by Harper Allen
Asher stared at her. Dawn bore his scrutiny with outward coolness.
“See anything that interests you, big guy?” she asked flippantly. She could afford the offhand attitude, she thought: a quick glance had shown her that there was nothing about the smoothly unblemished area of skin just below the curve of her bra to arouse his suspicions. The healing had run its course and whatever his speculations had been, the man standing in front of her would never be able to prove them. Not how I’d planned this evening to end, she thought in resignation, but better than it could have. I’m still in place as Sir William’s trusted assistant and the next time I lay my hands on his notes I won’t let anything or anyone stand in the way of my delivering them to Lab 33.
In fact, she was in a better position than she’d previously been, she told herself in satisfaction, because if Asher’s stricken expression was anything to go by, Mr. SAS’s faith in his own sanity was badly shaken. She couldn’t resist shaking him up a little more.
“Where’d the magic bullet enter me, Ash?” She looked down at herself curiously, at the same time nudging the bottom edge of her bra slightly upward over the swell of her left breast. “Here? Or was it higher?” She bit her lip innocently. “Hey, I know—maybe I jerked your gun just as you fired and your bullet went a little lower, like about here.” Negligently she slid a thumb under the narrow black strip of panty that traversed her hip and gave it a tiny tug southward. She looked up at him. “Or perhaps that’s only the way it happens in your dreams, sweetie. It kind of sounds to me like you have a problem shooting your gun off before you’re ready—”
“How the hell did you do it, Swanson—a bulletproof vest?” Under his tan Asher’s hard features were gray, and even before he finished the question he was shaking his head in negation. “I’m not thinking straight. Your sweater was soaked with blood, the same blood that was pouring from you on your way back here, so you couldn’t have been wearing a vest. But there’s not a damn mark on you, so…”
“So you’ve got the wrong girl?” Dawn suggested. “I know how disappointing this must be for you, Ash, I really do. Right from the start you’ve been so hot to pin something—anything—on me, and tonight you must have thought you’d actually caught me red-handed. Darn it all, I almost wish I was standing here with my life ebbing away, just to make you feel better about all this.” She turned slightly away from him and bent to pick up her robe. “Oh, well, qué será, será, as they—”
“Your back!” At the shock in his tone alarm bells went off in her mind and she spun around to face him, at the same time clumsily trying to force her arms into the sleeves of the robe. Asher grabbed the garment from her with one hand, his other gripping her upper arm. “Dammit, Swanson—the flesh is raw! It looks like—”
He froze, his disbelieving focus on her. “It looks like an exit wound,” he said slowly. “Except it can’t be, because there isn’t an entrance wound.”
Well, there was, but since it was the smaller by far of the two, it healed up a whole lot faster, Dawn thought hollowly. How could she have overlooked something so basic? she wondered, furious with herself. And how was she going to explain her way out of this?
Never apologize, never explain. For once she didn’t care that the maxim had been a favorite of Lee Craig’s, it was worth a try. She wrenched her arm from Asher’s grasp, tore the robe out of his hand and leveled a flat stare at him as she put it on and cinched it around her waist once more. “You’re losing it, Captain. I guess that’s not surprising, given your last mission, but either find some other way to work out the guilt that’s obviously eating you up or put your past as the Wolf of Bah’lein behind you and forget about it. Just don’t use me as—”
“Who told you about that?” At her mention of the nickname, a visible shock had run through him, as if she’d just thrown a switch that had sent an unendurable current through his body. He recovered immediately, but it was clear he was still more shaken than he wanted her to know. “Don’t tell me.” His words were clipped. “My bloody uncle, right?”
“Your bloody uncle who used his considerable pull to get you this baby-sitting job.” Her ploy was working, Dawn thought in relief. She’d lobbed the verbal equivalent of a hand grenade at Asher, and the shrapnel from its blast had temporarily blinded him to his issues with her. She was under no illusions she’d thrown him off for long, but all she needed was a few more minutes while her back healed. She pressed her advantage. “Oops, I guess I wasn’t supposed to let that one slip, either. Sir William seemed to think you’d be a little peeved he’d had to intercede to get your ass out of the sling you’d put it in, so he didn’t tell you that you were part of the deal he cut. Sweet old guy, isn’t he?”
“He’s a meddling bastard who knows damn well that what happened in Bah’lein and whatever my role might have been, the whole subject’s been ruled off-limits by an international court of law until Al-Jihr’s trial.” Asher’s jaw tightened. “Which is why this discussion between you and me is closed as of now, Swanson, even if you did bring it up as a smokescreen. I’m phoning down to the infirmary. I’ll let a doctor make the decision as to whether I throw you into a cell tonight after I arrest you, or cuff you to a gurney and—”
“God, we’re back to that again,” she said in a bored tone. Walking to the bed, she shrugged off her robe and sat back against the pillows. She waved a hand at the phone on the adjacent night table. “If you’re so determined to shoot what’s left of your military career down in flames, go right ahead. Better yet, I’ll dial the infirmary’s extension for you.”
Forestalling his move toward the phone, she flipped onto her stomach and reached for the receiver. Idly raising her legs and crossing them at the ankles, she punched in the number that connected the room telephones with the facility’s emergency clinic.
“It’s ringing.” She hummed a bar of “Rule Britannia” under her breath and frowned at her left index finger. “Broke a nail tonight, I can’t imagine how. Oh, wait, someone’s picking up.” With exaggerated courtesy she held the phone out to him. He snatched it from her and slammed it back onto the cradle.
“Right.” He exhaled sharply. “I’ve seen what I was supposed to see—the exit wound’s gone.”
“The imaginary exit wound?” She pretended to stifle a yawn. “If you don’t need to use the phone, Asher, I wish you’d let me get some sleep. I’m due to be in the lab in a few hours, and I’d really like—”
“Not this soldier, love.” Despite the endearment, his tone was hard. “The details of my last mission are classified, as I just said. But there’s no harm in telling you something about the one previous to it, although you don’t need to know specific names and locations. We were sent in to rescue hostages from an embassy that had been taken over. I volunteered to exchange places with the pregnant wife of a civil servant, and the rebels jumped at the opportunity to take a real live SAS officer as prisoner. I was kept in a cage for three months, beaten and tortured daily, and every time I fell asleep my captors would wake me up to tell me I could walk out a free man if only I’d let them videotape me denouncing my side and labeling my country and yours as evil forces. I walked out a free man, all right. I caught one of the bastards off guard one day, killed him with my bare hands, and used the gun I took off him to eliminate the others. But I never let myself be brainwashed into saying something I knew wasn’t true, and I’m not going to now.”
Abruptly he sat on the edge of the bed. Still lying on her stomach, Dawn felt his hand spread wide on her back and she tensed, ready to take whatever action was needed. “I know what I saw,” he said with ominous softness. “I don’t give a damn if it doesn’t make sense. How about we play a variation on the game of Truth or Dare we were playing the other night when I caught you skulking around the grounds after dark?”
“What kind of variation did you have in mind?” She hoped the terseness of her reply would conceal the anger building in her. The man had no idea how dangerous his implacability could prove to be. If Aldr
ich ever guessed that the SAS commander he’d once ordered her to kill now knew she wasn’t an ordinary woman, the head of Lab 33 would renew his order—and this time he would expect her to unquestioningly carry it out.
“More truth.” Asher still had his hand on her. “You know I don’t dare take something so fantastic to my superiors, so why not, Swanson? For example, my first question would be, how did you do it? How did you receive a bullet point-blank to your chest no more than fifteen minutes ago and not only survive, but show no signs of a wound now?”
For one reckless moment she was tempted to tell him. It had worked before, Dawn thought swiftly—she’d divulged her profession to him, and he’d found her assertions so fantastic he’d assumed she was spinning a tall tale. But then he hadn’t had the evidence of his own eyes to corroborate her story.
Now he did. And she had the feeling that no matter how incredible Des Asher might find her insistence that she was genetically capable of regenerating after being shot, some part of him would believe her. The risk factor was unacceptable…so she had to come up with another course of action that would derail his suspicions of her.
They were on her bed. She was already half-undressed and he was already touching her. It wasn’t rocket science, she thought edgily.
She was going to have to seduce Mr. SAS.
Chapter 12
Status: five days and counting
Time: 1321 hours
It had been four and a half days now, Dawn fumed as she loaded her tray in the cafeteria line, four and a half freakin’ days since her failed attempt to steal Sir William’s notes and the humiliating aftermath of that failure. She stacked a carton of milk precariously on top of a brimming glass of tomato juice, jammed two oatmeal-and-raisin cookies beside the slice of peach pie she’d already selected, and pushed her way back along the line to grab a second sandwich. She was burning off calories faster than she could supply them, she thought grimly, but it wasn’t action that was taking its toll of her energy, it was frustration.
Mr. SAS had proved impossible to seduce. She’d given it her best shot, but unfortunately her best shot hadn’t consisted of much more than a husky sigh and a languid stretch to unfasten her bra, because as soon as he’d realized she had no intention of answering his questions he’d abruptly stood up from her bed.
“Sorry, love, but you’ve screwed me over enough for one evening,” he’d said. “Normally I’m as willing as the next man to take advantage of the opportunity for a quick shag, but this is just a little too cold and calculated even for me. I liked you better when you were trying to kick the hell out of me. At least then your emotions were honest.”
He’d started to open the door to the hallway, but suddenly he’d halted. He’d turned back to face her, his eyes sharp. “Bloody hell, there’s a link, isn’t there—a link between what I saw happen to you tonight and the research you were trying to steal. You must want to get your hands on those notes pretty badly to have taken a bullet for them, am I right?”
From her prone position on the bed she’d given him a flat stare, not bothering to hide her fury. “Since it’s just you and me right now, yeah, Ash, I’ll admit it. I want those notes. I’m going to get them. You got in my way tonight, but that won’t happen again.”
“Don’t be so sure.” There had been the same coldness in his eyes as she knew was in hers. “From now on one of my people will be watching you twenty-four/seven. Your phone calls will be monitored. You’re never going to be alone with Sir William again, no matter how much he objects. After a while, whoever you’re working for will get tired of waiting for results, and he or she is probably going to blame their agent-in-place. If I were in your shoes, I’d start making plans for that eventuality.” He’d hesitated. Then he’d shrugged. “The rules have changed, Swanson. In the future if I catch you in a restricted area, I’m going to have to treat you like any other intruder, so conversations like the one we had a few nights ago are a thing of the past. But before we close all communications between us, I want to make two things clear. One is that I knew my uncle pulled strings to get me this posting.”
She’d been momentarily startled out of her anger. “You knew? But then why—”
“Why did I accept? Why did I let him think he’d put one over on me, why didn’t I cut him out of my life when I found out what he’d done?” Asher shook his head. “He did the wrong thing, but he did it for all the right reasons. He did it because he cared. I threw that into the equation, and I realized that although I hated what he’d done, I couldn’t hate him. He’s family. For better or for worse, he’s a part of me.”
She’d felt oddly unsettled by his words and she’d covered her discomfiture with a sharp laugh. “Lordy, Captain Asher, I do believe you’ve brought a tiny tear to my eye. Who would have guessed the Wolf of Bah’lein was such a softie at heart?”
She’d regretted the unpleasant gibe as soon as she’d uttered it, but it was too late to take it back. Asher’s expression became granitelike and his tone was equally hard as he answered her.
“You said it yourself—it’s just you and me here right now, so I’ll break every rule in the book and set the record straight this once. I didn’t do what they say I did, but I hold myself responsible for not guessing what that evil bastard Al-Jihr was planning in time to stop him. There’s definitely blood on my hands…even if it’s as invisible as the wounds on you.” He looked suddenly weary. “As for any tears in your eye, love, I don’t flatter myself that I put them there. It was obvious as soon as I walked in that you’d been crying your heart out.”
Her control snapping, she’d jumped from the bed, but even as she’d sprung toward him he’d closed the door behind him, leaving her alone in her room. Within minutes she’d heard the heavy tread of booted feet take up a position just outside her room, and early the next morning she’d heard another guard coming to take the place of the first one.
Asher had carried out his threat to the letter, Dawn reflected as she slid her laden tray onto an empty table, ignoring Roger Poole’s hopeful glance from across the cafeteria. Since that night, she’d had a permanent, albeit ever-changing shadow following her during her daily routine: waiting outside her room every morning, watching her from a corridor through the windows of the laboratory, staying a discreet distance behind her if she decided to take a stroll outside in the evening. If necessary, she supposed drearily, she could use her air-duct routes to make her way through the building at night, but they were useless unless she had a destination in mind, and she still hadn’t discovered where Sir William’s notes were now being kept. Even the old scientist himself didn’t know, according to a conversation she’d had with Roger yesterday.
“He’s rather miffed about it, but he sees his nephew’s point,” the Englishman had confided during a tea break. “The thug who attempted to filch his research hasn’t been caught and although security’s tighter than ever, what if he makes a second attempt? As long as Sir William’s as much in the dark as anyone else regarding the location of his notes, he can’t be forced to divulge that information to an intruder.”
“Although if I were Sir William, I’d rather be able to spill the beans if I was being threatened instead of having to say, sorry, old chap, haven’t a clue,” Dawn had replied impatiently. She’d caught Roger’s crestfallen look and relented. “Sorry, Rog, I’m sure it’s a good ploy.”
“A good precaution,” he’d corrected her with one of his apologetic coughs. “And I’m glad Asher’s taking precautions with your safety, too, by having you guarded around the clock. It’s well-known you’re the old man’s right-hand staff member, so it’s possible you could be targeted as well.”
His concern had made her uncomfortable. In fact, Dawn thought in chagrin, she was uncomfortable about the whole situation, which wasn’t like her. Yeah, she’d come here under false pretences and cultivated her friendships with Roger and Sir William and the rest of the scientists and technicians for her own ends. But her actions were justified, weren’
t they?
Her brow furrowed in thought, she pushed her empty sandwich plate aside and reached for a cookie. The moral implications of what she was doing could be addressed sometime in the future, but right now she had more immediate worries, not least among them being how she was going to make her long-overdue phone report to Aldrich.
Since Asher had made good on his vow to have her watched, she’d had to assume he’d also kept his threat to have her calls monitored. The morning after her failed theft attempt, she’d made her way to one of the pay phones in the building and had begun to dial the number of the antiquarian bookstore that served as her contact relay to Lab 33 and Peters, but even as she’d punched in the first few digits, the young soldier who’d followed her from her room had closed the distance between them.
“Do you mind?” She’d injected a full dose of Dawn Swanson irritation into her tone. The private had remained standing where he was.
“Sorry, ma’am, but Captain Asher’s orders. We stick to you like glue, and if someone contacts you or you try to contact them we have to be sure from your conversation that you’re not making the call under duress.” He’d given her an embarrassed smile. “Real sorry, Miz Swanson, but I guess the captain’s being extracautious after all the excitement last night. You go right ahead with your call and pretend I’m not here.”
“Forget it,” she’d muttered, hanging up the phone and stalking away.
She’d tried every day since, with the same results, Dawn thought worriedly. Last night she’d even climbed up onto the toilet tank, intending to make her way through the air ducts to a pay phone, but then she’d remembered the hallway monitors and had realized the futility of her plan. But she couldn’t leave it any longer. Somehow she had to get in contact with Aldrich today.
