by Misty Evans
"Flynn's orders, like it or not."
"Zara has Flynn wrapped around her pinky. You will be too, before you know it."
"Got a twenty says different."
"You're on."
"Meantime, hack into the personnel database and send me her Agency bio."
"That's classified. I'll get fired."
Lawson knew Del liked a challenge. “Only if Flynn catches you."
Del snickered. “What are you looking for?"
"Not sure. She's one of Flynn's army. I want to know everything there is to know about her."
"Everything you need to know about Zara you learned at the farmhouse."
That's what I'm afraid of. “Is her backstop identity ready?"
"Affirmative. Zara Morgan, aka Sara Lerner, is your stereotypical Paris Hilton clone, only way classier thanks to yours truly. I made her way smarter too. Harvard MBA, a few Trump-wannabe ex-lovers, and a weakness for—” His voice broke off. “Oh, yeah, Ding Dongs and Dom Pérignon."
In Lawson's mind, an image of Zara wearing nothing but her red shoes as she licked filling out of a Ding Dong caused the heat hibernating in his lower gut to flare to life. What he could do to her with a little champagne and chocolate...
He rolled his shoulders and shook off the image. This was business. He couldn't afford to get distracted. “Just be sure it's close enough to her real life so she doesn't forget something and screw up her cover accidentally."
"Jeez, Law, you sound like Flynn. Her cover will hold up to intense scrutiny and isn't that far off the mark. Even her first name is almost identical so she won't slip up. Besides, you forget who your new partner is. Tango's in a class by herself when it comes to this stuff."
A good reason to learn all he could about her. “I owe you, Hoffman."
"Yeah, no kidding. If Flynn finds out I hacked into personnel—"
"You're too good to let that happen.” Lawson hoped that was true. He didn't want Del to lose his job. On the other hand, he never worked with an unknown. For all he knew about Zara, he didn't know enough, and that was a surefire way to die young. “If you get in trouble with Flynn over stuff you're doing for me, I'll take the heat for it."
* * * *
Zara shook out the coffee-colored microfiber pants she had rolled up into the equivalent of a Tootsie Roll and examined them in the restroom stall. There were two articles of clothing she never traveled without—this pair of pants and her Prada Sport perforated-leather bomber jacket. The pants never wrinkled and the jacket, while no one believed it, folded down into a compact pancake and always looked great with anything she wore.
Slipping the pants and a white shirt on, she pushed away the nervousness that had been winding its way through her bloodstream since Annette had told her about Dmitri's release. She realized it wasn't just about proving herself to Flynn. The real reason she couldn't blow this assignment was Dmitri and Vos Loo. They were bona fide threats to the world at large. For the mother and child in the bar, as well as all the other innocent people who could be harmed, Zara had to stop them.
Slipping off her red heels, she traded them for a pair of low-heeled brown pumps. Giving her shirt a final smoothing, she shrugged on the bomber jacket, rolled up the red Prada dress—forgive me, Miuccia—and rearranged the items in her Kate Spade signature bag.
After leaving the stall, she stopped at the sink and examined her reflection in the mirror. She didn't look attention-getting anymore. A few more simple changes and she'd be a completely different person than the one who entered the restroom. She went to work on her face, brushing her hair out with her fingers and securing it behind her ears on both sides. After wiping off the red lipstick, she applied a flesh-tone gloss. Rummaging through her bag, she found her reading glasses and added them to her face. All in all, her appearance was much more understated and much less memorable. She'd certainly pass Lawson's critical eye now.
Even though he'd admonished her about the red dress, he'd had a hard time keeping his eyes off it, and that, Zara knew, gave her an advantage with her partner. He was going to be a challenge with his I'm in charge attitude, but he was a male. She knew how to use her feminine assets to gain the upper hand if necessary, and like any woman, knowing her physical attractiveness could make him do a double-take secretly pleased her.
The boarding call for her and Lawson's flight came over the speaker. Zara pulled her cell phone out of her bag and dialed quickly. Two minutes later, her call to Paris was complete, her plan in place. She would work with Lawson, stop Dmitri and prove to Flynn she was the best counterespionage spy he had, all in one operation. She was Zara Morgan, after all.
Smiling, she nodded at her image in the mirror. Let's dance.
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Chapter Five
They were in the air less than an hour when Zara fell asleep beside him, an abbreviated dossier of Dmitri on her PDA. Lawson turned off the device and stuck it in his pocket. The faint smell of jasmine drifted up from her soft, warm body, catapulting him back to the summer nights of his childhood and the perfect white flowers blooming under a full southern moon outside his bedroom window.
His memory was a funny thing these days. His childhood friend Tucker was smiling and laughing beside the creek instead of sitting in his bedroom in a daze after the water snake's poison had caused permanent brain damage. Lawson's younger brother David was making tents in the woods with their father's old tarps instead of leaving their ramshackle house in a suit and tie for a job in the big city.
Drawing another deep breath of the jasmine into his nostrils, he deliberately closed the door on Georgia and the past and instead watched Zara's eyes move under her eyelids.
She was a wild child inside the pretty, tidy-looking package. A soft target under the polished shell exterior. And even after all he'd done for her, she still didn't like him.
That was too damn bad. Now that he'd made up his mind, he had a job to do and no one was going to stop him. He'd known women like her before and he knew how to handle them. Knew what fed their egos and busted their superior attitudes into a thousand jagged pieces. He knew how to look through the suit and the heels and the perfectly coiffed hair, find the crack in the shell and capitalize on it if necessary. Zara's crack had been easy to locate and he'd already sprung it wide open. Pampered rich girl.
Ignoring his physical attraction to her wasn't easy, but she was Zara Morgan. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth and accustomed to a lifestyle he could only imagine. What he knew about her world could be held in the heel of one of her red shoes. Even if they hadn't been working an operation together, she was so far out of his league he shouldn't even be looking at her, much less thinking about her in and out of that damned red dress.
Lawson could scale an installation and bypass any type of security known to man to get inside it. He could play MacGyver and build a radio from gum wrappers and duct tape. He could map out an escape route for a downed Army crew behind enemy lines or go in and rescue the men himself. But he didn't know a salad fork from a dinner fork or what type of wine you drank with fish. Hell, he didn't even drink wine. He drank beer, Budweiser thank you very much, and he drank it straight from the bottle.
He wasn't rich, cultured or Harvard educated. He was Lawson Vaughn, a soldier just like his daddy and his daddy before him.
Ignoring the in-flight movie, he hauled out his laptop and stretched one leg into the aisle of first class. Flynn wasn't expecting a progress report for a few more hours, but Lawson had nothing better to do than watch Zara sleep. God, he hated paperwork but it was imperative he keep Flynn happy and out of his hair. He'd swamp the head of the spy group with reports if that's what it took.
Plucking at the tiny keyboard, he tried to find the right keys to make coherent words. His deft fingers could crack a safe, communicate in code, sew stitches in skin to close a wound and find the exact spot that drove a willing woman right over the edge, but type a memo? Jesus, he'd rather be shot at sunrise.
He p
aused in his pecking and grimaced in frustration, scanning the keyboard for the key he needed. He had to use phrasing Flynn would like. Bullshit words and sentences that made it sound like there was a plan and the plan was being followed and these outcomes were expected. Yada, yada, yada. The more details the better.
He did have a plan, of course, and it wouldn't take a genius to implement it. Outcomes were more difficult to pin down because of the nature of the job, but they weren't impossible to hypothesize since he had quite a bit of experience in tracking people. This was the first time, however, his partner was not only inexperienced in his line of fieldwork but also a woman. There was nothing wrong with a female partner if she had the right training and experience and could detach her emotions from the job at hand. Flynn insisted Zara had the training, but she didn't have the experience, and Lawson had witnessed how a few simple words, or lack of, could trigger her emotions.
So why did I take this job? Why am I determined to play with fire?
Even though Flynn had strongly requested Lawson accompany his intelligence operative on this mission, Lawson could have said no. The halls of Langley were filled with men like him. The FBI, the CIA, the NSA—all of them had people as qualified as he was for a mission of this caliber.
He glanced at his new partner sleeping beside him, her dark eyelashes lying against her smooth skin, her lip gloss faded. The truth, he knew, wasn't anything grand or noble or listed in his current job description. It wasn't even based on his natural male attraction to Zara.
The truth, he forced himself to admit, was the one thing Conrad Flynn warned him not to fall prey to. The little boy from Georgia was all grown up now, but he still wanted to play Superman. Still wanted to save the innocent, rescue those in danger and make the bad guys eat dirt.
Turning back to his laptop, Lawson rubbed his eyes and typed three sentences, full of bullshit details, yes siree. Flynn would love it. He typed another sentence and glanced again at his partner.
As soon as he had her in Paris, he'd tuck her away in some quaint little dive and give her this part of the job to do. He'd load her down with paperwork and a bunch of other useless, but safe, jobs. As long as she was safe, Flynn would stay happy. As long as she was busy, she wouldn't get in his way.
He had a terrorist to hunt down and he didn't need Zara Morgan's help to do it.
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Chapter Six
Charles De Gaulle Airport, Paris
Lawson stared at the black car and the uniformed chauffeur waiting for them beside the curb in total disbelief. “What the hell is this?"
Zara greeted the chauffeur in rapid-fire French, and he nodded regally as he took her bag out of her hand. “This is a Mercedes Benz, Lawson,” she said in that professional-suit voice she had. “I arranged transportation for us."
Gritting his teeth, he set his leather bag on the concrete and pulled Zara aside. “What did I tell you about this operation? Remember covert?"
She looked up into his eyes and smiled like a Cheshire cat. Like she enjoyed eating him one feather at a time. “Would you relax? I told you, I know what I'm doing."
This is another of her stupid tests. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the chauffeur reach for his bag. “Don't touch that."
Maneuvering around Zara, he grabbed it himself. The chauffeur raised one haughty brow before giving a pert nod and stepping off the curb to shut the trunk of the car. Lawson returned to face Zara, hanging the strap of his bag on his shoulder. “This is not low profile."
She cast a glance around at the other travelers loading their luggage into taxis and private vehicles before bringing her gaze back to him. “The only thing attracting attention is you."
As the driver extended one hand to her, she stepped toward the car. In one graceful motion, she slid into the backseat, her legs disappearing from view as she glided across to the other side. The chauffeur turned to Lawson and raised his eyebrow again. “Monsieur?” His gloved hand directed Lawson to the backseat.
Lawson hiked the strap of the bag higher on his shoulder. Men and women scurried past him, luggage, purses and children in tow, looking for shuttle buses or hailing taxis. No one appeared to be paying them any attention, and why should they? In Paris, as in most international communities, climbing into the back of classic Mercedes to be chauffeured around the city was as second nature as brushing one's teeth.
If the CIA had taught him anything, it was that there was always someone watching. His best move was to follow Zara's lead for the moment. Shifting his bag again and reining in his impatience, he nodded to the driver and dropped onto the gray leather seat next to her. He set the bag on his lap and blew out a controlled breath.
She flashed him a triumphant smile. “There, that wasn't so hard, was it? Albert will have at us at the hotel in about forty-five minutes."
If Zara had hired a car like this with its own driver just to take them across town, Lawson knew he wouldn't like the lodging she had arranged. “And which hotel would that be?"
Albert slid into the driver's seat and put the car in drive while catching Zara's eye in the rearview mirror. She nodded at him. “L'Hotel Ambassador."
A muscle twitched between Lawson's shoulders. This was definitely a test. “The Ambassador,” he repeated as the driver maneuvered the car into the busy airport traffic with ease. “You booked us into a four-star hotel?"
"Well, of course.” Her tone suggested he'd lost brain cells in the air. “Where did you expect me to stay when I'm in Paris?” She cast a quick glance at his face, turned to her window. “The George V is luxurious but it isn't the same since they remodeled it. Besides, you'll love the Ambassador. It's decorated in vintage 1920's art deco and their restaurant has the best espresso in the whole world."
Lawson tightened the grip he had on his bag and lowered his voice. “Did you register under your real name?"
Zara lowered her voice to match his. “We're registered at the Ambassador under Sara and Isaac Lerner, the brother and sister team Annette set up. We're in Paris looking to expand our American security business. I arranged separate suites joined by a door. Kitchenettes and king-size beds, but no whirlpool tubs.” She glanced at him again and held his gaze. “I wouldn't want you to get too comfortable and enjoy yourself."
He forced his attention away from her teasing baby blues to look out the tinted windows of the Mercedes. She was playing him big time. He would put a stop to it, but not in front of the driver.
Zara touched his hand where it gripped the bag, and he swung his attention back to her face. The eyes were wide again, the smile practiced. She knew she was causing him internal turmoil and she was enjoying it. “I've got everything under control."
That's what scared him.
* * * *
L'Hotel Ambassador du Paris
Sometimes it was nice to have money, Zara decided as she pulled the sheer shower curtain partially around the claw-footed tub and sank down into the hot water. She released her breath and sighed. The water was infused with avocado and lemon bath crystals, and she drew the brisk scent deep into her lungs hoping the refreshing smell would perk her up. The past fifteen hours had yielded little sleep and an overdose of adrenaline. She'd plunged herself back into the world of espionage, and the thrill screamed through her nerve endings like a roller-coaster ride.
As she leaned her head back against the bath pillow, she let her feet float. Her pink toenails bobbed above the water. She'd made it to Paris, gotten herself and Lawson checked in, deposited him in the suite next door and unpacked the few essentials she'd brought from her travel bag. Then, out of Flynn-ingrained, paranoia-induced habit, she'd double-checked the window locks and even looked under the bed. Lawson might not give her credit for being a good spook, but she was. He'd learn that soon enough.
Once her room check was complete, she'd washed out the microfiber pants and her panties in the sink. They were now hanging over the shower curtain above her head to dry.
Before the showdo
wn at the farmhouse, Paris had been like her second home. It had seduced her with its style, its art and its history. Even now, the city wove a spell around her with its clashing mix of vintage and modern, the smell of fresh pastries and musty museums, and the clichéd air of promised romance. The naysayers could be damned in Zara's book. Paris was still the most dramatic and seductive city in the world.
So even with her heart pounding at the thought of being so close again to Alexandrov Dmitri, she had moved from airplane to car to hotel as though she owned the world. With the grace her mother had instilled in her. With her chin up and an air of self-confidence that at moments was completely faked. As usual, it had worked like a charm. No one questioned her, doubted her or called her bluff.
Except Lawson. He'd kept his mouth shut during the drive to the hotel and the check-in, but his silence and clenched jaw spoke volumes. She might be a natural blonde but she wasn't stupid. Her partner was wound tight and he didn't like her tests one little bit.
Zara dialed up Tchaikovsky on her iPod and stuck the ear buds in her ears. She cupped her hands and pulled the warm water toward her chest. Back at Langley, she'd found out a few things about her rescuer through the Agency grapevine. Annette had told her stories about successful rescues and extractions attributed to his Pegasus team, but it was Lawson who got the most acclaim. According to Annette, he was a quiet, competent, loyal warrior who always got his man.
Or woman.
Watching a drop of water fall from the gold-plated faucet, Zara hummed along with the music in her ears. Once he let go of his pseudo-spy complex and realized they were safe, he'd be okay with everything. After all, what human being in his right mind would refuse a night at the Ambassador?
The rooms were stylishly decorated, comfortable and conveniently connected. She and Lawson could come and go from each other's rooms without anyone seeing them and it made sense Isaac and Sara Lerner, the owners of a successful security consulting business, would stay in an upscale hotel.
Yes, she was sure once Lawson had a chance to rest up, he would realize the Ambassador was the perfect place for them to stay while they figured out what Dmitri was up to. Along with that, she hoped he would also realize what an asset she was to the Agency. Not that she cared what Lawson thought, but the desire to prove to him she wasn't going to let Director Flynn down sat like a rock in her chest. She knew this world as well as any and could take care of the behind-the-scenes details like accommodations and transportation and help Lawson track down Dmitri.