“If I go after Laurel now,” Cruz said, “I go all the way. I’ll be hers, not yours or Cassandra’s. I’ll watch out for her welfare, not for anyone else’s, and screw the Ruby Surprise. Still want me to go?”
The sergeant-major took a breath and let it out in a string of curses.
Cruz waited.
“The guv warned me you’d take it this way,” Gillespie added after a moment.
“Is that yes or no?” Cruz asked coolly.
“Grace is packing the picnic now. Get it. Then get your sorry arse out of my sight before I use it for punting practice.”
Cruz looked at the other man’s dark eyes for a long moment before he nodded and turned away.
“Where are you going with her?” Gillespie asked.
“Where I always go.”
“When will you be back?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll give you plenty of time to make calls without worrying if Laurel is listening in on the house phone or standing outside the wrong door. Or if I am.”
Gillespie grunted. Laurel hadn’t turned all of Cruz’s brain to bean dip.
“Take the pager,” Gillespie said, turning away.
“Hell. I should just have the damn thing sewn into my jockstrap.”
“Sounds uncomfortable to me, but they’re your balls.”
“Gillie.”
The tall black man stopped and turned back toward Cruz.
“Tell Cassandra that if you’re planning to spring any surprises on Laurel,” Cruz said, “you’ll have to go through me to get to her. And I won’t be pulling any punches.”
Black eyes searched Cruz’s face for a few moments before Gillespie nodded. “I think she already knows.”
“Tell her anyway.”
38
Los Angeles
Tuesday afternoon
The lobby of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel was a cosmopolitan crossroads. Three Japanese businessmen in town to check their latest studio acquisition were being greeted by a dozen studio executives, who babbled energetically in their Berlitz second language and bowed with every third syllable. Two different and apparently hostile parties of Middle Easterners were trading glares in adjacent registration lines. A retired British prime minister’s entourage—press aides, personal assistants, and plainclothes policemen from London, Washington, and Los Angeles—milled around like edgy cattle, checking their own baggage and sniffing the baggage of others to make sure it didn’t contain explosives.
Aleksy Novikov smiled. The mixed crowd was perfect cover for a spy in an expensive double-breasted suit. Georgi Gapan was waiting for him in a darkened corner of the bar. Despite the fact that the workday was hours from ending, the bar was busy. Gapan was uneasily rolling an empty glass between his palms. The glass looked smudged, as though he’d been fiddling with it for some time.
“Where have you been?” Gapan asked in soft Russian when Novikov approached. “I called an hour ago.”
“If you have played with that drink for an hour, you had better order another. The bartender will remember you for certain.”
“I—uh, I ran out of American money,” Gapan admitted. “Los Angeles is a very expensive place. I spent fifty of the dollars on taxicabs alone, just to travel to and from the car rental lot.”
Novikov rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and dug into his pocket. “Poor lost lamb. You should have stayed at home with the rest of the peasants.”
Gapan’s dark eyes narrowed, but he made no other response to the insult.
As Novikov peeled hundred-dollar bills off a roll, he waved to the bartender and ordered two more of whatever Gapan had ordered the first time. Novikov paid for the drinks with one bill and gave three more to Gapan. As soon as the bartender brought the drinks and moved on to another customer, Novikov turned on Gapan.
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs,” Gapan said quickly. “Room six-twelve. I think she is alone. I saw the man she was with come down in the elevator and go to the street perhaps ten minutes ago.”
Novikov sipped his drink. It was a thin, sour American vodka, straight. A peasant’s drink, lacking all finesse.
“Did you identify the man?” Novikov asked.
“He is registered as J. C. Johnson,” Gapan said. “Beyond that, I know nothing. He is probably forty and he dresses casually. I believe he is carrying a gun beneath his shirt.”
“How about the mysterious limousine? Did you identify the occupants?”
Gapan shook his head. “It was a Cadillac, but I never saw inside. The windows, they are very dark.”
“It is customary, yes,” Novikov said sardonically.
“Either the driver or Toth’s companion must have spotted me. They went to the parking garage of one of those infernal shopping centers.”
“You lost them there.”
“I am sorry.” Unhappily Gapan rubbed his ragged chin fur. “I did my best. I am unused to driving. The traffic here…a bad dream.”
With a muttered curse Novikov knocked back the rest of his drink and nodded to the bartender for another. Gapan shot his own down his throat, grimaced, and swallowed.
“So, my little policeman,” Novikov murmured, “you found your subject, the alluring American journalist. Very good. You lost her. Not very good. You failed to identify the mysterious person or persons she met. Even worse. But now you have found her again. Good. How did you manage that?”
“I thought they might change hotels after they decided I was following them. I returned to the Century Plaza and waited for a bellman to collect their luggage.”
“Clever,” Novikov said, looking at the other man with surprise. “How did you think of that?”
“I am always the one who is left to handle the baggage when we travel,” Gapan said simply.
“Ah, of course,” Novikov said. Peasant logic. “How did you get the room number?”
Gapan took a drink of vodka. In another man Novikov would have thought it was stalling, but Gapan was too thick-witted to hide like that. Gapan belched, wiped his mouth with his hand, and hid a smile at Novikov’s distaste.
“The bellman had emigrated from Russia recently,” Gapan said. “I told him if he did not tell me the room number, I would have his brothers and sisters picked up.”
“Unfortunately, we cannot do that anymore. The new regime pisses their pants at the thought of offending ‘world opinion.’”
“The bellman did not know. He told me the room number.”
“Word spreads slowly among our expatriate countrymen.”
“They hear.” Gapan shrugged. “They simply do not believe change is possible.”
For a few minutes Novikov sipped his vodka, studying the late afternoon crowd that had begun to gather at the bar. Bright, colorful people, rich and confident and powerful. They were so unlike the denizens of Moscow, who wore the glum expressions of a people who seek oppression the way a river seeks the ocean, inevitably, relentlessly.
Peasants, Novikov thought bitterly. Peasants who did not know when they had a good life, so they ruined life for everyone.
He pushed the sour vodka aside and turned to Gapan.
“I am going to shorten the leash on our friend upstairs,” Novikov said. “Do you know where there is a house phone?”
“Near the lobby, yes.”
“Pretend to use it while you watch the front door. If the man calling himself J. C. Johnson returns, call the room. Ring once, then hang up.”
Gapan nodded. “Are you going to kill her?”
“I think not. But there is always the possibility, yes?”
39
Karroo
Tuesday afternoon
Heat welled up from the floor of the low desert like steam from a hot spring, exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.
Cruz loved it. From the easy swing of Laurel’s walk, she was enjoying it too. By the time he caught up to her on the ATV, he was nearly half a mile away from the compound.
She stopped and turned toward the sound of the AT
V. Expressionless, she waited for him to speak.
“Want a ride?” he asked.
She blinked. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t that. “No thanks. I’m enjoying the walk.”
“Going far?”
She looked at the stony rubble of the dry riverbed she’d been following. Then she looked back toward the compound. The fringe of tamarisk trees was a dark, dusty green against the hundred shades of brown that were the desert.
“Karroo,” Cruz said.
“Gesundheit.”
He laughed. “Karroo is what Cassandra calls the compound.”
“Karroo?”
“I think it’s from Kipling.”
Silently Laurel turned and looked toward the mountains that rose beyond the ridge which was her destination. The shimmering heat and intense sunlight bleached almost all color from the landscape. The Santa Rosa range loomed in gray-brown immensity, its stone faces seamed and cracked by the relentless sun. In the creases at the higher elevations, there were dark shadows that could have been ravines or vegetation.
“It’s almost cool up there,” Cruz said, following her glance. “There are ponderosa pines and hidden seeps where bighorn sheep drink.”
“It’s hard to believe there’s water anywhere in this desert.”
“You can thank the earthquakes. Their shock waves crack bedrock so that groundwater flows out.”
“We really see the land differently,” she said, turning to him.
“How so?”
The clarity of his pale blue eyes gleaming from the shadow of his hat brim made her breath catch. She forced herself to breathe normally. It wasn’t easy. The land was so vast. The sense of being the only two people on earth kept sweeping over her.
“When I think of the earth, I think of gemstones and crystals, common or rare,” she said slowly. “All those sparks and chips and facets of the earth’s beauty waiting to be revealed.”
He listened, waiting in his own way.
“You…” Her throat tightened in the face of his intensity, breaking her voice. “You’re fascinated by earthquakes, by the primal violence that shapes the land.”
He nodded. “Beauty and power, two sides of the same coin.”
“Hardly. They’re worlds apart.”
Yet even as Laurel was denying it, she knew there was truth in what he said.
“Are they?” Cruz asked. “The gems and crystals you love are born of the greatest violence the earth knows—plate tectonics, the grinding of huge slabs of the earth’s crust against one another.”
“You get mountains that way, not gemstones.”
“Mountains are half of the equation. The other half is when one plate rides up over another. The losing plate is drawn down, melted, and reappears as magma pools or a string of volcanoes. As the molten rock cools, crystals form. Incredible crystals. But not one of them is as beautiful as you are.”
A shiver went through Laurel, heat and cold impossibly combined. She wanted to look away from Cruz. She couldn’t.
“Sorry.” He raked his fingers through his short dark hair and made a disgusted sound. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why?”
He looked away from her to the high ridge. “I’m supposed to be guarding you, not frightening you. Now you’ll be too nervous to go see my little canyon.”
For a moment there was only silence. Then she cleared her throat. Even so, when she spoke, her voice was unusually husky. The intensity of his eyes before he turned away had made her heart turn over.
“Your, um, canyon?” she managed.
“Yes.”
“Well, at least it’s not your etchings.”
“It could be.” He turned back to her. “But only if you want it that way.”
Another ripple went through Laurel. She wanted to say yes and knew that she wouldn’t. She would be as honest with him about their mutual attraction as he was being with her.
“It wouldn’t be worth the oxygen,” she said simply. “Sex just isn’t my area of expertise.”
His eyes widened, then narrowed. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”
“It saves misunderstandings.”
Reaching behind his back, Cruz pulled a scrunched baseball cap out of his waistband. Before Laurel could guess what he had in mind, he reached up and tugged the cap down over her head. The rim was way too big.
“Lean forward and duck your head,” he said. “I have to make the band smaller.”
Automatically she bent down. He tightened the band, tucked her hair back out of the way, and settled the cap firmly on her head. His thumbs traced her cheekbones, touched the hollows beneath, and slid down to rest lightly on her neck. The sudden speeding of her pulse was as clear to him as it was to her.
“Now you’re ready to go sightseeing,” he said.
She took a broken breath, trying to control her response to his casual touch. The scent of soap and elemental man swept through her, filling her with a longing that shook her. She closed her eyes.
“Why you?” she whispered, her throat aching.
“What?”
“Of all the men who ever looked at me and wanted me, why are you the one I want in return?”
His breath came in sharply. His hands flexed slightly, caressingly, savoring the soft skin and sleek tendons of her neck.
“Your brand of honesty is damned dangerous,” he said. “It makes me want more than I should. More than is…safe.”
“That’s just how I feel about it,” she retorted. “Not safe at all.”
Slowly Cruz released Laurel. Then he blew out a hard breath and shook his head as though trying to clear it.
“Heat must be getting to me,” he said. He patted the seat behind him. “I know a great place to cool off.”
She looked at the seat. It would be a tight squeeze for two. “Doesn’t look like a good way to cool off to me.”
He smiled despite the hunger that was making him as hard as the rocks scattered over the desert. “Never an unspoken thought, huh?” he asked.
“Most people don’t have your effect on my tongue.”
Abruptly he remembered what it had been like to feel her tongue touching his own, sliding over it, the taste of her racing through him like fine scotch.
“I like my effect on your tongue,” he said in a low voice. Then, “Damn. Now you’ve got me doing it. Get on, honey. It’s hard for me to drive with both feet in my mouth.”
Careful to touch Cruz not at all, Laurel climbed on behind him. Inches from her eyes a pale blue shirt, faded and thin from use, clung to every ridge of muscle and line of tendon on his back. Grimly she found the foot pegs, balanced herself, and tried to ignore the expanse of male shoulders stretching across her vision.
“Ready?” he asked.
She looked down the long wedge of his back to his waist, to his hips, and then to his muscular thighs. The shorts didn’t cover much of him when he was sitting down.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said under her breath.
“Hang on.”
“But, your ribs…”
“Go below.”
“What about above?”
“Too high,” he said. “You’ll pull yourself off balance, and me with you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Want to find out the hard way?”
“I’ll balance on the pegs,” she said. “Just take it easy.”
Cruz kicked the ATV into motion and set off at an angle to Laurel’s previous trail. He drove carefully, picking his way around boulders as big as cars and climbing broken inclines with deft control.
Despite the foot pegs and the slow speed, Laurel found herself leaning uneasily to one side or the other, trying to see around the driver’s broad shoulders in order to anticipate the rolling and bucking of the machine.
It worked, some of the time. The rest of the time it nearly threw her off the seat.
“That does it,” he said when she barely righted herself at the last instant.
&n
bsp; He stopped the ATV and glared over his shoulder at his passenger. Her face was flushed. Her eyes gleamed catlike in the shadow of the hat brim.
“It gets rough ahead,” he said. “If you can’t get hold of yourself—and me—we’ll have to go back.”
Reluctantly she rested her hands on top of his shoulders. With a muttered word, he set the ATV in motion again, heading up one of the many rugged alluvial fans that spread out from the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains.
The first little rise nearly finished the ride.
The ATV tilted and jolted sideways as the center of gravity shifted, almost rolling them over.
When Cruz topped the rise, he put the ATV in neutral and dragged Laurel’s hands down to a point just below his waist. Then he pulled her hands together until they were overlapping and her arms were snug around his hips.
“If I can take it,” he said through his teeth, “you can.”
A startled sound was her only answer. She’d just felt a hard, unmistakable ridge of male flesh in his lap.
“Gimme a break,” he said curtly. “It can’t come as a surprise that you turn me on.”
Before she could think of a retort, they were moving again. Instinctively her grip tightened. She felt the sudden tension in his back, heard the hiss of his breath through his teeth, and started to remove her hands.
Instantly one of Cruz’s big hands settled over hers, clamping them in place.
“Stop wriggling,” he said without turning around. “The more you move, the harder it is on me.”
“We don’t have to—” she began.
“Keep your arms around me,” he said over her words as he kicked up the speed. “Harder, or you’ll go flying at the first bump. Good. Now hang on and try to match my movements.”
She obeyed because the only other choice was to dive off the rapidly moving ATV and do a face plant in the rocks. Closing her eyes, she told herself that if he could take it, she could.
Besides feeling good, sitting wrapped around him made the ride easier. With their bodies in close contact, she quickly caught on to the trick of matching his motions, leaning with the turns, shifting against the slope, and rising up on the pegs to take the bumps.
After a few minutes, she began to feel the unique freedom of good teamwork, the give-and-take and silent sharing of movement. Two bodies shifting, turning, holding balance between them like a shared gift. During a particularly rough stretch where they lifted and swayed and dipped in close unison, she laughed aloud with exhilaration.
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