Mallory had to admit this OMEGA gang was nothing if not thorough. The file she thumbed through contained everything from her taste in music to her preference for cookie dough and chocolate chip ice cream, as extracted from records of her credit card purchases. She was still poring through the file when they drove into an underground parking garage.
Fifteen minutes later, Cutter and his partner whisked her onto an elevator that appeared out of nowhere. After a short, swift ride, it opened in an elegant anteroom. The woman who rose and came around her desk to greet them had coal-black hair, blue eyes and a smile that lit up the room.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Dawes. I’m Gillian Ridgeway, filling in as executive assistant to the Special Envoy. He’s expecting you. Before I buzz you in, I have to know…”
Her eager gaze dropped to Mallory’s feet.
“Are those the Yvette d’Marchand’s? The ones you used to deck the Russian?”
“They are.”
Hiking up her jeans, Mallory displayed the lethal weapons. The aquamarine crystals caught the slanting sunbeam and threw it back in a zillion points of light.
“Oooh! I want a pair of those.”
“There was a catalog in the box. They come in every color. You should get sapphire, to match your eyes.”
Mike Callahan made an inarticulate sound that could have been a grunt or a mere clearing of his throat. Whatever it was, the small noise recalled the woman to her duties.
“I’ll tell Uncle Nick you’re here. Mac is with him, by the way.”
Escorted by Cutter and Mike, Mallory entered a sunlit office redolent with the scent of polished mahogany and well-soaped leather. When the President’s Special Envoy came from behind his desk, she felt her brows soar. Cutter had warned her to expect smooth and sophisticated. He’d left out the drop-dead gorgeous part.
Nick Jensen was as tall as his two operatives, but the similarities stopped there. Cutter and Mike were both dark-haired and more rugged than handsome. With his tanned skin, blue eyes and tawny hair, Jensen looked like an older and more polished Brad Pitt.
“Sorry we put you through the wringer in Normandy,” he said with a smile Mallory suspected had raised goose bumps on more females than he could count. “I hope you understand the necessity.”
“I do now. If you’d asked me a few days ago, I might not be so ready to forgive or forget.”
“The situation got a little rougher than expected.”
“It always does.”
That came from a long-legged brunette in a severely tailored gray pantsuit with a gigantic pink peony pinned to the lapel. Pushing off her perch on the conference table, she came forward. Lightning made the introductions.
“This is my wife, Mackenzie Blair-Jensen. She was working some communications issues upstairs when Hawk—Mike—called to say you were en route, and she decided to hang around.”
The vivacious brunette took Mallory’s hand in a firm, no-nonsense grip. “I had to meet the woman who took down an international thug with a thousand-dollar pair of shoes. Way to go, Ms. Dawes.”
Her glance, too, zinged south.
“Is that them?”
“It is.”
An obliging Mallory once again showed off her trophies. The sparkling platforms infected the other woman with instant greed.
“Guess what I want for Christmas, husband of mine.”
“Duly noted. Now if you ladies don’t mind, we should talk business instead of shoes.”
The mood in the sunny office immediately sobered. Suggesting everyone take a seat at the mahogany conference table, Nick Jensen laid out his plan of attack.
“I’ve set up an appointment with Congressman Kent a little more than an hour from now. Cutter and Mike will accompany me. Kent thinks I want to discuss the President’s new counter-terrorism initiative. He isn’t expecting me to show up with you two. Or with the House of Representatives Master at Arms, two detectives and a U.S. district attorney.”
That should get Kent’s attention, Mallory thought with unrestrained glee.
“We’ll show him the airport surveillance tapes,” Jensen continued, “and ask if he recognizes the woman accompanying Ms. Dawes. Only then will we produce sworn statements by Irina Petrov.”
Jensen’s glance swept the table.
“That’s when we ask him what he knows about the disk containing the stolen data pulled off a computer in his office.”
Mallory saw only one problem with the proposed plan and voiced it in no uncertain terms. “I want to be present when you do.”
“We’ve discussed that,” Cutter said evenly.
They had, she acknowledged with a curt nod. In Paris and on the long flight home. His argument that Mallory’s presence would alert the reporters who prowled the halls of Congress held weight. Just not enough to convince her to sit on her hands while they confronted the man who’d made her life a living hell.
“I’ll wear a disguise if necessary, but I want to see Kent’s face when you tell him about the video tapes.”
“Mallory…”
“I’m with Ms. Dawes.” The support came from Mackenzie Blair-Jensen. “She’s earned the right to be in at the kill. Plus she’ll add to the shock value when Kent sees her.”
Lightning drummed his fingers on the conference table and deferred to his field agent. “It’s your call, Slash.”
“No,” Mallory countered swiftly, “it isn’t. I didn’t ask to be part of this operation, but now that I am, I want to see it through to the end. Correction, I intend to see it through to the end.”
The men exchanged glances. Even Mackenzie looked surprised. Mallory suspected few people stood up to Lightning, but she refused to cave. Jaw set, she folded her arms and matched Cutter glower for glower.
“Okay,” he conceded. “You’re in. On one condition. We still don’t know how that disk got in your suitcase. We’re guessing Kent used an agent. We’re also guessing that was his chief of staff, Dillon Porter. We don’t think either of them will try to resist or turn violent when confronted, but we can’t rule out the possibility. You take your cues from me. If the situation looks like it might deteriorate, you do what I say, when I say. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
A look of amusement crept into Jensen’s eyes as they shifted to his wife. “She sounds a lot like someone else I know.”
“I can’t imagine who.” With a flip of her hair, Mackenzie shoved away from the table. “Come with me, Ms. Dawes. I’ll take you upstairs while the boys work out the final details. Give our wizards in Field Dress fifteen minutes and your own mother won’t recognize you.”
The vivacious brunette whisked Mallory out of the office. The door had barely shut behind them, however, before she pounced.
“Okay, the shoes are fantastic, but I want the real story on that ring.”
“So do I.” Abandoning her desk, the dark-haired executive assistant joined Mackenzie to ogle the diamonds and white gold.
“We saw the news conference,” she confided. “We couldn’t wait to meet the woman who brought Slash to his knees.”
“Cutter was just performing for the cameras.”
Mackenzie gave a snort. Gillian sniggered.
“Do you know how Slash got those scars?” the older woman asked.
“He said it was an explosion.”
“Did he say who ignited it?”
“No.”
“Make him tell you sometime. Until then, take my word for it. Cutter Smith wouldn’t put a ring on any woman’s finger unless he meant for it to stay there.”
After that startling disclosure, the confrontation in Ashton Kent’s office proved something of an anticlimax.
Mallory’s auburn wig and subtly altered features got her past the palace guard without so much as a flicker of recognition. Even Dillon Porter gaped when Nick Jensen identified her along with the two detectives and U.S. district attorney. Congressman Kent blustered, protesting her presence, until Jensen cut him off at the knees.
After that, matters moved at warp speed. Mike Callahan and one of the detectives led a protesting Porter into another room. The second detective advised Congressman Kent of his rights. Each thinking the other had ratted on him, Kent and Porter soon admitted to a conspiracy to cover up the congressman’s illicit affairs and use Mallory as a mule to deliver the blackmail payoff. Less than an hour after entering her old office, Mallory watched as her former boss was handcuffed and led out.
Someone had alerted the media. They’d assembled in droves and forced Kent to run a brutal gauntlet. Still in disguise, Mallory stood off to the side. She experienced none of the euphoria she’d expected at seeing the once-mighty legislator brought low.
“You okay?”
Sighing, she turned to Cutter. “I thought this would make up for some of the humiliation and hurt.”
“Didn’t it?”
“No. It just made me feel…sad.”
They stood side by side until the circus trailed down the steps of the Capitol.
“I was thinking…”
Cutter hesitated, sounding unsure of himself for the first time that Mallory could remember.
“You were thinking…?” she prompted.
“I got back from Central America and hopped on a plane right for France. Barely had time to shave between flights.”
He scraped a hand over his jaw, as if feeling for the whiskers he’d grown in the jungle.
“The thing is, I’ve racked up more vacation time than I know what to do with. I thought maybe you might want to go back to France, finish that trip you planned in such meticulous detail.”
“When?” she asked, her heart starting to pound.
“I’m ready whenever you are.”
They’d crawled off a plane less than four hours ago. Mallory hadn’t slept in longer than she could recall. She knew darn well her skin sagged like an old sponge under the makeup OMEGA’s Field Dress Unit had so skillfully applied. Yet joy sang through her as she framed Cutter’s bristly cheeks between her palms.
“Let’s go now. Right this minute.”
Epilogue
Mallory stood at the window of the small pension. Moonlight washed over her. A cold, damp breeze blew in through the open panes. Hugging her arms for warmth, she filled her lungs with the sharp sea air.
Instead of following the itinerary Mallory had planned originally in such meticulous detail, she and Cutter had holed up in this tiny hotel carved out of the ancient walls. The pension wasn’t as grand as Yvette d’Marchand’s château or anywhere near as modern. Cutter had lugged their hastily packed bags up three flights of stairs, grumbling with every step over the lack of modern conveniences like elevators and man-sized showers. His good-natured complaints had died when he’d taken in the view from their balcony window, however.
Mallory drank it in now, her spirits soaring. Floodlights illuminated the tall spire topped by the gilded statue of St. Michael slaying his dragon. Below and beyond, the moon-washed waters of the Gulf of St. Malo stretched as far as she could see.
“The tide’s in,” Cutter commented.
“So it is.”
Padding across the bedroom on bare feet, he slid his arms around her waist. Her head drifted back against his shoulder.
They and the other inhabitants of St. Michel were completely cut off from the rest of the world. Just the way they wanted it.
“Wonder if any cars or buses washed away?” she mused.
“Probably.” A chuckle rumbled up from his chest. “With any luck, ours was one of them.”
Then he bent to nuzzle her neck and Mallory forgot the tide, forgot the view, forgot everything but the sizzle he ignited just under her skin. Alternating kisses with stinging little nips, he fanned the sparks to a five-alarm blaze.
“Have I mentioned that I love you?” he muttered between bites.
“Not in the last hour or so.”
“I do, you know.”
“I know. Same goes.” Twisting around in his arms, she kissed the underside of his chin. The tough, puckered skin tugged at her heart. “Mackenzie said I should ask you who ignited the explosion that caused these. I got the impression it was a woman.”
“It was.” His palms cupped her face. “She’s history, sweetheart, and not worth wasting this moonlight on.”
He was right. The present was too full, and the future held no room for shadows from the past. Taking his hand in hers, Mallory led him back to bed.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0713-8
STRANDED WITH A SPY
Copyright © 2007 by Merline Lovelace
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Visit Silhouette Books at www.eHarlequin.com
Stranded with a Spy Page 16