Hot Ice

by Cherry Adair

  She looked at the car warily, then glanced up at Max. “Are we completely sure about this one? No more poison?”

  “Checked it out myself, princess,” Max assured her with a wink.

  She climbed into the backseat. So tired, so wrung-out, she would’ve accompanied them to Interpol if they’d offered her a bed in a dark room to decompress. Right now it took all her energy just to breathe in and out.

  Hunt walked around and got in on the other side. Cozy. She would’ve liked to crawl into his lap and take a nap with her head snuggled on his broad, manly chest. She gripped the armrest and looked out of the window instead.

  She thought of kidnap victims who fell in love with their captors; Stockholm syndrome, they called it. She had suppressed the little girl who’d once lived inside her. The kid who’d yearned for someone to stand between her and the world, someone to keep her safe.

  She’d buried that child at fifteen when she learned, and accepted, that the only person she could depend on to protect her and Mandy was herself.

  “Team’ll be here at 1900,” Bishop told Hunt as they pulled out into early morning commuter traffic. Max drove like a NASCAR race was in progress.

  When Bishop turned sideways, she saw the huge black-and-blue knot right in the middle of his forehead. She felt his pain.

  “You have me for another few hours before I have to bail,” Max told him. “Damn. I hate to miss all the fun.”

  Taylor rested her head against the seat and closed her eyes. How long had it been since she’d grabbed those few hours of sleep on the plane? And how long before that? Too long. Her body was an eighth of an inch away from complete shutdown.

  “Where to?” Max asked beside her.

  She rolled her head in his general direction and cracked her eyes open to see where they were. “Take the next right at the gas station, go six blocks and turn right again at the blue house with yellow shutters and the barking dog. I’ll tell you when.”

  She knew she should have directed them to a hotel. But she just wanted to be home. Wanted the familiar surroundings of her condo. Her own bathroom, her own bed. But before she could do that, she had to call the school. Fortunately, they never told Mandy she was coming until she was actually on the school grounds. To her sister, each second she had to wait for her was an eternity.

  “Weren’t you going to a hotel?” Hunt asked.

  She opened one eye to glare at him. It didn’t have much impact. But it was the best she could manage. “Don’t push me, big boy. I’m having a bad day here.”

  Throwing up while her new lover was holding her sweaty head ranked up there with Life’s Most Embarrassing Moments.

  “It isn’t over yet. Don’t fall asleep. You need to tell us where to go.”

  She managed a smile. “I’ve told you that a dozen times at least. You never listen.” She leaned over to touch Max on the shoulder. “It’s the gray building on the corner with white trim.”

  The condo complex had high security and a doorman 24/7. Taylor had owned two condos in this complex for the past nine years. The one on the third floor was in her own name, and the smaller one, on the second floor, as Beth Tudor. Never hurt to have a backup hole to crawl into.

  “Doesn’t look like a hotel,” Hunt said as Max pulled the car into the curved driveway under the portico.

  “Condos.” She really didn’t have the mental fortitude to bs at the moment.

  Her door opened and she looked at it stupidly. Actually, she looked directly at Hunt’s groin. It was a very nice groin, but she was too damn exhausted to get properly excited about it right now.

  “You live here?”

  “Uh-huh.” She closed her eyes for a second. Really. Who cared that he knew where she lived? He’d traveled halfway around the world to find her, against all odds, in Houston. If he wanted to, he could find her again.

  “Something you might have mentioned earlier,” he said flatly. “You can’t sleep in the car. Hop out.”

  “There will be no hopping this early in the morning, pal.” She could barely move. She opened her eyes again and swung her legs from the car. Her lovely silk pants were filthy and grass-stained.

  Hunt leaned over her and snapped the seat-belt buckle to release her. Okay. That made it easier to get out of the car. His arm brushed her breasts coming and going. Nice, but right now, no cigar.

  He extended his hand to help her out. “Sir Huntington, are you?” she managed to ask, smiling up at him. “Very gentlemanly. Thanks.” Taylor took his hand. It felt strong, warm, and safe wrapped around hers.

  A little electrical shock traveled up her arm at his touch. Not sharp or brilliant white, but a little zing of warmth. She let him pull her forward and stepped onto the sidewalk, wobbly on her feet.

  “What if those people followed us?” she asked suddenly, stopping in her tracks. It was daylight, and they’d left the hospital in full view of anybody and everybody. The nausea she hadn’t experienced in several hours churned once again in her stomach.

  “I hope to hell they have followed us,” Hunt told her, eyes glittering with fury. “We look forward to meeting them formally. Although, unfortunately, it isn’t likely since they believe us to be quite dead. Still, we can live in hope. Come on, you have to lead the way.”

  “What happens now?”

  He steadied her by curving his arm about her shoulders. Taylor used up her last reserves by resisting resting her head against the solid plane of his chest.

  “Now we escort you inside, and everyone gets some shut-eye.”

  That had a reviving effect. “Everyone? Stay here?”

  “Here.” He walked her into the lobby, his arm about her shoulders. Max stayed close to her left side, and Bishop brought up the rear, almost treading on her heels. Max handed the concierge the car keys, who in turn passed them discreetly to a waiting valet.

  “What floor?” Hunt asked.

  She wanted to tell him he could not stay with her. Because, damn it, he was supposed to be a one-night stand. Okay, a two-night stand. And this whole thing was supposed to be over by now. He should be riding off into the sunset, not crowding her in the elevator of her own damn building.

  This was her sacred ground. No one crossed the threshold of her condo, not ever. “What floor?” Max asked.

  “Four,” Taylor told him. She looked at Neal Bishop. “That has to hurt.” He had a big, extremely painful-looking black-and-blue knot in the middle of his forehead. It reminded her that they could all have woken up stone dead, instead of pukey and hungover. There were several extremely bad guys out there who’d already tried to kill them once.

  Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing to have the good guys hang around a little longer.

  Bishop gave her a stony look. “I’ll live.”

  The door pinged discreetly on the fourth floor. The moment the doors parted, Taylor strode down the wide, elegantly wallpapered hallway to her door at the far end, not looking back to see if the three men followed.

  Nobody said anything. She prayed old Mrs. Hildebrandt next door wouldn’t come charging out of her place on her walker, hair in rollers, to find out what was going on. Taylor couldn’t muster the energy to be interrogated at the moment.

  She practically tiptoed past her neighbor’s door.

  “Which one?” Hunt asked. He spoke so softly, Taylor was amazed she heard him at all. She pointed to her door. He took her purse from her with the ease of a gardener plucking a newly sprouted weed. Without a word, he opened her lovely smoke gray, snakeskin Prada clutch and pulled out her keys.

  Hunt inserted a key. The right key the first time, no less.

  “Wait out here,” he ordered very softly. The hand signal activating the others was immediately followed by a lightning-fast series of clicks as each man chambered a bullet. Then, with guns at the ready, Hunt and Max slipped inside her condo like oil over water.

  “Let’s go,” Bishop told her shortly, taking her elbow in a no-nonsense grip. She didn’t protest as he shoved her down the h
allway ahead of him. Not because his gun was a nasty-looking thing. Which it was. But because she wasn’t stupid.

  Clearly these men knew their way around guns and violence. She didn’t. She was all for scaling rooftops and crawling through air-conditioning ducts with rent-a-cops after her. She loved the adrenaline rush. But if there was going to be shooting—at close range, no less—she was out of there.

  The thought that somebody—anybody—was in her home without her knowledge gave her the heebie-jeebies. The thought that it was the same people who’d already tried to kill them gave her the über-heebie-jeebies.

  Bishop pulled her with him into the doorway to the stairwell, beyond the elevator bank, then released her arm and stepped aside. He didn’t look happy.

  “Guess you drew the short straw, huh?” Taylor whispered.

  His answer was to shove her behind him. He held the gun up as if fully expecting to blow away the first person coming around the corner.

  Lord, this was insane. The closest encounter she’d had with a gun before meeting Hunt was that time in Paris a few years ago, when the guard had chased her across a rooftop. He’d been a lousy shot, and more scared than she was. She had no way of knowing for sure, but she’d bet he was as relieved as she’d been when she got away.

  With that flame tattoo curling up his right forearm and a wicked scar on his left, Neal Bishop looked more like a biker than a reliable protector. “What happens if—”

  “Quiet,” he hissed, not looking at her. “Not another word out of you. I’m listening.”

  “For what?” Taylor whispered back.

  “Gunshots.”

  Shit.

  Twenty-six

  ZURICH

  Lisa Maki sat in the only chair in the room and crossed her legs. She lit a French cigarette, inhaled deeply, then let the acrid smoke curl from her nostrils. She picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue with short, unpainted nails before she spoke. “Which of you?” she asked, her voice thick with fury, and, Madre de Dios, fear, though she would never let them see it.

  “Which of you,” she repeated to the three people standing before her, “will be fearless enough to tell her we have failed? That despite our brilliant and careful plan, Mano del Dios moved faster, intercepted us, and from beneath our very noses took our prize?”

  Somehow, the Mano del Dios operatives had arrived in Zurich almost simultaneously with Lisa. How this was possible Lisa did not know. She hadn’t even seen that they were being followed from the airport until the big black truck overtook them and swooped in to take the prize.

  Her man, driving the limo, had been killed first.

  Marcos and Felicity were dead. Their bodies, stripped of identity, were still in the rental car parked behind the motel. Gregory was bleeding on the cheap hotel rug. Without proper medical care, he too would be dead come morning.

  The only thing that had gone right was the three T-FLAC operatives’ deaths, as well as that of the woman. The XC11 gas she’d used was quick and lethal. The supplier had guaranteed his product with his life.

  Half her job was done. But her brilliantly executed plan had, unfortunately, assisted Mano del Dios in retrieving the disks as easily as a mother plucked a teat from a baby’s mouth.

  The ramifications of her failure made Lisa feel numb. She looked at her remaining three members through a veil of terror. “Well?”

  Their silence was punctuated by the sound of rain hitting the windowpane.

  “I will do it,” Stefan said when the quiet stretched unbearably. He had the body of a man and the mind of an adolescent. His accuracy with a pistol was nothing short of miraculous. His stamina in bed impressive.

  “No.” Lisa stood. “It is I who bears the responsibility.” Taking her cell phone from her pocket, she nodded to Stefan as she flipped it open. Stefan removed a Ruger from the pack he carried. Before Christina or Gregory knew what he was about, the boy shot them. One shot each to the temple.

  Pop. Pop. They hit the floor almost simultaneously and lay still. Dead still.

  “Good boy.” Lisa smiled at him as she hit the speed-dial number for her own office in Barcelona. As the phone rang on the other end, she walked over and gently removed the gun from Stefan’s hand. “Good with a gun, but not a good driver, I’m afraid. Five minutes faster and we could’ve retrieved the disks and completed our task.” She raised his pistol. His innocent eyes widened and his mouth contorted with terror. Without hesitation she pulled the trigger.

  Stefan stared at her blankly for a moment. His mouth moved. She wasn’t sure she’d hit him. But from such close range . . . Still looking at her from sightless eyes, his knees gave way and he crumpled atop Gregory’s body and lay still.

  The ringing phone was picked up. Bile rose in Lisa’s throat as a cool voice spoke in her ear. “You have my disks?”

  Twenty-seven

  ZURICH

  No gunshots.

  “All clear,” Neal told Taylor after several long, tense minutes of silence.

  She could have told him that. Most of the residents in the building worked, and mornings on the fourth floor were usually pretty quiet. If there’d been any untoward noises, Mrs. Hildebrandt, with her bat ears and her walker, would be in the thick of things.

  Thank God there’d been no shots fired. Shooting meant the police. Possibly a dead body. Which all sounded exhausting and more than she wanted to deal with at the moment.

  She stumbled after Neal, who’d started down the corridor. He continued to hold the big, menacing-looking gun. Taylor walked directly behind him, using his tall body as a shield.

  Hunt waited for them at her front door. He too still held his gun. “After you,” he said, gesturing her inside as if she were a guest.

  “No Uzi-wielding bad guys lying in wait?” Taylor asked as she walked past him, kicked off her heels to clatter on the marble floor, and kept right on going. Marta, her bimonthly char, used lavender furniture polish on all the wood pieces, and the entry hall welcomed her home with open arms.

  Neal followed her inside, then Hunt closed and locked the door. “Place is clear,” he said, following her. “Nobody’s been here for a while.”

  She looked at the vacuum marks on the plush, cream wool carpet. Marta had her own machine, and she vacuumed her way out of the front door every other week. Except for a few sets of large, wide depressions, presumably Hunt’s and Max’s, the carpet was Marta-pristine.

  “Not since last Tuesday anyway,” Taylor agreed as she continued through the spacious, gold and black living room without stopping. A jungle of plants, saturated by early morning sunshine pouring through the windows overlooking the lake, had grown inches in the month since she’d last been home.

  “There’s a shower in the guest room,” Taylor told the three men. “Gym is third door on the right, if you have the urge to punch something. And if you’re hungry, check the kitchen.”

  Marta usually stocked up for her every couple of weeks, in the hopes she’d be home more often. “Coffee’s in the freezer, and there’s always frozen or canned stuff. Help yourselves.”

  Taylor yawned, beyond ready for a quick shower and a long nap. Without waiting for their response, she started down the long hallway.

  The glide of a drawer being opened stopped her in her tracks, and she retraced her steps to see what they were up to.

  Hunt stood beside her Chinese credenza with the top drawer open. The piece had been a gift from the House of Chu six years ago, in thanks for the return of a six-hundred-year-old jade chess set made of rare and expensive purple jade. It was a lovely and generous gesture, but her commission alone had paid the deposit for her second condo, down on the third floor.

  “Can I help you find something?” she asked a little too politely, too damn tired to be fully irritated, but knowing that she was. “I don’t own a gun. And if you guys are searching for something to eat, the kitchen is that way.”

  “Feel free to do whatever it is you’d do if we weren’t here,” Hunt said absently, ri
ffling through her Rapallo lace tablecloths.

  Annoying man. If he wasn’t here, she wouldn’t be here. She was supposed to be in London at the Hardings’ house party. Retrieving a gorgeous choker of perfectly matched Burmese rubies. Stolen a month ago and already reset.

  “Now there’s a dangerous weapon,” she said dryly. “Why don’t you check the freezer in the kitchen? I keep the weapons-grade plutonium in the ice trays.”

  Hunt looked up. “Got any electrical tape?”

  “No.” Maybe he wanted to shut her up, or he wanted to tie her up. Taylor wasn’t in the mood for either. “Keep the noise down in here. And don’t worry about the front door when you leave, it’ll lock behind you automatically.”

  She went back down the long, wide hallway leading to the master suite, firmly closed both doors, then locked them.

  Taylor drew in a ragged breath as she picked up the control from the bedside table and closed the electronically operated drapes, shutting out the spectacular lake view and the bright morning sunlight with full-length, blackout-lined, rose velvet drapes. The room immediately went dark.

  Removing her jacket, she tossed it in the general direction of the wide, king-sized bed. It slid to the floor as she stalked into the opulent bathroom and turned on the gold faucets adorning her sumptuous shower stall.

  “There’s nothing that says I have to cooperate with them for the rest of my natural life, is there?” she demanded as she stripped. “No,” she answered herself as steam filled the room. “There sure as hell isn’t.” She bent down to retrieve the two small pieces of insurance she’d hidden in a specially constructed and totally concealed pocket sewn into the waistband of her ruined slacks. Only then did she walk naked to the gilt mirror disguising the medicine chest.

  “I accompanied them halfway around the world.” She opened the mirrored door, took out a jar of face cream and twisted off the lid. “I took them to the bank.” She removed a few good pieces from the jar—earrings, and a diamond-encrusted watch—and tossed them into a crystal hair-clip bowl by the sink.