“So you did. You failed, however, to mention that he also likes to creep up behind women and poke his head up their skirts.”
Maggie concealed a fierce rush of satisfaction at the thought of the dramatic encounter between the scaly, bug-eyed blue-and-orange iguana she’d acquired as a gift from a Central American colonel and Adam’s sophisticated sometime companion. By all accounts, Terence had thoroughly shaken the flame-haired congresswoman from Connecticut and sent her rushing from Adam’s Georgetown residence. The redhead couldn’t know, of course, that the German shepherd-size reptile was as harmless as it was ugly. Nor had Maggie felt the least urge to correct the mistaken impression when she called to apologize.
As much as that incident had secretly delighted Maggie, however, it had drawn her boss’s wrath down on her unattractive pet. She tried once again to smooth things over.
“Terence was only feeling playful. He’s really—”
“No.”
“Please. For me?”
Adam’s eyes held hers for a few, fleeting seconds. Maggie felt her pulse skip once or twice, then jolt into an irregular rhythm.
“I can’t,” he said at last. “The Swedish ambassador and his wife are staying with me while their official quarters are under repair. Ingrid’s a good sport, but I don’t think Börg would appreciate your repulsive pet’s habit of flicking out his yardlong tongue to plant kisses on unsuspecting victims.”
Having been subjected to a number of those startling kisses herself, Maggie conceded defeat.
Adam held himself still as her sigh drifted across the office. Over the years, he’d mastered the art of controlling his emotions. His position required him to weigh risks and make a calculated decision as to whether to put his agents in harm’s way. There was little room for personal considerations or emotions in such deadly business.
Yet the distracted look in Maggie’s huge brown eyes affected him more than he would admit, even to himself.
“You might try Elizabeth,” he suggested after a moment.
“I tried her before I hired the sitter. She still hasn’t forgiven Terence for devouring the African water lilies she spent six years cultivating. In fact,” Maggie added glumly, “she threatened to shoot him on sight if he ever came within range.”
It wasn’t an idle threat, Adam knew. The grandmotherly receptionist requalified every year at the expert level on the 9 mm Sig Sauer handgun she kept in her desk drawer. She’d only fired it once other than on the firing range—with lethal results.
Watching Maggie chew the inside of one cheek, Adam refrained from suggesting the obvious solution. She wouldn’t appreciate the reminder that lizard meat had a light, tasty succulence when seared over an open fire. Instead, Adam pushed his conscience aside and offered up OMEGA’s senior communications technician as a victim.
“Perhaps Joe Sammuels could take care of…it for you. He returned last night from his satellite-communications conference in the U.K.”
“He did? Great!” Maggie jammed her glasses back on, wincing as the handles forced a path through the tight hair at her temples. “Joe owes me, big-time! I kept the twins for a whole week while he and Barb went skiing.”
Adam’s lips twisted. “He’ll repay that debt several times over if he takes in your walking trash compactor.”
Behind the thick lenses, Maggie’s eyes now sparkled with laughter. “Joe won’t mind. He knows how much the twins enjoy taking Terence out for a walk on his leash. They think it’s totally rad when everyone freaks out as they stroll by.”
“They would.”
“I’ll go call Joe. I can leave a key to my condo for him with Elizabeth. Thanks, Adam.” She started for the door, throwing him a dazzling smile over her shoulder. “See you…whenever.”
“Maggie.”
The quiet call caught her in midstride. She turned back, lowering her chin to peer at him over the black rims. “Yes?”
“Be careful.”
She nodded. “Will do.”
A small silence descended between them, rare and strangely intense. Adam broke it with a final instruction.
“Try not to bring home any more exotic gifts from the admirers you seem to collect in the field. Customs just sent the State Department another scathing letter about the unidentified government employee who brought a certain reptile into the country without authorization.”
Wisely, Maggie decided to ignore Adam’s reference to what had somehow become a heated issue between several high-ranking bureaucrats. Instead, she plucked at the sturdy twill pants bagging her hips and waggled her black eyebrows. “Admirers? In this getup? You’ve got to be kidding!”
She gave a cheerful wave and was gone.
Adam stood unmoving until the last thump of her boots had faded in the corridor outside his office.
“No,” he murmured. “I’m not.”
He flicked his tuxedo sleeves down over pristine white cuffs, then patted his breast pocket to make sure it held his onyx pen. The microchip signaling device implanted in the pen’s cap emitted no sound, only a slight, intermittent pulse of heat.
Adam never went anywhere without it.
Not when he had agents in the field.
After a quick flight from Washington to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Maggie jumped out of the flight-line taxi and lugged her heavy suitcase across the concrete parking apron. The huge silver-skinned stretch C-141 that would transport the UN inspection team crouched on the runway like a mammoth eagle guarding its nest. Its rear doors yawned open to the night.
“Be with you in a minute, ma’am,” the loadmaster called from inside the cavernous cargo bay.
Maggie nodded and waited patiently at the side hatch while the harried sergeant directed the placement of the pallets being loaded into the hold. A quick glance at the stenciling on the crates told Maggie that about half contained supplies for the twelve-person UN team, and half were stamped FRAGILE—SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT.
Racks of floodlights bathed the plane in a yellow glare and heated the cool September night air. Maggie stood just outside the illuminated area, in the shadow of the wing, content to have a few moments to herself before she met her fellow team members for the first time. Now that she was within minutes of the actual start of her mission, she wanted to savor her tingling sense of anticipation.
The accumulated stress from almost twenty hours of intense mission preparation lay behind her.
The racing adrenaline, mounting tension and cold, wrenching fear that came with every mission waited ahead.
For now, there was only the gathering excitement that arced along her nerves like lightning slicing across a heated summer sky.
She breathed in the cool air, enjoying this interlude of dim, shadowed privacy. In a few minutes, she’d be another person, speak with another voice. For now, though, she—
The attack came with only a split second’s warning.
She heard a thud. A startled grunt. The loud rattle of her metal suitcase as it clattered on the concrete.
Maggie whirled, squinting against the floodlights’ glare. If the lights hadn’t blinded her, she might have had a chance.
Before she could even throw up her hands to shade her eyes, a dark silhouette careened into her.
Maggie and her attacker went down with a crash.
She hit the unyielding concrete with enough force to drive most of the air from her lungs. What little she had left whooshed away when a bony hipbone slammed into her stomach.
An equally bony forehead cracked against hers, adding more black spots to those the blinding lights had produced. Fisting her fingers, Maggie prepared to smash the soft cartilage in the nose hovering just inches above her own.
“Oh, my— Oh, my God! I’m—I’m sorry!”
The horrified exclamation began in something resembling a male bass and ended on a high soprano squeak. Maggie’s hand halted in midswing.
Almost instantly, she regretted not taking out the man sprawled across her body. As he tried to push himself
up, he inadvertently jammed a knee into a rather sensitive area of her female anatomy.
At her involuntary recoil, he stammered another, even more appalled apology. “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry! I’ll just… Let me just…”
He lifted his knee in an attempt to plant it on less intimate ground. He missed, and ground it into Maggie’s already aching stomach instead. She stilled his jerky movements with a death grip on his jacket sleeves.
He swallowed noisily as he peered down at her. With the lights glaring from behind his head, Maggie couldn’t make out any facial features.
“Are…are you all right?”
“I might be,” she said through tight jaws, remembering just in time to clip her words and adopt the slightly nasal tone she’d perfected for this role. “If you’d stop trying to grind my liver into pâté.”
“I’m…I’m sorry.”
“So you’ve said. Several times. Look, just lift your knee. Carefully!”
Once freed of his weight, Maggie rolled, catlike, to her feet. Taking a couple of quick breaths to test her aching stomach muscles, she decided she’d live. Barely.
Turning so that the spotlight no longer blinded her, she shoved the glasses dangling from one ear back onto her nose. The black spots faded enough for her to see her attacker’s features at last.
The man—no, the boy, she corrected, running a quick searching glance over his anxious face and gangly frame—tugged his zippered jacket down from where it had tangled under his armpits.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated miserably. “Your suitcase… I, uh, tripped. I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s okay,” she managed. “I think my digestive system’s intact, and I’m getting close to the end of my childbearing years, anyway.”
Actually, at thirty-two, she still had plans for several children sometime in the future. She’d only meant to lighten the atmosphere a little, but she saw at once her joke had backfired. The boy’s face flamed an even brighter shade of red, and he stammered another string of apologies.
“I’m fine,” she interjected, her irritation easing at his obvious mortification. “Really. I was just teasing.”
He stared at her doubtfully. “You were?”
“Couldn’t you tell?”
“No. No one ever teases me.”
Maggie didn’t see how this clumsy young man could possibly avoid being the butt of all kinds of jokes. He was all legs and arms, a walking, talking safety hazard. Which made her distinctly nervous on this busy flight line.
“Look, are you supposed to be out here? This is a restricted area.”
“I’m…I’m traveling on this plane.” He glanced up at the huge silver C-141, frowning. “At least, I think this is the plane. The sergeant who dropped me off here said it was.”
Maggie’s eyes narrowed, causing a painful tug at her temples. She grimaced, vowing silently to get rid of the tight bun at the back of her neck at the first possible moment, while her mind raced through the descriptions of the various team members she’d been given. None of them correlated with this awkward individual. For a heart-stopping moment, she wondered if her mission had been compromised, if an impostor—other than Maggie herself—was trying to infiltrate the team.
Apparently thinking her grimace had been directed at him, he hastened to reassure her. “Yes, I’m sure this is the right plane. I recognize the crates of equipment being loaded.”
“Who are you?” she asked, cutting right to the heart of the matter.
“Richard. Richard Worthington.”
With the velocity and force of an Oklahoma twister, Maggie’s suspicion spiraled. “Richard Worthington?”
He blinked at the sharp challenge in her voice. “Uh, the Second.”
The tornado slowed its deadly whirl. Drawing in a deep breath, Maggie studied the young man’s worried face. Now that she had some clue to his identity, she thought she detected a faint resemblance to the scientist who would head their team. Not that she could have sworn to it. Even the Mole had been able to produce only sketchy background details and a blurred photo of the brilliant, reclusive physicist. Taken about a year ago, the picture showed a hazy profile almost obliterated by a bushy beard.
“I didn’t realize Dr. Worthington had a son,” she said slowly. “Or that he was bringing you along on this trip.”
“He’s not. Er, I’m not. That is, I’m Dr. Worthington.”
Right, and she was Wernher von Braun!
Maggie wanted to reject his ridiculous claim instantly, but the keen mind that had helped her work through some rather improbable situations in the past three years suggested it could be possible. This earnest, anxious young man could be Dr. Worthington. The Mole had indicated that Worthington had gained international renown at an early age. But this early?
“You don’t look like the Dr. Richard Worthington I was told to expect,” Maggie challenged, still suspicious.
A bewildered look crossed his face for a moment, then dissolved into a sheepish grin. “Oh, you mean my beard? I just grew it because my mother didn’t want—that is, I decided to experiment.” Lifting a hand, he rubbed it across his smooth, square chin. “But the silly thing itched too much. I shaved it off for this trip.”
Maggie might have questioned his ingenious story if not for two startling details. His reference to his mother caught her attention like a waving flag. The intelligence briefing had disclosed that Dr. Worthington’s iron-willed mother guarded the genius she’d given birth to with all the determination of a Valkyrie protecting the gates of Valhalla.
With good reason. At the age of six, her famous child prodigy had been kidnapped and held for ransom. His kidnappers had sent his distracted mother the tip of one small finger as proof of their seriousness. The hand this young man now rubbed across his chin showed a pinkie finger missing a good inch of its tip.
Despite the conclusive evidence, Maggie didn’t derive a whole lot of satisfaction from ascertaining that the individual facing her was in fact Dr. Richard Worthington. With a sinking feeling, she realized she was about to take off for the backside of beyond, where she’d proceed to climb down into silos filled with temperamental, possibly unstable, nuclear missiles, alongside a clumsy boy…man…
“Just how old are you?” she asked abruptly.
“Twenty-three.”
Twenty-three! Maggie swallowed, hard.
“You’re sure you’re the Dr. Richard Worthington who possesses two doctorates, one in engineering and one in nuclear physics?”
His eyes widened at the hint of desperation in her voice. “Well, actually…”
Wild hope pumped through Maggie’s heart.
“Actually, I was just awarded a third. In molecular chemistry. I didn’t apply for it,” he added, when she gave a small groan. “MIT presented it after I did some research for them in my lab.”
“Yes, well…” With a mental shrug, Maggie accepted her fate. “Congratulations.”
She’d been in worse situations during her years with OMEGA, she reminded herself. A lot worse. She could handle this one. Pulling her new identity around her like a cloak, she squared her shoulders and held out a hand.
“I’m Megan St. Clare, Dr. Worthington. A last-minute addition to your team.”
Maggie had constructed a name and identity for this mission close enough to her own that she could remember them, even under extreme duress. A minor but important point, she’d discovered early in her OMEGA career.
Worthington’s fingers folded around hers. “Could you call me Richard? I’m a bit awkward with titles.”
Was there anything he wasn’t awkward with? “Richard. Right. I believe the UN nuclear facilities chairman faxed you my credentials?”
“Well, yes, he did. Although I must say I was surprised he decided to add a geologist to the team at the last moment.”
Maggie could’ve told him that the chairman had decided—with a little help from the U.S. government—to add a geologist because she’d known she could never pass herself off as an exp
ert on nuclear matters with this group of world-renowned scientists for more than thirty seconds. But she’d absorbed enough knowledge of geological formations from her oil-rigger father to hold her own with anyone who wasn’t fully trained in the field.
She started to launch into her carefully rehearsed speech about the need to assess the soil around the missile site for possible deep-strata permeation of radioactive materials, but Worthington forestalled her with another one of his shy smiles.
“Please don’t think I meant to impugn your credentials. This is my first time as part of a UN team…or any other team, for that matter. I’m sure I’ll appreciate your input when we arrive on-site.”
Maggie stared at him for a long, silent moment. “Your first time?”
A gleam of amusement replaced the uncertainty in his eyes, making him seem more mature. “There weren’t all that many physicists clamoring for the job. I’m looking forward to it.”
At that particular moment, Maggie couldn’t say the same. She stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged. “Well, I suppose we should get this…expedition under way.”
She bent to pick up her suitcase, only to knock heads with Worthington as he reached for it at the same moment.
He reached out one hand to steady her and rubbed his forehead with the other. “Oh, no! I’m sorry! Are you hurt, Miss St. Clare? Uh, Dr. St—?”
Maggie snatched her arm out of his grip and blinked away bright-colored stars. “Call … me … Megan … and … bring…the—”
Just in time, she cut off the colorful, earthy adjective she’d picked up from the rowdy oil riggers she’d grown up with.
“Bring the suitcase,” she finished through set jaws.
Stalking to the side hatch, she clambered aboard the cargo plane and forced herself to take a deep, calming breath. Her mission was about to get under way. She couldn’t let the fact that she was saddled with a bumbling team leader distract her at this critical point.
She’d just have to turn his inexperience to her own advantage, Maggie decided, buckling herself in beside a gently snoring woman with iron gray hair and a rather startling fuchsia windbreaker folded across her lap. Worthington’s clumsiness would center the other team members’ attention on him as much as his reputed brilliance. Which would make it easier for her to search for the decoder and slip away when she needed to contact Cowboy.
Dangerous to Hold Page 25