“You were lucky you did not all succumb to the sickness.” Raminski cranked up the warmth of his smile. “I would have missed out on the best part of the evening—meeting two such lovely, young ladies.”
Gag.
It wasn’t only Raminski’s cheesy lines that made her queasy. She was about to do something that could get her arrested. The idea made her stomach cramp. Once in a lifetime opportunity, she reminded herself. And once in a lifetime might be an overstatement. Fate. Serendipity. Seize the moment. What is the worst that can happen?
They could lock her up and throw away the key.
Crap.
She swallowed more champagne.
Angel—born flirt—smiled an electric smile and smoothed her hands over her concave stomach, as if more attention needed to be drawn to her goddess-like figure. “I wanted to fit into my dress tonight so I was a good girl at lunch.” The expression in her eyes suggested she wasn’t normally a good girl.
“Your efforts are much appreciated, Ms. LeMay.” Raminski inclined his head courteously to Angel, and then to Scarlett.
He was so not her type. She liked men who appreciated a woman’s brain at least as much as her body. Not handsome, muscle-bound jerks who only wanted a bout of hot, sweaty, mindless sex.
Gotta get over that, an inner voice complained.
And then it clicked. This was her chance. Angel and Sergio Raminski were all distracted and flirty with one another. She just needed ten minutes alone. “Actually,” she touched her own stomach, “I don’t feel so good. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need to visit the powder room.” She took a step back and jostled the elbow of someone behind her.
“Fu…udge,” said a deep male voice.
She whirled and came face-to-face with Angel’s future husband. She could tell it was him because she’d made him spill champagne down the front of his dress blues.
“I’m so sorry.” She grabbed a white, cloth napkin off a nearby waiter and dabbed at the man’s white shirt and gold cummerbund. “I’m such a dork.”
“That wasn’t my first thought.” His expression caught her off-guard. It contained a very male look of admiration. She blinked. He took the napkin from her hand and she felt a shiver of something that was definitely not repulsion.
The guy looked…like… Well, he looked fabulous. And hot. Tall enough she had to tilt her head way back even wearing these ridiculous heels. He had military-short, dark blond hair that shone brightly under the chandeliers. A lean face, firm jaw, pale hazel eyes that twinkled with obvious humor and a mouth that tried to suppress it. She resisted the urge to fan herself the way Angel had earlier. Her eyes drifted lower, taking in broad shoulders and a chest-full of medals that jerked her out of her perusal. He was an American hero and not for the likes of her.
Sergio Raminski tried to step in. “Allow me to help.”
“Yeah, no thanks.” The guy held up his hand firmly as if to ward the Russian off. Captain America meets the Dark Prince. “Not a big fan of champagne, anyway.”
“You’re going to be all sticky.” Scarlett grimaced apologetically.
“Sarah LeMay!” Angel’s laugh got dirty and loud and Scarlett flushed with embarrassment.
She opened her mouth to insist she hadn’t meant it as a double entendre, but snapped her jaw closed. The sparkle in the sailor’s gaze intensified and Raminski’s smirk became a full-blown grin. She rolled her eyes. Great. Just great.
“If you’d like to get properly cleaned up I can take you to one of the guest suites, or…” Raminski tilted his head to one side and slipped into silky hospitality mode. “Miss LeMay was just going to find the restroom. Perhaps you can accompany one another?”
The American held the other man’s gaze so long Scarlett began to feel uncomfortable. Then he turned to her and held out his elbow in a courteous move. “Sure, let me escort you. We can get lost together.”
“I know who I’d like to get lost,” she muttered quietly, cutting a glance at Raminski as they walked away.
The sailor flashed her a grin. The last thing she wanted was an escort, especially the kind people noticed with good looks and glittering medals, but she needed to get out of here and making a fuss would garner too much attention. Scarlett Stone might run away and hide, but the congressman’s daughters had been raised in wealth and privilege. They expected to be treated like society princesses. Outside, in the hallway, a waiter directed them down a long stretch of dimly lit corridor. According to the blueprints she’d studied, this was where she needed to go.
Her heels clicked off the parquet flooring, her footsteps echoing loudly in the relative quiet of the empty hallway. He moved silently, but she was very aware of the man at her side—his size, his looks, and warm body next to hers. They stopped when they reached the men’s room and she quickly disengaged her arm. “I’m really sorry about the champagne.”
“Accidents happen.” He shrugged easily and held out his hand. “Matt Lazlo.”
She shook his hand, his skin warm and dry; grip, strong but not crushing. Her mouth formed her real name for a split-second before she remembered who she was supposed to be. “Sarah LeMay. I’m here with my…sister, Angel.” She couldn’t hold his gaze, but she could hardly confess the truth just because he had pretty eyes and looked good in uniform. Some secret agent she’d make. She resisted rolling her eyes at herself.
His lips tightened and his expression turned serious. “I’m sorry they made you uncomfortable back there.”
Her gaze flashed to his in surprise. She’d spent a lifetime being uncomfortable and few people noticed. She rubbed her bare arms where goose bumps raced over her skin. “It’s okay. It was my fault for knocking champagne all over you. I tend to be clumsy unless I’m working.” Then her hands were steady as lasers and they needed to be.
“So what is it you do?”
Crap. “Oh, nothing very important,” she said vaguely. Sarah worked for an advertising agency but Scarlett didn’t want to expand on the lies she’d already told and, under the circumstances, she could hardly tell him she was an expert in solid-state physics.
“Pretty earrings.” He tapped one of the sparkling danglies Angel had lent her. Scarlett touched it self-consciously, not used to wearing anything flashy.
She pointed to his medals. “That’s some impressive silverware you have there yourself. Thank you for your service.” The words made her uncomfortable—not because she wasn’t sincere, but because if he knew who she really was, he wouldn’t want her thanks. She hunched her shoulders at the thought, folded up a little on herself. America thought her family was the ultimate in treacherous backstabbers and betrayers. Unless she could prove otherwise, they always would.
She noticed a pair of tiny holes in the material where a pin must have sat on his uniform jacket. She reached out and brushed her fingers over the rough edge of the material. “What did you have there?” She raised her eyes to his and watched his pupils flare in surprise.
“Nothing.”
She withdrew her hand. “So why’d you take it off?”
One side of his lips kicked up. God, he was pretty. “Take what off?” Sharp intelligence spiked those hazel depths, making them a million times more attractive, sending a jolt right through her system. The timing was a death knell to any possible relationship—and wasn’t that the story of her life. She took a step back.
The thought of what she was about to do crowded out the pleasure of meeting a guy who had gorgeous eyes and a keen sense of humor. “I suppose I better hurry up and get back to Angel.”
He pulled a face, obviously as keen to return to the party as she was.
“Why did you come tonight?” Scarlett asked, suddenly curious.
“A direct order from my boss. What about you?” He stood with his legs braced apart, watching her as if he had all the time in the world.
She didn’t have all the time in the world—she had this one brief moment to try and right a terrible wrong. Even then it might not be enough. “My p
arents made me,” she told him.
It wasn’t a lie.
They stood there staring into each other’s eyes, and Scarlett forgot to breathe. It was one of those rare moments when you met someone and wanted to spend the whole night getting to know them better. She finally broke the connection. It could never be. She turned and walked to the entrance of the ladies’ room, and when she glanced back, Matt Lazlo had disappeared.
Matt Lazlo was not the man for her, no matter how much she might want him to be. His uniform should have served as warning enough.
Scarlett’s father’s favorite quote had been, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance,” but he’d still ended up in a supermax prison serving multiple life sentences for treason. Now Scarlett was about to take the concept of vigilance to a whole new level and God help her if she got caught.
Inside the restroom, she held the door for a woman who was just leaving. From her position half-hidden behind the large oak door, she spotted the Russian Ambassador coming out of a room across the hall, a room her research suggested was his office. She recognized his face from official photographs—shaggy blond hair and craggy forehead. Short, stocky, but good looking in a blunt, powerful way. Fourteen years ago he’d been the diplomatic attaché here in Washington. He’d returned to Moscow shortly before her father had been arrested.
Coincidence? Scarlett didn’t think so.
Her father had always been suspicious of Andrei Dorokhov, but he hadn’t found any concrete evidence of espionage. He must have gotten too close, and somehow the Russian had figured out a way to frame him—Scarlett was hoping to discover exactly how and exonerate her father.
The ambassador straightened his fancy white jacket and strode along the hallway in firm strides. Another man left after him, moving in the opposite direction. Scarlett eyed the slowly closing door to the office. Her plan had been to plant her device inside a cleaning supply closet around the corner that shared an inner wall with Dorokhov’s office. The technology should be good enough to pick up conversations, but it wasn’t ideal. Taking a chance, she dashed across the hall, caught the door just before it latched and darted into the office, closing it gently behind her.
It was dark and she flicked on the overhead light to make sure no one else was in the room. Easier to plead ignorance at the start than to snoop around and find someone sitting in the dark, watching her commit a crime. The room was beautiful in its old-fashioned opulence. A marble fireplace with a large gold-framed mirror above it formed the focal point of the room, and heavy red, velvet curtains shut out the rest of the world. A massive desk made of some dark wood with a satin finish sat to her right.
If she was caught here she didn’t know what they’d do to her, but it wouldn’t be good.
An ornate brass lamp on the desk was perfect for her needs. She hitched up her skirt and reached inside her panties, removed a small plastic bag. Carefully she laid the lamp on the desk and removed her tiny expandable screwdriver from the bag. It was fiddly, but after only a few seconds she’d removed the base of the lamp and peered inside.
A wave of icy horror swept over her bare shoulders and down her spine. Inside the lamp was another electronic listening device. A sophisticated one. Not a remnant of the Cold War. Crappity crap. She wanted to scream but clamped her lips shut. Sweat bloomed on her skin and her palms grew damp. Someone was already spying on Andrei Dorokhov, or his predecessor. And that someone might right now have her under surveillance.
This isn’t happening.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Then pulled herself together. It was happening and she needed to get out of there. Fast.
Quickly, she reassembled the lamp and wiped off her prints. There was every chance whoever was spying on the Russians had just witnessed her attempting to do the same thing. Or maybe they only had audio… Please, only have audio.
She stuffed the small plastic bag of equipment down her bodice, turned off the light before opening the door a few millimeters. No one was in the corridor so she slipped quickly across the hall into the bathroom. She flushed the transmitter down the toilet and dropped the screwdriver in the garbage.
Her chance was gone. Maybe it had never truly existed—just another fragile hope to keep the illusion alive. She leaned her forehead against the wooden stall door as her heart slammed into her ribs. Adrenaline made her dizzy. Skin clammy. Her body alternated between hot then cold as her reaction shifted from panic to despair. She needed to get out of here. She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid and naïve as to think she could pull this off, but maybe that’s how her father had been framed in the first place. Stupid and naïve must run in the family, along with gullible and unlucky.
See all the Cold Justice Series books on Toni Anderson’s website.
Read the start of Toni Anderson’s Multi-Award Nominated Romantic Suspense/ Spy Thriller…
THE KILLING GAME
©Toni Anderson
IT LOOKED AND felt like the dominion of Gods.
Special Air Service trooper Ty Dempsey had been catapulted from a rural English market town into the heart of a colossal mountain range full of pristine snow-capped peaks which glowed against a glassy blue sky. Many of the summits in the Hindu Kush were over five miles high. The utter peace and tranquility of this region was an illusion that hid death, danger and uncertainty beneath every elegant precipice. No place on earth was more treacherous or more beautiful than the high mountains.
He was an anomaly here.
Life was an anomaly here.
Thin sharp needles pierced his lungs every time he took a breath. But his prey was as hampered by the landscape as they were, and Ty Dempsey wasn’t going to let a former Russian Special Forces operative-turned-terrorist get the better of an elite modern-day military force. Especially a man who’d shockingly betrayed not only his country, but humanity itself.
They needed to find him. They needed to stop the bastard from killing again.
The only noise in this arena was boots punching through the crust of frozen snow, and the harshness of puny human lungs struggling to draw oxygen out of the fragile atmosphere. The shriek of a golden eagle pierced the vastness overhead, warning the world that there were strangers here and to beware. Dempsey raised his sunglasses to peer back over his shoulder at the snaking trail he and his squad had laid down. Any fool could follow that trail, but only a real fool would track them across the Roof of the World to a place so remote not even war lingered.
But the world was full of fools.
As part of the British SAS’s Sabre Squadron A’s Mountain Troop, Dempsey was familiar with the terrain. He knew the perils of mountains and altitude, understood the raw omnipotent power of nature. This was what he trained for. This was his job. This was his life. He’d climbed Everest and K2, though the latter had nearly killed him. He understood that there were places on earth that were blisteringly hostile, that could obliterate you in a split second, but they held no malice, no evil. Unlike people…
He relaxed his grip on his carbine and adjusted the weight of his bergen. None of the men said a word as they climbed ever higher, one by one disappearing over the crest of the ridge and dropping down into the snowy wilderness beyond. With an icy breath Dempsey followed his men on the next impossible mission. Hunting a ghost.
* * *
THE SMALL PLANE taxied down the runway at Kurut in the Wakhan Corridor, a tiny panhandle of land in the far northeast of Afghanistan. Thankfully the runway was clear of snow—a miracle in itself.
Dr. Axelle Dehn stared out of the plane window and tried to relax her grip on the seat in front of her. She’d been traveling for thirty hours straight, leveraging every contact she’d ever made to get flights and temporary visas for her and her graduate student. Something was going on with her leopards and she was determined to find out what.
Last fall, they’d attached satellite radio collars to ten highly-endangered snow leopards here in the Wakhan. This past week, in the space of a few days, they’d lost one sign
al completely, and another signal was now coming from a talus-riddled slope where no shelter existed. This latter signal was from a collar that had been attached to a leopard called Sheba, one of only two female snow leopards they’d caught. Just ten days ago, for the first time ever, they’d captured photos from one of their remote camera traps of the same leopard moving two newborn cubs. If Sheba had been killed, the cubs were out there, hungry and defenseless. Emotion tried to crowd her mind but she thrust it aside.
The cats might be fine.
The collar might have malfunctioned and dropped off before it was programmed to. Or maybe she hadn’t fastened it tight enough when they’d trapped Sheba, and the leopard had somehow slipped it off.
But two collars in two days…?
The plane came to a stop and the pilot turned off the propellers. The glacier-fed river gushed silkily down the wide, flat valley. Goats grazed beside a couple of rough adobe houses where smoke drifted through the holes in the roof. Bactrian camels and small, sturdy horses were corralled nearby. A line of yaks packed with supplies waited patiently in a row. Yaks were the backbone of survival in this remote valley, especially once you headed east beyond the so-called road. People used them for everything from milk, food, transportation and even fuel in this frigid treeless moonscape.
It was early spring—the fields were being tilled in preparation to plant barley in the short but vital growing season. A group of children ran toward the plane, the girls dressed in red dresses with pink headscarves, the boys wearing jewel-bright green and blue sweaters over dusty pants. Hospitality was legendary in this savagely poor region, but with the possibility of only a few hundred snow leopards left in Afghanistan’s wilderness, Axelle didn’t have time to squander.
Her assistant, a Dane called Josef Vidler, gathered his things beside her. She adjusted her hat and scarf to cover her hair. The type of Islam practiced here was moderate and respectful.
Her Risk To Take Page 8