by Cindy Dees
“Asher!” the night manager exclaimed. “It has been too long! Madame Eloise has gone home for the evening. You’ll stay until tomorrow and see her, yes? She’ll have your head if you don’t.”
Ashe grinned at the gray-haired man who’d been a fixture at the hotel for as long as he could remember. “Hi, Mr. Tibbs.”
“Good heavens. Call me Gregory. You’re all grown up, now.”
Ashe shook his head. “Time flies, huh?”
“It surely does. What can I do for you and your lovely friend tonight? A room perhaps?”
“That would be great. We’ve just gotten to town and could use a shower and a clean bed.”
“We definitely have both of those here.” Gregory passed him a room key that was an actual key. No modern plastic cards for the Fontenac, thank you very much.
Ashe leaned across the counter to murmur, “If anyone but Auntie El asks, I’m not here.”
“Understood,” Gregory answered smoothly. But then he asked in a conspiratorial whisper, “Are you still doing that fancy secret stuff for the military?”
Hank jolted beside him as he gave the man a noncommittal shrug. Dammit. He scooped up the key and herded her toward the elevator. She was tense, stiff, all of a sudden. The filigree metal cage closed behind them, and the lift jerked into motion.
She asked tightly, “What did he mean, secret stuff for the military? What secret stuff?”
He pitched his voice low. “Patience. We’ll talk in the room.”
“You bet your sweet bippy we will.”
He arched an amused eyebrow at her. “My sweet bippy? Do I want to know what that is?”
She sniffed. “Pop culture reference from the early ’70s and revived recently. You must have been overseas doing fancy secret stuff and missed it.”
Well, at least he knew now that she wasn’t a Special Forces groupie chick. That was something, at least. If she ever decided she liked him, it wouldn’t be for his job or for the thrill of bedding a trained killer.
He led them into what he knew to be one of the hotel’s best suites. It was good to be family. And by giving them this two-bedroom suite, Gregory had neatly sidestepped the question of one bed or two for them.
“Bedroom for you over there with your own bathroom. I’ll take the room by the door, and I’ve got my own shower, too. I’ll call downstairs and see if Gregory can scare up a snack for us. I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.”
“After all that vodka you drank?”
He snorted. “That’s why I need food. To soak up some of it.”
“I’m going to take a shower and wash the stink of the club off me,” she announced. “And then you and I need to talk.”
Indeed. He jumped in his shower, as well, and emerged in time to let Gregory in the door pushing a catering cart full of cold sandwiches and fruit. He pronounced the man a miracle worker and ushered him out.
“Who was that?” Hank asked from the doorway of her bedroom.
He looked up and did a double take. She was swathed in one of the Fontenac’s fluffy terry-cloth robes, her towel-dried hair a golden halo around her face. Without makeup, she looked entirely different. Gone was the hard edge of a woman pushing thirty and working in a rough joint. She looked about sixteen years old, her skin fresh and dewy. God, she looked young.
“How old are you?” he blurted.
“Twenty-five.” She added a little defensively, “I’m not a college student anymore. Granted, I did just graduate. But it took me a couple of extra years to get out of college because I had to help my brother take care of my mom until she died, and I could go to school only part-time.”
He sort of followed all of that. “What was wrong with your mother?”
“She was paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident when I was thirteen.” Shame entered her voice as she finished with, “I wasn’t badly hurt in the crash.”
“I’m sorry for your loss and her suffering.”
A shrug of a slender shoulder under the fluffy robe. “Life sucks.”
“That’s a pessimistic outlook for someone as young as you.”
She looked up at him. “How old are you, then?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Wow. You’re almost ready for the old folks’ home.”
He snorted. In his line of work, she wasn’t far wrong. Special ops was a young man’s game. The low-level hum of underlying panic in his gut over what he would do with the rest of his life notched up a bit.
“What’s this?” she asked, taking a step toward the covered table.
He whisked off the white linen napkins covering the plates and held a chair for her while she sat down. “A picnic.”
“In my world, this qualifies as a bona fide feast,” she declared.
“In mine, too. We eat some weird shi—” he corrected himself, “—stuff in the field.”
She picked up a chicken salad sandwich. “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?”
He picked up a tuna sandwich and considered. “Monkey brain. And it was as gross as it sounds.”
“Eeyew,” she exclaimed, laughing. “I think we’d better change the subject before I lose my appetite.”
He leaped on the opening. “Have you ever seen your boss have meetings with anyone while you’ve been working at the Who Do Voodoo?”
“Of course. He has meetings all the time.”
“Ever see him with any men who looked like his bosses? Maybe older men, or men he treated with special deference?”
“Now and then.”
“Did you find out their names, or can you describe them?”
“I don’t know any names. But I got a picture of one of them once.”
He put down his sandwich abruptly. “May I see it?”
“It’s a bad photo, and it’s very dark. I took it with my cell phone in the bar.”
“No problem.” Jennie could perform magic on anything with pixels. He could barely make out the features of a balding, middle-aged man seated in the dark corner of the club. But he forwarded the digital picture to his headquarters quickly with an urgent request for identification.
“Why are you so interested in Vitaly?” Hank queried.
“You want to find your boyfriend, right?”
She grimaced a little. “He’s not actually my boyfriend. He’s my brother.”
Ashe blinked. Brother? There was no lover? Well, that put a whole new spin on things. So...she wasn’t as off-limits as he’d thought. And he wasn’t a total douche bag for being turned on by her lap dance. Hmm, and they were alone in a hotel room together. Late at night. With her wearing a bathrobe, and him shirtless. He cleared his throat, suddenly more aware of her as an attractive, sexy female than he cared to be.
“I guess this is where I admit that Jennie isn’t my girlfriend, either, huh?”
The same progression of surprise, relief and then chagrin passed through Hank’s gaze before she murmured, “Who is she?”
“My ops and logistics support specialist.”
“Meaning what?”
“She does basically anything my team needs while we’re out in the field,” he explained in a matter-of-fact tone. “She gathers intel for us and arranges deliveries and pickups of supplies, reserves hotel rooms, hires informants—you name it.”
“So this is an actual mission you’re on? For which government agency? And what—or who—is the target?”
“Technically, I’m on leave. But let’s just say your boss triggered my internal alarm system. I asked Jennie to poke around and find out what she can about him.”
She quirked a delicate brow. “Why does Vitaly alarm you?”
“He’s a smart, competent guy who would make a hell of a dangerous criminal. The club itself raises some questions in my mind...it’s obviously much more than meets the eye.”
Hank deflated in what looked like disappointment. Ashe asked quickly, “What’s wrong?”
“I keep hoping my brother didn’t get involved in anything il
legal or dangerous at the Voodoo, but everything you’re saying confirms my worst fears. He’s gotten himself mixed up in something real bad, hasn’t he?”
An urge to comfort her, to go to her and wrap his arms around her, nearly overcame him. He forcibly stopped himself from moving toward her, however. He had no intention of taking advantage of her vulnerability to seduce her.
It wasn’t that he wouldn’t willingly jump into the sack with her and have a great time. But that wasn’t what he was here to do. He needed to focus on the job at hand. On helping the damsel in distress, not humping her. He repeated his old mantra to himself grimly: he was the job. Dammit.
He asked abruptly, “Do you have any idea what Vitaly is up to—”
The lights flickered once and then went out, plunging the suite into darkness.
A gasp from Hank located her position in his mental picture of the room. He responded to the frightened acceleration of her breathing by murmuring, “Stay where you are. The lights will come back on in a few seconds.”
Except they didn’t.
“Is it him? Has he come for us?” she whispered.
Battle alert roared through him. “Do you have reason to believe Vitaly would cut the power and burst into your room to harm or kill you?”
“No. But he’s the suspicious type. And your arrival in the club and interest in me will have drawn Vitaly’s attention to me. What if he figured out that I’m Max’s little sister?”
Ashe swore silently. She was a civilian with neither the knowledge nor resources to create a false legend that would hold up to Vitaly’s scrutiny. He asked quickly, “Does Vitaly know your real last name?”
“He knows my real first name, but I told him my last name is Smith and that everyone calls me Hank.” She’d told him Max’s last name was Kuznetsov—he caught the play on words and nodded. “Kuznets. Russian for blacksmith. You call yourself Smith. Got it.”
“I use a local check-cashing service. They cash my paychecks for me in spite of the name discrepancy. After all, how many women out there are named Hank? It’s a running joke with me and the manager that my employer keeps getting my name wrong on my checks.”
It was a small misdirection, but possibly enough to throw off Vitaly in the short run. “Don’t move. I’m going over to the phone to call the front desk.”
He maneuvered around the catering table with their meal on it and headed unerringly toward the rotary phone sitting on the end of the bar. He pushed the operator button.
“Hey Gregory, it’s Asher. You okay down there?”
A sound of exasperation in his ear. “Yes. The power’s out up and down the whole street. Ever since Katrina, we have a blackout whenever it rains. It may be a few hours before the power company restores it. Would you like me to bring up some candles?”
“Nah. We’re good. Call me if you need help with any of the guests.”
“Thankfully, most of them are asleep. The worst of it will be making sure the morning’s wake-up calls come off without a hitch.”
“You can handle it,” Ashe replied encouragingly. He hung up the phone and turned to face the darker shadow within the other shadows that was Hank. “The whole street lost power. This wasn’t targeted at us. It’s all good.”
“Umm, okay.”
He frowned. That was a faint tremor of some kind in her voice. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He might not know much about women, but he did know one thing. When a woman sounded upset and then told you nothing was wrong, something was definitely wrong.
He moved swiftly toward her, and she cringed as he drew close. He stopped an arm’s length in front of her, perplexed. “Tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it,” he demanded.
“I...nothing.”
“Translation: something is wrong. Spill.”
A sigh. A pause. Then, in a small voice, she confessed, “I’m afraid of the dark. Ever since the car crash, I hate being alone in the dark.”
He stepped forward and swept her into a hug. She stiffened for a moment, and then her arms crept around his waist. Her hands were cold against his back, and he recalled with a start that he was shirtless. At least she had on that thick bathrobe for modesty’s sake.
Gradually she relaxed against him. Even through the fluffy robe, she was slender in his arms. She felt fragile and breakable. But maybe that impression came from the faint trembling still making her shudder.
“I’ve got you, kitten. No one’s going to hurt you.”
“Who are you?” she mumbled against his chest.
“I’m military.” She knew that much already from Gregory. “I work on a Special Forces team.” Which she could also assume from Gregory’s “secret stuff” remark. He hoped she didn’t know enough about the armed forces to ask for any more details than that. In an effort to distract her, he asked, “What do you think Max was doing in the Voodoo?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine him going into a place like that on his own.”
He pursed his lips above her head. Her perfect big brother didn’t have male urges or look at half-naked women, huh? Color Hank naive.
She continued, “I figure it had something to do with his job. But I can’t imagine what.”
“You said he’s an art and antiques dealer, right? Have you ever seen Vitaly show an interest in that sort of stuff?”
She snorted against his chest. “He wouldn’t know a piece of art if it reached out and bit him.”
“Is it possible that Max went there just to have a drink and...take in the scenery?”
Another snort. “Max is no monk. But sleazy strip joints with underage lap dancers are not his style.”
Correction: Hank wasn’t as naive as he’d thought. “You said he found art pieces and antiques for people. Is it possible that Vitaly or someone who frequents the Voodoo hired Max to find something?” As soon as he expressed the idea aloud, it felt right to him.
Hank sighed. “I’ve talked to all the regulars and brought up the subject of art or antiques at one time or another. Nobody ever showed an interest in the subject.”
Asher frowned. What if Max had been commissioned to find something that wasn’t art? The same investigative techniques that an art dealer used might apply.
“What kind of education and training does your brother have?”
“He has an art history degree from Tulane University and an MBA. And my dad was an art finder. Taught him the ropes from the time he was a kid. He and my dad stayed close after my parents divorced.”
“And you and your father? Did you stay close?” he asked.
“Not so much.”
Ashe’s arms tightened a little more around her. He knew how painful it was to feel unloved by a parent. This was the first time she’d mentioned her father. Hmm...maybe she had daddy issues, too. “Tell me about your dad.”
Hank tensed against him. “My parents divorced when I was six. He got me every other Wednesday night for dinner and one weekend a month, assuming he was home that weekend. Which didn’t happen often.” She took a breath, let it out slowly. “Bottom line...I didn’t know him well nor were we close. He died a few years after the accident.”
“How?”
“No idea. Mom just got a notification from the Social Security Administration that because I was a minor, I would get a payment every month until I turned eighteen because my father had passed away.”
Whoa. “And no one knows the cause of death?”
“I imagine someone knows. But nobody in my family knows.”
She’d lost her father, then her mother, and then Max in quick succession. Her obsession with finding her brother made a little more sense now.
Something rattled against the window, and Hank lurched against him. “Oh, God. What’s that?” she whispered.
“That’s a tree branch knocking against the window glass.” He clutched her even closer. “I told you. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
“We have to get out of here,” she muttered frantical
ly. “We’re trapped. If someone barges in the door or through the window, we’re sitting ducks.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he replied in a soft, reassuring voice. “It’s pretty dark in here. And an intruder won’t know the layout of the furniture like I do. There are plenty of spots we could go for cover, like behind the bar or in either bedroom. And those are solid oak doors to the bedrooms. A bad guy would have a hell of a time busting one of them down.”
Hank was not calmed by his observations. She really was afraid and still trembled in his arms. Now probably was not the moment to lecture her on how unproductive fear was as an emotion nor to attempt to teach her techniques for managing and harnessing fear. Such training was standard ops in his line of work. While he occasionally registered momentary apprehension about a situation, fear was not something he allowed to creep into his psyche.
“What would make you feel safer?” he asked her.
“Could we go somewhere else?”
“Do you want to hide in a closet?” he suggested. He’d meant it as a joke, but he really was at a loss as to how to comfort a frightened civilian female.
“No,” she answered quickly. “That would be too much like being in the car after the crash, waiting for help to come.”
Oh, jeez. “How long did it take for someone to get you out of the car?” he asked gently.
“It took hours for someone to see us, and another two hours for fire trucks to come and rip the doors off to get me and my mom out. She quit moaning after about the first hour. I spent the rest of that time thinking my mom was dead...”
He gathered her even closer to him. God, that had to have been horrible. If he wasn’t mistaken, something wet was touching his chest. She was crying? Aww, hell. He bent down, scooped her off her feet and carried her into his bedroom. He kicked the door shut and then sat down on his bed with her in his lap. He adjusted the big pile of pillows so he could recline against the headboard with her cradled in his arms.
“You’ve had a rough go of things, haven’t you, Hank?”
Her shoulders shook harder.
“Go ahead. Let it all out. I won’t melt.” He’d learned over the years with his men that sometimes a good venting of all the pent-up emotions inside a person was therapeutic. Of course, with his guys, it usually happened over a bottle of whiskey and maybe a good old-fashioned bar fight.
