Mick felt a wave of shame course through him. He had been told all those things before. Sometimes the principals he had been bodyguarding had meant the observations in a kind way, and other times the statements were inflammatory accusations. Those qualities were what had helped him find work before the CIA had also added intractable to his dossier and work—at least, work he would agree to—dried up. A year ago, he would never have taken the job with Krystof Scherba.
Out on the river, one of the fishing boats unfurled a net and dragged it through the water. With the slow, lazy movement of the river through the heart of the city, the net would probably come up with the body in a short amount of time.
A police boat was in the water downriver. The lights whirled as it sped through the river traffic. Pleasure crafts, offering drinks and a late-night buffet, crawled slowly out of the way.
“Krystof,” a cultured voice said.
Mick was aware of the man making his way toward Scherba. Instinctively, he placed himself between Scherba and the new arrival.
Suave and urbane, Shane Dellamer stepped from the crowd. He wore a long black leather coat against the chill. Below his high, broad forehead, his gray eyes stood out starkly in the ruddy darkness of his face. He had a wide, generous mouth and was known in the media for being an entrancing orator. His face was blunt and squared-off as a trenching tool, and looked a good ten or fifteen years younger than the fifty-one his file had him clocked at. At an inch or two over six feet, his height didn’t really make him stand out in the crowd, but he carried himself like a lion, regal and apart.
As CEO of Dellamer Enterprises, Dellamer was fantastically rich. With those enterprises lodged firmly in electronics, pharmaceuticals and munitions, Dellamer’s interests were also spread across the globe. The multi-millionaire industrialist also worked at his rebel image, which was—Mick assumed—one of the reasons he’d come to Scherba’s party tonight. Dellamer had been in the news a lot lately as he prepared for a bid at a political position in his home state of New York.
“Yes, Shane,” Scherba responded. “Stone, please.”
Only somewhat chagrined, Mick stepped back. His gaze raked the river as the fishing boat trawled along. A second police boat had joined the first. Lights aboard the second boat showed divers hastily pulling their gear on.
Seeing the divers bothered Mick. He had witnessed the battle aboard the bridge. At the time he’d been caught up in the drama of the moment, but now that the presence of the divers made him think back, he realized the woman had dispatched two of her attackers rather handily.
Like a pro. The thought burst into Mick’s brain like a direct napalm hit. Three guys. She disables two of them. And the third manages to put her into the water? He glanced around at the crowd thronging the railing as the feeling of unease soaked through him. Not exactly shrimp on the barbie, eh, mate?
Dellamer and Scherba were in deep discussion regarding background checks the computer cracker had finessed regarding some of the recent pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions the industrialist had his eye on in the European theater.
A silent alarm jangled the handset inside Mick’s jacket. He felt the vibration and reached into his pocket. Intimate knowledge with the device and the way the security zones had been set up aboard Guilty Pleasures told him the alarm had been set off in Krystof Scherba’s private berth aboard the vessel.
But it was the secondary alarm, not the primary. Whoever had penetrated the secondary alarm was good. But he or she was also in a hurry.
Mick raised his left arm and exposed the pencil mike secured on the inside of his wrist. “Josef. Radu.”
“Yes,” Josef Szekeres replied. From Hungary, he was a bodyguard known for his nerve and methodical nature. Ten years older than Mick’s thirty-two years, Szekeres was an accomplished mountain climber and often worked security on high-profile extreme sports figures. He was compact, five feet eight and one hundred sixty pounds, a man who was often overlooked because he appeared so commonplace.
Mick had worked with Szekeres three times before, all of those times with the American Central Intelligence Agency. When he’d been given the present gig, Mick had brought Szekeres into the assignment.
Radu Galca was the local Romanian bodyguard Scherba had worked with for three years. Radu was a mountain of moving muscle, a steroid freak who lived in a gym and hunted bar fights when he wasn’t at post on a security detail. Galca and Scherba went back to the cracker’s beginnings of international attention. At twenty-seven, he was the same age as Scherba. But where nature had bestowed a keen intellect on Scherba, Galca was, as Josef put it, dumb as a box of hammers.
“I am here,” Radu said, mimicking the voice pattern of Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. He was smooth-shaven and in the habit of always wearing sunglasses, fitting in with the grunge crowd that Scherba hung with.
“Stay with the principal,” Mick ordered. “I’ll be back as soon as I check out this alarm.” Seeing that Josef and Radu both moved immediately to Scherba, Mick got into motion.
“Trouble?” Josef asked.
“Don’t know if we have trouble, Josef.” Mick shoved through the crowd, trying to be as polite as possible. He drew a multitude of curses but didn’t leave any broken bones and only a few bruises behind him. “Got an alarm tripped, mate. Think I’ll nip down and have a look-see.”
“An alarm?” Radu repeated. “You shouldn’t go by yourself.”
“Probably just one of our guests.” Mick said the word like a curse. He stepped through the foyer of the main doorway and stepped into the empty room.
Light glinted across a bright trail on the carpet. The carpet was a tight Berber weave that held up to heavy traffic and repelled water. Diamond-bright droplets captured Mick’s eye and created a trail across the floor. Most people would not have noticed them, and if he hadn’t been looking for something out of the ordinary, he knew he wouldn’t have noticed them either.
Kneeling, he put a hand to the wet carpet. He dragged his palm across the nap of the Berber weave. The water was cold to the touch, colder than it should have been if it had been there for a while. The trail was evident. For a moment, a scene from one of the old black-and-white monster movies he’d watched as a kid came to mind. One of his favorite scary movies had been The Creature from the Black Lagoon. If the creature had been real, it would have left a trail like this.
Or, Mick thought, remembering how the woman had plunged over the side of the bridge, someone who has dragged himself or herself from the river just a few minutes ago. There were no guarantees that the “woman” on the bridge had really been female.
He reached inside his jacket and curled the fingers of his right hand around the butt of the Colt .45 M1911A semiautomatic pistol he’d carried for years. Accurate to fifty yards and more, the pistol fired a big, slow-moving round that could be easily silenced and carried a tremendous amount of knockdown power.
Reaching into his inside jacket pocket, he removed a custom-made silencer and threaded it onto the pistol barrel. If someone had broken aboard Guilty Pleasures with killing on his or her mind, he intended to put that person down quickly.
Pistol in hand, Mick followed the carpet trail to the stairwell and went below. He stopped at the door to Scherba’s room and listened intently while he examined the locks. Nothing seemed to be amiss, but he thought he heard movement inside the room.
He tried the door and found it unlocked.
Now that, mate, he told himself, that definitely ain’t right. He took a firmer grip on the pistol and let the weapon lead him into the room.
Shadows cloaked the berth.
Mick moved immediately, stepping to the right so he wouldn’t be skylined against the doorway. His heart rate slowed slightly, the way it always did when he was under stress, like a shark gliding through the ocean just before a lightning-fast strike.
He noticed the prone figure swaddled in bedclothes first. Remaining in profile, the pistol gripped in a modified Weaver stance the way h
e’d been taught in the military, taking small comfort in the bulletproof vest he wore, he held his position.
Remember, mate, he told himself, a vest doesn’t cover your head.
“Hey,” he said.
The sheet-covered figure didn’t move. Lying on her side as she was—and Mick was definitely sure it was a she he was looking at because the hips, though slim and compact, held definite womanly curves—she was turned away from him. One naked shoulder and an arm showed outside the bedclothes. The light from the open doorway turned the skin alabaster, milky smooth and sleek.
Asleep, passed out or dead, Mick thought. After weeks of seeing Scherba at work, he knew any of those was possible.
But it was also possible she was playing possum, waiting for him to go away. Someone had left the wet trail through the upstairs room.
“Hey,” he said in a louder voice.
When he’d set up security on Krystof Scherba, Mick had known the people gunning for him would be coming after the man himself or the work that he did. Scherba had secrets, and secrets were worth money. The computer cracker never went anywhere without his notebook computer. Mick had persuaded Scherba to allow the secondary alarms to be put on the computer as well as on the desk.
The desk alarm had lit up, indicating that the computer had been tampered with.
Using his peripheral vision to keep an eye on the woman lying in the bed, Mick glanced at the computer. Green lights danced and flickered across the front of the machine, indicating that it was in use.
No way would Scherba leave that little beastie running unattended.
Then the wet pattern in the computer chair caught Mick’s eye. The rounded pattern was wide hipped, definitely feminine, and he would have bet the contours fit the vixen lying abed.
“Nice try, darlin’,” Mick said. “But the computer’s running, and I know my principal wouldn’t allow that to happen. So why don’t you come up out of that bed and we’ll have us a chat.”
“Krystof?” The voice sounded plaintive and whiny.
But the voice also sounded sexy as hell. The accent seemed to be American, but that could have been put on. There was nothing more attention getting than the soft, sexy voice of a woman just roused from sleep.
Only he was certain that this particular woman hadn’t been sleeping, and that she was gutsy enough to try to pull off the act proved she was dangerous. And if that wasn’t enough, there was still that little swan dive from the bridge while struggling with assailants to keep in mind.
“Not Krystof, love,” Mick grated. Irritation stung him. Even though he’d captured the woman, he was certain there would be hell to pay because she had managed to get aboard the catamaran.
Scherba was a man who expected perfection. He found it in the computer work he did, and he demanded the same capability from the people who worked around him.
Languidly, making no sudden movements, the woman sat up in bed. The blue silk sheet slithered down her athletic body, revealing rounded shoulders sculpted by serious dedication in the gym. She was tall, Mick realized as he tried to gather all the details and remember if he’d seen her near or around Scherba in the past few days.
Shadows gathered in the hollow of her throat as she regarded him with a sleepy gaze. The sheets continued skidding down her body, holding just for an instant at her breasts, then cascading over those as well.
Inadvertently Mick’s gaze went to those breasts and the back of his throat dried immediately in response. She was definitely full figured in addition to being athletic. Her breasts were firm and proud, defying gravity. The pale pink nipples stood out darker than her white skin. No immediate attempt was made to hide the lush femininity.
She lifted her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs, trapping the treacherous silk sheet and hiding the voluptuous body in an economy of motion.
Mick had to resist an immediate impulse to rip the sheet away and reveal the rest of her. Catching her like this, with her pants down so to speak, made her his conquest. And a beauty like this one brought out all the primitive instincts that lingered in the back of a healthy, red-blooded man’s brain.
No, Mick corrected. Not a man’s brain. Someone like this, she took a man’s brain right out of the bloody equation. His breath tightened in his chest and he felt his pulse pound at his temples.
Swallowing hard, Mick pushed his primitive response away. Still he stared at the outlines of her breasts where they curved out from the shielding protection of her crossed arms atop her sheet-covered knees. Let her feel naked, he thought. It’ll make her less likely to feel confident about this whole situation. I’ll get the answers I need.
Her lambent green eyes—despite the darkness Mick was certain they were the green of the Pacific—held amused lights in them as she regarded him. Damp and matted to her head, her hair could have been any color, but he was certain it wasn’t dark or red. She was a woman who could steal a man’s breath away.
Or a computer cracker’s secrets, he reminded himself.
“Are you going to shoot me?” Her tone was too light, too in control for someone facing another person down the length of a pistol pointed in the wrong direction for personal comfort.
“I might,” Mick growled. “And if it wasn’t me, there are men aboard this boat who would shoot you.” Even as he said that, recognized it as truth, he felt badly for her. Scherba’s regular security people would probably have come in blasting.
And in that moment, Mick Stone realized he might be the woman’s only chance of getting off the boat alive.
The young woman’s eyes widened somewhat, but Mick got the definite feeling that it was all put on. She wasn’t scared. Even staring down the barrel of his pistol, she wasn’t scared. Stupid sheila, he thought. You should be afraid right now.
“Whatever would they want to shoot me for?” the woman demanded.
“For being here.”
“I’m a guest.”
“Like bloody hell you are,” Mick growled. He hated the fact that the young woman looked so vulnerable in the bed. His gaze kept flitting to her breasts, and he couldn’t resist wishing he could see the whole package.
“Krystof isn’t going to like how you’re talking to me,” she insisted.
Mick shook his head. He had to hand it to her, she didn’t cave easily even when a situation was going against her. “Smooth as you think you are, darlin’, there are a few things you messed up on.”
“Ah,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “A critique then.”
Despite the tension of the situation and the fact that Scherba would take him to task later, Mick liked the woman. He liked her bravado in the face of certain disaster and he liked the skill she’d obviously had to get aboard the boat. None of the women his sisters had foisted on him over the years had that quality.
Here he was, facing a woman who had actually piqued his interest, and she had to be a damn thief.
“You got wet swimming through the river,” Mick said.
The woman wrapped her arms around her shoulders. Her breasts jiggled suggestively and Mick couldn’t help wondering how they tasted and how they felt. Heavy, he guessed, heavy and solid and definitely feminine.
“Very cold,” the woman said.
“You left a trail across the main foyer.”
She shrugged, and her breasts pressed together and deepened the cleavage. “Couldn’t be helped.”
“You left a wet spot in the chair.”
The woman’s eyes drifted to the chair. “Now that,” she said, “that I did not think about.” She looked back at him. “But I’ll remember in the future.”
“And your hair is wet, Goldilocks,” Mick said. “Meaning you’re my girl no matter what little story you decide to trot out.”
“Looks like you have it all figured out, Father Bear.” She trailed her fingers through her damp hair, revealing one bounteous globe that hung tantalizingly before him. “I have to admit, you didn’t catch me at my best.”
Mick appreciated the insouc
iance in her tone and couldn’t help paying attention to the way the muscles of her shoulders moved as she touched her hair. And he couldn’t help wondering how that tanned skin would look under the warm kiss of fragile moonlight.
Or how her lips would taste and feel.
Roughly Mick shoved the thoughts from his mind. Above all things, he was a consummate professional. Except that the reaction his body was presently showing didn’t advertise that.
“But the thing of it is, darlin’,” he growled, “I did catch you.” And the hell of it was that he didn’t know how he was supposed to keep her whole—or maybe even alive—when Scherba discovered she’d broken in.
She smiled sweetly at him. “The trick is, Mr. Mystery, keeping me caught. You see, I specialize in get-aways.” She tilted her chin up, her tone definitely flirting, and blew him a kiss.
Then she closed her eyes.
Mick didn’t realize that he had seen her close her eyes until after the explosion of light and sound filled the berth. He was stunned, deafened and blinded by the thunder and blistering light. For a moment he thought she had been a suicide bomber, there to take Scherba down at any cost, killing them both in the blast designed to rip the bottom out of Guilty Pleasures and send the boat to the river bottom.
Then he realized he was still standing.
Just a flash-bang, mate, he told himself. He was familiar with the disorienting effects of the pyrotechnic grenades from his stint in the military and considerable exposure to them since.
He also realized that the woman would try to make her escape as well. He still had a chance to stop her. But he was blind as a bat.
Chapter 3
As soon as the flash of light faded from her eyelids, Kylee snapped her eyes open. Even though she’d had her eyes closed, there was some residual loss of vision. Black spots whirled in front of her. Excitement flared through her, accompanied by unwanted stirrings she had seldom felt. Mr. Mystery had been much more handsome than she’d been able to ascertain through the long-distance lenses.
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