On the Edge

by Shannon Stacey

  Hell, she didn’t even like what they’d come up with. But there was no other way to get to Anetakis, and they weren’t letting him get away with what he and Konrad Ludka had done.

  Movement across the tarmac caught her eye, and Charlotte sucked in a deep breath as a few of those sexual fantasies managed to free themselves from the debris.

  Tony Casavetti was a vision straight out of the thick, glossy fashion magazines Charlotte had devoured in her younger years. The suit was black Armani. The boots, unless she missed her guess, were from Roberto Cavalli. The shades, Oakley RAZRWIRE, and the stride long and confident. The tattered carry-on bag had been switched out to a slim leather briefcase. Altogether the look was…well, she’d never seen so much suave and so much menace all in the same package before.

  He kept coming, bearing down on her until she took a few steps backward herself, feeling the cool skin of the Bombardier against her flesh. God, he even smelled good.

  “You look…delicious,” she whispered.

  “You weren’t thinking to leave the country without your personal security, now were you, Miss Rhames?”

  That little bit of Texas drawl that liked to tickle her spine was gone. Tony spoke in the smooth, almost accentless English of a well-educated European. She swallowed hard, a little taken aback by the transformation no matter how good it looked on him.

  “You know what the best thing about Tony Casavetti is?” he asked.

  “You mean besides the way he looks and cologne that makes me want to lick him like a melting ice cream cone?”

  There was no reaction, even in his eyes. “That expression ‘out of your league’ doesn’t apply to him, because he doesn’t have a league of his own.”

  She was confused. But one thing was crystal clear—he had taken her comment last night personally.

  “You’ve read my file, Charlotte. When I was eleven years old I had an epiphany standing in a courtroom, and Tony ceased to exist. I learned to be whatever the people around me needed me to be. You want a whipping boy, I’ll bend over. You want a jock foster son, I’ll throw that football until my arm spasms and tears are running down my face, but I’ll hit the end zone. You gotta jones for a laid-back cowboy, I can be him. You need an armed escort in the world of old Greek money, I can be him, too.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “No, that was the real you in my car. That was Tony Casavetti. So was the man who held Phil’s widow while she cried, and the man who’s going to gun Konrad Ludka down. That’s who Tony Casavetti is.”

  “Don’t ever think you know who I am. I don’t even know. That’s why I’m so good at my job. Now let’s get settled on board so you can fill in the finer details of what I need to know.”

  “You definitely need to know everybody we meet will think I’m a high-dollar prostitute named Sofia.”

  That got a reaction. “Why the hell would they think that?”

  “Because I used to be a high-dollar prostitute who went by the name Sofia.”

  “That’s…uh, interesting.”

  She laughed and pushed him back out of her space. “What’s the matter? Did you think you had some monopoly on a fucked-up past? That doesn’t get you a pass with me, pal.”

  She climbed the steps into the jet, leaving the mouth-watering vision standing there with his jaw damn near unhinged. As she always did when boarding the lavishly appointed Bombardier, she stopped and drew in a deep, leather-scented breath. The forward cabin held the bathroom, a sofa and two captains’ chairs with a table.

  Charlotte passed into the main section of the plane. Another pair of chairs with a table were across from another long sofa, all in buttery soft leather. Several seats had been removed and a computer bank set up along one wall with a minikitchen against the other wall. If she kept going into the rear cabin, she would find the heaviest modifications. The plush private cabin had been turned into a weapons, gear and medical station, along with a very small lock-down room for the occasional unwilling guest.

  Ten hours in a plane sucked no matter which way you looked at it, but at least a customized jet like this one took the sting out.

  Tony followed behind her, barely glancing around the plane. She knew he’d been on the old jet a few times, but she also remembered he preferred driving whenever possible.

  “So I’m waiting for you to tell me why you became a prostitute,” Tony said. “Were you dirt poor? Did your parents make you do it? Did you run away, fall in with a bad crowd?”

  She laughed. “Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid. A kid at school offered me ten bucks for a handjob under the bleachers.”

  “Ten bucks?” Tony tossed his briefcase onto a table and sank into one of the cushy captains’ chairs.

  “Yes, we were dirt poor. It was the first money I ever had that was mine.” Charlotte wasn’t one to wallow in regret. She’d done what she’d done and it was behind her now. But she felt just a hint of shame while waiting for Tony’s reaction to the selling of her first sexual encounter for a ten-spot.

  The corners of his mouth twitched. “I’m trying to imagine what you bought. Pink lip gloss? Lacy underwear?”

  A shaft of pain pierced her heart, but she managed a saucy grin. “Something like that.”

  “Come on. Tell me what you bought.”

  “I paid for my little brother to have hot lunches at school.” She waited for the sympathetic glance, the little clucking noises of false empathy.

  Tony laughed. He not only laughed, but he laughed so hard he ended up doubled over in his seat. The very, very few—okay, two—people she’d ever shared that bit of her past with hadn’t found it much more amusing than she herself did. Finally, his laughter faded into amused chuckles.

  “Oh shit,” he said, wiping his eyes. “The cowboy and the whore with a heart of gold. We’re such a cliché, darlin’.”

  She laughed with him, then, until Rogers came over the loudspeaker and told them to buckle up for take-off. Then she said, “Let Operation: Gunsmoke Goes to Greece commence.”

  Tony’s dislike of flying was especially evident during take-off. He strapped himself in, closed his eyes and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. By the time Rogers came back over the comm and gave them their altitude, estimated nine-and-a-half-hour flight time and the seatbelt all clear, their amusement had passed and it was time to get to work.

  “Anetakis deals in young girls mostly—occasionally boys,” Charlotte explained, pulling the target’s photo up on the computer. Just seeing the image unsettled her stomach in a big way, but she focused on the job. “Not little children—too many people would care—but still too young. Fourteen to sixteen.”

  “And we've been watching this?”

  “We've done some extractions on the rare occasion somebody's cared enough about a missing kid to put pressure on the right people. Rossi had an agent working on the inside to gather enough intel so international law enforcement wouldn't be able to turn a blind eye anymore. We lost communication with him two days ago. Rossi was going to assign a search and rescue team after the meeting.”

  “Jones. Gallagher mentioned him.”

  “I’m going to reach out to a local contact when we land. See if we can find any info. We’re not hopeful at this point.”

  “Any chance Jones crossed with Ludka?”

  Charlotte shrugged. “Gallagher and I discussed that possibility last night. While it’s possible, keeping comm with us would have been a more sensible play on their part, so we don’t consider it probable.”

  Tony stretched in the chair, and Charlotte turned to the computer and started pulling up more files. Now was not the time to be entertaining the possibility of that kind of distraction.

  “Anetakis lives in a compound in Schinias, an affluent waterfront neighborhood of Athens,” she continued, clicking through surveillance photos of his white marble palace on the Aegean. “Once there he has only a quarter of the security he uses in the city or when he's traveling. That security is never introduced to the women he's keeping
around, of which there are usually several. He keeps two Dobermans trained to shred a man, but they're trained to keep females inside the compound without hurting them. And the security for his bedroom suite is on its own circuit. That circuit is shut down when Anetakis retires for the night because he's paranoid about electrical impulses and thinks the system gives him nightmares.”

  She became acutely aware of Tony watching her instead of the slide show. “You’re not paying attention.”

  “When did he get you?”

  “I was nineteen when I went to Hector. Voluntarily. I was there for two years before Alex Rossi took me out of there. Not voluntarily.”

  “Sounds like there’s one hell of a story there.”

  There was, Charlotte thought, but it wasn’t a story for today. It was for a day when Alex wasn’t fighting for his life. When they could gather with good wine and laugh about the day he’d kidnapped Anetakis’s favorite whore right out from under his nose and made it look like she’d left willingly because he needed information she had. How she’d, once confronted with certain evidence, thrown herself and the intel she had on Hector’s life into helping Alex rescue a shipment of South American orphans.

  You’re selling yourself short, Charlotte Rhames—and yes, I know who you really are—because your mind is worth far more than your body.

  I haven’t met a man yet willing to pay me to think.

  I will.

  Tony slid his hand over hers. “You shouldn’t be doing this, darlin’. Not saying you can’t, but that you shouldn’t.”

  Charlotte sniffed back impending tears. “Alex helped me bury Sofia. He’s the only person I’d resurrect her for. And yes, I know he’d be royally pissed if he knew I was doing it, but it won’t be the first time I’ve ever pissed him off.”

  And God willing, it wouldn’t be the last. She couldn’t imagine her grief if Alex Rossi didn’t pull through. She…couldn’t deal with that now.

  “Maps of the area,” she snapped, conversely both relieved and disappointed when Tony pulled his hand away, “are already sent to your handheld. Photos of Anetakis and his inner circle, as well.”

  “I’ll look it over. But I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I’m betting you didn’t either. Call and get an update on Rossi and then I’m going to nap and let all this shit sink into my brain.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Not that she foresaw being able to sleep anytime soon with things the way they were.

  Ten minutes later they were no better.

  “Alex survived a second emergency surgery,” she told Tony. “But he’s still unconscious and still critical. There’s a head wound…”

  She let the words trail away. Tony didn’t need anything spelled out for him. Alex Rossi might live. Or he might not.

  “How’s Grace?”

  Charlotte shrugged. “Beyond out of her mind. But she’s unarmed, thank God. Danny was just flown in.”

  “That surprises me. Tough place for a kid to be.”

  “It was the only way Gallagher could think of to stop her from catching a flight to Athens and going after Anetakis single-handed. Her parents are there, too, since Danny was with them. Gallagher or Marge will call if there’s any change.”

  Tony stood and stretched, but Charlotte was too damn wiped out to appreciate the view.

  “Time for some shut-eye,” he said. “You can take the forward sofa.”

  He tossed the suit coat carelessly on a chair, laid out on the couch and closed his eyes. Charlotte wanted to curl up beside him. Just to be held—to feel his warm strength seep into her.

  Instead she walked past him to the forward cabin to wash her face and pretend to sleep.

  Tony didn’t open his eyes until full cognizance of his surroundings was achieved. Stretched out as he was on the sofa in the main cabin, he could feel the powerful hum of the Bombardier’s engines. Deep, even breathing told him Charlotte was still asleep on the sofa in the forward cabin.

  He wasn’t surprised he woke first. Even with the burden of pulling strings and greasing palms to get the things he needed last night, he’d still managed three hours of sleep. That, combined with the three he’d just gotten were more than enough to keep him going.

  The modifications they’d made to the jet had required the removal of the rear cabin’s bathroom, so Tony had to pass through the forward cabin to use the head. The plush carpeting cushioned his steps as he crept past his sleeping partner.

  Partner. The word seemed almost foreign in his mind. He worked alone. The closest he ever had to a partner—outside of the occasional collaboration with Rossi or Gallagher—were Charlotte and the support techs talking into his earpiece.

  Rarely was Tony responsible for getting anybody’s ass but his own out of a bad situation, and this wasn’t sitting all that well with his nerves. Especially since visions of this particular somebody’s ass in a short, plaid skirt kept popping into his head.

  But it was more than that, he knew. The schoolgirl fantasy was new, but affection for this woman had run deep long before he’d seen the body behind the voice.

  When he emerged from the head, Charlotte was awake. She hadn’t moved from her position—curled up in a ball under a soft, wool blanket—but her pretty blue eyes were watching him.

  She’d washed her face before lying down, and her fresh skin and just-woke-up expression softened the edges of her sexuality. But her naked, sleepy smile was a direct shot to his groin. The impact pushed him forward and he started back toward the main cabin.

  She grabbed his hand as he went by. “I’m going to sleep for another hour or so. But wake me if Gallagher calls.”

  Her hand was so small in his. Tony ran his thumb over her knuckles. The strange rhythm of their relationship confused the hell out of him. They’d known each other for almost a decade, and yet in some ways they were total strangers. Charlotte sending him data and coordinating missions he was familiar with. This soft, vulnerable Charlotte he didn’t know at all.

  The chemistry, though, was undeniable.

  “I will,” he promised.

  When she smiled and closed her eyes, Tony’s priorities tumbled around. Stopping Anetakis and his operation slid into second, with killing Ludka and avenging yesterday’s carnage a close third.

  First place now firmly belonged to sacrificing whatever it took to make sure Charlotte Rhames didn’t get hurt. And it had nothing at all to do with the skirt.

  He was already falling for her, dammit. The last thing he needed going into a dangerous situation with an untrained partner was rushing into a too-fast emotional clusterfuck with said partner. When feelings were involved, people made mistakes. And mistakes made people dead.

  But it wasn’t fast, he thought. The underlying foundation of their relationship was eight years strong. They made a damn fine team, and the new element—the sexual attraction—was just a bonus.

  Unfortunately, right now, it was a bonus he couldn’t afford.

  Chapter Four

  It had been a very long time since Charlotte had visited Athens, and when she stepped off the Bombardier, the balmy and fragrant breeze soothed her frazzled nerves. Despite her current reason for being there, she’d always been fond of Greece.

  Mindful of their cover story, she followed Tony off the jet. Looking sinister in his Armani, he visually scanned the area before opening the rear door of their hired car.

  Charlotte swept by him without so much as a nod of thanks—his role was to be the hired help. She was comfortable in her flirty, outrageously expensive white sundress and strappy heels, but she hated the wig. Men liked long hair—they showed their appreciation for long, gold tresses with their wallets.

  Shearing off her mass of blonde had been an almost ceremonial occasion for Charlotte. She liked it short—it suited her—and to hell with what any man thought. But now long, blonde strands flirted with her shoulders again and her aggravation with what that represented manifested itself as a persistent itch she couldn’t scratch.

  Once
she was ensconced in the backseat of the car, Tony stowed their luggage in the trunk. As planned, he didn’t ride in the back with her, but sat up front with the driver—one of the hundreds of discreet contacts the Devlin Group maintained around the world.

  The driver took the scenic route through the city. They’d made good time in the air and had some time to kill. She didn’t look out the window, though. Mostly she kept glancing at the privacy glass separating her from Tony. She knew the personal security charade was the most logical way to explain his traveling with her, but she would rather he was in the back seat with her.

  The car slowed under a bridge, coming almost to a complete stop. Her door was yanked open and a man threw himself onto the seat next to her. He’d barely pulled the door closed when the car resumed speed.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said, as if he’d just stepped into her front parlor for tea.

  “For you, Sofia, anything. You know you have but to ask.”

  Charlotte smiled as the harried police officer straightened his tie. She’d met Christopher Savakis several times over the course of her previous visit, and he was one of the very few men in Greece she trusted.

  Savakis finished settling himself and got down to business. “I’ve found nothing about your friend Jones. There have been, however, several unidentified bodies found in the last three days that loosely fit your description of him. Sometimes it is hard to tell depending on how they died.”

  “Do you have access to the bodies?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “Sometimes I must seek identification for a case.”

  Charlotte pulled a tiny scanner from her purse and handed it to him. “All you have to do is flip the switch on, then hold the scanner against the pad of the finger and count to ten. Then move to the next one. Turn it off when you’re done. If one of the bodies is Jones, it will flag our system and we’ll be in touch about retrieving him.”

  “I wouldn’t like to have an open case regarding an American visitor.”

  “If Jones is dead, we’ll give you the information you need to close the case.”