Ironclad Cover

by Dana Marton

  “Just started a new company, business consulting,” she said, and gave a few sentences worth of details. You never knew who he could be connected to.

  “Impressive,” he said.

  “And you?” Maybe she would recognize the company name. If he was ruining her eavesdropping, at least she could see if he might not be a possible link—maybe a way to get introduced to Cavanaugh.

  “Land development,” he said.

  Any connection to the real-estate deal being discussed next door? “Sounds exciting.” She smiled and tried to look fascinated. “Tell me more.”

  “Heaven forbid.” He gave her another one of his sexy grins. “Boring a lovely lady is an unforgivable offense. Especially when there are so many other fascinating things we could talk about.” He unleashed a slow grin. He was a charmer and he knew it.

  “Such as?” She played along.

  “I haven’t seen you at one of these receptions before. Are you new to the island?”

  “—going up.” Gina was saying something at the same time as Michael talked, so Anita caught only part of it.

  “Relatively,” she told Michael. Didn’t matter if they got caught now. It would look like they were up here with romantic intentions. She doubted anyone would bother with them. “You’ve been here long? I hardly know anyone here.” Hint: I wouldn’t mind some introductions.

  “Hardly anyone is worth knowing,” he murmured and leaned forward. “Present company excluded.”

  Before she knew what was happening, Michael was brushing his lips against hers. But despite how easy this could have been, her hands came up to his chest and pushed him away, even as her brain registered how nice it was to have that kind of human contact again.

  Her heart beat a confused rhythm in her chest as the door opened behind her. Michael raised his head.

  Busted, she thought and turned just in time to see Brant Law, FBI agent extraordinaire, walk into the room with a disapproving scowl on his face. He was a lawman through and through, right down to his stance—a perfect fit for his name.

  He flipped on the lights and the sudden brilliance of the chandeliers forced her to squint. What on earth was he doing here?

  “WOULD YOU LIKE to tour the facilities and see how the project is coming along, sir?” The man’s voice was cutting in and out.

  “No,” Tsernyakov said into his phone. He had no desire to walk through a biohazard lab, to link himself in any way to this latest project or to break the anonymity of the assignment. “I’ll be sending a representative.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He hung up the phone and thought for a moment about whom to send. He didn’t like for even his most trusted men to know too much, be involved in too many branches of the business. He kept them isolated from projects other than their own, from each other. He didn’t want any of them to put together the big picture, to get any ideas about whether they might be able to take over from him.

  He leaned back in his chair and ran down his list of top candidates, then settled on one. That should work fine.

  A timid knock sounded on his door that he recognized as Alexandra’s.

  “Come on in, dear.” He pulled himself straight and put a smile on his face.

  “Is this a bad time?” She hesitated in the doorway, young and beautiful, unaware of how the pink T-shirt stretched across her breasts made him feel.

  “You could never come at a bad time.” He got up and went to her. “You look breathtaking as always.”

  She looked down and blushed. “I was wondering if I could go into town today.”

  “Of course, I’ll tell my driver immediately.” He turned toward his desk then stopped, pretending to hesitate. “Unless…”

  “If you don’t think it’s—”

  “No, no. I was just thinking that I had a busy day. I could use a little time away from the office. I’ve been meaning to take you shopping at Marks & Spencer. Of course, you probably don’t feel like spending the afternoon with an old man like me.”

  “You are not old,” she protested instantly.

  “I’m not Ivan Ivanoff, either.” Ivan, a famous Russian piano player about the same age as Tsernyakov, had recently married a model younger than Alexandra, the top news of TV stations around the country.

  “No,” she agreed. “You’re much nicer. Do you ever think about remarrying?”

  He shrugged and tried to look as modest as he could. “Who would have me, anyway?” he said before she could respond. “So shopping, then maybe a movie and dinner?”

  “That would be really great.”

  Yes, it would be. He hadn’t had the time to work on her lately, but tonight he would make sure she began to see him as something else than just a family friend. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so glad you are here with me.”

  “Me, too.” Her smile was genuine. “Thank you for keeping me safe.”

  “Nothing will happen to you, I swear.” Not as long as she pleased him. That’s what he had spared her for when he ordered the murder of her parents—something she knew nothing about.

  He would end the year in style, with a new young lover and more money than he’d made on any one deal in his life before.

  “Why don’t you wait for me upstairs?” He ran a finger down Alexandra’s face. “I have to make a few more calls then I’ll be right there.”

  “Thank you.” She gave him a spontaneous hug and was practically skipping on her way out of the room.

  “Your next appointment is here, sir.” His secretary’s voice came through the intercom.

  He glanced at his calendar. “Last one for today?” he asked to double-check. Sometimes people got scheduled in at the last minute.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” He would get through it fast. Alexandra was waiting.

  BRANT LAW looked at Anita seated across the table, still not over the shock of how different she looked from when he had last seen her during their briefing at Quantico. She’d been a beautiful woman in the dark blue FBI training suit, but in this dress…Every man’s head turned her way when she had walked through the restaurant’s door.

  Personally, he was into leggy blondes, but he could certainly see the attraction. He tipped his glass to his lips.

  “Do you always drink decaf?” she asked.

  “For the past week or so.” He could hear the pain in his own voice. “I’m trying to kick a bothersome caffeine addiction.” On doctor’s orders. Since he had his hip injury, he hadn’t been moving as much as he should have and his blood pressure had been inching up. He was determined to do whatever it took to pass his next physical. “It’s all about discipline.”

  “How is it going?”

  He groaned just as his stomach growled. “Excuse me.”

  Her full lips stretched into a sympathetic smile. “Missed your lunch?”

  He nodded. He’d gotten into George Town on Grand Cayman Island late on one of those no-meal flights. His bad hip hurt from sitting still for so long. He wanted two things before he’d gone to bed for the night: a good dinner and a report from Anita Caballo on how the analysis of the financial records of their targets was going. So as soon as he’d dropped his suitcase at the hotel, he’d gone in search of her, concerned with what he might find.

  Bribing four convicts to join an undercover team to bring down the king of all criminals didn’t fill him with confidence about the operation’s success. Could the four women succeed where professionals had failed? Carly was a top hacker, Sam a whiz at breaking and entering, Gina an ex-cop who’d done time for manslaughter, Anita a resourceful embezzler of four million dollars. Maybe they would have some kind of edge, a deeper understanding of criminal reasoning or whatever. Or maybe they were heading straight for disaster.

  “How is the consulting business coming along?” he asked.

  “Pretty well.” She seemed to relax at his choice of subject. “We have a half-dozen clients and a couple of nibbles from others. Once we complete this first round of projects, I t
hink we’ll be getting a number of referrals.”

  Since Cavanaugh had left the party minutes after Brant had discovered Anita, they’d followed him to his compound on the beach. And as they weren’t equipped for breaking and entering, he’d decided to end surveillance for the night and take her to the nearest restaurant that was still open, the Reef Street Inn. He didn’t believe in wasting time.

  She looked nervous.

  Did she have a reason other than being caught with a man? Frankly, he would have preferred if she spent one hundred percent of her time and energy on the mission.

  He chewed his beef—a steak and potatoes man through and through—and washed it down with some decaf soda. He poured some extra steak sauce on the next slice.

  “I’m tempted to throw the poor thing a life jacket. You’re drowning it,” Anita said.

  He made a point in sopping up as much sauce as possible. “Best invention since the cow.”

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “So what have you been up to lately?” He didn’t have a good handle on the woman yet and was impatient to learn more.

  She gave him a detailed rundown on all the projects the team had put into place since they had arrived on the island.

  He wasn’t surprised that the business was doing well. She was a hell of a businesswoman—competent, resourceful, dedicated. He knew as much from her file. She had a fine track record with Pellegrino’s, the company she had built from nothing before she had succumbed to temptation and neatly made four million dollars disappear. “And the other end of the business?” He was referring to the money laundering they did on the sly in order to get closer to a shadier clientele that could provide valuable leads to Tsernyakov.

  “I wish things would roll faster,” she said. “I was hoping to make contact with Cavanaugh tonight.”

  “Got sidetracked?” He drew up an eyebrow.

  She shifted in her seat, but wouldn’t look away. Good, the woman had chutzpah. She would need it on this mission.

  “I was doing surveillance,” she said.

  So she was using the poor bastard. How far would she have been willing to go? He thought of her shoes discarded on the marble floor. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

  “I was trying to listen in on Cavanaugh’s meeting next door.”

  “Find out anything?”

  “Very little before I was interrupted. Cavanaugh is in some kind of a real-estate deal. He and a couple of friends of his are trying to rezone an area for building. They mentioned environmental setbacks and the possibility of losing a lot of money.”

  “They?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t have names. And I only saw one, other than Cavanaugh.”

  “Got pictures?”

  “Not a good one. But I have pictures of others Cavanaugh had been talking to earlier in the evening.”

  “And your companion?”

  “Michael Lambert, land developer.”

  “What are your plans with him?”

  She looked like she would have liked to say, none of your business, but said instead, “None. I have no plans for him at all. He followed me when I followed Cavanaugh.”

  “Is he linked to him?”

  “I don’t know. Yet.”

  He nodded. “Find out.” She obviously had no problem with cozying up to the guy. And Lambert had wanted badly whatever she’d been offering. Brant had seen the flash of anger and disappointment in the man’s eyes when he had walked in and interrupted.

  Was Anita looking for suspects, links to Cavanaugh and Tsernyakov, or was she looking for allies for her own purposes? Lambert had money, you could tell by looking at him. And with money came influence. Was Anita working him? Sure looked like it from where he was standing.

  He didn’t trust her, didn’t trust any of the women, had argued against the mission and lost. He had accepted the assignment of working with the team—somebody with realistic expectations had to be involved—but he still thought it was nothing but an invitation to disaster.

  You wanted to know how someone would act in the future, you looked at how he or she had acted in the past. By and large, past behavior predicted future behavior. What the hell were they doing conducting a mission based on criminals?

  The way he’d seen Anita play Lambert tonight had left a bad taste in his mouth, an odd reaction since that was exactly what she’d been recruited for. And she had been good, he had to give her that. She had looked the part of a woman about to be seduced.

  Anita, more so than the others, bore watching. She was the most beautiful of the four women on the team—dark hair, nearly black, cascading to her waist, the body of a dancer, legs that could mesmerize anyone. He was a sucker for high heels and she worked them like nobody he’d ever known. She was a lethal weapon even when armed with nothing but a smile. And he would just bet she was smart enough to know how to use what she had.

  In addition to her intimate knowledge of financial wizardry, those looks had been responsible for getting her involved in the mission. He had picked her himself, from the list of possible candidates.

  His attention lingered on her full lips, annoyed as the picture of Michael Lambert kissing her popped into his mind. What did he care?

  Then all of a sudden his instincts prickled and he turned his focus to the rest of the room, scanning the tables one by one. Nobody was paying them special attention. Maybe he was just too tired and out of sorts. Still, he had learned to appreciate intuition over the years.

  “How about if we have our food wrapped and take it back to my hotel?” he asked, unable to shake the feeling that they were being watched.

  “What’s wrong with here?” She didn’t look comfortable with the suggestion.

  He glanced around surreptitiously as he took a drink, and from the corner of his eye caught a dark shape at the window, the glint of metal. Instinct honed by years of conflicts in the field pushed him forward. He registered the surprised expression on Anita’s face as he took her down, protecting her, softening her fall.

  At the same time, the bottle of mineral water that had a split second ago been in front of her exploded all over their table, showering them with shards of glass from above.

  Chapter Two

  A woman screamed as people all around ducked for cover. With four years of federal prison and an intensive FBI crash course behind her, Anita managed to stay reasonably calm as she kept her head down.

  “Unarmed?” Brant poked his head out, trying to see.

  “Sorry.” She had thought about bringing her gun to the Chamber of Commerce reception, but there hadn’t been room to hide it under her slinky dress and her evening bag was barely sufficient to hold her cell phone, a tube of lipstick and the stack of business cards she had collected during the evening. She’d gone to the party to make connections, not to engage in a gunfight. She hadn’t thought the weapon would be necessary.

  He didn’t chastise her for the lapse, but pushed her forward. “Let’s go. Toward the kitchen.”

  All for getting out of there, she crawled under the tables among people who looked stunned, scared and confused. Spilled food and broken plates littered her path—a few tablecloths had been pulled down in the panic of the moment as people reacted on reflex.

  Whispers came from everywhere, punctuated by a few sobs and some swearing. “Where did it come from?” “Is the shooter in here?” “Stay still.”

  “Stop moving around. You’ll draw attention,” an older gentleman snapped as Anita pushed by him, then fell silent as he looked at Brant behind her.

  She nudged the swinging door open and slipped through into the hot and humid air of the kitchen, which smelled of frying onions and burning oil. She didn’t rise until the metal door was closed behind them and even then she stayed in a crouch.

  “This way.” Brant headed to the back.

  The man could move. The only two times she’d seen him before—at the Brighton Federal Correctional Institute in Maryland and at their briefing at Q
uantico, he seemed more the corporate type than law enforcement—crisp suit and calm, professional manners. But right this moment the FBI agent was clearly visible.

  They passed kitchen staff huddled in groups some in the cover of refrigerators, others squatting behind the counter.

  “Is there a shooter in the restaurant?” one of the cooks, a lanky Chinese man, asked, gripping his white apron with one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. At first glance he seemed prepared to protect the staff, but when Anita looked closer, his darting eyes said he was ready to run.

  “Outside,” Brant said. “Stay in here. Call the cops. Where is the back door?”

  The man pointed with the cleaver, his arm jumping with nerves when a chair crashed behind them in the dining area.

  Brant moved forward. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Anita followed him down a narrow hall that led to cavernous storage rooms and stopped when he did at a door with peeling green paint on its wood panels. He paused a second then pushed the door open a few inches to survey the outside. Then he reached back to take her arm and pulled her behind him, into the deep shadows of the night.

  The back alley was empty save the Dumpsters. She held her breath at the sour stench. Hundred-degree heat did nasty things to garbage.

  “Come on.” He strode to the street and looked in both directions before stepping out from the alley. He walked to the nearest car and had the door open and the motor started in under a minute. “Get in.” The vehicle was in motion before she shut the door behind her.

  “Did you see who it was?” She kept her eyes on the street.

  “No. Are you hurt? Any of that glass hit you?”

  She didn’t feel any pain but looked down at her bare arms anyway. Other than being dirty from the crawling, they looked okay. “I’m fine.”

  “Call the others and put them on alert. Call Nick.”

  Nick Tarasov was special ops, the man who had trained the four-woman team at Quantico after their release from prison. He had come to the island with them right at the beginning to keep an eye on things.