Diamonds Can Be Deadly

by Merline Lovelace

  "You'll join us for dinner, I hope." Greene issued the invitation with one of his disarming smiles. "Seven o'clock, in the Jade Buddha Restaurant? That will give me the opportunity to introduce you to some of our other guests."

  "I'll see you then."

  Despite its appellation, the Jade Buddha was more of a dining hall for the rich and famous than a restaurant. Everyone arrived at pretty much the same time and the menu posted in elegant script at each table offered only two choices—fish and vegetarian.

  The fat, happy Buddha who gave the place its name sat cross-legged on a stone pedestal, sur­rounded by pools filled with floating lotus blossoms and magnificent koi. Guests mingled poolside while waiters served fruit-juice cocktails and passed trays of appetizers.

  Greene escorted Jordan through the crowd, mak­ing introductions as they went. She shook hands with an aging movie star whose face showed the ravages of his years of substance abuse, a short, squat computer mogul and a frizzy-haired widow in a thousand-dollar St. John lounge suit paired with high-top black sneakers.

  Several of the guests recognized Jordan from her modeling days. Some, like the anxious-looking mother accompanied by her ten-year-old son, were too wrapped up in their own problems to evince any interest in the newcomer's background.

  "Davy's asthmatic," the thin, nervous Patricia Helms explained, her glance darting constantly to the boy. "The attacks have gotten so bad lately and the doctors can't seem to help. Dr. Greene is our last hope."

  Jordan kept her opinion on that to herself and made mental notes on everyone she met. She'd have Claire run the names through OMEGA's computers. She couldn't quite envision any of these people as willing accomplices in Greene's illegal activities, but he had to get the massive amounts he was sus­pected of laundering off the island and into various bank accounts somehow. He could well be using his guests as unsuspecting mules.

  Signaling to a passing waiter, Greene claimed two cocktails decorated with orchids and fat chunks of pineapple. He handed one to Jordan and lifted the other in salute. After the receptionist's warning about the institute's non-alcohol policy, she was prepared for the straight shot of guava juice. She wasn't prepared, though, when her host's attention zinged to the door behind her.

  "Ah, good. Here's our Director of Security."

  Glancing over her shoulder, she watched TJ's all-too-familiar figure stroll into the restaurant. The overhead spots highlighted the sun streaks in his brown hair and cast the strong planes of his face into sharp relief.

  Greene's voice floated above the buzz of cock­tail-hour conversation. "TJ! Come and meet our newest guest."

  Jordan stiffened, wondering if Bartholomew was toying with her. Had he watched a tape of her earlier confrontation with TJ? Or somehow learned about their brief affair? If so, no hint of it showed in his eager, open expression.

  TJ, on the other hand, looked anything but serene as he cut through the crowd. Without the mirrored sunglasses to shield his gray eyes, they seemed to slice right into Jordan.

  "Ms. Colby and I have already met," he informed his employer. "Here, and in New York."

  "That's right, you're both from the Big Apple!"

  He said it as if living in a city with a population of more than eight million automatically qualified everyone as friends and neighbors.

  "Why don't you join us. You two can catch up on old times."

  TJ's glance slid to Jordan. A mocking glint flick­ered in those granite eyes, but his reply was pre­empted by the appearance of a woman who'd garnered her own share of sensational publicity.

  Blond, much divorced and immensely wealthy, Felicity Dennison Albright Waller-Winston hooked her arm through TJ's. The fist-size emerald pinned to her left shoulder pressed into his bicep as she cuddled against him.

  "Yes, sweetiekins," she purred, "do join us. We missed you at lunch."

  "Sorry, I can't." With a polite smile, TJ disen­gaged. "I just came by to remind Bartholomew we're taking perimeter security down to install the new Y-beam system."

  Jordan had to give Scott reluctant marks for staying on top of his profession. The Y-beam was the hottest new infrared sensor. The military had re­leased it for commercial application only a few months ago. Mackenzie had briefed all the OMEGA operatives on the technology. She'd also assured them the new zip-up thermal suits she'd developed would shield them from Y-beams. It was looking as if Jordan would get a chance to test one out.

  "How long will the system be down?" Bartholo­mew wanted to know.

  "Less than an hour. I've got the new sensors in place and ready to activate."

  With a nod for Jordan and a smile for the blonde, TJ eased his way through the milling guests. Felicity Waller-Winston swiped her tongue over heavily glossed lips and followed his progress across the room.

  "That man comes darned close to making me forget I've sworn off the male of the species for the rest of my life."

  So much for that right side/left side business, Jordan thought wryly. The divorcee might have her emerald pinned to her feminine, receptive side, but she was sending out decidedly assertive signals. So assertive their host questioned her about them.

  "Are you troubled, Felicity?"

  "No, Doc. Just horny."

  Apparently that was a common condition for the woman, as her therapist didn't appear particularly surprised by the announcement.

  "You're making great progress. It's necessary for you to recognize and acknowledge your feelings."

  "Oh, I recognize them, all right. It's what I do about them that gets me into so much trouble."

  "Why don't you try an extra half hour of med­itation tonight," Greene suggested. "We'll explore your feelings in more depth during the group session tomorrow."

  Jordan almost choked on her guava juice. Oh, great! That's all she needed. An hour listening to another female explore her carnal feelings for Thomas Jackson Scott.

  She soon discovered the much-divorced Waller-Winston wasn't the only woman at the institute with an interest in Scott. Nudging Jordan in the ribs, the blonde directed her attention to the slender Eurasian who stopped TJ at the door.

  "That's the spa director. Liana Wu. The bitch."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Well, look at her. She's got that tiny, porcelain-doll thing going. I refuse to stand anywhere close to the woman. She makes me look like a knob-kneed gi­raffe."

  If Felicity towered over the spa director, Jordan would dwarf her. The possibility didn't particularly concern her. She'd long ago learned to use her five-nine height to her advantage.

  "Rumor is," Felicity confided, "Liana baby is hot for our boy TJ."

  No surprise there, Jordan thought in disgust. Scott had snagged her interest at their first meeting. Angry all over again at herself for falling for the crooked cop, she turned away.

  Dinner was a long, lingering affair. Afterward, Jordan walked back to her bungalow through a scented night, stopping at a scenic overlook to prop her elbows on the trunk of a palm that curved at waist level.

  The surveillance cameras she knew were scat­tered throughout the grounds would capture the image of a mainlander lost to the majesty of the surf foaming white against black cliffs. The ocean's roar would serve as a natural sound buffer for her report to OMEGA. Folding her arms, Jordan toyed ab­sently with her earring. One flick activated the trans­mitter.

  "This is Diamond."

  Claire came on within a few seconds. "Cyrene here. I read you. Diamond."

  Lightning chimed in as well. "I'm here, too."

  The fact that her boss was still at the control center despite the late hour D.C. time didn't surprise Jordan. Not with the kind of political pressure OMEGA was facing on this mission. She gave him the names of the guests she'd met at dinner and a rundown of her earlier encounter with Greene and his financial adviser.

  "They're interested. Definitely interested. Myers volunteered to get me in good with his pals in Colombia. He's going to help me work a deal on an emerald supply."

  "Nic
e of him."

  "Isn't it? I suspect he'll pocket a fat broker's fee."

  "Or skim more off the top of Greene's business deals with the Colombians."

  "Speaking of skimming," she said, scowling at the pinpricks of iridescent green glittering in the dark depths of the sea, "did Cyrene tell you TJ Scott was waiting for me when I arrived?"

  "She did."

  Lightning didn't ask the question, but Jordan answered it anyway.

  "Scott still claims he was set up."

  "You were there. What do you think?"

  What she thought about Thomas Jackson Scott would blister the airwaves. Reining in her anger, Jordan answered as coolly as she could.

  "I'm keeping him in my sights."

  Five thousand miles away, Lightning shared a quick look with Cyrene. Any target Diamond got in her crosshairs was a walking corpse.

  "I'm going to do some night work a little later," she told them. "Pay another visit to Greene's office. Among other things, I want to see what kind of in­formation he gathered on Scott before hiring him."

  "Keep us posted," Lightning instructed. "And be careful."

  "Will do."

  Cyrene cut the transmission and added a note in her electronic log, while Nick digested Diamond's report. He trusted both her skills and her instincts or he wouldn't have sent her in. As far as he knew, those instincts had failed her only once. Thought­fully, he met Claire's glance.

  "Pull up everything you can on TJ Scott. I want the names of the officers who busted him. The pimps and dealers he put the squeeze on. The judge who threw out his case. The address of his favorite pizza joint. Where he buys his underwear. Everything."

  Chapter 4

  The black thermal suit fit Jordan like a second skin. As thin and supple as Saran, its inner lining was coated with a high-tech polymer that made the body-hugging jumpsuit easy to slither into.

  The lining trapped and contained body heat, thus reducing the wearer's thermal signature and making him or her virtually undetectable by infrared scan­ners. That was great on missions to Alaska or Ant­arctica. Not so great in steamy Hawaii. Still, Jordan figured swimming around in her own sweat was a small price to pay for virtual invisibility.

  Twisting her hair into a loose knot on top of her head, she dragged up the black hood and worked it around her earrings. The embedded transmitter was so sensitive she could send and receive right through the polymer coating.

  Hood in place, she rolled down the attached face mask. The mouth and eye slits were covered with a breathable version of the same heat-containing shield. With every inch of her body encased in skintight black, she felt like a night version of Spider-Man.

  She flicked off the bathroom lights and watched herself disappear. The wide mirror above the sink didn't pick up so much as a shadow when she moved. With the CD player/electronic sweep in hand, she let herself out a side window. She left it open behind her. She'd re-enter her bungalow the same way to avoid triggering the iris-recognition system and advertising her late-night expedition.

  Velvet darkness surrounded her, ripe with the scent of tropical vegetation and the salty tang of the sea. Avoiding the crushed-lava pathways, Jordan glided across the lush lawns like a silent shadow. The sniffer allowed her to pick her way through the elaborate security grid. The thermal suit deflected TJ's new Y-beams. Or so she hoped!

  She reached the business center a few moments later. From her earlier visit, Jordan knew the location of the intrusion-detection devices at the windows. She zapped one with the sniffer, jimmied the lock, got the window up and was through it in thirty seconds flat. Another zap reset the electronic watchdog. The Interruption would appear as a tem­porary blip on a monitor, if it appeared at all.

  All too aware of the cameras mounted at regular in­tervals. Jordan kept to the shadows as she worked her way to the conference room where she'd met with Greene and Myers. The moonlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling glass window illuminated the map depicting Greene's far-flung empire. The emerald marking the headquarters here in Hawaii gleamed like a giant eye, following her stealthy progress across the conference room and into the private offices beyond.

  Two hours later, Jordan reentered her bungalow through the open window. She'd accessed the computer in Greene's office, rummaged through the files in Myers's sleek little laptop and poked into every corner of the headquarters.

  To her intense disappointment, she'd uncovered nothing. Nada. Zilch-ola. No evidence of offshore bank accounts. No link to the Colombians except through legitimate purchase orders for emeralds. No hidden treasure room containing the Star of the East. She had, however, sweated off at least five pounds.

  Dragging up the thermal suit's face mask, Jordan stopped only long enough to type a code into her laptop and verify no one had entered the bungalow in her absence before making straight for the bath­room. Every pore in her body screamed with relief when she peeled off the jumpsuit and kicked free of the clinging fabric.

  In her eagerness to shed the artificial skin, Jordan put a little too much oomph into the kick. Her sweat-slick foot slipped on the tiles and went out from under her. She flung out a hand to break her fall, felt it crunch against the marble counter and landed with a thud that sucked the air from her lungs.

  "Dammit!"

  She flexed her hand a few times. It didn't feel as though she'd broken any bones, but she'd sport one heck of a bruise in the morning. Rolling to her feet, she stripped off her sweat-drenched panties and bra and wadded them up with the thermal suit for rinsing out later. Her next priority was a long, hot shower.

  Turning the crisscrossing shower jets to full blast, she stepped inside and let the water fog up the glass blocks until a gruff shout shattered her bliss.

  "Jordan!"

  Cursing, she cut the jets and whipped around. Over the stair-stepping glass blocks, she got a good visual of the male who strode through the door. She swore again, yanked one of the resort's ultra plush towels from the rack, wrapped it sarong style and rounded the glass block wall.

  "So much for expecting any privacy at the Tran­quility Institute," she snapped. "Can any employee come waltzing into a guest's bungalow, or have you added breaking and entering to your resume?"

  He took his time replying. Jordan steamed while his gaze made a slow trip from her neck to her knees and back again. Tipping her chin, she conducted a similar inspection. He'd traded his duty uniform for a black T-shirt and well-worn jeans that hugged his muscular thighs. A cell phone was clipped to his waist. Apparently the no-phone policy didn't apply to the institute's director of security.

  "The officer on duty heard what he thought was the sound of someone falling," he said, catching her gaze.

  "Heard?"

  Jordan stiffened. She'd swept the entire bun­galow. There was no way she could have missed a bug. Not with Mackenzie's state-of-the art sniffer.

  "Heard how?" she demanded.

  "The bathroom tiles are pressurized to detect dropped objects weighing more than fifty pounds."

  "What? Why?"

  "Most hotel accidents happen in the bathroom. Usually when people are getting in or out of the tub. Since the cottages aren't equipped with phones for guests to use in case of an emergency, my predeces­sor devised this method of alerting us to a fall."

  Involuntarily, Jordan lifted a foot. Balancing like a stork on one leg, she scowled at the decorative tiles under her other foot and scrambled to recall the type of flooring in the headquarters building.

  Parquet. Both the conference room and the offices featured floor of inlaid wood. Had those floors been pressurized, too? Had TJ tracked her progress the entire time?

  If so, he made no mention of it. His concern seemed centered on the thud his security officer had heard.

  "I pounded on your door. When I didn't get an answer, I did a security override and came in to check on you. From what I saw when I walked in," he added after a short, charged pause, "you look to be in pretty good shape."

  Jordan's foot hit
the tiles with a thump. The sit­uation reminded her all too forcefully of the last time she'd gotten naked with this man. A whole anti-corruption squad had busted through the door on that occasion.

  "Okay, Scott. You did your duty and checked things out. You can leave now."

  "Not yet. Did you fall?"

  "Yes, I fell."

  "What happened?"

  "What do you think? I slipped on the tiles and took a dive. Now, if you don't mind.

  She waved a hand to send him on his way. He stood his ground, obviously not ready to be dismissed.

  "I need to fill out an accident report. What caused you to slip?"

  She could hardly tell him her nocturnal prowling in the equivalent of a portable steam room left her dripping with sweat down to and including her feet.

  "I got in the shower. Stepped out to fetch the shampoo. Lost my footing on the wet tiles and went down. After which, I got back in the shower where I remained until I was so rudely interrupted."

  She should have remembered he was a cop. One of the best, they'd told her, before he'd turned. His glance zeroed in on the array of toiletries in the basket on the marble vanity. Each bore the resort's exclusive label—including the mango scented shampoo.

  Hiking up the bath towel, Jordan moved to block his view of the shower stall. For all he knew, she'd used her own personal brand of suds.

  "Look, Scott, I've had a long day and I'm—" "Well, hell! You really did a number on your­self."

  His gaze had dropped to the middle of her chest. Glancing down, Jordan saw a mottled bruise already forming on the hand gripping the towel.

  "It's nothing. I just hit my hand on the counter when I went down."

  He crossed the room in two strides. "Better let me take a look at that."

  "Hey! Do you mind? I'm naked here."

  "Yeah. I noticed. Give me your hand, Red."