by Cherry Adair
“If you’d told the truth,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt. “I would’ve stood by you. Got you the best attorney my money could buy. All you had to do was admit you made a fucking mistake, that you didn’t intend the dose to be so high.”
“I should have,” she told him without expression or inflection. Because that lie would make at least one of them happy, and the end result was going to be the same anyway. There was already a bull’s-eye on her back.
“The trial starts in two weeks.” Watching her with a frown, he tossed the shirt on the bed and stood there gloriously, unself-consciously naked, and still semi-erect. His shoulders were broad, his chest delectably hairy, and his legs long. He had the body of a well-conditioned, honed athlete. She knew every hard inch of it, and every soft, tender spot as well.
Dakota felt absolutely nothing now. Not the clawing lust. Not anger that he hadn’t changed in the intervening years. Not even sorry that he looked at her so emotionlessly. “Okay.”
“You’ll testify on his behalf?”
“If that’s what you want.” She heard her own dull voice from a distance. “Yeah, sure.”
“Thank you.”
She blinked him back into focus, puzzled to see him dressed in the new jeans and a black T-shirt. She must’ve checked out for a few minutes. Foolish. She needed to be on her toes. Especially now. Especially around him. She reached for her cup, tipped it to her mouth, and remembered it was empty. Get a grip.
“Are you well enough to travel? If not, I’ll leave you here, and you can call in the coordinates.”
“I’m peachy to travel,” Dakota assured him. She would be. She just needed to give herself a pep talk about blood being thicker than water and people not being able to see the truth unless it bit them on the ass. She needed to pull up her big-girl panties and remember she had a task to perform before anything else happened.
Because as bad as the bank situation was, she knew the drug had the potential to produce much, much worse.
She put the empty cup on the table, then dug her GPS and the vial container out of her tote. She had to fake this till she made it. “Let’s see where our person of interest has gotten to in the last four hours.” The moment she touched the hard case, she swore under her breath.
“Damn it to hell. The trail’s cold,” Rand said flatly. He had sat down to put on the sneakers, and he looked over at her, ready for the bad news.
“No. The trail’s still hot. The problem is, we now have two people to follow.” She picked one set of numbers at random, as two separate strings of digits ran through her mind like a double ticker tape. She tapped the numbers into the GPS. “One’s moving east across France. The other’s headed north.”
“Can you tell if they’re traveling by land or air?”
“Neither is fast enough to be on a plane. I suspect they know the drug is unstable and loses potency if they fly.”
“Can you track both at the same time?”
“I just did.” Not that she’d ever had to follow two trails at once, but apparently it could be done, even when her insides had been scooped out by a dull knife. Oh, shut up, Dakota! Don’t be so dramatic. She was a scientist. Pragmatic when she needed to be. As a realist, she’d known for years how Rand felt; this was no surprise.
One blissed-out session on a hotel floor wouldn’t change that. If the man had been in his right mind, it never would have happened.
“Christ.” Finished with the shoes, he ran a hand around the back of his neck. “We’re spread too thin. I don’t have enough manpower for this.”
“Fortunate that you have me as backup womanpower, then, isn’t it?”
“I’ll have some of my people follow one trail, you and I the oth—” His phone rang. “This could be a real lead. Speak,” he added into the phone.
They’d arrived in Barcelona following a real damn lead, Dakota thought darkly.
Damn it, damn it, damn it. This wasn’t nearly as easy as she’d hoped, even though she’d known it wasn’t going to be.
“SING JUST DIED,” LIGG told Rand flatly.
“Brett Sing died ?” The stepfather of the groom was an ass and, Rand suspected, an alcoholic. Perhaps a heart attack, or kidney failure? “Tell me it wasn’t related to the drug.”
“Sorry, boss, but the doc said yeah, it was. He was knocking back that champagne pretty good during and after the event. One of his symptoms—shit. How do I describe it? His eyes looked kinda like my grandma Ella’s. Cataracts?”
“The bloom?” He looked over to see Dakota watching him intently. At those words, the flush drained from her face, leaving her skin pasty, the freckles standing out in stark relief. Her teeth dug into her lower lip as she listened to his end of the conversation. He turned the phone to speaker.
“Yeah. His eyes turned this spooky, milky white. Docs are pretty sure it’s not E. They’re speculating it’s that new Russian drug, Krokodil. I have toxicology back, want me to text the summary report to you?”
“Right away,” Rand ordered as Dakota nodded. It was no Russian drug, they both knew. Dakota could confirm it from the blood work. But they already knew the answer.
“Barcelona. Before I fill you in—any other news?”
“Yeah. The heist is all over the news. They’re claiming they have a ‘person of interest.’ Don’t know if they made you or are blowing smoke. But I’d watch my six.”
Rand motioned for Dakota to clear the room. Grabbing her tote, she slid off the chair to scoop up the clothes he’d stripped off, stuffing everything into the shopping bag.
A video camera might have survived the heist and been functional. God only knew he hadn’t examined them at the time. Without positive ID, he could be anyone. There were a million tall, dark-haired men.
Dakota, however, with her mile-long screaming-red hair, was impossible to miss, and easy to identify if captured on the video. Right now, she was more of a liability than an asset.
Rand strode to the connecting door, glancing around her room. Other than the slept-on bed, it was pretty much an empty hotel room. There was a small, rolling overnight case that she hadn’t had with her when they arrived, and several more shopping bags on the chair. He shook his head. In the midst of a drugged high, she’d fucking-well gone shopping. Women.
“Any footage?”
“Just a vague description and a grainy image off the surveillance video. Could be anyone. They won’t be able to ID you off the surveillance footage. However, they do have a pretty decent physical description from people on the street.”
There’d been pedestrians—plenty of them—between the bank and the car. “Hell!”
“They claim an arrest is imminent.”
“Unlikely. But I’ll be on the road ASAP.”
Dakota stood in the doorway between the rooms, as still as a doe in headlights. He glanced around to see if he’d left anything lying around his own. He hadn’t. He backed her into her room and quietly shut the connecting door. There was no point in trying to wipe away their fingerprints, between the bedrooms, the bathrooms, and the equipment in the gym. Hell, he’d used the corporate card when he checked them in earlier.
If the cops somehow traced them to the hotel, they’d be screwed. Besides fingerprints and his name on the hotel bill, there was their very public display when they’d arrived to tie them to what happened at the bank.
“Anything else?” he asked Ligg evenly.
“They showed a seven-second video of the scene before it was apparently pulled from the air by top brass. Pretty salacious stuff. Reports are that thieves got away with five hundred thousand euros. Seventeen dead. Cause unknown. Since I’m presuming you aren’t now five hundred K richer, I’ll take a stab that the perp got there before you did.”
“Same shit as the wedding guests were dosed with, but clearly stronger.”
“Not distributed in two-grand-a-bottle champagne,” the man said wryly, “unless that’s what they do now instead of hand over a toaster for opening a new account. What’
s your take?”
“Administered through the air-conditioning system. It has a faint scent of roses. Probably killed everyone within ten minutes?” He glanced to Dakota for confirmation.
She held up her hand, fingers splayed.
“Make that five,” Rand corrected grimly.
“Son of a bitch.”
“Keep me posted on any further developments.” Rand disconnected and looked at Dakota, his mind still on what he’d seen at the bank. “Get your shit together. We’ve got to go.”
Without asking any questions, she stuffed several small shopping bags in her tote and grabbed the handle of the suitcase. “Who died?”
“Stepfather of the groom.” He held his hand out to indicate she wait while he opened the door and checked the corridor beyond. “Okay. Here, give me that.” He took the small case from her and waved her ahead of him down the wide, well-lit hallway.
“Why are we sneaking?” They passed the bank of elevators and headed for the stairs. “Nobody could possibly know we’re staying at this hotel,” she pointed out as he opened the door into the stairwell.
“Want to stake your life on that?”
She shook her head. “You do remember that we’re on the sixteenth floor, right?”
“Better pace yourself.” The back of Rand’s neck itched, and he glanced back and up. There wasn’t anyone there, but he felt the need to get the hell away from the hotel and out of town as fast as possible. He couldn’t afford to be taken into custody and have to go through some lengthy process to prove he and Dakota hadn’t robbed the bank. Better safe than sorry now.
He took the Glock from his shoulder holster, and almost crashed into her when she stopped dead in her tracks. “Keep going. Don’t stop, for Christ’s sake!”
“My shoes.” She slipped off her heels and stuck them in her bag. Then she ran lightly down the stairs barefoot.
Rand caught up and stayed close, almost on her heels. He could smell the heat of her skin, and the faint, intoxicatingly familiar lemon scent of her hair. Even in the relatively dim lighting of the stairwell, the color was a dead giveaway. “Got a cap or something to cover your head?”
“Or something.” Still moving, she rummaged in her purse and pulled out a handful of light brown hair. “Hold this a sec.” She shoved the bag in the general direction of his chest and started twisting her hair on top of her head. She held it in place with one hand and tugged on the wig with the other.
“How’s this?” Dakota asked, turning to face him for a moment. Sleek brown hair brushed her shoulders, the straight-cut bangs skimming her long-lashed green eyes. “Better?”
No. He missed her red hair. “It works. Can you go any faster?”
She shot him a speaking glance, then turned around a little too hastily, and he had to grab her arms to prevent her tumbling over her own feet. Unperturbed, she asked, “Do you want a disguise too?”
He released her arm with a gentle shove to keep her moving. “You carry multiple disguises with you?”
She shrugged, not quite making eye contact, concentrating on not tripping again. “I like to change my look now and then, and like I said, I went shopping. I have this—” She pulled another hank of hair out of her bag, this time short and black.
“No thanks.”
She stuffed it back into the tote, then rummaged in one of the shopping bags and handed him a black baseball cap. “Then here. Wear the cap. Oh, wait—what about these?”
He put on the baseball cap, took the reading glasses and put them on. Clear glass. “You’re a regular Houdini.” They passed a door leading to the third floor.
By the time they reached the sign indicating the sky bridge to the public parking garage adjacent to the hotel, she was sweaty and out of breath. Exactly, Rand knew, how she looked after a passionate round of sex.
“Now what?”
“We’re going to boost some wheels.” Dusk had fallen, and the garage was dim and half-empty. Commuters had left their offices for the day and the dinner crowd hadn’t yet arrived, but there were plenty of cars to choose from.
Rand picked a nondescript station wagon. “Here.” He handed her the small tool kit he always carried in his back pocket. “Go take the license plates off that van over there while I hot-wire this puppy.”
By the time she got back with the license plates, the station wagon was purring. He switched plates, putting the van’s tags on the station wagon, and vice versa. Satisfied, he jogged back. “It’s not brain surgery, but it’ll buy us time.”
From the street below he heard sirens, then saw the flashing lights reflected off the mirror of a nearby car. The police could be at the hotel for any number of reasons, but Rand knew they were looking for them. How they’d tracked them so fast, he had no idea. He opened the driver’s-side door and gestured. “Get in.”
Dakota shot him a surprised look. “You want me to drive?”
“Do you have a Bluetooth headset?” When she nodded, he told her, “Get it out. You take this car, I’ll get another.”
“Really?” She just stood looking at him with her eerily pale eyes. “And how will you find the bad guys without me?”
“We’re going to stay in contact by phone. You hold on to the case, direct me where I have to go.”
She made no move to get into the car. “And I’m supposed to be … where exactly?”
“Keep that wig on, go back to my people in Monaco.” He tried to make out what people were saying on the street several stories below where they stood in the shadows. But the voices were indistinct.
“I don’t think so.”
He turned to look at her. “You don’t think s—”
Dakota stood, feet apart, a .38 gripped in both hands. “Wherever you go, I go.”
“Oh, for—while I appreciate your skill in being able to track like a bloodhound, we may both be wanted by the local authorities.” He tried for patience. It gritted. “I used my credit card to check in. If they haven’t already, they’re sure to figure out who I am, and by association, who you are. Those cops down there are hot on our trail. We need to split up if we have a hope in hell of not being caught. Do you really want to stand here and debate the merits of traveling together right now?”
“I’m not debating a damned thing. Make no mistake, Maguire, I will shoot you.” Expression grim, she motioned with the gun. “Get in the damned car.”
FOR SEVERAL UNCOMFORTABLE HEARTBEATS, Dakota thought Rand would refuse. But after a few seconds of deliberation, he climbed in and placed his hands on the wheel. He gave her a bland look from inside the car as she rounded the hood, keeping the muzzle pointed at the center of his forehead, then climbed in the passenger side. “Drive.”
“Since when do you have a gun?”
Since she’d been jumping at shadows for the last month. “None of your damn business.”
He jerked his chin at the gun clutched tightly in her hand. “Know how to use that?”
It was so small, only about six inches, and looked like a toy, but Zak had assured her it could do the job. “At this close range, you’d be hard to miss.”
They wound down the spirals of the parking garage. Dakota fumbled in her overly full tote for the case and her GPS while maintaining her grip on the gun.
When they reached street level and the bottom of the ramp, she saw two police cars parked right in front of the hotel. Her heart stuttered, then started pounding loud enough that she couldn’t hear anything else.
“Where are we going?” Rand asked, not sounding or acting freaked out in any way that he was being held at gunpoint or that the police were in their line of sight.
He probably didn’t take her as a serious threat. So long as he did what she wanted, it didn’t matter if he thought he was humoring her.
He eased onto the street and into traffic. It was getting dark, and the city lights twinkled around them. She pulled down the visor and flipped open the mirror to check behind them. As far as she could tell, nobody appeared to be following as the no
ndescript station wagon blended in with the early-evening traffic leaving the city.
“Head northeast. I’ll tell you when to change direction.” The coordinates of the two people carrying the vials were keeping a steady pace. Different directions, but similar speeds. She didn’t know how to isolate one from the other, so the two long strings of numbers remained layered so close together that at times it was hard to differentiate them.
There was quite a bit of traffic. Rand rested his elbow on the edge of the window as he drove. “So we’re still following the vials?”
“One of them, presumably—or at least the person who is carrying it. Trust no one. I’m adopting the Ma-guire creed.”
He kept his eyes on the red taillights ahead. “Does that include you?”
“I can follow one trail on my own, which will eventually lead me to the source. I don’t need you. But you need me.” This was crazy. She was crazy. Dakota wedged her hands between her up-drawn knees, keeping the gun below the level of the car’s windows and prying eyes. Her hands shook with adrenaline.
“Want to tell me what the hell’s going on?” His voice was smooth, but a muscle below his eye ticked. “I’ve never known you to champion guns, or to have a tote full of disguises available.”
How much to tell him? How little could she get away with before he demanded answers she couldn’t or wouldn’t supply?
“Whoever these people are, I think they’re testing the boundaries and applications for the drug. Presenting each application to potential buyers before it goes on the market.”
“How do you know this?”
Because nothing else made sense. “It’s an educated guess.”
“Who’s they ?”
She ignored his crisp tone. “I believe it’s the same people who had a vested interest in Rydell Pharmaceuticals going out of business two years ago.”
He snorted with disbelief. “Are you getting this spotty intel from your crystal ball?” When he stopped at a light, he turned and plucked the gun from her hand as easily as taking a toy from a baby. She didn’t even see it coming—blink and gone. Her fingers and her pride stung. “This damn thing still has the safety on,” he informed her, his tone layered with disgust. “Next time you point a gun at someone, do it with the intention of firing it.” He stuck it under his seat. “How deeply are you involved in this clusterfuck, Dakota?”