Seducing the Accomplice

by Jennifer Morey

  “After everything gets going we’ll start mingling.”

  “You mean after everyone starts getting drunk?”

  He chuckled. “Yes. You sure you don’t want to come to work for TES?”

  “TES?”

  Realizing his mistake, he inwardly reprimanded himself. Being with her constantly must be wearing on him. Or was he getting so comfortable with her that he forgot to watch what he said?

  “What does it stand for?”

  “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  Her eyes blinked and radiated her appreciation. “But you did.”

  Yes, he had. And that disturbed him. It was too easy being with her.

  “You might as well tell me now.” She gazed at him beguilingly as she sipped her champagne.

  He found her completely adorable, and she was right. “Tactical Executive Security.” He hadn’t given much away. She’d never find the name in any directory.

  “How long have you been with them?”

  “Six months.”

  He could tell by the sobering of her eyes that she understood the significance of the timing.

  “Why TES?” she asked.

  He’d gone to work for TES after his girlfriend had been killed. “They’re business is counter-terrorism. They were going after Dharr and I wanted to be the one to catch him.” He figured he didn’t need to keep this from her anymore.

  “So you joined them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? You were already chasing him.”

  “TES had the connections I needed, the resources. Equipment and money.” And a cause he believed in. “With them, I could move a lot faster.”

  “And secretly.”

  “Some of our accomplishments do reach the news.”

  “But no one is able to tie them to TES.”

  “No.” Not so far. “Most people would cheer us on.”

  “Except maybe our government, if your actions compromise international relationships.”

  “Nothing is compromised if the organization behind the mission is unknown.”

  He saw her consider that without any decisive favor for one side or the other. “Are you going to keep working for them?”

  Dharr was dead. “Yes.” His thirst for revenge had been satisfied but not his thirst to squash terrorism.

  “You say that with such conviction.”

  Her dreamy expression told him she liked that. Maybe knowing he worked on the side of good—albeit in secret—made her feel better. He didn’t know how to tell her she shouldn’t be so enamored.

  “What made you decide to join the Army?” she asked, sipping the last of her first glass of champagne.

  He flagged a waiter over and got her another one. That made her smile with that same dreamy look in her eyes.

  “I come from a long line of military men,” he answered her question. “My father lost a leg on one deployment, but he never spoke one negative word against the military. He was a true patriot.”

  “And so you grew up with the same ideals?”

  “Yes.”

  Her dreamy smile changed to curiosity. “You don’t sound very happy about that.”

  “I’ve seen things that made me question the way our military operates. It made me wonder if some rules aren’t in our best interest.”

  “Do you mean the attack in Yemen?”

  He nodded. “One of our own took sides with terrorism. I caught Dharr, but I didn’t do it by following rules or making sure I was politically correct. We’ll never beat terrorism by following rules. Terrorists don’t care about diplomacy. They don’t follow rules. That makes catching them a dirty job.”

  “But you were a Delta soldier. Every mission you went on was secret.”

  “Yes, they were secret, but none of them gave me Dharr.”

  “In other words, the only way to win the war on terrorism is to throw morals out the window and kill without mercy.”

  That was exactly the way he’d killed Dharr. “You think terrorists deserve to be treated morally?”

  “No, but the governments where they take refuge do.”

  “Not if they have their heads buried in the sand. At that point morality has very little to do with it. That’s the beauty of working for a company like TES. We go in and take out our target before anyone knows we were there or who was there. The media don’t know. Our government doesn’t know, not technically anyway, and the government where our target is located doesn’t know. If nobody knows, no one gets hurt except the one who deserves to be hurt.”

  Sadie sat back and sipped her second glass of champagne. He sipped his, too, and watched her think over what he said.

  Finally she set her glass down and looked at him. “You have a lot of passion on the subject.”

  Yes, it was something he felt very strongly about. “I’m going to kill as many terrorists as I can until I’m physically unable to do it anymore.”

  Her eyes blinked slowly and he could swear he saw her attraction to him grow the more she heard what she called his passion.

  “You have a really good reason for wanting to do that,” she said.

  He didn’t want to talk about what had led him down this path, so he didn’t say anything. Leaning back like her, he drank more champagne and checked the tables around Andoni. The older man had gone back to his table. One of the men who’d sat there had gotten up and now stood with a group of others.

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this from the beginning?”

  He turned to Sadie. “Would you have gone with me if you had known?”

  “You have a just cause for doing what you do.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  She didn’t answer at first. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

  Because her reasons for wanting to escape had more to do with her feelings than his background? Yes, and because of that he had to watch her.

  Surveying the rest of the crowd, he saw there were more people here. Many had abandoned their tables to stand and talk near the two bars in the room or to dance. It was time to start mingling.

  Just when he was going to ask Sadie to dance, a couple approached their table. Late arrivals.

  The woman asked something in Albanian.

  “Do you speak English?” Calan asked.

  “Ah, Americans,” she said in accented English. “We travel there a lot.” She looked from him to Sadie and back again. “Are these seats taken?”

  She wore a strapless white dress and held a small matching purse. Diamonds dangled from her ears and around her neck. She appeared to be in her late forties, with light green eyes that had probably been striking in her youth. They were her best feature—otherwise she wasn’t all that attractive. The man with her looked pretty much like every other man in the room, except for his big nose and mouth. He was also about an inch shorter than his date. They weren’t married, unless they both had chosen not to wear wedding rings.

  “No,” Sadie said before he could answer. “Would you like to join us?” She gave them a beaming smile.

  Calan noticed how hard she tried to be friendly and wondered why she thought she had to.

  “Why, thank you,” the woman said, all sugary and false. “I am Edona and this is Pietro.” She sat in the chair beside Sadie. Pietro sat next to her and to the left of Calan.

  “I’m Sadie and this is Calan,” Sadie said, still smiling in an overexaggerated way. “That’s a lovely necklace you have on.”

  The woman all but gushed her pleasure. “Why, thank you.”

  Were they going to have to listen to her say, “Why, thank you” all night? Calan watched her eye Sadie like a jealous woman looking for flaws. She made no return comment on Sadie’s appearance, which was about ninety-five percent higher on the knockout scale than hers.

  “What brings you to Tirana?” Pietro asked.

  “Just visiting,” Calan said, looking over at Sadie, hoping she’d take his lead.

  “Vacationing?”

  “Yes. We came ove
r from Italy.”

  The man nodded, taking a glass of champagne for his girlfriend and another for himself from a waiter who had approached with a tray.

  “Are you from here?” Sadie asked, looking at Edona.

  “Pietro is from Rome, but we live in Tirana.” Edona lifted her head higher. “In a villa on the coast.”

  “We rented one in Montenegro.” Sadie glanced over at Calan and he could tell she wondered if she was supposed to say that.

  Her distraction made her miss the haughty narrowing of Edona’s eyes. “We’ve been to Montenegro many times.”

  Sadie smiled. “I love to travel.”

  “What is it you do in America?” She looked from Calan to Sadie.

  Enjoying the show, Calan relaxed back with his glass of champagne and waited for Sadie to answer. This ought to be good.

  “We…I…my father runs a restaurant corporation and Calan is a business analyst.”

  Calan was momentarily awed by her quick thinking.

  Edona’s brow lifted. “Hmph.” She looked at Calan and checked him out.

  “What company are you with?” Pietro asked.

  “Homeland Bank.”

  The other man nodded. “Big company. Do you travel a lot?”

  “Yes. Mixing business with pleasure right now.” He turned to Sadie and smiled.

  “I know what that’s like.” Pietro chuckled, glancing over at his girlfriend.

  Her superior expression re-emerged. “Pietro is a top executive for Andoni International Airport.”

  Calan filed that away for now. That’s how he’d gotten his invitation to the party. He worked for Arber Andoni.

  “What kind of restaurants does your father run?” Pietro asked Sadie. “What’s the name of his company?”

  Her face fell a little. She didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to either, and would have stopped her if he wasn’t sure Zhafa already knew who she was.

  Edona didn’t want her to, either, Calan saw.

  “The Mancini Corporation. Table Mesa Kitchen. Pascoli’s. Salt Reef Bar and Grill.”

  “I know of them. Your father is a very successful man.”

  Sadie’s face remained unhappy. She glanced at Edona and saw the jealousy oozing off her. Except Calan doubted she recognized the other woman’s jealousy. Maybe she only saw the animosity and assumed she wasn’t fitting in again.

  “What is it you do?”

  Sadie turned to Pietro. “I…”

  “Sadie’s an artist,” Calan said and felt her startled eyes find him. He smiled fondly at her, not having to act. “She oil paints.”

  Edona laughed. “Good thing your father makes a lot of money. You’d be starving otherwise. It’s so hard to make it as an artist. It’s the same with musicians and writers. So many don’t make anything at all.”

  Sadie’s face began to flush.

  “Her paintings have sold,” Calan informed the shallow woman.

  Edona passed a glance over him and then returned her attention to Sadie. “Of course they have.” She patted Sadie’s hand. “I don’t have to work, either.”

  “Edona’s family runs a farm near Tirana,” Pietro said.

  Calan caught the alteration in her eyes and saw right through her. Her family didn’t make much money. She only made people believe they did. What she really wanted was to have what Sadie had. The real thing. Lots of money. Someone to take care of her while she floated from one social event to the next.

  “Oh, what kind of farm? Are there animals?” Sadie asked.

  “No.” Edona sounded annoyed. “We grow produce.”

  “Oh. My father gets a lot of his produce from a big corporation. They must have a lot more land than your family does. Because it’s a corporation, not a family-run business. All I mean is, it’s bigger…the corporation.”

  Despite Sadie’s attempt to smooth her words, Edona almost visibly fumed with anger.

  “You must have a very close-knit family,” Sadie added.

  Calan had to stifle a laugh. She tried so hard to make others like her that she ended up saying the wrong things. But the people who misconstrued what she’d said weren’t worth the effort to begin with.

  Edona bristled but said nothing. She took an aggressive sip of champagne and glowered at Sadie, who noticed and sort of shrank in her chair.

  Calan turned to Pietro. It was time to start digging. “How long have you worked at the airport?”

  “A little over a year.”

  Underneath the table, he reached over to Sadie’s knee and put his hand there, caressing her bare skin with his thumb. Her head turned abruptly but she didn’t resist him. Instead, he sensed she understood why he’d done it. He was certain when she put her hand over his and smiled.

  “You like it?” Calan asked Pietro.

  The man gave a noncommittal nod. “Pays good.” Beside him, Edona gloated over at Sadie, who again noticed and met the woman’s gaze with more confidence than before.

  “How do you know Arber?” Pietro asked.

  “I don’t know him well.”

  Pietro frowned. “Then how did you get invited? This is Mr. Andoni’s fortieth birthday celebration.”

  “We were invited through a common acquaintance. Because we didn’t have any other plans, we thought we could use a nice night out.” He gave Sadie a meaningful look, and she leaned closer to him with infatuation glowing on her face.

  As he hoped, Pietro didn’t press on who the common acquaintance was. But Edona glowered as she noticed the exchange between him and Sadie.

  Calan decided to spare Sadie any more torture and said to the couple, “Will you excuse us?”

  Standing, he extended his hand and Sadie took it. He led her to the dance floor and twirled her gently toward him, bringing her flush against him and holding her close.

  “You did that on purpose,” she said.

  Partially true. “Can you blame me?”

  She was still smiling warm and soft up at him, relaxed in his arms, moving with him to the music. There were several other couples dancing but there was plenty of room to move.

  Calan saw that Arber had left his table and had joined the group of men he’d seen earlier. He started talking to a man standing next to the one who’d left the older man’s table. His head tossed back for a loud laugh. Calan caught the man standing next to them looking right at him, and he didn’t look pleased. In fact, he looked downright ticked. Zhafa. It had to be.

  “Get ready for a confrontation,” Calan said.

  Sadie’s glow dimmed and she began searching around the room. “Why? Has someone recognized us?” She looked up at him. “You said no one was going to shoot at us tonight.”

  “They won’t. Not in here.”

  When her eyes grew more frightened, he said, “There are too many people here for anyone to do anything. Stop worrying.”

  “What about when we leave?”

  “Stop worrying,” he repeated, running his hand up her back and down again. He was beginning to really like her intelligent mind. When her eyes blinked in response to the caress and she softened again, he wondered if he’d forget the reason they were here and lost himself in her.

  Bad idea.

  “Let’s go get some more champagne.” He stopped dancing and took hold of her hand.

  “We just got out here,” she complained.

  He led her to one of the waiters and handed her a fresh glass, then took one for himself.

  She sipped and began looking around the room. Calan kept his eye on Zhafa, watching him look over at him and Sadie every once in a while.

  “Who’s that older man who keeps going over to Arber’s wife?” Sadie asked.

  He first turned to her, then followed her gaze to Arber’s wife, who smiled at a tall, gray-haired man with a barrel torso and dark eyes. There was a close connection between them. They knew each other well.

  “I bet he’s her father,” Sadie said.

  Again, her observation impressed him. She was full of
surprises. Rich socialite on the surface, but underneath…

  The older man leaned down and kissed Arber’s wife on her cheek and murmured what Calan assumed were terms of endearment. Then he walked away.

  “Definitely her dad,” Sadie said. “They look alike, too.”

  They did. “You sure you don’t want to come to work for TES?” he teased.

  And he got what he wanted—her unappreciative pout. Chuckling, he slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer to his side. Like on the dance floor, she melted against him.

  Checking the group of men with Arber, he saw that they’d broken up. Arber had returned to his wife’s side and he didn’t know where Zhafa had gone.

  “Arber waited until his wife’s father left before he went over to her,” Sadie said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw him looking over there when they were talking. I don’t think he likes his father-in-law.”

  Calan watched Arber talking to his wife. She wasn’t happy with whatever they were talking about.

  “That’s interesting,” he said.

  “Maybe you should try to find out her father’s name,” Sadie suggested like a true operative.

  Calan chuckled and that brought her head around. When he saw her bewildered expression, he chuckled again.

  “I don’t understand why you think it’s you who’s lacking when you meet rich people,” he said, trying not to fall harder for her than he already had.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re an amazing woman, Sadie Mancini. Don’t ever let anyone make you feel any less.”

  “What?”

  “Do you think Edona would have noticed a conflict between Arber and his wife’s father? She wouldn’t have noticed the fact that he probably is her father. And I know she would have never thought we should find out his name.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. And then she rolled her eyes. “You know as well as I do that I’m not cut out for this kind of work.”

  He wasn’t so sure about that. With a little practice she could be an asset to an intel team.

  “You have balls showing up here,” a heavily accented voice said in English.

  Calan turned to his right, Sadie stepping along with him, to see the man who’d spoken with Arber.

  “Gjergj Zhafa,” Calan said. “I’ve been waiting to meet you.”