The Medusa Proposition

by Cindy Dees

  Aleesha frowned. “Are you referring to that bit where you denied having a relationship with her and that it was merely an accident that you ended up together last night?”

  “Yes!”

  “Ah.” A long pregnant pause. “Yep, you men definitely need relationship-skills transplants.”

  He shoved a frustrated hand through his hair. “Care to explain?”

  “Think about it from her perspective. You’re crazy about this guy, you’re spending romantic time together, there’s a big vibe going between you. And then he stands up in front of God and the international press corps and declares that he’s having nothing at all to do with you.”

  “But you Medusas had arrived! She didn’t have to pretend to be my girlfriend anymore, and doing so was going to wreck her reputation. It was only logical that I deny our being involved. I wouldn’t want to blow her cover. Nor do I want her reporter buddies invading our private relationship.”

  “And did you explain all that to her before you announced that you two had nothing going on between you?”

  “There wasn’t time! I had a dozen microphones shoved under my nose!”

  Aleesha laughed. “And you can’t figure out why she broke that story? How’d you get so rich being so stupid?”

  He scowled. Stared out at the ocean. Was it really that simple? Had he hurt Paige’s feelings? She always seemed so tough, so sure of herself. Had she really let him get that far under her skin? Whoa. What did it mean?

  He sighed heavily. “I think maybe I know where she went.”

  Paige made the turn for home, panting hard as she lengthened her stride even more. This run on the beach had been just what the doctor ordered. Her head felt clearer than it had since that gruesome bag washed up on the beach several days ago and Tom Rowe had barged into her life.

  She had to face it. They were over. Not that they’d ever had a chance to begin with. She would put him behind her, lick her wounds and move on eventually. And in the meantime, she had her day job and her work with the Medusas to keep her busy. And speaking of which, she had an idea. It was a hunch, really. Nothing concrete, just a niggling suspicion that wouldn’t go away. She wanted to check it out before she said anything to anyone else about it, though.

  Instead of stopping at her cottage, she ran right past it and headed for the conference hotel. Her press credentials and the tools she would need were in her fanny pack, and she had fresh clothes at the hotel. She’d shower there and then check out her theory.

  Greer Carson was out of the news bureau when she got there. Too bad. She ought to catch up with her cell phone sooner or later. Truth be told, she felt more than a little naked without it. She’d been so rattled when she heard about Smythe’s death she’d forgotten to ask Greer for her phone back. And goodness knew, Carson had had too much going on just then to think of it. She stepped into the private bath attached to the bureau and took a quick shower. A half hour later she’d dried her hair, changed into a pair of dress slacks and a tailored shirt and finished tossing on a little makeup. Time to go test her theory.

  The first order of business was to find out where Mimi Ando was right now. Thankfully, Paige had chatted up the concierge the first few days she was here, and he was more than happy to tell her that she could find her good friend Mimi in the hotel’s spa. A quick call to the spa revealed that Mimi would be there wrapped in towels and mud for the next hour. Perfect.

  Time to take an extracurricular look around the grieving widow’s digs.

  It was a shockingly easy matter to stroll unseen right up to Mimi’s door, insert an electronic lock pick into the card reader and let herself into the suite.

  The concierge had mentioned that Mrs. Ando’s assistant had a separate room attached to Mimi’s. Listening hard, Paige thought she heard the guy moving around in his room. In deference to him, she glided around the suite quietly, in search of anything that would confirm or allay her suspicions.

  Mimi’s things were scattered haphazardly around the suite, although someone had clearly straightened them and imposed a modicum of order on what Paige suspected would otherwise have been a chaotic mess of clothing and possessions flung around the place. She eased open the bedroom door and slipped into the dim space. It was messier in here, smelling thickly of some sort of floral perfume. Jasmine, maybe.

  She poked around tabletops and dresser drawers, opened purses and looked inside the luggage stored in the closet. Nothing. But Paige’s gut said there had to be something. She just wasn’t looking in the right place. She moved into the bathroom.

  And there she spotted the mother lode: Mimi’s cell phone lying on the bathroom counter. Paige picked it up quickly and hit the button to retrieve all of the woman’s recent phone calls. Whipping out a notebook and pen, Paige quickly scribbled down all the phone numbers stored for the last several weeks. She checked Mimi’s voice mail for any saved messages, but that was a bust. That really would’ve been too much to hope for, she supposed. Still, the list of phone numbers was a major coup.

  She laid the phone back down exactly where she’d found it and turned to leave, but noise in the outer room made her stop cold. Voices. Two of them—one male and one female. Damn! She leaped over to the light switch and slapped it off. Then she raced over to the shower and slid inside, eased the door shut behind her, crouched in the back corner and thanked God that the shower had wavy glass that obscured her from sight.

  Someone came into the bedroom, and the voices resolved themselves into two people speaking agitated French. Apparently, Mimi was upset about something that had happened at the spa. Paige’s French didn’t include extensive beauty terminology, and she didn’t follow the details of the conversation.

  The bathroom door opened and the lights flashed on. Yelling stridently now to the man outside, Mimi went to the restroom while Paige held her breath and pressed even lower against the cold marble at her back. The toilet flushed, the sink ran and the lights went out. The room plunged into darkness once more.

  Paige let out a relieved breath. Now to get out of here and run down that list of phone numbers! Her watch said it was nearly five o’clock. If she was lucky, Mimi had some sort of late tea or early dinner engagement and would leave the suite shortly.

  No such luck. One hour dragged into two before Paige heard the outer door close and the suite finally went quiet. She gave it a few minutes to make sure no one was in the main room, and then she crept cautiously out of the shower.

  The bedroom was nearly dark now as the sun set outside.

  She had one last job to do before she left. She unscrewed the metal air vent cover high in the corner and planted a tiny transceiver inside the duct, wiring it to the metal to boost the device’s tiny antenna. After checking that it was activated, she replaced the vent cover and eased over to the living room door. She pressed her ear to the wood panel. Silence. Cracking open the door slowly, she took a peek into the main room. Only a single small lamp illuminated the space and it was empty. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  When she was sure the hallway was deserted, she slipped out of the suite. Clear. She’d made it. Her first successful breaking and entering. Well, her second if she wanted to count sneaking into Tom’s suite. Except he’d caught her that time. She pushed the image of him out of her mind. Work. Her life was about work. No more men. At least not for a good long time.

  She made her way to the news bureau and was relieved to find it deserted. World News had a secure Internet connection that she used to send H.O.T Watch the list of phone numbers with an urgent request to track all of them down. Knowing the intel specialists there and the scope of their computer resources, she imagined it wouldn’t be more than a few hours until they’d nailed down the owner of every number.

  Until then, she had some free time on her hands.

  Thoughts of Tom crept into her awareness along with pain. Loss. Sorrow. Maybe it was for the best she discovered now instead of later that she’d been nothing more than a casual fling for him. But that didn�
�t make the knowledge suck any less.

  The last few nights of thin sleep were starting to catch up with her, and her eyelids drooped. Time to settle in for a bit of surveillance. She went to the front desk and asked for a room in the hotel. The assistant manager told her they were full, but if she was willing to take something without a working shower, he could at least give her a bed for the night. She took it.

  Mimi would be out for a couple of hours at dinner, so Paige set her wrist alarm and lay down for a much needed power nap. Just in case, though, she put the speaker that went along with her planted bug right next to her ear and turned up the volume all the way.

  Some time later, the blaring of Mimi’s voice practically inside her head brought Paige bolt upright out of a dead sleep. It took her a disoriented moment to figure out that the harridan wasn’t in Paige’s room, but was actually transmitting over a radio.

  Right. The bug.

  “…don’t care about your excuses. I need you to finish the job!” A pause, and then she seemed to cut off someone. “Stop. I don’t care why. Just finish it. Now.” Another pause. “I don’t care what it costs!” Mimi’s voice was rising shrilly. “Hire three men. Six. Ten! Just get rid of him now! Do you understand me?”

  Paige grabbed for the volume control. Nothing like having Mimi Ando screaming in your ear to wake up a soul. Or wake a soul from the dead, as it were. Sheesh. She hit the replay button on the digital recorder built into the speaker setup and listened to Mimi once more. For all the world, it sounded like the woman was talking to a hit man and berating him for failing to kill his target.

  Could her suspicions really be true? Was Mimi Ando the would-be killer?

  Chapter 14

  Paige frowned, thinking hard. Were the killings linked after all to the mysterious business deal the billionaire targets had been approached with, or was it something else entirely?

  She could see why Mimi Ando might want to kill Tom Rowe. He definitely had that effect on a girl. But why the others? Why Jeremy Smythe, and why Mimi’s own husband?

  One thing was for certain. If Paige was interpreting what she’d heard correctly, the threat level to Tom was about to go sky-high. Instead of a single would-be killer, an entire team of them was about to go after him.

  Think, Paige. Do the analysis the way you were taught. Okay. Mimi had just told someone to finish the job immediately and to hire as many people as needed to get it done. Where was someone on this isolated and super secure little island going to scrape up several assassins on short notice? And how would the hit squad lay their hands on weapons? At the moment, security on Beau Mer was ridiculous. The only way she’d gotten a sidearm onto the island was by someone at a much higher pay grade than hers—like White House level—okaying use of the American diplomatic pouch to smuggle one to her. The only people on the island with guns were conference security personnel and the police….

  Her train of thought froze in its tracks.

  Surely not. The police?

  Why not? The conference security team had been compromised, and as soon as the local police got involved in Takashi Ando’s death, all sorts of rumors had started, which could only mean the police had a leak. A corrupt leak. Someone willing to trade information for cash, most likely. In her experience as a journalist, she’d found that where there was petty corruption, there was almost always major corruption.

  Okay. So, assuming Mimi’s hit man would recruit help from within the island’s police force, that was going to be a pain in the rear for the Medusas to deal with. How were they supposed to tell apart the legitimate police who would protect Tom and the corrupt ones who would hide behind their uniforms while trying to kill him?

  He had to leave the island. Leave the summit. Now. Before this new threat got organized and came after him.

  She reached for the telephone beside the bed out of reflex, but then stopped. If some of the local police were corrupt, some of the hotel staff were likely corrupt, too. And they might very well be engaging in dodgy activities like phone tapping. She had to assume the phone lines on the island were not secure. Which meant she needed her cell phone back if she was to contact the Medusas and warn them of the looming threat.

  She made a quick call down to the World News bureau and hung up frustrated. Where in the hell was Greer Carson? The other guys in the news bureau had no idea where he’d gone. Out for dinner somewhere on the island. Not helpful. She didn’t even know if he’d gone to a public place like a restaurant or whether he’d gone to a private dinner.

  No help for it. She’d have to warn the Medusas in person…and see Tom again.

  Cursing under her breath, she headed for the elevators and rode up to the top floor. She paused for a moment in front of Tom’s door, steeling her nerve. She could do this. Just go in, state her business and get out. Do her job, and nothing more. Heck, if she was lucky, he’d be in the bedroom and she wouldn’t have to see him at all before she delivered her warning and left.

  She knocked upon the panel.

  Gretchen opened the door. Paige frowned. That was weird. She’d have expected one of the Medusas on duty to have answered.

  “Hi, Gretchen. I need to speak to my colleagues. May I come in?”

  “You may come in, but they’re not here.”

  Paige stepped inside quickly and closed the door behind her, alarm bells clanging wildly in her gut. She asked urgently, “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know. Out somewhere trying to find you, I gather. Miss Aleesha tried to call you for hours, then Mr. Rowe said he knew where you were, and they all left.”

  “How many of the others were with him?”

  “All of them, Miss Ellis.”

  Not good. Her teammates should be well into an established rotation of rest and bodyguard duty already. But if Mamba had the whole team around Tom, she obviously believed something was very wrong.

  Paige asked Tom’s assistant, “Did they give you any indication where they might be going? Any hint? Did they say anything?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. They just picked up their backpacks and charged out of here.”

  That was good news at least. It meant her teammates had ample weapons and ammunition with them, in addition to a wide array of nifty tools of the trade. It also meant they must have left the hotel. Which meant—

  Her cottage.

  “Thanks, Gretchen. You’ve been a great help. If any of them happen to contact you in the next few minutes, tell them I’m where Tom and I took cover last night.”

  “Where you…”

  Paige raced out of the suite before Gretchen could finish her sentence and headed for her car. Aleesha was worried about something, and Paige trusted her colleague’s instincts completely. Heck, her own instincts were shouting that trouble was coming. Soon. Very soon.

  Tom searched the cottage himself, even after the Medusas had finished sweeping the place. He’d been so sure she’d be here! Where was she, dammit? Worry pecked at the back of his eyeballs, too insistent to ignore. It was shocking to realize that no matter how mad he was at her stunt with the news report, he still cared about her. How could that be? She was a reporter for God’s sake. A mouthy, pushy female who in no way needed him. Although maybe, at the end of the day, that was the draw of her. She was more his equal than just about any woman he’d met in a very long time.

  “Believe me now, boyo?” Aleesha asked as he emerged from Paige’s bedroom.

  He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. But she was here not too long ago.”

  Aleesha’s eyebrows sailed up. “How do you figure that?”

  “Her bathroom smells like her. The scent would have faded if the last time she was in there was early this morning.”

  One of the other women piped up, “And you know she was in there early this morning how?”

  Aleesha intervened smoothly. “That’s a good point. Would you recognize if any of her clothes were missing?”

  “Not hardly. About all I can tell you about her wardrobe is she wears far too
many mannish, ugly slacks and shirts.”

  Several of the Medusas looked back and forth between him and Aleesha, comprehension dawning on their faces. Nope, not slow on the uptake these snake ladies. They’d all figured out how he had personal knowledge of Paige’s morning activities.

  “Are her running shoes here?” he asked.

  Aleesha gestured to one of the women to check it out.

  In a moment the tall blond one came back. “No running shoes,” she announced.

  “Which direction would she run from here?” Aleesha asked.

  He shrugged. “Either way from here, there are a couple of miles of hard-packed sand. It’s a little more isolated to the north, and that direction would be my guess. She strikes me as the type to prefer solitude for her runs.”

  Aleesha looked at the others. “Would you agree with that?”

  Nods all around from Paige’s teammates.

  “Go have a look down the beach, Casey.”

  The woman nodded briskly at Aleesha’s order and left via the kitchen door. Tom resisted an urge to pace and instead sat down on the sofa and commenced trying to relax the tension across the back of his neck and shoulders. The exercise was a complete failure.

  Casey couldn’t have been outside more than three minutes before Tom jumped at the shadow suddenly standing in the living room doorway. The former FBI agent murmured, “No sign of Paige. But we have a bigger problem. Someone’s hiding in the jungle on the south side of the cottage.”

  Everyone’s gazes snapped to the windows, but nobody made any other sudden move. Good self-discipline these women had. Dusk was falling outside, which meant they’d be brightly lit in here to anyone looking in. Fish in a barrel.

  “Casey, slide into the kitchen and turn out the light. Alex, give it a few minutes after that and then turn out the lamp beside you. Cho, a few seconds after that, kill the bedroom lights. It’s too early for anyone to believe the occupant of this place is going to bed for the night, but let’s not make it blindingly obvious that we’ve spotted whoever’s out there by slamming off all the lights at once, eh?”