Dangerous to Know (30 page)

“He probably thinks he's going to get another treat,” Maggie muttered.

“Isn't he?”

“If you give away another one of those biscuits, that shaggy Hungarian won't be the only one howling.”

He sent her an amused look. “You get a little testy when you're hungry, don't you?”

“Very!” she warned. “Remember that.”

“I will,” he promised, his eyes glinting.

The agent patrolled the shore while Maggie and Adam walked
out onto the spit for a few moments of much-needed privacy. They had to contact headquarters. Relay the latest developments to Jaguar. Formulate a game plan for communicating in an insecure environment. None of which could be done in a house wired from rooftop to wood-plank floor.

Despite the urgency of their mission, however, the initials carved into the weathered trunk tugged at Maggie's concentration. Pulling off a glove, she traced the deep grooves.

“
T
and
H.
Taylor and Harold.”

“Hal,” Adam reminded her, leaning a forearm against the tree. His breath mingled with hers, soft clouds of white vapor in the sharp mountain air. “She called him Hal.”

Maggie nodded. “Hal.”

With the tip of one finger, she followed the smooth cut. It had been blunted a bit over the years, but had withstood the test of time.

“Did you know him?” she asked.

“I met him once, just before he died. He was a good man, and a gifted sculptor. I have a bronze of his at home.”

The glint of gold on Maggie's finger caught her gaze. “They must have loved each other very much,” she said softly. “The words inside this ring make me want to cry.
Now, and forever.
”

When Adam didn't reply, she squinted up at him, her eyes narrowed against the now-dazzling sunlight reflected off the lake's frozen surface.

“Don't you believe in forever?”

Unaware that she was doing so, Maggie held her breath as she waited for his answer. There was so much she didn't know about this man, she acknowledged with a stab of uncertainty. He kept his thoughts to himself. His past was shrouded in mystery. Their only contact was through OMEGA and their work together.

Only recently had she finally acknowledged how much she wanted him. Yet now, staring into eyes deepened to midnight by the dark blue of his ski jacket, she realized with shattering clarity that wanting wasn't enough. Physical gratification wouldn't begin to satisfy the need this man generated in her.

In that moment, with the sun cutting through the distant peaks and their breath entwined on the cold, clear air, Maggie knew she wanted more. She wanted the forever Taylor had never had. With this man. With Adam.

“I believe in a lot of things, Maggie, my own,” he said softly, in answer to her question. “Several of which I intend to discuss with you very soon.”

My own.

She liked the sound of that. A lot. Suddenly very soon couldn't come fast enough for Maggie.

“It seems as though the list of things we have to discuss with each other is getting longer by the hour,” she replied, her smile answering the promise in his eyes. “Right now, though, I guess we'd better contact Jaguar.”

They moved to a boulder at the end of the spit. While Maggie brushed the snow off its flat surface, Adam punched the necessary codes into the transceiver built into his watch.

To the agent on the shore behind them, it must have appeared as though they were enjoying the panoramic vista of an ice-crusted lake skirted by towering dark green firs. Shoulder to shoulder, Maggie and Adam shared the rock and waited for headquarters to acknowledge the signal. He kept his arm tucked against her body to muffle the sound of Jake's voice.

“Jaguar here. Been wondering where you were.”

“I couldn't check in this morning. Chameleon discovered a hidden device in her room. We had to assume there was one in mine, as well.”

Through the crystal-clear transmission, Maggie could hear the frown in Jaguar's voice. “What kind of device?”

“One that our scanners didn't pick up when we swept the rooms last night. Or someone planted while we were downstairs.”

“Can you describe it?”

Maggie bent her elbows across her knees and leaned forward. Keeping her voice low, she spoke into the transmitter. “About an inch square. Wafer-thin. Blue-gray in color, made of a com
posite material I've never seen before. It looks like plastic, but it's a lot more porous, almost like a honeycomb.”

“That doesn't fit any of the designs I know. I'll have the lab check it out.”

“Tell them to dig deep. This might be the first break we've had on this mission.”

A hint of excitement had crept into her voice. She'd had plenty of time to think through this unexpected turn of events during the long hours of the night…after she'd left Adam's bed.

“Tell the lab to talk to the Secret Service's technical division. Those guys have access to the latest materials.”

“You think the Secret Service planted a bug in the vice president's bedroom without her knowledge or approval?”

“I don't know,” Maggie confessed. “But if they did, the order had to come from high up in their chain.”

“Like from the secretary of the treasury himself,” Jaguar drawled.

“Exactly.”

“Slip someone into Digicon's labs, as well,” Adam instructed. “I'm willing to bet they're using this composite material in the work they're doing for NASA.”

“I'd say that's a pretty good bet,” Jaguar commented. “By the way, you might want to know that we've confirmed Stoney Armstrong's suspicions about First Bank.”

“First Bank is laundering drug money?”

“Laundering it, dry-cleaning it, and serving it up starched and folded. It took our auditors some time, but they finally uncovered a blind account that traced back to a dummy corporation fronted by a major cartel.”

“Tell them they did good work.”

“They didn't do it all on their own. We got some inside information. From a source tracking it from the other end.”

“Is the source reliable?”

“Ask Chameleon,” Jake drawled. “She had dinner with him when he was in Washington a few weeks ago.”

“Luis!” Maggie exclaimed. “
That's
where I heard about First
Bank! I knew it was in connection with something other than the president's inter-monetary whatever.”

Adam's black brows snapped together. The idea of Maggie having dinner with the smooth, oversexed Colonel Luis Esteban, chief of Cartozan security, didn't sit particularly well with him.

“What's Esteban's interest in First Bank?”

“His government's trying to unfreeze the assets of the drug lord Jaguar and I helped take down last year. Evidently First was holding some.”

“And?”

Maggie shrugged. “Cartoza's a small country. They were getting the runaround from some bureaucrat or another. I made a few calls to one or two of my contacts and hinted at high-level government interest on our side.”

“How high?”

Her eyes gleamed. “I more or less left it to their imagination.”

Adam frowned. There were too many references to First Bank cropping up for simple coincidence. First, there was the president's plan for stabilizing the Latin-American economies, which the bank had helped draft. Then Stoney Armstrong. Now Maggie and her smarmy Latin colonel. There was a connection. There had to be.

“Is that team of auditors still in place?” he asked Jaguar sharply.

“I was going to pull them out today.”

“Keep them there. Have them examine every transaction, every wire transfer, for the last two years. See if Digicon does any business with them.”

“Roger.”

“And have them look into any blind trusts that may have been set up to handle accounts for persons currently in public office.”

“Like the secretary of the treasury?”

“Like the secretary of the treasury. Get back to me immediately if they turn anything up. Anything at all. There's a link here that we're missing. Something that ties it all together.”

“Will do.”

Adam signed off. Rising, he shoved his hands into his back pockets and frowned at the lake.

“What do you think it could be?” Maggie asked. “This link?”

“I don't know. But it's there. I'm sure of it.”

She regarded him with a solemn air. “Careful, Thunder. Your sixth sense is showing.”

Adam turned, and felt his heart twist.

Maggie shone through the facade of her disguise. His Maggie. Irrepressible. Irresistible. Her eyes alight with the mischievous glow that snared his soul.

Surrendering to the inevitable, he reached for her. At that moment, he didn't care who was watching. Who was listening. He had to kiss her.

“Mmm…” she murmured a few moments later. “Nice. See what happens when you let yourself go and operate solely on instinct?”

“I've been operating on instincts where you're concerned for a long time,” he said dryly. “You defy all logic or rational approach.”

Laughter filled her eyes. “I'll take that as a compliment.”

Adam caught her chin in his hand. Tilting her face to his, he warmed himself in her vibrant glow. “It was intended as one.”

“Hmm… I think this is something else we have to add to our list of topics to discuss. Soon.”

“
Very
soon.”

Her breath caught. “Adam…”

He would always remember that moment beside the lake and wonder what she might have said—if the distant throb of an engine hadn't snagged her attention. If the agent on the shore hadn't turned, his head cocked toward the humming sound. If the dog hadn't risen up off its haunches and swung its massive body around.

Adam lifted his head and searched the tree line.

“It sounds like a snowmobile,” Maggie murmured, a frown
sketching her forehead. She listened for a moment, then stiffened in his arms. “It's not coming from the direction of the cabin.”

“No, it's not. Come on, let's get off this unprotected spit.”

Tension, sudden and electric, arced between them. The dog picked up on it immediately, or perhaps sensed the danger on his own. He growled, deep in his throat, and pushed ahead of them onto the pebbled shore. His huge paws had just hit the snow when the first snowmobile burst out of the screen of trees.

It darted forward, a blue beetle whizzing across the snow on short skis. A second followed, then a third. The white-suited driver in the lead vehicle lifted his arm, and a burst of automatic gunfire cut the Secret Service agent down where he stood.

Maggie and Adam dived for cover. In a movement so ingrained, so instinctive, that they could have been synchronized swimmers, they rolled across the snow. On the first roll, Maggie had freed Taylor's puny little weapon from her pants pocket. On the second, Adam's far heavier and more powerful gun was blazing.

The first attacker came at them, spewing bullets and snow as he swerved to avoid the counterfire. Maggie left him to Adam and concentrated on the second, who was circling behind them. She got off one shot, and then a shaggy white shape hurtled through the air.

An agonized scream rose over the sound of gunfire and roaring engines, only to be cut off by a savage snarl.

A
dam saw at once that they were outgunned and outmaneuvered.

Their Secret Service escort lay writhing in the snow, blood pumping from a hit to the stomach. They couldn't reach him without running along a stretch of open, exposed shoreline. The downed man's only hope of survival was for them to keep the attackers focused on their primary target. And her only hope was escape.

Obviously Maggie reached the same conclusion at exactly the same moment. She thrust herself upward, leaving the shelter of the shallow depression her body had made in the snow.

“Cover me!”

“No! Get down! Dammit, Maggie—”

Since she was already plowing across the snow, Adam had no choice. Cursing viciously, he rose on one knee. His blue steel Heckler & Koch spit a stream of fire at a white-suited figure zigzagging through the trees on a gleaming blue snowmobile. The driver jerked, and a sudden blotch of red blossomed on his shoulder. The hit was too high, only a flesh wound, but the
assailant fell back, out of range, before Adam could get another clear shot.

Cursing again, he swung around.

Radizwell had knocked the second figure sideways, out of his seat. The riderless vehicle had skidded forward for another fifty or so yards before running up a high drift at an angle and tilting over. Screaming and thrashing, the driver flailed his arms in an effort to protect his face from the dog's savage assault. Adam didn't dare risk a shot from where he knelt. The sheepdog's massive body all but covered the downed man.

The third attacker circled through the Douglas firs, spraying automatic rifle fire in wild arcs as he tried to handle both his vehicle and his weapon. Adam couldn't get a clear line of fire through the screen of trees. In frustration, he raised his arm and squeezed off a shot. An overhanging branch snapped, dumping a shower of white just as the figure passed under it. For a few precious seconds, the automatic went silent.

Those seconds were all Maggie needed. Plunging through the knee-high snow, she reached the overturned snowmobile. At that point, she had to choose between charging forward another fifty yards to retrieve the Uzi the driver had lost when Radizwell hit him and snatching at their only chance of escape. The sound of rifle fire behind her decided the matter. She couldn't hope to reach the weapon before the other two attackers cut her—or Adam—down.

Grunting with effort, she heaved the sputtering snowmobile upright. Bullets stitched a line in the snowbank just above her head as she threw herself onto the seat and grappled frantically with the controls. The vehicle jerked forward, almost tumbling her backward. She grabbed at the handles for balance, then leaned low and gunned the engine.

The few moments it took her to reach Adam would repeat themselves in her nightmares for the rest of her life. He knelt on one knee, arm extended, pistol sited at a target darting through the trees. His black hair and blue ski jacket stood out against the dazzling whiteness of the snow and made him a
perfect target. He was trying to draw the attackers' fire, Maggie knew. Away from her.

At the sound of the snowmobile coming at him from an angle, Adam swung around. For a heart-stopping moment, his weapon was trained directly on Maggie. It jerked in his hand. A sharp crack split the air.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the figure struggling to escape Radizwell had made it to his knees. Adam's shot sent him diving facedown in the snow for cover. The dog promptly landed on his back.

Maggie reached Adam half a heartbeat later. Throttling back on the controls, she slowed a fraction. As soon as she felt his weight hit the seat behind her, she rammed the machine into full power. His arm wrapped around her waist like an iron band, cutting off her air. She barely noticed. She hadn't drawn a full breath since the first shot. Opening the throttle all the way, she aimed for the tree line.

The chase that followed could have come right out of a movie. A horror movie. Using every evasive tactic she'd been taught, and a few she invented along the way, Maggie dodged under low-hanging boughs, swerved around granite outcroppings and sailed over snowbanks. At one point, she took a turn too close. Prickly pine needles lashed her face, momentarily blinding her. The snowmobile swerved, tilted, righted itself.

“There!” Adam shouted in her ear, pointing over her shoulder.

She squinted through the involuntary tears caused by the sting of the needles. Following the line of his arm, she saw a wall of serrated granite slabs thrusting out of the snow to their left. To her blurred eyes, the gray-blue mass looked impenetrable.

“Take it hard and fast! Right through the notch!”

“What notch? I can't see!”

He twisted on the seat behind her, shoving his weapon into his jacket. Then he reached forward, an arm on either side of her, and took the controls. Maggie felt a craven urge to close her streaming eyes completely as the sheet of granite loomed in front of their hurtling vehicle.

Just when it seemed they were about to hit the wall, Adam threw his weight to one side and took her with him. The vehicle tilted at an impossible angle. Its left ski lifted, scraped stone. The engine revved louder and louder as the right ski dug into the snow. The vehicle hung suspended for what seemed like two or three lifetimes, then shot through the narrow opening.

Maggie would have shouted in joyous relief, if her blurred vision hadn't cleared just enough to see what lay on the other side of the wall. A ravine. A big ravine. About the size of the Grand Canyon. At its widest point.

Adam's hands froze on the controls for half an instant, then twisted violently. The engine screamed into full power.

“Hang on!”

As if she had any choice!

Maggie didn't hesitate at all this time. She scrunched her eyes shut and didn't open them until a bone-jarring jolt told her they'd landed on the far side. When she saw the steep, tree-covered slope ahead, she was sorry she'd opened them at all.

Branches slashed at their faces, tore at their bodies, as they whipped down the incline in a series of snaking turns. Her heart jackhammered against her ribs with each zig. Her kidneys slammed sideways on every zag. All the while she strained to hear behind her, listening for sounds of pursuit over the scream of their engine and the roar of her blood in her ears.

At the bottom of the slope, Adam yanked on the controls and slewed the machine to a halt. He shoved himself off, backward, and immediately sank to his knees in the snow.

“You take it from here.”

“No way!”

“Get moving.”

“No!”

Above his whiskered chin and cold-reddened cheeks, Adam's eyes flashed icy blue fire. “That's an order, Chameleon. Move!”

“I'm the field agent on this mission. I'm not dividing my forces, or what little firepower I have!”

“Dammit—”

“I'm not leaving you. Get on the vehicle!”

Every second wasted in argument could be their last. She knew it. He knew it.

His jaw working, Adam threw a leg over the rear of the snowmobile.

 

They finally slowed to a stop at the crest of a wooded rise. Maggie kept the snowmobile idling, afraid to shut it off completely, in case they had to make a quick getaway. Eyes narrowed against the sun's glare, bodies tense, they listened and searched the woods below for signs of pursuit. Maggie was the first to pick up the rise and fall of engines in the distance.

“There's at least…two of them,” she panted. “Maybe three…if…Radizwell didn't have the S.O.B. for lunch.”

Adam angled his head, listening intently. “They're following the ravine. Looking for a place to cross.”

He shoved back his sleeve. The flat gold watch nestled among the dark hairs of his wrist glinted in the morning sun.

“Jaguar, this is Thunder. Do you read me?”

Their breath puffed out in white clouds, rapid and ragged, while they waited for a response.

“I read you. Go ahead, Thunder.”

“We've run into a little unfriendly fire. How close is the backup team?”

“Twenty minutes by helicopter,” Jake snapped instantly. “Give me your coordinates.”

Anticipating the need, Adam had already dug a small rectangular case out of his pocket. Not much bigger than a package of chewing gum, the digital compass received signals from the Navstar Global Positioning System. Navstar had proved its capabilities during the Gulf War by guiding tank commanders across the vast, featureless Saudi deserts. Its current constellation of twenty-four orbiting satellites could pinpoint time to within one-millionth of a second, velocity to within a fraction of a mile per hour, and location to within a few feet.

“Latitude, three-nine degrees, six—”

He broke off as the distant sounds died. Maggie inched the
throttles back as far as she dared to quiet the noise of their own engine and concentrated all her energies on listening.

“Six minutes,” Adam continued. “Longitude, one-two-oh degrees—”

A sudden burst of horsepower cut him off once more. He stiffened, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords as he swiveled in the direction of the sounds.

“They got across!”

Engines revved. Grew louder.

“They're coming straight at us!” he snarled. “How the hell did they double back and find our tracks so quickly?”

Maggie turned a startled face to his, as stunned as he. Then her eyes dropped to the gold watch.

“Maybe they didn't find our tracks! Maybe they're homing in on the satellite signal!”

Adam didn't waste time in further speculation. The satellite signals were supposed to be secure. Scrambled. They'd never been broken or intercepted before. But an individual who knew how to bypass the sophisticated electronic filters in the White House switchboard might well have broken into a supposedly secure satellite system.

“Six-one, Jaguar! Six-one!”

With that emergency signal telling Jake to stand by until further contact, Adam abruptly terminated the transmission.

 

They managed to shake their pursuers once again.

The sounds of the distant motors fell away as Maggie steered an erratic course, up one slope, down another. Dodging fallen trees and low-hanging branches, she headed for a line of low, ragged peaks to her right. From the angle of the sun, she calculated they were headed due east, away from the cabin. Given the topography, however, she couldn't circle back. She had to follow where the mountains led.

Her face was stinging with cold and her numbed fingers were locked on the throttles when the machine under her began to sputter and miss. Maggie glanced down at the dash, trying to find the fuel gauge. She tore one gloved hand loose and rubbed
it across the snow-covered indicator. Sure enough, the red bar danced at the bottom of the frost-encrusted gauge, almost out of sight.

Not two minutes later, the engine died. The snowmobile skidded a few feet farther up the slope, slowed to a crawl, stopped, then began a backward slide. Adam dug his boots in and brought them to a halt.

For a few seconds, neither of them moved. They remained silent. Listening. Searching the trees behind them.

Somewhere below them, their attackers were equally silent. Listening. Searching the trees above them.

“They're waiting,” Adam said, his voice low. “For us to signal again.”

“Bastards.”

“They won't have used as much fuel as we did riding double. They'll catch us easily.”

“Who?” Maggie muttered angrily. Her mission had just exploded in her face, and she was furious with herself for not having anticipated it. “Who are ‘they'? How did we go from a narrow list of suspects to a whole damned strike team?”

“Whoever knew you were going to be at the lake this morning,” Adam tossed back.

From the rigid set to his jaw, Maggie saw that he was no happier about this unexpected turn of events than she.

“Everyone knew,” she snapped. “It was some kind of a ritual with Taylor.”

“And if they didn't know, we told them,” Adam added, disgust lacing his voice. “Last night, in my bedroom.”

Maggie struggled to rein in her anger. “We're no longer dealing with a lone assassin here. This individual has a whole organization behind him. Obviously we need to reassess our mission parameters.”

“Obviously.” Adam pushed himself off the snowmobile and drew in a steadying breath. “Right now, though, our first priority has to be cover. If they don't pick us up soon, they'll call in air support and continue the search from the air.”

“Denise and her people will have heard the shots and found
their downed man by now. They'll be searching, too—assuming one of them wasn't behind the attack in the first place,” Maggie finished heavily.

“I don't think we can assume anything at this point. I suggest we burrow in until dark. The chances of them picking us up at night after we signal Jaguar will be slimmer. Marginally slimmer, admittedly, but slimmer.”

Nodding, she clambered off the snowmobile and surveyed the now-useless vehicle.

“I guess we'd better see what we can salvage from this hummer.”

While Adam used the butt of his pistol to break off pieces of one of the small mirrors mounted on the handles, Maggie pried open the storage compartment. Inside, she found a pitiful cache of survival equipment—one metallic solar blanket, so thin it folded into a plastic pouch the size of a candy bar, a small tool kit, and a spare pair of goggles. Evidently their attackers hadn't planned on a prolonged stay in the wilderness.

Adam knelt on one knee to bundle their small cache of equipment in a piece of fender he'd broken off. “You'd better take that off,” he said, nodding to indicate her bright pink jacket. “I'll wrap it up with the rest of this gear.”

Maggie didn't need to be told that the vivid color made too visible a target. Her shiver when she tugged off the thick layer of down wasn't due to the chill air.