Covert Danger: Mata Hari Series - Book 1

by Jo-Ann Carson

  ***

  Sebastian watched her disappear into the crowd. She wore those spiky high heel things that made most women walk like lame horses, but they didn’t stop her from flowing like an angel. The low cut in the back of her evening gown drew his eyes down to her ass. He imagined holding it in his hands, pulling her naked body against his. He laughed out loud. What a woman.

  Five minutes later, he heard her scream.

  4

  Chapter Four

  Sadie could feel Sebastian’s eyes on her butt. Her face warmed. What should she do? He looked like a Viking though he had no accent. A giant of a man. Ruggedly handsome in a tux, he looked out of place here, a rough diamond amongst the gravel of gentry. She sighed. Being near him stirred a longing within her. A longing for connection… But she couldn’t let anything or anyone get in the way of her mission, even if he did send delicious quivers through her body.

  He wasn’t for her. She bit her lip. After all, what kind of man was he? Without even knowing her, he’d helped her escape the police. Bent the law! That put him on the shady side of her universe, a place she had no intentions of going. Laws weren’t made for bending. Why are bad-boys so damn sexy?

  She laughed. They could have an interesting relationship. Lady jewel thief and accomplice. Wait—a relationship? Oh hell, she didn’t have time for one of those. How had this man slipped through her guard so easily?

  What about a one night stand? She winced. They weren’t really her thing. Not that she didn’t like sex, but one-nighters reminded her of gymnastic workouts that satisfied body parts, but left her feeling empty and more alone than ever the next morning. She preferred serial monogamy with men who knew her a little bit, but not too much.

  Still, Sebastian’s directness and charm, not to mention his body, made her want to know more about him. The way he laughed so easily… Images of straddling his naked body flooded her mind, raising her heartbeat into her throat. She’d been alone for far too long. That’s what was wrong with her.

  Gripping his card in her hand, she walked up the stone stairway to the loggia, the second level balcony overlooking the courtyard. Moonlight flooded the stone patio. A dozen people in small groups chatted as they walked up the wide, stone stairway. After scanning Sebastian’s card, she slipped it into her purse.

  Sensing a body closing in behind her, she readied herself for an encounter. Excitement coursed through her blood. This dude was way too potent.

  She turned to face him. But it wasn’t Sebastian. Her gut clenched. “You!”

  “Sadie, darling.” The sound of the man’s familiar voice froze her words in her throat. Her ex-husband, Jonathon Moore, the last person she wanted to run into tonight, or any night for that matter, stood looking down on her with the same damn smirk on his face he’d flashed for the cameras when the divorce courts awarded him half her life savings. Or was it more than half ? She’d been so eager to get rid of him she didn’t care. Jonathon “the Lothario” asshole. His tie undone, face unshaven, and long black hair pulled into a pony tail at the nape of his neck; he looked like the rake he’d always been, fit for a romance cover page or a torrid affair. How could she ever have loved such a man?

  “What do you want?”

  “Not glad to see me, darling?” His chocolate brown eyes narrowed, but his slimy, slick smile stayed in place, rooted in his deep, black hole of a heart.

  Wishing her eyes could burn through that friggen hole she stared back.

  “I hear you’ve got a new job.” His hand grazed her shoulder.

  She stepped back out of his reach. How the hell did he know? “I’ve got a few new contracts.”

  “I’m not talking about modeling.” His voice lowered, the way it did when he wanted her to do something for him. He reached out to touch her again.

  She shoved him away. “Don’t you dare.” She put her hands on her hips

  He smirked, grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him.

  Stepping hard on his foot with her six-inch designer heel, she screamed, “Don’t touch me.” People turned to stare.

  “Bitch.”

  She pulled away from him, turned and ran for the stairway. But she ran right into Sebastian. It was a bit like running into a wall.

  In one smooth movement he pulled her behind his massive body with a firm hand. His eyes focused on Jonathon. She could smell testosterone vibrating in the air. Her ex stood still, taking in the giant.

  “Relax, man. I just want to talk to my ex-wife,” Jonathon said. He put up his hands like an innocent guy. Talk about sleaze that walks.

  She came out from behind Sebastian to stand by his side.

  Sebastian’s soft blue eyes turned to steel. He glanced at her. “Lady, I’m guessing you don’t want to talk to your ex right now.”

  “Hell, no,” Sadie replied. “Maybe you guys could talk this out…”

  Both men said, “No,” in such tight unison you’d think they’d rehearsed it. Their voices echoed off the ancient stone walls. Looking from one to the other, she grimaced. The flush in Jonathon’s cheeks spoke of too many drinks and a bitter itch to hit someone if he couldn’t get what he wanted. The blond warrior-guy didn’t look as though he’d back down. Wasn’t in his character. A nasty tremor of impending violence hung between the men, like a spark about to ignite into a full flame.

  Sadie took a quick intake of air. How could she explain herself to either of them? Tell her husband she now smuggled looted art, but it wasn’t his business? Tell the hotter-than-hades, supersized stud, that this creep was the biggest mistake of her life? And yes, she had been that stupid. She opened her mouth then closed it. When did her life get so complicated?

  Bottom-line-time. Under no circumstance could she risk giving information about herself that might expose her covert mission. She had to lose them both. Now.

  It hurt like hell to run in heels, but it wasn’t her first escape from a rodeo. She pushed through groups of people as she fled down the stone staircase and headed for the palace entrance. Not a classy exit, but her best option.

  As she slid through the crowds, she heard the men getting to know each other. First, a solid punch, then a grunt, then another smack. Hearing them scuffle quickened her step. Guilty pangs of regret shot through her mind. What had she gotten Sebastian into? No time to look. He’d have to take care of himself. And he sure looked like he could. She needed to escape.

  Her left heel twisted and she hit a stone step. She went down, scraping her knee and then her face. “Shit.”

  A bystander helped her to her feet. Blood gushed from a cut on her cheek. Her knee looked worse. Shit, shit, shit. She had an important shoot in the morning, and the magazine owner would be furious with her when she arrived injured. This never happened to James Bond. Hell, he didn’t even have to wear panty hose.

  “Grazia, grazia,” she said to a stranger who helped her up. She gathered herself with as much dignity as she could muster and continued her exit with her shoes in her hands. People flooded past her, taking in the spectacle of the two men in tuxedoes duking it out on the second floor.

  When she reached the cobblestone street, she looked for a place to catch her breath. Spying a darkened side road she made for it. How much did Jonathon know? How the hell did he know anything? He couldn’t mess up her op. Jeremiah would be furious with this turn of events. Limping along on the cold brick surface in her bare feet she hobbled in the direction of her hotel.

  A blue compact car drove up beside her. Delilah, alone in the driver seat, rolled down the window. “Want a lift?”

  Sadie tipped her head to the side. How did Dee happen to be in the right place at the right time? The thought of taking her weight off her feet trumped her worries. Delilah knew all the back streets of Italy, so maybe it wasn’t that odd. Sadie would get her to the hotel safely, and that’s all that mattered. Right? Well, maybe.

  She needed to talk to Jeremiah. The sooner the better. She got in the car.

  Delilah let her off at her hotel and waved g
oodbye. The woman smiled, but a voice from the dark recesses of Sadie’s mind whispered—be careful.

  5

  Chapter Five

  Once inside her hotel room, Sadie collapsed onto the double bed gritting her teeth. She ripped off her shoes and threw them at the wall enjoying the bumping sound they made when they hit the old plaster and fell to the tiled floor with a thud.

  Just when she had Delilah reeled in to where she wanted her, Jonathon turned up. What a mess. This wouldn’t impress her boss. Did Jonathon think he could blackmail her? Unbelievable. Her blistered feet burned, her knee bled and her head ached. On top of all that, her stomach churned with a foul acid. Oh yeah, Jonathon had returned.

  She needed to get things straight in her mind before she called Jeremiah. How did Jonathon know she had a new moonlighting gig? She ran through every possibility she could think of. Could Jonathon be connected to Delilah? She hadn’t seen any evidence of that. She went over and over the chain of events since the beginning of the op, but couldn’t see a hole large enough for him to have seen through. She cleaned and dressed the cuts on her knee and cheek. The sting of the antiseptic brought tears to her eyes. Jonathon had known that she was a cat burglar, back when they were still together. Did he now know she’d upped her game, or was he guessing?

  The knocking on her door jarred her. It took all her willpower to pull her body up and hobble towards it. Two new blisters swelled on her right foot from the stilettoes. One bled. Looking through the peep hole she spied Delilah. Now? She took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Delilah’s curvy body left a chill in its wake as she brushed past Sadie and took a commanding stance in the middle of the room. She held a bottle of red wine in the air like a crucifix in one hand, and two glasses in the other, by her side. “We need to talk.”

  Sadie rolled her eyes. “Let’s talk in the morning. I’m done in.”

  Delilah gave her a knee-buckling stare. “What happened between you and Jonathon?”

  “Ah. You heard about us.” That took less than twenty minutes. Clearly someone had been watching. Sadie walked over and sat in one of the two chairs by the windows. She accepted a full wine glass and took a demure sip.

  “Talk.” Delilah’s cheeks reddened. She smelled of a fresh cigar and cheap perfume. Sadie choked back her revulsion.

  Sadie shrugged. “He said he knows what I’m doing. I told him to get lost.”

  “Details, Sadie, details. How much does he know?”

  Sadie narrowed her eyes. What the hell? Technically, Delilah worked for her. When their gig stepped up from stealing jewelry to looted art their roles had apparently changed, but no one had sent her that memo. A cold chill slithered up Sadie’s long spine and sent a silent tentacle of fear deep into the recesses of her mind, the kind of visceral warning that had never steered her wrong in the past.

  Sadie twisted her neck, trying to shake the feeling. Her mission to learn all she could about a power-crazed man code-named Anubis had sounded easy at first. Another idiot after power. No doubt, his ego would become his Achilles heel. Always did with men like that. It was a story as old as time. The image of Icarus, the prideful Greek youth who flew too close to the sun, came to mind. She knew she could handle Anubis when she got to him. But she needed to get to him. And to do that she needed Delilah. Sadie made a dramatic sigh.

  A spook has to do what a spook has to do. And sometimes that meant rolling in the muddy swamps of humanity with scum. In the end, everyone had their price.

  Solid intel linked Delilah to Anubis. Since Sadie already knew her from working her cat-burglar cover, she’d been assigned to get close enough to her to meet Anubis. Sounded easy. Hah. Why couldn’t people be more predictable?

  In her line of business she relied on her ability to assess people quickly, to know their weaknesses, their strengths, the danger they might pose. She’d pegged Delilah as a simple-minded bad-girl who liked money, but Dee was more complicated. A steely edged sense of “something’s going effen wrong” gathered at the base of Sadie’s spine. In a flash of a false eyelash, Delilah had slid from being a bar-fly with Euro trash humor to something much darker. Sadie stared back at the woman with wariness.

  “What does he know?” Dee demanded.

  “I didn’t wait to find out. I got the hell out of there.” Sadie ran a hand through her mane and shook her head. “Then the tall Dutch guy showed up.”

  Dee’s brow furrowed. “I don’t like this. How could Jonathon possibly have found out? You only moved one painting last week, a small Rembrandt.”

  Sadie’s insides twisted into a knot. Just a small Rembrandt! Oh Delilah, what a lost soul. It was a masterpiece, a priceless painting, a part of European culture, a piece of the world’s art heritage, stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish man in Amsterdam at the beginning of World War II. But a woman as rocky-road-hard as Dee wouldn’t get any of that.

  The well-known painting would be difficult to sell for cash on the black market, but it could be sold to a private collector, or be used as a trading chip in the underworld. Either way it would be out of the world’s sight—possibly forever. Just a Rembrandt!

  Sadie shrugged and took another sip of wine. Moving Nazi-looted art made her feel dirty, but she had to gain Delilah’s trust. The wine burned as it trickled down her parched throat. How dirty would she have to get? And how dangerous would Delilah become? The woman reeked of a toxic mix of desperation, determination and greed. Sadie had seen that kind of hunger before. It grew inside people and when it took them over, things never ended well for anyone.

  Nodding, she said, “Jonathon looks like a harmless gigolo, but he’s not. He’s a self-centered bastard who’ll do anything to feed his coke habit. Someone must have leaked the information to him.”

  Delilah’s cold black eyes hardened to pinpoints. “Why’d you marry such an asshole?”

  “I was sixteen and stupid.”

  “So he keeps tabs on you, because he wants your money.”

  “Cocaine is expensive. I guess he’s low on cash and decided to hit on me.”

  “Does he know you steal jewelry?”

  “Hah.” Sadie looked out the window at the street below. This wasn’t something she liked to talk about. A group of young people meandered arm-in- arm along the ancient, cobblestone road singing in beer soaked voices. She looked back at Dee. “He taught me how to do it.” And that was the bitter truth. “He said my modeling money wasn’t enough. I was young and stupid enough to believe him. It turned out I was good at it.” She hesitated for effect. “And as you know, I get off on the thrill.”

  “Does he know I work with you?”

  Interesting.Dee should have said,for me. Sadie hesitated.

  Delilah reached over with the wine bottle and filled Sadie’s glass to the top. “No,” Sadie said. “At least I don’t think so. Last time we met, I was working with my old fence Renaldo. But when he went to jail I found you.”

  Dee screwed up her mouth as if she’d eaten a bad olive. “I think I’ll pay dear old Jonathon a visit and introduce myself,” she said. “In the meantime I want you to take this.” She put the bottle down, reached into her purse and pulled out a dark object.

  “A gun!” Not just any gun, a Glock 17, Sadie’s personal favorite. But Delilah didn’t know that.

  “Hustling a little jewelry is no big thing, sweetie, but you’ve upped your game.” Dee firmed her jaw like a lawman in a spaghetti western. “Moving looted art puts you in the ring with dangerous thieves.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And organized crime. I’ve no idea if Jonathon is working alone or with someone else, but I intend to find out. In the meantime, stay safe.” She pressed the gun into Sadie’s hand.

  She released her fingers and let it drop to the floor. It made a distinct thud when it hit the tiles. “I’m over my head here.” In fact, she was familiar with many guns and a crack shot, but she acted her dizzy-dame part.

  “Too late to complain, honey.”

  “What do you mean it
’s too late?”

  Delilah’s eyes iced over. They’d always been cold, but now a friggen glacier engulfed them. “In two days, there’s a gala event at an art gallery in Amsterdam. You will pick up a package there. You don’t need to know what’s in it. Your job is simple. Just go there and be visible. That’s easy for you. A courier will pass you a parcel and you bring it to me. You’ll make five hundred thousand dollars for a few minutes’ work.”

  Excitement coursed through Sadie’s veins. This must be an Anubis job. She was finally getting closer to him and the thought made her feel lighter than air.

  Dee’s eyes bored into hers. “You’re already booked for Amsterdam to do a magazine shoot in the central square. This little job at Eros won’t take you out of your way.”

  “Eros?” Why did that name sound familiar? Oh Shit!

  6

  Chapter Six

  “Godverdomme.” Sebastian swore as he entered his Florence hotel room. His fists curled. At least the other guy looked worse. He stripped off his torn tuxedo jacket and blood stained shirt and tossed them into the garbage. Then he grabbed some tissues and pressed them to the cut on his mouth to stop the blood trickling down his jaw.

  Grumbling, he grabbed more. It would take a while for the bleeding to stop. With adrenalin still surging through his body, readying him for action, he didn’t want to stay still, but he knew he had to. He lay on the bed and put pressure on his cut lip. He needed to slow down, but his heart kept pounding, as if danger lurked around the corner.

  Danger. Interesting word. Beautiful women could be dangerous, but this one took the cake. And he didn’t even get to lick the icing.

  After two minutes, he got up and headed to the mini-fridge. His left eye, swelling to the size of a ping pong ball, ached. He reached for the ice in the freezer. Why did he stand up for her a second time? He didn’t even know her name. The ice numbed the pain; at least his physical pain.