by Dana Marton
Not a chance, he thought as he willed his gaze not to return to her legs. Not a complete victory as his attention was now captured by her full lips. Man, he was a fool. Women always smiled the sweetest when they were trying to screw you over the worst.
HE HADN’T PLANNED on tossing her office, but once she was gone, the idea that something was off wouldn’t leave him. He glanced through her files. Nothing jumped out. Nothing on her desk, either, or in her drawers. She was neat and orderly—that was about all the information he gained.
The space she created fit her. It even smelled like her—some exotic scent that included Caribbean fruit.
He plugged in his laptop and read through his e-mail, thought about asking Nick to scan through hers. Thinking of the devil, Nick Tarasov had forwarded some background info on Xiau Lin whom he still hadn’t located, although he had found some kind of a trail. Brant sent that file to the printer, but nothing happened. Out of paper. He grabbed a handful from the cardboard box under the desk and refilled the tray. As he did so, the printer moved a half an inch, revealing the corner of a dark blue folder.
Damn. He pulled it out, looked at the shiny new cover for a second or two without opening it. She wouldn’t have hid it unless she was doing something she didn’t want anyone to know about.
He wouldn’t have minded being wrong about Anita, but he wasn’t surprised. She had betrayed her family. And family should have been everything to her. It certainly was that to him. He couldn’t imagine any of his sisters doing something like she had.
He read through the papers inside, press releases about Pellegrino’s, about some of her family members who were now running the business: her two brothers, her younger sister, her brother-in-law. There were a couple of financial statements, too, and other stuff—calculations.
On what?
Then it hit him.
She was, at the moment, the managing director of a consulting firm that did money laundering on the sly. If she hadn’t before, now she sure knew all about that subject. Hell, the FBI had trained her on it.
Brant slapped the folder shut and swore.
She was working on accessing the four million dollars she had embezzled and hidden and was getting ready to wash it squeaky clean. She was manning her own operation, probably thinking of skipping the second she had everything in hand.
Not if he had anything to say about it.
Chapter Three
She was out of prison.
He rubbed the headache at his temple. She was out and at the worst possible time. And she had lied. Whatever she was doing, this was not some government program to help her to readjust to society after her years of incarceration.
Where had she gotten the car from, the apartment and the job? He had expected some halfway house where he could get to her easily, where there’d be a bunch of other ex-cons and weapons and drugs, so when her body was found, not much would be questioned.
Instead, here she was in the Caribbean, as high and mighty as she had ever been, with another company and employees and money. What game was she playing?
And who was her guy? They’d left the party together, drove to the ritzy part of the island and parked. Probably making out. He should have taken care of her then and there. Maybe both of them. But it had been dark and to top it off the car had tinted windows. He didn’t want to miss.
So he had waited until they were at the restaurant, all lit up, and he had missed anyway. And then they disappeared. He’d spent the rest of the night in front of her apartment, waiting for her to come home as anger and frustration boiled in his guts.
She wasn’t going to let the last four years go. She would investigate, had started already, the alarms he had set in place had been going off one after the other.
He had to get to her before she got to him. It was as simple as that.
SAM WAS SLAPPING STAMPS on a stack of envelopes at the front desk as Anita walked in the door, back from her business meeting that was likely to net them another contract, but was—thank God—uneventful otherwise. No sign of the shooter from the night before.
Gina, who had reassured her that as far as she could tell they hadn’t been watched or followed, passed her and went straight for the bathroom. They’d been circling the block for a parking place for nearly thirty minutes.
They needed to make contact with Cavanaugh. The weekly paper she had read in the car on the way back gave her an idea the other three women were likely to resist. Not that it would stop her from trying.
“The coffee vendor brought some flavored coffees and I made the Italian Delight. You’ve gotta try this,” Sam said as she worked. “We’re on our second pot.”
The way she angled her head had a familiar slant to it and déjà vu hit Anita with a pang of homesickness so sharp it cut her off at the knees. She stopped and stood there, let it wash over her. Diosmio, how many times had she walked into her old office like that and been offered coffee by her sister? And Sam looked a little like Maria, too, around the eyes.
Was Maria still the first from the family to arrive to the office each morning? Dee, Anita’s ex-secretary, had always come in late and left late, an arrangement she’d been happy to make for the single mother who needed the flextime to work around her babysitter’s schedule. Dee worked for her brother, Rob, now.
Anita wondered if Dee was in love with him yet. Dee had the habit of falling in love with the men around her. Unfortunately, they tended to use her then discard her. She couldn’t remember how many times this had happened since she’d known the young woman. But Dee dusted herself off each time then tried again. Some people accused her of being promiscuous for going after so many men. But Anita understood what was behind it all—a deep-seated, desperate need for love that she was always trying to find in all the wrong places.
Rob wouldn’t take advantage of that. He simply wasn’t that kind of guy. And Dee wasn’t Rob’s type, in any case.
Roberto, her oldest brother, handled safety at Pellegrino’s. Maria, the youngest of the four siblings, did human resources. Nigel, Maria’s husband, headed sales. Chris, the middle brother, just a year younger than Anita, worked IT. Anita had been responsible for the finance department. The rest of the directors were outsiders, hired for their skills, well paid and well appreciated, but the family definitely formed the driving force behind the business. They wanted to keep it like that for as long as possible.
On any given day, family members who were in the office would have coffee together in the morning, catching up before heading off to their individual departments. Pellegrino’s was a beehive compared to Savall, the difference between an established company and a struggling new one.
Pellegrino’s had more than two dozen employees in the office alone, in addition to the hundred or so construction workers and specialists they employed. They worked on several projects at a time, mostly residential. The hours were murder, but she wouldn’t have traded her job for anything. Although, William, the last man she’d been semi-seriously seeing, had tried to talk her into quitting often enough. He’d been jealous of the time she’d spent at work. He never understood her—one of the reasons why they had broken up eventually. Still, the relationship hadn’t been a complete wash. Her sister, Maria, met William’s brother, Nigel, and the two were blissfully married to this day.
Nigel didn’t resent the company like William had, instead, he became part of it. He understood that Pellegrino’s meant family to them, especially to Anita.
She had built the company from her father’s floundering contracting business. It had pulled them together, helped them economically and would benefit generations to come. Then someone had taken it away from her. The controversy that followed the conviction had just about broken her family apart.
The memories tightened her throat.
“You okay?” Sam was looking at her with concern.
“Yeah. Just thought of something.” She broke out of the spell and moved forward. She had work to do if she wanted to get her family back.
“The coffee vendor brought all different creamers, too, and a new order sheet. We’re supposed to pick what we want by Friday and fax it to him,” Sam said.
She had changed a lot since they had been on the island. The imprint the streets and prison had left on her had begun to wear off. The resentful, sneering wildness had softened to a point where she could say things like “coffee is ready” without a snarky remark about whatever it was she chose to despise that day. She was changing her hair, too, letting the short black spikes grow out to a simple, straight do. Her original color, Irish red, put a smile on Anita’s face every time she looked at it. One more cut and Sam would be a bona fide redhead.
She pushed the past from her mind and thought of that, of Sam changing and Carly and Gina softening toward the team, how they were now bordering on friendship, a shaky substitute for family, but the only thing they had and it hadn’t been that bad lately. The progress they had made filled her with optimism and put the spring back into her step as she headed for her office.
The sight of Brant Law still sitting there with his back to the door was enough to make her good mood evaporate. In the blue jeans and black polo shirt he had switched to this morning from last night’s suit, he looked like a Ralph Lauren commercial.
“Hi.” She stopped on the threshold. She’d been hoping he would be gone by the time she got back.
He turned around slowly.
Air caught in her lungs as her gaze dropped to the blue folder on his lap.
“Why don’t you close the door, Anita?”
She took a deep breath and stepped inside, did as he asked. “I can explain.”
“I’m sure you can.” He tossed the folder onto the desk and flipped it open. “Trying to get to some pocket money?”
She had not said the words since her trial and fat good it had done for her there, but it sprung to her tongue now, pushed by some unreasonable hope that this time someone would believe her. “I’m innocent.”
Shouldn’t have said that, she thought immediately after. As much as she wanted to believe in it, truth didn’t always triumph at the end. Why would he have faith in her when even some of her own family hadn’t? Their turning against her cut deep, the wound still raw and open after four long years. “I’m innocent,” she said again, and choked on the word that seemed to make Brant angry.
“I’m not the man to play that game with,” he said, his voice clipped and cold. “You’ve done your time. I don’t care what you do with that money when this mission is over. But while you are on this team, I expect one-hundred percent of your attention. Was there any confusion about that?”
If the door wasn’t closed behind her she would have stepped back from the burning contempt in his gaze, but she was forced to stand her ground. “I didn’t take the money. Someone had to have my ID and password. I’m just trying to figure out who it was. I didn’t do anything.”
“That was for the judge and jury to decide. And they decided,” he said. “I’ve seen your file.”
Did he mean her criminal file or the blue folder open on her desk? She didn’t have a chance to ask.
“If this is not about figuring out a way to get to your stash…Why bother with trying to prove your innocence now?” he went on, his voice betraying that he didn’t believe a word she had said. “Your sentence is up, you’re free anyway.”
She opened her mouth then clamped it shut again. She was not going to bring her family into this, not for a stranger. She was not going to drag out all their hurt and shame, would not betray to him the pain that still lived inside her and tortured her at night. To hell with what he thought. He probably wouldn’t understand that even more than freedom, clearing her name mattered.
He was waiting on her with a raised eyebrow.
“I have nothing more to say to you.”
“You were brought here to work a mission. That’s what you agreed to.” Not that I expect someone like you to keep your word, the look in his eyes said.
“I am working on the mission. We all are. We are risking our lives for it.” Frustration strengthened her tone. “What do you know about any of us?”
He held her gaze. “More than you think.”
Who did he think he was to stand in judgment over her? She felt her temper rise and welcomed it. She drew herself to a full height that wasn’t all that impressive, but with him sitting, would do. “I have some work to do so this mission can move forward. Get out of my office.” Then she added, “You want the truth? Here it is: I was wrongly convicted. I gave you the truth. Now deal with it.”
He drew up a dark eyebrow and watched her without a word as he picked up her folder and his laptop. Then, slowly, he stood and walked to her until they were separated by only a few inches. “I’ll be working out of my hotel room,” he said in a low voice. “A word of warning, Anita. Whatever Nick let the four of you get away with, it’s over. I’ll be watching.”
Then he sauntered away, leaving her staring after him, running through his words in her head. She was surprised he hadn’t tacked, “there’s a new sheriff in town” to the end.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE I’m wearing a bikini,” Sam mumbled as the four women lay side by side on Seven Mile Beach.
“I can’t believe I’m entering a beauty contest.” Gina’s voice brimmed with disgust. “Thank God nobody I ever knew could possibly turn up here.”
“How do you know?” Carly asked idly.
“Cop salaries don’t run to Caribbean vacations.”
“I should take pictures. Some blackmail money could come in handy later,” Sam mused.
She related differently to Gina than any of the others did. Carly had been intimidated by the ex-cop turned murderer, although she’d worked through that for the most part at this point. Anita had a hard time finding a connection with the woman. Sam, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice Gina’s hard shell, which covered a full package of “dangerous.” Could be Sam had spent enough time on the street to be immune.
“Keep in mind, kid,” Gina was telling her now, “that I learned from the best how to make sure not to leave witnesses.” But while her face was dead serious, she kept her tone light.
Joking.
That didn’t happen often. But they had all changed in the last two months or so, let some defenses down, lightened up and some had even opened up. Carly had positively blossomed.
Had she changed with them? Anita thought. She couldn’t see it. Maybe it was something a person could only notice about others.
Carly sat up and looked at the other contestants who were preening and slathering on makeup and hair products. One of them was sharing a small tube of hemorrhoid cream with her friend. According to the redhead, it reduced under-eye puffiness. Another was having a fit because a few strands in her bangs weren’t falling at the exact angle she was trying to produce.
“I can feel brain cells dying just listening to this,” Carly said with disgust and lay back down. “Participating might leave us with permanent damage.”
“You said it.” Gina turned her head as if it were too painful to watch.
Anita bit back a grin.
“What?” Sam was watching her.
“It’s not that bad,” she said.
“For you,” Sam said, then pointed at Carly. “She’s a nerd at heart. In the best possible meaning of the word,” she added. “Gina and I are tomboys.”
“What is this, kindergarten?” Gina drew up an eyebrow. “I think what you meant to say is that we kick ass.”
“Right.” Sam grinned. “Anyway, face it, Anita, you’re the only girlie girl on the team.”
“I’m not a girlie girl.”
“You wear high heels when you don’t have to.” Carly seemed to agree.
“So what? I like heels and skirts and makeup. I like being a woman.”
“So do we. We just don’t like beauty pageants. Personally, I’m still not convinced I couldn’t do more good to the mission back at my office with my laptop.”
“Why am I not surprised, Carly?” Anita rolled her eyes. “You probably think the solutions to all the world’s problems are buried someplace inside a computer.”
“Well, duh.” Carly nodded with a full dose of self-satisfaction as if she were a teacher who’d just led a not-particularly-bright student to the right conclusion. “Now you’re getting somewhere.”
Anita gave up. “There are worse things we could be doing than hanging out on a gorgeous beach. Just have fun and go with it.”
The Beach Beauty Pageant, advertised in Cayman Weekly Entertainment Guide, was open to anyone over eighteen who showed up at the announced location at the announced time and was willing to parade in a bikini on the hot sand.
Cavanaugh was one of the judges. He was everywhere, one of the most visible men in the island’s business community. Would he do that if he had something to hide? Tsernyakov was so covert and mysterious. Would he do business with someone who was so out there? Everyone seemed to know Cavanaugh. Did that mean that he had nothing to conceal or that he was trying to hide in plain sight?
“I feel naked.” Sam was lying on her stomach and looked stiff and uncomfortable.
Probably never owned a bikini before. Sam wouldn’t talk about her life on the streets, but Anita could guess it hadn’t been a bed of roses. “You look beautiful,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll wow the judges.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m sure they’re into bicolored hair, tattoos and pasty white skin.”
The trouble wasn’t white skin—they had all spent quality time with little plastic bottles the day before to get as fabulous a fake tan as possible. The trouble was with Sam’s idea of self-worth, which was way off as a result of her past.
Nothing could change that in the next five minutes, although Anita was determined to try to help if she could in the long run. Right now, however, they needed a quick fix.