“I saw that place when I was downtown,” she tossed back. “The parrot’s purple, not pink.”
“Whatever. I’d better slather another layer of sunscreen on you first. The backs of your legs are looking a little red.” He scooped the lotion off the coffee table. “Turn around.”
“I’ll do it.”
She snatched the lotion out of his hand and backed away. No way she was letting him slide his hands between her thighs again.
Duly slathered and smelling strongly of coconut, she called to have the rental car delivered from the parking area. The cheerful, smiling parking valet had it idling at the curb when they emerged from the open air lobby. “Buenos dias, Dr. Grant, Señor James.”
“Buenos dias, Ramon.”
“I’d better drive,” Wolf said as they approached the vehicle.
He’d taken the wheel of the rental before his too-casual comment registered with Nina.
“Why do you need to drive?”
“I know the town better than you do.”
Also too casual. As he adjusted the rearview mirror, she bit her lip and wondered if she’d made a mistake by suggesting they get out for a few hours.
She got her answer less than thirty minutes later.
They’d just parked the rental and were strolling through the plaza in Cabo’s open-air mall. A gallery with arched windows showcasing exquisitely painted pottery caught Nina’s gaze, but Wolf spotted something entirely different in the windows. “Hell!”
She glanced up and saw he’d locked on a wavy image reflected in the window. It showed the shop across the plaza, with two men standing just outside the front entrance.
Nina threw a startled glance over her shoulder. She had time to note only sketchy details—the shop was a tobacco store and the taller of the two men was rolling a fat black cigar between his thumb and forefinger—before Wolf thrust her at the gallery entrance.
“Get inside! Now!”
Her heart pounding, she reached for the elaborate brass latch and stumbled over the threshold.
“Who is it?” she asked when Wolf whipped in behind her.
“I don’t know the one on the left. The tall one on the right is the Albanian sewer rat who pumped two rounds into me before I shot him.”
“Please tell me you’re kidding!”
“I wish.”
Wolf used the pottery display as a screen and kept his eyes on the men across the plaza. “The hits must have thrown off my aim,” he muttered in disgust. “I was sure I put one dead center before the whole friggin’ warehouse blew.”
“Your sewer rat,” Nina gasped. “Do you think he’s working for the Russians?”
“That would be my guess. Alekseev is probably inside the tobacco shop now, stocking up on hand-rolled Hobanas.”
Albanians. Russians. Lying, stealing, scum-sucking Americans. The whole alternate universe thing was now officially freaking Nina out!
Scarcely able to breath, she peeked around Wolf. Her chest cramped when she spotted the taller of the two men frozen in place, staring at the gallery entrance. The cramp doubled in intensity when he said something to his pal and they started across the plaza.
“May I help you?”
The polite query almost brought Nina out of her skin. Close to hyperventilating, she slewed around to face a smiling salesperson.
“No, uh, thanks. We’re just, um, looking.”
She’d barely gasped out the reply before Wolf wrapped a hand around her upper arm. Hustling her past the startled saleswoman, he hauled her toward the rear of the gallery.
“Señor! You cannot go out that way!”
He ignored the woman’s shout and hit the emergency release bar on the back door. The action triggered an ear-splitting alarm. Wincing, Nina hunched her shoulders against the vicious assault. She winced again when she caught a whiff of the garbage bins that lined the back alley, their contents steaming in the heat.
Wolf didn’t give her time to adjust to the screaming siren or the stink. He shoved the rental’s keys into her hand and rapped out instructions.
“Take the car. Drive straight back to the resort. Don’t open the door for anyone except me or Mannie. Or Ace, my controller,” he reminded her as he hiked up his pant leg. Ripping up the Velcro strap on his ankle holster, he straightened again in one fluid move.
“Wolf! What are you—”
“Go, Nina.”
He spun her toward the north end of the alleyway and shoved. She took a few stumbling steps, then started to run.
Instinct told her she would only get in his way if she didn’t do as he instructed. Or force him to take stupid risks to protect her. Or…
Oh, God!
She skidded to a stop and ducked behind a garbage can. One glance back down the alley twisted her insides in knots. Wolf stood at the far end of the alley. Clearly silhouetted against a bright shaft of sunlight, Nina saw as terror closed her throat.
He’d set himself up as a target to give her time to get away!
She wanted to scream at him to take cover, but she knew he wouldn’t hear her over the screeching alarm. Then the sewer rat and his friend burst through the gallery’s back door and she realized in a blinding flash that they couldn’t hear her, either. Not with their entire attention fixed on the figure at the far entrance to the dank passageway.
Careful, precise, cautious Nina didn’t stop to think. Snatching a lid off the garbage can, she charged down the alley.
Chapter 10
“She took the Albanian down with the lid from a garbage can?”
The stunned response coming through Wolf’s cell phone might have made him grin if he wasn’t still trying to recover. Even now, almost an hour after the fact, the image of Nina tearing down the alleyway had him leaning an elbow against the wall outside Mannie’s office for support.
“She came at him from behind,” he confirmed, “and whacked the hell out of him.”
“Are you sure we’re talking about the same woman?” Ace asked incredulously. “Isn’t this the one who was so twittery and nervous about wearing a bug that you had to jump into the picture as her fiancé?”
“That’s the one.”
“Damn!”
“Yeah,” Wolf drawled, “that was pretty much my reaction, too.”
“Wait until I tell Lightning about this,” Ace said, his voice filled with unholy glee. “One of OMEGA’s crack agents creases the Albanian’s skull in Paris a few years ago, and he walks away. Dr. Grant whacks him with the lid from a garbage can and he goes down for the count.”
“Can we get serious here?”
“Sorry, Wolfman. You said two men came after you. I assume you took care of the second.”
“I did. Mannie’s got them both in holding cells. They’re not talking, and he’s not letting them make any calls. For the time being, anyway.”
Wolf shifted just enough to peer inside the office Mannie and his elite federal task force had commandeered in Cabo San Lucas’s central police station. Nina sat on the edge of a battered desk, her eyes huge, as Wolf’s counterpart for this op regaled her with God knew what stories from their checkered past.
“What about their boss?” Ace wanted to know, reclaiming Wolf’s attention.
“Alekseev was in a tobacco store across the plaza. Mannie’s people grilled the shop owner. He swears he and his customer didn’t hear the alarm go off in the alley behind the gallery, but realized something had happened when the police arrived on the plaza with sirens screaming. Reportedly, Alekseev rushed to the front entrance, saw his two watchdogs had gone missing, then cursed and tore back through the shop.”
“So the Russian doesn’t know what went down?”
“Not yet. He’s got sources. He’ll find out eventually. So will Cordell. The question now is whether this will spook them into calling off the deal.”
The possibility ate at Wolf like battery acid. They were so close to nailing the traitorous bastard. So damn close. He hated the possibility they’d have to reiniti
ate surveillance and start all over again.
“My guess is they’ll press ahead,” Ace said. “The wire transfer for the first three million went through a half hour ago.”
That should have been enough to take Cordell down. If the man hadn’t been so careful, if he’d made an actual reference to the stolen technology during his so-called negotiations, Wolf and Mannie could move on him now. But all they had on tape were vague references to “merchandise.” They had to nail him with the disk in his possession. Preferably at the time of hand-off, so they could catch the buyers in the same net.
Which would have happened tomorrow night, some seventeen miles out to sea.
Wolf gripped the phone in a white-knuckled fist. Every job he did for OMEGA involved uncertainties. The unexpected had to be anticipated. Things could—and often did—go wrong. He suspected that in other circumstances he would have assessed the implications of his encounter with the Albanian, calculated the risks and pressed ahead with the op as originally planned.
A sudden outburst of laughter brought Wolf around again. Nina had her head and shoulders back, chortling in delight. Despite her present merriment, she displayed ample evidence of their grim back-alley confrontation. The hair that spilled over her shoulders was damp with sweat. Dirt streaked one cheek. A variety of stains discolored her once-pristine white pants.
Slammed once again with the mental image of her charging down the alley, swinging that damn lid, Wolf opted instantly for Plan B.
“I want Dr. Grant out of Cabo this evening. Although we have the Albanian and his pal on ice, I can’t take the chance they’ll get word to Alekseev, or tip Cordell to the fact that I’m not really her fiancé.”
Ace had spent too many years in the field to question an operative’s on-scene assessment. “Your call, Wolfman. I can set up an extraction and have her out of there in an hour.”
“Make it two. There’s a chance Cordell won’t connect her—or me—to the incident with Alekseev’s boys, so we need to make her departure look legit. I’ll drive her back to the resort to pack her things and check out. That way, when she calls Cordell to tell him there’s been an emergency at home and she has to leave Mexico, the hotel can verify that she’s checked out and departed.”
“Two hours works perfectly,” Ace replied. “Diamond’s in Scottsdale at a showing of her new line. T.J.’s with her. I’ll set up a private jet and have one of them in Cabo by the time you get Dr. Grant to the airport.”
Wolf felt the tight knot of tension at the base of his skull ease a fraction. Jordan Colby, code name Diamond, designed a line of high-fashion eyeware coveted by queens and teenagers alike. Only a few insiders knew that she donated all proceeds from her business to charities that cared for abused or abandoned children.
In her other life, Diamond was the one of the coolest agents under fire Wolf had ever worked with. Her husband, former NYC cop, T. J. Scott, was no slouch, either. T.J. could talk down, stare down or take down all comers. Wolf could trust either of them to keep Nina safe until he tied things up at this end and rejoined her.
Whoa! Where had that come from?
Until this moment, he hadn’t thought beyond nailing Cordell and recovering the stolen technology. Now he was projecting ahead to more days with Nina. And nights. Like last night, he thought, with a sudden tightening in his belly, but with a very different ending.
Wolf waited until they were in the rental car and headed back to the Mayan Princess to inform Nina about the change in plans.
“The encounter with the Albanian upped the stakes.” He kept an eye on the rearview mirror, as much from instinct as from nerves. “Mannie’s promised to hold him incommunicado for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Until after the exchange.”
“Right. But there’s no guarantee Alekseev won’t nose out what happened, maybe finger me as the agent who tangled with his boy in Paris a few years back. If he does, he’ll want to know what I was doing at Cordell’s hacienda with you.”
“Cordell will want to know the same thing,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “This just keeps getting hairier and hairier.”
“Which is why we need to get you out of it. This evening, Nina.”
He braced himself for a spurt of angry protests. She’d made her feelings about staying in the game clear enough at breakfast. And he had to admit she’d more than held her own back there in the alley. To Wolf’s surprise, she merely gave a small nod.
He should have let it go at that. He’d made his point. Had her unspoken acquiescence. No need to muddy the waters with a fumbling explanation.
“It’s not just your confrontation with the Albanian,” he heard himself say. “It’s how I felt when I saw you charging down the alley.”
That caught her attention. She cocked her head and studied him with an arrested expression. “How did you feel?”
Wolf hesitated. This was tougher than he’d imagined. He’d never told a woman he loved her before. He couldn’t tell this one, either. The standard, hackneyed phrases just wouldn’t come.
“Like the ground dropped out from under my feet.”
“I felt pretty much the same way when I realized you were setting yourself up as a target to lead your Albanian pal away from me,” she said slowly.
Wolf shot her a quick glance. So she’d tumbled to that, had she? He’d figured she’d just reacted instinctively back there in the alley. The realization that she’d put herself in the line of fire to save him reinforced Wolf’s decision to get her out of Cabo.
“Then you understand why I need to know you’re safe, Pumpkin. Otherwise I won’t be able to concentrate on my job, and that doubles the risk to both of us.”
Nina understood all right. She didn’t like it, but she understood.
These days and nights with Rafe Blackstone had triggered something inside her. Some craving for adventure and excitement she’d never realized she possessed. It was as though he’d flicked a switch and turned on a hidden Nina. Bolder, braver, more reckless.
Everything in her resisted the idea of flicking the switch to Off again and going back to her safe, secure world. But the possibility that her continued presence in Cabo could get Wolf killed overrode every other consideration.
She took heart from the unspoken message buried in his gruff admission, however. Even more from that ridiculous nickname. Suddenly being compared to a slice of Thanksgiving pie didn’t seem quite as obnoxious as it had before.
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll go quietly, sheriff.”
The smile he flashed her almost made up for being hustled out of Cabo. Almost.
“Here’s the deal. Ace is sending a private jet to pick you up, along with another OMEGA agent to act as your escort. She, or he, will stay with you until this op terminates and I can join you in Albuquerque.”
Nothing hidden in that message! The excitement started to trickle back.
“You’re coming to Albuquerque?”
“That’s the plan.” He slanted her an inquiring glance. “Unless you say otherwise.”
Was he kidding? Delight curled in her belly, but she was darned if she’d make it that easy for him.
“So now I get a vote?”
His smile turned wicked. “Not really. I was just being polite. You and I have some unfinished business to take care of, Dr. Grant.”
She wanted to follow up on that interesting comment, but Wolf insisted they use the remaining five or ten minutes until they reached the casita to rehearse the exit lines they’d feed to Cordell’s listeners.
They assumed their respective roles as soon as he’d keyed the front door and done a quick sweep of the interior. Ushering Nina inside, he tossed the key card on the counter and did his best to project a disgruntled lover.
“I can’t believe your biggest customer calls you and insists he has to meet with you tomorrow morning. This is your first vacation in years. What’s so serious it can’t wait until next week?”
“I told you. Mike has a good
shot at fifteen million in medical-reform dollars. He needs sanitized data from us, like yesterday, to demonstrate the viability of the med-chip he proposes to imbed under patients’ skin.”
“Well at least he’s sending his private jet for us. Sure hate to miss going out on your friend Cordell’s boat, though. You’d better call him and cancel.”
“I’ll do that right now.”
Much to Nina’s relief, Cordell’s answering machine clicked on. She might have discovered a newfound bravado in herself, but she was still the world’s worst liar.
“Hi, Sebastian. This is Nina Grant. I’m so sorry, but Kevin and I have to bow out of the cruise tomorrow afternoon. Something’s come up at work and I need to get back to Albuquerque. We’re flying home in a few hours.”
She had to force herself to fumble through her last few lines.
“I, uh, enjoyed meeting you. I hope I’ll see you again sometime.”
Like in the newspapers, when she read that he’d been sentenced to ten to twenty years.
“Thanks again for your hospitality.”
Despite her newfound craving for excitement, she felt only a sense of relief when she hung up. This undercover business did a real job on the nerves.
“Need help getting packed?” Wolf asked casually.
“No thanks. I’m good. Or maybe not,” she amended as he followed her into the bedroom.
She thought he wanted to add some last-minute instructions or make sure she gathered all her belongings. She did not expect him to shut the door, catch her arm and spin her against the wall.
“About that unfinished business…”
Her breath caught. “Yes?”
He planted an arm beside her head and smiled down at her. Nina could see herself reflected in his eyes. She saw something else as well. Something that made her heart thud against her ribs.
“I thought maybe you should take this home with you.”
“This” was a slow, sensual kiss. An erotic blend of touch and taste and tongue.
Slow was good. Great, in fact. But Nina needed more. Hooking her arms around his neck, she made that abundantly clear. Her mouth locked on to his. Angling, she canted her hips into his lower body. The effect was instantaneous and everything she’d hoped for.
Risky Engagement Page 10