Whirlpool

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “No. Unlike some people, I use the truth on a regular basis.”

  He gave her a sideways glance and then returned to admiring the figures. “Did you design these?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who sells them for you, or do you do that yourself too?”

  “Several galleries around the country carry my work.”

  “Under the name Laurel Swann?”

  She wondered if he really was interested or if he was just asking questions out of habit. In the end, it didn’t matter. At least she could answer these questions without weighing every syllable.

  “I work under the name Swann Cameron.”

  “Are you under contract?”

  “I don’t have the touch or the temperament for production work,” she said. “I freelance a lot.”

  He nodded, looked more closely at the delicate curves on the mold, asked in the same casual voice, “What did your father say?”

  Shocked, shaken, Laurel spun toward Cruz. “You son of a bitch. You listened in.”

  “I tried. I didn’t want to risk someone noticing an open line, so I stood at the top of the stairs. I could hear your tone but not all of your words.”

  “Then how did you know I was talking to my father?”

  “You said you don’t have a boyfriend—”

  “I don’t.”

  “—but you were talking to someone you’re comfortable with. And you’re not reading him or her the riot act for getting you in trouble.”

  She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

  “You don’t have any siblings or cousins or aunts or uncles, and your mother died in front of witnesses, but your father…”

  Cruz noted the telltale dilation of her pupils and the abrupt speeding of the pulse in her neck and knew he’d guessed correctly.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought. He’s listed as Missing in Action, but nobody found the remains. Is he Agency?”

  She said not one word.

  “The gun was the giveaway,” Cruz continued calmly. “Whoever customized it and taught you how to shoot was a bit old-fashioned. U.S. Army, Vietnam era, probably. Somebody more up-to-date would have given you a small lightweight nine-millimeter.”

  She forced herself not to look away from his brilliant, icy eyes.

  “But the most convincing piece of evidence was your own attitude,” he said. “You were worried about whoever was on the other end of the line more than you were worried about yourself. And you were used to obeying him. Otherwise you’d have told him to go piss up a rope when he asked you to lie for him.”

  Abruptly Laurel turned her back on Cruz. “I almost wish you’d listened in. I don’t like being read like headlines in a daily paper.”

  “You’re easier than most. You’re honest.” He shrugged. “What can I tell you?”

  “Try goodbye.”

  “Don’t want to talk to me anymore, huh? How come?”

  “Since you’re so damned smart,” she said between her teeth, “you tell me.”

  “Under normal circumstances you have every right in the world to protect your father,” Cruz said. “But we’re talking about high-level international theft of artworks. The law will twist you like a wet cloth to get at your father.”

  “Nice try, doesn’t fly,” she said flippantly.

  “You think your daddy is working for the feds, is that it?”

  “The law doesn’t have anything to do with it. That’s why you’re here. Your client doesn’t want the cops.”

  Surprise and rueful approval showed for a moment on Cruz’s face. “You’re catching on. Or did your daddy fill you in?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know. I do know you won’t be immune forever.”

  “Who is?” she asked sardonically, turning toward him.

  “No one. But a lot of people make the mistake of thinking they are.”

  He looked around the workroom again. The expression on his hard face was unreadable. Then he gave her a view of his back.

  Uneasily, she waited for the next round in the undeclared war between them. She doubted it would be long in coming.

  It wasn’t.

  “Our client isn’t interested in attracting attention,” Cruz said, turning swiftly back to Laurel, pinning her with his brilliant light eyes. “But he’ll do what it takes to get the egg back.”

  She simply stared at Cruz, hoping her game face was half as good as his.

  “If chewing up the thief’s innocent daughter gets the egg back, then you’ll get chewed like gum.” Cruz hesitated before adding gently, “I’d hate to see that happen.”

  “Yeah. Right. You’d cry all over your Risk Limited paycheck.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Dad told me all about you,” she said tightly. “You’re in the same business he was, so don’t talk to me about how you worry for the poor bleating lambs of the world. By training and by nature, you and Dad are users and liars. People are pawns to you.”

  The silence stretched until both Cruz and Laurel could hear themselves breathe.

  “Does your father know how much you hate him?” Cruz asked softly.

  “No, because I don’t.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “Then you’re easily fooled. I love my father. I simply don’t like him very much, especially when he’s in work mode.”

  She stared past Cruz to the window, where darkness spread over the sea.

  “I don’t like being a pawn,” she said, “but at least I know where I stand that way. Dad loves me as much as he can love anything, including himself.”

  Cruz heard the sharp edge of sadness in her words and felt a primitive male urge to comfort and defend a female who was more helpless—and more desirable—than she understood. Before he could act on the urge, an old, savage memory flashed before him.

  A woman turning to face him with a gentle smile on her face and a heavy black gun in her hand. A searing pain in his own left hand as a bullet shattered the knuckle of his index finger. Then the sound of his gun firing twice, rapidly, the double tap of death.

  With some women mercy was a dangerous mistake.

  Laurel could be one of them.

  19

  Los Angeles

  Monday night

  Jamie Swann sat in the expensive hotel room, watching the lights of the city through the dirty fog that crept in each night from the Pacific. Finally he got up and poured himself a straight shot of vodka from the minibar. He finished the drink in two gulps and was pouring another when he heard a knock.

  Shaking himself like a man emerging from a trance, he pulled his gun and went to the door.

  “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “It’s me.”

  He recognized the voice, holstered the gun, and opened up.

  Claire Toth stood on the threshold, smiling like a woman who expects to be well and truly welcomed by a man.

  “Come on in,” he said, turning back to the room.

  Hands on her hips, Toth stood in the doorway. “Is that the best you can do, lover?”

  “We’ve got troubles, lover,” he shot back.

  The quality of Swann’s voice told Toth that there wouldn’t be any sexual athletics for a while. She shut the door, shot the security bolts, and turned back to the handsome charmer who was the best cocksman she’d ever had. Which put him in a class all by himself. On her rise out of brutal poverty, she’d screwed more men than she could or wanted to remember. They thought they were screwing her, but she knew better.

  She was the one who walked away with the money.

  And in this world, money was all that mattered. Anyone who didn’t think so had never been poor enough to eat cockroaches.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Somebody traced the egg as far as my daughter.”

  Toth looked surprised, then thoughtful. As she watched Swann walk to the bar, her expression of heavy-lidded sensuality vanished, replaced by a calculating look. />
  “Daddy’s little girl will hold her tongue, won’t she?” Toth asked.

  The subtle challenge in her voice would have been missed by a less experienced man. Swann didn’t miss a thing. He turned around and looked Toth in the eye.

  “You can bet on it,” he said flatly.

  He lied very well. He’d had a lot of practice. So much that he wasn’t sure where lies stopped and truth began.

  If it ever did.

  “Good,” Toth said, her voice supple and warm once more.

  For the space of two breaths she held the glance of the man whose tawny, feral eyes had fascinated her from the first time she’d seen them. Lion eyes. As sexy as they were dangerous. She didn’t know which she liked better, the danger or the sex. She only knew she had to have both or neither was any good.

  With Jamie Swann, she got both.

  Looking him in the eye, she walked up and stood in front of him, close enough to touch him, close enough to invite his touch.

  “Where’s the egg?” she asked, but her tone was asking if he felt as much like a man as she felt like a woman.

  “In a safe place.”

  “Did she get the ruby out for you?”

  “I didn’t ask her to.” He smiled thinly. “The less Laurie knows, the better for everyone.”

  “Who’s dogging her?”

  “Cruz Rowan.”

  “Rowan? The fed that murdered those innocent kids?”

  Swann laughed curtly. “Jesus, Claire. When did you begin believing your own bullshit? We both know the little assholes were terrorists.”

  He took a fast drink, draining the glass of vodka.

  “Hitting the sauce pretty hard, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry. It won’t take the lead out of my pencil.”

  Her smile changed into a sultry, inviting pout. “Nothing takes your lead out for long. Even me.”

  He smiled almost cruelly. With a swift movement he bent down, caught her mouth beneath his own, and bit her hard enough to bring involuntary tears to her eyes—and her nipples to hard points.

  “You lie like the whore you are,” he said, licking the mark he’d left on her lower lip.

  “And you believe me like every john that ever paid for it.”

  Swann threw back his head and laughed. Her savage emotional resilience was the exact opposite of his dead wife’s endless capacity to be hurt. With Toth, he didn’t have to hold back anything.

  “You’re like fucking a cat,” he said. “Drawing blood only makes you hotter.”

  “You talk a good game, white boy. When you gonna follow through?”

  “When you make me want it so bad I can’t wait.”

  When Toth’s hand went to Swann’s crotch, he simply watched her through half-lowered eyelids and kept talking.

  “Too bad your faked exposé of Rowan’s connection to South Africa made him quit the FBI,” Swann said.

  “Why?” She traced Swann’s erection with her fingernails, digging in just short of pain.

  His breath came in sharply as he grew beneath her hand. “Rowan’s working for a private outfit called Risk Limited.”

  Her hand went still. “Not good, lover.”

  “I know. I had to dodge them last year.”

  She caught the tongue of Swann’s zipper between two scarlet fingernails. She toyed with it, watching him. His pupils had expanded and his heartbeat was visible in his neck, but he was nowhere near the limits of his control.

  That’s what she liked about him. He was almost as cold emotionally as she was. Almost as controlled.

  Almost.

  The difference was her safety margin.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “We bought some electronics gear for a former ally, stuff that was on the Commerce Department’s shit list. The manufacturer hired Rowan to find out who was getting embargoed goods from them.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yeah. He blew the deal right out of the water,” Swann said.

  The sound of his zipper coming down was clear in the silence.

  “Everyone gets unlucky,” she said.

  Her hand slid inside his fly.

  “I wasn’t unlucky,” Swann said. “Rowan was too damned good. Better that he’d stayed with the FBI.”

  “You’d rather be running from the FBI?”

  “They have to play by a few rules. The private guys don’t.”

  For a time there was only the sound of Swann’s breathing, deeper now, as Toth threaded him through his shorts and open fly.

  “Is the egg close by?” she asked, squeezing him with both hands.

  “Close enough.”

  “Where?”

  When he didn’t answer, she sank to her knees. Her expression was closed, unreadable, the one she’d used with Damon Hudson, the one she’d used on all men except Swann.

  Until now.

  “Get it,” she said.

  The sight and feel of his cock being sucked into Toth’s red-rimmed mouth never failed to excite Swann. Even when she raked him with her sharp little teeth.

  Especially then.

  He could barely breathe for the sexual urgency hammering at him, but he wasn’t going to let her know it. Not yet. Not until he couldn’t hold back a second longer. And maybe not even then.

  “I don’t take orders from you,” he said.

  “Even when your dick is in my mouth?”

  “Especially when my dick is in your mouth.”

  She laughed and licked him like candy. Then she gave him the sharp edge of her teeth. His breath hissed. Abruptly his strong fingers closed around her throat in both caress and warning.

  She shivered wildly and made a low sound of arousal.

  His smile was as cruel as his eyes. “If I put my hand up your skirt now, it would come away wet.”

  She didn’t deny it. Swann was the only man who could truly excite her, because he was the only man she’d never wholly controlled with her sexuality. Even now, when he should have been at her mercy, his hands could choke the life from her.

  And would, given a good enough reason.

  Yet she was certain that she excited him more than any other woman had. Because she too could kill. Would kill.

  Even him.

  “If I’m ever killed,” she said, “I hope you’re the one who does it.”

  He fought the heat rising from the base of his spine and asked thickly, “Why?”

  “You’d make me come while you did it.”

  “You’d do the same for me.”

  “Mmm, yes.”

  He laughed softly. It was as close to love as hell got.

  His hands flexed, savoring the wild beat of his lover’s pulse. Then he put his hands beneath Toth’s arms and lifted her to her feet with an ease that belied her size.

  “Already?” she asked, smiling at the swift victory.

  “How about you?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he dragged her short skirt up to her bikini underwear. Two fingers slid inside the damp strip of silk and sank into her until he could go no farther.

  She made a low sound and clenched around his fingers, redoubling the pressure. Pleasure twisted through her.

  “Yeah, babe,” he said, biting her lip. “I like it when you get wet.”

  Without warning he released her and stepped away.

  Surprised, she watched as Swann stuffed himself back into his pants.

  “I’ll be back in ten minutes,” he said. “With the egg.”

  Breathing unevenly, Toth watched him leave. She bit her lip, tasted blood, and bit down harder.

  Then she went to the phone, punched in a number that went directly to a cellular phone, and waited.

  A rough, guttural voice at the other end of the line answered with one word. It sounded like “Yeah,” but it could have been in any number of languages.

  “Did she have a visitor?” Toth asked neutrally.

  “Possibly. There was unusual activity. The lights came on. They are s
till on.”

  “Kill everyone there.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  She hung up and went to the window, staring at her reflection, feeling the heat between her legs and wondering who would come and who would die.

  And when.

  20

  Cambria

  Monday night

  Cruz Rowan studied the woman who had chosen to face the night rather than him. The whole posture of Laurel’s body reinforced her silent decision—back straight, legs apart, head up.

  She was willing to take on the unknown alone.

  No surprise there, he decided. She’s probably been on her own a long time. A father like Jamie Swann wouldn’t have been around much. The artist mother probably lived in her own world a lot of the time.

  With Swann for a husband, who could blame her?

  “You want to help your father?” Cruz asked finally. “Okay. Tell me where the egg is.”

  The quality of his voice made ice slide down Laurel’s spine. She looked over her shoulder and then quickly looked back at the night. She’d never seen anything quite as bleak as Cruz Rowan’s eyes. Compared to them, darkness was inviting.

  “I’ve told you,” she said evenly. “I don’t know where the egg is.”

  “Did your father take it with him?”

  She shrugged.

  “Where did he go?” Cruz asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where would he go?”

  “I can’t help you.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both,” she said. “Even if I could help you, it just isn’t in me to betray him.”

  Cruz wished he didn’t believe her. But he did, and that left him up shit creek without a paddle.

  Puzzled by his silence, she turned around. She expected to confront all the hard planes and angles of masculine determination. What she saw was an expression of compassion and admiration that vanished almost before she could identify it.

  This time it was Cruz who looked away. He turned toward the worktable because he could no longer face the woman whose spirit he had to break in pursuit of the real offender—her father.

  Cruz picked up the heavy black pistol that had been lying on the table. Though he regularly practiced with a variety of arms, there was something very different about pulling the trigger on a living target. He knew he would never get used to it. In fact, there were times when he wondered if he could do it again.