Nobody had survived the massacre and the men of the village had formed the first rebel faction to take up arms against Sebastian’s government.
They had repeatedly attempted to murder the Premier and had finally succeeded on July 3rd. They hadn’t claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack on The Sea Princess, but they hadn’t denied it either.
Guerrilla warfare in the form of blockading the roads that led to the peaks of Santa Boronia was their propulsive action.
She didn’t blame these men. Not really. Who would not want to avenge the death of a hundred and fifty women and children? Families had been destroyed and people were held accountable, from what Romero said.
But, she wasn’t sure.
Deciding that no answers would be obtained if she just sat on her butt and speculated, Akira shoved her papers away and pounded on the connecting doors between them.
Within two seconds, Brand flung the door open and pulled her to him with one hand, while the other hand held a Walther without a quiver.
~~~~~
He was wearing pajama bottoms, and nothing else.
A totally female part of Akira’s mind could ogle at the sight of Brand half-naked, while the other part hated his utter cold-bloodedness while he was half-naked!
Not that she was dressed any better. She was wearing her oldest and most ratty sleep shirt and nothing else. Much.
“What? What happened?” he asked her, blinking slowly, in the harsh lights. His arm wedged under her breasts while he held her at his side.
She hadn’t been able to stop herself from hugging his waist, for fear of losing her balance, but common sense dictated she step back. Which she would. In a minute.
When he would stop looking so damn sexy.
“Nothing happened, Brandon.” She shook her head and made to step back.
He simply held her, without exerting more force. “Then why in heaven’s name were you pounding down my door like Voldemort was in the room with you, at…” He consulted his gun hand where a slim steel watch was strapped to his wrist. “Three in the morning?”
Brand glowered as he suddenly let her go. “For that matter what the hell are you doing staying awake till three? Aren’t you supposed to be resting up for your last round of interviews with Geraldo?”
She frowned back. “And Rosella. Don’t forget Rosella.” She reminded him sourly, while she walked back to the bed slowly. She shot him a look over her shoulder. “Care to put the weapon away, big guy?”
He looked at her. Then the gun. And then nodded. He lowered the gun, and shoved it back in the waistband of his pajama bottoms.
She almost sighed. Why did she have to find that gesture sexy? If he was really careless it would go off and then he would end up shooting himself in the butt. How could that be sexy?
“Yes, Rosella too. So, what are you doing up at this hour, Akira?” he said in a low voice, while he inched back to the door.
She raised her brows at the retreat, could barely contain a shiver at the way he’d said her name. Instead she held up a sheaf of papers and said, “I was just going through my transcript of the interview with Tony Romero.”
“Conscientious, aren’t we?” A smile ghosted on his sexy lips.
Actually, between the sleep-tousled hair and the bare, defined chest with just the right amount of chest hair and the fact that his devil black eyes held both sleep and grim coolness, she couldn’t find a single thing unsexy about him. Even the way he annoyed her with his stupid protective questions.
Yes, she really needed to sleep.
“Desperate,” she corrected him, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Akira patted the seat next to her.
This time he raised one brow, darn it, enough with the sexy gestures, and ambled over in bare feet. The silk bottoms strained while he settled down next to her.
Drawing her unwilling attention to his taut thigh muscles and, she swallowed, tamped down on unwelcome lust and concentrated on the fact that he was still lying to her. Or not telling her the truth. Which amounted to the same thing.
“Santa Lucia. The massacre. Were you aware that Sebastian gave the order to torch an entire village to discourage dissent, Brandon? ”
All sleep was gone from his eyes, and all that was left was his ever-watchful readiness.
“I was not.”
“I know you won’t talk to me. You’re not my source. But, dammit, Brand. You know something. Something that could actually help me, then you should be willing to share that information, shouldn’t you?” she argued, plunking the papers down.
He stared at her for a long moment. In which she wanted to fidget. She, who had held her nerves and breath in Malaysia, in Uganda, in Algiers and while meeting Heads of State, couldn’t hold the gaze of one mysterious man.
~~~~~
“I told you before. I won't answer your questions.” Brand was shocked to realize he wanted to.
For once, he actually wanted to help someone for nothing but the fact that it was right. He didn’t do right. Not the normal, moral victory sort of right, anymore.
“I am tired,” he said finally, still staring into her frustrated, confused, brown eyes. “And so are you. How about you wrap this up and we’ll see how it goes in the morning?”
He reached out and tucked her wavy hair behind her ear, barely resisting the impulse to tug her closer in the same motion. She’d come too, he knew. The physical attraction shimmered between them; underlying and unspoken, beneath everything else they said and did.
But he couldn’t act on it, any more than he could make it go away.
He took his hand back and looked at her for one more moment.
She looked half like a child, in her Disney character sleep shirt. But the evidence of her being all woman was right there, in the awareness in her eyes. In the shape of her breasts outlined so perfectly against the thin cotton.
He stood up. “Good night, Akira. Please sleep. Sweet dreams,” he said, before he walked away.
“Brand,” she called, while he made to open the door connecting their rooms.
He turned to look at her. There was nothing in his fathomless black eyes. “Yes?”
“There’s a gun at your back. I hope you don’t shoot yourself when you sleep,” she said primly, before she turned back to her papers.
Brand laughed. And told himself that he couldn’t be with her. She wasn’t just trouble, she was catastrophe itself. And he was very good at averting it.
He didn’t invite it into his life and bed. Or heaven forbid, his heart.
Twenty-Five
Brand was struck dumb by how right he was when he waited for Akira at the bar at the hotel, the next day. Her last day here in this godforsaken country.
She was uncharacteristically quiet when she joined him for a drink in the dingy place that passed for a salon at Hotel Excelsiora.
“You’re early,” he remarked. Uncorking the bottle of expensive cab sauv he’d ordered earlier.
“What’s that for?” She munched on barmix and regarded him with shadowed eyes.
“Celebrating your departure from here,” he answered promptly.
She gave him a cool smile. “Eager to get rid of me, aren’t you?”
Her hair was piled on her head, leaving trails to escape down her neck, and she wore some sort of three-fourth formal pants, culottes she called them, with a blue shirt and a gold chain around her delectable neck.
He wondered how she’d react if he just leaned in and ate the barmix right from inside her mouth. It’d be enjoyable. That was a consideration.
“Thanking providence you’ve made it out alive.”
They sipped on the cool wine. It sat tart on his tongue, much like every word out of her mouth and yet…he wasn’t sure he’d trade this for anything. Trading insults with this contrary, exciting woman.
“So it is true,” she murmured.
“What is?”
She toasted him with the glass. “Private security pays handsomely. I wonder if I can affo
rd you.”
His body jackknifed to attention at her provocative words. “What do you mean, Akira?”
She trailed one manicured nail on the rim of her glass. It was painted sunshine yellow. “I poked around with the security people…they told me, you’d helped build the new security measures. The X-ray machines and sensors…the guards with guns…all of that. Is that true?”
“Yes.” Brand was instantly wary. “Why do you ask?”
“Then you’d know this,” she said absently. “There are three doors, reinforced steel I think, at the end of the passage the diplomatic corps uses. Can you tell me where they all lead?”
Since it seemed a harmless enough question he told her, “Door one leads to the vaults. Door two has twelve steps that lead to the Premier’s tower. And the last door opens the Cabinet’s sanctum.”
“Okay, that makes sense.”
“Is all this juice for your story, Akira?”
Akira drained her drink and spoke while refilling it. “Geraldo De La Hoya canceled my appointment. He’s apparently had to fly urgently to Europe for a meeting. He did send me his deepest apologies.” She regarded her drink critically. “But I managed to catch Rosella Martinez. And she told me, way off the record that Alfredo’s son Kevin Moya negotiated the deal for the lumber company that first struck oil.”
“I don’t understand.” But he was beginning to.
Her face was set in familiar intractable lines. “I think the current administration is responsible for Sebastian’s death. And I’m going to prove it first before taking it to the UN.”
“How?” Brand asked slowly, dreading her answer.
“By incriminating Alfredo Moya’s son in the land deeds, which are down in the vaults.”
He was shaken because he could see nothing in her eyes except absolute conviction. Brand said nothing.
“And for good measure, I am also planning to swing by Geraldo De La Hoya’s office. See what secrets he is hiding.”
Because it couldn’t get worse than this, he asked her in a straight voice, “And how exactly do you propose to commit international political espionage?”
“Simple. I am going to break into the Hall of Records.”
“Of course.” He nodded slowly.
“Tonight.”
“Listen to me, Akira.” Brand gripped her hand tight enough to hurt. “Whatever you think you know or want to know, this is not the way to do it. It isn’t. It’s time to give this over to the proper authorities. Let them do the digging for you.”
“Dig for what?” she demanded, taking her hand away.
It was silly but he missed it. “The proof you want so badly.”
“But they don’t know where or what it is,” she argued. “And if the administration comes to know the authorities, international or otherwise, are after them they’ll scrub everything. And then the truth will be lost forever.”
“They’ll hang you for this. If they catch you. Your career will be ruined. Your life will be ruined, Akira,” Brand told her dully. “You can’t break into a political seat of power like it’s a fucking bank in a movie.”
“I could.” She shrugged. “If I had the man who designed security for it with me.”
“FUCK.”
“They murdered Sebastian,” she said fiercely, her voice breaking. “They murdered Stephan Flaubert because he was going to meet me. This entire country is at war, Brandon. And all because a few men are so greedy they are willing to let it all burn for billions of dollars.”
Brand opened his mouth to counter her.
“I am not completely stupid, Brandon. I actually resigned my job at FPAI before I came here,” she told him. That subsided him into silence. “After what happened with Stephan…I couldn’t take it if they hurt anyone else because of me. And my family has more or less disowned me for choosing my career over kitty parties.”
It sounded so cold, so lonely…this path she’d taken. So familiar.
“I’m sorry, Akira --”
“This is not just a story for me, Brandon.” She sounded deadly serious. “I wasn’t supposed to survive the shootout on The Sea Princess,” Akira said quietly. “But I did. This has to be why. So I can find the truth.”
“Even if it gets you killed?”
Akira sniffed. “I don’t want to die, Brandon.” She gave him a small sad smile. “You know, I’ve never gotten a tattoo or bungee jumped…I’ve never even been in love? All of my relationships were just…” She made a wavy motion with her right hand. “And it’s stupid to expect thunder and lightning and multiple orgasms but I don’t want to die,” she ended fiercely.
“I don’t want to die,” she repeated. “But I cannot live while San Magellan suffers and Sebastian’s murderers go scot-free. This is about honor and justice, Brandon. If that makes me insane then I am insane. I can live with that.”
Brand was strangled into silence. With need and protectiveness and a desire so intense he couldn’t breathe from it. Lust and fear twisted their knives in him till he didn’t know which end was which.
“If I die on this mission with you, my ghost will haunt you forever,” he warned her.
“So, you’re in?”
Brand nodded, damning himself to Hades for doing the stupidest thing on the planet he could think of for the bravest woman he’d ever known. “God save us all, if you are going to commit international espionage then you might as well do it right.” He twisted their fingers together. “With me.”
Her eyes were huge golden pools of light with unshed tears. “With you,” she echoed. “I can live with that.”
Twenty-Seven
“Of all the harebrained schemes in the world,” Brand muttered, as he jogged up the marble steps with Akira beside him.
They were dressed almost identically, in black outfits – jeans and tank top and a jacket in her case, while he wore cargo pants and rubber soled boots with a muscle tee and a leather jacket. Brand had procured the ID he’d helped create in the first place for himself while Akira wore hers.
Akira went to the first guard, manning the station and spoke to him, “Hi. I’m Akira Naik, the war correspondent who’s here for the interviews with the Premier?”
She was smiling too, and her halo hair spilled over on the denim jacket. She didn’t look like anybody’s idea of a cat burglar that was for damn sure.
After trying – and failing – to talk her out of this harebrained scheme, he’d decided to follow along and expedite it for her because he was sure of one thing.
The people who wanted him found were going to act any moment and he really did want her out of the country before that. He devoutly hoped this was the case, as he surreptitiously patted his jacket back into place, so that his firearm was not detectable.
To be on the safer side, and because of what had happened last time when she’d been there where she shouldn’t have been and gotten shot because of it, he’d made her wear light Kevlar underneath her tank top.
It just outlined her already hot figure even more clearly for him, and definitely for the poor guard who was trying hard not to stare at her chest.
“Yes, we know.” He took her ID and Brand’s anyway to run it through the small scanner kept at the guard’s station.
“Oh, great.” She beamed at the guard, while tugging Brand closer. Brand rolled his eyes at the guard, in a ‘women’ Gesture.
“So, maybe you can help me out. You see, I left an entire file inside Mr. Geraldo’s office, when I was interviewing him. And I have a plane to catch in about five hours, visa expiry and all that. So I was wondering if you could please just help me out, Mr.” She glanced at his name tag. “Alvez.”
“Roberto, please.” The man told her, while he went back to the computer and saw that they did check out.
“Senhor De La Hoya is out of the country.” He began, after conferring with his group mates, who were also trying to not stare at her boobs.
If Akira didn’t think that their obvious distraction was to her advantage, she would
have totally let them have it. As it was, Brand, the man she did hope to distract, had not so much as glanced at her, since the moment when he’d knocked on her door and asked her to at least wear protection.
“I know.” She nodded vigorously, which also brought attention to all that sexy hair. Thank you, NoFrizz.
Brand squeezed her waist tightly and made her subside with all the gestures.
“Exactly my concern. My story needs to be filed tomorrow or my boss will fire me for being so careless. And I can't do that, if my file is here and I am in Mumbai, can I?” she asked Roberto, while she sniffled a little.
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