Afterglow

by Cherry Adair

  Her expression barely changed, but he saw a small flicker of hope in her still features. “When?”

  “When you were taking your bath.”

  “You saw them just a few times. What made you change your mind?”

  She’d been in the bathroom longer than she realized. He’d watched them each a dozen times. In slo-mo and without sound. He’d been in the movie business. He knew about dubbing and splicing and creative editing. “I know you.”

  The harsh light glittered on the rim of tears welling in her eyes. She blinked them back, and Rand saw her throat move as she tried to swallow her emotions. “Don’t—” She had to swallow to get the words out. “Don’t say that unless you mean it. I’m at the very end of an incredibly short rope here.”

  For Dakota, who’d gone through so much, no thanks to him, to admit vulnerability, made Rand’s chest ache with compassion. He reached out and covered her icy fingers with his. “I have no idea how or why these things have been put into place, but I believe you. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you before.”

  She couldn’t prevent the raw sob that ripped her throat, but she put up her free hand to check him when he rose from his seat. Rand sank back down, turning her hand and lacing his fingers with hers.

  He poured her half a glass of wine and pushed it in front of her as she struggled for composure. “You won’t like it, but drink a little anyway.”

  She pulled in a deep, shuddering breath, lifted the glass, and drained the fine wine like medicine. “That is truly disgusting.” She put the glass down and grimaced, making Rand smile.

  “You should probably try to get some sleep. We’ve been going nonstop for days—we should take advantage of this short respite.”

  “Unless the good guys or the bad guys knock on the door,” Dakota pointed out dryly, reading his mind. There was the glimmer of them together that he’d missed for the past two years. The way they could finish each other’s thoughts, knew the other person. It had been so painful when he’d thought that he didn’t know her after all. And now …

  “We can talk about this—figure it out—tomorrow when we’re both fresh.”

  “Oh no. You don’t know how long I’ve had to mull this over. Examine and reexamine every detail. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? I’d rather hash it out now. Do you mind?”

  No. For the first time in a long while, he was breathing easier. He too wanted everything out in the open. “What’s your theory?”

  “At first I thought someone was setting me up for a fall. Now I’m not so sure. Let’s just go with your mother being overprotective and wanting someone better for you. Malicious mischief, nothing more. But then she’s killed. Paul believes with utmost sincerity that I was the one who sent him the drug and the wafers so he could administer the DL6-94.

  “We know—I know—that wasn’t the case. What if someone wanted Paul in jail? Who could have benefited from your mother’s death, from getting Paul out of the way and leaving you isolated?”

  “Nobody.” Rand pushed her plate back in front of her. “Eat while you talk. Yeah, I inherited a chunk of change from my mother, but let’s agree that I’m not behind all this, okay?” He saw a hint of a smile on her face, and drew another breath before continuing.

  “If I die, everything goes to a foundation my mother set up for research into depression. Nobody would personally benefit from my death. So the who and why?” He shrugged. “No idea. I agree that someone is manipulating the players, but, and I hate to say this, I do believe you’re the target. Forget my mother’s shit, which I don’t think was related to the rest of it.

  “Someone is responsible for splicing and dicing the video from the lab. I think that footage was taken over the span of several weeks. Then, to solidify the case for your presumed guilt, you were sent to the lab the night of the explosion. I’ll check with Mancini, but I’ll bet that wasn’t anyone from his office who called you.”

  “After seeing the video, I’m damn sure it wasn’t. Someone wanted to implicate me in corporate espionage long before your father was put in jail. That footage was taken in October and November. A good four months before your mother died in Italy. The security firm never kept surveillance tapes for more than a couple months, but someone made sure they had what they needed for the blame-Dakota reel.”

  She took a bite of the arugula and chewed, then stabbed the air with her empty fork. “Someone wanted to implicate me in the explosion at the lab.”

  Rand, who had followed suit and taken a bite of his steak, suddenly had a hard time swallowing his food. “Or kill you.”

  “They almost succeeded.” She shrugged, not giving anything away with her expression and leaving Rand to imagine how hideous and terrifying the experience must have been. “Bummer for the bad guys, yay for me. Next step, if the explosion didn’t take me out of the picture: have me arrested for corporate espionage? And if that doesn’t work, use those videos to prove that I wanted your mother dead, and therefore I’d be an accessory to murder, if not an outright murderer?” Her fingers tightened in his.

  Rand took a sip of wine to ease his tight throat, then said, “Some pieces fit, others don’t. It all sounds both plausible and, quite frankly, like one of Seth Creed’s movies.”

  She smiled. “Blockbusters, all of them.”

  “Okay. Let’s try something else. What if you aren’t the target? What if this person used you to get to me, knowing you were my Achilles’ heel?”

  She smiled slightly, a spark of hope igniting behind the pale green eyes. “Was I?”

  “In ways you can’t imagine.” But that was a conversation for another time. “Let’s try this for an alternate theory. First, breaking us up. It almost killed me when I saw the proof of your infidelity.” He put up a hand to stop her from speaking. “Then my mother dies from a drug you and Paul were responsible for manufacturing. Paul is arrested. There’s a damn good chance he’ll rot in prison. And while I have no love for him, he is my father. I don’t want that for him.”

  “If we go with this train of thought, that you’re the target of all this—we were intentionally broken up,” Dakota agreed. “The wedding you were hired to protect was targeted in a very personal and specific way. They could’ve used Rohypnol, if all they wanted was a scandal-worthy party. But it was this drug. Our drug, the one your father and I worked on.” She exhaled, then sipped the glass of milk. “Someone seems to have worked very hard to manipulate you, your father, and me. None of what we know adds up to any real solution. Yet nothing about any of this feels coincidental. Does it to you?”

  He looked grim. “No. It sure as hell wasn’t a coincidence that Rapture was used there.”

  Dakota tapped her fingernails against the edge of the ceramic plate. “Where are the good guys? Not that we’d be any happier to see them than to see the bad guys—but where are they? Even though we used mostly cash, we still used a credit card for the car in Perugia, and had to leave passports for ID at several hotels we stayed at. If the police and/or Interpol knew who we were in Barcelona, they should’ve been able to follow you to the moon with that kind of information. They should be right here at the hotel with us, ordering dessert.”

  “Therefore we weren’t made at the bank. Not by the good guys, anyway. Another issue of concern: why my men haven’t made contact in forty-eight hours. It couldn’t just be bad cell reception, not for that long. And … yes, that is freaking weird. Ham was two feet behind me in the catacombs when he was shot. I wasn’t touched. Yet we were almost shot and killed en route to see Paul.”

  “True. But no one seems to have followed us here, right?”

  “This feels like,” Rand said grimly, getting to his feet, “you and I are being herded.”

  Her eyes went wide. “But why? What could they possibly hope to gain?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  “IT’S TIME TO GET rid of those who no longer benefit us, and put the final clue in place, Szik.”

  “Rebik and Ligg?”<
br />
  “This time, I want you to travel to do the job. Go to Albania and dispatch them personally. I don’t want anyone to see you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Father. Should I dispose of Rand at the same time?”

  “Not now. She’ll only go forward if he’s with her. There’s no point separating them now.” Monk threw him a bone. “You can have him when we have her.”

  Szik’s face lit up, his eyes glittering with excitement. “You trust me that much, Father?”

  Monk forced his lips to curve into a benevolent smile as he gazed with flat eyes at his most faithful servant. “You are the only one I trust, my son.”

  Szik fell to his knees and sobbed his gratitude as Monk brought the lighter to the end of his cigar.

  RAND WAS RIGHT. WITH the threat of a hit team chasing them, and the GPS location of the carrier of the missing vial leading them, it did feel suspiciously as if someone was manipulating their every move. Certainly people other than Zak Stark knew about her tracking ability. She’d been mentioned in the local papers several times, if nothing else. There was no resisting the easy strength of Rand’s grip as he bracketed her face with both hands. “You’re frowning.”

  She gave a half-laugh, putting her fingers around his wrists to remove his hands from her face. Looking at him made her heart hurt. She wanted to believe that he believed in her, but experience told her that what she was feeling was wishful thinking.

  Nobody made such a fast turnaround. Not with all the damning evidence against her. Not a man as steadfast as Rand had always been about things being black or white. “This situation warrants at least a frown,” she pointed out, not pulling him away but instead running her fingers lightly around the strong bones of his wrists. She loved touching him. That never changed. She loved his physical strength, and God only knew, right then, his physical strength was incredibly seductive.

  He bent his head, blocking the light. “I’m sorry. I’m so goddamned sorry.” And then he kissed her so gently, so tenderly, tears prickled behind Dakota’s lids. Her heart swelled and her chest felt tight as she opened her mouth and welcomed him inside.

  She slid off the chair and allowed herself to lean on him as he stroked her hair, which was still wound in a braid down her back. That would last about two seconds—his fingers expertly combed through the still damp strands until her hair was draped in a damp cape over her shoulders.

  She felt ridiculously safe right now. Stupid, all things considered. Dakota fitted herself against him, felt the hard ridge of his erection, yet she sensed no urgency from him as, still kissing her, he backed her against the bed.

  He lowered her to the mattress, coming down beside her, and she broke the kiss. “I—”

  He murmured, “Shh,” and placed a finger gently on her parted lips. His eyes, a dangerous forest green, turned even darker as he cupped her breast. He made no move to get her naked in thirty seconds flat. Instead, he caressed her through her T-shirt and bra, until she moved restlessly under the slow caresses that weren’t nearly enough.

  He petted her, teased her nipples, and kissed her so that they had to pull apart and gasp for air. She loved the musky scent of his skin that even the hotel soap couldn’t mask. Loved the feel of his cool, damp hair as he slid his lips down the arched curve of her throat. She loved the hot, sweet pull of his mouth as he closed his lips around her nipple through two thin layers of fabric.

  He stroked a line from her collarbone with a gentle finger, nudging her farther up the mattress, coming to rest between her upraised knees.

  Eyes closed, she stroked his nape as he kissed a path up her throat and took her mouth again. Slow, sweet drugging kisses that made her blood surge urgently through her veins. She felt the glide of his hand under her T-shirt, then the brush of his fingers inside her bra.

  Rand wasn’t just making love to her, but worshiping her with a tenderness that both broke her heart and made her want to fly. It had been so long, so very long since he’d believed in her, and it came through in every touch. They made love slowly, as if they had all the time in the world and no one but each other. An illusion, but one Dakota clung to as he kissed his way down her body. She was willing to put aside both the past and the future. Because the truth was that all anyone ever really had was the present. And the present was perfect.

  SIXTEEN

  Are you sure Rebik and Ligg are dead?” Rand repeated the next morning as they ate breakfast. The outdoor area of the trattoria was doing a brisk business. Nobody was listening to one more couple crammed into the narrow space, with tables placed cheek by jowl to accommodate as many people as possible. A line was forming near the door to the restaurant.

  Dakota swallowed a mouthful of eggs. “Positive. I don’t see their numbers anymore.” She’d known in the early hours of the morning when she’d gotten up to pee, and checked. But she hadn’t had the heart to wake Rand to tell him. It served no purpose to rouse him from the first decent night’s sleep he’d had in days to tell him something he couldn’t fix. She’d crawled back into bed, tucking herself into the warm spoon of his body, and gone back to sleep herself.

  They’d both woken feeling refreshed. No crazed killers or determined officials knocked down their door in the middle of the night. Nonetheless, she’d had to tell him his men were dead before they left the room to go eat.

  Now they sat outside an out-of-the-way, family-style trattoria having breakfast, and Rand placed his coffee cup on the table with a thump of disappointment. “Not that I don’t believe what you’re telling me,” he assured her with a squeeze to her fingers, threaded in his. “I just need confirmation that you aren’t having a … glitch. Damn it to hell. We’ve gotten this close, and now the trail is cold?”

  “No, it isn’t cold. We know your guys found the person carrying the vial, because they were in the same place as his coordinates when they died.”

  “Fuck it! Who the hell’s killing my men?” He kept his voice low, but it took an effort. Rand ran a hand around the back of his neck, frustration in every line of his body.

  “I don’t know who, but I know exactly where it happened. I marked it on the map while you were in the shower. But I have another idea. Something Paul said yesterday.”

  “Since we both know Paul is only out to protect Paul, implicating you in my mother’s death …” Rand shoved his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Can we believe whatever it was he said?”

  “I don’t know, but I have a feeling this might be worthwhile. When we were talking about DL6-94, he mentioned mastic. Mastic is an ingredient that some of our control studies used. I was more concerned with getting a stable product than I was with taste. But Paul implied that the mastic wasn’t for taste. That it was an important ingredient in Rapture.”

  She picked up her cappuccino and cradled the shallow cup in her palm. “Pistacia lentiscus is found all over Mediterranean Europe, but the subspecies on our approved supplies list came from only one place, in Greece. Specifically, the peninsula of Mount Athos. And how did I remember this small, insignificant detail, you ask?” She took a sip of creamy coffee and looked at him over the rim. He obligingly raised his eyebrows in inquiry, a slight smile on his lips. “Because when I was researching it and where the plant grew, I learned that this is the area that has all the monasteries, and that no women are allowed to go there. The details stuck in my head.”

  Rand smiled. “And of course you wanted to go immediately and pick the leaves yourself.”

  She smiled back, taking inordinate pleasure in their simple camaraderie. Looking for emotional pitfalls was exhausting business, and she was more than willing to take advantage of the current détente. The sun shone, a couple nearby was laughing, and a small bird near her feet looked up, hopeful for a breakfast crumb. The last time she’d felt this happy, this content, was when Rand had taken time from his busy new company to take her to Carmel for the weekend, a few weeks before everything in her life had blown to hell. Literally.

  No. I’m not going t
here. Not now. She was going to enjoy every damned second of this morning for as long as it lasted. “Something like that. We used the tree’s resin, not the leaves. It oozes out of the bark. When the resin dries, it’s mixed with the other ingredients. Actually, it’s been used in medicines for centuries, not to mention chewing gum, foods, and cosmetics. It’s in lots of products.”

  “Then what makes the mastic used by Rydell different or special? It seems as though your clue is giving us a needle in a very large haystack.”

  “The mastic that’s used in this application can only be found in two places in the world. Two places.” Her heart started beating faster with anticipation as she realized she could be onto something. This could be the real clue to finding the person responsible. “The Greek island of Chios has one subspecies, but that proved unstable for our purposes. The one we used exclusively is harvested in very small amounts in the Mount Athos region. I think we should go there and see what we find.”

  “I hear you.” He considered her suggestion for a moment. “But I’d prefer to go to Albania, and the last place my men were alive, to search for clues. Someone killed them, and that someone might be the same person we’re following.”

  Dakota put a free hand on his rock-hard forearm. “While I appreciate that you want to check on your men, my instincts say we should head directly to Mount Athos. We’re running out of time and we can’t do both.”

  Rand gave her a half-smile as he lifted his butt to pull his wallet from his back pocket to pay for their meal. “Do you have a manly disguise in that bag of yours? A nice mustache and goatee perhaps?” He laid a handful of euros beside his empty plate.

  Dakota stroked her thumb on his warm skin on the back of his hand, which was lightly clasping hers. She loved his big hands. Loved the look of them, loved the feel of them touching her skin, loved the strength and the gentleness when he made love to her. “It never occurred to me,” she teased back. “But I bet I can improvise. Would you make love to me if I were a man?”