by Rachel Grant
“Mimic?” she whispered. “Or…I could go down on you.”
He groaned. He wanted that. Had fantasized about it for months. But not like this. Never like this.
He kissed her again. He’d just have to risk dragging her out of the room and off the boat. It was the only solution he wouldn’t regret. If they lived long enough to look back on this night.
She slid a hand between them and into his pants. She wrapped her fingers around his cock, and he thought his eyes might roll back in his head. He knew she was trying to make this easier for him. His body blocked the cameras. No one could see her hand on his cock.
“Let me suck you, Mani,” she said loud enough for the recording devices to pick up. “Let me make it up to you.”
Her hand felt so good, and this situation was utterly twisted.
Behind him, the door burst open. Flimsy fucking locks.
Before he could set Savvy down, he was yanked backward and Savvy ripped from his arms. She dropped to the floor.
Anton. Fuck. He’d forgotten about Anton. She must’ve done something to ditch him.
The guard he’d elbowed in the face was more than happy to take a swing at Cal while Anton went after Savvy.
“You fucking bitch!” Anton shouted as he backhanded her.
White-hot rage shot through Cal. Revulsion rose too. He’d done the same thing minutes ago. He lunged toward Anton, but the guard nailed him in the stomach, then pushed him back.
“I will fuck you while your American watches.” Anton yanked her head back, exposing her throat. “Then I will cut you right here.”
Cal elbowed the guard in the gut, then shoved his head into the wall. The guard dropped, unconscious, clearing the path to Anton.
Anton’s hands were fumbling with his fly as Cal came at him. Cal yanked him away from Savvy and grabbed him by the throat. He slammed his back against the wall. “Touch her again, and I will rip your fucking throat out.”
A knife appeared in Anton’s hand. He slashed toward Cal’s stomach. Cal turned the blade back and shoved, his hand wrapped around Anton’s on the knife. The long, sharp blade pierced Anton’s gut with ease.
“I told you she’s mine.” He jerked on the Russian’s wrist, making sure the knife cut a wide swath through his belly. Blood poured over Cal’s hand, soaking his sleeve and spilling onto his jacket and shirt.
Anton slumped forward, mouth open in shock. He slowly slid to the floor.
Cal took Savvy’s hand. “Time to go.”
She nodded. Her eyes had the glazed look of shock, even horror. He’d bet it was an act. But damn, she was good. She gave a slow, almost numb nod and followed him out the door, her hand clasped in his.
All eyes followed them across the room as he approached their host. Still holding Savvy’s hand, he picked up the pendant with his other hand, smearing it with Anton’s blood. “A hundred and ten. And the girl is mine.”
The Russian nodded. “Done. Leave the pendant. Money will be delivered to your hotel.”
“No. I want the money now.” He slipped the pendant in a blood-soaked jacket pocket and turned for the door.
“Fine,” Gorev said. “You will have it now.”
Cal turned to see Gorev nod to a servant.
Precious minutes ticked by as they waited. He should have left the artifact and allowed the money to be delivered. He hadn’t because it would have looked suspicious. Same with just walking out, leaving the artifact behind.
Savvy stood meekly at his side, leaning against him. He wrapped an arm around her waist, reminding him she was nearly naked. “She needs her gown.”
Lubanga was silent for a long moment, then said, “No. If it is in my stateroom, it is mine.”
He really couldn’t argue that point.
A servant arrived with stacks of hundred-dollar bills in a briefcase. Gorev counted out eleven stacks. Cal flipped through them to make sure they were all hundreds and dropped them in a cloth sack the servant provided. He then set the pendant on the table. Transaction complete, they turned to leave.
“We haven’t discussed the other artifacts,” Gorev said.
Cal didn’t bother to turn back. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Meet me in Kinshasa in a week, Mr. Kalenga,” Lubanga said. “I will have the paperwork for your mining claim drawn up and ready to sign.”
Cal gave a sharp nod. He and Savvy escaped the ballroom at last.
11
Savvy didn’t take a deep breath until they were in their SUV, driving away from the dock. They couldn’t speak, because odds were, the truck had been bugged while they were at the party. It had been an unavoidable risk.
They couldn’t waste time scanning for a bug when they needed distance from the boat. Cal was bound to be freaked out about hitting her. Not to mention he’d killed a man.
Well, Anton might not die, but no one was rushing to get him medical aid, so odds were he was dead already.
Not that Cal would freak out over the death. She knew for a fact he’d killed in combat. But this was his first kill as part of a covert op. This wasn’t a battle with enemy lines drawn. It was different when there was deception involved.
She’d set Anton up. She’d used him to escape the room and had enraged him by humiliating him. It was her fault Cal had killed Anton. Her fault Anton—no matter how vile he was as a person—was dead.
Cal had been magnificent in his role as Mani, staying in character even when everything went to hell. She’d feared his acting ability would fall short, but he’d delivered a flawless performance. So good she wasn’t sure if it was Mani or Cal who’d kissed her with such intensity.
It would take a while to reach the Japanese sedan they’d purchased this morning and parked near an ocean beach. They would abandon the SUV and head to a new hotel. This would buy them time to regroup and figure out their next step.
She needed to tell Cal about Zagreus.
And the fact that this had been a kill mission—except now, she wouldn’t kill Lubanga. Not until she knew who in the CIA had leaked the operation to the target.
Cal drove, taking a long, slow Surveillance Detection Route through the city. If the car was bugged, they were being tracked anyway, but at least this way, they’d have a few minutes to change cars. The sedan couldn’t be bugged—no one even knew it existed—and they’d take yet another long SDR before heading to their next hotel.
It was hard to believe it was only just after twenty-one hundred hours. They’d been at the party for about an hour. All that prep and days of travel for one intense, horrible hour, and they were done. At least he hoped they were.
If Savvy hadn’t managed to copy Lubanga’s files, he couldn’t see a way to get back on the boat. The ruse of her trying to trade up sugar daddies would never work again. The CIA would have to send someone else.
Tomorrow, they’d be on a plane to Camp Citron, and he’d be Sergeant First Class Cassius Callahan again. She’d be Savannah James. They’d part ways when he returned to the US in a week. They might cross paths again in another country, another deployment, but more likely, he’d never see her again.
That was partly why he’d turned down her offer of sex the other night. He wanted to be able to walk away from her at the end of the op with a clear conscience. But after tonight, was that even possible?
He squeezed the steering wheel. He’d backhanded her, then kissed her, brutally. Forcefully. But the worst part was he’d gotten a fucking hard-on in the process.
She shivered and turned on the heat. She still wore nothing but underwear. He’d offered her his suit jacket, but it had been damp with Anton’s blood and she’d declined. Instead, she’d piled the stacks of hundred-dollar bills in the jacket and tossed the cloth bag out the window. Good thinking. It was probably bugged.
He reached out and put an arm around her, pulling her close to his side, sharing his body heat. She curled up against him as he drove through the dark streets of Dar es Salaam.
He came to a stop at a red light
, and she reached up and turned his face, pulling his mouth down to hers. She kissed him, openmouthed and deep. A connection he needed in the wake of their forced silence. Her tongue slid against his, taking, giving. He responded in kind.
A car honked, and he lifted his head to see the light had changed. He pressed the accelerator, still holding her close but his focus again on the road and the SDR. They needed to be alert for followers. Any sign of a tail and they’d have to lose them before going to the sedan, or they’d have to abandon the sedan—which held all their supplies.
With a hundred and ten thousand dollars, they’d get by, but it would be better if they had access to Savvy’s spy gadgets. After an hour of seemingly aimless driving, Savvy gave him the thumbs-up. It was safe to head to the sedan now. There’d been no sign they were being followed.
Twenty minutes later, they pulled into a parking lot near the ocean. The sedan was parked across the street next to an open-air market that was nothing but shuttered stalls this time of night.
He unbuttoned his shirt and handed it to her. At least the blood was dried now and wouldn’t stain her skin. With the market closed, there weren’t many people around, but she’d still draw attention crossing the street in nothing but a bra and underwear. This close to the water, they might look like a couple that had opted to go skinny-dipping, with her clothes being caught by a wave, so they shared his.
Not something that would be approved of in Tanzania—where public displays of affection were frowned upon—but better than the alternative, being arrested as foreign agents.
They could only hope it was too dark for anyone to notice the blood on the white shirt.
She donned the shirt and buttoned it up. He grabbed the jacket wrapped around the money, and together they crossed the street. They reached the sedan without incident and within a minute were back on the road. Savvy did a quick scan of the car with a bug detector, coming up empty as expected. She scanned the money too, just in case. It was clean.
“What will happen to it? The money?” he asked.
“It will fund more missions like this one. A small portion of Drugov’s money was redirected to fund Mani Kalenga’s bank accounts. It was faster than going through channels and getting all the right forms signed. Not every project requires buying cars and chartering planes, but it’s nice to have the money when needed. You and I will both be signing forms in triplicate when we get back, documenting where every dollar went along with where this money came from.”
She climbed into the backseat. A glance in the rearview mirror showed her changing into a T-shirt and sweatpants, which she was able to retrieve by pulling down the seat to reach her suitcase in the trunk.
“Can you grab me a tee as well?” he asked.
She did, and he pulled it over his head at the next traffic light. They settled into silence again as he drove down side streets and main thoroughfares through the city. He wasn’t ready to talk to her about what had happened on the boat, not when he couldn’t look into her eyes as he apologized for all he’d had to say and do.
Things he’d said about her mouth and body, the way he’d objectified her. It was the role she’d signed up for, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t cut them both to play it out in front of men who saw her as a possession.
After thirty minutes of driving, Savvy said, “We can’t go to the hotel I chose when we were at Camp Citron.”
“Why not?”
“We need to hide until I go through the data I uploaded from Lubanga’s computer.”
“You got in?” He’d guessed she had, or she would have found a way to signal their efforts had been a bust, but still, it was a relief.
“Yeah. I copied about seventy-five percent of his files. It should be enough.”
“And we need to hide because?”
“I think we were compromised—by someone in the Agency.”
She didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t press. There would be plenty of time to debrief when they were out of the car and safely tucked away in an anonymous hotel. He felt exposed out here—even though they’d changed cars and swept for bugs. “So where do we go?”
She pulled a cell phone from the glove box—one of the phones she’d purchased in Nairobi. She tapped the screen. After a few minutes she said. “Got us an Airbnb. One bedroom, one bath. It’s a pool house on a larger gated estate in a quiet neighborhood. Owner is expecting us in thirty minutes.”
“That fast this time of night?”
“Yep. I promised him a hundred-dollar bonus.”
Considering hotel rooms could be pretty cheap here—some only fifteen dollars a night—this was an extravagant payout for late arrival, but considering the stacks of Benjamins in the back, it wasn’t exactly a problem. He was more concerned about putting innocent people at risk, but that couldn’t be helped. At least no one would know where they were.
“How did you get the Airbnb account set up so fast?”
“I did that when we were in Kenya. Just in case. I’d already checked the listings and put out feelers but opted to stay in the same hotel as Anton.” She cleared her throat at that.
Anton, who was probably dead.
Not that Cal grieved for the prick. He’d been about to rape Savvy. He just wondered if his body had already been thrown overboard or if Gorev would wait until they were at sea.
The phone GPS issued directions, and he followed the voice, taking a few wrong turns on purpose, still looking for a tail. Savvy had warned him to never directly drive to their destination. The GPS could recalculate their route.
“What’s our cover story?” he asked. “The landlord is going to want an explanation for a last-minute late-night arrival.”
“We arrived in Dar today, checked in to our hotel, and went to the beach, then out to dinner. While we were out, our hotel room was robbed and my jewelry was taken. We were just getting ready for bed when I discovered the theft. The hotel accused me of lying about the jewelry since nothing else was missing. I don’t feel safe there anymore and insisted we leave.”
“Solid.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re pretty good at this spy thing.”
“Thanks. You’re pretty good at the soldier thing. And you were great tonight.”
“I was horrible tonight,” he said
“Well, you were great at being horrible.”
He tightened his fingers on the steering wheel again. “Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
The phone GPS issued another direction, which he ignored. They’d been only fifteen minutes from the house when Savvy made the arrangements, but it took the full thirty and a few extra to get there. While he drove, Savvy applied makeup to her face, covering her bruises.
At last they reached the gated estate, and he punched in the code that Savvy provided for the gate. Their host met them in front of the pool house, which was set apart from the main house by a separate driveway and garden. The pool nestled between the two buildings at the back of the estate. “How much is this place a night?” he asked.
“Sixty-five US dollars.”
In the US, a place like this would easily be several hundred a night. He felt like they were cheating their hosts, but many factors led to the low cost of housing in Tanzania, not the least of which was the aftereffects of the Rwandan genocide and lengthy war that engulfed Zaire/DRC.
Their host was kind and efficient, quickly showing them around the small house. He expressed remorse at their experience with the hotel and promised they were quite safe on his property. Each guest was given a separate gate code, which was only valid for the length of their stay. They paid cash in advance for a week. What Airbnb didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
The homeowner left them, and at last, they were alone. Safe and anonymous.
After bringing in their bags, he closed and locked the door, then leaned back against it. Savvy went straight to the freezer and pulled out an ice cube tray. She dumped a handful of ice into a towel and held it to her cheek.
The cheek he’d hit.
Fuck. They’d been driving for hours, and she’d needed ice. He hadn’t given her so much as an ibuprofen. He crossed the small room to stand inches in front of her. He studied her expression but didn’t touch her. “Does it hurt?”
“Not too bad.”
He lifted the ice pack from her cheek to inspect the bruise in the full light of the kitchen. The makeup downplayed it, but he could see the swelling. He gently pressed his lips to the welt along the bone.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
She held his gaze. “I’m not. You did what you had to do.” She tucked her forehead against his chest. “But I’m sorry for putting you in that position. Sorry you were forced to do that.”
He cradled her head between his palms and gently nudged her face up so she would see his eyes. “I’m glad it was me, not someone else from Camp Citron. Not Harry. It means a lot to me that you trusted me with that role.”
“You’re the only one I trusted for this mission.” She pressed the ice pack back to her cheek.
He cleared his throat. This was the part that would be hardest to say. But he had to acknowledge it. “When I…when I got hard—it—it wasn’t because I’d hit you. That isn’t what turned me on.”
Her nostrils flared, and she blinked. “I know.” She took a deep breath. “It was an intense moment. You handled it perfectly by kissing me like you did. You saved us both by turning the violence sexual.”
And he could have fucked her in that room, with cameras rolling. He’d been hard and eager. It would have been so easy. And it might’ve happened if Anton hadn’t interrupted.
She stepped back from him. “You want to take a shower? I’m going to make some tea.”
He took that to mean she needed space. He could give her that. “Sure. You planning to work tonight?”
She shook her head. “The files are probably encrypted. I’m too brain-dead to deal with that tonight. I’m going to have some tea. Take a shower. Then try to sleep.”
He wanted to invite her to share his shower, but it didn’t feel right, not after he’d struck her and then violently kissed her.