She took another swallow of her water and fingered the flash drive in her skirt pocket. Forget the past. Focus on now. This drive. What she needed from it. And whatever in the world he wanted from it.
Forcing herself to listen to his conversation, she had to know who had hired him. She hoped Grey Holden did a background check on all his potential clients.
“What’s the latest word on the shooting at M and Wisconsin?” he asked his boss as he paced in front of the kitchen island. “Yeah…Right…Okay if you can get a police band reading, call me back. I could call a buddy at the Pentagon, but he might not be able to share intel. I know. I will. By the way, I left the car in mid-lane on Wisconsin. When I ran north with Tierney, I noted the street is still blocked. No tickets or police boot on it yet. I’ll check it later if she’ll cooperate.”
He glanced at her.
She stuck her tongue out at him.
He rolled his eyes. “But that might be tough. Right. I might be able to leave her alone. Yep. Later.”
“Well?” she asked him as he put his cell phone on his belt clip. “What’s our status?”
“You and I are safe and sound. Three people at the corner of M are dead, four wounded. Perp had a semi-automatic that he fired at will. One eye-witness said he shouted that he was on a mission. But we have no details what kind of mission that was.”
“What did he look like?”
“Wore a black balaclava, white tee shirt, jeans, Nikes. Caucasian. Five-ten, one hundred forty or fifty pounds. That’s all.”
“Not much to go on,” she said, noting Mike’s precise rendering, all so stat for his six-year stint as a Navy SEAL. “But why did you say in the shop that the shooter might target me?”
“When things break like that, we take everything into account in a wide circumference. Holden had not told me anything definitive that made me think the shooter had you as a target. That was all me.”
Her jittery stomach rolled over once and relaxed. She took a deep breath. “Good to know.”
He stepped toward her. Towering over her by mouth-watering inches, he gazed down at her with a comforting smile. “Time to get better acquainted.”
She pursed her lips. “You go first since you’re the man on a job.”
“Sit.” He nodded toward a barstool. “I’ll even give you another Perrier to wet your whistle.”
“Sounds good. How is it that your refrigerator is stocked?”
“I have a housekeeper who maintains a certain level of readiness year-round.”
“Efficient.”
“Works for me. Means I can fly in on a whim and visit my grandmother with ease.”
She tipped her head toward the fully stocked wine refrigerator. “You’re even prepared to drink off duty, eh?”
He gazed at it for a very long minute. “That’s for guests. I don’t do alcohol anywhere, anytime. Not smart with the PTSD.”
“Ah.” Since his injury, she’d wondered how he coped with not being able to drink alcohol. So she took this news with pride in him. Despite the fact that Mike could always drink any two men under the table, he’d always been able to walk a straight line. He’d always been so controlled. His self-discipline had made him a superb scholar, second in his midshipman graduating class. He’d gone to sea, traveled the world, come home stateside to receive a promotion well ahead of his buddies. That’s when he decided he wanted to be the best-of-the-best and he’d gone off to BUD/s in San Diego to train to become a SEAL. Nothing stopped him. Not even the death of his parents in that same year. “I applaud your abstinence.”
He swung to face her. “Do you want me to crack a bottle for you? I know how you love a good Cote du Rhone.”
“No, thanks. Later maybe, huh?” Why did his remembrance of her favorite wine make her teary-eyed? Damn. She swallowed back her sudden fears. “Why did you come and take me away like that? I have to know all you do about Omega’s client and why you’re here. It all just seems too uncanny that you’d show up and take me away if…if there’s something weird going on down on M Street.”
He took a seat opposite her at the counter and looked her squarely in the eye. “Whoever hired Omega wants their ID kept secure. They had specific instructions. They wanted you out of Baylor’s immediately, out of Mayhew’s reach and under protection of a bodyguard.”
“And did this person specify that my guard dog should be you?”
He nodded. “They did.”
“Anything else?”
“I was not to leave you alone for a second until—“ He paused. “This is the crazy part.”
“Okay. Ready for crazy. Let me have it.”
“Here it is, and I do quote. ‘Until the reason you were working at Baylor’s was moot.’”
“Wow,” she said with more awe than surprise. “This so-called client knows an awful lot about both of us.”
“So it seems.”
She shook her head. “Who do you know who would have that much intel?”
“On you and me?” he asked, wide-eyed. “Wild guess says it’s State and Langley.”
“Yeah,” she said barely breathing on that possibility. “That’s my thought, too. But supposedly, it’s not them. Do you think they’d lie to Holden?”
“Maybe. They wouldn’t get too far past his check.” He reached across the island and took her hand, squeezing hard. “Fraud experts in Foggy Bottom, the CIA and Special Ops know what we did together in Paris. How we worked. What your expertise is in tracking fraud. They’d figure that whatever jam you’re in, together you and I could get you out. Are you in a jam?”
She lifted both shoulders. ”I was doing just fine. Took me a while to gain Mayhew’s confidence but that’s normal. You can’t just walk right into a job and know precisely what to grab or how to sting them. And you coming in today introduces a new dynamic to my profile.”
“The Paris operation we completed was all about pretending we were lovers.”
“Me getting the intel. You checking it out, mirroring Molyneau’s computers and stealing his data. But honestly, I’m not certain you being my lover accomplishes the same objective as in Paris.” Molyneau had been gay. Mayhew was definitely not.
“You mean that Mayhew is interested in you romantically?”
“I might get him there. Yes.”
Mike widened his eyes and hot blue jealousy poured out of them. “Would you become his lover to get your proof?”
Shocked by his rare display of emotion, she sat stark still. She would never go to bed with anyone for success at a job. The idea was lurid, resembling an act her father would have committed. Ends justifying means was not her modus operandi. No. Her body was hers and she had learned over the years that she should give it only with the finest purpose. “I would hope it wouldn’t come to that.”
Silent, he examined her. Only his eyes spoke. They said decadent things about those two months they’d spent together when they hadn’t pretended their attraction. They had become lovers within two days of starting their assignment. The years spent together in grade school and high school, living side-by-side as neighbors had brought familiarity. The years they had danced around each other had brought unbearable tension, undeniable desire. The two of them easily fell into bed, she because she’d always loved him and he because…well, because she was there, she supposed. And she’d allowed it. She’d welcomed it. She’d told herself he did love her and that an extended Parisian liaison would prove to him that they were meant for each other.
Besides, what else was there to do but for her to go to work in the morning, leave him to do the computer searches, then at night go to cafes, stroll arm-in-arm down the Rue Caulaincourt in Montmartre and buy roasted chicken and potatoes from the boulangerie and fromage and vin from the grocer on the corner? They’d return upstairs to their fourth floor walk-up, shed their clothes and feed each other by hand the glories of French street food. Afterward, he nibbled her breasts and licked every inch of her while she cried out in abandon. In return, she had sucked his
cock and learned how to make him totally lose it as he came in a rush.
“I’ve never forgotten how good we were in Paris,” he said, sorrow lacing his deep voice, his eyes darkly searching hers.
For what? Agreement?
She fumed. “Good? No. We were stellar.”
She swallowed, tasting again the bitterness of his rejection last summer. The reality of what they were now washed through her. Honesty was a devilish brute. They were friends, good friends, who happened to love what they did for each other in the sack.
He walked around the island and pulled her up into his arms.
If she admitted that she still cared for him, would she ever escape him this time with her pride intact?
Her track record was not good. She had failed three out of four times before. When she’d been eighteen, he claimed she was too young to take to bed. When she’d been twenty-two, she’d been a starry-eyed college grad thinking she could land the hunky Navy officer if she slept with him while he was home on leave. He’d refused her then, too, because he was off to war. When she’d been twenty-four, after his folks died, she thought she might show him that all the people who loved him were not dead. But he’d walked out on her then too, saying thanks and not a good idea. Then last year in Paris, when he’d been specifically assigned to the French Embassy on diplomatic duty because he spoke fabulous French, his job had been to protect her by dogging her every step. To the US government, she was performing a professional duty to track jihadi money-laundering by an art dealer. She was to foil the sale of a priceless painting by Claude Monet to a private Arab art collector who regularly funneled the proceeds to terrorist groups. Mike’s job was to find evidence of a two-way money conduit among dealer, collector and terrorist group while he gave Becka cover as her lover.
He had been successful. So had she.
And now?
She gazed up at him. “I haven’t forgotten, either. But I can’t do what we did last time.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Good.” She pushed away. “Then don’t.”
“There isn’t any special man, is there?”
The fact that he might be able to detect that just by holding her in his arms, irritated the shit out of her. “No.”
He winced, chewing on that a bit. Then he walked to the wine fridge, pulled out a bottle of red, a Rhone probably, and started to uncork it.
In relief that he didn’t pursue that subject, she sank down to the stool.
“Holden told me you’re now an employee of Coldwell Insurance Securities in London.”
“I am.”
“Doing what?”
“I investigate fraud. Art fraud. Only now I don’t track money, I track the forgery. And I do it for a private company, not Langley and State.”
“What’s your job here with Mayhew?”
“I am his assistant salesperson and his bookkeeper. He hired me in May after Coldwell discreetly paid his assistant a sizable bribe to take a permanent powder. I applied with such sterling credentials that Mayhew salivated at the prospect of hiring me.”
“And your job there is what?”
“Coldwell suspects Mayhew is trafficking forged Mary Cassatts.”
“Cassatt? Don’t know her. Educate me.”
“An American impressionist who moved to Paris in the late 1860s. She painted mostly women. Her most recent work to be sold privately went for four million.”
“Would I like her work?” he asked with sincere interest. During their time together in Paris, she’d taught him much about impressionist artists and their work. She smiled that he had asked such a thing.
“You like Monet and Renoir. So you’d like her paintings, too.”
He popped the cork on the bottle, poured her a hefty glass of wine and sauntered over to put it in front of her. “And are you proving that he sold it or that he forged it?”
She picked up her glass, swirled the rich red in the bowl and inhaled the notes of cherry and blackberry. She took a generous drink and loved the hell out of the silky ambrosia. Once she answered him, she predicted she might be drinking the whole bottle herself as she told her story. “When I first started, I was attempting to prove he was a fence for one forged Mary Cassatt.”
Mike stared at her, his blue eyes narrowed and wary. “And now?”
“I suspect he may have sold two additional forged paintings of hers.”
“Too much of a coincidence to have so many by one artist?”
“Precisely.” She smiled at him.
“So you think Mayhew knows the forger?”
“I do,” she said with conviction. “For two reasons. One, few dealers can have such repeated luck finding so-called ‘lost’ Impressionists’ paintings so easily unless they value the source. Secondly, we suspect the subject matter of the last two paintings. Interpol runs a master list of lost art, you see.”
“And these last two are not on it?”
“Correct.”
He widened his eyes. “And three are worth how much total, approximately?”
“More than a cool thirty million dollars.”
He whistled.
“My thought exactly.”
“Holden was told you would have documents. In the office, I asked you if you had them and you said yes. Do you?”
She dug the flash drive from her skirt pocket and held it aloft. “Would I ever lie to you?”
Chapter Three
“What’s on there?” he asked.
“Mayhew’s recent sales.”
“Will that give you enough info to slap him in jail?”
“We’ll see when I plug it in.” She took another drink and fingered the little black drive. “But before that—“
“What?”
“I need to call him.”
Mike’s eyes turned glassy. “Covering my ass?”
“Absolutely. He’s logically wondering who you are and why you barged in like Tarzan and hauled me away. I can’t let him question what’s going on. Do we chance he calls the police and says someone’s abducted his sales assistant?“
“You played it like you knew me.”
“Sure. And didn’t want to.”
He strode around the island and took her by the shoulders. “Listen to me. Don’t tell him where you are. Omega’s client wanted you safe. That’s why I went in there the way I did.”
“Yeah. Well, that shooter on M Street didn’t help.”
“We don’t know the full story on yet with that. If that shooter is headed for you—”
She huffed. “Why would he shoot innocent pedestrians if he were headed for me in an art shop?”
“Maybe he got spooked.”
“Right. And maybe I’m Tinkerbell. We don’t even know if he’s been caught. Or she has.”
“Precisely why we’re being careful,” he said. “Besides, a radius around the crime scene will be off limits. So you most likely can’t go back. Not yet. Not until the police catch a suspect. And definitely not until you tell me more about Mayhew’s activities and why you suspect him of selling forged paintings.”
“Look, Lyons. I can play Jane captured by the big bad jungle cat for only so long. Then I will have to call in. The sooner, the better.”
“Great. Drink up.” He motioned for her to finish off her wine.
“I will not. This vino deserves a worthy admirer.”
“So leave it. I’ll open another bottle later.” Grabbing up his cell, he seized her hand and tugged at her.
She groaned in objection. Then she took a healthy swig and left her glass on the granite.
He watched her with a half smile. “Come along, Jane.”
“Har, har,” she said as she stumbled along behind him. He led her out into the foyer and up the circular staircase. The air was cool as it whirled around her, the subtle fragrance of jasmine filling the air as it had years ago when his mother was alive and tending her fabulous garden.
Upstairs on the landing, she noted that the doors to the walnut pane
led library and the sunroom stood open. Farther down the short hall toward the rear of the house, three doors were open there too. On the left was the master bedroom suite, a study in ultra modern cream and beige, steel and glass. He walked into the last door on the right and into a room that backed out onto the rose garden. Here he had installed three computers with huge screens, a sound system and a bank of other computer-type gadgets. He flipped a few switches. Lights blinked. Screens jumped to life.
“Wow,” she said as he rolled over two ergonomic chairs and motioned for her to sit. “All the latest, huh?”
“Close to it. Good tech makes me feel smart.”
“Makes me feel creepy,” she admitted as she rubbed one arm. “Can they see inside my body?”
“Inside, no.” He grinned ear-to-ear. “Under your clothes, yeah.”
She punched him in the arm and swung the steel chair around to sit in it. “Get serious.”
“I am.”
She whipped around to face him, horrified. “Nooo. Tell me you’re joking.”
He raised his arms in surrender. “It’s new technology. Good, too.”
Her mouth fell open.
“No lie. It will replace x-rays soon. Nothing harmful either. Fun stuff.” He wiggled his brows at her.
“I am not amused,” she grumbled.
“Okay. Enough of the funny stuff. Hook up that flash drive to this one, Tierney.” He pointed to a stand-alone lap top. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
She hesitated. “It’s not wi-fi connected?”
“Safer that way. We send no signals off that flash drive. Just in case Mayhew gave it a virus to alert him to any snooper’s extra-curricular activities.”
She nodded and plugged in her stolen goods. The directory drive popped up on screen. She took a deep breath. “Looks good and—“
A long list of documents scrolled down the monitor.
“See? It’s fine.” She grinned, crossing her arms, satisfied.
“Maybe,” Mike said as he peered at the screen.
Her job was almost finished. She’d have her proof of fraud for her supervisor in London, fill out the paperwork and quit. She took hold of the mouse to click on one titled Year-to-date Revenue and the entire page of figures collapsed to gibberish.
The Omega Team: The Lion (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 3