Medusa’s Master

by Cindy Dees

  Jeff rolled over, drawing her on top of him. He grinned up at her. “You’re right. Three days is too soon. I’ll give it a full week. After all, I’m patient. But even you understand that this is a done deal between us. Right?”

  A done deal? Was she ready to admit that? The reality of the naked man sprawled beneath her was hard to ignore. But it was a complete departure from anything she’d ever even remotely envisioned for her life. Was she ready to abandon a lifetime of solitude and monkish asceticism to embrace this new and foreign world of emotion and passion and impulsiveness?

  Kat had no idea how to answer Jeff’s question. What he was asking of her was huge. Life changing. She’d always considered herself to be courageous, but at this exact moment, she was scared to death. She was standing on the edge of a cliff. Once she stepped off it, there would be no going back. Jeff would sweep her into a new life with him and there’d be no fighting the power of his overwhelming determination to make her his once she gave into it. Such was the promise—and the danger—of Cupid’s Bolt.

  Suddenly, something moved abruptly a few feet away. Her discarded jeans wiggled slightly and made a faint buzzing sound. Jeff whipped her over on her back, covering her body protectively with his from this new threat.

  “I highly doubt my cell phone is going to assassinate me,” she commented wryly.

  “Your—” Jeff sagged on top of her. “Being around you is shooting my nerves all to hell.”

  As he rolled half off her so she could reach for the phone, she said, “Then relax already. I can take care of myself.” Still smiling up at him, she answered her phone. “Go ahead.”

  It was Aleesha. “Sorry to interrupt your fight—or maybe you two are making up by now, and I’m very sorry to interrupt that.”

  Kat blushed fiercely. Thank goodness Aleesha hadn’t sprung that line on her in person! She managed to choke out casually enough, “What’s up?”

  “News. We know who the Ghost stole the disk from. Or at least we’ve got a very good idea. I’m afraid you two need to cut your little tryst short and get back here.”

  Kat was profoundly relieved that their conversation had been cut off when it had. Jeff rolled to his feet in a single powerful move. He was swearing under his breath as he reached for his discarded clothes—something to the effect of work having a way of interrupting when a person least needed or wanted the interruption. Poor guy. The timing really had sucked from his point of view.

  They sprinted back to the cottage, which not only worked out some of the lingering sexual energy between them, but also shook most of the telltale sand out of their hair and clothes.

  Aleesha wasted no time in briefing them when they burst back into the warmth and light of the cottage. “Turns out the Ghost robbed an Indian tycoon’s estate a few weeks back.”

  Kat nodded. She recalled Jeff’s summary to her of the robbery.

  “This Indian fellow just got our frisky Russian oil minister to agree to sell a whole bunch of oil futures to India that were slated to go to the United States. The folks at H.O.T. Watch say the State Department has been wondering how the Indians pulled off the deal. It was apparently quite a coup for India and a big blow to the U.S.”

  Jeff interjected. “So, the Indian guy blackmailed the Russian guy. Why was the video in Chinese, then? If the Chinese took the footage, why wouldn’t they have used it themselves to blackmail the Russian into selling them the oil?”

  Aleesha shrugged. “Could be they got a ton of money by selling the footage. Could be our Indian guy acquired it by doing a private deal of his own. Could be he stole the video. Hard to tell.”

  Kat interjected. “So we still don’t know who the commandos are.”

  Aleesha nodded. “Correct.” She threw an apologetic glance over at Jeff as she continued, “Cobra, I floated your idea of impersonating the Ghost to the gang at H.O.T. Watch Ops.”

  “And?” Kat asked with ill-disguised interest.

  Another apologetic look at Jeff from Aleesha. “They loved the idea. General Wittenauer has already greenlighted the op.”

  Jeff’s jaw went rock hard, and Kat thought she detected a hint of redness around his ears. Without a word, he pivoted stiffly and walked out of the room. The back door slammed. Hard. She might have kept her face still and calm, but she flinched all the way down to the bottom of her soul.

  The Medusas looked over at her expectantly.

  Aleesha asked gently, “You gonna go after him and talk to him?”

  Kat sighed heavily. “It wouldn’t do any good. We’ve both said all we have to say on the matter. He can’t stand watching me take risks, and I can’t give up what I do or who I am.”

  Aleesha studied her long and hard—until Kat had to actively clamp down on an urge to squirm. Finally, the Jamaican said, “This op isn’t going to be a picnic. You sure you’re up for this mission? It’s going to take one hundred percent of your focus and concentration.”

  Kat knew exactly what Aleesha was asking. Was she too emotionally involved with Jeff to give the job her full attention? Kat sighed. Who knew for sure? One thing she did know. She couldn’t possibly back out on this mission now and live with herself. She’d drawn her line in the sand with Jeff. He had to accept her career, or there’d be no future for them.

  Belatedly, she answered, “I’ll be okay. Let’s just get on with it.”

  But in her heart of hearts, she wasn’t so sure things were going to be okay at all. She and the Medusas had steamrolled right over Jeff, and he wasn’t going to take kindly to that. At the end of the day, he was exactly what he’d said he was—traditional, protective and used to being in charge. It had been too much to ask him to accept her profession—heck, her true identity.

  Likewise, she’d made her choice. She was a warrior first and a woman second.

  But, God, it hurt to see him go.

  Chapter 17

  Kat was still awake when Jeff came back to the cottage as dawn broke outside. She’d given up on sleeping soon thereafter and gotten up. He made no effort to speak to her all day. He participated professionally enough in the planning of the night’s mission, but when she tried to talk to him in private, she got exactly nowhere with him.

  Each time he gave her a closed, stony look—the classic thousand-yard stare of a hardened soldier—her heart broke a little more. By suppertime, she was a complete mess. So much for being able to hold it together no matter what life threw at her.

  She went out to the beach where she swayed and stepped through the slow motion dance of an ancient gigong ritual designed to calm and center the chi. Twice. It didn’t work. She resorted to the more violent Shaolin kung fu forms next. Better. At least working up a good sweat burned off a little of her urge to burst into tears. But she still felt like crap.

  “You okay?” Aleesha murmured for at least the tenth time that day as Kat let herself back into the cottage at dusk.

  “No, I’m not,” she snapped, her fragile calm already wrecked.

  Aleesha laughed quietly. “Welcome to the world of wallowing in emotions like the rest of us.”

  Kat threw her a bitter look. “Yeah, well, it sucks.”

  “Ahh, but when it’s good, it’s great, isn’t it?”

  Kat squeezed her eyes tightly shut. That was just sweat making them burn like that. Just sweat, dammit.

  Aleesha sighed. “I really ought to pull you from this mission.”

  Alarmed, Kat blurted, “You can’t. I’m the only one who can do it.”

  A reluctant nod. “True. But we can postpone it a few days until you’re feeling more like yourself.”

  Kat winced. She was starting to be genuinely afraid that from here on out this was herself. How was she supposed to close the floodgates and re-contain all that emotion that Jeff had let out? It would be like trying to empty a lake with a teaspoon.

  “I’ll be okay, Aleesha. I promise. Once I get into the flow of the mission, my training will take over.”

  Aleesha looked at her hard. “Make me
a promise. If you get in that house and your concentration isn’t perfect, you’ll call it off and back out.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Either you promise, or I’m pulling the plug. We’ll find some other way to draw these guys out. The way I hear it, those folks in the H.O.T. Watch can do surveillance on the entire island of Barbados at once.”

  Having seen the Ops center, Kat could believe it. She glanced up to see Aleesha staring at her expectantly.

  Kat sighed. “Fine. I promise.”

  “On your honor?”

  “Yes, mother.”

  Aleesha nodded firmly. “All right, then. Now go take a little rest and we’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.”

  Kat crouched in the bushes outside the mansion that was her target. It was a massive lump of brick and stone, generically Caribbean colonial. And a hell of a tough nut to crack. The place had banklike security, and in the guise of being built hurricane-proof, had also been built practically burglarproof as well.

  To the credit of the home’s designers, it had taken most of the staff of the H.O.T. Watch, a team at the Pentagon, and several high-powered civilian electronics and security consultants to come up with a way to breach the place. And were it not for the H.O.T. Watch’s high-tech satellite systems and an orbiting electronic counterwarfare chopper nearby, she wouldn’t have had a prayer of getting inside undetected.

  Wherever he was right now, hidden in the trees, was Jeff worried about her? Or was he just mad? Or maybe he felt nothing at all. He certainly seemed to have shut down his emotions earlier. And how ironic was that? She was the one with the legendary self-control while he wore his feelings on his sleeve, and now she was a blithering idiot and he was a rock.

  She checked her thoughts sharply. She ought to be reviewing the plan, running it one last time in her head, not to mention keeping an eye out for movement that didn’t belong out here. Good thing Aleesha wasn’t beside her right now, or this mission would already be over.

  Jeff’s voice crackled over her earpiece, crisp and emotionless. “H.O.T. Watch and Bravo 51, report when ready.” Bravo 51 was the helicopter with the equipment that would jam several electronic portions of the mansion’s security system. She didn’t hear the chopper yet, but it would move in close when she started her run at the house.

  Did he have to sound so cold and uncaring? Stop that. He was transmitting on a frequency that close to a hundred people were listening to. How else should he sound?

  “You ready, Cobra?” Aleesha prompted.

  Kat started. Crud. She was supposed to report when she was ready, and then Jeff would give the green light, and she’d forgotten to do it. Aleesha’s transmission had been a subtle kick in the pants to get her head in the game. And Aleesha was right.

  Kat slid the switch on her waist pack to hot mike. Everything she said now would broadcast live without her having to press a microphone button. She’d need both hands to do her job pretty soon. “Cobra ready to proceed.”

  “You are cleared to proceed,” Jeff said. “Give us a time hack.”

  Kat pushed up her sleeve and opened her mouth. The pair of two-inch-long Cyalume sticks she’d tucked into her cheeks emitted a faint glow from between her teeth—enough to see her watch face. “On my mark, it will be 1:30 a.m. Three, two, one, mark.”

  And with the last syllable, she took off running toward the house. The pressure sensors in the lawn reported wirelessly to the security computer inside, but Bravo 51 had that covered.

  On cue, an electronic warfare specialist came up on frequency and announced, “The pressure sensors are jammed. You are clear to cross the grass.”

  She reached the expanse of green a few seconds later. In her mind, this was the most dangerous part of the mission. She was to run across the lawn in plain view of anyone who might be lurking nearby. After all, the idea was to let the hostiles know she was here. Once she gained the cover of the house, there’d be much less chance to take her out. The working theory was that the commandos would want to capture the Ghost to ask him where the disk was now, and that they wouldn’t want to kill him. At least not right away. But if that calculation were wrong, now was the moment they would find out—when bullets slammed into her exposed self.

  And then she was across the lawn, crouching in the shadows of an oleander bush. One of its narrow leaves tickled her nose, and she pushed it aside absently. She had about thirty seconds to wait while Bravo 51 did its magic on the house’s outside phone lines. They were going to do something having to do with setting up a feedback loop that blocked a dial tone. The end result would be that when the house’s automated alarm system tried to summon the police, no call would get out. At least, that was the plan.

  She recognized Jennifer Blackfoot’s voice in her ear. “We show no hostile heat signatures on satellite imagery at this time. You are clear to proceed.”

  “Phones are down,” Bravo 51 reported.

  That was her signal. She stood up and went to work on the window above her. It was an easy enough matter to cut a foot-wide circle out of the glass and lift it aside. Trickier was the maneuver to use a thin steel rod to manipulate the window latch without breaking the grid of laser beams an inch beyond the window’s surface. But with patience and concentration, she got it. After sliding a flat metal strip under the window to maintain contact on the pressure sensors there, she slid the window up gingerly. The house alarms remained silent. Gripping the window frame, she leaped up lightly until she was poised on the narrow sill, balancing on her toes. Carefully, she slipped mirrors into the laser grid until she’d created a gap about ten inches high and eighteen inches wide. It would be a tight squeeze, but that’s why she was doing this and not a hulk like Jeff.

  The thought of him momentarily broke her breathing rhythm, and she had to pause to remind herself to breathe lightly and evenly. Her calm restored for the moment, she eased through the narrow gap, reaching across a three-foot gap to the back of a leather sofa. Never touching the floor, she slid over the sofa back and twisted to land lightly on its cushioned surface.

  “I’m in,” she murmured.

  The laser grid in here was visible to the naked eye, which made her job of sliding, climbing, leaping and squeezing past it easy. She reached the bookcase beside the door. She commenced pressing, pulling and shifting books in the shelf until she found the dummy book that actually was a switch. It tilted outward from the shelf, and to the right of the library door, a small panel slid open to reveal a numeric keypad.

  She described it quickly over her radios. A new voice came up on frequency and didn’t identify himself. He did, however, identify the model of alarm system pad she’d described. She spent the next ten minutes following his detailed instructions on how to open the box and disable the alarm.

  “Okay, Cobra, give the doorknob a try. If we’ve done it right, you should be able to open the door and get no alarm siren.”

  She took a deep breath. Here went nothing. From this moment forward, she’d be on her own inside the house. She turned the cool brass knob slowly. Cracked the door open an inch. Silence. She’d done it.

  In point of fact, they expected any bad guys to jump her as she left the house. She ought to be able to proceed from here unhindered. Nonetheless, she eased forward cautiously. It was a short trip down the hall to her right, across the foyer and left into the expansive living room where her target—a magnificent Van der Meer painting—hung.

  She eased down the carpeted hall, her passage utterly silent, and frowned. Something didn’t feel right. It was nothing she could put her finger on, but an uneasy intuition stole over her. Maybe it was the fact that she was committing a major felony that bugged her.

  For no reason she could explain, she paused at the edge of the three-story-high foyer and examined it suspiciously. A huge chandelier dripped with crystal. An ornate table in the middle of the space held a giant Limoges porcelain vase she couldn’t wrap her arms around. It was empty at the moment, but would no doubt hold a large flor
al display when the house was occupied.

  The floor was a marble so glossy it glistened like glass in the scant light. Her senses kicked over to another level altogether, her military and martial arts training blending until she was vibrating with awareness at a level so minute her teammates wouldn’t believe her if she tried to explain it. And that was probably why she noticed the infinitesimal flicker of movement in a dark shadow under the far leg of the table. She pulled out her sniper scope, a palm-sized telescope she usually used to measure distance to targets. She zoomed it in on the spot where she’d seen the movement.

  She frowned. It was a gnat. Lying on its side, one wing beating sporadically in an attempt to free itself. How was the bug trapped? It ought to be able to use its legs to right itself. It was probably just a dying bug and happened to have ended up in that pose. Except…

  She sniffed the air experimentally. The faintest odor of something familiar—lightly sweet with a musty undertone—just barely registered. She knew that scent. But where from? She sniffed again, letting its essence flow over her and through her. Summers in Korea. Hidoshi’s snug little barn, where the pigs and sheep spent their nights. The paper fly strips that spiraled down from the ceiling, mustard yellow and sticky…and smelling exactly like this.

  Flypaper? What did that have to do with this opulent home? Alarm bells went off in her head. Something was not right here. She knelt down to get a better look at that gnat. Now that she thought about it, the gnat was acting just like one of the myriad flies that used to bumble onto Hidoshi’s flypaper and then buzz frantically until they died.

  The floor. It smelled more strongly of the flypaper glue. From this angle, it looked like a thick layer of polyurethane had been freshly spread over the marble, drying to that glossy sheen. There wasn’t a single nick on that satin-smooth surface. What floor had absolutely no nicks or scuffs?