by Cindy Dees
Neville Thorpe had picked her up at Marrakesh Menara Airport, a stunning terminal made of white concrete diamonds filled with glass and light. She followed him through the tall wooden gates of a white stucco house now, into an open-air courtyard and up two flights of stairs to a thick-walled room furnished with rugs and piles of pillows on low platforms.
Tessa nodded a greeting to the other men lounging around the room, who smiled back at her. That’s right. A woman has finally cracked the all-boy’s glass ceiling. A moment’s pride passed through Tessa, but then she set it aside. She had a job to do. They all did, apparently.
Cole Kettering, the team’s computer expert and resident hacker, strolled over to give her a hug. “Lookin’ good, Wilkes.”
“Quit trying, Webby. I’m way out of your league.” Cole’s field handle was Webster, but she tended to shorten it to Webby. Truth be told, he was more like a brother to her than any of the other guys on the team.
Torsten called them over, and they gathered around a rough-planked table that looked older than this ancient house. Gunnar spoke from the head of it. “I brought you into this op, Wilkes, at the suggestion of a CIA profiler who has studied our target for years. She believes you will throw him off balance and that he won’t suspect a woman of being a military plant.”
Tessa turned her attention to the files Torsten passed out to everyone at the table. Hers was substantially thicker than everyone else’s.
“Open them,” Torsten ordered.
She lifted the cover to reveal a picture of a Middle Eastern–looking man with a shaved head and silver-rimmed spectacles.
“Nasser Malouf,” Torsten said. “Former employee of international arms dealer Hassan Al Dhib.”
Beside her Webster sucked in a quick breath and asked sharply, “Is Al Dhib our target?”
“Affirmative,” Torsten answered. “Turn to the next picture.”
She did as he said and stared at another Middle Eastern– looking man, this one with a thick black beard and heavy brows.
“Tarek Sadiq. He’s Malouf’s contact inside Al Dhib’s inner circle. He’s a powerful man in his own right, and possibly more violent than his boss. He’s going to be willing to get his hands dirty and will kill with the slightest provocation. If he distrusts you at all, you’re dead. Understood, Tessa?”
She nodded. Her cheeks felt tight and butterflies flitted in her stomach.
Torsten continued, “Marco and Ray have already been introduced to Sadiq by Malouf.”
Marco Giordano was a quiet Italian guy who passed for Middle Eastern with his thick, black beard and fluent Arabic. Ray Torres was the team’s ordinance specialist and built like a brick mountain. They’d been the point men on this op, posing as terrorists in the market to buy black market weapons, making contact with Nasser Malouf. They’d been cultivating Malouf for months, cautiously angling closer to Al Dhib, the ultimate target. But they’d hit a wall.
Torsten was speaking again. “As you all know, Marco and Ray tried to get a meeting with Al Dhib, but it was a no-go. Al Dhib wants an End User Certificate for any weapons Marco and Ray plan to buy before he’ll meet with anyone.”
End User Certificates were documents generated by governments promising that any weapons purchased would be used for legitimate purposes by that government and would not be sold to anyone else. And they were priceless in the world of illegal arms sales. They passed liability to the government that issued the certificate and away from the black-market dealer who sold the weapons.
Torsten added, “Al Dhib has also demanded to meet with Marco and Ray’s boss. If you’ll turn to the third picture, that’s Hassan Al Dhib.”
Tessa stared down at a well-groomed man of perhaps fifty-five years of age. His hair was iron gray, and his Western-style suit was impeccably tailored. But it was his eyes that captured her attention. They were flat, cold, calculating and as lethal as any she’d ever seen. This was a cold-blooded killer.
Tessa frowned. “Where do I fit into all of this?”
Torsten answered, “You’re going to be Marco and Ray’s boss, a high-ranking member of the VRM—the Venezuelan Resistance Movement. You’re the one who will meet with Al Dhib.”
All of a sudden, the profiler’s suggestion that a woman would throw off their target had a context and made total, terrible sense. A woman highly placed in a violent protest movement would surprise Al Dhib.
The bad news was that he was bound to be suspicious as hell of her, too. Tessa asked, “How am I supposed to convince this Al Dhib guy that I’m the real deal?”
“The additional documents in your file are an exhaustive intel report. They include everything the CIA knows about the VRM. You’ll need to memorize all of it before your meeting with Al Dhib.”
“And when am I supposed to meet him?” she asked.
“No idea. Could be a few days, could be a month. But whenever his people call to set up the meet, you’ll have to be ready to go.”
“What about the End User Certificate?” she asked. “Do we have that?”
“It should arrive tomorrow sometime.”
She leaned forward. “What’s my angle going to be? Am I a political fanatic, a seductive sexpot or something else altogether?”
Torsten referred to his notes, but Tessa suspected he had every word in his file memorized already. Gunnar was a frighteningly brilliant guy. “Al Dhib appears Westernized on his exterior but is a traditionalist at heart. Which means he’ll be an extreme chauvinist. He’ll try to assert sexual dominance over you and use his status as a powerful man to bully you.”
Horror rattled through Tessa. Sexual dominance? Brief, terrifying images of burly, drunk thugs groping her and pushing her around flashed through her mind. She shoved the images aside. It wouldn’t be like that. She was an adult now. A freaking Medusa. She could defend herself. No man would ever hurt her again.
Torsten continued, and Tessa tuned back in. “You’ll need to be both a fanatic and willing to do anything—including have sex—to get what you want.”
Oh, God.
“I don’t expect you to actually sleep with him, of course,” Torsten added quickly. “I leave it up to you how far you want to go in flirting with Al Dhib. But you may need to convince him you’d go that far.”
“Gee. Thanks,” she responded drily.
Torsten shrugged. “I actually recommend that you not sleep with him. He would perceive it as an abdication of power and would take merciless advantage of you in negotiating the actual deal. Also, sleeping with him would open us to accusations in a court of entrapment.”
“Well, then,” Tessa choked out past her sawdust-dry throat. “We wouldn’t want to entrap poor Hassan.”
Chuckles floated around the table.
“You’ll be fully wired for sound,” Webster volunteered. “We’ll try to send in Marco and Ray with you. But my guess is they won’t be allowed into the actual meeting between you and Al Dhib.”
Torsten leaned forward. “Expect him to quiz you at length on the material in that folder. He’ll kill you if you make the slightest misstep.”
“Lovely,” Tessa murmured. “Anything else?”
Torsten grimaced. “I’ll leave the shopping trip to find suitable clothing for the meeting up to you.”
“What? You don’t know what all the girls are wearing this year to high-end arms deals?” Tessa quipped. “I’m disappointed in you.”
Torsten threw her a quelling look while the other men at the table grinned.
She scooped up the folder. “If you don’t have anything else for me, I’d better get going on my homework.”
Torsten nodded. “When you feel ready, we’ll all quiz you on the contents of the folder.”
That sounded ominous. She expected it would feel more like an interrogation, and that the guys would do everything in their power to trip her up. Which wasn’t a
bad thing. Not when one misstep would, indeed, get her killed.
In a distant part of the house, the doorbell rang.
“One more thing,” Torsten said casually.
The tension level leaped all around the table. She looked around, and suddenly, none of the guys would meet her gaze. What did they know that she didn’t? Frowning, she looked back at Torsten. Here came the zinger the rest of the guys were already in on.
“One more person will be joining our team.”
She swore mentally. She didn’t even need to ask who it was.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs behind her and she turned around grimly.
“Hey, Tessa,” the newcomer said.
An urge to stride over and punch Beau Lambert in the face almost, but not quite, overcame her. Instead, she leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms defensively, drawling, “Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. If it isn’t Beau Lambert.”
Chapter 16
Beau schooled his face to show nothing. But it was freaking hard. The rest of the team—his team, his buddies, dammit!—surrounded her, subtly closing ranks to protect her.
From him?
What the hell? He was one of them!
Huh. Apparently, in his six-month absence, the dynamics in the team had shifted. Tectonically. Their body language shouted that she was theirs now, and that he’d better not mess with her, or else he’d have all of them to answer to.
And to think he’d been worried about how other operators would react to her. Apparently, they loved her like she was their own little sister.
Great. No Special Forces guy on earth was sane when another man eyed his baby sis.
He tried to talk with her after the briefing broke up, but the other guys adroitly stepped between him and her and dragged him away to hear all about his trip to Ecuador and what it took to get the Ecuadoran generals to cough up the End User Certificate.
As if any of them gave a damn about that. They were running interference for Tessa, the assholes.
By the time he managed to extricate himself from them, Tessa was ensconced in the library with Torsten, going over the information she was supposed to memorize.
Supper with the team was more of the same. Ray and Marco made a point of sitting on either side of Tessa, using their bulk to hem her in like they were her designated bodyguards. As for Tessa herself, she was quieter than he remembered from before. Oh, she joked around with the guys and was clearly at ease with them, and the guys all obviously liked her. But she’d matured as an operator in his absence.
She was even more cut physically than she’d been six months ago, her face more deeply tanned and her eyes...well, she definitely had total awareness of her surroundings now. Her eyes were never still and took in everything and everyone around her, constantly assessing, calculating risk, identifying exit points, tactical weaknesses...
She exuded a quiet self-confidence she hadn’t had in Louisiana, which was saying something because she’d been pretty damned confident, even then. She looked like a full-blown Medusa now. Pride in her accomplishment filled him.
No doubt about it. She looked fantastic. Even more attractive than ever.
He’d really tried to get over her and to end his feelings for her while he’d run around South America in pursuit of an eco-terrorist the Ecuadoran government desperately wanted to get its hands on. It had been a trade. Deliver the bad guy in return for the End User Certificate Al Dhib had demanded.
Even in the jungles of South America, Beau hadn’t stopped dreaming of Tessa. She was the first person he thought about in the morning and the last person he thought about at night. And nothing he’d tried had worked to rid him of his addiction to her.
After supper he timed his departure from the dining room for when Tessa slipped out to go to the restroom. He turned the other direction and sprinted around the four-sided courtyard to meet her on the other side. He rounded a corner and all but plowed into her. He grabbed her shoulders to steady her and himself.
“Let go of me,” she snapped.
“Sorry about that,” he murmured. “How are you doing? You look great. Guys treating you okay?”
“I’m fine. The team is fine. Everyone’s fine. What are you doing here?” she demanded.
Ouch. She sounded more than a little annoyed to see him again. At least she wasn’t completely disinterested. He would take anger over apathy. At least there was little passion left for him to work with.
“I got the End User Certificate Al Dhib is demanding before the deal with him can go forward.”
“So now that you’ve delivered it you’ll be leaving?” she asked hopefully.
His brows twitched into a frown. “Look. I’m sorry I had to go. But we knew that was going to happen. Why are you busting my balls because I had to go back into the field and you had to finish your training?”
Her green eyes narrowed until she looked distinctly like a cat about to tear a rat limb from limb. She bit out, “I’m not mad that you left, or that I had to go to training.”
“Then what?”
She rolled her eyes. “Men. You’re all such morons.”
“Help me out here. Why are you mad at me?”
“Because you didn’t say goodbye. You just turned your back and walked away from me like it was nothing.”
“Jeez, Tessa! It wasn’t nothing. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do!”
She shrugged, unimpressed. “Whatever. I’m done with you, anyway.”
Except she was breathing hard, and her pupils were dilated way too much for the ambient light conditions, and her hands were clenched in fists. He leaned in, backing her up against a wall. He put a hand up beside her head and leaned in even more. He growled, “Then why don’t you look done with me?”
She slipped out from under his arm and moved back from him. “How does done look? Tell me, so I’ll know how to properly convey that I’m over you.”
He laughed shortly. “Liar.”
She glared at him before spinning on her heel and stomping away from him. He watched her rear end twitching in irritation as she stormed away from him, enjoying the sight. God, he’d missed her. He’d even missed her quick temper and sharp tongue.
Beau jumped about a foot in the air when a voice said from behind him, “She’s a looker, isn’t she?”
The British accent announced that it was Neville Thorpe. Beau’s fist itched to slam into the guy’s teeth. He was impatient to follow after her and finish the unfinished business between them. Which was to say, he wanted to make up with her and get into her pants in the worst way. He turned to speak to his teammate, in a hurry to get rid of the guy as fast as humanly possible.
“How’d she do with you guys?” Beau managed to ask reasonably civilly.
“Better than any of us anticipated. She’s a natural.”
Beau sighed. “Yeah, she is.”
“Must’ve been rough being alone with her in the middle of nowhere for months on end,” Neville commented.
The guy had no idea. Of course, it was entirely possible that Neville was fishing to see if Beau would give away anything extracurricular that had gone on between him and Tessa in Louisiana. Beau merely shrugged. “She was a fast learner. Good student. Made my job easy.”
He turned to leave, to follow after her, when Marco rounded the corner. God dammit! Was the whole team determined to keep the two of them apart?
“Hey, Beau! Welcome back. How’d South America treat you?”
“Same old, same old.” He tried to look past Marco to see if he could spot Tessa, but he couldn’t peek around the guy without obviously leaning to the side. Tessa was gone. Damn.
“Tell us more about Louisiana,” Marco said, crowding Beau back toward the dining room.
“Not much to tell. I ran Tessa all over the place, dragged her through swamps and did everyt
hing in my power to get her to quit.” He shrugged. “And she didn’t.”
“How long were you two out there?” Webster asked.
Twelve weeks, three days and a sunrise. “A few months. Three, maybe. I lost count,” Beau answered aloud.
“Wow. Rough duty, running around with her like that,” Ray chimed in suggestively.
Crap. They all seemed to be fishing for details. At least that meant Tessa hadn’t kissed and told on him. Which was good news, at any rate. She hadn’t felt obliged to nuke his career.
Beau looked around at the group. “She was a good recruit. Worked hard. Did her best. Showed talent for the business. Same stuff all of you have seen in her.”
Quickly after that declaration, the guys started wandering off to their own pursuits. Thank God, no one was going to come right out and ask him if he’d slept with her. He would have lied, of course, but not only were these guys trained to sniff lies, they also knew him very well. If anyone could spot the tells of him lying, it would be this crew.
He diverted the conversation to getting a rehash of the earlier in-briefing he’d missed. And as soon as that was done, he claimed jetlag and retreated to his bedroom.
He stretched out in his bed, deeply alarmed at what Gunnar Torsten was planning to ask Tessa to do. The entire US Government had been after Hassan Al Dhib for years, and he’d proven too paranoid, too highly connected, too damned slippery, for anyone to catch. The bastard had left a trail of dead bodies in his wake every time he was forced to elude the authorities.
Why Torsten thought this time would be different, Beau had no idea.
All the next day he tried to get another moment alone with Tessa, but the whole damned team decided to help quiz Tessa. They all memorized the Venezuelan Resistance Movement file and peppered her with questions, phrasing them in ways meant to trip her up or take her by surprise.
He had to admit, she was good. By the next evening she knew the file backward and forward and could practically quote the entire thing verbatim. More important, she had instant recall of even the most trivial details. She was ready to face Al Dhib’s interrogation—or at least as ready as the team could make her.
