Athena Force 7-12

by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees

  Just for a moment she thought her bluff was going to work. He’d lost ground with his bughouse remark—for someone like Asher who kept such a tight rein on everything and everyone under his command, being tripped up by his own tongue was galling, and being put on the defensive by her must have been even more so. Perfectly executed feint and attack on my part, she told herself with an inner smile. Anytime you feel like losing another mini Battle of New Orleans with this here American, Captain, go right ahead and bring it on.

  She took two steps past him, heard whining behind her, and knew her perfectly executed plan had just been shot to hell.

  “What did you do to them?” His hand clamped around her upper arm. She felt her biceps tighten in reflex and quickly relaxed it, hoping he hadn’t had time to wonder why a lab tech had muscles like iron. But Asher was preoccupied. “The dogs—what’s the matter with them?”

  Reluctantly she turned to face the animals. They’d found the courage to slink out from behind the boulder and were huddled at Ash’s feet, their gleaming bodies trembling so badly they looked like two cans of midnight-black high-gloss being violently shaken in a paint-mixing machine. Twin pairs of canine eyes met hers. Slasher—or maybe Ripper—attempted a growl. It ended in a strangled whimper. The second Doberman just bared his teeth, lifted his muzzle and howled.

  “If I find you poisoned them with something smuggled out of the lab, Swanson, I’ll have you in lockup so fast you won’t know what hit you,” Asher grated. “And this time neither Keifer nor my gullible uncle will be able to save you. What did you give those dogs?”

  Rule number two in bluffing, Dawn thought wearily, was knowing when rule number one wasn’t working anymore. On the few occasions in the past when she’d reached an impasse like the one she currently found herself in, she’d had no compunction about resorting to a physical solution. Not that I have any compunctions this time either, she told herself. But going mano a mano with Slasher and Ripper’s master is out of the question, unless I want to kiss off any chance of getting Sir William’s research back to Lab 33.

  She would simply have to Dawn Swanson her way out of the situation yet again, she thought without enthusiasm. God, she was getting tired of this particular alter ego.

  So go ahead and dump the Swanson chick, O’Shaughnessy. As soon as the reckless little voice inside her head offered the suggestion, it seemed overwhelmingly attractive. Not that she could abandon her cover persona, Dawn thought glumly. Going undercover meant staying undercover, not popping in and out of character on a whim. That’s the beauty part, though—it’s not a whim, it’s a double bluff! the little voice argued. And there’s no freakin’ rule against double bluffs, is there?

  Maybe there was in Aldrich Peters’s book, but not in hers, she thought slowly. A spark of excitement flared in her. She was going to do it, dammit!

  “I didn’t give the mutts anything,” she retorted with a shrug. “I’m just the dog bogeyman, for some reason. If you don’t believe me, watch this.”

  She lunged at the Dobermans. In panic they backed into the boulder, and at that point they forgot the last shreds of their training. She turned to Asher as his canine line of defense ran off yipping into the darkness.

  “They sense something wrong about me,” she said offhandedly. “Dogs and SAS officers are supposed to be smart that way, right?”

  He was staring after the Dobermans in disbelief, but at her question he turned back to her, his eyes narrowing. “Are you admitting that both the bloody dogs’ instincts and mine are correct, Swanson?”

  She scooped her hair back from her face with her hands, continuing the movement to lace her fingers behind her head. “Why not,” she said carelessly, her voice losing the pedantic tone she’d been assuming. She rolled her shoulders to relieve the strain. “You guessed my big secret, Ash. I’m not Dawn Swanson, lab nerd—I’m the original femme fatale. Last I heard, I was rated one of the top three international assassins in the world, but I figure I got rooked. As far as I’m concerned, I’m in the top two.” She drew her eyebrows together thoughtfully. “Except since the guy above me died last fall, I guess that leaves yours truly as number one with a gun.”

  His gaze was still on her. She returned his stare coolly, taking in the way the short spikes of his burnt-silver hair contrasted with the mahogany of his tan, and how the beach-glass aqua of his eyes couldn’t be completely concealed even behind the denseness of his half-closed lashes. He wasn’t in the same league as Lover Boy, she thought assessingly—one look at Des Asher and a woman’s thoughts didn’t veer immediately toward a vision of rumpled sheets and deliciously wasted afternoons. One look at him was enough to make any sane woman keep her guard up rather than let it down.

  Even as the thought flitted through her mind, her guard fell completely away.

  A few minutes ago she’d heard him laugh at something Keifer had said. His laugh had been surprisingly attractive; low with amusement and somehow giving the impression that it was a fleeting glimpse of the real man. So yeah, his laugh could be called sexy, Dawn thought dazedly. But his smile…

  His teeth gleamed briefly white in the shadows. A corner of his usually grim mouth lifted. His aqua eyes were still half-hidden, but now instead of glinting coldly at her they seemed to draw her in.

  She still didn’t think of wasted afternoons when she looked at him, she told herself unsteadily. Her thoughts were running more along the lines of hustling the man into her bed this very night.

  Bad mistake, O’Shaughnessy. Real bad mistake.

  She snapped back to sanity as he spoke. “Number one with a gun, Swanson? You sure you’re not just trying to impress the hell out of this poor Brit?” The laughter in his voice was reluctant, but it was still there as he continued. “Because I am impressed, love. See, I figured you for a small-time operator hired by someone a little higher up on the criminal food chain to infiltrate this place and report back on its security measures and procedures. I’ll admit I was pretty shaken by your moves when you and I got it on a couple of nights ago at the front gate, but I had no idea I was dealing with the female equivalent of the Jackal.”

  Her instincts had been right, she thought in amazement…reckless but right. The truth was so fantastic that Asher found it easier to believe she was spinning him a story, and he’d been amused enough by what he saw as her outrageousness to play along. You could keep this up indefinitely, O’Shaughnessy, the daredevil voice inside her urged. Come on, isn’t it a whole lot more interesting playing ‘catch me if you can’ with the man rather than being stuck acting out the Swanson role?

  It was more interesting. It was more interesting because it was more dangerous, she told her inner daredevil repressively, fixing a scowl on her face and opening her mouth to revert to a Swanson-style put-down.

  So it’s more dangerous. Where’s the downside to that?

  Dawn closed her mouth without delivering the put-down. Slowly she widened her eyes at Asher. She let the corners of her lips curve into a smile, and when she spoke there was absolutely nothing of Dawn Swanson in her purr.

  “What happened between us at the gate, Ash?” She let the faintest trace of disappointment color her tone. “Maybe that counts as getting it on where you come from, but to a red-blooded American girl like me it barely rates as a warm-up to foreplay. Not that I’m trying to scare you or anything,” she added, examining her nails with assumed casualness.

  This time his startled laugh wasn’t reluctant at all. Looking up from her nails, Dawn saw a slash of humor crease a tanned cheek as he replied to her veiled dare. “Don’t forget I’m SAS, Swanson. We don’t scare easily,” he informed her. “Know what our motto is?”

  “Who Dares, Wins,” she replied without hesitation. “Us international assassins know everything there is to know about our opponents. And since we’re on the topic of what we know about each other, have you had any luck in getting that information on me you contacted Interpol and Washington about?”

  He didn’t answer her immed
iately. The crease of humor in his cheek disappeared, although a ghost of a smile still played around the corners of his mouth. Without appearing to have shifted his stance in any way, there was an instant stillness in every muscle of his body, as if he had sensed a slight movement of the earth beneath his feet.

  Or as if he realized that although they were still playing a game, the rules had suddenly changed, Dawn thought, watching him intently. They have, she told him silently. By asking about your inquiries into my background, I just confirmed there’s something I don’t want you to find out about me. Your response will tell me whether you’re going to end this now and act on that confirmation…or play the game a little longer to see if you can get anything more from me. The next move is all yours, big guy, so are you going to fold and walk away, or are you still in?

  Mr. SAS was going to fold, she decided with an obscure feeling of let-down. The moment she’d asked about his inquiries to the authorities he’d gone on full alert…and with a man like Des Asher, full alert didn’t include playing games. Which was too bad, because matching wits with him during her time here might have been fun. She’d have won, naturally, but with his SAS training in strategy and maneuvers he would have been a worthy opponent.

  She stifled a yawn, trying to work up enough interest to plan some sort of Dawn Swanson explanation for her behavior. A bad reaction to some headache medication? Delayed shock and fear from being set upon by Slasher and Ripper? she wondered without enthusiasm.

  “Funny you should ask.” Asher’s voice broke into her thoughts. She looked at him swiftly, but the same half smile ghosted around his lips as it had a moment ago and the same wary watchfulness was in his eyes. He continued, his tone giving nothing away. “Until this evening I hadn’t gotten a single damn thing back from either Washington or Interpol in response to my inquiries about you. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. At first I figured I’d made a mistake about you.”

  “Weird.” Dawn arched her eyebrows in astonishment and was sure she saw a flicker of humor momentarily overlay his wariness. “Because I’m beginning to think I made a mistake about you. Maybe we both shouldn’t have been so quick to jump to conclusions.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have,” Asher replied. “But as much as I’d like to shelve all my unworthy suspicions of you, something tells me I’d end up regretting it for a long time. No, I’ve pulled some less-than-smart moves in my career, but trusting you won’t be one of them. Whoever prepared your cover story slipped up, Swanson.” He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Not that Swanson’s your real name, but I might as well keep calling you by it for now.”

  He was trying a bluff of his own, Dawn thought with an inward smile. For an opening move in this preliminary skirmish, it wasn’t bad, either, but she doubted whether he expected her to fall for it. He was simply trying to get her off balance, plant a momentary worry in her mind that Carter might have overlooked a detail when he’d created Dawn Swanson.

  But for all Carter’s faults, overlooking details wasn’t one of them, so she wasn’t worried. It wouldn’t hurt to let Asher think she was, though.

  “What do you mean, they slipped up?” She frowned quickly and then just as quickly smoothed her brow, as if she hadn’t meant to let him see her consternation. The shaky little laugh that followed her alarmed question was the perfect touch, she thought as she fixed an uneasy eye on her opponent. “An international assassin like myself wouldn’t have anything less than the best backup team available. My people don’t slip up, Ash.” She paused long enough to nervously bite her lip. “But just for interest’s sake, what do you think they did wrong?”

  Even before she finished speaking, he was shaking his head. “You disappoint me, love. I’m in this game for the same reason you are—because until you drove up in that wreck of a hatchback a couple of days ago and tried to slice me open with a car antenna, I was going out of my mind with boredom. I’m used to operating behind enemy lines, taking on assignments that never get written up in the official reports, making HALO drops over occupied territory. This particular posting doesn’t exactly compare—”

  She couldn’t help interrupting. “HALO?”

  He shrugged. “An SAS term. High Altitude Low Opening parachute jumps. Essentially, dropping like a bloody rock right up until the last possible second, which is the quickest and dirtiest way to get from a plane five thousand feet up to the ground where the fighting is. But what I’m trying to say is that for a minute there I thought you were going to make things interesting. Then you started overacting like crazy, Swanson—biting your lip, opening those big green eyes as wide as you could. Hell, I haven’t seen a performance like that since I was a five-year-old kiddie being taken to a Sunday afternoon pantomime by my dear old nannie.”

  Sheer outrage robbed her of speech. Overacting? Dammit, had she been overacting when she’d infiltrated a certain Middle Eastern potentate’s palace dressed as a dancing girl and taken out the sheikh’s murderously corrupt son before he could sign a deal that would destroy the balance of power in that part of the world? Had she been overacting when she’d posed as a nun in the godforsaken jungles of a tiny but violent South American country, had allowed herself to be kidnapped by the group of terrorist thugs that had been slaughtering foreign civilians, and had then coldly dispatched the whole band of killers, one by one, during the night? Had overacting gotten her the position as secretary to a Swiss money launderer, enabled her to get close to the Russian Mafia hit man who’d been jeopardizing one of Aldrich Peters’s more lucrative operations, put her in place to carry out the half-dozen or more other assignments that had required her to play a part?

  I don’t think so, Dawn seethed. And those jobs needed way more finesse than putting one over on Mr. SAS. He’s just trying to piss me off by—

  By telling her the truth. Her outrage faded away, to be replaced by uncomfortable self-honesty. The man was right, damn him. She hadn’t given it her best shot. Her performance a moment ago had been amateurishly halfhearted because she’d assumed she wouldn’t have to work at conning him. She’d violated one of Lee Craig’s cast-iron rules.

  Act like every assignment is your first, or else it could turn out to be your last, Dawnie. Never let yourself forget that laziness and arrogance can kill someone in our profession faster than a bullet.

  Des Asher had said she’d disappointed him, Dawn thought wryly. He might be taken aback to learn that an assassin who had gone under the code name of Cipher would have said the same thing if he’d been alive to witness his former protégé’s most recent efforts.

  She pushed all thought of Craig aside and concentrated on the frowning man standing in front of her. “Three things I want to get straight—firstly, I’m not real sure what a pantomime is, but I have the feeling I’ve just been insulted.” She exhaled tightly. “Secondly, I probably deserve it. I thought I could get away with treating this as a game. But with you as my opponent, I should be treating it as a war game, right?”

  “Going up against me won’t be the walk in the park you seem to think it’ll be,” Asher agreed with a tight smile. “Even though I don’t buy your international-assassin story, I’m willing to accept you’ve taken on the best, and won. But I’d lay good money you’ve never taken on the SAS and beaten us. Don’t count on this being the first time, Swanson.”

  “I’d lay good money you’ve come out on top in most of the confrontations you’ve been in, too,” she told him, her smile equally tight. “Ain’t gonna happen that way with me, buddy. So we’re on the same page here—bluff, counterbluff, no holds barred and may the best woman win?”

  “Bring it on, love.” Asher’s tone was strained.

  “You bet, sweetie.” Hers was just as edgy.

  For a long moment gold-green eyes locked with aqua, the tension between them so thick Dawn had the impression that if she’d had a blade in her hand, she could have sliced through it. This was what she’d needed, she thought, feeling her senses sharpen and the blood quicken in her veins. Try as she might, she co
uldn’t completely eradicate her Lab 33 history and the training she’d received from Lee Craig, but in the months since she’d met the Cassandras and learned the truth about herself, the outlets that had in the past served as releases for her restless energy and instincts had been closed to her.

  I guess you could say I’ve been itching for some real action, she told herself. Something tells me I’ve just found it.

  “What was the third thing?” Asher’s question pulled her abruptly from her thoughts. She blinked at him.

  “The third thing?”

  “You said there were three things we had to get straight between us. I almost forgot to ask you what the third one was.”

  Her blankness disappeared, and with it went some of the rigid tension that had been gripping her. War games were still games, Dawn told herself as she let a slow smile curve her lips. Playing with Des Asher was going to be fun.

  “The third thing was you admitting you’d had a nannie, Ash.” She slanted a dubious look at him. “If I were you, I wouldn’t make that public knowledge. Not unless you’re totally secure in your masculinity, that is.”

  “Oh, but I am.” Earlier in their conversation she’d injected a purring note into her voice and now he did the same; although with its undertone of roughness, Asher’s purr reminded Dawn of velvet over concrete. If I was a girly girl, I might even feel the tiniest hint of a shiver running down my spine at Mr. SAS’s bedroom voice, she decided. In fact, girly girl or not, I believe that’s exactly what I’m feeling right now.

  “But you understand that kind of security, don’t you, love.” His glance swept briefly over her, from her sneaker-shod feet past the baggy sweatpants and top to the mud-brown of her hair. “Only someone with supreme self-confidence would have no problem with posing as a dweeb, as Jeff Keifer calls you. That god-awful shade of brown comes out of a bottle, right? My guess is you’re a natural blonde.”