Kill Zone (Danger in Arms, Book 2)

by Cindy Dees

  Thankfully, Taylor was silent for the remainder of the short flight, lost in his own thoughts. She needed most of the time to squash the rioting emotions inside her.

  They checked into their hotel suite without incident, and she retreated to her room immediately, ostensibly to take a nap. She spent the time poring over the journal and gleaned nothing but a headache from her father’s nearly illegible scrawl. She was glad to set it aside and dress for the evening. It wasn’t often she got to go out to swanky restaurants and nightclubs on Devereaux’s dollar. When she was sufficiently primped, she called through Taylor’s still closed bedroom door, “Come on, Casanova. It’s time for your big debut. Let me see.”

  He stepped out into the suite’s living room, reluctantly facing her impatient appraisal. Brilliant. He’d gotten the look just right. He’d moussed his hair into a studied tussle, turned up his collar and nailed a bad-boy, bedroom-eyed look Elvis would have been proud of. Oh, yes. High-class gigolo all the way. She grinned widely.

  Taylor scowled in response. “So there’s no chance I can get out of being seen in public like this?”

  Bloody hell. He was even more uncomfortable with his cover as her lover than she’d anticipated. She was going to kill Harry when she saw him next, and that’s all there was to it. She suggested, “Think of it as a disguise.”

  He continued to look skeptical. Time for emergency measures to thrust him into his role. She stepped near to adjust his black leather tie, surreptitiously gauging his reaction when her perfume hit him. His pupils dilated hard and fast. She smiled lazily into his darkened eyes and murmured, “Can’t you pretend to be the slightest bit attracted to me tonight? You’re 007 himself. Pretend I’m enslaved by you, and you know it. Use that power. Tantalize me. Romance me. You’re gorgeous and sexy and you make me hot beyond belief.”

  Taylor took a startled step back and cleared his throat. “Uh, right. Sexual attraction.”

  “Sheesh,” she groused, “you don’t have to say that like I’m chopped liver.”

  A reluctant smile curved his mouth. “Sorry. You caught me off guard, there.”

  “Don’t let it happen again,” she warned. “Your guard is your last line of defense.”

  “Is that lesson number one in the How To Be a Badass Spy Handbook?” he asked with a faint edge in his voice.

  She didn’t bother to answer.

  They made it all the way through dinner at a trendy restaurant without another slip from him. He kept up the intimate eye contact, the meaningful smiles and undivided attentiveness of a lover. And it damned near stole her breath away. Every time he smiled, her stomach fluttered, and every time he gazed deep into her eyes, her breathing hitched. The way he trailed his fingers across the back of her hand provoked thoughts of doing things with him that made her blush just to contemplate.

  No matter how aggravated she might be over her visceral reaction to Taylor, there was no denying it. She was so attracted to him she could hardly see straight. Of all the rotten luck. The first man in years she’d been even remotely interested in, and he turned out to be her very off-limits partner. The idea was for him to seduce Marina, not her. Cursing her ill fortune, she continued to flail against the sensual web entangling her. A brush on the arm, a deep look, a secret smile—each added a thread to her discomfort, tangling her more deeply in choking terror. Her entire life was built around the concept of being in complete control of herself, and these raging feelings Taylor provoked were anything but under control.

  After the meal, they left the restaurant and proceeded to a hot spot called the Wild Side in the heart of the nightclub district. She had it on good authority from the hotel staff that everybody who was anybody in Toronto congregated there. If Marina had arrived in town, she was bound to be there checking out the local talent. Her old school chum was a barracuda when it came to fast, handsome men. With a glance at Taylor, Amanda smiled grimly to herself. She had a very shiny object to dangle before Marina.

  Amanda and Taylor paused just inside the door of the club. It was a circular room with a bar running around the walls in both directions from the front door. The curved bars terminated across the room in an elaborate sound booth. The music was loud and the air was heavy with cigarette smoke and the distinctive, sweet odor of marijuana. This was Marina’s kind of place. Rules were broken here.

  There was no sign of Marina, however. After one tawny tigress performed a rather lascivious mating dance on Taylor’s thigh, Amanda reasserted her claim. She whisked him away for a long, slow dance. He took her in his arms and swung her easily onto the floor, holding her lightly. It was a heady feeling to have all that strength so carefully controlled for her sake. He brushed a strand of hair back from her cheek. His touch was light, but it sent a shiver through her. A single finger curled up and around her ear, coming to rest on the pulse just behind the soft flesh of her earlobe. She drew a shaky breath. Lord, that felt incredible. Electricity flowed from his hand into her body, grounding out low in the pit of her stomach. It disrupted the rhythm of her breathing, leaving her gasping. This was all an act. Just an act. She could do this.

  “You come alive under my touch,” he murmured. “Where there was only cold gray ash, now there is heat. Fire.”

  Oh, God. Amanda closed her eyes for a second and let his potency flow over her, ambrosia to her starving soul. She could think of nothing more alluring than to give in to that craving, to glut herself upon the feast he offered.

  “Fly to me,” he whispered into her hair.

  She let go and leaned into him, reveling in his strength. Her head found his shoulder, and he massaged her neck and shoulders while they swayed and flowed with the music. She felt weightless, floating like a butterfly in the wind, letting Taylor carry her away. Just this once, she’d accept what he offered. For a little while she’d let down her guard. She’d be herself. Nothing more, nothing less.

  She set aside all her training and reflexes and allowed herself to experience the moment, to exist for pure sensation. She was startled by what it did to her. Dancing in Taylor’s arms made her feel feminine. Fragile. The song began to wind down, and regret swamped her that the moment couldn’t continue. Very carefully, she memorized how it felt to be free. Then she painstakingly tucked it away in the deepest, safest corner of her mind. She sighed and lifted her head from his shoulder.

  “Go give your ankle a break,” he remarked practically. “I’ll ask around about Marina.”

  The bubble of the moment burst, leaving a sour, soapy taste in her mouth. So much for the romantic interlude. It had all been an act anyway. She suffered his kissing her fingertips before he drifted away toward a knot of men. Jerk.

  Some time later, he walked up to where she was seated at the bar. He had a well-groomed, middle-aged man in tow. Intelligent brown eyes complemented the man’s salt-and-pepper hair. Taylor said jauntily, “Amanda, I’d like you to meet Gilles Fortesque. Gilles, allow me to introduce you to a charming and very sexy lady, Amanda McClintock.”

  With exaggerated flair, Fortesque asked her for a dance.

  Gay or French. Or maybe both. Nonetheless, she accepted the invitation. Fortesque turned out to be an inexhaustible dancer. She thought her ankle would explode before the man finally led her off the floor. When they returned to the bar, Taylor handed her a straight shot of vodka wordlessly. She slugged down the fiery liquid with a shudder, praying it would dull the agony shooting up her calf.

  Fortesque clapped Taylor on the shoulder, proclaiming, “You must come to my place this weekend. Did you know this little lady knows one Russian on the whole planet, and that Russian is coming to my house tomorrow? What a small world. Really, you must come.”

  Phone numbers and a scrawled map on a napkin were duly exchanged, and Fortesque wandered off. Amanda kept an eye on him as best she could in the crowded, smoky club. She caught a brief glimpse of him having a short, intense conversation with a dark-haired man wearing funny little wire spectacles. But then the two men smiled and went their sepa
rate ways as if they’d been discussing nothing more than the weather. Nonetheless, her internal antenna wiggled and she took a good look at the guy in the spectacles as she and Taylor made their exit. Early to midforties. Olive complexion. Thick black hair. Medium build. Mediterranean or Eastern European, maybe.

  When she was seated once more in a no-nonsense rental car, away from the club’s glitzy magic, thorough annoyance with herself set in. She’d acted like a perfect mush head over Taylor all evening, going all fluttery when he flirted the slightest little bit with her. And for goodness’ sake, she’d told him to do it! She was annoyed with herself for another reason, too.

  It wasn’t often that she misjudged someone. Taylor was turning out not to be nearly as naive or stupid as she’d expected. In fact, he’d adapted quite well to the situation tonight. While it had made her job easier, there was also danger in his ability to act on his own. She couldn’t afford to have him argue with her in a crisis. He would have to be willing to follow her orders instantly and exactly if they were to remain safe. When he’d parked the car in the hotel’s garage and killed the ignition, she turned in the seat to face him. “Taylor, I need to tell you rule number three of field operations before learning it gets you killed.”

  He sighed. “Lay it on me.”

  She scowled at him. “Don’t argue with me if we’re in a tight spot, or even if it doesn’t look to you like we’re in a jam. If I tell you to do something, do it. You can ask questions later, but a second’s hesitation can mean the difference between life and death in the field.”

  Taylor nodded slowly. “I suppose I can live with that.”

  She had to give him credit. Not all men could or would take orders from a woman. But he’d swallowed that edict without a word of complaint.

  The second they stepped into their suite, Amanda kicked off her high-heeled shoes, sighing in relief. She performed a routine sweep for bugs in their rooms. The suite was clear. As she zipped the bug detector back into its case, Taylor asked, “Is somebody trying to kill you?”

  “Probably.”

  He asked reasonably, “Dare I ask who harbors this dark plot against you?”

  She responded coolly. “The less you know, the better. I have no intention of getting you involved. You’re here to be my stooge and nothing more. If they associate you with me professionally, they’ll kill you, too. Your life depends on convincing them how dumb you really are. Fortunately, that shouldn’t be too difficult for you to pull off.”

  “And who is ‘they’?” he asked calmly.

  Interesting. He didn’t rise to the bait when she called him dumb. Chalk up another point for her surprising partner. Belatedly, she answered his question. “The people moving these diamonds are not nice blokes. I’ve been stepping on some lucrative toes, and they won’t take kindly to it when they realize what we’re up to.”

  Taylor retreated silently to his room, frowning. It was hard to gauge how much of Amanda’s big talk was paranoia, and how much of it was legitimate. He had no idea how dangerous a case he’d stepped into the middle of. But it was high time to find out. He changed into a black turtleneck and pants, dug out his silent-shutter Leica camera and loaded a roll of high-speed, low-light film into it. He gathered up assorted other gear and stepped out into the hall. He should probably invite Amanda to go with him, but the way she’d been limping, she needed to stay off her ankle tonight. Besides, all he had in mind was a little simple surveillance of the Fortesque estate. Nothing he couldn’t handle on his own. He wanted to experience firsthand what it felt like to do Amanda’s work. Maybe it would give him a new insight into her state of mind.

  An hour later, he contemplated an eight-foot-tall security fence topped by a Y bracket of barbed-wire strands with rolled razor wire nestled in the crook of the Y. There was a conspicuous lack of vegetation touching the fence. Electric, then. Beyond the fence lay a vast, sleeping mansion. Taylor snapped several pictures using a telephoto lens. Nothing remotely dangerous or interesting out here. If this was all there was to it, her work wasn’t nearly as exciting or sexy as he’d imagined.

  He was almost ready to go back to the car when a sound arrested his attention. A loud noise of crunching gravel ruptured the night’s deep silence. Someone was driving up the Fortesque driveway. At this time of night? He watched a white van pull around the circular drive and stop in front of the house. The driver and front-seat passenger got out. As they approached the porch, the double doors swung inward, and a small pool of dim light fell at their feet. So, these nocturnal guests were expected. Okay. Now this was more interesting. His pulse jumped on a surge of adrenaline.

  He raced back to the car and grabbed the rope. He ran to a wooded copse even with the house and lassoed a stout branch that overhung the tall security fence. He shimmied up it quickly. His palms burned from the bare nylon, but in moments, he sat astride the branch. He was breathing a lot more heavily than the climb called for. Man, he felt alive. He could see where this feeling could get addictive, where someone like Amanda would come back for more and more of it, even if she was cracking up mentally. He inched across the branch and slithered down the trunk of the tree. Pausing long enough to slash away a vertical strip of bark with his pocket knife, he left a white scar on the tree trunk to mark it.

  The trees extended to within roughly fifty feet of the front corner of the house. He slowed and crawled the last few yards through the trees. The front door opened again. Three men emerged and he snapped their pictures, his heart pounding double time. If he wasn’t mistaken, that was Gilles Fortesque sandwiched between the two visitors. But it was too dark to be certain. They stepped to the back of the van and one of the men tapped on the door. It swung open and a fourth man stepped out, carrying a small leather satchel. The guy from the nightclub with the wire-rimmed spectacles! All four men returned to the house. Power. He was definitely feeling a rush of power. To uncover a secret meeting like this, to be in the know when these guys thought they were getting away with it…yup, it made a person feel kind of invincible. Amanda’s sharply worded lessons began to make more sense now. She was used to being the one in control of the situation.

  A light went on in a window to the left of the front doors. Wrong angle to see in it from here. Crap. He stepped out of the trees and moved toward the window. The four men stood around a large desk. The satchel was open, and Fortesque bent down, staring intently at whatever lay on top of the case. The Canadian brought a jeweler’s loupe to his eye and, using oversize tweezers, lifted a large cut diamond from the table. Taylor snapped a picture. Fortesque put down the first diamond and picked up a second stone to examine. And a third. And a fourth. Holy shit.

  As if that shock weren’t enough, Taylor practically dropped the camera when, without warning, a pair of guard dogs bounded around the far end of the house and set up a tremendous barking. He frowned when the pair ran away from him toward the back of the house. Perplexed by their behavior, he nonetheless retreated to the woods, watching for a human reaction to the uproar. Amanda could have this part of her job. The sense of impending doom if he got caught sent another, more powerful surge of adrenaline into his blood. The true fight-or-flight adrenaline of someone about to get busted.

  A surge of sick dread rolled through him as the rottweilers rounded the end of the house nearest to him. Silent now, they came toward him at a dead run. He dropped any attempt at stealth and sprinted with a speed born of fear. He tore through the trees, heedless of the branches ripping at his face and arms, praying fervently that he wouldn’t trip and fall. He reached the fence and saw no sign of the tree he’d originally climbed. Damn! He sprinted along the wire barricade, casting about frantically for the mark he’d left. The dogs were closing in. Twigs snapped beneath their feet close behind him, and he heard the low growls in their throats as they pursued their prey.

  Several yards ahead of him, he spied a flash of white. The dogs were almost on him. He put on a last burst of speed and leaped for the lowest branch. In one motion he caught
the branch and swung his feet upward, hooking a leg over an adjoining branch. The bark was wet and his hands began to slip. Christ. He lurched, clawed at the branch and barely maintained his grip. He pulled himself up and straddled the limb, staring down at the massive creatures jumping at him from below.

  Their black sides heaved and their snarls of frustration revealed enormous fangs. Their eyes glowed red in the dark as they clawed at the base of the tree and lunged at him futilely. At 150 pounds apiece, they were the hounds of hell incarnate.

  He inched along the limb while the dogs waited below for the slightest fumble. A fall now almost certainly meant serious injury, if not death. He tried not to think about that and concentrated on his agonizing progress across the slippery bark. The branch narrowed, trembling slightly beneath his weight.

  He reached the fence. An ominous groaning and subtle cracking sounded under him. Crap. He scooted across the final few feet. The cracking sound was louder now. Frantically, he untied the rope with fumbling fingers. He dropped to the ground on the far side of the fence in grateful exhaustion. Amanda could have this job. He didn’t need these sorts of thrills and spills to get his jollies.

  The branch above him gave way with a slow rending noise. It touched the wire, and a spray of yellow sparks exploded. He rolled away from the flying sparks, scrambling to his feet. Perspiration soaked and muddy, he slid behind the wheel of the car, releasing the clutch. The car rolled silently down a gentle incline toward the main road. As he neared the pavement, a white van sped by. The same white van that had been parked in front of the house a few minutes ago. On its side, Taylor saw a logo—the letters GFX within the outline of a red rocking horse.

  He considered following the van but decided against it. On such an isolated road at this time of night he’d be spotted immediately, especially since the van was flying like a bat out of hell. Besides, he’d learned what he came here looking for. Amanda was an adrenaline junkie and control freak because of her job, and furthermore, was more than half crazy if she did this sort of stuff voluntarily.