The Fifth Doctrine

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  The overall impression she gave was of slightly fragile, high-maintenance femininity. She cultivated it deliberately. It was the polar opposite of what she was, and the problem was he knew it. With their history, catching him by surprise with what she could do just wasn’t going to happen.

  Which meant she was going to have to wait for the right moment to take him out.

  “Can I get you some coffee?” Evie asked him.

  As Bianca reached her desk and started off-loading the bags onto it, he glanced away from her at last to focus on Evie.

  “Or we have tea, if you’d prefer. Hot or iced,” Evie added. “Or water. Or eggnog.”

  Curiosity was coming off Evie in waves. Bianca could feel it. Evie knew her well enough to pick up on whatever freaked-out vibes she must be giving off. Fortunately, Colin was a good-looking guy and Evie was an inveterate matchmaker. The way Evie’s mind worked, she was probably putting Bianca’s reaction and the impossible-to-miss tension in the air down to some kind of mysterious romantic past between them.

  Please, God.

  The good news was, there was no possible way Evie could guess the truth. The bad news was, there was a romantic past between them. A very abbreviated one. A few shared kisses, mostly staged by one or the other of them to further their respective up-to-no-good agendas.

  No need to dwell on the fact that the heat generated by those kisses had been 100 percent real. Or that she’d been deliberately kissing Colin mindless when the drug she’d given him had finally kicked in and he’d passed out on that Moscow hotel room bed.

  Yes, it was a good bet that he might still be a little mad about that.

  “And we have Christmas cookies,” Evie added, her tone that of one offering up a deal clincher.

  In the act of disentangling the strings of a Santa Claus–themed gift bag from one sporting snowflakes, both of which dangled from her wrist, Bianca glanced around at Evie to find her giving Colin a warm smile.

  Warm was Evie’s thing, which was one reason she was such a surprisingly big success in this, the poor little rich girl’s first paid job. Evie was five foot two, with big brown eyes, shoulder-length chocolate-brown curls and a round, pretty face. The former Savannah Deb of the Year was a rich man’s daughter, a rich man’s (soon-to-be ex) wife, a Southern aristocrat to her toes. She and Bianca had been besties since they were ten years old, when they’d met at the exclusive Swiss boarding school they’d both been shunted off to. Taking this job was an essential part of the first act of rebellion Evie had ever engaged in, which was leaving her cheating scumbag of a husband. Like Bianca, today she was dressed for the fancy dinner of appreciation that Guardian Consulting was throwing for their best customers after work, because Christmas was less than two weeks away and showing appreciation at the holidays was what successful businesses did.

  Evie looked like one of Santa’s more upscale elves in a loose emerald velvet sheath that skimmed her beach-ball-sized belly. It had long sleeves, an emerald satin Peter Pan collar, and was worn with a matching headband and flats that Evie had reluctantly chosen over the heels she normally preferred because her feet had a distressing tendency to swell.

  Evie was almost six months pregnant.

  She couldn’t have looked more wholesome if she’d tried.

  “Cookies?” Colin responded with interest. He was, Bianca was aghast to discover, now right beside her. A big guy for all his appearance of leanness, he loomed more than half a head taller, and his shoulders were twice as wide as hers. It was all she could do not to jump as she discovered him not an arm’s length away. He’d moved as silently as a shadow, and she was reminded once again of the deadly skills he possessed. As an operative, he was nearly—nearly being the key word here—her equal. At such close quarters, she could feel his energy, feel his strength, feel the voltage he gave off. She was sensitized to it, she supposed, because her every nerve ending was rubbed raw by his presence.

  “Let me help,” he said to her as Evie nodded affirmatively in reply to his cookies query. His caramel-brown eyes glinted with malicious enjoyment as they collided with Bianca’s. He obviously knew how much his presence was rattling her and was getting a kick out of it. Without waiting for an answer, he started lifting the uppermost layer of packages from her arms and stacking them on her desk.

  Bianca was torn between equally strong impulses to back away from him and drop him to the floor with a side kick to the kneecap.

  All too conscious of Evie watching them, she did neither.

  “Thank you.” Her tone was almost normal now. Credit that to a lifetime’s worth of training kicking in. Succeeding in freeing the entwined bags at last, she slid them over her hand and deposited them on her desk. Colin solicitously moved a few gaily wrapped boxes to make room. It was all she could do not to jerk away as his fingers brushed hers. Instead she absorbed the static-electricity-style jolt without outwardly reacting, then sidled a strategic few steps to one side.

  “What kind of cookies?” he asked Evie, seemingly unaware of any defensive repositioning on Bianca’s part. Bianca wasn’t fooled: he knew exactly, precisely, to the inch how much distance she’d put between them.

  And he was enjoying the game. Cat, meet mouse.

  “Snickerdoodles, thumbprints, gingersnaps, sugar cookies and iced Santa Clauses and Christmas trees.” Evie ticked the types of available cookies off on her fingers as she spoke. “I could bring in the tray and let you choose.”

  “That would be fantastic. A Christmas cookie with coffee is exactly what I wanted.” His eyes met Bianca’s again as he lifted more packages from her arms. “It’s almost like you were expecting me.”

  The thing was, the faint undertone of mockery notwithstanding, Colin sounded perfectly normal, too. He looked perfectly normal, just one more (okay, maybe exceptionally hot) businessman with a possible need for Guardian Consulting’s services. Nothing about him, his words, his body language, his expression, came across as the least bit scary. Nobody who didn’t know could have guessed what he was. What his presence meant. It was all Bianca could do not to shudder as the ramifications revolved through her mind in a heart-stopping slideshow. Bottom line, she was caught, exposed, possibly arrested, maybe even dead.

  “If only.” She said it before she thought, and watched Colin’s eyes flicker as he registered the not-all-that-well-hidden meaning: if she’d known he was coming, she would have prepared a reception that he’d never forget.

  No stranger to the tartness of her tone, and clearly recognizing it for the harbinger of worse things to come that it usually was, Evie frowned at her.

  For Evie’s sake, Bianca tried to cover up, adding lightly, “For one thing, I’d have gotten in some tea cakes and scones.”

  Evie brightened. “Oh, are you British?” she asked Colin.

  “Partly. Like most people, I’m a bit of a mixed bag.” He smiled at Evie, then glanced at Bianca. There was something in his face—a slight contraction of his brows, a quirk at the corner of his mouth—that caused her pulse to quicken with alarm. Once more she was made to wonder, Does he know? “A little of this, a little of that.”

  Was that aimed at her? Did he mean, a little of this, a little of that, like her own, like Nomad 44’s, doctored biology?

  Flustered wasn’t something she did, but her reaction closely resembled it. Knocked off balance by the idea that he might be seeing her as something other than human, she busied herself yanking one more crammed-to-overflowing shopping bag down her arm while she fought to get her suddenly pathetically thin-skinned act together.

  “Looks like somebody’s going to have a big Christmas.” Colin relieved her of the heavy bag as she lifted it free.

  “Tomorrow we do Dare-To-Care,” Evie said when Bianca didn’t reply. At Colin’s inquiring look Evie explained: “It’s a party we throw with other local businesses to provide gifts for children who otherwise wouldn’t get very much for Christmas.”

  Oh, God, the party. The dinner tonight. Her plans for the weekend.
Her plans for her life. At the thought that it was now all blown to smithereens, Bianca felt her insides twist.

  “That’s great,” he replied. “It’s nice to know that Guardian Consulting is so dedicated to the community. That’s the kind of company we like to do business with.”

  Evie smiled, but Bianca had to physically bite her tongue to keep from snapping Bullshit.

  Okay, pencil in a nervous breakdown for later. For now, take control of the situation. First order of business: protect the innocent.

  “Evie,” she began, meaning to send her friend away so that she could go ahead and confront Colin already and find out exactly what she was facing, then broke off as another terrible thought hit her.

  Is he alone?

  The possibility that he might not be made her blood run cold.

  A swift glance out at the overcast sky beyond the wall of windows reminded her that one very important reason she had selected this particular riverside penthouse office suite to be her new company’s headquarters was because none of the windows afforded a sight line for a sniper shot.

  So she didn’t have to worry about having her head blown off at any second. Didn’t mean there weren’t all kinds of other unpleasant surprises out there waiting for her.

  One thing she knew for sure: she had to deal with Colin before the whole house of cards that was her life came crashing down.

  Whatever it took.

  “Yes?” Evie looked at her with some surprise. Breaking off in the middle of a sentence to gaze blankly out a window wasn’t something Bianca did.

  Until now. Damn Colin anyway.

  “Do I have any more appointments this afternoon?” Ordinarily she would have known. She did know. She just couldn’t think.

  “Triad Services at four thirty.” Evie shot her a questioning look—Bianca never forgot appointments—before refocusing on Colin. “About that coffee. Cream and sugar or …?”

  “Black, please,” Colin replied.

  “Reschedule that appointment,” Bianca said. “I’m done for the day.”

  “Okay.” Evie wasn’t quite able to keep the bemusement out of her voice: Bianca never rescheduled client appointments—and she was almost never abrupt, which that request had been. “You want coffee, Bee?” No need for Evie to ask how she took her coffee, because she knew: black. One more thing, Bianca reflected grimly, that she apparently had in common with Colin.

  She didn’t like acknowledging a single one of them.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  She placed the last of the packages—a small red gift bag containing the latest handheld game system for Quincy Pack, a young neighbor—on her desk. Immediately she felt better. With her hands free and her arms unencumbered, she was more than Colin’s match. If it came down to hand-to-hand combat, she would back herself against him anytime.

  But she was conscious of a terrible certainty that this wasn’t going to be resolved with something as uncomplicated as hand-to-hand combat.

  Colin and Evie were talking—something about the merits of Dark Roast Arabica Coffee from Koffee Kult (which Evie swore by and bought for the office) versus plain old Folgers—and he seemingly paid no attention as she set her purse down beside the gift bag.

  Once again, she wasn’t fooled. He was aware of her every move.

  “I look forward to trying it,” Colin said to Evie. His deep voice with its slight trace of an accent—not British but Irish, as Bianca had discovered while reviewing his background, presuming that what the research had turned up was accurate—was utterly charming. The smile he gave Evie was far different from the wolfish one with which he’d greeted her. She hoped it meant that he’d realized that Evie was harmless. And clueless. An innocent noncombatant in their war.

  On the other hand, innocent noncombatants made excellent shields—and weapons.

  Would Colin really stoop so low as to use Evie to gain an advantage over her?

  Bianca didn’t even have to think about it: yes, he would.

  I need to get her out of here. The idea of Evie as collateral damage zapped the last of Bianca’s shock. She could feel herself morphing into warrior mode, feel the familiar cold calm descending as her head cleared and her body readied itself for action.

  “Be right back.” Evie beamed at him and headed for the door. Bianca followed her, meaning to close it behind her while welcoming the excuse to put a strategic amount of distance between herself and Colin.

  It was always better to launch the kind of attack she was considering from at least a couple of yards away.

  First, though, she needed a private word with him.

  Before she made the call on whether or not she had to kill him.

  3

  “Uh, boss, you need help with anything?” Doc—Miles Davis Zeigler, Guardian Consulting’s pudgy, baby-faced computer expert—loomed in the doorway, blocking Evie’s exit, causing both her and Bianca, who was some four paces behind her, to stop where they were. A close cap of frizzy black curls sprouted from his recently buzzed scalp. His maroon dress shirt was rumpled, his candy-cane striped tie was askew, his black polyester pants drooped. He was paler even than usual, with beads of sweat visible around his hairline. He darted a speaking glance past her at Colin, who was blocked from getting a good look at him because of the position of the door. His dark eyes were alive with alarm.

  Unlike Evie, Doc knew exactly who and what Colin was.

  Last time the two had encountered each other, Doc had slammed Colin over the head with a heavy bronze statue and knocked him cold. And Colin knew it.

  Given their history, today’s reunion couldn’t have been a happy one. Doc’s horror at Colin’s presence had to be nearly as great as her own.

  With her head full of Christmas shopping and that night’s party and a hundred other things, she’d been oblivious to what, in hindsight, had been his desperate attempts to clue her in to the disaster that had befallen them.

  Colin hadn’t hurt Doc or done anything else to him (like having him cuffed and carted off), which she had to take as meaning that, for the moment at least, he had a different agenda.

  Potentially valuable information. She just didn’t see, yet, how she could use it to her advantage.

  “I’m fine.” She remembered the text she’d ignored while exiting the elevator because her hands were too full to allow her to access her phone. Dollars to doughnuts it had come from Doc. His frantic expression as she’d headed toward her office, his hand slashing across his throat in an age-old gesture of dire warning, should have told her something.

  What was it they said about hindsight?

  “What are you doing with that? It’s for Hay.” Folding her arms over her chest, Evie glommed in on something Doc clearly was trying to hide behind his back.

  Bianca saw that it was—she had to look closer at the place where Doc’s fingers curled around the object’s wooden neck to be sure—a baseball bat. The effort he was putting into concealing the thing told her that he was hoping to keep Colin from spotting it, probably with the goal of reprising the sneak-up-and-brain-him tactic that had worked so well before. She didn’t need Evie’s accusing tone to recognize the bat as the one Evie had had signed by Georgia Tech’s entire Ramblin’ Wreck team for überfan Hay’s Christmas gift, then hidden in the cabinet behind her desk until she could wrap and give it to him. Hay being Haywood Long, former cop and Bianca’s second in command at Guardian Consulting. In the thank-God-for-small-favors department, Hay was currently out overseeing a job. In that same department Bianca now placed the fact that she had banned guns from the office. If Doc had had ready access to one, she had no doubt at all that he’d be holding it right now instead of a bat.

  That way lay disaster. Like milk and lemon juice, Doc and guns was one of those combinations that just wasn’t meant to be.

  “I—uh—opened the cabinet and it fell out. Probably you should think about hiding it somewhere else.” Doc blinked nervously at Evie.

  Bianca couldn’t see Colin’s expression,
or Evie’s, but her own mouth twisted with derision. As lies went, that one stank.

  He’d snatched the baseball bat up in case he needed to come to her defense. She knew it. She had little doubt that Colin knew it. A nice thought on Doc’s part, although in practice it would be laughably ineffective against someone as highly trained as Colin—unless he was fatally distracted by, say, her half-naked body sprawled on the floor, trapped beneath an unconscious mountain of human flesh, as had been the case when Doc had gotten the drop on him before.

  She was pretty sure Doc wasn’t going to get that lucky twice.

  To Doc, Colin said, “Keeping things hidden is hard.”

  Bianca couldn’t help it: at the (spurious) sympathy in his voice she glanced around at him. He’d moved, perching on the corner of her desk with one well-shod foot swinging. His expression as he looked at Doc, whom he could now see perfectly well, was bland. Doc, on the other hand, was looking right back at him with the desperate resolve of a trapped animal. After everything they’d been through together she was family to Doc now, just like he was family to her. She was absolutely certain that he couldn’t take Colin out, but she was just as certain that for her sake he was prepared to try.

  The knowledge would have been heartwarming if it hadn’t been so terrifying.

  Doc needed to be gotten out of the way along with Evie. God only knew how this was going to play out, but the last thing she wanted was for anyone she cared about to be at ground zero if (when) the situation went south.

  “Give that to me.” Evie marched toward Doc, who backed out of the doorway and her way. Snatching the bat from him as she passed, Evie headed toward the small kitchen with a reproving look for Doc and a brisk “I’ll just be a minute with that coffee” thrown over her shoulder at Bianca and Colin.

  Bianca narrowed her eyes warningly at Doc, who stood a few feet away in the reception area while she was still inside her office. Empty-handed now, he looked back at her with transparent horror. Everything from his twitching fingers to his too-rapid blinking betrayed his consternation.