by Dana Marton
“I understand,” she said. “Family first.”
“Exactly. I don’t have to worry about money. My children won’t have to worry about it, either. I want to take a break and live a little.”
“How can we help you?”
“I will need outplacement services for a good fifty percent of my employees. I need to sell off unnecessary equipment. I would like the company to move into a smaller office or to divide the existing one and rent out the unused portion.”
“We can certainly do that.”
“I will also need some data to be removed from our equipment for encryption and storage.”
“No problem.” Was he going legit in anticipation of the birth of his sons? Or was he scaling back his existing business because he’d gotten some better paying projects from Tsernyakov? “Will you be doing a lot of global business in the future? Are you keeping your overseas interests? Our IT specialist has a number of innovative techniques that you might want to employ in that area.”
“I’ll be selling my global interests,” he said. “With the new family, I am hoping to spend a lot more time at home.”
She nodded and mentally crossed him off the list. Sounded like he was taking several large steps back from business life. The man Tsernyakov chose to replace Alexeev would be moving in the opposite direction. Looked like they were down to a single suspect: Cavanaugh.
But what if they succeeded in getting close to him and ended up realizing he was just a solitary crook, with no connections whatsoever to Tsernyakov? Would they have to start everything all over again? She wondered if Brant already had plans in place for that. He would. He was organized and systematic—virtues that fit well with her accountant-type personality.
Anita focused on Marquez. She was not going to sit here and think about how well Brant and she fitted together in a number of ways. She needed to get real and get the man out of her head.
ANITA GLANCED at the corner of her screen. It was seven-thirty in the evening already; nobody but her and Carly were in the office.
“Hook him and reel him in,” Carly said, and headed for the kitchen, probably for more coffee. She often worked late, got caught up in whatever program she was running.
Anita looked at the information on her laptop. What was she still doing here? She could have looked at these figures at her apartment, settled into her couch. But she’d been waiting for Brant and Brant hadn’t come.
She’d gotten used to him watching over her. How stupid was that? She’d agreed to a dangerous mission. She couldn’t expect him to hold her hand the whole way.
She turned off the laptop and tossed it in its case then stood. “I’m going home,” she called out to Carly who was still in the kitchen.
“Brant’s here?” She stuck her head out.
“I think I can handle it on my own.”
“Maybe he’s working on something with Nick. Debriefing each other or whatever. You should wait.” She disappeared, but a second later popped out again. “Want me to take you home?”
“I’ll be fine.” Did Brant go back to the States without saying anything? It was possible. He could have left just as he had arrived—without notice. The thought hit her hard in the chest. He’d come to keep on eye on them while Nick had been away. Now that Nick was back, he probably figured he wasn’t necessary.
“Never mind. I’m gonna go, anyway.” Carly shut off the kitchen light behind her. “Which car do you want to take?”
“I don’t have mine. Brant brought me in.”
“You were going to walk?” Carly stopped for a second and just stared at her. “You shouldn’t take any chances.”
“You’re right.”
They turned off the lights and locked up, took the elevator down to the lobby.
“So what’s up with Nick?” Anita asked.
Carly shrugged, but wouldn’t look at her. “He’s back.”
“Carly Jones.” Anita smiled. “I meant, beyond that?”
“He is okay.”
Obviously, Carly didn’t want to talk about it. She was okay with that. Everyone was entitled to their privacy.
“Yes, he is,” Anita said. “All I meant was that if you’re happy, I’m happy for you.”
They reached the lobby level and said good-night to the security guard at the desk, stepped out into the muggy night. The wave of heat that hit them in the face came as a shock after the building’s air-conditioned climate.
The first thing she saw was Brant’s car and him behind the wheel, talking on his cell phone.
Relief flooded her and a smile that she couldn’t hold back split her face. She looked at Carly to tell her that she’d be going home with Brant and found her watching.
“So what’s up with Brant?” Carly asked, a smile playing above her lips.
“He’ll take me home. Thanks for the offer, anyway.”
“Beyond that.”
She tried to look as nonchalant as she could. “He’s a nice guy.”
Carly pulled up an eyebrow. “Spill.”
“Hey, I let the Nick business go.”
“So? Who said life was fair?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“I bet not for long.” Carly flashed an all-knowing grin. “Try to have a fun night.” She made smooching moves as she walked away.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, what were they, teenagers? Anita thought, but couldn’t help smiling.
Brant leaned over and pushed the passenger side door open for her, still on the phone. She got in.
“Okay. Thanks.” He hung up. “Sorry. I got bogged down on the phone. I was going to come up. Any news?”
“I think we can cross Marquez off the list, for now.” She told him about her meeting with the man and the conclusions she had drawn.
He seemed to agree with her.
“How about you? Find out anything new?”
The look on his face said it wasn’t going to be anything she liked.
“Got the results on the fingerprints. One clear set other than Carly’s, Gina’s, Sam’s, Nick’s, yours and mine. No match in any of the databases.”
Disappointment balled in her stomach. She’d placed so much hope in those prints. “So that’s a dead end.”
He pulled away from the curb and into traffic. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll catch whoever it is. How is work?”
“Okay.” She had to spend most of her day on the legit business, since that was picking up. “Cavanaugh is coming back tonight.” She’d almost forgotten. “And we’re invited to a beach party this weekend.”
“Whose?”
“Michael Lambert.”
He pulled up an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s none of my business.”
She hated the bitter taste of disappointment that rose in her throat. “So whatever it takes, one of us is going to make personal contact with Cavanaugh if he’s there. We are going to try to entice him into some business, legit or otherwise.”
They discussed that for the few minutes it took to get to her building. He got out to walk her up.
“You’ll stay down here again tonight?”
He nodded.
“It’s not necessary.”
“Just the same.”
She didn’t want him to stay. It was too hard to try to sleep knowing he was just outside her bedroom window. But, of course, she couldn’t tell him that.
“Don’t you have anything else to do?”
“Nothing that won’t keep.”
And from the way he said that, she felt like he did have something in mind to investigate. “So what am I keeping you from?”
He paused so long she didn’t think he would respond, but then he said, “I thought about swinging by and checking out Cavanaugh’s place from the oceanside. Didn’t see much the other night. Figure that end would be wide-open.”
“You just want to get on the water.” She remembered his earlier comment on loving boats.
/> “That, too.” He grinned.
She considered for a moment. Her choices were tossing sleeplessly in bed, or doing something that might move the mission forward.
“Give me a second to change into something more suitable for spying on the high seas,” she said.
THEY SHOULD HAVE gotten separate WaveRunners. Brant cut the motor, breathed easier once Anita’s arms slid from around his waist. Bringing her was the best option for the mission—this way, he could make sure she was safe and do some surveillance at Cavanaugh’s place at the same time—but he wasn’t sure it was the best thing for him.
The moon glinted off the water with enough romantic flair for a postcard, the air balmy, the water only a few degrees colder. The Cavanaugh estate was about a thousand feet down the beach. He had to start thinking about that instead of what Anita’s breasts had felt like pressed against his back as they had ridden the waves.
“These come in handy.” Anita was gesturing at the sleek vehicle that brought them so far.
“Best invention since the motorboat,” he said. “I’m going in.” He pulled his T-shirt over his head, draped it over the handlebars and slid into the water. He needed a little cooling off.
He let the WaveRunner slowly drift with the waves and floated along with it.
Twenty minutes passed before they were in line with the Cavanaugh estate. They had an unobstructed view of the mansion itself from here. The main building was dark, but another, maybe a guest cottage, on the other side of the driveway had light filtering through drawn blinds.
“I’ll snap some pictures,” Anita said.
She was using his camera, not her ring gadget. This one had serious zooming power and could operate under less-than-ideal light conditions.
“Make sure you get the neighboring estates, too.” He paddled in place.
A light came on at the end of Cavanaugh’s private marina, then blinked out again. Nothing but a speedboat was docked there tonight, although Cavanaugh had several watercrafts registered under his name.
The waves were pushing the WaveRunner toward the shore, so he grabbed on to it and swam to keep it at a safe distance where they wouldn’t be seen, or if they were, their presence wouldn’t cause alarm. A man and a woman out on the water on a moonlit night like this was a pretty common occurrence in a tourist paradise. They were floating along the waves about three hundred feet from the beach, passing the estate’s boundary now. The light at the end of the marina blinked on again, then went out.
“Looks like the salt air’s gotten to the wiring,” Anita said.
“Maybe. My guess would be that it’s a signal.”
“For whom?”
“We’ll have to stick around to see.”
They floated by the next property. The pink mansion had a couple lights on upstairs and cars in the driveway. Same with the Mediterranean-style villa that came after that. The next property was smaller with a regular house, similar to his aunt’s cottage on Rhode Island where he used to spend his summers with his cousins when they’d been kids. This place seemed deserted. He moved to the other side of the WaveRunner and helped the waves push it to shore.
“What if someone sees us?” Anita asked.
“They’ll think we’re a couple of lovers, sneaking ashore to make love in the surf.”
He could see in the moonlight as her breath hitched, and cursed himself for saying that. He didn’t need to put that picture into his own head, either. He swam in silence and tried to focus on that, put his back into it, needing to burn off some of the excess energy that vibrated through his body.
She hopped into the cresting waves once they were close enough and helped to pull the WaveRunner onto shore.
“I’ll go up to the house and make sure there’s no one here,” he said, and moved in the direction of the building, which stood on stilts a good eight feet off the ground. The owner kept a picnic table there with chairs. Not a bad idea—a comfortable spot, always in the shade.
He rounded the structure and made his way to the front where wooden steps led up to the wraparound porch. A sign with the words For Sale and a phone number printed on it blocked half of the downstairs window to the right of the front door. He walked up the steps with caution just the same and peeked in another window. Enough moonlight filtered in from the back to see that the room he was looking at, the living room most likely, was bare, without a single piece of furniture. He checked the rest of the windows and found the same everywhere.
He walked back to Anita and dropped to the sand next to her. She was panning the ocean with the military-issue binoculars he had brought.
“Find anything?” she asked.
“Nobody here. How about you?”
“There is a good-sized boat coming in.” She handed the binoculars over to him.
The light at the Cavanaugh estate blinked on again.
He watched the boat that came from the south, parallel to the beach. It was a brand-new, twenty-eight-foot Monticello that seemed to be slowing.
“Movement on the shore,” Anita warned.
He shifted his binoculars to Cavanaugh’s private beach. The dark van that had been sitting in the driveway was going down the sand now, to the edge of the water. When it got there, a half-dozen men got out. Two of them waded into the water then swam out to the speedboat. A moment later, the boat’s motor started up.
“They’re going out to the ship,” Anita said.
“They’re probably too far, but try to take some pictures anyway.” He kept his eyes glued to the binoculars.
The ship slowed and the speedboat sidled up to it. There was movement on board on both vessels. Small packages, a foot by a foot maybe, were tossed from the ship to the boat. He counted forty-six of them. Drugs, not illegal immigrants, were the game tonight.
The speedboat brought its cargo back to the van where the packages changed hands once more. The ship continued on toward the main harbor. It probably had a legitimate itinerary, doing a little dirty business on the side.
He got up to go for the WaveRunner at the same time as Anita was rising. They bumped into each other. He lifted a hand to her shoulder to steady her and found that he didn’t want to let go. Her gaze shot up to meet his. She didn’t pull away as he trailed his fingers down her arm.
It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to wrap his fingers around her wrist and pull her closer.
He should let her go, walk up the beach to his car, drive straight to the airport and get out of here, leave the rest to the women and Nick. The thought ambled through his head. He kissed her instead.
It left him with a craving that clouded his mind to a dangerous degree. The second kiss brought him down—as clean a shot as he’d ever seen. He was old enough to know that he wasn’t going to be able to run from this even if he moved to Alaska first thing in the morning. Part of him would be here on this beach, in the moonlight with the waves cresting at his feet, holding Anita in his arms, and the rest of him would have to return or he would never be whole again. He wanted the heat, the spice, the sheer joyful zest of life Anita brought to him.
She made his blood drum with desire and he kissed her deeply and hungrily, hands shooting out to claim. She did the same, giving as good as she got, taking him as he took her, laughing as they tumbled into the surf.
He felt ten years younger. Hell, twenty. Had he ever experienced this overwhelming urgency even back then? If he had, he didn’t remember it.
He cupped his palms over her breasts, over the wet tank top that clung to them. They rolled until he was on the bottom and she sprawled on top, her hair cascading around them. “You look like a mermaid in the moonlight.”
She rose up and straddled him. “We are going to have sand in some uncomfortable places.”
“I feel no pain,” he said.
She smiled and traced his face with a finger. He caught it between his teeth when she got to his mouth.
“You look like a shark in the moonlight.” She grinned.
“F
unny that you should mention that. I do feel predatory.” He rose and flipped them, pinning her on the bottom. Then he pulled back, giving her room, a last chance to get away. “Swim for your life.”
She ran her fingers up his sides. “Mermaids don’t retreat.”
“What do they do?”
“This.” She pressed her lips to his.
His body told him this was right, this was what he needed, what they both needed. His brain, however, was transmitting the same signal over and over again: Wrong course of mission. Abort immediately. Abort.
Chapter Nine
She’d never imagined it could be like this again. She’d never come close with any other man since Miguel. But here in the surf under the moonlit sky, Brant made her forget about the past. She floated on the sheer pleasure of his touch.
A bigger wave washed over them without warning and they came up laughing and gasping for air. He sat up and pulled her into his arms, brushed his lips over hers again, smiling. Then something switched and the next minute he was staring at her with something akin to shock flashing across his face. He looked away and stood abruptly.
“I’m sorry. This is—We can’t do this.”
She looked up at him, bewildered, speechless for a long moment before she could force, “It’s okay,” past the sudden lump in her throat.
He extended a hand to her, pulled her to standing. “We should go.” The look in his eyes was raw, his body hard with suppressed passion.
The sudden switch of emotions was giving her whiplash. She stared at him, trying to figure out what was going on in his head.
“We have to be smarter than this. I didn’t mean to—It was my fault.”
She wasn’t ready to call what had happened between them a mistake just yet. “You didn’t take advantage of me,” she said for the record, in case that was what he was worrying about. Although, to a degree, she supposed she understood him. From his point of view, he was here to protect the women on the team, to supervise them. And he was professional enough and gallant enough to consider any other type of conduct unacceptable.
