The Scotland Yard Exchange Series

by Stephanie Queen

  He looked puzzled. “Grace is David’s wife, right?”

  “So?”

  “So she already knows.” He sounded so sure that her stomach took a dip.

  “But I will be the charming man that you’ve never experienced. And…” He paused. He reached out and took her hand and squeezed. “And I think it’s sweet of you to want to protect your friend.”

  Her face heated yet again and she looked away from his gaze. He tugged her hand forward and pushed through the doors as she regained herself and followed. Would she feel forever disoriented in the presence of this man?

  They walked into the office and Grace rushed toward them. Sophia almost allowed tears to fall from her eyes and opened her arms for her friend’s inevitable hug. When Grace enveloped her, she thought she’d been prepared, but she found herself squeezing her eyes shut against the tears. No way would she ruin it. She couldn’t worry Grace any more than she already was if the tightness of the hug was any indicator. When Grace released her, she kept an arm around her and they both faced Chauncey. He wore a tolerant half smile, or at least that’s how Sophia chose to interpret his expression. It could have been a frown.

  “Good to see you again, aah…” Grace said.

  “Chauncey. Call me Chauncey.”

  “She has a flair, doesn’t she?” Grace vibrated with enthusiasm, but it could have been tension. Sophia started to feel hot and impatient.

  “I need to get a few things, Grace. I’m going to be away for a while. I’ll need my computer, a few files and my Rolodex.”

  “Rolodex?” Chauncey lifted a brow.

  She lifted a shoulder. “I’m an old-fashioned girl.”

  “Whatever you want you can take. How long do you think you’ll be gone?” Grace turned to Chauncey for the answer. It was a very good question.

  “I estimate it shouldn’t be more than a week. Then our nemesis will either be caught or—”

  “Don’t say it!” Grace’s hand flew to her mouth.

  “I was going to say, or we’ll have lured him from this country back to London where I’ll confront him with the Yard.”

  Sophia noticed he didn’t mention catching the traitor that he suspected from within the Yard, as he called it. Maybe that was a top secret tidbit. She locked eyes with him for a flash.

  “Oh. I’m so glad you cleared that up.” Grace turned to Sophia again, and with an arm around her shoulder, she led them toward her office.

  “Try and keep things to a minimum. And as for the Rolodex, you won’t be making any contact with anyone for the duration. Not even this office. Plan for a communications blackout. Perhaps Mrs. Young can fill in for you in your absence.”

  “Of course. Consider it done, Pixie. I’ll hold off on rescheduling the audition shoot for the design show and get as long a postponement as I can. They’re still really keen on you. They were very impressed with all the excitement and are coming up with all kinds of espionage angles to your decorating style. Funny, isn’t it?”

  “Keen on me? What decade were you born in? That’s really funny. Decorator spy angle? I would have never thought of it myself. I’m still not.” She tried to keep her voice calm. She hoped she’d make it back. She thought of Polly and hiccupped. Chauncey eyed her.

  Grace knew, but she didn’t say anything, and she smiled as she left them at her office. “Take what you need. Leave me instructions for the rest.” Grace turned to Chauncey once again, looking up at him, but not craning her neck like Sophia had to. “Are you sure Pixie won’t be able to contact me?”

  “Positive.” He met her gaze and didn’t say that not even her husband could change matters, but his look said it.

  Grace left them with a forlorn little smile and rushed down the hall.

  Sophia swept some files from her desk, a few sketch pads, and some pencils. She then disconnected the laptop from all its connections and stuffed it in her bag along with the cable. Her hands shook as she ripped the zipper closed and tossed the overstuffed bag on her shoulder. She turned to her enigmatic captor.

  “I suppose it’s better I let you kidnap me than let your nemesis Azzam get me.”

  He’d been leaning with his arms crossed, observing her. Now she felt self-conscious. He pushed himself from the door jamb and in a fluid motion slipped his hand under her shoulder strap and lifted the bag off and away.

  “I suppose I should remind you it was your idea to join me on this excursion.”

  “Either that or some stuffy hotel room where I’d die of impatience waiting around to hear from you. This way I can keep my eye on you—and your nemesis.”

  “You mean I can keep my eye on you.”

  “If you must.” She felt the flirtation add an extra thud to her heartbeat. She knew she was doing the right thing. She was certain now. Her biggest danger would be from dying of a heart attack every time she thought about him as a man, rather than a spy.

  He headed toward the lobby. She turned the other way and headed down the hall toward Grace’s office. She told him, “I’ll be along in a minute. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  He said, “Don’t be long.” Apparently he didn’t figure the place to be infested with potential terrorists lying in wait to capture her. She walked through the glass door to find Grace waiting for her.

  “I’m not so sure I trust this guy. What do you really know about him?” Grace nodded her head in the general direction of somewhere else.

  “You mean besides that he’s a great swimmer?”

  Grace shot her a “stop with the smart-ass bravado” look and picked up the phone, dialing you-know-who.

  “Sweetheart, it’s me.” Her face melted into a tender soft glow. Sophia kept her eyes glued to it like it was a train wreck that was unhealthy to look at, but captured her attention anyway.

  “Are you sure it’s all right for Pixie to go on this crazy trek to Canada with Chauncey or…or whatever his code name is?” Grace pressed the intercom button to share David’s wisdom with her. He spoke loud and clear.

  “I’m not so sure at all, darling, but she insisted, and you know how stubborn she is. Plus I’m afraid I was double-teamed.”

  “What do you mean?” Sophia horned in on the conversation. She felt a blip in her excitement level at the possibility and she had to know.

  “Hello, my stubborn little Pixie. Looks like you’re not the only one who wanted you along. Your imperturbable Chauncey left me no alternative. It was all I could do to keep him from kidnapping you. I insisted that we had to leave it up to you. I’m afraid he took great satisfaction in your insistence at going along without any prodding whatsoever.”

  “I’ll bet he did. You should have told me the plan before I made my…request.” Sophia tried to hold onto her anger, but her excitement at Chauncey’s desire for her began to overwhelm everything. Even the good common sense notion that it was his sense of responsibility and protective streak that prompted his desire and not other better, more exciting urges.

  “You’re in danger either way, I’m afraid. You’re a defined target.” David’s voice turned somber. “I wanted to keep you safe and sound here, especially after…” He cleared his throat. “However, I realize that Chauncey has a stake—perhaps even greater than mine—at keeping you safe. You’ll be in good hands. As long as you let him do his job. We’ll be in contact all the way.”

  “What about the traitor?” She leaned into Grace, who still held the phone. She felt the churn of her gut. Imagine what Chauncey felt.

  “We’re considering our options.” David had shut down. Grace took him off speaker phone and said her good-byes.

  “I hate that you’re leaving.” Grace sighed heavily and stepped toward her with open arms, enveloping her in a heartfelt hug.

  “I’ll only be gone a week,” she said, muffled. She hoped Chauncey was right. “And I’m not gone yet.” She hadn’t meant for it to sound the way it did.

  Grace finally let her go. “What do you suppose David meant by ‘considering their options’?” sh
e said.

  “I’m not an official spy, but if it were me, I’d set a trap.” She shivered involuntarily and tried to cover her nerves by scooting to the door. “I have to go—Chauncey’s waiting.”

  She rushed to the lobby with Grace behind her. With her last look back she saw Grace wave with a ‘will-I-ever-see-you-again’ look on her face. Chauncey swooped her from the office, leaving no room for cold feet.

  They rode down in the elevator with him carrying all her things. It occurred to her he left nothing to chance. There was no way she could escape his clutches now. The sudden shot of blood to her heart was matched by a rush to her libido. The tiny trilling sensations that spread through her nervous system almost made her dizzy. She slumped back against the wall and leaned in his direction like he was a magnet and she was a pile of iron shavings dancing around his force field.

  “Are you with me or have you run out of fairy dust?” He looked down at her with hot eyes.

  “Don’t worry. No matter what I look like on the outside, I’m made of steel underneath.” Hot molten steel at the moment, but still.

  He gave her that abrupt laugh of his that reminded her of a guard dog. That helped dispel some of her misery of wanting. Then the doors slid open and he put his free arm around her to usher her to the street. He felt cool and detached, on the professional protector clock now. She reminded herself he was always a professional protector and that this was nothing personal. None of it, she shouted inside her head. That and the familiar city noises and smells of the block where she worked—practically lived—snapped her out of the spell he had on her.

  He hurried them into the car and slipped on his sunglasses. As if that would hide his obvious law-enforcement operative demeanor. The sunglasses looked more like the definitive tell.

  “Oh wait, maybe you want to be an obvious spy,” she said out loud.

  They both got in the car and he arranged himself behind the wheel. That alone gave her trepidation. He turned to her and lifted his glasses.

  “I’m not MI6, I’m Scotland Yard. Flying Squad. We’re detectives. We sometimes do detective work. But we’re never, ever spies. Sorry to burst your James Bond delusions, but that’s not real.”

  She opened her mouth. She couldn’t believe he’d just said that. “But it was you who referred to me being the Bond girl. I never had any…”

  He’d flipped his glasses back onto his nose. One corner of his mouth twitched. She couldn’t tell if it was nerves or a suppressed smile. He put the car in gear. They didn’t screech tires but lurched into the stream of traffic. Sophia didn’t know whether to punch him on the arm for his outrageous accusation and risk a collision with a bus, or to cover her face and pray they didn’t crash before they got back to the governor’s mansion.

  “I have a surprise for you,” he said out of nowhere.

  She looked up and out the window, realizing they weren’t headed for Cambridge to the mansion. “Are you taking me home?” She scolded herself for allowing the astonishment through so easily.

  He laughed his genuine laugh and looked at her with that dimpled smile that made it hard for her to maintain her cool distance. She felt more like his poodle wagging her tail and eager to lick his face.

  “I confess I can’t take all the credit. David suggested you would need to retrieve some things from home. He sent some men to check the place out and watch it for a while to make sure it was safe. As suspected, it hasn’t been touched. One more piece of evidence to suggest Azzam has left town. He likes to be unpredictable. Lying in wait for you would be too obvious—and thus too dangerous for him.”

  “So the upshot is I get to go home?”

  “Only to collect some things. Didn’t I say that?”

  “Just checking. But if the place is safe, why don’t I stay there?”

  “Police department budget. They can’t afford endless round-the-clock surveillance and eventually Azzam would have eyes on the place and know you were there unprotected.”

  “Eyes on the place?” The creepy feeling raised goose bumps on her skin. “You’re coming in with me, right?” She didn’t care at the moment how chicken-livered she sounded.

  He barked an amused laugh, at odds with the edgy tension emanating from his body. Or maybe that was his normal testosterone. She needed to control her reaction to that. She could feel another quiver coming on as they pulled up to her small brick building on a narrow street on Beacon Hill. She’d taken over Grace’s studio after she was evicted for that pet violation. Sophia wondered if the landlord would hold it against her if he found out about the cop-watch on the place.

  “Lovely building. Reminds me of Chelsea.”

  “You mean Chelsea, England.”

  “What else is there?”

  Sophia didn’t bother to enlighten him about the less than spectacular version of Chelsea that lay across the river north of Boston. Some day she’d get him off his high horse, but since she was relying on his professional protection right now, this wasn’t the time. He followed her up the narrow staircase and when they got to her door, he put his hand on her shoulder and motioned her aside. He stood at the door and seemed to study it, listening intently. If she expected him to draw a gun, she was disappointed. He put his hand out for her key, let them in, and proceeded ahead of her. Shamelessly, she stuck within a sneeze breeze of him as he moved through the small space.

  “Quite a place. Very stylish.” He turned and looked down at her with a dimple showing. “So you really are a decorator.”

  She pushed him with two hands. “So if you really are a detective, has anyone been through my place?”

  “You need to test me? A crisis of confidence already and we haven’t even hit the road.”

  “No, but we’ve hit the water and I’d like to avoid similar circumstances no matter how invigorating and all’s-well-that-ends-well they turn out.”

  He went unreadable and turned his attention to her apartment. “No open windows, no marks to indicate any foul play, there’s a fine film of undisturbed dust on the sills and in fact on every surface in the place. The air smells stale and undisturbed with only the hint of bitterness from days-old coffee grounds in the coffee maker,” he added as he stepped into her kitchenette. “The sink is bone dry. There were no footprints in the carpeting, with bits of dirt or debris from outside or otherwise. But most telling of all, the bolt lock, doorknob and door hinges were undisturbed. No telltale traces of screwdriver or other equipment at play and the key entry was unencumbered.”

  She listened with increased discomfort as her heart rate increased with each item on the list that he ticked off, making the potential menace seem more real. She took a deep breath and held back her spine-tingling fear. She had a harder time holding back on how impressed she was with his expert assessment. But she dredged up the nerve to say something.

  “Did you expect someone to take the door from its hinges?” A hint of incredulity laced her voice, but she hoped she came across mostly as scoffing.

  “I’ve done it.” He raised a challenging brow and turned toward her bathroom. “I expect you’ll want a few things from here. He stepped into the darkened room, flipped on the light and… then nothing.

  She stood outside the door. Her blood froze and her heart raced at an impossible pace, seemingly trying to jar her from her dread. “Chauncey?” Her voice squeaked in that way that had become too frequent in his presence.

  “I was wrong,” he said in a deadly quiet voice.

  She rushed to stand on the threshold and stared over his shoulder. The words scrawled in her stiletto red nail polish on the bathroom mirror shot a shudder through her body. She felt Chauncey’s hands on her before she even realized her knees had given out. He dragged and half carried her out of there. She wanted to sit on the couch and gather herself. She hiccupped her protest as he pulled her, her feet barely hitting the floor, to the door and out into the hall.

  “Can I sit…”

  “No. We’re out of here. We’ll have a team of experts
in to see what they can come up with.” He lifted her all the way off her feet and carried her down the stairs and to the car. After he shoved her into the passenger seat he rounded the front of the car and got in with his cell in his hand. She felt her teeth chattering but had no idea why. She couldn’t remember now what the words had said, only that it was an angry threat. A deadly threat. Against her.

  And the bastard had used her best red nail polish. Her mind sparked with the flash of the open tube discarded carelessly in the sink. She didn’t listen to what he said to David on the phone. The instant he’d finished his call she turned to him.

  “What did it say?”

  He looked at her and his face turned from deadly serious to a frown of concern. “You don’t…it’s better that you don’t dwell on it. It doesn’t matter what he wrote. The point is I was wrong.”

  “Wrong?” She couldn’t grasp what he was telling her.

  “He did get into your apartment. He had a key. As soon as the uniforms get here, I’m going to have to go back in and I’m going to interview the apartment manager. What did you say his name was?”

  “Mr. Dog Hater. I don’t know. Why does it matter? He lives in 1A. Break his door in and shake the truth out of him.”

  He smiled at her. She felt instantly warmed and the whole scene came back into view like she’d emerged from a tunnel. “The bastard ruined my best nail polish with his sick message. Get him.” She smiled back at Chauncey, because in that moment she felt supreme confidence that he would get the man. The poor, poor evil man.

  “I was almost worried about you, Pixie. I should have known better.” He spied the blue–and-white pulling up behind them in the rearview mirror. He turned back to her. She stared at him and he doubted she realized how wide-eyed she looked right now. Anything but the sassy sarcastic spitfire of an hour ago. Maybe he was still worried about her. The green eyes didn’t waver. They glistened and he couldn’t resist their draw. He leaned in and lowered his mouth to hers. Her lips were soft and warm against the coolness of his own. He sucked in and took a thorough taste before he let her go. Any other time and he would have devoured her, he promised himself. But this was a very inappropriate time. He looked up and out the window in time to see the uniforms approaching. He touched her face and glanced back at the sparkling green eyes.