Beneath the Surface

by Meredith Fletcher

  “Did I mention the part where I was ducking and running for my life as bullets flew a few inches over my head?”

  “Forgive me. That information was sensitive.”

  “That information,” Shannon said, “could take a bullet better than I could.”

  “You’re right. I’ll make sure you have things there that you may need.”

  “Thank you. But if it’s all right to spend this money—”

  “Of course. I’ll make sure there is more by the time you reach your room.”

  “It might help if I can call you for a change,” Shannon said.

  “At this point, that’s not possible.”

  “Why?”

  “When we meet, I’ll explain everything. Be careful.”

  Before Shannon could protest and point out that she had been the careful one, the line clicked dead. She took a deep breath and put her phone away.

  Then she went shopping because it was the only sane thing to do.

  Why is it, Shannon asked herself, that when you shop for underwear you think of a man seeing you in it?

  She prowled through the sexy, silky sheerness of fantasy in one of the intimate-apparel shops. She loved how the material felt against her fingertips and she thought about how it would feel against her skin.

  Why can’t you just shop for underwear and think about seeing yourself in it and be happy?

  But her mind kept wandering, and she didn’t like where it wandered to. Was Rafe Santorini the kind of guy who liked a woman in next-to-nothingness? Or in shimmering falls of color and satin that hinted at all the curves it was supposed to?

  It bothered her that she didn’t know. She could usually tell a man’s preference within five minutes of meeting him.

  Strong and silent Rafe, with his mysterious scars and harsh attitude, was an enigma. He was the kind of man who would protect a woman even when he was hurting. And he was the kind of man who could turn vicious in a heartbeat if he had to.

  So which would he prefer?

  More than that, Shannon asked herself, why do you care? You’re not ever going to see him again. And if you did, it would only be because he was there to arrest you or run over you with his car.

  But as she rounded a corner she saw a white embroidered eyelet babydoll that looked absolutely divine. She put her hand under the material and could see her fingernails perfectly. In fact, she bet she could probably read through the material. A pair of solid white panties accompanied it.

  The babydoll was the perfect blend of naughty and nice that she felt would drive someone like Rafe Santorini crazy. Shannon knew she had an all-over tan that would make the white material work, and the honey-gold of her hair would be subtle and striking at the same time.

  Rafe Santorini would never survive the meltdown he’d get just from seeing her in that.

  But he’d never get the chance.

  Shannon felt a little disappointed at that. If he hadn’t been such a jerk—and a friend of Allison’s—it would have been nice to see what kind of guy would wear those scars and be willing to carry an injured woman for blocks. Those kinds of guys, Shannon knew, didn’t come along very often.

  She bought the lingerie on impulse. Sometimes that was the best way to buy things so no guilt was front-loaded.

  Standing on the balcony of the small apartment Kwan-Sook had arranged for her in Sai Kung Town in Hong Kong’s New Territories, Shannon looked out over the ocean and drank in the beauty.

  Before it had become a retreat for Hong Kong residents and tourists who could afford it, Sai Kung Peninsula had been home to fishing villages. Fishing boats and the junks that were the remnants of the once-mighty Tanaka fleet lay at anchorage or sailed in the harbor.

  Shannon breathed in the salt air and felt safer than she had all day. This part of Hong Kong operated with a frenzy and a pressure that drove the rest of the city.

  However, a storm was building on the horizon out over the sea. It was monsoon season, after all. Shannon chose not to view the blossoming mass of clouds as an omen of bad things to come.

  It was just weather. Weather happened.

  All right, that’s enough goofing off. Reluctantly Shannon turned from the view and reentered the apartment. It was small and simply furnished, but the furnishings were traditional Chinese, so it was almost dressy.

  The bed took up a lot of space, but there was a small entertainment area created by furniture placement and a curtain of beads. Her new clothing, again in bags and boxes, had beaten her to the apartment, which spoke Kwan-Sook’s obvious efficiency.

  There was a new computer, fully loaded with the same files she’d had on the other one. It didn’t have the notes she’d made or the Web site links she’d saved, but Shannon felt comfortable with the grasp she had on the material.

  A bouquet of fresh-cut flowers stood bright and colorful on the table. There had also been a picnic basket of fresh fruit, cheeses, crackers, breads, jams and jellies and chocolate. The refrigerator was filled with juices, herbal teas and wine. The pantry held canned and dry goods. All of it was welcome, but it was enough to feed a small family for several days.

  The iPhone rang and Shannon answered it.

  “I trust the accommodations are acceptable?” Kwan-Sook asked.

  “Very.” Shannon took a papaya juice bottle from the refrigerator. “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “This way you won’t have to go out. I think you will be safer.”

  “Probably.” Shannon thought she heard beeping in the background again. She tried to isolate it, but she didn’t hear it again.

  “I have arranged a meeting with Dr. Chow for eight o’clock tonight,” Kwan-Sook said.

  “Where?” Shannon took a pad and pen from the desk.

  “Do you know where the Ten Hau Temple is there in Sai Kung?”

  “Yes. I’ve been here—and there—before.” The Tin Hau Temple was dedicated to the goddess Matsu, who was respected as a mother-ancestor of China. She was also revered by sailors and fishermen because they believed she protected them and anyone else who was upon the ocean.

  “There is a restaurant not far from there that features private rooms for private dinners. I have arranged for one of those rooms. Dr. Chow will meet you there at eight o’clock.”

  “All right.”

  “We will talk again after you have met with him.”

  “Wait,” Shannon said.

  “Yes?”

  “When will I get to meet you?”

  Kwan-Sook hesitated. “Soon. More than that, I can’t say. Good luck.” The line went dead.

  Shannon gazed back through the balcony doors. The wind had picked up enough to whip the curtains on either side of the doorway. The temperature had dropped at least a handful of degrees while she’d been on the phone.

  According to her watch, it was only shortly after one o’clock. She had time for a nap before she made the meeting.

  That only made her think of the lingerie she’d bought. As soon as she was thinking about lingerie and bed, she was thinking about Rafe Santorini.

  And that was a totally frustrating train of thought in more ways than one.

  Knowing she’d never be able to sleep at the moment, she retreated to the refrigerator long enough to make a smoked-salmon-and-cream-cheese sandwich. Then she headed to the computer.

  Since Rafe Santorini wasn’t going to stay off her mind, it was time to find out all his secrets.

  Chapter 22

  “A lot of the stuff about this guy is buried pretty deep,” Gary said. “That’s why it took so long to find it. Usually I’m better at this.”

  “That’s all right.” Shannon took small bites of her sandwich as she cruised through the files Gary had put together. There was a lot of information. Evidently Rafe Santorini wasn’t one to let the grass grow.

  Shannon understood that completely.

  “When it comes to tough guys, Shannon, this guy’s the real deal.” Gary’s assessment held awe and respect. Those weren’t nor
mally in his lexicon for anyone. “He did the Rangers—”

  “We’ve been through that. Have you learned anything new?” Shannon was impatient to find out what made the man tick.

  “I did deep research on him because I figured you’d want it.”

  “I do.”

  “I even went tiptoeing into places I shouldn’t have, and spooky things happened.”

  That caught Shannon’s attention, and she looked away from the pictures Gary had found of Rafe Santorini’s various high-profile military engagements. There were pictures of deserts, jungles and bombed-out urban areas. In his eight years of soldiering Rafe Santorini had been in a lot of hot spots.

  “What spooky things?” she asked.

  “When I do that kind of digging, I never do it from anywhere close to my home twenty. I went slumming in Brooklyn. Hit a couple Wi-Fi places and used throwaway accounts.”

  “Save the computer mumbo-jumbo for someone that will understand and appreciate it.”

  “Somebody in the government’s watching Rafe Santorini’s files.”

  Shannon thought of Allison. That wasn’t surprising.

  “I got a hinky feeling—”

  “‘Hinky’?”

  “Yeah. That’s another word for—”

  “I know what it means. You’re just too young to say it.”

  “Whatever. Anyway, I got a bad vibe about the whole deal when I kept getting hung up on simple page shifts, so I closed up my computer and blazed. A few minutes after I left the bar where I’d been hanging and doing my thing, this hot looking chick—”

  “‘Chick’?”

  “Sorry. Woman.”

  Shannon hadn’t been offended by the term. It was just that every time she looked around, there were women involved. All of them appeared to be specially skilled. That was what the Athena Academy had been about.

  This is all an Athena operation, she thought. Just the way they were in Kestonia, Puerto Isla and Cape Town. What is going on?

  That made her feel good. If she was asking questions, she knew her audience would be. Only, when they got to asking questions, she’d be able to answer them.

  “This woman goes into the bar,” Gary went on, “and starts showing my picture around. My picture! Dude, I so could not believe that.”

  Shannon could. The word conspiracy locked into her brain. Genetically modified women were coming out of the Athena Academy.

  She thought about that, wondering if that was too big a leap to make. Then she realized Gary was talking again.

  “I’d really suggest you stay away from Mr. Hero Guy,” Gary said. “I mean, not only does just digging into his name through the Net seem to trigger the wrath of the Internet gods, but he had a screwed-up childhood.”

  “All of us did.” Shannon couldn’t help thinking about her own dysfunctional family. She’d escaped. Not everyone did.

  But Rafe had escaped, too. He’d gone into the military.

  “All of us didn’t try to kill our father,” Gary said.

  The support personnel Allison had set up were sharp. They met with Rafe at the airport without a hitch. They were also Asian, which meant they would blend in where he didn’t.

  “Captain Santorini,” a young woman said when she fell into step with him.

  Rafe looked at her. “I’m out of the military and I don’t know you.” He never broke stride, forcing her to keep up. The last few hours of the flight, it had been all he could do to stay in his seat.

  “I’m your contact, sir. Allison sent me.”

  When he glanced at the woman, though she was a full head shorter than he was, Rafe saw that she had no problem keeping pace. He wasn’t ready to just assume the first person who approached him was his contact. Whoever was helping Shannon Connor also had access to people.

  “Then you’d have a code word,” he told her.

  The young woman smiled. Her hair was cut square with her shoulders. She was beautiful and deceptively thin. But her stride was perfect, powerful and cadenced. She could have been a dancer.

  “Yes, sir. I would. Hardhead. She said you shouldn’t take it personally.”

  “I won’t.”

  “But that I should also keep it in mind while I’m dealing with you.”

  Despite the situation and his anxiety over Shannon, Rafe had to grin. When he spoke again, it was in Cantonese. “What’s your name?”

  Another smile curved the young woman’s lips. “Fang Xiaoming. You speak the language pretty well.”

  “‘The’ language? Not ‘our’ language?”

  “I am an American. English was my native language.”

  Rafe passed through the doors to the transportation area.

  “How do you know Allison?”

  “We went to school together.”

  “I would have bet you were going to say that.”

  “My father is Chinese, but my mother is American. They choose to live here now, but I was invited to attend Athena Academy. It was a very prestigious honor.”

  “I guess it was. You guys seem to stick together.”

  Xiaoming nodded. “Loyalty is highly regarded among graduates. And often we find we have many similar interests.”

  “Like world peace?”

  “We do what we can.”

  Rafe had been joking, but he saw that the young woman wasn’t.

  “Do you have a vehicle?” he asked.

  Xiaoming pointed toward a compact SUV at the curb, then she led the way.

  Rafe followed. His knee twinged slightly, but his interest was focused on the young woman. He had to admit, Allison Gracelyn topped the charts when it came to interesting friends in interesting places.

  “What are you talking about?” Shannon asked.

  “I found a police report in the military file on Rafe Santorini that I wasn’t expecting. Apparently when he was fifteen, he got into a fight with his father. Of course, at the time his dad had been wailing on his mom. All of them ended up in the hospital that night. According to the follow-up reports, Mom and Dad were heavy into extracurricular combat. Extreme parenting. They took turns beating on each other. Then every now and again—”

  “They beat Rafe,” Shannon whispered.

  “Yeah. Pretty hard-core stuff. Everybody blamed everybody for the shared misery. Rafe was just a kid. He was made a ward of the court and placed in a juvenile shelter. And I have to tell you, boss lady, what Rafe Santorini didn’t know about violence and fighting going in, he learned by the time he got out. I’ve been there a few times myself. Not fun.”

  Shannon stared at the hard, handsome face of the man on the computer monitor.

  “Then there was the whole North Korea thing,” Gary stated.

  “What happened in North Korea?”

  “Rafe Santorini was in North Korea on some mission—I’m guessing it was an assassination, but the report didn’t spell everything out—and he got caught. The North Korean army kept him imprisoned for five months. The report I looked at said he’d been treated pretty bad. He’s lucky they didn’t kill him. A few months ago the State Department made some kind of arrangements to get him out.”

  Shannon looked at the man on her computer and realized that she really didn’t know what he was capable of.

  Fang Xiaoming headed up a six-man crew. There was one other woman. They were all Asian. From the way they moved and listened when he spoke, Rafe judged all of them to have military training.

  They met in a small hotel in Sai Kung Town. That was as far as Allison had been able to pinpoint Shannon’s location.

  It drove Rafe crazy to think that he was so close but still unable to reach her. He kept himself calm by getting to know his team when they met in his room. With all six of them in there, the room was crowded.

  Hua, the other woman, was a sniper and perhaps a handful of years older than Xiaoming. According to Xiaoming, Hua was a professional mercenary who had been taught by the British Special Air Service.

  Xiyue was in his forties, a quiet, watchful man w
ho was the electronics specialist. He also specialized in close-in grabs of assets and people.

  Jintao and Zhenrong were both hand-to-hand experts, small-arms marksmen and demolitionists. Jintao chewed gum incessantly and listened to an iPod. Zhenrong wore manga T-shirts and long hair and would have looked at home on any college campus.

  According to Xiaoming, she and her crew worked tracking down and preventing industrial espionage and corporate kidnapping of domestic and international businesses.

  “The first thing you need to know,” Rafe said, “is that the woman is not to be hurt.”

  “We don’t do that kind of work,” Xiyue said.

  “That’s what I was told,” Rafe said. Allison’s review of the team had been glowing. Evidently the NSA had used them before and been very satisfied. “But when push comes to shove and she might get hurt, we fade the heat and back off. I want us all on the same page with that.”

  They all agreed.

  “There are at least two different teams playing this besides us,” Rafe said. “They’re at cross-purposes. Shannon Connor is trapped somewhere between them. We’re here to get her out. Safely.”

  “I was told that she might not want to come,” Hua said.

  Rafe folded his arms. “Her last choice in the matter was to come here. She’s in danger every minute she stays here and she’s ill-informed about her decisions.”

  No one said anything.

  “What do we have for equipment?”

  “Anything you want,” Xiaoming replied. “Weapons. Surveillance. Transport. Medical. We’re a full-service entity. That’s why Allison called me.”

  Outside, a long peal of thunder rolled across the sky. Then the clouds opened up and the deluge began.

  Rafe glared at the window and saw the tree branches jerking in the high winds. Raindrops as big as the end of his little fingertip hammered the windowpanes.

  “Does anyone know how long this is supposed to last?” he growled irritably.

  “It’s monsoon season,” Xiaoming said. “It will last until it’s done.”

  Rafe’s phone rang. He peeled it off his belt and held it to his face. “Yes.”