“Oh, for…!” Wolf slammed the handgun he’d taken from the downed henchman onto the bar counter. “Cut the crap, Cordell. You’re not wiggling out of this one. You know damn well we’ve got the goods on you.”
“Do you?” Calmly, he adjusted his cuff. “What goods, may I ask?”
“The encrypted disk you lifted from Senator DeWitt’s office and sold to our friend here.”
“Indeed? And where, precisely, is this disk?”
A muscle twitched in Wolf’s jaw. Spotting it, Nina felt a sudden, hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach. He’d jumped back aboard the yacht, not just to cover her escape, she realized. He’d wanted—no, needed—to be in on the handover of the disk.
That, obviously, hadn’t happened. And without the hard evidence linking Cordell to the stolen technology, the bastard might just wiggle off the hook after all.
“You’re going to tell us where that disk is,” Wolf warned, emanating promise and menace in equal measure.
“I can hardly tell you what I don’t know.”
The sheer arrogance of the man took Nina’s breath away. Fist clenched, she stomped across the salon. “Nina?”
Ignoring Wolf’s questioning glance, she rounded the end of the bar. “My dear!”
The wary note that leaped into Cordell’s voice gave her a vicious satisfaction.
“What are you doing?”
“Treating myself to that drink you promised me. I think I’ve earned it, don’t you?”
“Let me pour it for you.”
Before he could take a step, she snatched the silver encrusted tequila bottle from its protective rack and whipped around.
“That’s okay.” She held the bottle up by its neck. “I’ll pour my own.”
Her eyes locked with Cordell’s. She saw realization flare in his, felt triumph flood her own. Deliberately, Nina opened her fist.
“Ooops.”
The two-thousand-dollar bottle shattered against the gleaming teak counter. Glass splintered and liquid spilled out, but the spiny silver plating held its shape. So did the medallion at its center. Which, Nina confirmed, with a blaze of satisfaction, was not made of bronze.
“Well, lookee here.”
She poked carefully among the gooey shards and used a finger and thumbnail to lift the round, gray-colored object. Her glance swept the salon full of stunned personnel. She took almost as much pleasure from Alekseev’s fierce scowl as from the red that now mottled Cordell’s cheeks. The gleam of respect in the tall, slender blonde’s eyes wasn’t bad, either. But it was Wolf’s crooked grin that put a silly smile on her face.
“I think this might be what you’re looking for,” she told him.
“I think it might.”
Chapter 13
“I’m glad T.J. and I arrived in time to get in on the action,” the long-legged blonde mused as she and Nina downed mugs of hot coffee and watched the sun come up from the forward deck of Cordell’s yacht. “Been a while since we had this much fun.”
The boat was on its way back to shore, minus its owner and about half the crew. They’d been hustled aboard the navy cutter that had come alongside several hours ago. Mannie had hauled Alekseev and his pals onto the cutter, too, citing violations to Mexico’s gun laws and suspicious activity involving transfer of funds. A small contingent from Mexico’s elite marine ops squad had remained aboard the yacht to bring it to safe anchorage at the police impound marina.
Wolf had gone with Mannie, along with a tall, well-muscled male in a black wetsuit. He’d turned out to be the husband of Nina’s present companion, Jordan Colby, aka Diamond.
Diamond had traded her own wetsuit for a cool, cotton-weave robe appropriated from one of the yacht’s well-supplied guest cabins. Beneath it she wore only the two-piece bathing suit she’d had on under the wetsuit. Nina had caught glimpses of the mile-long legs and slender body that had made the woman one of the highest-paid models in the world before she’d quit to begin designing her line of signature eyewear.
A pair of her sunglasses, with their distinctive butterfly logo, picked out in small diamonds in the corner of the left lens, rested on the bridge of her nose now. The sophisticated shades imbued Nina with intense envy and a firm resolve to order a pair as soon as she got home. Home.
The very thought of it reverberated in her head. After last night, her condo nestled in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains beckoned like a shimmering oasis of peace and calm in an otherwise insane world. Sebastian Cordell and friends had maxed out Nina’s newly awakened craving for excitement and danger. No way she could ever classify last night’s terror “fun,” the way Diamond just had.
“Tell me something.” Cradling her coffee mug in both hands, she turned to the cool blonde. “You and T.J. work for the same agency that Wolf does. How often do you get tapped for assignments like this one?”
“It varies. Sometimes we go for months between ops. Other times, we might hop from one right into another.”
“And you like living on the edge like that?”
“It certainly keeps life interesting.” She slid her glasses down and tipped Nina a glance. “It’s not for everyone, though.”
“No kidding!”
Diamond hesitated, obviously choosing her words with care. “Look, it’s obvious you and Wolf have something going on. If you’re worried about getting in too deep, you might want to ask him how he came by his code name sometime.”
“Thanks. I will.”
Nina didn’t tell her she was already in way over her head, but she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to live with a man who jumped into danger on a more or less regular basis. Could she lie awake night after night, wondering and worrying?
Not that Wolf asked her to do either. She was putting her own spin on his casual promise to come to Albuquerque when he’d wrapped things up down here.
Then again, Nina reminded herself, he’d made that promise while they still had some “unfinished business” from the beach to take care of. Maybe those two wild sessions at the Mayan Princess, before they’d left for the airport yesterday afternoon, had settled that score. She didn’t think so, but the uncertainty gnawed at her so much that she was only marginally grateful, once back on dry land, to find that Mannie’s people had recovered her luggage from the hijacked rental car. They had no idea what had happened to her straw tote, however. So her first act was to borrow Diamond’s cell phone to cancel her credit cards and notify the on-call duty officer at the U.S. Consulate in Cabo San Lucas that she’d lost her passport.
“They want me to come by and fill out an application for a replacement passport.”
“Not a problem,” Diamond assured her. “Let’s get changed. We can swing by the consulate on our way to rendezvous with the guys.”
Diamond and her husband had left their gear at Wolf’s hotel. They’d checked his room after verifying that he and Nina had departed the Mayan, then failed to show at the airport. At that point, she and T.J. had contacted Mannie Diaz and joined the naval assault team.
“How did you get in?” Nina wanted to know as she and Diamond swept past the front desk of the hotel overlooking the sea. The Pacifica was several steps down from the ultra-fashionable Mayan Princess, but bursting with color and fragrant with the scent of bougainvillea.
“OMEGA operatives have their ways of accessing hotel rooms,” Diamond said with a smile as she zapped the key code on the door to Wolf’s.
Once inside the functional one-bedroom minisuite, Nina looked around with interest. Rafe Blackstone certainly wasn’t the neatest person in the world. The desk chair sported the wrinkled and very gaudy tropical shirt he’d had on the night they’d met at the marina. The knit polo he’d worn to lunch with Cordell lay crumpled at the foot of the bed. A beat-up leather carryall spilling a variety of electronic implements sat atop a dresser.
Diamond set her small overnighter on the desk. “You want first dibs on the shower?”
Nina wanted out of her wrinkled linen slacks a
nd red tank in the worst way, but another urgent priority had surfaced. She tried to remember when she’d last eaten and came up blank.
“You go ahead. I’m famished. While you do your thing, I’ll hit the café and order two breakfasts to go.”
“Sounds good.” Diamond fished a wad of pesos out of her sleek designer handbag. “Better take these, since you’re cash-and credit-cardless.”
Nina felt a little weird as she strolled the palm-shaded walk that wound between the detached units. After days of looking over her shoulder and playing to a listening device and getting kidnapped not once, but twice, she experienced a relieved, if slightly nervous, sense of freedom. Her stomach provided a distraction as she approached the crowded café and caught her first whiff of sizzling sausage and spicy huevos rancheros. Unfortunately, she’d timed her expedition at the height of the breakfast hour. It took almost a half hour to get a carry-out order.
Balancing a heavy sack and two tall cups of coffee, she made her way back along the palm-shaded walk. With both hands full, she had to kick the door panel to get Diamond’s attention. But when the door swung open a few seconds later, the individual on the other side was neither blonde nor freshly showered.
“Wolf!”
He looked rumpled and red-eyed from lack of sleep, with dark bristles shading his cheeks and chin. The bruise on his temple had turned an ugly purplish green. Yet the grin he gave her was all male, and so potent that Nina’s heart skipped several beats.
“Diamond indicated we would rendezvous with you and her husband downtown,” she said a little breathlessly.
“That was the plan.” He relieved her of the precariously balanced coffees. “But it looks like the wrap-up will take longer than expected. So we decided to take a break, clean up, and start fresh later this afternoon.”
She trailed him into the minisuite and looked around. “Where are your friends?”
“They went to the front desk to get their own room.” He set the cups on the desk and reached for the paper sack. His blue eyes held hers. “They have to stay for wrap-up, but they plan to fly back tonight, if possible. Diamond offered to take you to the consulate to get a replacement passport so you could leave with them. I told them I’d take care of all that. Later.”
Oooh-kay.
“If that’s all right by you,” he added with a totally unconvincing show of willingness to defer to her wishes in the matter. “Well…”
“Good. That’s settled. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
They took their breakfast to the suite’s small balcony and ate from the cartons. The double order of beans and huevos rancheros disappeared in quick, hungry forkfuls. So did the warm, sugar-dusted sopapillas slathered with butter and honey. Washed down by gulps of coffee, it was hands-down the best meal Nina had ever consumed.
The absence of nerve-crawling tension added to her enjoyment, of course. Then there was the company. He sat across from her, still rumpled and red-eyed and unshaven, but looking totally relaxed…until he caught her gaze.
Eyes narrowed, he searched her face. “You sure you’re all right? No lingering aftereffects from the stuff Cordell’s goons pumped into you?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“I was ready to kill him when I came to. I came close, very close, just before you showed up in the salon.”
A shudder rippled down Nina’s spine. Sitting here in the bright sunlight made the terror of the night before seem even darker and more desperate.
“The worst of it is that I didn’t tell you…” Scowling, Wolf scraped a palm across his chin. “That is, I didn’t let you know…”
“What?”
His frown deepened. “Do you remember me telling you how I felt when I saw you charging down the alleyway?”
Like she could forget it? “As if the ground had dropped out from under you.”
“Right. Well, take that feeling and multiply it by a thousand,” he said with grim emphasis, “and you might come close to how I felt last night.”
She caught her breath. Was he trying to say what she thought he was?
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess, Nina.”
The air left her lungs with a whoosh. “That’s what you’ve been leading up to? An apology?”
Shoving back his chair, he took her hand and tugged her up to stand beside him on the narrow balcony. “I’m trying to say I love you.”
Well! That was better.
“I know it’s too soon,” he said gruffly, sliding his arms around her waist. “We haven’t really had time to get to know each other and you’re still getting over the hurt from your jerk of a fiancé.”
“What fiancé?”
A sense of absolute rightness filled her heart as she framed his bristly cheeks with both hands.
“I dated Kevin for almost a year before we got engaged, and look what a disaster that turned out to be. I’ve known you for, what? Five days? Yet I know all I need to about you. No, wait! There is one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Diamond told me to ask you how you came by your code name.”
A rueful smile tipped his lips. “She did, huh?”
“She did. What’s that all about?”
“Most wolves run in packs, but I’ve always preferred to operate independently. No ties, no entanglements.”
“I assume that includes women.”
“It did.” His arms tightened, pulling her closer. “Until now.”
She could feel him hardening against her belly. Her pulse leaped in response, but the doubts that had pinged her earlier came creeping back.
“We need to talk about those ties, Wolf. I’m not sure how well I would do, sitting home and chewing on my fingernails while you go off to battle the Cordells and Alekseevs of the world.”
He brushed back a strand of tangled hair. “Someone has to do it.”
“True.”
“But I’ve been thinking about that, too. Even lone wolves need to come in from the cold eventually. I’ve been with OMEGA ten years now. It may be time to take a break, work on other interests. See what new directions life takes.”
“That,” she breathed, sliding her arms around his neck, “sounds like an excellent idea.”
“And in the meantime…” He dropped a fierce kiss on her mouth. “A quick shower and a good three or four hours of sack time might be in order.”
“Might, hell!”
Their shower turned out to be anything but quick. Wolf soaped her down, up, and down again. Nina returned the favor, deriving intensely erotic pleasure from the glide of her hand over his taut muscles and slick skin.
And when he lifted her, hooked her legs around his waist, and thrust into her, she knew most definitely her wolf had come in from the cold.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5670-9
RISKY ENGAGEMENT
Copyright © 2010 by Merline Lovelace
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*Code Name: Danger
*Code Name: Danger
*Code Name: Danger
*Code Name: Danger
*Code Name: Danger
*Code Name: Danger
*Code Name: Danger
**Holidays Abroad
**Holidays Abroad
**Holidays Abroad
†Time Raiders
Risky Engagement Page 13