The Ultimatum--An International Spy Thriller

by Karen Robards

Do. Not. Sneeze.

  Her eyes continued to water. Blinking, she tried to clear her vision. She could hear nothing from the restroom behind her. She didn’t know if that was because of the drumming of her pulse in her ears or the slight scratching sound her dress made as she shoved it in front of her or because of the insulating properties of the metal and marble with which she was surrounded. She would like to think that the reason she heard nothing was because there was nothing to hear.

  The problem with that was, she couldn’t hear the water rushing from the taps she’d left running.

  The knowledge set her teeth on edge.

  What was King Kong doing? There was no way to know. Everything she could imagine was counterproductive, so she shut that down. All she could do was scoot and slither and belly-crawl away as fast as she could while praying that “as fast as she could” would be fast enough.

  Squirming past the spot where the duct she was in connected at right angles to another duct that ran directly to the ballroom, Bianca thought about trying to use the new channel to turn around so that she would be approaching the vent she meant to exit from feetfirst, which in theory would make getting out without cracking her skull easier. It would also give her the added advantage of being able to kick the vent out, because the screws on that vent would be on the outside, which meant she wasn’t going to be able to reach the screws to unscrew them. But she didn’t want to waste the time required to complete the maneuver, plus the advantage of being able to see who or what was in the men’s room she intended to drop down into before she did it trumped everything else.

  The cross vent meant she had only another eight feet to go.

  How long would it be before King Kong lost patience and forced the restroom door?

  The question got her adrenaline spiking, accelerating her breathing and forming a knot in her chest. Not helpful.

  Using her tongue to flip out the acrylic insert that gave her Jennifer Ashley’s charming overbite while altering the shape of her mouth and jaw, she added that to her purse. Working her mouth and pursing her lips to relax her lips and cheeks into their natural, more finely drawn contours, she made use of the momentary bit of extra space afforded her by the opening where the secondary vent branched off to reach down and free her hacksaw/pry bar and her spool of cord from their storage units in her garter belt. She would use the pry bar to pop off the grate. The cord would allow her to lower it gently to the ground, thus preventing it from crashing down on the marble floor and alerting anyone (like, say, King Kong) who might be close enough to hear.

  As she neared the end of the chute, Bianca discovered that her dress posed a massive problem: it completely blocked the last few feet, including the vent itself. She couldn’t see around it or reach the vent.

  Swearing silently, she got her arms over the damp, prickly, wine-smelling thing and tamped it down as much as she could, wedging parts of it beneath her chest as she struggled to gain a reasonable degree of access to the vent. Pressing her face close to the grate, blinking as she tried without a whole lot of success to clear her still-blurry vision, she squinted out at the men’s room.

  Like the women’s restroom, it was large and white. It was also single user: toilet, urinal, sink—she couldn’t see everything, but she could see those essential components clearly enough.

  It was empty.

  So go already.

  Latching the hook that was attached to the cord to the vent, she edged her small pry bar between the wall and the grate and popped the grate off. She quickly lowered it with the cord and shoved her dress out at the same time. Her dress landed with a soft plop. She dropped her purse on top of the dress.

  There was no fainting couch in the men’s room, of course. Such a convenient aid to getting out of the vent would be too much to ask. From her prone position some two feet below the ceiling, it was an eleven-foot drop straight to the marble floor. She was going to have to go out headfirst, which fortunately shouldn’t pose a problem. Piece of cake to do a backflip on the way down that would allow her to land on her feet.

  Wriggling head and shoulders out of the vent, she pressed the flat of her hands against the slick marble wall to get some momentum behind that flip.

  Then she pushed, squirmed, kicked—and fell. Straight down.

  Backflips, half twists, somersaults—none of the moves she might have used to land on her feet were forthcoming.

  Because her attention was fatally distracted by the man standing in the corner nearest the vent watching her fall.

  6

  Bianca couldn’t have been more shocked if somebody had thrown a bucket of ice water over her. How the hell had she missed him? How—

  Having dropped like a rock with her gaze riveted on the man, she barely managed to get it together enough to catch herself with both out-flung hands in time to save her head from smashing into the floor. Dangerously off balance in her impromptu handstand, she flopped over and smacked down flat on her back on the barely there cushion of her dress.

  “Ooph!” The sound was surprised out of her as the impact sent the breath rushing from her lungs.

  For a split second after she hit, she lay there, dazed and winded, the back of her head resting on the unforgiving marble floor, the rest of her sprawled inelegantly atop her dress. Her eyes were still blurry as she gazed blankly up at the ceiling. She arched slightly as her purse dug into her spine and found herself gritting her teeth against the pain shooting from her tailbone, which had hit first and hardest.

  “Well, hello there, beautiful.” He had a low, deep voice, rich with amusement and something else. He spoke English with the faintest of underlying accents, the origin of which she was in too much distress to even try to place. Shoving away from the wall he’d been leaning against, he moved to stand over her.

  Her pulse skyrocketed. Her heart thumped. Her fight-or-flight response had jumped directly to fight even before she landed, but to her horror she discovered that both options were beyond her. She couldn’t move. Forget harnessing her body’s reactions. She was struggling to suck in air.

  “You know, when I first heard scratching inside the wall here, I was thinking rats.” He gave her a slow once-over, blatant male interest warring with the twinkle in his eyes. “This is much better.”

  By way of a smart comeback, she wheezed. God, she needed to breathe!

  “Take your time,” he advised, his eyes on her legs, which were bent at the knees and all akimbo, giving him an unfettered view all the way up to her crotch.

  Eat dirt and die, she thought. Good thing she couldn’t talk.

  “Is this like spelunking? Only, in your underwear? Very nice underwear, too, I might add.” His eyes were doing a slow crawl over the rest of her.

  Wheeze.

  He was tall, probably around six-three, although it was difficult to be certain, since she was looking up at him while lying flat on her back. He was about thirty, lean, with broad shoulders, narrow hips and long legs, and he looked good in a classic black tux, which was what he was wearing. His hair was coal black and wavy, brushed back from his face and long enough so that it curled up a little on the ends, which just reached the collar of his white shirt. He had a wide forehead, broad cheekbones, a square, clean-shaven jaw. His brows were straight black slashes above caramel-brown eyes that were, at the moment, checking her out with an unmistakably carnal gleam in them. His nose was aquiline and had been broken once. It had a bump on the left side of the bridge. His mouth was a little thin, a little cruel-looking despite the hint of humor in the curve of it as he looked her over. His skin was deeply tanned, leading her to conclude that he’d spent a great deal of time outdoors in either this or some other sunbaked locale.

  He was handsome, sexy even, but that wasn’t what sent a shiver snaking down her spine. Her instincts screamed that he was dangerous. Underneath the humor and the sexual interest,
he was looking at her like a predator eyeing prey.

  Armed? She couldn’t tell, but it was better to err on the side of yes. A pistol in a shoulder holster, maybe, or tucked into his waistband at the small of his back.

  No way was his presence in the men’s room at this particular moment an accident.

  Was he one of the prince’s men? Or Durand’s?

  Her heart lurched.

  Then adrenaline—and ice water—flooded her veins as survival mode kicked in.

  She finally managed to suck in air.

  If he’d moved quicker, he might have succeeded in capturing her while she was helpless, handcuffing her or tying her up or whatever it was he had in mind to do to subdue her.

  Too late. She wasn’t helpless any longer.

  His weakness was right there in front of her, in the hot gleam in his eyes as they moved over her, in his obvious assumption that he could take his time with her, that he was bigger and badder and stronger, that he had her and she couldn’t get away.

  The scraps of black lingerie, the strapless bra offering up her breasts as way more of an eyeful than they actually were, the filmy panties, the sky-high heels and long gloves, but most of all the blatant suggestiveness of her garter belt and (now torn at the knees, but still working for her) fishnets were doing exactly what they were supposed to do: getting him to think with body parts other than his brain.

  Well, everyone was entitled to a mistake now and then.

  “Help me up?” Her voice was husky, suggestive, its sexy breathiness aided by the fact that she still didn’t have her breathing completely normalized. He abandoned his slow perusal of her body to meet her eyes. Projecting sultry invitation for all she was worth, she gave him a small, intimate smile and held up her hand.

  Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

  He did.

  “My pleasure,” he said and took her hand. His was big, long-fingered, strong. He pulled her to her feet easily.

  She let him, smiling at him even as her bruised tailbone sent a twinge up her spine, resisting the urge to flip him over her hip, throw him to the ground, use a blood choke on him and have done. First, because there was something in the way he held himself that made her suspect he might be able to launch a counter to such a move, and second, because fighting was noisy and King Kong, supposing he hadn’t gone in search of orders or reinforcements, wasn’t far away. The last thing she wanted to do was bring him into the picture again.

  Best to string this guy along until she could take him out silently. The only problem with that was, she didn’t have a lot of time. A discreet glance at her watch told her that it was two minutes, forty-one seconds until midnight.

  She needed to move this along.

  “Thank you.” On her feet now, she was able to verify that he was, indeed, around six-three, and that despite the appearance he gave of leanness he was broader and more muscular than she had at first supposed. She estimated his weight at around one-ninety, which meant he outweighed her by a good seventy pounds. A glance at the pair of them in the mirror over the sink confirmed it: he seemed to dwarf her. He was inches taller, twice as broad, a good-looking guy in a tux looming over a slim, blonde girl who looked like he’d special ordered her from Hookers R Us.

  Their comparative sizes actually worked to her advantage. The fact that he was so much physically larger meant that he wasn’t on his guard with her, because he was confident he could overpower her at will.

  That thing people said about assumptions? His were about to bite him in the ass.

  “Usually you find condom dispensers in men’s bathrooms,” he said. He was having fun toying with her, she could tell. He was still holding her hand, his fingers wrapped firmly around her gloved palm, and she suspected he didn’t mean to let go. Of course, it was always possible that he was being careful because he wasn’t quite sure she was his target. After all, she was now a blue-eyed blonde in slutty undies instead of the green-eyed redhead in a ball gown he must have been expecting. On the other hand, how many women could possibly be sneaking around inside the palace’s air-conditioning system? And said ball gown formed a very visible heap on the floor. Fortunately, the heap was mostly lavender instead of black. “I like this Bahraini custom of dispensing beautiful, half-naked women through the air vents much better.”

  “Oh, my.” She gave a wide-eyed glance around, playing confused innocence to the hilt on the off chance that it might keep him, or throw him, off balance. “Is this the men’s room? I’m embarrassed.”

  “Probably hard to tell where you’re going to come out when you start crawling through the ductwork.” His tone was all sympathy. His eyes as they met hers—well, she no longer had any doubt at all that this guy was major bad news.

  “It is.”

  He smiled at her. “What’s your name?”

  She smiled right back.

  “Sylvia,” she said, because the Jennifer Ashley identity was now gone with the wig, which, a quick glance at the floor told her, was fortunately hidden by the crumpled folds of her dress. She made big bedroom eyes at him while trying, subtly, to free her hand. Her best bet was probably to chop him across the throat. That would shut him up and put him out of commission at the same time. The only problem: she did her best chopping with her right hand, which he was holding. And she needed to make this quick, silent and not messy. “What’s yours?”

  “Mickey.”

  “Hi there, Mickey.”

  “Right back at you, Sylvia.”

  Okay, so subtle wasn’t going to do it. He was holding on to her hand like he never meant to let go—which, she suspected, he probably didn’t, at least not until he had her secured in some other way.

  He said, “Don’t tell me, you’re the air-conditioner duct version of a chimney sweep.”

  She gave a flirtatious little nose wrinkle as she debated the merits of sweeping his legs out from under him and then taking him out with an elbow to the temple. “Not quite.”

  “An exterminator, then. With a very enticing uniform.”

  “You are funny.”

  “So you want to tell me what you were doing in that vent?”

  “Escaping,” she admitted, because sometimes honesty really was the best policy. At least, as far as it went.

  He hadn’t expected her to actually tell him the truth. She could tell from the flicker of surprise in his eyes.

  “Escaping?”

  “From the man I was with. I would have used my words, but he was a little too...insistent.”

  “He being the big guy rattling the knob of the ladies’ room next door,” he said, as if he were guessing. Only, she was as sure as it was possible to be that he didn’t need to guess. She didn’t know who or what he was exactly, but he’d clearly seen King Kong, and since he wasn’t yelling some version of “She’s here, I got her” to him, she felt it was unlikely that he was part of the prince’s team.

  So was he with Durand? That possibility was actually worse. It dried her mouth, made her stomach twist. The prince and his men were murderous thugs, but they were mostly dumb murderous thugs with a local reach. Durand, on the other hand, was smart, relentless and global.

  She gave an elegant little shrug, made a small moue with her mouth.

  A kick to the chin was what she was going with, followed by a knee drop to the solar plexus once she had him on the ground.

  “He’s not really my type,” she said. Stepping closer, she vamped him with her eyes.

  He smiled, a slight, sensual curve of his mouth, but before either of them could say or do anything else, the sound of heavy footsteps outside caused them both to glance in that direction. Bianca’s breath hitched as she realized that someone was seconds away from reaching the door. Her gaze flew to the knob. It was unlocked.

  Had King Kong breached the ladies’ room
? Had her absence been discovered and were the prince’s men now looking for her? She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to find out.

  Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

  Except in plain sight.

  Tightening her grip on the hand imprisoning hers, she stepped toward Mickey, looked up into his eyes that were just starting to frown down at her and whispered a panicked-sounding “Oh, no, he’s coming! Please, you have to help me hide! Kiss me!”

  Then she threw herself against him, wrapped her free arm around his neck and kissed him for all she was worth.

  He didn’t kiss her back, just stood there like a statue while she teetered on her tiptoes and urgently plied his mouth with hers and pressed her nearly naked body right up against the long, solid, fully clothed length of him and used him to keep whoever might be coming through that door from getting a good look at her. His hand gripping hers tightened and he folded her hand against his chest. That was all the reaction she got. Deepening the kiss, she licked into his mouth, slid her fingers up into his hair and closed her eyes.

  The closing-her-eyes part was the hardest, because she really, really didn’t like to render herself blind, but she figured she had to do what she had to do to sell it.

  Two things happened almost simultaneously: he turned so that his back was fully to the door, pulling her around with him and shielding her from the view of whoever would enter, and the door opened behind them.

  There was a pregnant silence. Bianca could feel the weight of the intruder’s gaze on them. She imagined the scene from his perspective: a man’s broad back; a blonde girl in her underwear, her lavender dress puddled on the floor; the two of them, a couple, alone in a restroom, locked in a kiss—

  Nothing to do with the escapee you might be looking for, she told the onlooker silently. Nothing at all.

  Mickey’s hand slid across the bare skin of her rib cage, big and hot and strong. His mouth slanted over hers as he started kissing her back. He backed her into the wall—the marble felt smooth and cold everywhere it touched her skin—and pressed himself against her.