by Cindy Dees
His warning tone of voice made it clear she was intruding into personal territory he didn’t appreciate having invaded. Tough. If she was going to work with him she needed to solve this mystery.
“Why don’t you allow yourself relationships?” she asked.
“I don’t have time for them.”
She crossed her arms, fully aware of what it did to her cleavage, and crossed her legs, fully aware that her already short shorts hiked even higher. He made no secret of letting his gaze slide down to take in the sights appreciatively. This man was so not a monk. She declared, “That’s a cop-out. You could make time if you wanted to.”
“The right woman has never come around?” he threw out dryly.
She snorted. “Another cop-out. You’ve never looked for her, and that’s different.”
He leaned back, scowling. “Well then, if you know so much about my love life or lack thereof, you tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked. I’m going to fret about this when I ought to be paying attention to Annika. I need to know…for the sake of the mission.”
One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Nice try, but no cigar.”
She leaned forward to give him a better look down her sweater and he didn’t hesitate to take in the view. What was up with him? Was he truly a look-but-don’t-touch type? “C’mon, Brady. What have you got against women?”
“Are you hungry?” he asked grimly.
“Don’t change the subject,” she snapped.
“We won’t be back here for several hours, so eat and drink now if you want to,” he replied stubbornly. Not going to be lured into further conversation about his opinion of women, was he? Interesting. She did believe she’d struck a nerve.
“I’m not going to give up,” she warned him.
“Then you’re bound to be disappointed.”
She played the sympathy card shamelessly. “I’m about to go to the Cayman Islands and join a terrorist cell. I’m probably going to die and I’ll take your secrets to the grave with me, anyway.”
He merely shrugged.
When she opened her mouth to speak again, he startled her by cutting her off with a single word. “Enough.” He said the word quietly, but with sufficient bite to stop her in her tracks. It was easy to forget he was a military officer with him running around barefoot in casual jeans and T-shirts. Time to beat a tactical retreat.
Why was it she had such lousy luck with men? She couldn’t stand the ones who chased her, and when she finally found a man she was actually attracted to, he wanted nothing to do with her.
She headed for the kitchen and poured herself a glass of orange juice. She chugged that, then sipped a cup of hot coffee more slowly. After she’d judged sufficient time had passed for him to calm down, she wandered cautiously into the living room.
He was standing over by the big picture window staring toward the ocean in the distance. He looked totally unreachable. She’d never known it was possible to be in the same room with someone and yet feel completely alone like this. She chose a chair facing him and nursed her coffee while she waited for him to rejoin the living.
Finally, he turned briskly. “No more personal baggage. Just business between us. You do what I say; I keep you alive. We bring down Annika Cantori.”
She nodded her acceptance of his terms, but a little voice in the back of her head asked what came after all of that. What about the two of them?
Except there was no them. She had to put on her big-girl panties and get over him. It was the only way she’d get a shot at redeeming herself for a crime she hadn’t committed.
Chapter 6
From the air, Grand Cayman Island resembled Captain Hook’s wrist, ending in a large hook. That narrow, mostly north-south hook was their destination, a strip of land and beach dominated by swanky high-rise resorts stacked next to each other like rows of dominoes. And banks. Scores of them. One of the last great tax havens on the planet, the rich and secretive flocked to the Caymans from all over the world to hide and launder their taxable assets.
It wasn’t a bad place for a terrorist to hide. Privacy was a highly valued commodity on the island, and as long as a person looked affluent enough to be part of the out-of-town clientele, the locals kept their distance.
Eve scoped out the soft, white sand of Seven Mile Beach with the eyes of an expert. There was a hierarchy to beach real estate. The patrons of the hotel facing a strip of beach got dibs. But within that bunch, those who forked out for cabana service got the prime spots—far enough from the water not to get their towels wet, but close enough to be gently cooled by the breeze and salt spray. And with that location went the privilege of seeing and being seen.
She adjusted the hip strings of her barely there bikini and sauntered toward the cabana boy’s stand. She flashed her room key and signed a chit charging her private clamshell shade and chaise lounge to her bill. Thank you, Uncle Sam. Amusement flared. How much fun was it to spend the U.S. government’s money on a fabulous tan?
“Oh, and a piña colada, please,” she told the cabana boy.
He smiled and left to fetch it for her.
Seven Mile beach stretched the entire length of the captain’s hook. If Annika Cantori was hanging out on the resort side of Grand Cayman, she’d likely pass by here eventually.
Eve had spent most of the flight from Brady’s island to this one reviewing the handful of photographs of Annika that H.O.T. Watch could come up with. A few of them had been artificially aged and had hair color and styles changed. The stack was pitifully small. But they, in addition to her having known Annika as a girl, were sufficient for Eve to be confident she’d recognize her target on sight.
Ensconced on her upholstered chaise, sipping on a cool drink and playing with its little umbrella, she languidly picked up her phone when it dinged an incoming call.
“Comfy?” Brady asked dryly.
“Couldn’t be better,” she replied cheerfully. “Enjoying the view?”
He cleared his throat and didn’t answer the question. “Any sign of the target?”
“I’ve been here three minutes. Give it a little time. I thought you were the patient, disciplined one.”
He didn’t respond to that jibe, either. “Call me if you see anyone who could be her.”
“I’ll do more than call you. I’ll rush up to her and give her a big, sloppy hug and gush all over her.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that type of approach,” he blurted in quick alarm. “Her profile indicates she’s extremely stingy with shows of emotion of any kind, particularly those of personal affection.”
“Lighten up, Brady. She and I come from France. There’s a protocol for these things. We shake hands and then air kiss each other on both cheeks. We trade small talk, agree to get together for drinks later and go our separate ways. I’ve got it handled.”
He disconnected the call and left her to her surveillance mission in peace after that. Sunlight-soaked laziness settled into her bones as she listened to the whoosh and crash of the ocean and the murmur of voices around her.
About an hour later, her phone rang again. Half asleep, she picked it up.
Without preamble, Brady said, “H.O.T. Watch wanted me to let you know their satellite images show you’re starting to burn. You might want to roll over and/or apply some more sunblock.”
She burst out laughing. “Dirty little voyeurs. Tell them thank you.”
She hung up the phone and pulled out a bottle of suntan lotion. Making as lascivious a production as possible out of it, she smoothed the cream over her legs and arms. She moved on to her belly and then the valley between her breasts. She took extra time there, smoothing the cream down into her cleavage and then up to her neck, across each shoulder blade, and then back down into the plunging crease between her breasts. She could just imagine the sensation she was causing among the military technicians at the other end of whatever camera they had trained on her.
She wondered what Brady th
ought of her little show. He was somewhere nearby supposedly keeping a lookout for Annika with binoculars from one of the hundreds of hotel rooms fronting the beach. But she’d lay odds he was keeping an eye on her, too.
For fun, she gestured the cabana boy over, flipped over on her stomach, and popped open her bikini top. She smiled archly as the handsome teen smeared lotion all over her back. Fully aware of his potential tip, he made every bit as sexy a production out of it as she could’ve hoped. She didn’t even say anything when his fingers dipped down her ribs, coming perilously close to the swell of her breasts.
There. That ought to keep Brady and the boys drooling for a while. She kept one eye open, idly watching the tourists strolling along the beach and reflecting on the fact that fat, tanned people were infinitely more attractive than fat, pale people.
Her phone rang again. She reached down into her beach bag and held the instrument to her ear. It was Brady’s number. “Wanna have phone sex?” she purred.
“Check your ten o’clock position. Red one-piece bathing suit. Straw hat. Carrying a pair of flip-flops in her right hand. Range, eighty yards.”
She sat up fast, clutching her bikini top to her chest. Not that the slack strip of cloth was doing a whole lot of good at the moment. She could barely see the figure Brady described. She reached around awkwardly to hook her suit and slipped the straps back up on her shoulders.
“If this isn’t her, I’m going to be very annoyed with you,” she announced. “You interrupted a perfectly lovely nap.”
“You’re supposed to be working, not sleeping,” he retorted.
“I am working. On my tan. It’s part of my cover, of course.”
“Of course. Check out the lady in red. Can you identify her or eliminate her as a suspect?”
“You can really knock off all the fancy military jargon. A simple, ‘Is that her or not?’ would suffice.”
“Fine. Is that her or not?”
“I can’t tell. She’ll have to get a little closer. Build’s about right, though. She always did have a sort of funny-looking high waist.”
“I don’t care about her waist. Is it Annika?”
“Hold your horses. Her face is in shadow. I’m going to have to walk over that way to get a better look.”
“Well then, get going.”
“You’re as impatient as a kid at Christmas. Honestly. Relax.”
He snorted. “You’re about to make contact with a sociopathic murderer. You could at least show a little awareness of the danger you’re putting yourself into.”
“Gee. Thanks.” Butterflies suddenly erupted in her stomach, slamming around in there more like small, panicked birds than ethereal, nearly weightless insects.
“Good luck.”
“Be quiet, Brady. You’re not being any help at all, here.” He was laughing when she hung up on him. She walked down to the beach and her phone rang again. Reluctantly, she picked it up.
“Let me guess. You want to me to give you a running, play-by-play commentary,” she said sourly.
“That’s correct. Do not hang up on me again.”
“Grouch,” she muttered. Eve strolled down toward the water and out into the shallow surf until she was about knee deep. The cool water felt like heaven on her skin after baking herself in the hot sun.
“Mmm. The water’s fabulous. It’s cool and refreshing on my skin. Makes me think of an ice cream cone dripping over my hand. I can just taste its sweetness and the saltiness of my hand—”
“Kill the phone sex. Just check out the target already.”
Grinning, Eve passed in front of the woman in red. She glanced casually to the right, then left. She only looked directly at the woman for a second, but it was enough.
“That’s her,” Eve murmured into her phone. “I’m going in.” She hung up the phone and stowed it saucily in the rear end of her bikini. She turned left toward her oncoming target. When they were maybe fifteen feet apart, she looked up from the surf and directly into the woman’s nearly black eyes.
Recognition flared in Annika’s gaze as Eve stopped dead. Stared. “Annika?”
“Eve? Eve Dupont?”
“Yes, yes, Viktor’s little sister. My God. I can’t believe it’s you. I just assumed when Viktor died…that you had, too—how are you?” she babbled.
“I’m fine. You? What brings you here?”
They closed the remaining gap between them and did the handshake and air kiss thing exactly as she’d described it to Brady. Eve glanced at the ocean. “I came for the beach, of course, and the sun. I just had to get out of London. It was so gloomy and gray I was going to slit my wrists if I stayed there another day.”
“London? What are you doing there?”
“I’m a graphic artist at an advertising firm. It’s boring as hell, but it keeps the bills paid.”
Annika’s gaze hardened for a moment. Judging the shallow materialism of her life, was she? Eve lowered her voice. “I couldn’t stay in the Pays Basque anymore. It reminded me too much of Viktor. Of what he stood for. Of what he sacrificed. And my mother—”
She broke off. It wasn’t hard to choke up a little when she thought of her mother. “She lost the will to live. Grieved herself to death. I couldn’t live in that house with her ghost and Viktor’s…”
Annika nodded as if Eve had confirmed something she already knew. Must keep tabs on the old home front.
“So what are you up to these days, Annika? I still can’t believe you’re alive. It’s like you disappeared from the face of the earth after…well, you know.”
Annika’s smiling shrug was a patent affectation. “A little of this and that. My heart was broken after your brother died.”
What a load of bull. Eve made a sound of sympathy. “We should get together later. Talk some more. Drinks, maybe?”
“The Crystal Room. You know it? Eight o’clock.”
She answered, “I’ll find it. All right then. I’ll look forward to catching up with you, Anni.”
Eve thought she spied a tightening across Annika’s shoulders at the old endearment Viktor used to use with her. Brady would be thrilled. The more off balance she could keep the terrorist, the better.
She returned to her chaise lounge, much satisfied with the encounter. Of course, she didn’t even get to sit down before her cell phone rang.
“Report,” he barked at her.
“Easy peasy,” she said lightly. “I’ve got drinks with her at eight at someplace called the Crystal Room. We can move on to step two.”
“Outstanding.” He sounded genuinely pleased, and delight unfolded in her middle. To reward him for being nice, she was going to give him another backless tanning show. And this time, she was going to have the cabana boy oil up her legs, too.
Brady watched Annika until the beach curved out of sight nearly a mile beyond where Eve lay. “H.O.T. Watch, I have lost visual on the target.”
“Never fear, boss,” Harry Sheffield replied. “I’ve got her on satellite imagery.” Harry was one of the top real-time photo intelligence analysis experts in the world, and one of the few men in a field dominated by women. Usually, he watched live video feeds from unmanned aerial drones flying over frontline battle targets. But he was on a forced noncombat rotation for a few months, and Brady was glad to make use of the guy’s mad skills in the meantime.
“Don’t lose her. We need to know everything we can about her before we send in Eve.”
“We’re on it,” Harry replied evenly enough that Brady realized he was being gently chastised.
He sighed. His men were the best at their jobs. He didn’t have to tell Harry what to do; the man would do exactly what he was supposed to without any help from an interfering boss. “Sorry,” he murmured.
He swung his binoculars back toward Eve and was in time to catch the cabana boy practically groping her as the kid smeared suntan lotion all over her slim, muscular thighs. Fury flared hard and hot in Brady’s gut. How dare that pimply gigolo-wannabe fondle her like that— W
hoa. Stop camera. Rewind. He had no say whatsoever in who Eve did or did not let put their hands on her. She was not his woman.
But as her handler, he damn well could tell her to tone down the sex on the beach. He picked up the phone and started to punch her number before it dawned on him that he was reacting only slightly more civilly than a caveman here. Her life. Her body. Her damned suntan lotion. But he didn’t like it. And that bothered him more than he cared to admit.
The Crystal Room was a bar at one of the more elegant resorts on the island. The crystal chandeliers from which it got its name cast sparkling prisms through the dim space. It also overflowed with potted palms that provided privacy for guests—and significant cover for guys doing surveillance on an asset’s meeting with a terrorist.
He had a word with the hotel’s chief of security, who was happy to let Brady slip into the bar before it opened to place several surveillance cameras in the plants. Although he planned to be in the room posing as a tourist, Brady wanted additional eyes on the meeting. Transmissions from the cameras would go directly to H.O.T. Watch headquarters.
He wasn’t surprised when Annika showed up nearly a half-hour early for the meeting. The woman was dressed in a black turtleneck and tight slacks that screamed Euro-punk. Her short, spiky hair was dyed black and she wore heavy eye makeup. If he wanted to score bad drugs and kinky sex, she was the chick to hit on.
He was worried by the suspicion her early arrival for the meeting signaled. It wasn’t like they could back out at this point, though. Eve was already on the terrorist’s radar. Even if she didn’t show up for this rendezvous, Annika would no doubt investigate Eve thoroughly. He didn’t have a good read on how violent Annika would be toward the little sister of her former lover, but his best guess was that Eve was already in danger.
Eve showed up several minutes late as he’d coached her to do over the phone. He didn’t want her looking too eager to speak to Annika. Not that it would ultimately allay the terrorist’s suspicions. But it was the best he could do.
Every male head in the room turned when Eve walked into the bar. He fit right in watching her as she sashayed across the open space and bellied up to the mahogany bar. She wore a tight little red dress that did full justice to every sinful, curving inch of her. Even Annika seemed taken aback by Eve’s smashing good looks.
