Smokescreen

by Meredith Fletcher; Vicki Hinze Doranna Durgin

  Listening at the bathroom door revealed only silence, and she went so far as to peek out. The smoke hung thickly in the abandoned hallway. Selena ducked back inside, took another deep breath—this one to hold—and eased out into the hallway, running silently to the waiting room she’d left the Berzhaani ambassador so precipitously only moments before.

  Empty. Allori’s teacup lay broken on the floor, tea soaking the priceless carpet.

  Son of a bitch.

  The door leading to the prime minister’s office stood slightly ajar, and Selena made for it, her chest starting to ache for air. But breathing meant coughing, and coughing meant being found.

  She didn’t intend to be found until she understood the situation. If then.

  Razidae’s office proved to be empty, as well, the luxurious rolling office chair askew at the desk, papers on the floor, the private phone out of its sleek-lined cradle—and the air relatively clear. Selena closed the door, grateful for the old, inefficient heating system, and inhaled as slowly as she could, muffling the single cough she couldn’t avoid.

  All right, then. The building was full of tear gas, and the dignitaries were gone, and Selena had somehow missed it all.

  They could have blown the building out from under you while you were throwing up, and you wouldn’t have noticed.

  Think, Selena. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and calmed the chaotic mess of her mind. She could call for help from here—Razidae’s private line might have an in-use indicator at his secretary’s desk, but it wouldn’t show up on any of the other phone systems, so she wouldn’t give her presence away by picking it up.

  But there was no point in calling until she understood the situation. No doubt the authorities were already alerted.

  You still don’t know what’s going on.

  Well, then, she told herself. Let’s find out.

  Selena laid her briefcase on the desk, thumbed the token combination lock and flipped the leather flap open. She’d left her laptop behind in favor of her tablet PC, and the briefcase looked a little forlorn…a little empty.

  Not much to work with. No Beretta, no extra clip, no knives…

  Maybe she wouldn’t need them. Maybe by the time she discovered what had happened, it would actually be over.

  Nonetheless, she took a quick survey: cell phone, battery iffy; she turned it off and left it behind. A handful of pens, mostly fine point. She tucked several into her back pocket. A new pad of sticky notes. A nail file, also worthy of pocket space. Her Buck pocketknife, three blades of discreet mayhem, yet not big enough to alarm the security guards. It earned a grim smile and a spot in her front pocket. A spare AC unit for her laptop, which garnered a thoughtful look and ended up stuffed into the big side pocket of her leather duster. A small roll of black electrician’s tape. A package of cheese crackers—

  Selena closed her eyes, aiming willpower at her rebellious stomach. I don’t have time for you, she told it. Without looking, she set the crinkly package aside. And then she looked at the remaining contents of the briefcase. A legal pad and a folder full of confidential documents. She supposed she could inflict some pretty powerful paper cuts. A few mints and some emergency personal supplies she wasn’t likely to need if she was actually pregnant.

  No flak vest, no Rambo knife, not even a convenient flare pistol.

  Then again, there was no telling what she might find with a good look around the capitol. Almost anything was a weapon if you used it right.

  Selena jammed the rejected items back in her briefcase, automatically locking it; she tucked it inside the foot well of Razidae’s desk and checked to see that she’d left no sign of her presence, except there were those crackers—

  She made a dive for the spiffy executive waste-basket beside the desk, hunched over with dry heaves. Mercifully they didn’t last long. And afterward, as she rose on once-again shaky legs and poured herself a glass of the ice water tucked away on a marble-topped stand in the corner, she tried to convince herself that it was over. That she could go out and assess the situation without facing the heaves during an inopportune moment.

  She dumped the rest of the water into a lush potted plant that probably didn’t need the attention, wiped out the glass and returned it to its spot. She very much hoped that she’d creep out to find an embarrassed guard and an accidentally discharged tear gas gun.

  A stutter of muted automatic gunfire broke the silence.

  So much for that idea. Selena’s heart, already pounding from her illness, kicked into a brief stutter of overtime that matched the rhythm of the gunfire. “All right, baby,” she said to her potential little passenger, pulling her fine wool scarf from her coat pocket and soaking it in the pitcher. “Get ready to rock and roll.”

  But as she reached for the doorknob, she hesitated. She could be risking more than her own life if she ran out into the thick of things now. As far as she knew, whoever had pulled the trigger of that rifle didn’t even know she existed. She could ride things out here with her lint-filled water and her cheese crackers.

  Or she could be found and killed, or the building could indeed blow up around her, or whoever’d fired those shots could succeed in their disruptive goal, and Selena and her theoretical little one could be trapped in a rioting, war-torn Berzhaan. Her mind filled with images of frightened students and dead capitol workers and a dead Allori. She closed her eyes hard.

  It really wasn’t any choice at all.

  …NOT THE END…

  Look for CHECKMATE by Doranna Durgin, on sale June 2005 at your favorite outlet.

  DOUBLE VISION

  by

  Vicki Hinze

  On sale June 2005 from

  Silhouette Bombshell

  Every month Silhouette Bombshell has four fresh, unique, satisfying reads to tempt you into something new…

  Here’s an exclusive excerpt from one of this month’s releases, DOUBLE VISION by Vicki Hinze.

  “Okay, Home Base.” Staring through her diving mask, Captain Katherine Kane swam toward the rocks above the newly discovered underwater cave. Cold water swirled around her. “I’m almost there.”

  “Roger that, Bluefish.” Considering the distance between Kate and Home Base, Captain Maggie Holt’s voice sounded surprisingly clear through the earpiece. “I don’t like the idea of you diving alone. The boss would have a fit.”

  The boss, Colonel Sally Drake, would understand completely. “Sorry, no choice.” Captain Douglas and his tactical team had been diverted. “If we want to find GRID’s weapon cache, then I’ve got to do this now—before they have time to move it.”

  Douglas and his men had assisted Kate on a former mission, intercepting GRID—Group Resources for Individual Development—assets, and when he’d summoned Kate to the Persian Gulf, she’d known he suspected a GRID presence and needed help. All the key players in the Black World community knew that pursuing GRID, the largest black-market sellers of U.S. intelligence and weapons in the world, was Kate’s organization’s top priority. And it had been designated such by presidential order.

  “I still think we should follow the usual chain of command,” Maggie said. “If the boss were here, you know she would agree with me.”

  If Colonel Sally Drake were there and not at the intelligence community summit meeting coordinating the war on terror, Kate and Maggie wouldn’t be having this conversation and there would be no debate. Kate resisted a sigh.

  Maggie was new to their level of covert operations and still adjusting to tossing out standard operating procedure and assuming command in critical circumstances. But she had all the right stuff; she’d grow into the job eventually. Nothing taught operatives better than experience, and she’d get plenty in their unit. Still, for everyone’s sake, including her own, Kate hoped Maggie adjusted and grew into it soon.

  “Look,” Kate said, speeding the process along, “ordinarily Douglas would have worked up the chain. This time he came straight to the S.A.S.S.” Secret Assignment Security Specialis
ts were the last resort, and Douglas respected that. “I know this man and he knows us. He’s got a fix on GRID.” Kate couldn’t resist an impatient huff. “No offense intended, Home Base, but you’ve got to learn to trust your allies.” That included Douglas, his team and Kate.

  “Yeah, well. I’m gun-shy. You have to prove you deserve it.”

  That response surprised Kate. “How?”

  “Don’t get yourself killed today. Do you realize how much paperwork I’d have to do?”

  Kate smiled. Okay, she’d cut Maggie a little slack. The woman was trying. “Waking up dead isn’t my idea of a fun way to start the day, either, Home Base.” She reached the finger of rocky land jutting out into the gulf and, treading water, removed the black box from her tool bag.

  Stiff-fingered from the cold chill, she flipped the switch to activate the C-273 communications device and then affixed it to the rock just below the waterline. If this leading-edge technology worked as advertised, she would still be able to communicate with Maggie at Home Base via satellite. Supposedly the water would conduct the signal from Kate inside the cave to this box and then transmit via satellite to Home Base, completing the link to Maggie. Kate hoped to spit it worked. “Okay, C-273 is seated. We’re good to go.”

  Looking up, she again checked the face of the rock above the waterline. Worn smooth and scarred by deep gouges. Definitely signs of traffic.

  That oddity had caught her eye initially and led her to dive here for a closer look. Otherwise she never would have found the cave—and she seriously doubted anyone short of an oceanographer charting the gulf’s floor would have, either.

  “Bluefish?” Worry filled Maggie’s voice. “The guys at the lab swear this device will work, but if it doesn’t and we lose contact, I want you out of there pronto. I mean it.”

  “Here we go again. Trust a little. Remember, no guts, no glory.” Kate adjusted her diving headgear, checked to make sure her knife was secure in its sheath strapped to her thigh, pulled her flashlight from her tool belt, turned it on and then dove.

  “Glory?” Maggie’s sigh crackled static through Kate’s earpiece. “What glory? You’re a phantom. Less than three hundred people know you exist.”

  The S.A.S.S. was a highly skilled, special detail unit of covert operatives assigned to the Office of Special Investigations and buried in the Office of Personnel Management for the United States Air Force. The unit didn’t exist on paper, its missions didn’t exist on paper—the unit’s name even changed every six months for security purposes, which is why those who knew of the S.A.S.S. operatives referred to them by what they did and not by their official organizational name. If more than a couple hundred people knew S.A.S.S. existed, Kate would be shocked. “Personal power, Home Base.” Kate had learned from the cradle to expect no other kind. “Doesn’t matter a damn who else knows it as long as I do.”

  At the mouth of the cave, she paused to scan the rock. More of the same: worn smooth and deep gouges. Even considering tidal fluxes, too many deep gouges rimmed the actual opening. Water action alone couldn’t explain them. She swam on, entering the cave.

  “Are you inside now?”

  “Yes.” Snake-curved, the inner cave was about three feet wide. Kate swam close to its ceiling. Suddenly the width expanded to nearly ten feet. “The cave’s opened up.” She lifted her head above water, cranked her neck back and shone the light above her. “Now this is bizarre.”

  “What?”

  “I dove a solid twenty feet to get to the mouth, then swam a couple football fields to get to this point. The water rode the cave ceiling the whole way. Now I’m seeing a stretch of wall that’s exposed a good nine feet above the waterline.” She stopped treading water and tested for bottom. Her fin swiped the sand, and she stood up. “Water level’s dropped. It’s chest-deep.”

  “I’m plotting your GPS,” Maggie said.

  “Good, because even considering an umbrella effect, this shouldn’t be possible.” Kate kept her diving mask on in case she was standing on a shelf or sand bar—false bottoms had proven common in her explorations—then looked down the throat of the cave. A diffused light emanated from somewhere far ahead, creating a haze. The rocks jutting out from the cave walls cast deep shadows. Must be reflections shining through the water, or cracks in the rock. Neither seemed possible, but the alternative… “Oh, man.”

  “What is it?” Anxiety etched Maggie’s voice. “Bluefish?”

  “This is more than we bargained for.” Kate’s heart beat hard and fast. “A whole lot more.”

  …NOT THE END…

  Look for DOUBLE VISION by Vicki Hinze, on sale June 2005 at your favorite retail outlet.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-1630-3

  SMOKESCREEN

  Copyright © 2005 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

  CHAMELEON

  Copyright © 2005 by Doranna Durgin

  UPGRADE

  Copyright © 2005 by Meredith Fletcher

  TOTAL RECALL

  Copyright © 2005 by Vicki Hinze

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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