Into Temptation

by Jeanie London

  Joshua glanced at the moored boat and the men there, one on board, the other on deck.

  He didn’t recognize the men from the marina. They were dressed casually for boating, and the man on deck glanced their way then turned to alert his friend.

  Something about that struck Joshua as wrong. He looked closer at the men.

  At first glance they appeared to be boaters readying to cast off, but he noticed that while both were dark-haired and olive-skinned—presumably Italian—neither had a tan to suggest he spent any time in the sun. The man on board joined his friend on the pier, who waved at Joshua and called out a greeting.

  These men shouldn’t be able to identify him—only the name, not the face.

  Joshua glanced down at Lindy, somber expression still in place. Had she set him up?

  Stalling, he dropped the folder holding the boat keys and rental papers then knelt to retrieve the items, pulling Lindy down beside him. She looked surprised.

  “Are they yours?” He watched her closely.

  She glanced out from under the fringe of her lashes at the approaching men, and her frown deepened….

  “Bloody hell,” she hissed on a breath. “They’re not—”

  Joshua shoved her off the pier just as the first shot rang out. He went over on top of her, hitting the surface hard and plunging them into the water between two powerboats at anchor.

  Not MI6, unless Lindy’s people had decided to take her out of the situation, too. Joshua didn’t think so. Her people didn’t operate this way.

  His people did.

  Two more bullets sliced through the water near them, one so close Joshua could feel the heat streak the bare skin of his thigh, the sound eerily muffled by the depths.

  Lindy clutched at his arm, fighting to continue their descent and not resurface, motioning in a direction that would take them under the pier. Her hair wisped out on the water, her cheeks filled with breath, her face pale and purposeful.

  Catching her tight against him, he lent his strength to their descent, and they swam into the murky depths, the only place to hide in this pristine water, using his free hand to maneuver through the snare of anchor lines that created an underwater web.

  They couldn’t stay down for long—a fact all too obvious. The hit men would be searching, waiting for them to surface. With any luck, someone would hear the shots. Any commotion might force these assailants to flee, even if the last thing he and Lindy needed was an interview with the cops.

  Clutching Lindy’s hand, he led her up toward the pier above, his heart throbbing in his chest, his breath burning like white heat in his lungs.

  They broke the surface with barely a sound, dragging air into their lungs, trying to tread water without splashing.

  A shout then footsteps hammering above forced them into action again. Sucking in another hard breath, he dove back in. This time Lindy beckoned him to follow, and he swam after her, trailing after her long pale legs that sliced in clean strokes as she led him under a hull’s draft.

  They cleared the channel between the piers, deep enough not to draw fire, and headed below the next pier before resurfacing in the shadows for air.

  “You thinking we should make our way toward the far end?” he whispered in between breaths.

  She nodded, not risking a sound, but from above they only heard raised voices, no more gunfire.

  Then they dove again. Joshua knew she was thinking—exactly what he was thinking.

  Make their way to the end of the marina and surface with the maintenance vehicles that fueled the moored vessels.

  Had shots not been fired and had he not had a sick feeling in his gut that Henri was responsible for this hit, Joshua might have appreciated another reminder of how this woman complemented him in so many ways.

  But right now he was just relieved that she was skilled enough to carry her own weight because the very idea of getting Lindy killed felt a lot bigger than he was.

  Marseille, where ships from all over the world clear this seaport, filling the streets with mobs that provide the perfect cover to vanish.

  JOSHUA WATCHED Lindy disappear into the bathroom and pull the door shut behind her. After a long day of travel, she wanted to shower and he hadn’t been invited. He cautioned himself not to take it personally. Lindy wanted privacy right now, and he’d done nothing to earn the right to infringe upon it.

  He wondered if she’d barricaded the door, wouldn’t blame her if she had.

  They’d been on the run all day. After escaping the marina, they’d had no choice but to risk a return trip inside Hôtel de Monaco to retrieve their things and had managed the trip without detection. From there it had been a matter of a television remote to learn the Italian authorities had decided to use the paparazzi to aid in their search.

  The Santa Lucia break-in wasn’t big news by any stretch, but it had caught the Italian authorities at a bad time. Timing could be a roll of the dice in Joshua’s work. His timing couldn’t have been worse. Under normal circumstances, he would have researched carefully. Most likely he’d have opted out of Venice while the country was still stinging from recent terror threats and a religious artifact theft that hadn’t been one of Henri’s acquisitions.

  These weren’t normal circumstances. He’d been working too hard to dodge Lindy, to set up a fake trail for Henri and to add to his cache for leverage.

  As it was, the Italian authorities had sent his and Lindy’s descriptions to the press, along with police artists’ renderings that were all too accurate.

  Piecing together the course of events from there had been easy. Joshua’s cell phone had stopped ringing with calls from Henri about twelve hours ago—shortly after the authorities had released their descriptions.

  If Henri had connected Joshua with a woman, he’d have used his resources to discover who the woman was. No doubt he’d placed Lindy as a British agent and would naturally assume Joshua had double-crossed him with the amulet.

  Hence the hit.

  Exactly what Henri had done in New York when Jean Allard had upped his price for the White Star.

  Since Henri obviously knew how they’d left Italy, leaving the principality of Monaco by sea had no longer been an option. So Joshua and Lindy had stolen a motorcycle to leave a trail to the train station, bought two tickets for the TGV, the high-speed train that linked Nice and Paris, then hopped a taxi for the Nice-Côte d’Azur International Airport.

  They’d hired a private helicopter to cross the Franco-Monégasque border without having to produce their papers and had flown to a shuttle stop in Nice. That flight had taken them over what were, in Joshua’s opinion, the most beautiful shores along the Côte d’Azur. Ironically, they’d flown close to his place.

  He hadn’t bothered pointing it out to Lindy.

  After leaving the shuttle stop, they’d taken a bus trip to Marseille, where they were currently holing up in a waterfront pension he’d stayed in before when keeping a low profile.

  He gazed around the tidy room. Functional, clean and even well-decorated with a Battenberg lace comforter on the four-poster and matching curtains on the window. Nothing that would impress the woman currently showering behind closed doors. Except perhaps for its anonymity, which was requisite right now.

  Henri had driven them underground until Joshua could tap back into his resources without detection. Holing up to regroup had made the most sense. He wondered whether Lindy still thought they were in this situation together.

  When his cell phone vibrated, Joshua pulled it from his pocket, resigned at what he’d find on the display.

  An incoming text message from his Northumberland investigator.

  Target acquired.

  Randall and Hope St. George

  Newcaster Road

  Kirks Moor, YA6 3HN

  England

  United Kingdom

  +44 (024251) 41925

  Randall St. George is a barrister. Hope runs his office. Elders in the Anglican Church. Only child: Melinda. Listed as a p
rivate financial consultant based out of London. Awaiting instructions.

  Joshua confirmed then disconnected and stored the message. He had information on Lindy’s parents and could make his move.

  But what would that move be?

  In New York, Lindy had threatened to expose his alias. Now he could threaten to expose hers. He’d acquired her parents’ information as verification. Collateral, if necessary. That would depend on whether she helped him by erasing his MI6 file.

  It was a simple maneuver, one he’d used before. Just days ago, in fact. But the NYPD officer had made a mistake that Joshua had used as a bargaining chip. Lindy’s only mistake had been doing her job too well. She’d simply been unlucky to have been assigned to him.

  Would he force Lindy to risk her career to bail him out of the mess he’d made of his own?

  He was beginning to see just what a mess he’d made.

  Joshua knew his best chance to stay alive was to blackmail Lindy into erasing his file. Then he would disappear. He’d always had a fail-safe. A man in his line of work could never be too cautious. But if Lindy could contain the threat of the international authorities by eliminating his file, his disappearance would be that much easier.

  Henri would never let him go, of course, not with Joshua knowing so many secrets. But if he sent along the White Star as a show of faith and could avoid a hit, perhaps in time, Lindy would actually build a case against Henri that would stick.

  If she didn’t wind up dead.

  Clearing his cell phone display, Joshua stepped outside onto the small balcony that overlooked the busy wharves. The familiar feel of the warm ocean breeze under the setting sun should have chased away his chill. Tonight, that familiar feel only melted the numbness that had shielded him from looking at his actions too closely for too long.

  When had he sunk so low?

  He’d been running from the answer lately, before Lindy. He hadn’t realized what the problem was. Now he knew his conscience had been nagging for a while. He hadn’t been able to outrun the truth, not even on a boat cutting through that crystal water.

  The truth had been inside him, dogging his heels wherever he went.

  He’d blackmailed a police officer, had forced the man to risk career and family to deliver the White Star, had forced him to sacrifice his self-respect to cover up a past mistake.

  And even worse than corrupting the man was the ease with which Joshua had managed it.

  As easily as he’d dug up something about Lindy and considered using it against her.

  He’d finally met a woman who was his equal in so many ways, a woman he admired and respected, and he was poison to her.

  Leaning heavily on the stone railing, Joshua felt the exhaustion of the past few days suck at his strength. Or maybe that was the weight of his actions and finally facing the truth.

  He deserved this turnabout. He hadn’t given a second thought to right or wrong when vowing to put the past behind him. When he was growing up he’d hated dropping by friends’ houses for meals because his mother hadn’t come home. As much as he’d appreciated the handouts, he’d thought pity was too high a price to pay.

  As well-meaning as the concern had always been, his pride had taken hits year after year because everyone in the neighborhood had known about his sorry situation.

  And Joshua had accomplished what he’d set out to do—to get far away from the poor, lonely kid he’d once been.

  But at what cost? Had he ever considered the cost?

  A cop’s self-respect.

  Lindy’s career.

  His soul.

  He laughed, a brittle sound that melted on the buzz of the busy wharves. All it had taken was an MI6 agent with sparkling eyes and a sexy smile to make him see the truth. He hadn’t wanted to become a slave to her agency, had been trying to outmaneuver her, willing to sacrifice her to escape fate.

  But he was already a slave—not to Henri, but to himself. The past had dictated his life. He’d sold his soul to live a lifestyle that had turned him into a ruthless bastard who would use anyone or anything to get ahead.

  And now… The weight of his choices sat heavily, and one locked door between him and a beautiful woman felt like an obstacle he could never overcome.

  But at least now he knew what he wanted to do.

  Good, bad or otherwise. He’d had enough.

  13

  BY THE TIME Lindy was ready to face Joshua again, she’d showered, dried her hair and gotten fully dressed. She’d had enough time to sort through her thoughts, to clear away the emotional debris so she could assess the problem rationally. Unfortunately, she still didn’t feel rational, which probably had to do with the fact that she didn’t see any solution with consequences she cared to live with.

  She’d made a bloody mess of this whole situation.

  Malcolm would not be happy when he saw her face go public as an accessory to a break-in, and the only way to rationalize the choices she’d made was to bring Joshua in.

  Joshua didn’t want to go, and knowing what SIS had in store for him had dulled the edge on Lindy’s determination.

  The only thing she could do was force his hand and try to deal. She couldn’t do anything with the Santa Lucia photos, but he was in possession of the White Star.

  A new deal. A real deal.

  He knew her true identity. If she took a leap of faith and trusted that noble streak she’d glimpsed, perhaps she might convince him to walk away, if she promised to walk away.

  They’d be square.

  She’d tell Malcolm he’d given her the slip. What did it matter if her reputation took a dive? She was the target of Renouf’s hit man, which had changed everything.

  Working in covert operations meant living life away from the general public, a sacrifice she’d always considered worth the end result. Sure, she didn’t date often or have normal friends, but she still had a circle of nearest and dearest. She wasn’t totally isolated.

  Now that she’d been compromised, those closest to her would also be at risk, which meant a serious alias overhaul and another layer of protection around family and friends.

  No problem for SIS, but a problem for her career goal.

  Renouf’s hit had put an end to any hope of running her own ops. She had to wonder if her chances had ever been that good anyway. If she’d had to go to such extreme lengths to force Malcolm’s hand, had she ever been a contender?

  She didn’t like the answer.

  So, hiking her carryall onto her shoulder, she steeled herself for the battle ahead, pulled the door wide and left the loo.

  “Joshua, we need to—”

  She came to an abrupt stop in the doorway when she found the room empty. Crossing to the small balcony, she pushed the door open. “Joshua?”

  The man had gone.

  They’d checked into this room with nothing but the new clothes on their backs and their respective bags. His leather money belt with the White Star was nowhere to be seen.

  Then she saw a note on the pillow… A sheet of plain stationary with the pension’s name and address stamped on the bottom in blurry ink. On it, brisk cursive strokes read:

  No deal, Melinda. Go home and change your alias.

  Underneath was a wad of cash—more than half of what he’d had, enough euros to pay the room bill and make her way back to London in whatever fashion she felt safe.

  Lindy stood there, staring at the cash, the letter clutched in her hand, but it took time for full comprehension of what he’d done to sink in. Or what he hadn’t done, more precisely.

  He hadn’t blackmailed her.

  If he knew her real identity, it was a safe bet he knew about her parents. Yet he hadn’t threatened to expose her, or harm her family. He might have tried to maneuver her into eliminating his file, so he could drop off the grid.

  He hadn’t. Instead, he’d left her in a dockside room in Marseille. The bloody man had left her!

  Lindy took off down the three flights of stairs to the lobby, where she
hurried through the house, looking for the woman who’d registered them not so long ago.

  She found the old woman wielding a dust cloth with a vengeance over the antique buffet. Lindy strolled into the dining room, nearly gagging on the lemon scent of wood polish.

  “Excusez-moi,” she said.

  The woman kept on scrubbing the surface as if she wanted to see her reflection.

  “Excusez-moi,” she repeated, more loudly this time.

  When the woman finally glanced up, she peered at Lindy from beneath a head full of steely gray curls and smiled. “You like the room?”

  “The room’s fine. The man I checked in with. Did you see him leave?”

  “Non, non.” Her gaze brightened with interest. “You fight?”

  Lindy shook her head. “He was running out to grab something for us to eat. I wanted to tell him to bring me tea.”

  The lie tumbled easily off her lips. Lindy knew the old lady wasn’t buying because she tucked her dust cloth inside her frilly apron and motioned toward a door at the back of the room.

  “Come into the kitchen. I will make you a cup. We can chat until your young man returns.”

  Young man? Lindy almost smiled. Hadn’t a college student recently accused Joshua of being exactly the opposite? It was all in the perspective, she supposed.

  “Come, come,” the old lady prompted.

  Lindy eyed her for a moment in indecision, torn by the need to head out to look for clues to Joshua’s whereabouts. But if he meant to vanish, he’d be long gone by now. A few minutes wouldn’t make any difference tracking him down. She knew that firsthand. And there was an urgency about this woman that made declining the invitation feel rude.

  The old lady’s face was angular and gaunt, a face that had seen a lot of years and too many of them hard, but her bright blue eyes were kind.

  Lindy smiled. “Merci.”

  The woman led her through the dining room into a kitchen that was as immaculate as the rest of the house. She told Lindy to sit while putting a kettle on the stove and fishing out tea bags from a porcelain canister.