by Cindy Dees
She rummaged in the dumpster beside them for some newspapers and a couple of cardboard boxes, which she spread over him. They’d not only hide his tuxedo but also keep him slightly warmed. Hopefully, the pungent stench of garbage would cover the smell of his blood. She stepped back to survey her work and decided he’d pass for a homeless drunk at a glance. If he got picked up by the police, he could always claim he’d been mugged.
She turned and left the alley, walking calmly along the street as if she strolled this way every evening. There were fewer catcalls and lewd propositions than she’d expected. She must look worse than she realized. She walked for perhaps a mile before she reached a neighborhood where taxis would venture.
Before too terribly long, she managed to hail one. The driver raised his eyebrows when she gave him the address of Fortesque’s home and inquired if she had the money to pay the fare. She peeled a hundred-dollar bill off the roll in her shoulder bag, passed it up front, and told the guy to step on it.
An hour later, the taxi crunched up the gravel drive to the mansion and a maid let her in. A postconcert pool party was in full swing out back and the house was deserted. She slipped upstairs avoiding the wild festivities, packed quickly, loaded their bags in the rental car and headed back toward Toronto.
What on earth did she think she was doing? Here she was rescuing Taylor when it was her fondest wish to be rid of him. Wasn’t it? Of course it was. He was a huge hindrance to her. She ought to just leave him in that alley. His wound wasn’t mortal, and he could look after his own hide. She wasn’t responsible for him! She lectured herself on her stupidity all the way back to the waterfront.
She jumped out of the car to collect Taylor and stopped short. Where she had left him, there was only a pile of newspaper and cardboard boxes. Her stomach plummeted to her feet. “Damn!” she burst out, striking her palm against the wall beside her.
Taylor poked his head out of the dumpster right next to her. “Looking for me, boss?”
She leaped straight up in the air, and when her heart started beating again, she glared at him. “What are you doing in there?”
“I heard a familiar voice asking about a man and a woman in evening clothes, and I thought I’d better hide. This was the best I could do.”
“Who was it?”
Taylor frowned. “I don’t know. I was pretty out of it. It was a man’s voice and it sounded close. I knew I was in danger.”
“Our sniper must’ve been asking questions at the bar right around the corner.”
“Probably,” Taylor agreed. “Uh, boss? Could you help me get out of here? ’Fraid I’m not feeling up to my usual superhuman standards.”
With her help, Taylor crawled awkwardly out of the dumpster and made his unsteady way to the car. She loaded him in quickly and jumped into the driver’s seat. They were many miles beyond Toronto before either one of them spoke again.
“Boss?”
“Hmm?” she replied.
“Thanks for coming back to get me.”
An odd warmth spread through her. “You’re welcome.” Lest the moment get too sappy, she added dryly, “If you’re truly grateful, roll down the window. You stink to high heaven.”
It was nearly daybreak when they reached the U.S. border in Windsor, Ontario. She reached across Taylor’s slumbering form to cover his torn and bloody pant leg with his coat. She was grateful he didn’t wake as they approached the border guard, who peered in the window politely. Taylor probably couldn’t lie for squat under the best of circumstances, and certainly not in his present condition.
Amanda told the guard briefly that she was driving because her date was drunk. The guy waved her through with an admonition to be careful. They rolled past the five towering, mirrored cylinders of the Detroit Renaissance Center and joined a smattering of sleepy drivers winding through the sunken expressways of the Motor City.
Amanda drove as though their very lives depended on getting far, far away from Toronto. Exhaustion nipped around the edges of her consciousness along with something else. Something that kept her foot on the accelerator and her eyes wide open. Fear. Stalking her patiently like the cruel hunter it was. It breathed down her neck, whispering of a narrow escape that might not go her way next time.
She felt Taylor’s forehead from time to time, watched for the next rise and fall of his chest to reassure herself that they were both alive. That first bullet had come inches from killing her. They’d been sitting ducks. Damned lucky sitting ducks. She shuddered and drove on.
It was late afternoon before she exited the highway at a cluster of gas stations, fast-food joints, and motels. Taylor woke up and groaned in relief.
She grumbled, “I don’t see what you’re so thrilled about. I’m the one who spent all day smelling you.”
He smiled wanly in response.
She turned in at the entrance to a motor lodge and got them a room. While Taylor luxuriated in the shower, she made a quick trip out for first-aid supplies and food. She got back before he finished washing and was sitting cross-legged on one of the double beds, chewing on a piece of barbecued chicken when he emerged from the bathroom. Cole slaw, biscuits, cartons of milk and chocolate pudding rounded out the picnic she’d spread out on the coverlet.
“Let me see your leg,” she ordered.
He lifted the edge of the towel wrapped around his hips and showed her the double wounds, which were bleeding again.
She scolded, “Why did you get your scabs wet? You’ve lost more than enough blood already.”
Taylor shrugged. “Sorry. There were still a couple of splinters in it, and I had to dig them out so my leg wouldn’t get infected.”
Ouch. That sounded painful. She bit back the rest of the lecture and pulled out the gauze and tape she’d bought. She held out the first-aid supplies to him and averted her face as he sat down on the opposite bed, hiked the towel up even farther and proceeded to tape his leg.
“That’ll leave an unsightly scar if you don’t get a few stitches. Would you like me to set a couple sutures? I’ve done it before.”
He glanced up at her, and his jaw rippled as if his teeth were clenched. “I’m not planning to enter any beauty pageants. I’ll take the scar. I’ve had about enough pain for one day, thanks.”
She looked away again hastily. “Remember to slather it in antibiotic cream.”
“Taken care of,” he bit out. He tore long strips of tape to secure his bandage, and she let out as big a sigh of relief as he did when the job was finally done. Her bed lurched as he sat down on it. She stiffened in surprise but relaxed when he reached for a piece of chicken.
“So,” he asked, “where are we on this case?”
She’d given that a lot of thought during the long drive. “I’d like you to take a look at my father’s journal.” She rummaged in one of her bags and came back to the bed with the leather diary in hand. “You’re a shrink, right?”
He grinned up at her. “Guilty as charged.”
“Maybe you can make some sense of my father’s writing. It all sounds like wild, meaningless ranting to me.”
She handed him the diary, which he thumbed through. He looked up at her, frowning. “Can you actually read this chicken scratching?”
“Yeah. I grew up with it, remember?” She sat down beside him and started to read aloud. Over the next couple hours she read to Taylor while he jotted down occasional notes. It was painstaking work requiring copious amounts of coffee. Eventually, her brain just gave out. She put the bookdown and rubbed her eyes. “What have we got?” she asked wearily.
He glanced down at his notes. “This was your father’s last journal before he died. He wrote it as a legacy to you and was trying to tell you the shortened version of some story. It revolves around some fantasy of him being an international spy with a control officer named Nicky, from whom he took something called Udarsky.”
She peered at him from under her hands. “It wasn’t a fantasy. He was a spy.”
Taylor gaped at her. H
is expression would have been comical if she wasn’t so damned tired. “For whom? Or more importantly, against whom?” he asked incredulously.
“To the best of my knowledge, for the Russians against the British.”
He stared. “Your dad was American, wasn’t he?”
She nodded. “Yes, and he hated the rigid, imperialist class structure of Europe.”
“Your father was a Communist? What did he have against the Brits?”
She’d have thought that after so many years of bearing the shame of her father’s sins, Taylor’s horrified tone of voice wouldn’t hurt. But it did.
“He wasn’t all that passionate about politics. Frankly, he didn’t care one way or another who he was spying for or against. For him, it was all about money. My father was an untalented art dealer with expensive tastes and a family to support. The Russians paid him well, so he took the rubles and did what they asked.”
“So what does he have to do with this diamond-smuggling investigation?”
She looked up candidly at Taylor, grateful for the compassion in his gaze. “I have no bloody idea.” She sighed. “I was hoping you could tell me after you read that thing. Are you ready to get back to work?”
Her father’s ramblings got less and less coherent as they neared the end of the book. He ranted repeatedly about something he called the Udarsky cache. Claimed to have found it right under Nicky’s unsuspecting nose and brought it out of Russia.
Taylor frowned. “Whatever Udarsky was, Christopher McClintock seemed to think it or he was his ticket—and yours—to a life of wealth and ease.”
Time for a break to rest her numb brain and burning eyes. She lay on the bed, exhausted.
Taylor stretched out beside her, his body big and warm and disturbingly near. “What’s the deal with this oak tree that keeps cropping up? Do you know what he’s referring to?”
Grief sliced through Amanda. “Yeah. It’s the tree in the picture that came with this journal. He and I planted it when I was seven. Whenever he came home from trips abroad he’d always go straight away to see that tree. I used to wonder if he practiced some weird religious ritual beneath it.”
“Were his trips to meet Nicky? To pass over information?”
She frowned. “I don’t think so. Nicky was his Russian contact in London. Anything my father learned he passed to Nicky there.”
“What kind of spying did your father do?”
“Collected gossip, mostly. Stuff about politicians and the British upper crust who made up his clientele.”
“Did your father have any unusual skills like a talent for cryptography or a ham radio hobby that would make him useful to the Russians?”
Amanda frowned. “I don’t think so.”
“What about photographic analysis? You said he was an art dealer, so he must have been good at looking at visual details.”
She stared at him. In all her years of living with the man and the fallout from him, that had never occurred to her. “Wouldn’t the Russians have used their own people to do photographic analysis?” she asked.
“Could your dad have had special knowledge of an area that the Russians were interested in? They needed his expertise to tell them what they were looking at, maybe?”
The obvious answer to that pierced Amanda’s exhaustion. She propped herself on her elbows, staring at Taylor. She answered slowly, “My grandfather was a missionary to Kyrgyzstan before World War II. My father grew up there. He traveled every inch of that place. Went to some really remote areas. But why would Kyrgyzstan interest the Russians? People in that part of the world still live in yurts and raise yaks. It’s hardly a place with huge military significance.”
“What the hell’s a yurt?” Taylor asked.
“A domed tent made of animal hides or felt. Kirghiz shepherds live in them.”
He rolled onto his back beside her and stared at the ceiling for several minutes. Finally, he announced, “I don’t see the connection between Kyrgyzstan and diamond smuggling. It’s not a place diamonds come from, is it?”
She frowned. “Not to my knowledge. The only thing I know of that comes from Kyrgyzstan is hydroelectric power. They’ve got a couple huge dams on major rivers.”
Amanda’s eyes flew open when Taylor’s hands touched the sides of her head, massaging her scalp. Lord, that felt good. She made the mistake of looking at him. His hands drew her inexorably nearer to the stormy ocean of his gaze. Her breath hitched. Fire ignited within her. It swirled and twisted, grew like a hungry blaze to consume her. His gaze locked on hers, he came closer and paused for a moment, giving her permission to stop this. And then his mouth touched hers.
This man. This moment. It was as if she’d been waiting a lifetime for this single, culminating instant. From this second forward, her life would not be the same. She knew it as certainly as she drew breath. It was a homecoming, a recognition more ancient than time. She knew this man, knew the feel of his warm, firm mouth moving gently across hers, knew the taste of him, the scent of him.
She sank into that primeval memory and melted into his embrace. Her mouth parted beneath his, and his tongue ran lightly across the smoothness of her teeth. One of his hands went behind her head, and the kiss deepened. His tongue found hers, and she reveled in the velvet roughness of it. He groaned deep in his throat. Elation soared within her. She stretched her emotional wings cautiously, responding experimentally to his kiss. Her hands came to rest upon the hard contours of his chest and began to explore the thrilling mystery of his body. If accepting comfort from Taylor had been freedom, then this was flight.
Harry Trumpman walked into the conference room. It was decorated in shades of bland utilitarian and not quite cheap. It reeked of government. Probably an FBI field office or something similar. He studied the other men in the room. Several of them didn’t look FBI. Two of them wore the expensive, old-school suits of…if he had to guess, State Department. One face he recognized from a case Devereaux’d put him on about three years back. High-level CIA. What in the hell was he doing here? Cautiously, Harry sat down at the conference table.
One of the FBI guys spoke first, predictably bellicose. “What do you know about a murder at a ritzy hotel in Toronto a couple days back?”
Harry frowned. “Nothing. Why?”
“What about a shoot-out at a warehouse on the Toronto waterfront last night?”
He looked at the guy and said deadpan,” I didn’t know Toronto had a waterfront. I’ll be damned. Live and learn.”
While the FBI guy scowled, the CIA rep stepped in. Smooth. Professional. “Your boss has a couple operatives poking around, Harry. Care to share what they’re investigating?”
“Not particularly. Why?”
“They’ve bumped into someone we’d prefer they backed off of for now. Are you in contact with your people?”
He wasn’t, but he wasn’t about to admit that to the people in this room. “I can be.”
Mr. CIA pushed a photograph across the table at him. Harry looked down at a swarthy guy with thick, black hair; fortyish in age; wearing a little pair of spectacles perched on his nose. “I need you to do me a favor. Get your people to leave this guy alone.”
“Is he yours?” Harry asked.
“No. But we have a vested interest in giving him some room to operate.”
That was interesting. “Any objections if my operatives continue to watch him?”
The CIA guy looked Harry in the eye. Too damned sincerely. “Sorry, my friend. You’re gonna have to trust me. This guy needs to be completely sterile. We need your people to have no interaction whatsoever. Nothing that could spook him. No contact, no surveillance, nada.”
“Care to share what you’re poking around in?” Harry asked.
The CIA guy shrugged. “Sorry.”
Right. He was supposed to lay all his cards on the table while they didn’t show him any of theirs. Not bloody likely. “Anything else?” Harry asked sourly.
“No, nothing else. It’s good to see you agai
n.”
Nothing, his ass. Why would the CIA send in someone that high level to do an errand boy’s job? Why the show of interdepartment unity from Uncle Sam? What had Amanda and Taylor stumbled across? Sure as he was sitting there, they’d kicked up one hell of a hornet’s nest. Damn, Amanda was good. Two days and she already had the Russians trying to kill her and the U.S. government putting on dog-and-pony shows to back her off.
Taylor tightened his arms gently about Amanda and shifted smoothly, following her down to the mattress. God, he wanted to sink into her, to surround himself with her warmth, her vulnerability. She was sweet and potent, like a fine liqueur. He sipped at her, savoring her complex, elegant flavors. He covered her with enough of his body to offer protection, sanctuary, but not so much as to trap her. One of his hands traveled briefly down her ribs, past her hips, down the length of her thigh to the back of her knee and up again. She shuddered under his fingertips, arching slightly into his touch. Thank God. Her reaction was healthy and normal. Nobody’d done a number on this part of her psyche.
He squeezed his eyes shut in a gut-wrenching battle of lust versus better judgment. Now was not the time. She was just discovering her wings and was not yet ready to fly with him. He marshaled his raging hormones and managed to contain them enough to lift his mouth away from hers. His hand captured one of hers and he twined their fingers together. He propped himself up on one elbow and gazed down at her. “I’m sorry. That was meant to give you comfort. But it’s damn hard not to get carried away with you.” When Amanda didn’t answer, he released her hand and rolled away from her reluctantly. Dammit. He’d pushed too hard.
She sat up and said thoughtfully. “Thanks. For the comfort, I mean. It was…nice.”