And Christophe knew it, too, whether or not he was too proud to admit it.
“I know what has been eating at you,” Christophe observed as Alexandre began setting up the chessboard for a new match. This time he would not lose.
“You’re worried that you will not find the rebel leader in time,” his father continued. “You’re worried that you will go to prison.”
Alexandre did not reply. He had never consulted his father about his political affairs. After all, Christophe was a coarse, uneducated man who had spent most of his life toiling in the sugarcane fields. He knew nothing about politics, guerrilla warfare, military strategy or what it took to run a country. It hadn’t taken any brains or ingenuity on his part to get away with murdering his wife; he’d simply been the benefactor of a legal system that did not value women. His counsel on most matters could be of little use or interest to Alexandre.
But that never stopped him from offering his opinion, anyway.
He wagged his bony finger at Alexandre. “You should have gotten rid of that boy when you had the chance. Instead you allowed him to hang around for years and make a fool of you. You cannot be a strong, respected leader if you cannot silence your enemies.”
Alexandre clenched his jaw so tightly it hurt. “Are you going to play or talk, old man?”
Christophe made a sound of disgust. “I do not want to play again. There is no challenge in it for me if you are not focused on the game.”
“Fine.” With an impatient snap of his fingers, Alexandre summoned his father’s nurse, who had been seated on a bench nearby reading a romance novel.
“Escort my father to his room,” Alexandre ordered the burly woman. “It’s time for his nap.”
“I’m not tired,” Christophe grumbled to no avail as he was assisted from his chair and led away.
No sooner had Alexandre gotten rid of his irascible father than a servant appeared at his side. “Pardonnez-moi, your excellency,” the youth said, bowing deferentially. “This just arrived for you.”
“Merci,” Alexandre murmured, calmly accepting the large envelope. But as soon as the servant departed, he ripped it open with trembling hands, his heart pounding with anticipation.
Inside the envelope was a small black-and-white photograph attached to a one-page dossier on Special Agent Lia Charles, the woman who had led the Special Forces team responsible for Magliore’s extraction. Alexandre lingered over the photo for a moment, reluctantly admiring the beautiful young American who’d thwarted his mercenaries that night in the jungle. If only she’d been captured and brought to the palace. He would have thoroughly enjoyed ravishing her, hearing her screams of pain and terror, before he sliced her throat.
Chuckling darkly at the thought, Alexandre scanned the document, skimming over the agent’s impressive credentials, until he came upon what he was looking for.
There, in fine print at the bottom of the paper, was the name and address of the mountain retreat where Magliore and the woman were hiding out, along with detailed instructions on how Alexandre’s assassin would gain access to the secure government facility.
As Alexandre calmly returned the document to the envelope, a slow, cunning smile spread across his face.
I’m coming for you, traitor. Ready or not.
Armand jolted upright in bed, heart slamming against his ribs, a fine sheen of sweat clinging to his bare chest.
As he blinked in the gloomy darkness of his room, trying to make sense of what had awakened him, a clap of thunder sounded outside, followed seconds later by the steady patter of rain against the rooftop.
Slowly he eased back against his pillows, scrubbing his face with his hands.
He’d fallen asleep dreaming about Lia—edgy, tantalizing images full of smoke and heat and pulsing steel drums, sultry dark eyes, glistening brown skin and moist lips parted in sensual invitation. The whisper of soft, husky laughter teased his senses, and the seductive exploration of her mouth and hands made him writhe with longing. And then suddenly the images changed, became darker, menacing. He was running. Out of breath. Someone was shouting at him, telling him that he was in danger and must save himself. Lia, he realized. But when he stopped and turned around, he saw his mother and two siblings, Henri and Felicite. They were all staring at him with such sorrow in their eyes that he took a step toward them, seeking to comfort them. But they shook their heads frantically and pointed toward the ground, and when Armand looked down, he saw that there was a wide chasm separating them. Felicite and his mother began to cry—terrible, keening wails that tore him apart. When he started toward them again, the earth opened wider and swallowed him, plunging him into a dark underworld of blood, violence and mayhem. He heard machine-gun fire, mortar blasts, tortured screams. And he heard Lia again, yelling at him to run, to leave her behind. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
This time when he turned around to reach for her, he found himself staring into the cruelly smiling face of Alexandre Biassou.
That’s when Armand woke with a violent start.
“Merde,” he swore hoarsely under his breath.
Tossing aside the covers, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, then stood and padded barefoot to the adjoining bathroom, where he splashed cold water over his face. A shudder ran through him at the memory of the disturbing dream, which had seemed all too real.
Especially the sinister smile on Biassou’s face.
Nightmares were nothing new to Armand. He’d had more than his fair share of them over the last two years, harrowing dreams in which he saw the lifeless faces of comrades he’d lost along the way and men he’d killed in battle.
But this dream had been different. More intense. Ominous. Even now, as he stood over the bathroom sink, staring at his shadowy reflection in the mirror, Armand couldn’t shake a horrible sense of foreboding.
Trouble was on the way. He felt it down to the marrow of his bones.
Over the last four days he’d been so preoccupied with Lia, so obsessed with seducing her, that he’d allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of security. A state of relaxed contentment. Every time he was with her, he found it startlingly easy to keep reality at bay. To push unsettling thoughts of home, corruption and danger to the far recesses of his mind. After two years of fighting and living in self-imposed exile, Armand knew he’d earned the right to relax a little. But it was a luxury he couldn’t afford to indulge for very much longer.
If there was one thing being a soldier had taught him, it was to be on guard at all times.
And if there was one thing he’d learned from Alexandre Biassou, it was to never underestimate your enemy.
Biassou’s failure to prevent Armand from leaving Muwaiti alive did not mean he had given up on stopping him from testifying at the hearing. Biassou had too much to lose to surrender now. He would pursue Armand to the ends of the earth to keep him from ruining his future. There was no doubt in Armand’s mind that if Biassou discovered where he was hiding, he would do everything in his power to find a way to breach the tight security and get to Armand.
The dream had been a warning, he realized. His intuition was telling him to be on the lookout, to be vigilant, because Biassou was coming after him. Hunting him like an animal.
Armand frowned, his gut tightening at another possibility. Maybe Biassou was going after his family, not him. After all, Biassou knew how much Armand’s mother and sister and brother meant to him. He’d successfully managed to sneak them out of the country without Biassou’s knowledge. Maybe Biassou had learned of their new whereabouts and decided that the only way to get to Armand was to kidnap his family and use them as bait to lure him out of hiding. Once he had Armand in his clutches, he would kill all of them.
Armand shuddered, closing his eyes and bracing his palms on the smooth, cool surface of the bathroom counter. Suddenly he was struck by a fierce urge to see his mother and siblings again—an urge so strong he was tempted to march next door, drag Lia from her bed and demand that she take him to his f
amily. He needed to make sure that they were safe and sound. He needed to hug them, and tell them how much he loved them.
And if something was going to happen to him, he needed one last chance to say goodbye.
But he knew that Lia would never go for it. She wouldn’t even give him the exact location of the federal safe house where his family was being kept. For security reasons, she’d explained. Which was also why taking him to see his family or arranging a clandestine meeting at a neutral location, was out of the question. It was too risky, too dangerous.
Armand understood the rationale. God knows he had no desire to put his mother and siblings in any more danger than he already had. But as disturbing images from the dream replayed in his mind, he knew he had to find a way to get in touch with his family somehow. One way or another he had to convince Lia to help him.
With his mind made up, Armand left the bathroom and crawled back into bed.
Lying on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, he watched out his window as a bolt of lightning cut an electrified path across the sky.
He knew that sleep would elude him for a few more hours, if not for the rest of the night.
Chapter 11
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
0700 hours
Thurmont, Maryland
Day 5
When Lia emerged from her bedroom at seven o’clock the next morning, she found Magliore standing at the living-room window, one hand thrust into the pocket of his jeans as he stared out at the heavily falling rain. He appeared to be deep in thought, not even glancing over at her as she made her way to the kitchen.
“Good morning,” she said, already thinking ahead to what the day would bring. With Armand Magliore, nothing was ever predictable. Which—under vastly different circumstances—was just what she’d always liked in a man. Unpredictability. Spontaneity. A daring sense of adventure. Magliore had those qualities in spades.
“That was quite a storm last night, wasn’t it?” she remarked. “Woke me out of a deep sleep. What about you?”
Magliore barely spared her a glance. “Yeah,” he murmured.
As Lia headed into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, she wondered if his moodiness had anything to do with the way they’d parted last night. She’d kissed him as if her very life depended on it, then retreated like a coward—for the second night in a row. Yet when he’d asked her point-blank whether she wanted him to stop pursuing her, she hadn’t been able to give him an answer.
Lia cringed at the memory. She wouldn’t blame him one bit for thinking she was a total flake or, worse, a tease.
Stop it, she ordered herself with a stern shake of her head. Just because the man seems unusually distant this morning doesn’t mean it has anything to do with you. Get over yourself!
While she waited for the coffee to percolate, she rummaged around in the well-stocked cabinets, finding unopened boxes of buttermilk pancake mix and instant grits. From the refrigerator she pulled out eggs, milk, bacon and butter.
When she poked her head around the kitchen doorway, she saw that Magliore had not moved from his position at the window.
“I thought we could have breakfast here,” she told him. “You know, since it’s raining so hard outside. I thought we could save ourselves a trip to the main lodge in this downpour.”
And avoid having to see your girlfriend, Tiffany, she added silently.
Magliore glanced over his shoulder at her. “I don’t mind walking in the rain.”
“I do,” Lia said, straight-faced. “All that humidity is hell on my hair.”
He just stared at her, as if trying to decide whether or not to take her seriously.
Lia ruined the moment by grinning. “Just kidding. Honestly, Magliore, how shallow do you think I am?”
This, finally, brought a faint smile to his face. “I don’t think you’re shallow at all. But I know how you sisters are about your hair.”
Her grin widened. “Well, with a job like mine, this sister can’t be worrying too much about her hair.”
Magliore’s lazy gaze roamed across her ponytail. “Do you ever wear it down?”
“Sometimes. Depends on the occasion.”
He was silent for a moment. “Would you wear it down if I asked you to?”
“Why would you ask me to?”
“Maybe I’d like to see what you look like with your hair down, loose around your shoulders.”
There was nothing overtly sexual about his words, or the way he was looking at her, but Lia shivered just the same. It was that deep, smoky voice of his. Even the most innocent conversation could sound indecent with that voice.
She shrugged, glancing away from him for a moment. “I’ll think about it. So are you okay with staying here for breakfast? You said yourself it was the best way for you to keep a low profile.”
He arched a brow. “And now you agree with me?”
“I never disagreed.”
“No,” he murmured, watching her with a vaguely amused expression, “I guess you didn’t. So if we stay here, who’s making breakfast?”
“I am.”
“But I thought you told me you don’t cook?”
“I don’t. But I found everything I need to make pancakes and instant grits. How hard can it be to whip up some eggs and read some instructions on the back of a box?”
An hour later, Lia had her answer.
Seated across the breakfast table from Magliore, she surveyed the unappetizing array of food on her plate. The scrambled eggs were brown, the grits were runny, the bacon was overcooked and the pancakes looked nothing like the fluffy, perfectly round flapjacks displayed on the box.
As she watched, Magliore lifted one from his plate and studied it, turning it this way and that as if it were a foreign organism beneath a microscope. “Most unusual thing I’ve ever seen,” he murmured, his mouth twitching. “And yet somehow familiar…”
“Familiar?”
He nodded. Suddenly his face broke into a wide grin. “I know why. This one is shaped like Muwaiti!”
Lia stared at the pancake for a moment, then burst out laughing. He was right. It did bear an uncanny resemblance to the small Caribbean island!
“I’m touched,” Magliore said, chuckling as he reached for the bottle of syrup. “You knew I was feeling homesick this morning, so you decided to make me a pancake in honor of my homeland.”
“Right. That’s exactly what I had in mind,” Lia confirmed, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “I’m so glad you appreciate the gesture.”
“Oh, most definitely. Just as I appreciate the time and effort you put into making, ah, breakfast this morning.”
Lia grinned ruefully. “You might want to hold off on thanking me until after you’ve actually tasted the meal in question,” she advised.
Magliore grinned, forking up some eggs. “Oh, I’m sure it can’t be all that—” He froze, midchew. The look on his face could only be described as one of horrified disbelief.
Lia howled with laughter. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
Magliore shook his head at her, his eyes dancing with mirth. Instead of grabbing the closest napkin and spitting out the eggs, he bravely swallowed the mouthful of food, then chased it down with several gulps of strong black coffee.
“You continue to amaze me, Lia Charles,” he said with another shake of his head.
Lia chuckled. “I would say thank you, but somehow I don’t think that was meant as a compliment.”
He laughed. “An astute observation.”
“I don’t know where I went wrong,” Lia complained, watching her soupy grits run like water through the tines of her fork. “I followed all the directions to the letter. And I had no way of knowing the eggs would stick to the bottom of the pan if I didn’t spray it or use butter.”
Magliore chuckled, pouring syrup over his lopsided stack of pancakes. “Don’t beat yourself up. It was your first time. It always gets easier after that.”
“Ha! You think I’m a
ctually going to try this cooking experiment again? No way. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that.”
“Why?” Lia said drolly. “You enjoy being forced to eat unpalatable food?”
He laughed. “How do you know it’s unpalatable? You haven’t even tasted anything yet.”
She grinned wryly. “I don’t need to. The look on your face after tasting the eggs said it all.” She heaved a deep sigh. “I guess we should have gone to the main lodge for breakfast, after all. I was crazy to think my food could compete with those melt-in-your-mouth country biscuits and incredible omelets.”
“Maybe not,” Magliore agreed, winking at her, “but I couldn’t ask for better company.”
Lia warmed with pleasure at his words—which, she supposed, had been his intent. She gave him a grateful smile. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better about my disastrous attempt at cooking.”
“Did it work?”
“Not nearly as much as watching you eat those pancakes, God bless you.”
“Actually, they’re not that bad.”
She brightened. “Really?”
“Really. Of course,” he drawled, his mouth twitching with suppressed humor, “after existing on a steady diet of MREs for the last year, anything tastes good to me.”
Lia poked her tongue out at him, and he began laughing.
The entire situation was so comical that she soon joined him. When she picked up one of her own oddly-shaped pancakes and waved it at him, he threw back his head and roared with laughter, which only made her laugh harder.
When their laughter finally subsided, Lia reached for her glass of orange juice and took a long sip. She studied Magliore quietly for several moments.
“Is that why you were so subdued this morning?” she asked gently. “Because you were feeling homesick?”
Secret Agent Seduction Page 13
