing to wait until the next morning to retrieve her package from the mailbox to which she'd sent it here on the island of Antigua. A careful application of authority and a generous dispersal of American dollars had gotten the postmaster to open the office after hours so she could get her package.
Now Anja's sandals crunched the gravel lining the beachfront road that led toward the harbor. Her final destination was not very far. She suspected another dose of authority and some American dollars would get her a ride in some decently seaworthy craft.
Meanwhile, she couldn't wait. As she walked along, she ripped the paper off her package, tucked the crunched paper under one arm and then tore open the cardboard container. A wide smile curved her lips as she drew forth the slim, gray laptop. Caution and anxiety had ruled the past few days. Power and confidence now edged them aside.
All the pieces were in place now. She'd succeeded in evading her pursuers. She had access to her data, and in a few hours she'd be in a place where she could finish her work in peace. Anja stroked the surface of her laptop and closed her eyes in satisfaction. Yes, she was in charge now. Completely in charge.
Oh, there was still the possibility that Gideon would figure out where she was. And there was the matter of keeping Dr. Subrahmanyam in the dark. Subrahmanyam was director of the laboratory where Anja was headed. But Anja wasn't worried.
Gideon would have to be willing to listen to his wife in order to find out where Anja had gone. Highly unlikely. And Dr. Subrahmanyam was one of those pathetic creatures who had no ability of her own, but had learned to exert enough social and political influence to elbow her way into a job anyway. Anja had met the woman at a conference two years before, and had not changed her opinion of Dr. Subrahmanyam's intellect during their sporadic correspondence since.
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