by Cherry Adair
“Cut to the chase, Miss Smallwood. You managed to talk your way into my office by claiming you have information about a certain robbery?”
“The safe in your San Cristóbal villa was robbed just over two months ago. I know the woman who took the contents.”
Morale’s pulse leapt. A woman. No wonder the people investigating the robbery hadn’t come up with anything. They’d been looking for a man. But then, who would have guessed a thief as able as the one who’d stolen from him would be a woman?
He wanted the bitch. She’d managed to bypass laser alarms and integrated systems that were wired into explosives, along with trip wires designed to stun or kill an intruder. Yet she’d left the safe unharmed. How? How had a female managed to do the job?
“This woman? Was it you?”
“No.”
One dark eyebrow lifted and his hands itched to slap the supercilious smirk from her face. She obviously had cojones to come into his office and face him down. In fact, she had far more guts than brains.
“And I’m supposed to take your word for that?”
She smiled. “Why not? If I were the thief, I certainly wouldn’t come to you in this way and incriminate myself.”
“Then you’re here to trade information for money. Fine. We understand each other.” A blackmailer was nothing but a bug to be squashed. With the touch of one finger to a button beneath his desk, he could have the woman killed the moment she left his office. “How much do you want?”
She laughed. An unattractive sound that grated on José’s nerves. For some reason the foolish woman was obviously convinced that she was in charge here. Had she really no idea who she was dealing with? She was a minnow swimming with sharks. Forward. Stupid.
“I don’t want money from you, Mr. Morales,” she said. “What I want is a position in your organization.”
His eyes narrowed on her. Suspicion rattled bells inside his brain. Was she a plant? Sent by his enemies? A not-so-friendly outside government? He’d had her searched before seeing her. But not strip-searched. “This is an export-import firm, Miss Smallwood,” he said tightly. “What kind of position would you consider yourself qualified for? And why would I give you—a stranger—a job?”
“We both know you head Mano del Dios.”
The oceans shall shrink, he told himself, recalling the prophecy while hearing the woman’s voice as though through a veil. Deserts shall expand. Crops shall fail; there shall be massive starvation. Widespread emotional and mental collapse; increase in crime and violence. Changing weather patterns; basic laws of nature shall be disrupted.
Satanic demons shall appear in broad daylight. War, pestilence, and worldwide plague. Good people who repented of their sins would be saved, while cruel tyrants would be cast into the burning fires of Hell.
Mankind would disappear if José Morales did not do something to make them change.
Morales fisted one hand atop the desk as she kept talking, unaware or uncaring of his inattention.
“So let me, as you say, cut to the chase,” she said unctuously. “I am no longer content in my current position.”
He wasn’t going to hire her. All he wanted was the information—then he wanted her out of his sight.
“I am a lieutenant in the Black Rose.”
José’s eyes narrowed. A trick. It must be. Black Rose was developing a reputation, and now, cutting into his interests. It had begun as a small, irritating enterprise and had grown in both power and accomplishment in an amazingly short time. The Black Rose had become a true thorn in his side. “Why would I believe you?”
“Why would I lie?” she countered silkily.
“Prove it.”
She shrugged as she stood, then turned her back. Unbuttoning her jacket, she removed it and laid it, carefully folded, over the high back of her chair. Then pulled the hem of her white shirt out of the waistband of her skirt, lifting it up and away from her body.
The smoothness of her flesh was marred by old, crisscrossing scars from repeated whippings. He had similar marks. He ignored both her body and the proof of her suffering—neither of which interested him in the slightest. What did interest him, though, was the small, neat tattoo on the small of her back.
A black rose.
A tattoo his people had discovered on the backs of every Black Rose member.
He suppressed a smile. This could be worth his while after all.
She looked at him over her shoulder. “I’m not moving up the ranks in the Black Rose as fast as I would like . . . May I?” She indicated the shirt.
José nodded, still stunned. A Black Rose operative. Here. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. And for this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me. Colossians 1:29
After tucking in the shirt, she donned her jacket and resumed her seat. “Black Rose wanted the disks in your safe. In fact, I was sent to hire the thief to get them for us. At first, she feigned interest in a partnership. Then she double-crossed me.”
“And how,” José asked her dangerously, “did you come to know of the existence of such disks?”
“Black Rose has someone inside your organization, Mr. Morales.”
A pit opened beneath his feet. A traitor. He’d known, of course. This information was too sensitive. Held too closely to his vest—“Who is this person?”
“I do not know. I swear to you. I do not know. I’m only aware that such a leak exists. I can of course try to find the information for you.”
José had no sympathy for this stupid puta. Now he understood why she was not climbing the ranks in her organization. She was weak. Foolish. And worst of all—disloyal. Loyalty was paramount. Any commander knew his power was only as good as the loyalty he invoked.
“She robbed me,” José reminded her, congratulating himself on the iron control keeping him from slapping her to the floor. “How did she double-cross you, Miss Smallwood?”
She slid one nylon-clad leg across the other. A move calculated to bring a man to his knees—yet it was wasted on Morales, a staunch Catholic and a good family man. Anyone who knew him, even if marginally, knew how devoted he was to his Maria. She was second only to his love of God.
“Your security is the best in the world, Mr. Morales. Completely proven one hundred percent reliable and trustworthy. Not so?”
“Your point?” The words were ground out from between gritted teeth. He had thought his security impenetrable. Until the thief had stolen from him. Of course, his new security “expert” had paid for that insult. And that was one body that would never be found.
“Your San Cristóbal safe,” the woman mused, “as with all your security systems, is top of the line. Invincible. Impenetrable. Impossible to crack.”
When would she get to the point?
“This is true.” Nothing short of a nuclear bomb should have been able to open the San Cristóbal safe. A safe so foolproof, so impossible to open, that the company had sent out the man who invented it to show him how to operate it.
He’d been a pleasant young man, clever, useful. Quite brilliant, really. Not, as it turned out, brilliant enough. But the next security man he was sent would be better at his job. José had made certain his employees would have the proper incentive by having them witness the brilliant young man’s execution.
“I gave this woman the last piece of the combination,” Smallwood said smoothly. “The piece that only three people knew.”
José interrupted. “Am I to believe that you knew what no one else did? You waste my time. Anyone could come here and foolishly claim this information.”
Her red-painted mouth frowned. “The unique feature of the safe required the operator to enter the combination twice in uninterrupted succession, followed by another unbreakable code of a combination of six numerals and three letters . . . Should I go on?”
He nodded.
“The thief was confident she could open the safe. Until I told her that even with her expertise, there was a key eleme
nt she couldn’t possibly know.”
So. This puta had a hand in robbing him. Idiota.
“Had it not been for my information, she would surely have been caught in the act.”
God save him from women who thought they were as intelligent as a man. “So I have you to thank for the insult of that robbery?” Was she really so stupid to think he wouldn’t kill her for this? Even though she lied. The information she claimed had been the final key necessary for the thief to open the safe was incorrect.
“Black Rose wants whatever information is contained on what the thief stole. With the information . . .” She shrugged.
She wanted the information. But she, and therefore Black Rose, had no idea just how much power they would have if they knew what was hidden in the subterranean cavern in South Africa.
Dark eyes glittered. “I would have given what was stolen back to you. Ah. I see you doubt me, and wonder why I would do such a thing.” She smiled. She had teeth like a rodent. “To show my loyalty. To you. I have a proposition for you, Mr. Morales . . .”
Loyalty. What did this bitch know of loyalty? She was here turning on her employer. He should trust her to be loyal to him?
“First,” he said, “tell me who gave you the combination.” Half the secret combination had been correct. He knew who must have given it to her. It hurt his heart. But of course he knew.
Only one person could have betrayed him.
She didn’t hesitate. “Samuel Larson.”
The man he’d put in charge of his San Cristóbal operation. The man he’d trusted like a son. José felt the sharp stab of betrayal and then the cold sweep of reason.
Samuel’s entire family would have to be killed, of course. That pretty young wife. The three children. The mother-in-law who lived with them. And naturally, Samuel himself, once he’d been forced to watch all he loved die. Then he would have to find someone else to take Samuel’s place.
Inconvenient to find someone to move up at such short notice. “Go on.”
“I will tell you what you need to know to find, and retrieve, what was stolen from you. And in exchange, you place me in a prominent position in your organization.” She looked smug.
Morales opened his lap drawer and removed what looked like a tooled silver pencil box. “You know the thief’s name?” he asked as he carefully lined up the container in the center of his desk with the index finger and thumb of both hands before looking up at her.
She met his gaze dead on. “I can give you a full physical description. She is about my height. Five-foot-six. She has extremely dark brown eyes and shoulder-length black hair. She is between twenty-five and thirty. Medium build, Mediterranean in ancestry. Dark-skinned.” She bubbled enthusiasm as if she thought she’d won.
“That is it?” Disappointment crushed his chest. Madre de Dios. He’d thought—he’d hoped . . . “You come here,” he said with cold fury, “claiming to have information. And all you give me is a description that could be one of twenty million women? You’re wasting my time. Good day, Miss Smallwood.” He rose.
She stayed seated and looked up at him. “I might not have her identity, Mr. Morales. But I do know who she is with, and I know where they are going.”
Eighteen
Taylor drifted upward through layers of sleep like a deep-sea diver breaking the surface. Two things struck her simultaneously. One, she still had a tight knot of foreboding in her stomach. And two, she was being watched.
Without moving, she slitted her eyes open. Just enough to see him through the screen of her lashes.
He was lounging in the seat opposite, silent and watchful as a large, sleek panther. He’d changed into black slacks and a crisply ironed shirt the color of his eyes, and looked as though he’d stepped from the pages of GQ. His dark hair, which was combed straight back, did nothing to soften his face.
Taylor recognized the strategy of seating himself with his back to the only light in the cabin. His face was shadowed like Phantom of the Opera. She, of course, was bathed in golden light from a wall lamp directly behind him.
Words rushed to her brain grouped in related pairs—hard and uncompromising. Humorless and ruthless.
Oh yeah.
Sexy and hot.
Lucky her.
Taylor scrutinized him the same way he dissected her with his eyes. Her sense of foreboding didn’t dissipate, and now an equally disconcerting attraction had been added. No, more than that. Attraction was too mild a word for the way he made her insides feel. Call it what it was: lust. She didn’t have to guess how that broad chest would feel beneath her hand, her cheek, or her mouth. She remembered. Vividly.
She didn’t need to speculate about how it would feel if he slid his body over hers either. She remembered that vividly too.
She didn’t need to wonder about the taste and texture of his mouth. Now she knew. God, did she know. Just looking at him made all her juices flow and her temperature rise. She’d never had such a visceral reaction to a man before.
But she enjoyed sex, and sometimes an appliance just didn’t do the trick. She needed warm skin, and the physical contact of another human being. Closeness—
But here? Now? With him?
Why not? Here. Now. She was faced with a man who was turning her blood into steam—and he already knew her secrets. Well, most of them. Why shouldn’t she enjoy a little distraction?
Love had never been in the cards for her. Not that she hadn’t thought about it now and then over the years. She’d considered what she might be missing; the intimacy, the pleasure of lying in a man’s arms with no need to have sex because you knew you’d be together tomorrow, next month, and next year.
But love required trust. And trust was a luxury Taylor couldn’t afford. She didn’t anguish over it. Why worry about things you can’t control?
She dated occasionally. But her selection pool was somewhat limited to friends and acquaintances of the crooks she had to deal with. In her line of work, it didn’t pay to get too close to anyone. Although she’d had several marriage proposals over the years, and plenty of indecent proposals as well.
She’d had only two lovers. Daniel Turner, another ex-pat in Switzerland, when she’d been a scared nineteen-year-old living in a foreign country. And Jörn Peterson, whom she’d met at a party on board Neo and Julia Konstantinopoulos’s yacht three years ago. The same party where she’d been introduced to José and Maria Morales.
She’d cared deeply for both men in turn, and the sex had been pleasant, sometimes even incredible. But she’d had no expectations from either relationship. In both instances, the fire had eventually fizzled and they’d parted ways. Jörn amicably. Daniel with a small tug of heartache on both sides.
And yes, once in a while she missed the physical closeness. Although the longer she lived without it, the less she seemed to miss it. Then Huntington St. John stepped into her life to disprove that theory. He knew what she did and who she was. The thought excited her, and she felt the same sensation in her stomach now as she did when poised beside a safe. Or running across a rooftop. Half fear. Half excitement. All . . . alive.
Lids at half mast, she watched Hunt from behind her lashes. Lord, he fascinated her. He scared her too. His cat-watching-a-mouse-hole stillness was unnerving. He had a way of scrutinizing her with those smoky gray eyes that made her feel as though he could read her mind.
But he couldn’t read her mind. And he didn’t know any of the deep, dark secrets of her soul that she had trusted to no one. Things that wouldn’t be revealed in any of those files he had on her. He was no threat to her if she kept this quick and gave him what he wanted. She had to remember that.
Unfortunately, she had to admit—if only to herself—how drawn she was to this man. His quiet strength intrigued her. His tenacity. His aloneness called to something deep inside her soul. She was fascinated by his intelligence and discipline. She wanted to know what made him tick.
Thank God their association was going to be short-lived. The second they lan
ded in Zurich, she’d take him directly to the bank and her safety-deposit box. Ten miles. About twenty minutes. Half an hour tops in traffic. Then hand over whatever it was he wanted and wave bye-bye.
“What are you scheming in that agile brain of yours?” His voice was low and a little more gravelly than normal. The effect of that rough tone on her was almost physical. Little pulse points all over her body sprang to life. The delicious sensation was like happy champagne bubbles popping and dancing inside her veins.
She stopped pretending she wasn’t watching him and blinked her eyes into focus. “My brain was filled with sheep jumping hurdles wearing little numbers pinned to their fleece,” she said lightly as she straightened, dropping her bare feet to the floor. “How long was I asleep?” As she ran both hands through her hair, Taylor took a quick glance down to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be.
The silk of her halter dress kept everything confined but not actually covered. Nope, her erect nipples were easily outlined by the thin fabric. Great timing, she groaned inwardly. She might as well be wearing a sign around her neck with marquee lighting that proclaimed she wanted him. Now. She gave a mental shrug. She couldn’t control her body’s reaction to him.
He didn’t glance at his fancy-dancy wristwatch for the time, but his short black lashes fluttered down as he too looked at her breasts. She felt the heat of his gaze on her body, and it raised her own body temperature by several sizzling degrees. Then his lashes lifted as he met her eyes without expression. Okay, I get it. You’re immune.
“You slept two hours.” He answered the question she’d almost forgotten she’d asked. Which was a good reminder, Taylor thought, to keep sharp around this guy. He never seemed to lose track or have a problem with focusing on his objective.
Great. At least another seven or eight hours cooped up in the air with him. What she wouldn’t give for a parachute. “Got any cards?”
“I do. Yes.”
She waited for the punch line. After a long, looong pause, she looked at him expectantly. “And?”
He raised a brow. “You asked if I had cards. I answered.”