Dangerous to Know

by Merline Lovelace

  His heart battering against his ribs, he crashed through the door to the stairs. The stairwell was empty, as Adam had known it would be. He’d pulled a few strings for this mission. Without a single question, the British ambassador had cleared the entire fourth floor of the embassy for OMEGA’s use. It had proven an ideal site for an observation post. Only the broad expanse of Massachusetts Avenue, a screen of pines and a rolling lawn separated it from the vice-presidential mansion and the surrounding grounds.

  Even more to the point, the embassy was close enough for OMEGA to tap into the Secret Service’s own surveillance system. Adam had tracked Maggie from the moment she emerged from her bedroom this morning. Infrared cameras so sensitive that they picked up even the trickle of sweat rolling down her cheek had recorded her jog through the predawn gloom. With the aid of the concealed transmitter in her ring, Adam had heard her every gasp—and every increasingly acerbic comment she muttered under her breath as she jogged up yet another hill.

  As he barreled down the stairs, Adam replayed over and over in his mind those moments when she’d entered the home stretch. There, in those few yards where the pines branched over the path and obscured the camera’s angle, she’d disappeared from view for a few seconds. Christ! A few seconds, and he—

  “Get…off…me! Puh-leez!”

  Maggie’s voice jerked Adam to a halt. His chest heaving, he stared down at his watch.

  “Are you…all right?”

  He didn’t recognize the panting male voice, but guessed immediately it was the agent who’d trailed Maggie during her run.

  “I’m…fine.”

  “Are…you…sure, ma’am?”

  She sucked in a rasping breath. “I’m sure.”

  “But you…went down!” The man was still huffing. “That bus, when it backfired…I thought it was a shot. And you went down.”

  “I thought…it was a shot, too. That’s why I went down.” Chagrin, and the faintest trace of rueful laughter, crept into her voice. “I guess I’m a little jumpy this morning.”

  Alone in the empty stairwell, Adam closed his eyes. His throat was so damn tight he couldn’t breathe, cold sweat was running down his back, and Maggie was laughing. Laughing! With great physical effort, Adam unclenched his jaw and headed back to the control room.

  Joe Samuels, OMEGA’s senior communications technician, stood with one big hand fisted around a radio mike.

  “She okay?”

  “She’s okay. It wasn’t a gunshot. A bus backfired.”

  The grim expression on Joe’s face eased, and his brown eyes lost their fierce glitter. “A bus!”

  “A bus.”

  The black man shook his head as tension drained visibly from his big body. “Well, with Chameleon, you never know.”

  “No, you don’t,” Adam replied, an edge to his voice that he couldn’t quite suppress.

  Joe’s brows lifted in surprise at the director’s acid tone, but he refrained from commenting.

  “Get Jaguar on the net, would you? I’ll give him a quick update before I go upstairs to the heliport.”

  Nodding, Joe reseated himself at the communications console. An acknowledged expert in satellite transmissions, he’d been actively recruited by half a dozen major corporations when he left military service a few years ago. He could have named his own salary, strolled into work wearing tailored suits and vests and jetted across continents in sleek corporate aircraft. Instead, he’d joined the OMEGA team at about the same time Maggie had.

  Adam was well aware of the bond between them. During long, tense days and nights in the control center, the technician worked his electronic magic to keep her plugged into whichever field agent she was controlling at the time. When Chameleon was in the field, Joe always arranged the duty schedules so that he manned the control center himself.

  Adam suspected that their friendship might have been tested a bit lately, however. To Joe’s disgust, his twins had developed a passion for Maggie’s repulsive house pet. The boys begged to keep the reptile whenever she left town. They delighted in Terence’s unique repertoire of tricks, particularly his ability to take out a fly halfway across a room with his yard-long tongue. Joe had been visibly relieved when Maggie informed him she’d drafted her father for iguana duty this time.

  While he waited for Jaguar to come on-line, Adam forced himself to relax his rigid muscles. Gradually the tension gripping his gut eased. In its place came a different and even more unsettling sensation.

  For the first time in a long, long time, he’d reacted without thinking. Sheer animal instinct had sent him crashing out into the hallway. The last time he reacted like that had been in a dark alley outside a Hong Kong hotel. Eight years ago. Just before the night had erupted in a blinding explosion, and he’d dived for cover.

  When he’d heard Maggie’s surpised cry a few moments ago, Adam had felt the same as he had when the world blew up all around him.

  With a wry grimace, he acknowledged that her cry had irrevocably, irretrievably shattered the detachment he’d forced himself to maintain all these years as OMEGA’s director. The distance he’d kept between himself and Maggie Sinclair had narrowed to a single heartbeat. To the sound of a bus backfiring.

  Adam refused to deny the truth any longer. He wanted her. With a need so fierce, so raw, it consumed him.

  Thirty minutes, he thought, dragging in a slow breath. Thirty minutes until he met her at Andrews Air Force Base for the flight to California. Thirty minutes, and Adam wouldn’t have to watch her from a half block away over these damned monitors. When they met at the airport, he promised himself, the “relationship” between the vice president of the United States and the president’s special envoy would enter a new and very intimate stage.

  “Thirty minutes!”

  Sweat-drenched, her lungs on fire and her legs wobbling like overstretched rubber bands, Maggie stared at Lillian in disbelief.

  “I thought our plane wasn’t scheduled to leave until nine!”

  “The White House command post called a few moments ago. There’s another snowstorm moving in. The pilot would like to get off before the front hits, if you can make it. I told them you could.”

  The dresser jerked her mop of frizzy gray curls toward the bathroom. “You have seven minutes to shower and do your makeup. Your breakfast tray and travel clothes will be waiting for you when you get out. We leave the house at exactly oh-seven-twenty.”

  “Were you ever in the Marines, by any chance?” Maggie tossed over her shoulder as she forced her vociferously protesting legs to carry her toward the bathroom.

  Lillian snorted. “Before I came to work for Mrs. Grant, I ran a preschool. I’d like to see any platoon of Marines handle that. You’d better get it in gear.”

  Maggie got it in gear.

  She sagged against the shower tiles for two precious minutes, letting the steaming-hot water soak into her aching muscles, then soaped and shampooed with record-breaking speed. Thankfully, the vice president’s short, stylish shag took all of ninety seconds to blow-dry. A slather of concealing foundation, a quick application of mascara and mauve eye shadow, a slash of lipstick, and she was out of the bathroom.

  The sight of the VP’s breakfast tray, with its single granola bar on a gold-rimmed china plate and its crystal goblet filled with a greenish liquid, stopped Maggie in her tracks.

  “What’s in that glass?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Guava juice,” Lillian replied, bustling forward with a creamy wool pantsuit over one arm.

  “Guava juice?” Maggie groaned. “Why couldn’t your boss be a grease-loving biscuits-and-gravy Texan instead of a California health nut?”

  Her mouth pursing, the older woman laid the pantsuit on the bed. She lifted the Kevlar bodysuit and dangled it in one hand.

  “Maybe if you drank more guava juice and ate fewer biscuits,” she said, with patently false sweetness, “you wouldn’t need this.”

  Grinning, Maggie acknowledged the hit. That would teach her to cr
iticize Mrs. Grant to Lillian Roth! Intelligence hadn’t understated the bond of affection between the two women.

  “Drink your juice,” Lillian instructed. “We have exactly fifteen minutes to get you suited up and out of here.”

  Fourteen minutes later, Maggie and Lillian descended the curving central staircase. After a hurried last-minute update by a staffer on the short speech she was to give tonight in L.A., she said goodbye to the various members of the staff who drifted out to wish the vice president an enjoyable vacation.

  A car waited under the portico to take her and her small party to the naval observatory helipad. Gray, drizzly mist closed around the vehicle, almost obscuring the grounds, as they drove the short distance. Like an impatient mosquito, a navy-and-white-painted helicopter squatted on its circular pad, its rotor blades whirring.

  Maggie, Lillian and Denise Kowalski, who would accompany the vice president to California, had no sooner strapped themselves in than the chopper lifted off, banked sharply and headed east. Maggie had flown out of Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, just across the Potomac from Washington, many times. She settled back against the padded seat to enjoy the short flight and grab the first few moments of relative calm since Lillian had rousted her out of bed two hours ago.

  “Have you seen this morning’s Post?” the sandy-haired agent asked, raising her voice to be heard over the thump of the rotor blades.

  “No.”

  Denise held out a folded section of Washington’s leading newspaper. “They did a whole center spread on your appearance at last night’s benefit.”

  “Really?”

  Just in time, Maggie bit back the observation that she’d never thought of herself as centerfold material.

  “The special envoy looks rather distinguished in black and white, doesn’t he?” the agent commented mildly.

  He looked more than distinguished, Maggie thought. He looked devastating. Her stomach gave a little lurch when she saw the enlarged close-up shot of her and Adam. Or rather Taylor Grant and Adam. The photographer had caught them just as she emerged from the limo. Adam was holding his out his hand to help her out. Her face was in profile, but his was captured in precise detail. If Maggie hadn’t remembered just in time that he was playing a role, the expression in his eyes as he looked down at her, or at Taylor—whoever!—would have caused a total melt-down of her synthetic corset. She stared at the picture, mesmerized, for several long minutes before studying the accompanying article.

  The reporter covering the glittering gala had evidently found the VP and her escort far more titillating than the event itself. The story included several more shots of Maggie/Taylor and Adam, as well as a gossipy little side note about the fact that the wealthy, sophisticated special envoy was accompanying the vice president to her private retreat for two weeks. Judging by the way his eyes devoured the lovely Mrs. Grant, the reporter oozed, it should be a most enjoyable vacation for all parties involved.

  Maggie might have agreed with her, but for the fact that sometime during this supposed vacation she hoped to lure a killer into the open.

  She spent the rest of the short trip leafing through the thick Post, although she couldn’t help sneaking repeated glances at the folded section in her lap. As she studied the shot of them getting out of the limo, the curious niggle of resentment she’d felt when Adam first took her hand last night returned.

  Her lips twisted as she identified the feeling for what it was. Jealousy. Weirdly enough, she was jealous of herself.

  She’d wanted Adam to look at her like that, to touch her, for so long. Almost as much as she’d wanted to touch him. But he’d held himself back, just as she had. Neither of them had been ready to acknowledge the attraction that sizzled between them, as electric and charged as a sultry summer night just before a storm. Neither had wanted to upset the delicate balance between their professional responsibilities and their personal needs.

  Now they hovered in some kind of in-between state. That shattering kiss in the snow-swept garden, not to mention those sinful chocolates, had destroyed that balance forever. When this mission was over, when they stopped playing these assigned roles, they’d have to find a new level, a new balance. What that balance would be, she had no idea, but for the first time since joining OMEGA she was more excited about concluding an operation than about conducting it.

  Adam’s helicopter landed at Andrews Air Force Base a few moments before the vice president’s.

  Home to the fleet of presidential aircraft and the crews who flew and maintained them, Andrews was well equipped to handle the entourages that normally traveled with their distinguished passengers. Although the various craft used by the chief executive and his deputy were always parked in a secure area a safe distance from the rest of the flight-line activity, a well-appointed VIP lounge was only a short drive away.

  Yanking open the helo’s door, a blue-suited crew chief gestured toward a waiting sedan. “There’s hot coffee in the lounge, sir, if you’d like to wait there. The driver will take you over.”

  Ducking under the whirring rotor blades, Adam shook his head. “I’m fine. I’ll wait by the plane.” Turning up the collar of his tan camel-hair overcoat, he walked to the Gulfstream jet warming up on the parking apron.

  When discharging the duties of her office, the vice president usually traveled aboard Air Force Two, a huge, specially equipped 747 crammed with communications gear and fitted with several compartments for the media and assorted staff members who traveled with their boss. For this trip—a combination of party business and personal pleasure that didn’t require her normal entourage—she’d fly aboard a smaller, more economical plane.

  Cold wind whipped Adam’s hair as he waited beside the sleek white-painted Gulfstream. Around him, crew members performed a last-minute visual check of the aircraft while a portable power cart slowly revved up the twin Rolls-Royce turbofan engines. Having flown jet fighters during his long-ago stint in the navy, Adam had maintained his flight proficiency over the years. At any other time, he would have observed the takeoff preparations with a keen eye, and his hands would have itched to take the stick. Today, the fists he’d shoved into the pockets of his overcoat remained tightly clenched.

  During the short flight to Andrews, reality had set in. The raw male need that had surged through him when he finally admitted that he wanted Maggie had given way to an even fiercer need. The need to protect her.

  She was at risk, as she’d never been before. Like a sacrificial goat staked out at the end of a tether, she was offering herself as a target for an assassin. Adam couldn’t believe he’d allowed himself to consider, even for a moment, unleashing his desire. He couldn’t allow himself or her to be distracted from their deadly mission during the days ahead.

  But when this mission was over…

  By the time he heard the distant whump of rotor blades, he had himself well in control again. Narrowing his eyes against the drizzle, he searched the dense gray haze. A few seconds later, a blue-and-white chopper broke through the mist and hovered above the runway. It drifted down until its skids touched lightly. Then the copilot jumped out to open the passenger-compartment door.

  Maggie climbed out first. She smiled her thanks at the helmeted copilot and darted out from under the turning rotor blades. The downwash from the blades ruffled her auburn hair and whirled the skirts of her cream-colored wool coat around her calves.

  Although Adam was expecting it, her likeness to Taylor Grant still generated a small shock. The resemblance didn’t have anything to do with the wine-colored hair or the jawline that Field Dress had molded so exactly, he decided as he watched her cross the wet tarmac. It was a matter of style. An inner vitality. A shimmering essence that the two women had in common.

  But the mischievous gleam that filled Maggie’s eyes as she returned the greetings of the crew members who snapped to attention was hers alone. She knew very well that her less-than-precise rendition of a military salute would make Adam grimace inwardly. Which it did. Af
ter this mission, he promised himself, he’d teach her just how to bend that elbow. Among other things.

  “Good morning.”

  Taylor’s voice carried over the whine of the Gulfstream’s engines and the whir of the helo’s blades. This was Chameleon at her finest, Adam thought in silent admiration. No one in OMEGA could come close to matching Maggie’s skill at pulling a deep-cover identity around her like an invisible cloak.

  “Good morning,” he replied, taking her outstretched hands in both of his.

  In the periphery of his vision, he saw the news team from the White House pool who’d braved the cold to cover the VP’s departure recording their greeting.

  So did Maggie. Suddenly ridiculously self-conscious, she smiled up at Adam. She felt like a teenager about to go out on a closely chaperoned date, for Pete’s sake!

  “Are you sure you want to exchange two weeks of Washington’s cold, snowy weather for California’s cold, snowy weather?” she asked, tilting her head in a coquettish gesture while the cameras whirred.

  “I’m sure. Come on, let’s get you aboard before your…nose freezes.”

  She bit back a grin as he passed her hand to the steward who was waiting to help her aboard.

  Shrugging out of her wool coat, Maggie handed it to the hovering attendant. She could get used to this pampering, she thought, if not to the idea of being constantly under surveillance. The interior of the plane was like none she’d ever seen before, all gleaming oak, polished brass and plush blue upholstery.

  She had no trouble identifying her seat. A slipcover embroidered with the vice president’s seal draped a huge armchair, one of two in a private forward compartment. While she strapped herself in, Adam took the seat opposite her. She shifted her feet under the smooth oak table to make room for his long legs.

  Lillian and Denise settled themselves in the rear compartment, along with several other Secret Service agents, who’d coordinated the final details of the L.A. visit. Even before the hatch had closed, Denise had bent over an outspread map and begun a review of the security along the route from the airport to the hotel.