Cherry Adair - T-flac 03 (3 page)

"Holy Hannah! Ramon has a
medical
degree?"

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"No."

Delanie frowned. "But you just said—"

"I said we went to med school together. He didn't finish."

"Did that have anything to do with the fact that he was at least ten years older than his classmates?"

"He wasn't," Kyle told her shortly. "I was eight years younger than the average."

"Doogie Howser, huh?"

"Something like that," he said dismissively. "I'll make arrangements for you to leave tomorrow morning."

"I beg your pardon?" That had certainly come out of left field.

"Sorry." Kyle said, not sounding in the least bit apologetic. "Was that sentence too complicated for you?

How about this. You." He pointed. "Leave." He made a running motion with his fingers. "Tomorrow."

The finger took a dive.

"You should've been a comedian. If you're so offended by my presence,
you
leave."

"You don't know what the hell you're in the middle of, Delanie." Kyle kept his voice low and cool, and the fire in his pale eyes banked. "You don't know him like I do."

"He's
my
lover," she reminded him coldly, wishing she had an antacid for her revolting stomach. "I assure you, I know him as well as I need to."

"Somehow I don't think so." His brow cocked as he scrutinized her. Kyle Wright had an uncanny way of watching her that made her feel as though he could read her mind. It wasn't going to be easy hiding anything from him.

"Once you dissect a cadaver together after an all-night keg party, you get to know the other guy pretty damn well. And believe me, Montero and I did our share of kegs and corpses together. Wanna compare notes?"

She shook her head. He crossed the room toward her, his stride long and loose. His clothing was expensive, well-tailored, fitting his rangy body well. He
could
be a doctor, or an investment banker, or a businessman. But one look at his ice-floe eyes, and a person would know he wasn't anything so tame.

Just
what
he was, she wasn't sure.

She frowned when he sat in the middle of the same sofa and sprawled against the glove-soft leather, stretching out his legs, crossing them at the ankle. Speculation, and something else, flickered in his expression. It was the something else that made her heart lurch.

Determined not to let him rattle her, she studied his face.

"What could you have that a man like Ramon Montero would want?" she mused aloud. "It can't be your…" she eyed his black T-shirt, black jeans, black boots… black scowl. "Flair for fashion," she managed dryly. "And surely you've both outgrown keggers. Are doctors making house calls these days?"

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She hadn't missed the obscene chunk of gold and diamonds he wore on the pinkie finger of his right hand. A twin to the ring Ramon wore. She loathed jewelry on men.

Half turning, he rested an arm on the back of the sofa. It was a very relaxed pose, yet Delanie could almost feel the crackle and pop of energy emanating from him. "I'm not a medical doctor anymore."

"Shitty bedside manner?" she suggested sweetly.

"Ph.D. Switched to biotechnology and virology research." He tasted his drink and assessed her over the glass. "And you took a different career path, too, right? From showgirl to playmate? Were you aware of what Montero was before you… hooked up with him?"

Oh, you mean a drug-dealing terrorist and a sadist
? Delanie forced a laugh. "Do you think I'd come to the middle of nowhere with him if I didn't?" She leaned back, flinching when she encountered his hand on the cushion behind her head. "And the reason I changed career paths ought to be obvious. Money.

Glamour. Nice clothes. It only took a few weeks working at the Cobra before he singled me out."

Agonizingly embarrassing weeks. Weeks of worrying and questioning her sanity. Weeks of mingling with and befriending people she would've run from in real life. She'd lived in her sister's apartment, worn her sister's clothes, and God help her, practically absorbed her sister's personality. And existed on antacids.

She'd done, and said, whatever it took to gain the attention of the big boss.

Nonchalantly she reached for her glass and took another sip of iced coffee. "And obviously I knew he owned the casino."

His eyes flickered for a nanosecond to the corner camera and back. "Owned the ca—Yeah, right," Kyle said drolly, proving he, too, knew of Montero's criminal activities.

Delanie felt ridiculously disappointed and more afraid than ever. Of course he knew. He was here, wasn't he? She got up and strolled to the sideboard across the room. If she didn't get out of here soon, she was going to do something really stupid. Like have a nervous breakdown.

She held up the frosted glass carafe. "More coffee?"

Kyle stood, draining his glass before following her. "Perhaps in the next couple of days you'll give me a guided tour of the compound." He gave her an ironic look. "If you can find time to squeeze me into your busy schedule, that is."

She felt stalked, and hitched a hip on the sideboard as he handed her his empty glass. "Sorry. You'll have to ask someone else. I've only been here a week myself and Ramon keeps me pretty busy."

An iridescent beetle the size of her fist scurried across the floor toward her. If crushed, the smell alone would be overpowering enough to evacuate a large room. Its sting could kill in minutes. Her sandals clattered to the tile as she swiftly lifted herself onto the sideboard and swung her bare feet out of harm's way.

She read Kyle's intention a second before he managed to step into the V of her thighs. "Oh, I don't think so!" Delanie jumped down and grabbed her sandals.

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"Your mother should have taught you not to grab." She managed to sound amused as she stepped around him. "Just because something's for sale doesn't mean
you
can afford it."

"True. There are some things not worth keeping around at any price."

"Don't—" she warned as Kyle lifted a booted foot to step on the lethal beetle. Ignoring her warning, he crushed it beneath his heel, then turned and strode from the room.

The second the stench rose, Delanie slapped a hand over her nose and mouth, then watched Kyle's retreating back through tear-drenched vision.

"Damn you, Kyle. Damn you."

«^»

Still furious ten minutes after their encounter, Kyle removed his shoulder holster and weapon and placed them on the foot of the enormous bed in his suite. He'd left his stinking shoes outside for one of the invisible servants to dispose of.

What in God's name was Delanie, with her soft, pouty, lying mouth and those deceptively innocent baby browns—which did a piss poor job of hiding secrets—doing here? Her presence complicated everything. And her presence at both the inception and completion of this assignment was suspect.

Coincidence, or something far more calculated? With Montero one never knew. This entire mess was tenuously built on lies, fabrication, and bullshit. One truth and the entire operation would come down like a frigging house of cards. All he had to do was maintain for five more days.

Five days compared to the last fifteen hundred? No sweat.

Kyle yanked off his clothes and walked naked into the opulent cream-and-gold marble bathroom and cranked on the shower.

Hearing about Montero's new girlfriend-in-residence at lunch this afternoon had thrown him a curveball.

Kyle had spent the previous six weeks in Atlanta arranging the last delicate chess pieces, the
final
pieces, and setting the stage for the grand finale. Up until then he'd known all the players in Montero's game, and Delanie Eastman's name had never been mentioned. And God only knew, even if it
had
, he wouldn't have connected the woman he'd met briefly all those years ago with someone Montero would have any interest in now.

Someone's ass was grass for not being more thorough and keeping him properly briefed. Lives depended on his knowing Montero's every blink and fart.

Kyle savagely loosened his braid, his yardstick, as it were, of how long he'd been undercover and on this particular job. Four years, three months, and four days.

He stepped beneath the cool, hard jets and let the pulsing water pummel his neck and shoulders, causing his hair to glue itself uncomfortably all the way down his back.

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He reached for the shampoo.

He'd inform Ramon at dinner that he didn't want her here, especially at this crucial time. That if she stayed, he'd walk. He knew his unstable, unpredictable host well enough to know that he'd better take this carefully. No sudden moves.

Just because his scrotes pinched, knowing the kind of danger Delanie was bringing down on her own head, didn't mean he had the luxury to go off half-cocked. He hadn't gritted his teeth, gone at a frigging snail's pace, and controlled his every urge to take Montero down
now
for all these years, just to blow it at end game.

Damn it to hell. How was he supposed to keep her safe for the duration when she was way the hell 'n'

gone on the other side of the hacienda and under Montero's watchful eyes?

He'd have to hurry the hell up slowly. She didn't deserve what would surely happen if she was still around at the end of the week.

He had five days to get her off the mountain.

Sooner—he wiped shampoo out of his eyes and reached for the soap—would be better than later.

It shouldn't take much to get rid of her. Like cotton candy, she'd melt after one bite.

Kyle gave the empty dining room a cursory glance when he arrived a few minutes early for dinner.

Reflected in a wall-size gold-veined mirror behind it, a large, quite magnificent Ming vase, filled with tropical foliage and golden-green orchids, was showcased on a centuries-old Spanish sideboard. Kyle strolled over and poured a glass of wine from the silver serving tray there.

Across the room hung an enormous oil: a Spanish Mediterranean villa, purported to be the original home of the Montero family and dating back to the sixteenth century. Montero flaunted his Spanish ancestry and expected his acquaintances to attach as great a prestige to his pure Castilian blood as he did. In reality, Montero's late father had stolen the painting from a Spanish monastery thirty years before. The history of the Montero family fortune could be traced no further than Ramon's introduction to terrorism twenty-two years ago. There wasn't a drop of Castilian blood to be found anywhere down the line.

Ramon Montero had been inconveniently born in Monterey, Mexico, and had dragged himself up by his sandal straps.

Everything about Montero's hidden hacienda was a testament to how good taste could be bought. A decorator on retainer, an art restorer on his payroll, and a scout who brought his boss the best that money could buy. Or in many cases, steal.

And one leggy, brown-eyed blonde.

Few people were left who knew of Ramon Montero's humble beginnings, and fewer yet who would dare voice disbelief. Terrorism and the cocaine trade had made him one of, if not the, richest men in the world.

A generous philanthropist, Montero's "legitimate" art collection alone was appraised into the millions. His acquired artwork was worth at least that much, if not more. As part of his diversification into legitimate
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business, Montero owned coffee and orange
fincas
and one of the largest horse-breeding farms in Kentucky. He was also heavily invested in real estate all over the world.

Not to mention, he was head of one of the world's most powerful drug cartels, involved in international-scale money laundering, and the leader of one of the most vicious and profitable international terrorist organizations ever known.

Over the last ten years various law enforcement agencies had tried, and failed, to put a stop to his activities. Montero was too fast and too clever. But what he now wanted to unleash on the world had brought together some of the most powerful international agencies in a collaborative effort to end Montero's reign of destruction. The logistics, intricate and on a need-to-know basis, spanned the globe.

Once and for all, they were going to take down Ramon Montero and all his associates.

In five days Ramon Montero would be stopped. And stopped dead.

Kyle was merely the sharp tip of the wedge that would finally put an end to Montero's terrorist acts for good.

And Delanie was smack dab in the middle of it.

"Casing the joint?"

"Only for what I can get into my pockets," Kyle said dryly as he turned. "Yowza!"

Unlike this afternoon, tonight Delanie wore full battle garb. The fire enginered dress, consisting of a scrap of latex, clung to her breasts and thighs as if painted there by a miserly hand. She was an insanity-inducing combination of Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Rabbit.

And if he didn't miss his guess, she was blushing as he let his eyes take a leisurely tour. Nevertheless she spun around, arms extended, so he could get the stereo version of what passed for her dress. She dropped her arms when she came back to face him again. "You like?"

"What's not to like?"

The changes in her appearance in the years since he'd last seen her were subtle. Hair a little blonder, clothes a little tighter.

Her eyes appeared even darker surrounded by smoky color, her already-long lashes thicker and more seductive. Slick red lipstick painted her succulent mouth with moisture. Streaky, honey-blond hair had been pulled up and away from her face in loose, just-got-out-of-bed curls. She looked good enough to eat, and knew it. As overblown and overt as she appeared, Kyle still experienced the familiar immediate arousal he'd relived at the pool earlier.