Dangerous Illusion

by Melissa James

  “With the utmost respect, sir, I agree,” Nightshift, Team Commander Three, intervened. “No single woman with a child could have made it this far, evading even detection, let alone capture, by so many professionals, without being a pro—or having expert help. She hasn’t had that, as far as we can see.”

  Anson gave a short, pithy return to Nightshift’s opinion, but then, any other answer was unthinkable for the unbeatable, indestructible Ghost.

  As team commander, McCall needed to be privy to the lives and backgrounds of every operative in his region, but he knew only the basics about Anson. Like McCall, Anson had dragged himself up from a neglected childhood on the streets, but he’d come from the swampy dirt and muck of New Orleans rather than the gang-ridden streets of L.A., to make it this far through guts, ability and decades of hard work. No man like Nick Anson would handle the news that a young woman alone—and burdened by a small child, at that—had outwitted his best, handpicked team, yet again.

  McCall watched Anson’s internal battle against disbelief versus unassailable facts in silence, feeling raw and idiotic, and yes, relieved that it wasn’t only him that had been so stupid or blind. Did all his operatives believe Beth was a current pro? He looked around at his fellow operatives, and saw them all nodding, with the complete lack of surprise that meant they’d already had the idea in their minds.

  And if this had been any other case, with any other woman, he’d have been the first to toss the idea in the air. It explained the ease with which she flew planes and raced speedboats, got an identity and accent so damn flawless that it took the Nighthawks years to crack it. They’d known of the existence of Elizabeth Silver for three years, yet she hadn’t even become a strong probable for Delia until a casual cross-referencing with the actual written records in Dunedin proved that no Elizabeth Anne Silver had been born there within twenty years of Beth’s age. It also explained her stoic silence in the face of arrest and search, the perfection of her escape system, and her code with Donna Richards.

  He flicked a glance at the monitor. Yeah, Beth was playing perfect mommy, reading a Dr. Seuss book to Danny. Yet despite the storybook loveliness of the picture they made, too many pegs were fitting right into their holes. If Beth was in the game, it was no wonder she’d twisted him in knots. She’d know how to get an operative on edge, even to knowing the way that would make him back off, if she had a dossier on him.

  Turnabout was fair play. Time to go for the double bluff.

  With all the coolness he was far from feeling, he doused the heat of the argument. “With all due respect, sir, we can thrash this out all night, or we can test the theory.”

  All heads snapped his way, their eyes filled with startled respect, and McCall realized how close he’d come to losing point on this operation because of his personal involvement. Anson’s eyebrow lifted in the way it did when he didn’t want to concede the right to someone else. “Well? Are you going to throw the bomb and leave it there, or defuse it for our delectation?”

  McCall grinned, feeling sudden adrenaline kick in. Anson was willing to give him point still. “It’s obvious that Ghost has told most of you about my involvement with Delia, before her marriage. And this woman and I have the same kind of attraction, have done from the minute I walked into her studio.”

  “And?” Anson snapped a pencil between his fingers.

  His heart started knocking out the hard tattoo of coming excitement, of knowing he was right. Yeah, this was going to work. It had to. “She wants us to believe she’s a single mom on the run from an obsessed lover, mistaken for Delia. So let’s call her on it. She told me she never married Danny’s father, which means, if she told me the truth, that she’s free. So let’s give her the one thing she won’t be able to resist.”

  “You’re not Hercule Poirot, Flipper. We don’t appreciate the dramatic pauses here,” Nightshift interrupted irritably. “If you have a point, I’d appreciate it if you’d let us in on it. It’s been a long two days with little reward thus far.”

  “It’s obvious, Nightshift.” Anson was grinning now, all but laughing with the boyish look he always got when he had the chance to outwit someone who’d got ahead of him. “Give her the full Monty. We offer her a new name, a new country and identity, and a big strong daddy for her little boy. All fully documented and tied in a red ribbon, complete with a wedding ring.”

  “Dated back seven years, for added safety when Falcone’s men check her out,” McCall added, grinning, too. “Make me Danny’s legal father, too. Give her the anonymity she craves, and see what she does. An active pro with anonymity as her top priority would take the offer and try to take me out within hours, by temporary disablement or death. An innocent woman genuinely attracted to me, seeing me as a man tortured with love for her and willing to let her disappear again, will be grateful for the help, touched by my pain…and maybe she’ll trust me with the truth.”

  “And you get lucky in the interim,” Panther commented languidly from behind him. “Damn lucky, with that body and face. She is one superb woman.”

  “Now that’s what I call a perk of the job,” Nightshift added, his irritability vanishing with the quiet joke.

  “That will do,” Anson interrupted, his tone clipped. “We have work to do, so let’s get on with it. What do you need, Flipper?”

  McCall turned to Braveheart, one of his two most trusted team members. “Get the details into Births, Deaths and Marriages stat. I’m a dual American-Australian citizen—make her one, too, and date it back seven years. Give her American background, living in Australia. Get her onto the U.S. records now—have her born there, preferably Texas or New Mexico, but came out here at least twenty years back, to account for her accent. It’s mostly only Aussies and New Zealanders that can tell their accents apart, so Falcone’s men will swallow that Danny and Beth are Australian.”

  Braveheart, U.S.-born and Australian raised, a man of action who loved tinkering with any kind of gadgetry, computer or otherwise, grinned and nodded. “You got it, sir. This is gonna be fun.” He left the room within seconds.

  McCall turned to Wildman next, a Texas boy and a fully trained ParaRescue Jumper, the other man on his most trusted list. “Form a team, Wildman. Whoever you want, it’s your call, but at least twelve CSAR experts. Your job is to follow us discreetly when we run. You’ll need to be ready for anything—rescue, arrest, whatever happens. Have all equipment ready to go at any time. Full military-rescue ability at all times.”

  “Hoo-yah, sir.” Wildman saluted him and marched out.

  Anson lifted that eyebrow again. “What’s my job?”

  “I need a doctor and nurse here, stat, preferably Irish and Songbird if you can recall them. I need a team ready to attack us—people the subject has never seen and never will see again.”

  Anson nodded. “Done.” He picked up the phone.

  “And me, sir?” Panther said in the dark, sinister growl of his, cool and lethal, that led to his code name. “What do I do?”

  McCall chuckled. “With your expert marksmanship? You work with Nightshift on his op. You get to face us if you have no other recourse. You’re the official fall guy.”

  Nightshift lifted an eyebrow and spoke in his elegant, drawling British accent. “At this point in the proceedings, I almost dread asking, but what exactly is my task?”

  McCall held in the exuberant laugh. Man, this was taking point in a way he’d never dreamed when he joined the Nighthawks under Anson’s irascible and unquestioned leadership. He hadn’t had the chance to get so inventive since he left he SEALs. “I saved the best for last…and it’s a job right up your alley,” he told his fellow team commander, a man he liked and respected, a former operative in MI5—a real-life James Bond. “I need you and Heidi to set up a murder for me.”

  Chapter 16

  3 a.m. Time to go. Seven minutes and counting.

  McCall nodded to Irish, Team Two commander and Nighthawks’ doctor, called in from his honeymoon—but his wife, Songbird, not on
ly understood, she was right beside him this moment. Heidi lay on the floor outside Beth’s door in a flat sprawl, a broken blood capsule beneath her back, staining her clothes and skin and the carpet. She lifted an arm; Irish injected her with the serum. Her eyes closed in seconds. Her delicate frame stopped the rhythmic lift and fall of breath, and her skin took on a sick pallor as her body, responding to the chemicals injected into her, cooled faster than a normal death.

  “Go,” Irish whispered, and disappeared into the shadows of an open door. “I’ll be here for her.”

  McCall opened Beth’s door, stepped in silence over Heidi’s body and closed the door. He’d need a moment of privacy with Beth before he sent her into either operative mode or total shock.

  The sight in front of his eyes almost made him hesitate. Two single beds, one with a sweet-faced child cuddling the puppy against his face, and a teddy bear clutched in his other hand; the other bed held the woman of his dreams—a decade’s worth of dreams. In the soft, unfocused light of the half moon outside, her sleeping face was perfection of face and form in shadow and marble, living and warm, cool and remote.

  Six minutes forty seconds.

  He crossed to the bed and touched her shoulder. “Beth.” It wasn’t hard to inject the name with urgency—Heidi’s life depended on exact execution of this op. “Beth, wake up.”

  She flipped her body toward him as by instinct, because it was obvious she still walked in the land between sleep and waking. “Hmm…Brendan…my Brendan…”

  He almost reeled at the tone, saturated with sensuality and something deeper, sweeter—wild and wanton and longing, as if in her eyes, his name was beautiful. If she’d spoken his name like that two days ago…hell, if she’d said his name at all—

  Six minutes twenty seconds.

  He tried to shake her, but his rebel hand drank in the sweet warmth of her half-bare shoulder, and he caressed her instead. He swallowed a groan as the heated silk of her skin shivered right into his needing body. “Yes, it’s me.” The dark huskiness of his voice, hot and urgent with sexuality, disgusted him. Be an operative! “Wake up, Beth,” he growled.

  “Mmm.” An arm hooked around his neck. “I was dreaming of you,” she whispered in a half-dreaming voice. “I dreamed of you touching me. You’re always with me when I’m alone and afraid. You haunt me even when you’re not there…you stalk my soul, you live and breathe inside me, and I can’t forget you, can’t leave you behind…never. You’re with me, always with me. Touch me…”

  The man heard the words, the operative understood what they meant for the mission—but their power and beauty speared the heart of the child with too many unhealed wounds, lost and alone and needing. The dark-hearted little boy who’d lost his mommy looked out that stark, lonely window into empty night, and saw her once more—not his mom, but the face that haunted him, the hand that could dry ancient tears, fight his fears for him, walk through life holding him. “Beth…” His voice cracked.

  Five minutes fifty seconds.

  Just one kiss…

  You’re a fool to believe in this, even for a moment. She’ll only deny it when she’s awake.

  Five minutes forty seconds…

  I don’t care. Just once. I’d barter my soul for this.

  His mouth moved over hers with all the joy of a captive finding release from dank chains. Beth’s arms held him with such sweet ferocity…she responded to his kiss with sweet abandon, her mouth drinking him in, her hands twining in his hair. Her lovely body, her nakedness sheathed only in a swathe of satin, lifting to touch his; her hands pulling him down, down until he fell to the bed, drowning in his moment. If he paid with a century of torture, it was worth the pain, having sweet, lovely Beth in his arms, being in her arms where he belonged.

  Four minutes thirty-five seconds.

  If she stops breathing for longer than seven minutes, brain damage can set in. Heidi’s life is in your hands!

  The jolt brought the operative back to the fore, even as he touched Beth, caressed her, kissed her, and his body moved with hers in a rhythm that told him he could be inside her right this moment, finding release and long-overdue peace in her welcoming body. And the torture kicked up a notch. It was physical agony, but he tore his mouth from hers. “Beth…”

  “No.” She pulled at him to bring him back to her. “Tomorrow will be the same as today—it has to be, or you’ll die. But they can’t see me tonight, and I can have what I want…I can have you…”

  He kissed a searing path from the base of her throat up to her mouth, and he growled in intense satisfaction when she gasped and writhed beneath him. Her words made no sense, but he didn’t care right now. “Baby, you can have me whenever you want. That’s a promise. But now—”

  “Yes, now,” she whispered into his mouth. “Now…always. I’ll always want you. Always.”

  Four minutes ten seconds.

  As the man drowned, the operative kept count—and delivered the TKO to his needs. “Tonight, baby. I promise,” he muttered, hoping to God it would come true. Bartering his soul on that hope. “But now, we have to go. You and Danny are in danger.”

  The one word guaranteed to bring the mother forth from the sensual siren beneath him. Her eyes snapped open. “What?”

  He spoke rapidly, submerging his aching desire beneath cold hard lies. “The safety of this place has been breached. One of the Nighthawks has compromised the operation. Someone’s here, and they’re after you, Beth—after Danny.”

  “How do you know?” Her voice was low, half-terrified as she jerked up in the bed, half lifting him off her with the force of her movement. She was with him already, but needed proof.

  Three minutes forty-five seconds.

  He vaulted over the bed and opened the door to reveal Heidi’s sprawling body, the expert fake blood seeping from beneath her.

  “Oh, dear God…no, not again. Not again…”

  At the first sound of the cracked, teary voice, McCall glanced at Beth, and felt sucker-punched. She was as stark white as Heidi’s chemically induced comatose body. She swayed as she sat, her face taking on a greenish hue. She clapped a hand over her mouth, but her body jerked forward, and she threw up over the bedcovers in horrifying silence.

  So he’d been right about her. No pro in the game could be so shocked at death, or act this well, but justification had never come at so high a price. He couldn’t even take the time to comfort her. Three minutes ten seconds. “Get your things, Beth. We have about ten minutes before they sweep the hall again. We have to be long gone by then. Two minutes to pack and run, Beth.”

  Did he sound urgent enough? For Heidi’s sake— “Follow me out of here,” he added in the imperative, authoritative tone that made people in war zones follow him in SAR ops. “I know the layout of the place. I helped plan the traps.”

  Beth nodded. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, her voice scratchy and aching. “I’ve made a mess…”

  “Just get up, sweetheart,” he said quietly, aching to comfort her. “I’ll get Danny and the pup, you get a few things together. Go light. We have about ninety seconds to get out.”

  “But the poor girl…she must have been hurt trying to—to help us…” Without warning she flew off the bed to Heidi, and felt frantically for a pulse. “We have to help her! We can’t just leave her here like this!”

  Confirmed: Beth was no spy. Even Mata Hari couldn’t act this well—and she wouldn’t have cared enough about Heidi to start an imperfect round of CPR on her, as Beth was now. “She’s gone, Beth. She’s lost too much blood. We have to go—now.” Two minutes fifty seconds. He could almost feel Nightshift’s fury, and Irish and Songbird’s frantic need to take the six steps to Heidi’s supine body and inject her with the adrenaline-based antidote. Damage can set in as quickly as seven minutes after injection if the subject isn’t fit, or has heart/lung problems.

  Heidi was a mountaineer and champion gymnast, and a former agent of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, ASIO. Surely she c
ould handle a few more minutes.

  “We can’t leave her!” It was as if she sensed his urgency for Heidi and relayed it back to him in a pulsing beat of guilt.

  Two minutes forty seconds.

  If he didn’t get her out of here, Heidi wouldn’t die—Anson would see to that—but they’d have to reveal the ruse before Beth’s eyes, and then they’d never get the tapes or her trust. He had to go through with the whole charade, or lose everything.

  Do something! He felt every operative in the hallway screaming silently for him to act.

  “It’s her, or Danny,” he uttered brutally. “A woman you barely know, or your son. Sixty seconds. Take your pick.”

  Beth gasped and vaulted to her feet as he’d done a minute before, and ran to the backpack, leaving the suitcase behind. “This has all we need. Let’s go.”

  With lethal efficiency, McCall bound electrical tape around the muzzle of Danny’s pup. “We can’t let him bark…and we can’t let Danny cry out, either.” He put a gentle hand across Danny’s mouth before he lifted the child, startled out of sleep, into his arms. “It’s Brendan, pal,” he whispered in the boy’s ear. “We’re going on an adventure, me, your mom and Bark…but you have to be real quiet. Okay?”

  Danny’s eyes swiveled to Beth’s; and though she looked startled and still somewhat green, she managed a smile and nod for her son. “You missed out on your fun with Ethan, sweetie, so we’re making it up to you.”

  One minute thirty seconds.

  Danny struggled against McCall’s hand until he was free; then he smiled up at McCall with the instant, unquestioning love only a secure child can give. “Can we go camping? Can I see a kangaroo and a koala?”

  “Sure, pal, as soon as we can manage it.” He made himself smile at the boy. “We’re going to my place first—but that’s in the countryside, so there are wild kangaroos and sometimes koalas. We’ll have to go hunting at night for a koala, okay?”