by Cindy Dees
“Why are you so determined to push sex between us?” he challenged.
“Because it’s always there between me and men. Especially good-looking, virile men who are used to having whatever woman they want.”
She thought he was good-looking and virile, huh? “I don’t ‘have’ whatever woman I want. I have a demanding career that takes up most of my time. And even if I had time, I’m not interested in most women.”
Particularly sexy women who threw themselves at men. He’d endured his mother’s addiction to sex as a kid and had nothing but contempt for women like her. She’d gotten every little scrap of self-esteem she managed to pull together from the men who used her and tossed her away like trash. Technically, she hadn’t been a hooker. But she’d supplemented her income as a receptionist heavily by pawning the gifts her many boyfriends gave to her. It had been a humiliating way to grow up, knowing his mother was sleeping her way to rent and food on the table.
Eve was speaking again. “…but you are interested in me. I was there when you kissed me back, remember?”
She wasn’t going to let him forget that, was she? He replied evenly, “You were also there when I ended the kiss and walked away.”
That sent a shadow of hurt through her light green gaze, which in turn knotted his gut unpleasantly. He reminded himself that, at the end of the day, she was the one doing him the favor by infiltrating Annika’s cell, not the other way around.
He sighed and changed the subject. “The mission is going to put you in the path of some dangerous and violent people. I’m worried about you.”
“How so?”
Thank God she was going along with the change of subject. He really didn’t want to have to hurt her any more. That look in her eye said she’d suffered more of it in her life than most people were aware of.
“I’d suggest you be careful about provoking the men you’ll be hanging around. They could be…brutes.”
“You mean they might try to rape me?” She shrugged as if unimpressed by the prospect.
Really worried now, he glared down at her. He’d listened to his mother cry in her bedroom more than once after one of her male guests played a little too rough. “I’m serious, Eve.”
“Sex has always been about power and always will be. If some guy decides he needs to have his way with me to show how powerful he is, whatever.”
Brady’s jaw literally dropped. “Excuse me?”
She stared up at him equal parts surprised and defiant. “What?” she demanded.
“You don’t care if someone assaults you?” he asked in credulously.
“Isn’t that basically what sex is anyway?”
“Good Lord. What kind of sex have you had to think that?” She opened her mouth as if to answer and he threw up his hands. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” She shrugged.
He jumped up and paced along the beach, kicking idly at the wavelets as they rolled in. No wonder she was such a cynic. Did she really believe sex was at best a power play and at worst an attack women were supposed to endure?
His cell phone vibrated. “Hathaway,” he said irritably.
“Hey, it’s Jennifer. I see you two are taking a break from training. How’s it going with your girl?”
Eve was emphatically not his girl. He barely stopped himself from snapping that to his colleague. Instead, he blurted, “Do all women think sex is basically an act of assault?”
“Do I want to know why you’re bringing this up?” Jennifer sounded startled.
“Trying to figure out Eve. She’s not exactly what I expected.”
“Has she been raped? Is she too unstable for this op? Do we need to scrub her and wait for a Medusa to cut loose?”
“I don’t think we have that long before Annika strikes again,” Brady replied. “I’m not ready to give up on Eve. She’s just more of a man-hater than I pegged her for.”
“With looks like that?” Jennifer half-laughed. “No surprise. Men can act like colossal jerks around pretty women. She’s probably been pawed by the worst of them.”
“So I’m gathering,” he replied dryly.
“Hang in there. You men aren’t all bad eggs. Take you, for example. You don’t make passes at women no matter now hot they are.”
“Do you have anything work related you want to tell me,” he ground out, “or is this call purely meant to insult and harass me?”
“We’re getting pressure from the families of the Americans who were killed in the Dred-Naught bombing—and their various elected representatives—to arrest someone. I’ve been trying to explain that there’s not enough evidence to charge anyone with any crime and that I’m trying to collect it. But congressmen with dead constituents want someone to blame right away, proof or no proof.”
“Hold your ground,” he advised. “Making an arrest right now would be useless. They’ll just have to be patient. You might want to tell the journalists on the story to cool their jets, too.”
“Easier said than done,” Jennifer grumbled.
He laughed. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks.”
She snorted. “What big bucks? I’m a government employee.”
“I’ll call you if anything changes down here, Jenn.”
“Good luck…and hurry.”
He disconnected the call. Good luck, indeed. He’d need more than that to deal with Eve Dupont. He’d need a damned miracle to come out of this op unscathed.
Chapter 4
Eve watched Brady pocket his phone and head back in her direction, scowling. Why was he so bothered by her cavalier attitude toward men? Did he actually give a damn about her? Care about her feelings? Surely not. It wasn’t how men were wired. Once they stopped thinking with their brains and started thinking with their…well, not thinking at all…they all turned into colossal jerks. Brady wouldn’t be any different.
He sat down beside her and stared out to sea, tension radiating from him. “What’s got you so wired?” she asked. “That phone call?”
His gaze didn’t leave the ocean. “My colleague was urging me to hurry.”
“Hurry what?”
“Your preparation for this mission. Thing is, I’m still not sure I want to send you out.”
“What’s the hang-up? Is it me…or is it you?”
That finally got him to look at her. But his gaze was distant. Inscrutable. “That is the question, isn’t it?”
“All right. We’ve established the question. What’s the answer, then?”
Frowning, he picked up a bit of a sea shell idly and tossed it toward the ocean. “I’m worried about you going out in the field by yourself. You’re totally unprepared for what you’re going to face. Of course, that’s exactly why you’ll succeed. I can’t even give you the most basic training, or our target will spot you and kill you.”
She turned over that information in her mind. So, she was being sent on a mission precisely because of her ignorance. Great. As for her being unable to deal with whatever happened, she commented, “I didn’t grow up in some utopian paradise, you know. I survived the mean streets of a violence-prone region. There were bombings and clashes with police, Basque separatists who’d kill you if you didn’t support them, and French loyalists who’d kill you if you did. And as you’ve been at pains to point out, it wasn’t like I had caring parents or even a protective brother to look out for me. I mostly figured it out on my own.”
He shook his head in denial.
She pressed further. “Has it occurred to you that I’m not some fragile, helpless thing? It just so happens I’ve been taking care of myself for a good long time. And I’m still standing.”
“I can guarantee you’ve never been in the kind of danger I’m about to put you in. This mission may very well be too much for you.”
“We won’t know until we try, will we?”
“The price of failure could be your death, and possibly mine. And that changes everything—for you at least. You’re a civilian.”
“Civilians aren’t allo
wed to risk their lives for something they believe in? Only you military types are allowed to do that? Is that how your world works?”
“Yes. It is. It’s my job to protect people like you.”
She sat up beside him. “People like me? Exactly how stupid do you think I am?”
“I don’t think you’re the slightest bit stupid. But you’ve got no idea—”
She cut him off. “Then give me a little credit for being able to figure it out as I go.”
“You’re determined to do this come hell or high water, aren’t you?” he demanded.
“You offered me a shot at getting my life back. Wild horses won’t stop me from taking that shot. It’s too late for you to back out of this now. We’re both committed. Even your boss is telling you to hurry.”
“She’s not my boss. We’re coworkers.”
“She? You work with a woman?” Eve hadn’t seen that one coming. Why then, was he so hinky about putting her out in the field? “C’mon, Brady. Quit…how do you say it…cat footing around.”
“Pussyfooting,” he answered dryly. “Fine. You’re determined to do this mission no matter what? So be it.”
“Thank God,” she breathed. “So. Tell me the details.”
He snorted. “Your mission is to infiltrate a terrorist cell led by your dead brother’s ex-lover, Annika Cantori. I believe you know her?”
Annika. The name flowed through Eve like bitter poison, conjuring a face from her distant past. A hard, frightening young woman who’d lured Viktor into the world of violence and extremism that ultimately killed him.
“She recruited my brother,” Eve said in a strangled voice she hardly recognized as her own. Memories of the skinny, short-haired, punked-out, preternaturally intense girl who had taken her brother from her rolled through Eve’s mind.
“And now you’re going to let her recruit you,” Brady continued. “In fact, you’re going to do everything in your power to get her to recruit you. You want to take up the work with her where your brother left off.”
With her brother’s lover. The woman her mother had always blamed for Viktor’s death. Eve agreed with her mother: Annika was also her brother’s killer. And she was supposed to work with the woman? Surely not. Aloud, she asked, “Am I supposed to kill her?”
“No. You’re just supposed to find out if she’s responsible for the nightclub bombing in Jamaica last week and discover what she’s planning next. I’ll arrest her once you’ve gotten the evidence I need.”
“You don’t arrest a woman like Annika. She’ll never be taken alive.” An image of her brother, laughing and teasing her, flashed through Eve’s brain. He’d made an intolerable life tolerable for her. He’d looked out for her. Taken care of her. Until Annika. He’d become a stranger—moody and distant and dark. And then he’d died on a suicide mission engineered by Annika. And she was supposed to work with the woman? No way. Kill her, yes. Cooperate with her? Not a chance.
“How well, exactly, do you know her?” Brady asked, sounding suspicious all of a sudden.
She thought fast. Brady knew where Annika was. Had resources that could help her get close to the woman. If she wanted to kill Annika, she’d have to play along for now.
Eve answered lightly, “I know her very well, of course. She’s from my hometown, which wasn’t much more than a village. Everyone knew everyone. How do you think she and Viktor met?” Eve shrugged, trying to look casual. “Her little brother, Drago, was in my grade in school. Awful boy. Sick in the head. Used to invent horrible ways to kill mice to gross out us girls.”
Brady jolted. “We have no record of her having a brother. Do you know where he is now?”
“The way I heard it, he was shot and killed on the cruise ship at the same time you people killed my brother.” She halted, checking her bitterness. Not the way to get Brady to use her on his mission. She added hastily, “Trust me. Drago Cantori was no loss to the world. He was a psychopath.”
“What about Annika?” Brady asked eagerly. “What was she like as a child? Our profilers are going to have a field day with this. They rarely get detailed background information on a subject’s childhood.”
Eve opened her mouth to speak, but Brady waved her to silence. “Wait a second before you answer.” He pulled out his cell phone and spoke into it quickly. “Jennifer, you’re never going to believe this. Eve knew Annika and her brother as kids. I’ll put her on speakerphone.”
There was a short delay while some sort of recording device was activated on the other end, and then a woman with a rich contralto voice announced, “Whenever Eve’s ready.”
Reluctantly, Eve thought back to a time she rarely allowed herself to visit in her mind. “Alberto Cantori—Annika’s father—was a leader in the Basque separatist movement. A violent man. He gradually grew more unhinged as we grew up. Used to beat up his wife and kids. Annika and Drago would show up at school with black eyes and split lips often. The story was always that they were studying martial arts.”
Eve remembered feeling sorry for Annika until the day she’d said something to the older girl about it and gotten spit on for her trouble. She continued, “Annika and Drago were throwing Molotov cocktails at army troops by the time they were eight or so.”
“Did they get arrested?” Brady asked.
“They were always in trouble with the police. But they were so young. No one wanted to throw them in jail. They usually got hauled home to their mother. She was a decent enough woman, if not very bright. Ran a laundry.”
A male voice from the phone said, “Tell us more about the father.”
Eve glanced at Brady, who nodded encouragingly. “I was scared of him. He had a crazy look in his eye. Like he was always half-considering how to kill you. I never knew if he was that committed to a Basque homeland or if he just used it as an excuse for violence. Rumor had it he got nearly beaten to death by the police as a young man and was never quite right in the head after that.”
“What did Annika think of her father?” Brady prompted when she stopped speaking.
Eve frowned. Viktor would have known the answer to that one, but she wasn’t so sure. “My impression is that she both loved and hated him. Is that too vague?”
“Not at all.” Brady smiled at her. “Go on. What else can you remember?”
“The kids at school nearly worshipped Annika. You have to understand. None of us liked the police or the military. We all sympathized with the freedom fighters. Not to mention, she had tattoos and wore black leather pants and had facial piercings. She was a rebel who infuriated our teachers. Of course we all thought she was cool.”
The man again. “Would you say the locals protected Annika and her family?”
Eve answered without hesitation, “Absolutely. No matter what they saw her or her family do. No one in town would talk to the French police. They were the enemy.”
“That’s our entrée,” Brady announced. “Eve is someone Annika can trust because she already has a history of keeping her mouth shut about the Cantori family to the police.” He threw her a sidelong look. “And Eve’s never given the authorities anything to work with regarding Viktor’s death.”
“That’s because I don’t know anything!” she protested.
The man on the phone piped up. “But Annika doesn’t know that. Eve can intimate that her brother spoke freely to her, and she has protected his secrets all these years. Annika will respond well to that.”
Sick dread roiled in her gut at the idea of lying to Annika. The girl got that same homicidal look in her eyes that her father used to. And she’d beaten the hell out of the only girl in school who’d dared cross her. That had been one of the few times Annika had spent some time in the local jail. After Viktor died, who knew how crazy she’d gotten? He’d always been a stabilizing influence on her—which was a scary thought, given that he’d ultimately died in a terrorist attack himself.
The psychologist/profiler, or whatever he was, continued, “If Eve appears to have transferred hero worship of
her dead brother to his ex-lover, that will seem logical to Annika. Even a chance sighting of Annika, alive and well when everyone thinks she’s dead, would plausibly trigger the transference of idolization.”
Eve frowned. “If you want me to work with Annika, pretty much all I’ll have to do is invoke my brother. Viktor saved Annika’s life. I’ll just call in that debt.”
“How did Viktor save her?” Brady asked, startled.
“She tangled with the French army one time too many. They came looking for her. She made it out of her house and into the street where they tried to gun her down. Viktor dived in front of her and took three bullets to the gut.”
She’d never forget the horror of that day, the sound of the shots, the screams of the bystanders, the blood. So much blood. And Annika, just standing there, staring down at her brother like he was roadkill. It had been Annika’s mother who leaped forward, tearing off a strip of her skirt and pressing it to Viktor’s wounds to staunch the bleeding until an ambulance arrived. Eve had gotten the distinct impression that Annika would have been perfectly happy to let Viktor bleed out in the street.
Brady interrupted the grim memory, asking, “How badly was your brother injured?”
“He nearly died. He was even given the last rites.” She added sourly, “When Annika went to see him in the hospital, she didn’t even thank him. She only wanted to know why he did it. That’s when he told her he loved her. I was there.” And Annika’s dark gaze had merely gone narrow and calculating. As if she was thinking about ways to use his declaration to her advantage.
The man on the phone asked eagerly, “How did she react to his declaration? What did she say?”
Eve was there again in the dingy, depressing hospital room. It had been cold and rainy outside, casting dim, gloomy light on the gray-tinged sheets and too may times repainted, cast-iron bed frame. “She said she believed him. That if he was willing to die for her, it must be true.”
The man on the phone replied immediately, “Her father no doubt invoked proving her love to him when he asked her to do violence as a child. The only proof of love or loyalty she’ll accept involves death. She may ask Eve to die for her to prove her loyalty.”
