He sat as implacable as Buddha, awaiting the full story.
Another memory constricted her throat with sorrow. “I joined ATSA when it was formed under the Homeland Security Department. Some of the cops who died in the 9-11 attack were friends. I had to do what I could to prevent more carnage.”
Nick nodded solemnly. “I’ll bet you never expected to trap terrorists by living in a Chevy Chase mansion.”
“And you never expected to be in the midst of a terrorist trap.” When he didn’t react, she said, “I’m glad we’ve cleared up the past. But our having a past causes a small problem.”
“And what’s that?”
“You know my real name. You can’t call me Vanessa even in front of Officer Snow. Thinking of me as Danielle must be a habit. One slip could jeopardize the entire mission.”
His features hardened, his expression closed and cautious. The soldier—or the CEO—was back.
“I have no problem with you as Danielle. Trust me to play my part, or find another woman to be Danielle.” He paused. “Ah, is that it? Do you want out—Danielle?”
Here was her chance.
Vanessa hadn’t wanted this undercover gig to start with. She had come to hate pretense and deception, immersing herself in someone’s life only to leave in the end, struggling to remain detached when indifference went against her nature.
She felt as false as the fake rock that weighed down her third finger, left hand.
Director Nolan didn’t see this glitch as a legitimate out. He’d said she was the best one for the job. And finding a new Danielle double would take time they didn’t have. Stopping the terrorist attack was of prime importance. Her reluctance counted for nothing in the scheme of things.
Surely her awareness of Nick as a very attractive, sexy man was a complication she could avoid acting on. But could she ignore the other complication her intuition nagged her about—the troubled soul that lurked beneath his strong facade? She had to. For the duration—four weeks, tops—she could remain neutral, uninvolved and play her role.
“I don’t want out. If you have no problem, neither do I.”
“Then that’s settled,” Nick said. His smile, a lethal curve of sculpted lips and blinding white teeth, zinged straight into her bloodstream.
Her earpiece crackled to life. “Yo, Wade, we have a problem. Intruder on the grounds.”
Chapter 3
Nick was just opening his mouth to offer congratulations to Diana and her new fiancé, when Vanessa held up her hand.
She clicked something in the breast pocket of her blouse. “I’m in the library. Intruder location?”
He realized she’d heard a surveillance report in her earpiece and activated a microphone. Just as well it hadn’t been turned on during their trip down memory lane.
ATSA eavesdropping wouldn’t have mattered. No equipment was sensitive enough to pick up his fascination with her. Without the leather jacket, her silk blouse revealed the curves he’d brushed in their back-seat scramble. She listened intently, an apricot-pink painting her cheeks.
Cute and incongruous as hell.
She turned to him, green eyes glittering as though she’d discovered the mother lode.
“African-American male, late teens, short dreadlocks, backpack. Entered by the garden gate on the far side of the house. Headed toward the back.”
“Not one of New Dawn’s finest, then,” he said as he headed out the door toward the sunroom.
Vanessa caught up to him at the door to the terrace. She grabbed his arm. Her strong grip surprised him, but didn’t halt him. The sizzle from her touch did.
He glanced at her slender hand on his dark forearm. How small she was, only about five-four, but professional and self-assured. The contrast between her girl-next-door appearance and her terrorist-hunting profession intrigued him. He didn’t know what to think. Or what she’d do next.
She was tough, frank and quick-thinking, all qualities he admired but observed rarely. Danielle had those qualities, but in her they were like a stabbing blade, not a reassuring hand.
Vanessa’s glorious rose-gold hair was down, Danielle-style, yet was nothing like hers. Her milk-white skin was nearly translucent, as if passion waited just beneath the surface. Her big green eyes, the stray curls licking her temples and a slightly pointed chin made her oval face pixieish.
Pixieish. He’d never used that word before.
What the hell was the matter with him? Focus, man. Remember, you’re engaged and she’s government.
“What? You intend to go out there instead of me and confront him? Danielle wouldn’t do that.”
She shook her head, let her hand drop away. “If we need backup, the surveillance unit will take care of it. I just wanted to advise you not to be a hero.”
Guilt sliced his gut at her absurd statement. She shouldn’t trust him with her safety. No one should.
At his sides, his hands had curled into fists. He forced them open. “Honey, the last thing you can expect me to do is play hero.”
She tipped her head at his admittedly odd reply, but didn’t comment. He watched her studying him with apprehension. He didn’t need her concern, though ATSA must know what had happened in Somalia. He’d led men to their deaths. Didn’t she get it?
Something in her lured him, a siren song that beckoned him to trust her, to spill the details of that shameful episode in his past. And more. But unlike Ulysses, he needed no ropes to restrain him. He’d kept his counsel for ten years. Whining about his failure now would serve no purpose.
“Besides,” he continued, “this sounds like Janine’s daughter’s boyfriend.”
“The housekeeper? What’s her daughter’s boyfriend doing here on a Saturday?”
From what Alexei’d told him, he could think of several reasons, none of them legitimate. “Shall we go find out?”
“So we’re on the same page, what would Danielle do?”
“Danielle might be aloof and cynical, but she’s a journalist, curious as ten cats. She’d be right next to me.”
Her smile caught him off guard. The beam of pleasure was a spill of sunshine from his father’s native Aegean isles. Its warmth curled around his chest. He shrugged off the impression and opened the door.
As they emerged onto the terrace, the young man rounded the back corner of the house and neared them. Baggy gangsta pants and layers of shirts, the hot brand of basketball shoes, earrings. No tattoos in view, but the kid probably had those, too. Nick knew the rebel uniform. He saw it often enough on New York streets. D.C. was no different.
When the kid spotted them on the terrace, surprise opened his mouth before caution—possibly guilt—closed him up tight. Challenge defined his walnut-colored features. He slouched, affecting a cocky and defiant demeanor.
“You must be Ray,” Nick said. He sat on the finished part of the low stone wall. Unthreatening, casual.
“You must be Mr. Markos’s brother.” Ray adjusted the bulky pack hitched over one shoulder and came to stand in front of Nick. The slope of lawn and the terrace exaggerated his lowered position. He flicked a curious glance toward Vanessa, who stood behind Nick.
Nick judged him to be about six feet and fit. Probably a dirty street fighter, but no match for Special Forces training. Nick hoped they’d never need to find out. He hadn’t the heart for it anymore.
“I’m Nick Markos. This is my fiancée Danielle LeBec. The house is mine now.”
Vanessa said nothing, but offered Ray a cool nod. She ambled to the left, flanking the kid.
Nick gave himself a mental slap. He’d automatically positioned himself to protect a woman who didn’t need it.
Intelligent brown eyes assessed the two adults on the terrace. Ray might dress and walk the antisocial street-thug part, but he met a gaze directly. Nick awarded him a point.
“I ain’t done nothin’.”
“That’s good, Ray. Real good. So why are you here?”
“I come to see Lise. Ain’t she here helping her mom do t
he cleaning?”
“It’s Saturday, Ray. Janine works here Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”
“Reckon I forgot.” He bobbed his head in a servile manner Nick recognized as crap. “I be outta here then.”
Vanessa meandered to a stone fountain. She trailed her fingers in the water and smiled. “Ray, isn’t there something you want to ask my fiancé? The other reason you came?”
Nick slanted her a questioning look.
“The gloves?” she added.
Worn brown cotton work gloves peeked from an outside pouch on the pack’s side. Nick suspected a less benign reason for those gloves, such as fingerprint prevention. Was he more of a skeptic than the ATSA officer?
Vanessa’s smile had a disarming effect. A ruddy hue infused Ray’s dark cheeks, and he nearly smiled back before he caught himself and twisted his mouth to tough-guy sullen.
“Miz Janine, she said you might have odd jobs for me sometimes. Like some yard work. Or that sad-ass wall.”
Either Ray thought fast on his feet or Vanessa had hit it right. The job excuse allowed the kid to save face. Why not?
“Zeno does the yard work, but if there’s something extra, I’ll tell you.”
Ray jerked his chin toward the terrace corner where the wall ended in a tumble of odd stones. “Ain’t nobody worked on that wall in months. Too bad to leave it half-done.”
Alexei’s grandiose designs would’ve buried him in debt. Unless that mysterious ten million existed after all.
“I agree,” Nick answered. “My brother stopped paying the landscaping company, so his plan crashed. Are you a mason?”
Ray shrugged. “I helped a guy build a couple walls.” He toed a stone. “This one don’t look too hard.”
“I haven’t decided how much of Alexei’s renovations to complete. We’ll see.”
“I be goin’ then.” He hitched up the pack and started toward the corner.
“One more thing, Ray.”
Ray turned, eyes opaque, mouth tight.
“I’ll take the gate key. Next time you come to see Lise, ring the bell by the garage walk-in door.”
Without demur, Ray extracted a brass key from a deep pocket in his shorts and handed it over.
A moment after he disappeared around the house, Vanessa said, “Snow reports he’s out. Jogging down the street toward Connecticut Avenue. They put a man on him.”
She listened again. “Roger that. Out.”
She clicked off her mike. For the first time her gaze held no warmth, only the green ice of emeralds. “Nick, what’s Ray’s last name? He wasn’t on our list of possible visitors. We’ll find him, but a last name would speed identification.”
“All I know is Ray. When I saw Alexei in jail, he said he’d ordered the boyfriend not to come around again. I didn’t expect to see him.”
From Vanessa’s tone, he gathered ATSA was suspicious of his motives for neglecting to mention the kid.
They wanted the household to appear normal, so Janine and her daughter continued their routine, but under ATSA eyes. The government distrusted the two women because of Alexei. Nick scoffed at that, but he’d insisted the surveillance also be protection. In case New Dawn got new hostage ideas.
But Nick had forgotten about Ray.
Let ATSA suspect the hell out of him. He had enough to deal with. Ray was the least of his worries.
He levered to his feet and walked to the stack of building stones and picked up a flat granite circle the size of a dinner plate. On one side he observed an intricate design in relief. Another similar stone was mortared in the finished part of the wall. The stack contained enough of the circular medallions to form a pattern around the terrace.
Nick laid the medallion down. “The pool and tennis courts Alexei dreamed up are out of the question, but I like the wall. And these stone medallions.”
“A finished terrace will help sell the house.”
“I’ll see about having it finished. Ray was right about that. What makes you think he came ready to do honest labor?”
“He had the gloves, and his hands are callused. You don’t think so?”
“Maybe. Alexei suspected him of casing the house for what he could sell. He found Ray skulking around outside exactly like today. That’s when he ordered him off the property.”
“So why’d you say he could come back to see Lise?”
If Ray was honest after all, he shouldn’t be punished because Alexei’d acted the lord of the manor, something he’d learned at his mama’s breast. Those were family affairs Nick shouldn’t get into with this perceptive woman. But the more he explained to her, the more he wanted to spill.
Before he crossed his self-imposed line, he had to get away from her. And stay away.
“Beats the hell out of me. Dinner’s at seven.” He turned and walked into the house.
Dinner at seven? Not exactly.
On Monday, as she browsed a computer at Markos Imports in Georgetown, Vanessa was still mulling over what had happened.
Nick had disappeared to his room and then to the gym downstairs. She’d showered and napped for a couple of hours. She never napped, but whisking to London and back in three days had skewed her body clock. How did the jet set do it?
When she’d found her way to the hangar-sized, gleaming granite-and-stainless-steel kitchen, no Nicolas Markos. Only a scrawled note with a salad and the menu for what to nuke. A chicken breast and some sort of bean-and-rice dish Janine had prepared. Nick hadn’t appeared the rest of the evening.
And she’d seen little of him on Sunday, come to think of it. She’d spent some of the day going over strategy with the surveillance guys.
When they were alone, Nick seemed to find somewhere else to be. ATSA needed her to dig out more about him.
Background checks had uncovered nothing concrete, but ATSA still wondered if he’d been involved in his half brother’s dirty dealings. His Special Forces experience and his overseas business and social connections made him a potential risk to the mission. And there was that missing money. She needed proximity to coax out information.
But Nick was making himself as scarce as that ten mil. The director had chosen her because people usually talked to her.
But not Nicolas Markos.
Was he just working or had she alienated him? They’d cleared up her past transgression at Diana’s apartment, hadn’t they? Was it the encounter with young Ray?
She’d observed Nick going into soldier mode, but then he’d shut down and shut her out. His harsh comment about not being a hero kept repeating in her brain like an annoying tune. She’d noticed nothing unusual in his file.
What was going on?
Whatever it was, his suspicious actions didn’t bode well for this operation.
She had to find a way to spend time with him, so he’d open up. That plan would exacerbate her other problem—hiding her inconvenient awareness of him. She would be her usual friendly self, and keep things on a professional plane.
As long as they were alone, anyway.
In public, that was another story. Would he have his hand on her? His arm around her?
How could she ignore the lure of his woodsy scent mingled with salty male? Or forget the solid feel of his arms? Or the controlled burn in his eyes? Or was it the lure of the forbidden and the mystery she sensed in his soul?
Think of him as your brother, like Jason or Troy. She tried to imagine Nicolas Markos scouring her face with mud after she’d doused him with the garden hose.
Dream on. Professional interest, not personal involvement. Detachment. She repeated the mantra.
She sighed. Her mind wasn’t on the task at hand. She’d been at this computer too long. She hit Page Down.
She and her so-called lover were spending the day at Markos Imports on O Street in Georgetown. Nestled among antique shops and galleries, the old brick building housed a retail shop and offices on the ground floor and more offices and warehouse space in a second story.
Across the street, in an upstairs storage room, was another ATSA surveillance unit. During the night, they’d secreted electronic bugs throughout the business. Cameras and microphones covered the entrances, front and back.
Since she was supposed to be a magazine editor and savvy with computers, Vanessa aka Danielle had the task of examining the electronic books. She figured that was Nick’s excuse to stash her out of the way.
Accounts were straightforward, up to date, but so far contained no hint of Alexei’s transactions for the New Dawn Warriors, let alone a couple of million spare bucks.
Even with the smattering of econ theory she remembered from college, Vanessa didn’t think it took an economist or even an accountant to see that Markos Imports was sinking, not as fast as the Titanic, but as inevitably.
Without an infusion of new stock and without Alexei’s contacts, clients and vendors were abandoning ship.
When the numbers on the computer screen began to blur, Vanessa left the cramped office and went in search of Nick.
She found him in the executive office that occupied the entire back of the shop.
The lavish suite dazzled with a kaleidoscope of patterns and colors—burgundy-and-navy Persian rugs, black-lacquered cabinets and tables, gold-framed paintings and Japanese brush drawings. A cobalt-blue porcelain vase stood on a low hammered-brass table. A black-and-gold enameled dragon guarded one end of a mahogany desk, the twin of the one at the house.
She waited quietly at the doorway while he conversed with the manager and assistant manager.
Nick’s burnished-olive skin contrasted with the snowy white of his band-collared shirt. He’d opened one button, and the ebony hairs curling above the opening caught Vanessa’s gaze. She had yet to see him in a tie, but he looked every inch the CEO in a navy pinstripe Hugo Boss.
All day he’d spent in negotiations. Sessions with the employees, who didn’t want him to sell, and with importers, who might buy the shop, meant walking a tightrope. He was in command, quiet but firm and decisive, putting Vanessa in mind of a conquering knight.
Or the Greek tycoon of her first impression.
The shop manager was an elegant, wand-slim Chinese-American woman named Celia Chin. “The rugs are no problem,” she was saying, “and the small decorative pieces. We sell a few every day. We could continue if we could obtain more.”
Code Name: Fiancée Page 4