The Medusa Proposition
Cindy Dees
The Medusa Proposition
Cindy Dees
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u2dfcae1d-09ea-58e7-9627-22f39dbb5cfc)
Title Page (#u7fdfcc17-74f6-5442-9bb6-fa6e604bf906)
About the Author (#ulink_93a7b1ed-c5e7-574f-85b5-d42bd94387c8)
Chapter One (#ulink_2bbe8976-7210-5272-93a1-df36715f2276)
Chapter Two (#ulink_961a79b6-2560-5b4e-80f1-4bd4db224d1d)
Chapter Three (#ulink_c7170989-97a5-5d55-b465-37188bd1ea6d)
Chapter Four (#ulink_5b51a473-e950-53d5-8f49-e84e5b33827e)
Chapter Five (#ulink_5fb81064-d30c-5b46-a761-a0640ef93b1c)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#ulink_9817e56e-96cc-5ffa-9efa-848aadd3305d)
CINDY DEES started flying aeroplanes while sitting in her dad’s lap at the age of three and got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. At age fifteen, she dropped out of high school and left the horse farm in Michigan where she grew up to attend the University of Michigan.
After earning a degree in Russian and East European Studies, she joined the US Air Force and became the youngest female pilot in its history. She flew supersonic jets, VIP airlift and the C-5 Galaxy, the world’s largest airplane. She also worked part-time gathering intelligence. During her military career, she traveled to forty countries on five continents, was detained by the KGB and East German secret police, got shot at, flew in the first Gulf War, met her husband and amassed a lifetime’s worth of war stories.
Her hobbies include professional Middle Eastern dancing, Japanese gardening and medieval re-enacting. She started writing on a one-dollar bet with her mother and was thrilled to win that bet with the publication of her first book in 2001. She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted at www.cindydees.com.
Dear Reader,
I always look forward to starting a new Medusa book because they’re personal favorites of mine. But I have to say this one was extra special fun, because it marks the beginning of a whole new Medusa team! Never fear, though. All of your favorite original Medusas will still show up from time to time to help save the world and show the boys how it’s done.
The Medusa Proposition launches the stories of another feisty and talented group of ladies out to kick butt and make the world a better place … oh, and maybe find themselves a smokin’ hot hunk along the way. This set of Medusas brings a broad array of skills to the game that will make the capabilities of the Medusa Project just that much more exciting.
We begin with Paige Ellis who’s looking to take her life in a new direction. And boy does she ever when she bumps into Thomas Rowe. These two are gasoline and fire from the moment they meet. So buckle your seat belt and get ready for a wild ride as the Medusas storm back into action bigger and better than ever!
Happy reading,
Cindy Dees
Chapter 1 (#ulink_df8a00b1-095a-5202-bd9f-1e3aaea20668)
Paige Ellis stared grimly at the gray turmoil of the ocean below. How was it the sea always so accurately reflected her mood? The weathered Adirondack chair beneath her was cold and hard, and somehow that was fitting, too. No comfort for her, no, sir.
Guilt writhed in her gut like a serpent, eating at her from the inside out. Not many television news journalists could lay claim to having single-handedly gotten their cameraman/best buddy/sometimes lover killed. Oh, sure, she hadn’t technically come right out and asked him to try to track down that extremist group to set up an interview for her. But she’d darn well hinted around that it would mean the world to her if he could pull it off. She might not have killed Jerry outright, but his blood was on her hands, nonetheless.
Other people had argued that he should’ve known better, that he knew what he’d been getting into, that he was too much of a risk taker, and it had finally caught up with him. But her sense of responsibility was too deeply ingrained for her to let it go that easily.
She ought to throw herself over the cliff into the icy embrace of the sea and just let it take her. Except the fall was probably only about fifty feet and she doubted it would kill her. And even if it did, a cold, quick death was better than she deserved—
“Paige! Phone!”
Her father’s voice jerked her out of her dark thoughts. “I’m not taking any calls!”
Uh-oh. He was striding across the backyard with that Ellis jaw-jut going full force. “You need to take this one.” He shoved the handset at her.
“Who is it?” She didn’t reach for the phone. She wasn’t kidding. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not to nosy reporters trying to find out how one of their own died, not to her boss at the TV network, and most certainly not to anyone who would attempt to talk her out of her self-recriminations yet again.
“Find out for yourself.” Her father dropped the phone in her lap and stalked off.
Sheesh. What had his knickers in such a twist? She picked up the phone cautiously. “Hello?”
“Hello, Paige. My name’s Vanessa Blake.”
“Do I know you?”
“Not yet. But I’d like to meet you. I have a proposition for you. One you’re going to find very interesting if I haven’t misjudged you.”
“Is this a sales call?” She was going to kill her father. “I’m so not interested in a time-share, or an overseas investment opportunity or in opening a mutual-fund account.”
The woman at the other end of the line laughed in what sounded like genuine amusement. “Good. Neither am I. I work for the U.S. government. What I want to talk with you about is classified. Highly classified. Is there somewhere we can meet? I’ll come to Maine if you’d like, or you can come to North Carolina to see me. Or, of course, we can meet halfway, say in Washington, D.C.? Neutral ground for both of us?”
Interest flared in Paige’s gut. She smelled a juicy story. Particularly when this woman very smoothly wasn’t taking no for an answer. Paige knew the technique well. She used it all the time herself to wrangle interviews out of people. A little flustered at being on the receiving end of her own bulldozer tactics, she belatedly answered, “I’d rather go to D.C.”
Her parents’ beach house was sacred. It was her final sanctuary, her last line of retreat from everything and everyone. Besides, if she was going to take control of the meeting with this Blake person, she might as well put the woman at ease. Let her think she was safe, get her to let her guard down.
Ms. Blake was speaking again. “I’ll have a plane waiting for you in Bangor in four hours. I’ll arrange your hotel in Washington tonight, and we can meet first thing tomorrow morning. Oh, and bring your passport. I’ll take care of everything else.” The line went dead.
Paige stared in disbelief. That woman wasn’t a bulldozer. She was an industrial-size steamroller! And four hours? It was nearly a three-hour drive to Bangor, and she’d still need to pack. Paige jumped to her feet and hurried to the house.
The plane turned out to be an unmarked Learjet that whisked her down the coast to Dulles International Airport. Dusk was falling on the nation’s capitol as a similarly innocuous SUV met her at the plane and drove her to an understated hotel in Alexandria’s Old Town neighborhood. It was the kind of place high-profile politicians might use to meet their mistresses or maybe meet a journalist on the sly. After all, the fine art of the news leak was alive and well in this city.
Who was Vanessa Blake?
In the last few minutes before she’d had to leave for Bangor International Airport, Paige had frantically researched her on the Internet and came up with absolutely nothing. In some ways, that was more telling than finding out the woman’s life history. As far as Paige could tell after Net surfing high and low, nobody anywhere believed a Vanessa Blake in government service in North Carolina existed. Either the name was an alias or this woman worked in the intelligence community. Deep inside the intelligence community.
Paige’s interest was piqued. How could it not be? To quote Crocodile Dundee, she was a reporter and a woman, and that made her the nosiest person on the planet.
A call from the hotel phone on the nightstand woke her up the next morning, and no surprise, the caller was Vanessa Blake. “Good morning, Paige. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“No, of course not.” God, she hoped she didn’t sound half-asleep.
“I’ll be downstairs in Private Dining Room B in a half hour. How do you like your eggs?”
“Uh, sunny-side up with a side of bacon. Toast and grapefruit juice while you’re at it, please.”
“I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”
In spite of herself, Paige was a little intimidated. She didn’t want to be late and put herself at an even bigger disadvantage. She hustled through a shower, grateful that her strawberry-blond hair needed only a quick hit from the blow-dryer to be wavy and lush around her face. She tossed on a little makeup and leaped into clothes with two minutes to spare. Thankfully, she didn’t have to wait long for an elevator and strolled into the private dining room exactly on time per Vanessa’s phone call, looking as cool and composed as could be.
Vanessa Blake looked to be in her mid-thirties. She was pretty, but not someone who would turn heads in a crowd. In fact, intuition told Paige that this woman worked to underplay her good looks most of the time. She didn’t carry herself like a law-enforcement type. Not FBI, then. CIA, maybe? Paige’s pulse jumped a little. When news stories came out of Langley, they were usually juicy.
Her quiet hostess seemed content to let Paige eat in peace, and the meal passed without any stunning revelations. Finally, Vanessa laid down her fork and linen napkin. Showtime. Paige leaned back casually, as if her every sense wasn’t on the high alert that it was.
“For the record, Paige, I have an electronic jamming device in my purse that will prevent all listening devices from penetrating this room. It also will scramble any recording you try to make of this conversation.”
That sent Paige’s brows skyward. She replied, “If we’re going to speak strictly off the record, then what is the point of this meeting? I have to be allowed to report the story.”
Vanessa smiled. “I’m not speaking to you in your capacity as a journalist. I’m interested in you for another purpose altogether.”
Okay, now she was confused. Where was this woman taking this? Was she being recruited to work for the CIA? Holy cow. Time to take the offensive. Aloud she asked, “Why me?”
“You fit my criteria … and very, very few women in this country achieve that,” her cryptic companion replied.
Paige frowned. “I beg your pardon? What criteria?”
“You’re smart. You’re resourceful. You’re an outside-the-box thinker. You’re reasonably physically fit—although I’ll improve on that quite a bit before it’s all said and done. Your career puts you in a position to be extraordinarily useful to me because you can plausibly go places that most people aren’t allowed to go.”
Uh-huh. Recruiting me to be a spy.
Vanessa leaned forward and looked Paige square in the eye. “But most of all, you’re motivated. You have a powerful and personal reason for accepting the offer I’m about to make you.”
“And what is that reason?” Paige asked, vaguely alarmed now. Did this woman actually think she could blackmail a high-profile journalist into working for her?
“Jerry Sprague. Your cameraman, and if I don’t miss my guess, significant other.”
Paige involuntarily lurched back from the table.
Vanessa’s gaze held hers forcefully, but her quiet voice continued inexorably. “The real story of what happened to Jerry Sprague. Not the sanitized one that was fed to the public, and to his family for that matter.”
It was Paige’s turn to stare aggressively. “How exactly do you know the real story?”
Vanessa didn’t answer directly. But what she did say stunned Paige into frozen horror.
“Please allow me to express my condolences on your loss. Sprague was a good man, and that was an awful way for him to die. If I don’t miss my guess a second time, you’re hauling around a nearly unbearable burden of guilt at the moment.” She paused and then added lightly, “I thought you might be interested in getting a little payback against the forces that did something like that to a friend and lover.”
How on God’s green Earth did this woman know she and Jerry had been occasional lovers? They’d been extremely discreet about their off-camera relationship. The network didn’t even have any idea of it. Paige blurted, “Who are you to presume to know how I feel about Jerry’s death?”
An infinite well of sadness and knowing filled Vanessa’s gaze. Paige’s anger dissolved abruptly in the face of this woman’s compassion. Vanessa murmured, “You’re not the only person in the world who’s been touched by evil. Who’s seen death. The only difference between you and me, Paige, is that you point cameras at it and I do something about it. Today, I’m offering you the chance to quit being merely an observer and take action.”
“Who are you?” Paige demanded. She was startled to register something already unfolding in her gut in response to this woman’s words. Whether it was yearning for redemption or simple hope that it was possible to act against the badness in the world, she couldn’t tell. She just knew that all of a sudden, this woman had her complete, undivided attention.
“Let me properly introduce myself. I am Major Vanessa Blake of the U.S. Army, Team Leader of the Medusa Project.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Good. If you had, I’d have to shoot you.”
Paige blinked. From the deadpan way the major said that, she wasn’t entirely sure the woman was kidding.
“I have a proposition for you, Miss Ellis.”
Chapter 2 (#ulink_3a28e6d2-fe2f-5652-b108-e85c0323b0a3)
Two years later
Breathing deeply, Paige lengthened her stride to a full-out run. Funny how running so often hurt so much, but every now and then it was like this. Exhilarating. Powerful. Free. The beach sand had just the right give beneath her bare feet, and the waves crashing beside her were as wild and untamed as she felt. The jungle on her other side was thick and mysterious in the pale light of dawn.
Maybe it was because she was so wrapped up in her runner’s high that she didn’t spot the dark lump on the shore ahead of her until she was nearly on top of it. Her initial impulse was to swerve and continue around it. But something about the size and shape of the sodden canvas bag set off warning bells in the back of her mind. If she’d learned anything in her long months of Special Forces training with the all-female team of soldiers known as the Medusas, it was to listen to her gut. And her gut said something wasn’t right about that sack.
She slowed. Walked cautiously the last few paces to the bag. It was big, easily four feet long, and stuffed with something bulky and irregular. The drawstring that held it shut was swollen and stiff with salt water in addition to being heavily knotted. Paige pulled her switchblade out of the concealed sheath sewn into her running shorts and sawed at the tough rope until it popped free. Good thing it was Medusa policy never to go anywhere completely unarmed.
Her nose twitched. The rotting seaweed smell rising from the bag held another subtle note … something foul that made her gut roil ominously. Carefully, she pulled the neck of the sack open. Peeked inside.
She spun away as vomit hurled up and out of her throat explosively. She fell to all fours on the sand beside the bag, her back arched like a cat’s, and emptied her gut. Remnants of bile burned like acid in the back of her throat, tasting so terrible that she retched again. But there was nothing left to heave this time.
Sonofa—
It was one thing to see a dead body. Lord knew she’d done enough of that in her years as a foreign war correspondent. But it was another thing entirely to see the dismembered, partially decomposed remains of someone you knew. She knew that one firsthand, too.
Shaking off the memory of her old cameraman’s mutilated corpse in a military morgue, Paige glanced down at the canvas bag at her feet. It smelled of salt and seaweed—and rotten death. She knew that smell, too, thanks to Jerry.
Nobody’d blamed her when she’d decided to take extra time off and drop out of sight after Jerry’s death. There’d been some murmurs about the nearly two years she was gone. But her cameraman’s death had been a shock, after all, and rumors persisted that she’d been involved in it somehow. Thankfully, the worst of the rumors had been long forgotten by the time she finally showed up on her old network’s doorstep again, leaner and noticeably fitter with an imminently more self-contained look in her eyes than before, asking to go back to work—the more dangerous the locale, the better.
A cold wave washed over her ankles, startling her into jumping back hard. The canvas bag containing the dead man rocked as the water receded. She grabbed the sack and dragged it higher up the beach.
The dead man had a name. Takashi Ando. He’d gone missing forty-eight hours ago, although the Japanese government was downplaying it, claiming he’d gone on a short vacation before the economic summit formally commenced. He was a ridiculously wealthy businessman, and it was fully possible he’d jetted off for a day or two of fun in the sun before attending this important global economic conference. Officially, Paige was here as a journalist to cover the meetings.
Unofficially—well, that was another story.
Paige reached reluctantly for the cell phone in her hip pocket. Her fingers paused over the numbers. Who to call? Greer Carson, her boss at the news network? Or her other bosses? The secret ones nobody knew about?
She’d get all kinds of attention for breaking the big story of the summit. Two years ago, she’d have made the call to the newsroom in a heartbeat. But now …
… now she was less interested in fame. Much more interested in the larger consequences of the news she covered. The network execs would splash the death of the Japanese delegation chief all over the news, and it would rock the core of the summit, if not cause various key parties to withdraw their delegations and go home. Exactly the kind of reaction her other bosses were hoping to avoid.
She sighed. Vanessa had warned her that she would face constant conflicts of interest if she tried to be both a credible journalist and a Medusa. And she’d naively vowed that there was no conflict. That her loyalties were clear. The Medusas first. Her career second.
After all, she’d had plenty of opportunity to expose the Medusa Project to the world and she hadn’t. Even she had to admit she’d probably get a Pulitzer if she wrote the story of women in the Special Forces. But puh-lease. No way would she go through the rigors of army basic training, continue to work her butt off for another year, then sweat, claw and bleed her way through Medusa indoctrination, just to get a story. Nobody was that big of a masochist.
Paige stared down at the bag at her feet. She’d spent her entire career standing back from events like this, detached and objective, merely observing the casual atrocities taking place around her. But she’d never done a damned thing. Oh, sure, she’d felt her share of moral outrage along the way. But she’d never acted on it. Not until now.
Now she was a soldier. A Special Forces operator with the capacity and duty to respond to the murder of a famous, important man. Shockingly, she realized that her careless detachment was gone. Gone, too, was her reporter’s jaded eye. This was her turf. Her summit to protect. And someone had died on her watch. It felt good to be angry, good to know she could act to right this wrong. And in the meantime, she’d show them all that she belonged in the Medusa Project.
Resolutely, she dialed her phone. “Viper, it’s Fire Ant.” The original Medusa squad all took nicknames of dangerous snakes. Her training group of Medusas had elected to give themselves field handles of dangerous insects. Vanessa Blake was Viper, and Paige had been dubbed Fire Ant in honor of her reporter’s sharp bite. Her reddish blond hair probably had something to do with it, too.
“What’s up?” Vanessa asked briskly.
She thought she detected sleep in Vanessa’s voice, but phone calls at weird hours came with the job. She took a deep breath. “I found Takashi Ando.”
“That’s great!”
“Not great. He’s dead.”
Silence greeted that announcement. Then, a terse, “What happened?”
“It’s bad. We’re gonna have to call in the local authorities.”
“Our orders are to keep this summit on track, and the way I see it, Ando’s death has potential to derail the whole thing. Do you concur?”
Paige sighed. “Yes, I concur. The North Koreans are only here because the Chinese twisted their arms. They’re looking for any excuse to pull out. And if any of the South Asian rim nations take their new offshore oil finds and go home, the whole purpose of the summit evaporates.”
“So why do you want to bring in the police?”
Paige winced, but answered evenly enough. “To catch Ando’s killer, maybe? He was murdered.”
A long silence greeted that announcement. Paige was always fascinated to hear what Vanessa came up with when she started thinking hard. But in this case, her commander’s eventual response was only a bland question. “How did he die?”
“Don’t know. I found his body washed up on the beach in a bag. In pieces.”
Another long silence. “Where are you?”
“I’m on the west shore of the island about four miles north of the hotel strip.” The summit was being held on Beau Mer, a resort island smack-dab in the middle of French Polynesia. Neutral territory for all the interested parties. She glanced down at the bag on the sand. Not so neutral after all.
Vanessa announced, “I’m calling in some backup for you.”
Paige’s impulse was to protest. To argue that she didn’t need help. That she could handle this alone. Except, it would be a lie. A dismembered corpse lay at her feet. And she frankly didn’t know what to do next. A niggling feeling that she was missing something important plagued her. It was the same feeling she got when a big story was breaking under her nose and she hadn’t spotted it yet. But what? What was she missing?
Vanessa’s voice interrupted her turbulent thoughts. “The guy I’m going to send you will answer to the name Wolf. Stay put and don’t move Ando.”
Paige snorted. “Takashi isn’t going anywhere.”
“Report to me in an hour.”
Paige disconnected the call and stared glumly down at the gray-green bag. She became aware of fine tremors passing through her body, like aftershocks of a major earthquake. “Who did this to you, Mr. Ando? And why?”
You’re an investigative reporter, Einstein. How would you investigate this thing?
She’d try to track his movements for the last few days of his life. Find out who he’d met with. Called. E-mailed. She’d poke into his past. Into his business dealings. Look for enemies who wanted to see Ando dead. She’d check out everyone who wanted to see this summit fail. Of course, that wasn’t much of a stretch to figure out. Neither the North Koreans nor the Russians were thrilled to be here. And either group had the resources, resolve and mind-set to kill someone if that was what it took to put an end to the summit.
Paige started as the sound of an engine disturbed the rhythmic whooshing of the waves. Far down the beach, a speck was racing toward her. She glanced around quickly. No time to hide the body. She could push it in the water but might risk losing it in the capricious tides. Subterfuge, then. Quickly, she bent down and pulled shut the neck of the sodden canvas bag. Scuba gear. She’d claim it was diving equipment in her bag and she was waiting for a friend to pick her up.
She was surprised when her nerves calmed and her body fell into a state of relaxed readiness. Wow. All that training from the Medusas must have worked. Certainty that she could handle whatever happened in the next few minutes flowed through her. She’d feel better if she had an assault rifle in her back pocket, though. She made a mental note to carry a firearm from now on when she went for her morning runs.
The speck resolved itself into a blob of yellow, and then into a four-wheeled, all-terrain vehicle. Driven by a man. A holy-moly, ay Chihuahua, gorgeous man. Although his hair was dark, slicked back like he’d been swimming recently, and his eyes were dark as well, he looked Caucasian. Just with a really good tan.
A pair of surfboards stood upright in the passenger seat beside him. He wore a baggy pair of swim trunks that did nothing to disguise the sculpted power of his legs and showed off a tanned, muscular chest that frankly made her want to fan herself. Even his bare feet were sexy as he grabbed the roll bar over his head and swung athletically out of the vehicle.
He frowned as he looked at her. “There must be some mistake. I’m supposed to meet a guy called Fire Ant out here this morning. But you’re obviously not him.”
Paige grinned. It was an honored Medusa tradition to mess with male operators and fail to mention that the Medusas were women. She replied cautiously. “You Wolf?”
“Who’s asking?” he replied tersely, all traces of the casual surfer dude abruptly gone.
Ah, the joys of special operators dancing carefully around each other, afraid to blow their covers. She said quietly, “I’m Fire Ant.”
His frown intensified. “Come again?”
“I’m Fire Ant.”
“Sonofa—” He broke off. “Yeah, I’m Wolf.” He nodded at the canvas bag. “That your gear?”
“No. That’s the problem you’re here to help me with.” “What’s in it?”
“A dead man.” She watched carefully to gauge his reaction to the announcement. Interestingly enough, his expression barely flickered. Was he used to being around dead people or was he just extraordinarily self-controlled?
“What do you want me to do with him?” Wolf asked.
“Help me hide him until the right people can come and claim his body.”
He took that news calmly enough. “Who is it?”
Interesting that he should assume she knew the dead man. But then, what other explanation was there for why she’d want to hide the body? She hesitated to tell this guy the dead man’s identity. After all, she didn’t have any idea who he really was.
She shrugged.
He studied her all too perceptively. If she read him right, he didn’t buy for a minute the idea that she didn’t know the dead man. For all she knew, he might suspect she’d been the one to off the victim.
Wolf asked casually, “Any sign of chains or weights in or on the bag?”
“I dunno. I didn’t look yet.” Not to mention she hadn’t thought of it. She clamped down on the chagrin bubbling up in her gut.
“Help me check.”
They squatted in the sand near the bag and examined its exterior surface for tears, holes or other signs of attempts to weigh it down. The smell was worse this close to it. Paige held her facial expression perfectly still, particularly after she caught Wolf’s sidelong gaze on her.
She leaned back on her heels. “I don’t see any signs from the outside.”
“Me, neither. Let’s open it up, then.”
She clenched her jaw but held her position resolutely.
Her companion swore under his breath when he got his first look at the dead man and the condition he was in. Then he breathed, “Ando.”
So. Wolf was familiar with the attendees at the upcoming summit … or else he was conversant with Japanese businessmen and could recognize them on sight, even while dead and starting to bloat.
He commented, “Doesn’t look like any fish have been nibbling on him. Which means he was bagged before he went in the water.”
Wolf reached into the bag and around in the various—appendages—while Paige’s gaze slid away.
He rinsed his hand in the surf as he announced, “Nothing obvious in the bag with our guy. Odd. Who’d ditch a body and not weigh it down?”
Her gaze snapped back to him and she blurted, “Someone who wanted it found, obviously.”
He stared at her speculatively for several seconds. “Grab the bag,” he abruptly ordered.
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Help me lift your guy into my ATV.”
Distastefully, she grabbed the wet canvas and, between the two of them, they heaved the wet sack onto the back of the vehicle. It landed with a sickening thud. Trying to hide her involuntary shudders, she helped Wolf lash the surfboards across the spare tire mounted on the back of the vehicle. The guy knew his way around ropes and knots. But then, so did she.
He swept his arm toward the passenger seat in invitation. As she climbed in, she asked, “What do you suggest we do with him?”
“Put him on ice.”
She frowned over at her companion as he started the engine.
“Literally?”
“Yeah. Unless you want me to help you bury him. Can’t leave a body out in this heat and humidity for more than a few hours for obvious reasons.”
He flashed her a grin and her breath caught in surprise. Whoa. In the television business, that was known as flesh impact. Normal people might call him charismatic. She’d call him a walking advertisement for raw sex.
She mumbled, “The idea is to conceal his death until the summit is well underway. It starts tomorrow. We’re only looking at a day or two. Just until someone can get here quietly to take his body home. His family deserves to get his remains.”
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
“At the beach cottage of a friend. It’s close to the resort the summit is being held at.”
“Perfect. We’ll keep him at your place.”
“No way! I’ve got a refrigerator, but the freezer isn’t close to big enough to hold our friend.”
He shrugged. “So, we’ll buy you a freezer.”
“You can’t just walk into a store and say, ‘Excuse me, I need a freezer right away. Something big enough to hold a dead body for a few days.”
“Sure you can.”
“You’re nuts.”
He glanced over at her. “You got a better idea?”
She sighed. “No.”
“Technically, he only needs to be refrigerated if we’re looking at less than a week of storage.”
Lovely. They bounced over a high berm of sand and turned onto a paved road, heading south. The ATV accelerated smoothly as she studied her companion surreptitiously. Who was this guy? He obviously worked for Uncle Sam, but in what capacity? And how did he know so much about storing dead bodies? She supposed she should leave it alone and just be grateful he’d come so quickly to help out. But she was too much the nosy journalist to let it go.
Of course, she couldn’t ask him outright who he was. Special operators told you only what they wanted you to know, which was usually less than nothing about themselves. Everything else was off-limits. Case in point, she had no idea how much or how little Wolf knew about the Medusas. Just because Vanessa had sent him in to back her up didn’t mean he was briefed on the Medusa Project. Paige memorized his face carefully. And the license plate of the ATV. And the fact that he surfed. It ought to be enough for her to get a name, at least.
“Any idea how he died?” he asked without warning.
She answered as emotionlessly as she could muster, “I didn’t examine his body carefully, but I can tell you this. He was tortured before his death.”
“How so?”
“His fingertips were black. He was electrocuted. That blood pooling would’ve had to happen before he died.”
“Could be the corpse just beat against some rocks before it washed up here.”
She replied shortly, “Trust me. I’ve seen the results of electrical torture before.”
He didn’t comment, and she had no desire to elaborate. Visions of Jerry’s body threatened to steal her composure. She directed Wolf to turn onto the dirt road that led to her place.
The ATV pulled to a stop in front of the whitewashed stucco bungalow. A thick wall of trees blocked it from her neighbor’s view to the south, and a large rock outcropping separated her from the neighbor to the north. She and Wolf carried the bag around to her back porch without incident.
She opened the door and Wolf followed her inside. The kitchen abruptly felt tinier than it already was. Contained within walls like this, her impromptu companion suddenly lived up to his nickname. His eyes were dark and fierce with a predatory intensity that warned her off in no uncertain terms. Not that she was interested in making a play for the guy while a dead man was lying on her back porch.
He opened her refrigerator, a boxy 1970s model, briskly ordering, “Help me empty this out.”
He passed her what little food she had inside, some fresh fruit, a half pound of smooth Havarti cheese, a partial container of pâté and two bottles of wine. He stopped to read the labels of those. “Good choices. Although, that Merlot is too overpowering for a cheese as mild as the Havarti. You need an aged Stilton to hold up to a wine that robust.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I hate blue cheeses.”
He sighed, passing her a metal shelf he lifted out of the refrigerator. “Uneducated palate.”
She scowled. “I don’t need to be sledgehammered by the taste of my food. I appreciate subtle flavors. My palate is refined, thank you very much.”
He grinned at her as he pulled out the last shelf. “There. That should do it. Let’s get your boyfriend in here.”
Jerry’s dead face flashed through her mind. She snapped, “He’s not my boyfriend.”
Wolf threw up his hands. “I was just trying to lighten the mood a bit.”
Her anger subsided, leaving her chagrined. “Sorry. Touchy subject.”
“Why. Your boyfriend the kind who kicks butts and takes names?”
She snorted. “Like I’ve got time for a boyfriend with my work schedule?”
He closed the refrigerator door abruptly, leaving them standing face-to-face, no more than a foot apart. He was a lot more muscular than he looked at first glance. And lethal looking. Like her instructors back on the island. She thought she’d gotten over the whole fluttery female reaction to overwhelmingly alpha males in the past two years, but apparently not.
Belatedly, she realized she was staring at him. She turned abruptly on her heel and headed for the back porch. Wolf didn’t comment, but she felt him smiling at her back as clearly as if she’d been looking at him. When she reached the door, she tossed a quick glance over her shoulder, but his features were perfectly straight. The smile still danced in his smoking hot gaze, though.
She rolled her eyes. Alpha males. All the same. They knew their effect on women and had the gall to be entertained by it. Just because some instinct left over from the Stone Age drew her to him, that didn’t mean she had to act on it. Far from it. She’d learned long ago to run screaming from guys like him.
They lifted the bag and wrestled it through the kitchen door with a minimum of conversation. Getting the dead man into the refrigerator involved standing the bag upright and cramming it into the small space. But eventually the door closed and stayed shut on its own. They tied a rope around the unit to hold the door in place just in case, though.
“I wouldn’t open that until you’re ready to take him out.”
“Ya think?” she asked dryly.
Grinning that thousand-watt smile of his, Wolf slipped out the back door. The screen slammed shut behind him. “Thanks!” she called.
He touched a finger to his brow in a mock salute. And then he was gone. And her little cottage felt oddly empty—despite the fact there was now a dead man in her refrigerator. She headed for a hot shower to wash off the sweat of her run and the creepiness of handling a body bag.
Talk about two ships passing in the night. Too bad she was never going to see Wolf again. He was hot.
She finished her shower, got dressed and duly reported in to Viper. Vanessa told her that an American forensics team had already been dispatched to collect the body and perform an autopsy. They’d arrive on Beau Mer around midnight local time.
In the meantime, Vanessa told her to go on with her normal day and act like a reporter covering the upcoming summit.
Sure. No problem. Morning run. Check. Discover dead body. Check. Stow it in refrigerator. Check. Yep. Just another day at the office.
Paige gathered her laptop computer, a notebook and her car keys, and headed out for her nine o’clock interview with Thomas Rowe, the reclusive billionaire financial advisor to the American delegation at the summit. Apparently, he was some sort of genius regarding anything to do with money.
Getting this interview had been a coup. Rowe never gave interviews. He was barely ever photographed for that matter. As it was, he’d forbidden recordings of any kind during her interview with him. She got to do it the old-fashioned way. Shorthand. Good thing she could take dictation at well over one hundred words per minute and had nearly total audio recall. But what Rowe didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. At least, not until she wrote her story.
She parked her rented MINI Cooper and walked into the plush Athenaeum Hotel at six minutes until nine. The past two years in the military had taught her that if she wasn’t five minutes early, she was late. She stepped up to the concierge’s desk.
“May I help you, mademoiselle?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Rowe. I have an appointment at nine.”
“I’ll ring his suite and buzz you into the elevator.”
She looked around the marble interior of the hotel. It was decorated like a Greek temple, with stone columns and carved wall friezes, which could have been incredibly cheesy. But the decor was so tastefully interspersed with plush Aubusson carpets and luxurious furnishings that the overall effect was impossibly elegant.
“Mr. Rowe is not quite ready for you, but his assistant says you may come up now.”
She stepped into the elevator the concierge indicated and pushed the button for the top floor. Of course Rowe had a penthouse suite. What else? She stepped out of the elevator into a small hallway and knocked on the last door on the right.
An obnoxiously gorgeous blonde wearing a tight business skirt and tailored silk blouse opened the door immediately. “Miss Ellis. Please come in. I’m Gretchen, Mr. Rowe’s personal assistant.”
Ha. She’d bet. With a body like that, it didn’t take a genius to guess just how personal Gretchen meant. Paige followed the woman into a sunken living room decorated in stark white, with lots of chrome and crystal. But then she caught sight of the view out the floor-to-ceiling windows. The Pacific stretched before her in brilliant shades of turquoise, cobalt and sapphire that stole her breath away. White sailboats bobbed on the waves, and a few brightly painted fishing boats added quaintness to the otherwise surreal picture.
“May I get you a cup of coffee or some juice?”
Paige wasn’t fond of the strong coffee favored in this part of the world. “I’d love a glass of water. No carbonation and with ice, if you have it.”
“Of course. If you’d like to sit down, Mr. Rowe will be out shortly. He was held up with a private matter earlier and is running a little behind.”
As Gretchen strolled away, Paige watched the woman’s impossibly long legs. Three guesses as to what—or who—that private matter was, and the first two didn’t count.
Instead of sitting, Paige went over to stand by the windows and gazed at the magnificent ocean below. She didn’t like to meet powerful people from a seated position. It gave them too much subliminal control of the interview from the start.
She’d stood there for maybe two minutes when a door opened behind her. Paige turned around and said, “Thanks for the water, Gretch—”
Not Gretchen.
Wolf. He was clean shaven now, his hair dry and styled—not slicked back from his face—and wearing a tailored business suit that must’ve cost thousands, but there was no mistaking him. If only she’d been able to find a picture of the reclusive billionaire to have recognized him on the beach! The casual surfer dude was gone, and in his place stood this formidable businessman. But the eyes … the eyes were the same. Intense. Smoky. Mysterious.
“You? You and the surfer are the same pers—”
Another door opened and Gretchen stepped out, carrying a tray with coffee, croissants and a pitcher of water.
Wolf held out his hand quickly. “I’m Thomas Rowe. Pleasure to meet you, Miss Ellis.”
Chapter 3 (#ulink_2e4882c2-ec57-5abd-9f5d-58a71598f1d0)
Tom watched his assistant impassively as she set down the tray on the coffee table in the living room. “That will be all, Gretchen.”
She nodded and turned silently to leave. Good assistant. Didn’t need or want pleasantries from him. Plus, she was the soul of discretion and scary efficient. He made a mental note to give her a raise. The door shut behind Gretchen and he turned to face the imminently less predictable woman still in the room with him. She’d moved again by the window and stood facing him, her posture defensive. Good. He liked reporters back on their heels. This one in particular after she’d shocked the hell out of him.
“You’re Paige Ellis?” he demanded. “How in the hell do you know Vanessa Blake?”
“Gee, I was just about to ask you the same thing,” she snapped.
He answered evasively, “We’re old friends. You?”
“Ditto.”
Riigghhtt. The obvious answer was that the woman in front of him was part of Vanessa’s secret team—
He discarded the idea out of hand. No way was a well-known journalist like Paige Ellis part of the Medusa Project. It was laughable to even think about. Except she’d answered to the code name Fire Ant on the beach. A biting insect … hadn’t Vanessa’s husband said something a while back about the new Medusa team going for dangerous bugs instead of snakes for their names?
Surely not. She was a civilian for God’s sake. A pampered media princess. No way did she have the stamina, the fortitude, the sheer guts to be a Medusa.
“So, tell me, Mr. Rowe. What is an important guy like you doing out at the crack of dawn surfing alone?”
“I like to surf. And I like my privacy.”
“But it’s dangerous. Too dangerous for a man of your stature.”
He raised an amused brow. “What’s wrong with my stature? Aren’t I tall enough to surf?” She rolled her eyes at him.
He studied her as she moved from the window to stand across the coffee table from him. Tension vibrated through her entire body, and something deep in his gut responded in kind. Damn her. He didn’t like being off balance like this.
Although she was an attractive woman overall, the first thing a person noticed when they looked at her were those incredible electric blue eyes of hers. Bright and inquisitive, they looked right through a guy and made him feel a little naked in front of her. He jumped in before she could ask the next question burning in her glorious gaze. “And what were you doing on the beach at the crack of dawn, Miss Ellis?”
“Hauling dead men out of the surf, of course.”
“Do you do that on a regular basis?” he asked dryly.
“At least twice a week. It’s great aerobic exercise,” she snapped.
Touchy, touchy. He asked more seriously, “What do you know about Takashi-san’s death? His family will be devastated.”
“You know the family?” she asked softly. Careful to keep his expression smooth and give nothing away, he nodded. “His first wife died of cancer years ago. Wife number two is a former high-fashion model and quite the wild child. But he seems—seemed—happy with her. He’s got a couple of grown kids from the first marriage.”
“Any idea who’d want to kill him and then dispose of his body in such a fashion?”
“You’re the reporter. You tell me.” She shrugged. “The North Koreans and the Russians have every reason to sabotage this summit and properly provoked, they’re both capable of murder. Of course, it could be some business or personal enemy of Ando’s, maybe the Yakuza—the Japanese mob is still pretty powerful. And then there’s always the ubiquitous child who wants to collect an inheritance sooner rather than later.”
Tom jerked, offended. “Not Ando’s sons. They’re both honorable men.”
Paige shrugged. “Then we’re left with enemies or politics.”
“Who’s coming to collect the body?” Paige pursed her lips and looked prepared to be stubborn about answering. He added gently, “I can always call the local police and tip them off to check out your house. In this part of the world, they’d throw you in jail first and maybe get around to investigating the murder later. Or maybe they’d just lock you up and throw away the key.”
She did an odd thing. Her eyes became preternaturally intense, and she became very still. Like she was readying herself to do violence. It was something he’d expect to see in a soldier, not a girly-girl TV journalist. For make no mistake about it, Paige Ellis was all girl. She wasn’t a big thing, maybe five-foot-five. And slender. Not skinny, by any stretch, though. She looked fit. But feminine. And those eyes of hers … he was having trouble looking away from them. They were even brighter and bluer in person than on television.
She spoke quietly. “I don’t take well to being threatened, Mr. Rowe.”
That was more like it. Now she was the one on the defensive. He grinned and picked up a plate of croissants. “Snack, Miss Ellis?”
“No, thank you,” she bit out.
He sat down on the couch facing the magnificent ocean view and poured himself a cup of coffee. Since he never took anything but coffee and croissants before noon, he assumed the water on the tray was for her. He poured some into a crystal glass already filled with ice. He set it on the low table in front of her without bothering to ask. She struck him as the kind of woman who’d answer no to anything he asked of her just to be obstinate.
He enjoyed watching her struggle to corral her temper as she sat down stiffly across from him. Slowly, she pulled out a notepad and a pen. And when she finally looked up at him, her face was calm. Pleasant even.
Impressive.
“So, Mr. Rowe. How did you get involved with this summit? Were you approached by our government, or did you approach them?”
Ah. Retreating into her reporter persona, was she? Surely she was aware of his reputation with journalists. He was known as the worst interview in America. He made no secret of the fact that he despised anyone poking into his personal life. He was even known for finding questions about his business matters offensive. But suddenly, he was finding it damned hard to be offended when he could hardly tear his gaze away from Paige’s tanned and toned legs.
She asked him the usual questions about the global business climate, the outlook for the future, what recommendations he was planning to make at this summit of world business and political leaders. In return, he fed her his usual dodges. He was the master of answering a question with a question, sidetracking the conversation into clarifications of exactly what questions meant and, when she finally nailed him down with a direct question, blatantly not answering it and straying into vague politician-speak about hope for the future.
After about ten minutes of cat and mouse, she sighed and laid down her pad and pen. “Mr. Rowe. If you’re not going to cooperate at all with this interview, why did you agree to it in the first place?”
He leaned back, grinning openly. “I give an uncooperative interview every few years just to make the point that I still don’t talk to reporters. And when I heard you were coming back to television, I thought you’d enjoy the welcome back gift.”
Chagrin flitted across her face. Uh-huh. She thought she’d landed the big catch that would launch her comeback. Sorry. He was nobody’s trophy fish.
A cute little frown wrinkled her brow as she pressed. “Seriously. Why me?”
Now there was a loaded question. With more loaded answers to it than he cared to examine closely. His gaze narrowed. Two could play that game. “I wanted to see if your eyes were as blue in person as they are on TV.”
Only the barest flutter of her eyelashes gave away that she was flustered by the innuendo in his voice. She was really very good at what she did. It was just that he knew her reporter’s game all too well and had no intention of playing along. Women tried to use sex as a weapon against him all the time. He was rich, single, reasonably good looking and still in his thirties, which was to say, he was the Holy Grail to women like her.
“And are they?”
“Are they what, Miss Ellis?”
“As blue in person?”
It was his turn to hide his surprise. He got the distinct impression that was a personal question. Purely off the record. Was she flirting with him?
He studied her, letting his gaze range from head to toe and back until she squirmed once, ever so slightly. Then he answered casually, “Actually, I was more curious whether they’re that blue in bed.”
“In your bed?” she asked shortly.
He shrugged, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“That is something you’ll never find out, Mr. Rowe. This interview is over. I shall, of course, be happy to make it known to my colleagues that you are still as stubborn and arrogant and obnoxious as ever.”
His grin broke free. She was magnificent with her eyes snapping cobalt fire like that and her cheeks bright with color. She leaped to her feet in agitation as he rose casually to his. So. She’d turned down his fairly unusual offer to bed her, had she? A fascinating first.
“Give me a call the next time you find a dead guy on a beach and need help,” he drawled at her ramrod stiff back.
She paused deliberately at the door and looked slowly over her shoulder. She said pleasantly, “Good Lord willing, Mr. Rowe, the next dead body I find on a beach will be yours.”
He laughed heartily as the door slammed shut behind her. He was still chuckling a few minutes later when Gretchen stepped into the room, frowning.
“What’s up, Gretch?”
She handed him a sheet of paper with an e-mail printed on it. “We received another threat against you, Mr. Rowe.”
He sighed. “I get death threats all the time. Tell Nils. He knows what to do.” Nils Olson was his chief of security and a former Swedish Special Forces commando. They’d met when they got caught in a blizzard, helicopter skiing on a mountain in Austria. The big Swede had found him snow-blind and half-frozen. They’d made it down that mountain together and been fast friends ever since.
“Here’s your schedule for today, Mr. Rowe.”
He’d tried for years to get Gretchen to call him Tom, but she’d never budged. He was the boss, and would forever remain Mr. Rowe to her. He knew everyone thought they were sleeping together. But he also knew that she was hopelessly in love with Nils, and Nils was hopelessly focused on his job, completely unaware of her feelings. Tom tried to respect her privacy as much as she respected his, however, and stayed out of the whole thing. And in the meantime, he had a great security chief and an equally great assistant.
He sighed and took the typed schedule. His day was packed with meeting various members of the sixty delegations at this summit, then he had an hour to work out, an hour to rest and shower, and last on the list, the opening ball this evening.
“Have my tuxedo steamed and my black dress shoes shined, will you, Gretchen?”
“Of course.” She moved to the coffee table to collect the tray. “How did your interview with Miss Ellis go?”
“Actually, it went fantastic.”
That made Gretchen look up. She knew as well as anyone how much he despised reporters.
He grinned. “She only lasted ten minutes before she stomped out in a huff.”
“The last one made it nearly a half hour before she gave up.”
“The last one was hoping to get me in the sack.”
Gretchen tsked. “Still. Only ten minutes? You must have been particularly unpleasant today. Either that or this one wasn’t the least bit patient.”
“You’re right. She’s not the least bit patient, our Miss Ellis. Not patient at all.”
* * *
Paige looked around the grand ballroom, scoping out who was present and if her light blue satin gown was too horribly out of fashion. It felt weird to be wearing high heels and jewelry and have her hair piled on top of her head like this. She’d spent so long crawling around in mud, wearing fatigues and toting an assault rifle that she’d almost forgotten what it felt like to get dolled up.
The crowd ranged in more or less concentric circles around the room, with the people growing progressively more financially important as she walked toward the heart of the party. Her gaze swept the innermost circles of power here tonight—a who’s who of the world’s most influential business leaders. Her stomach leaped at the sight of a familiar silhouette, a tall, athletic form she’d recognize whether dressed in surfing trunks or a designer tuxedo.
Of course, he had to choose that exact moment to look up. Their gazes locked. Damn him! He would have to catch her ogling him in a fancy tux that made him look like a cover model. He smirked at her and her palm got a sudden itch to swipe the expression off his face. But rather than give him the satisfaction of getting a rise out of her, she instead pasted on a pleasant smile as she veered away from him and his companions.
Paige snagged a flute of champagne from a strolling waiter and downed the thing in a single gulp. When the next waiter passed, she exchanged the empty glass for a full one and sipped this one a little more temperately. Although she’d been gone for two years, the faces were mostly the same. She had interviewed many of the dignitaries in the room and made polite small talk with them as she cruised the ball.
A number of her fellow journalists were clustered around a bar at the far end of the huge room, but she avoided them. They had an alarming tendency to reminisce about Jerry with her, and frankly, she avoided those memories whenever possible. She might have come to terms with her role in Jerry’s death, but it didn’t mean she wanted to wallow in her lingering guilt.
She felt eyes on her and glanced up, her gaze colliding with the dark, amused one of Thomas Rowe halfway across the room. Jerk. She looked away pointedly. But she couldn’t resist peeking his direction a minute later. Dammit! He was still staring at her!
She yanked her gaze away, vowing to herself not to look at him again tonight. But then the darnedest thing started happening. She’d glance innocently at something or someone, and there he’d be, smack-dab in her line of sight. It was like he was trying to make her look at him. Surely he wasn’t that juvenile.
And then he started moving in on her. Oh, it was a gradual thing, and to the innocent observer would undoubtedly be completely undetectable. But she was aware of every foot closer to her that he came. Was he stalking her? She actually had to curb an impulse to sidle away from him. Double jerk.
The annoying game was interrupted when she overheard his name mentioned among a group of women clustered just to her right. Paige recognized one of them as the wife of the American ambassador to China, a woman she’d interviewed before.
Paige moved in smoothly. “Mrs. Carrillo. You look fabulous! Tell me, are you still working with that international women’s rights group?”
“Why, hello, Paige. Yes, I am. You’re looking lovely yourself.”
“You’re too kind. I didn’t mean to interrupt you ladies … please, don’t stop on my account.”
A woman Paige didn’t know but who sported a thick European accent—French, maybe—laughed. “I was just telling them about Mimi Ando’s rather sordid past.”
Paige said winningly, “I’m sorry. I thought I overheard you mentioning Thomas Rowe.”
The Frenchwoman replied, “You did. He and Mimi were quite an item a few years back. They had a scandalous relationship, even by Parisian standards.”
Curbing her eyebrows, which seemed to want to sail upward, Paige encouraged the woman. “Do tell.”
“Well, they partied their way across Europe and had spectacular fights in the most inappropriate places. And then she met Takashi and dumped Rowe cold. He hasn’t dated another woman seriously since. Rumor has it that she broke his heart.”
Indeed? A jilted lover, was he? Funny he hadn’t shown more reaction to Ando’s body this morning, then, even if to show a certain satisfaction at a rival’s death. But he’d acted entirely unaffected. Not even surprised, come to think of it. Had he known what was in that bag? Was it possible? Had Thomas Rowe murdered Takashi Ando? Over a woman? Her instinct was to reject the notion as absurd. But her training, both in journalism and things military, demanded that she consider every possibility, no matter how outrageous.
She risked glancing around the room in an attempt to spot Rowe. There he was, speaking to a very tall brunette with the kind of body that made other women feel completely inadequate. “Who’s that Rowe’s talking with over there?” Paige asked.
The other women looked around and the Frenchwoman burst out laughing. “Speak of the devil. That’s Mimi Ando.”
Another woman murmured, “While the Takashi cat’s away, the Mimi mouse will play….”
The Frenchwoman shrugged. “Maybe their romance isn’t as dead as it seemed.”
Paige flinched at the reference to death. Ando’s body was still in her refrigerator, awaiting the American forensics team due in later tonight. A gruesome image of his remains flitted through her head. Surely Tom wouldn’t say anything to Mimi about her husband’s death before the American team had a chance to examine Takashi’s remains. And even he wouldn’t be so callous as to tell a woman in a public venue like this that her husband had died.
“If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I could use another glass of champagne. Enjoy your evening.”
“Look me up the next time you’re in Beijing, dear,” Mrs. Carillo called as Paige drifted away.
Paige stepped into the hotel lobby and paced the length of the cavernous space, troubled. Why would Vanessa Blake send a possible murderer to help her this morning? If Rowe was some sort of agent of the U.S. government, had he gone rogue? She opened her cell phone and dialed Vanessa’s private line as she stepped outside into a lush garden in search of privacy.
“Hey, Viper.”
“What’s up?”
“Who was that you sent me this morning? I mean I know who he is. What capacity do you know him in?” “A professional one. Why?”
Paige frowned. “Could you be a little more specific than that?”
“Mind me asking why?”
“Were you aware he had a torrid relationship with Mimi Ando that she broke off so she could marry Ando?”
A long silence greeted that announcement. Finally, Vanessa said heavily, “I’m forced to acknowledge the relevance of that, but I’m having a hard time believing what you’re suggesting. I’ve known Tom for years. He was on Jack’s team.”
Paige’s jaw dropped. Vanessa’s husband was Colonel Jack Scatalone, a longtime Special Forces officer and team leader. He was still one of the Medusas’ primary instructors. And Rowe had worked for him?
“Are you telling me Thomas Rowe is … was … one of us?”
“He was. He’s not an active operator anymore.”
Paige asked grimly, “So, if he wanted to go off the reservation, he’d know how to do it?”
Vanessa sounded surprised. “You seriously think he’s turned? That he killed Ando?”
“I think we can’t rule it out.”
“Jack’s going to have a cow at the idea. He thinks the world of Tom.”
“So don’t tell him about it just yet. Let me poke around a little and see what I can find out.”
Vanessa sighed. “That’s not how Jack and I do business, but thanks for the offer. Call me if you learn anything new.”
“Right, boss.”
She lifted the phone away from her ear thoughtfully.
“And what are you poking into now?” a male voice asked from directly behind her.
Paige whirled, startled, and almost dropped her phone in her shock. Thomas Rowe. “That’s none of your business, Mr.
Rowe.”
“Ah. So the journalist likes her secrets, too, does she? Are we being a hypocrite, perhaps?”
She scowled at him. “You wish. I’m just doing my job. What’s your excuse?”
He laughed, a low masculine sound that scraped across her skin, leaving goose bumps in its wake. “You’re missing all the fun, Miss Ellis. Come inside.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to dance with you.” That made her stare. “What on earth for?”
“To start rumors and wreck your credibility should you attempt to do some sort of negative report on me.”
“I thought you don’t give a damn what the press says about you.”
“I don’t want them to say anything about me at all. That’s entirely different.”
“Dancing with me isn’t going to shut me up.”
He grinned. “I doubt much of anything could do that.”
“And on that insulting note, Mr. Rowe, you can take your invitation to dance and shove it.”
She turned and strode away from him with as much aplomb as she could muster. But she didn’t count on him following her inside. Furthermore, she didn’t count on him reaching out fast to wrap his arm around her waist tightly enough that it would take violence on her part to shake it off. Heads were already turning their way, and if she wasn’t mistaken, eyebrows—and tongues—were wagging.
“Don’t be a spoilsport,” he murmured. “Dance with me. It’s a waltz.”
“And your point?”
Of course he ignored her question entirely and instead commented, “Did you know the waltz was declared scandalous when it was introduced? It was thought to be too sensual for proper ladies. So. Are you a proper lady or not, Miss Ellis?”
She opened her mouth to suggest as politely as she could that he remove his hand from her waist before she broke his fingers, but before she could, he spun her around him and onto the dance floor. Despite his dashingly lean appearance, the guy was shockingly strong.
And she was waltzing.
With Thomas Rowe.
Playboy. Billionaire. Bastard.
And all she could think about was how incredible sex with him would be.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_90fa807e-4d8e-51a2-a914-ba99d81cf0f0)
Tom grinned as the waltz shifted into a slow ballad, the kind where the guy pulls the girl as close as he thinks she’ll let him without slugging him, and the dancing is actually just swaying and shuffling while checking out each other’s bodies. Paige made to step back, but he tightened his arm around her waist to prevent the movement.
“What are you doing?” she whispered furiously.
Amused, he murmured back, “Your reputation isn’t wrecked, yet. One dance with me could just be a polite thing after I granted you an interview. But two dances means there’s something going on between us.”
“You are such a jerk!”
“You’re just now figuring that out? You mustn’t have done your homework on me before our interview, Paige.” Her entire body vibrated in his arms, almost like she was growling. He grinned down at her. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”
Her eyes narrowed to distinctly feline slits. For just a moment, alarm resonated in his gut. If she’d been a man and looked at him like that, he’d have given second thoughts to provoking the guy any further. But as it was, she barely came up to his chin and couldn’t weigh much more than half of his solidly muscled 220 pounds.
His left hand slid down the slinky satin of her gown, caressing the inward curve of her spine. Her body arched slightly away from the touch, which brought her belly very nicely into intimate contact with his groin. Blue lightning snapped and crackled in her eyes.
He probably ought to stop. But damned if he didn’t want to see just what she’d do if she exploded on him. His hand slid lower. The pert bulge of her derriere filled his hand like it had been made for him. Her flesh was firm and resilient and, about as quickly as he registered its sexy texture, went rock hard under his palm.
Her gaze went black. Cold. Furious.
Oooh whee, she was pissed off. It was a sight to see. He had himself an armful of fireball, now….
Her gaze left his for a moment, focusing on something over his left shoulder. Alarm flashed in her eyes, at sharp odds with the fury pouring off her.
And then, without warning, she went limp in his arms, a hundred plus pounds of deadweight jerking him downward. It wasn’t that he couldn’t hold her weight. In fact, he did it easily. It was just that he had to adjust to the surprise of it.
A slight breeze whiffed over the top of his head. What the—
Something hooked behind his right ankle. Jerked sharply. Twin fists smashed into his shoulders. He flew backward, slamming onto his back at full length on the dance floor.
Something heavy landed on top of him. Breasts smashed into his face, and he smelled the most luscious combination of warm female and sexy perfume he’d ever encountered.
Holy cow. She was a hellion when she blew up. He mumbled against her chest, “I want you too, honey, but do you think this is the place for—
“Shut up and stay down,” she snapped. He froze. That was exactly the tone of voice one of his buddies on his old Special Forces team would have used when bad things hit the fan.
“What’s up?” he bit out. Paige was vibrating again, but this time it was pure fight-or-flight adrenaline coursing through her. He could smell it on her skin.
Her breasts lifted away from his face far enough for him to breathe, but she continued to sprawl on top of him. And then it dawned on him—her stance was protective.
She spoke without glancing down at him. “Someone just shot at you. Stay here. I’m going after him.”
And then her weight lifted away from him and she was racing across the room in a flash of ice blue satin. He leaped to his feet. People around him were staring, still frozen in that moment of initial shock before they began buzzing like bees. He hadn’t experienced the time distortion of a hyperadrenaline rush since his Special Ops days, but damned if everyone around him wasn’t moving in slow motion now.
With preternatural strength, he bolted after Paige. She was already slipping onto the terrace and into the night. He put on an extra burst of speed. If she got to the gardens before he caught up with her, it’d be hell not to lose her in the thick tropical foliage and overhanging palm trees.
She dodged down a shadowed path between giant ferns and he followed suit, thankful for her pale dress in the blackness. Damn, she was fast! His legs churned as he chased after her. A branch whipped across his face and he ducked grimly, but pressed on.
Surely she was mistaken. They’d been on a crowded dance floor, for goodness’ sake. There was no way of knowing who the shooter had been pointing at … assuming there even was a shooter. He wouldn’t put it past Paige Ellis to have imagined the whole thing. She was a reporter, after all. She made her living sensationalizing things.
For all he knew, she was chasing nothing at all. But he couldn’t in good conscience leave her alone to the vagaries of whomever might be in this isolated area late at night. Although the way she’d knocked him down in the ballroom, she probably could take perfectly fine care of herself. Okay, so he was out here tearing after her because she interested him. And very few women did that.
He stretched into a full run, arms pumping, breathing hard. There. Another glimpse of blue satin ahead. He ran even harder. Sweat popped out on his brow. The path turned sharply and his dress shoes slipped on the crushed granite. He flailed his arms and managed to catch himself, but Paige had pulled away again.
How big was this stupid garden anyway?
Yard by yard, he gradually closed the gap on her. How on Earth was she running in high heels? The foliage thinned slightly. He vaguely recalled hearing about a rose garden that this resort was known for.
And then he glimpsed something that made his blood run cold. A second fleeing figure not far ahead of Paige. Attired in all black and running like his life depended on it. Worse, she was almost on the guy. And what exactly was she planning to do with him once she caught him? The guy was obviously a pro. He’d break her neck in a heartbeat.
For the first time tonight, true panic speared through him. He’d been shot at plenty during his military career, and he’d had plenty of bullets wing past uncomfortably close to him before. But the idea of watching Paige get her head ripped off scared him like nobody’s business. He dug deep and with supreme effort found an extra gear. Ten yards from Paige. Eight. Five.
A shot rang out and he flinched reflexively.
Rifle. High-powered, large caliber. Sniper rig, then.
The man fleeing before her went flying, tumbling head over heels and crashing into a bush. Paige hit the dirt beside the man and Tom slammed flat beside her. “You okay?” he bit out.
“Yeah. You?”
“Good. What about the other guy?”
Paige reached up awkwardly with one hand and felt the downed man’s neck. “Dead. Sounded like a sniper rig.”
He agreed with her assessment of the lone gunshot.
She muttered, “You need to get out of here. I can handle this on my own.”
“Yeah, well, you’re stuck with me.”
“I mean it, Tom. Go back inside. You’ll be safe there.”
“I don’t give a damn about safe. I want to know who just killed the guy who tried to kill me.”
She glared at him in the darkness. Although she sounded pissed, she looked closer to panicked. “I won’t have your death on my hands! You’ll be safe inside, and I need you to get undercover right now.”
“Not happening.”
Her mental wheels were turning so hard he could almost see them as she tried to cook up some reason to make him go inside. Time for a little distraction. “You packing?” he muttered.
“Where in this dress am I going to stow a weapon?”
He grinned as his hard gaze scanned the area. Too much cover out here. They’d never spot the shooter. Besides, assuming the sniper had killed his intended target, the guy would have already left the area.
“How ‘bout you?” she asked in turn, her head swiveling all around in search of the latest assassin. “You armed?”
“Nah. Hotel security forbade it,” he answered in disgust.
She glanced at him in surprise. “And you actually followed the rules?”
He snorted. “I sure as hell won’t from now on. Who’s the dead guy?”
“Dunno. His name badge says he’s conference security. Goes by Claude Dufresne. He looks European.”
He raised a skeptical brow. “And how does a European look?”
She answered absently as she rummaged in the dead man’s pockets. “Bad teeth covered with nicotine stains from unfiltered cigarettes.”
Okay, he’d give her that one. A certain group of Europeans certainly fit that set of parameters.
She continued under her breath, “His credentials look legitimate. I think he actually was conference security.”
“We’ll have to verify that. If this meeting is compromised, we’ve got a big problem on our hands.” A huge problem, in fact. “It’ll be a mess if the conference has to be delayed or rescheduled—”
She interrupted his train of thought as he started to spin out the alarming possibilities if this economic summit failed. “Tom, you’ve got a bigger problem than that. Someone just tried to kill you.”
“You don’t know that for sure—”
She cut him off briskly. “I was looking directly down the bore of this guy’s weapon. The back of your head was his target.”
“I didn’t hear a shot.”
“He had a silencer on the weapon. I saw the sideways flash when he fired.”
He frowned, still skeptical.
She added with scant patience, “The cops can recover the round and do a ballistics analysis to confirm it. But in the mean time, I’ve got to get you undercover. Have you spotted the second shooter?”
“Nope.”
“We’ve got to assume he’s still out there, then. Stay low and follow me.”
He jolted. Follow her? She could follow him. He retorted, “I’ll go first.”
“You’re the target. I’ll go first.”
“You’re the girl—”
“Shut up, Rowe.”
Well, okay then. He tried another tack. “You’re not exactly dressed to crawl around out here.” “I’ll survive. Let’s go.”
He watched in shock as she hiked up her ball gown around her hips and commenced scrabbling along in a shockingly efficient low crawl, her belly barely an inch off the ground. It took huge strength do that. Where in hell did Paige Ellis develop that kind of power? He knew male Special Forces soldiers who couldn’t do it that well.
Shouting voices in the distance sounded like they were approaching. The cavalry coming to the rescue, no doubt. Paige stopped in front of him in the shadow of an overhanging banyan tree. He pulled up beside her, elbow to elbow. The length of her thigh pressed against his, strong and slender. And damned if she still didn’t smell good.
She glanced sidelong at him, a glint of humor in her eyes. “Wanna stick around to talk to the authorities? The way I hear it, you like them about as much as you like journalists.”
He snorted. “Snakes or lizards—take your pick. I suppose you’re going to want to dust yourself off and jump in front of a news camera and cover this, aren’t you?”
She frowned. “It’ll be a hell of a breaking story. Unfortunately, I have somewhere else to be this evening.”
He matched her scowl, inexplicably irritated. “You got a hot date or something?”
“Or something.” She pushed up to her hands and knees and then to a standing crouch. “You have fun evading the cops, Tom.”
“You’re leaving me?”
“Now that every security guy on the island is converging on this garden, I expect you’re about as safe as you’re ever going to be. Our shooter is either bugging out right now or is already gone. He won’t stick around for the entire French Polynesian police force to surround him.”
She was right, but for some reason, he didn’t like the idea of her leaving him. There was something electric about her presence. She stood upright and commenced dusting off her gown. “Need help with that?” he asked.
She glanced at him. “Lay a hand on me and you’ll withdraw a bloody stump, buddy.”
He snorted with laughter. “Big words from a little girl.”
She turned and stalked off into the shadows. He glanced down, perplexed. Barefoot. Again. She’d been barefoot on the beach this morning, too. He’d noticed then that she had nice feet. High arches and pretty toes with sassy red nail polish. He jogged after her and caught up. “Where are you headed?”
“Back to my place. Thought I might clean out my refrigerator.”
“Ah.”
They walked quickly back toward the hotel, dodging the bulk of the security personnel streaming toward the source of the gunshot. Without warning, Paige grabbed his arm and yanked him off the path into a stand of bushes that had some sort of sharp, prickly frond.
He murmured under his breath, “I knew you were attracted to me, but I had no idea you were this desperate.”
She glared at him and whispered, “They would spend all night questioning us, and meanwhile you wouldn’t be getting any safer. I need to get a security perimeter set up around you.”
A pair of police officers raced past them. Another pair. Lots of shouting erupted behind them in the vicinity of the dead man.
Paige stalked back out to the path and took off toward the hotel without waiting to see if he caught up with her. A security perimeter, huh? It kinda made a guy feel loved. This could turn out to be an interesting conference, after all. Not to mention, damn, she was fun to tease. She rose to the bait so easily for him.
They’d almost reached the brightly lit hotel before he broke the charged silence by asking, “Who’s coming to collect Ando?” Maybe now that someone had tried to kill him, she’d be a little more forthcoming with him. And indeed, she was.
She answered, “An American forensics team. They’ll try to determine cause of death and look for anything else on the body that might help catch the killer.”
“This is going to make a hell of a story for you.”
She threw him an exasperated look. “If I was going to break the story, I’d have done it this morning when I found that bag on the beach.”
He countered, “There’s nothing to stop you from breaking the story now.”
“Yeah, except national security interests and the safety of everyone at this summit.”
He stared. “Are you telling me you actually have a conscience and think about these things?”
She rolled her eyes and merely strode along faster.
He lengthened his stride to keep pace with her as the hotel loomed.
She muttered, “We shouldn’t be seen together. I’ll walk around to the front through the gardens. You can go inside here and kiss whoever’s butt you need to.”
He grinned. “They mostly kiss mine.”
She retorted dryly, “Well, you enjoy that then.”
It was his turn to roll his eyes. She veered away from the ballroom, which appeared to be in an uproar and was emptying quickly. He veered with her. The gardens in this area were crowded with guests and he murmured under his breath, “I’ll give you a ride back to your place.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I never said it was. Nonetheless, the offer stands. My car’s over there.”
Although she glared at him when he took her by the elbow and steered her into the parking lot, she made no further protest. He escorted her to the passenger side of his Jeep and steadied her as she swung into the vehicle. Her ball gown hung up on the door and their hands collided as he reached for the satin to release it. His gaze snapped up to hers.
Her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated. And something flared in his gut in response. It was lust. Just lust. It had been quite a while since he’d been with a woman. Truth be told, until Paige showed up, he’d been cruising the party in search of a female who’d go for a little meaningless sex. Plenty of women at these affairs knew the score. A few nights of mutual pleasure, no strings attached, no promises. A nice piece of jewelry when it was over, and everyone went their own way. But here he was instead, driving away from the hotel with a virago who’d bite his head off if he even hinted at the idea of jumping into the sack with him. He sighed.
Thankfully, for a busybody, she was capable of keeping her mouth shut now and then. The short ride to her cottage was quiet.
He turned off the beach road and stopped abruptly, flipping off his headlights. “I see lights on at your place. How do you want to play this?”
She studied the pair of large, dark SUVs parked in front of her cottage for several seconds. “I’ll take care of it. You head on back to the hotel. And thanks for the ride.”
Did she seriously think he was just going to toss her to the sharks like this? Without comment, he watched her climb out of the Jeep and square her shoulders. Leaving the lights off, he backed up the vehicle and pulled away. But he only went to the beach road before he pulled over and tucked the Jeep behind a stand of palmettos. His tuxedo wasn’t exactly ideal for sneaking around in the bushes, but it would have to do. After a mental apology to Giorgio Armani for ruining his tux, Tom plunged into the dense undergrowth.
With every light blazing in her little house, it was an easy matter to make his way unseen practically to her back door. Three coplike guys who sounded American were clustered in front of the open door of Paige’s refrigerator examining the bag stuffed inside it.
Four more suited men, who sounded local, were standing by glaring and muttering among themselves. One of them turned to Paige and snapped, “Why were we not informed of this discovery immediately?”
“Monsieur Martine,” she answered evenly, “I notified my government immediately. They deemed the security of the summit more vital than following the exact letter of police procedure.”
“You have interfered with a police matter, madame. You face serious criminal charges.”
Tom watched with interest as Paige’s gaze went the temperature of an arctic glacier. She responded in that same measured tone of voice, “You face a much more serious problem than me, monsieur. When word gets out to the members of the summit that one of their own was murdered, you’re going to have a wholesale flight of many of the delegates from the island. And how will you explain to your superiors that your failure to protect the delegates and or to keep a lid on this security breach caused the collapse of an important international summit? Not to mention the negative impact it’ll have on tourism revenue to your island when I break this story. Every wire service in the world is going to pick it up. There will be a feeding frenzy over it.”
The police inspector blustered and broke into angry French that required no translation. Paige crossed her arms to wait out the guy’s tirade. Tom couldn’t help but notice the spectacular things the pose did to her cleavage in that low-cut gown. The blue satin had seen better days after tonight’s adventures, but the dress was still magnificent on her.
Paige finally interrupted Martine. “Which is it going to be? Am I breaking the story of Ando’s murder on my network within the hour, or are we all going to be discreet and cooperative with one another about this?”
More grumbling from the inspector, but the guy was weakening.
Paige continued in a cool voice. “Inspector, unless you’re planning to arrest me, I need to go to my news bureau. I have a story to file.”
“And exactly what story will that be, madame?” the inspector demanded.
Paige shrugged. “For the record, I am under no obligation to answer your question. But as a courtesy, I will tell you that I do not plan to mention the tragic death of Mr. Ando just yet. His family should have a chance to be notified in private before they hear of it on the TV news. I do, however, plan to broadcast the story of tonight’s attempted shooting of Thomas Rowe.”
Tom jolted. He couldn’t be splashed all over the news like that! If her network broke the story, the others would be crawling all over him before long. He had to stop her. At all costs. He couldn’t afford any publicity. Not here. Not now. She’d ruin everything.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_4cec2bf7-3911-5593-aa4b-c140e00d6276)
Paige sailed out of the cottage and sagged against the porch railing as her bravado abruptly evaporated. She had no intention of publicizing Ando’s death—her role in it was suspect for one, and secondly, it really could cause a panic at the summit. The United States was committed to seeing this economic conference come off without a hitch, and to that end, she wasn’t about to rock the boat.
The shooting at Rowe, however, was an entirely different matter. He was a private citizen not attached to any delegation. He was also high-profile tabloid fodder. A shooting at him was the stuff of sensationalism, not necessarily serious news or a threat to the summit. She had no compunction about splashing him all over the news.
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