Dark Cover (The DARK Files #2) (18 page)

On the cross street, she powered the Mercedes the wrong way on the one-way street.

Horns blared and brakes shrieked as vehicles swerved to avoid the crazy lady. At the next corner, she hung a sharp left and zipped up a residential, tree-lined street. She didn’t know or care which direction it went.

“We’re out of sight now.” She gulped air as she slowed. “They won’t know which way we headed.”

“Impressive,” Nick said. “You ever do any stunt driving?”

She laughed, albeit a little nervously. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime. First we need to get Snow to a doctor.”

She punched her mic. “We’re clear, Harris. Direct me to the nearest hospital. And where’s our damn backup?”

***

They delivered the wounded Grant Snow to the Georgetown University Medical Center emergency room. They paced the waiting room until they got word that he’d regained consciousness after surgery. His condition was pronounced serious but not critical. The bullet had damaged muscle, tearing through his neck within a millimeter of an artery. He’d lost a lot of blood, but would recover.

Three DARK officers arrived to stand guard. Once stabilized, Snow would transfer to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to recuperate.

Under escort, Nick drove his abused silver Mercedes to Chevy Chase. By the time they pulled into the garage, darkness had fallen on the dreary day.

When they exited the car, Vanessa clicked her tongue at the scrapes and dings. “Sorry about your baby.”

“She’ll heal.” He scratched his head. “Don’t know exactly how I’ll explain this to my insurance company.”

“Don’t. DARK will cover you.”

“Like they did this afternoon?” He still simmered. DARK hadn’t detected a trap. Backup had arrived too late to do anything but escort them to the emergency room.

“The CO will knock some heads together over that one. The traffic on M Street held them up. We had cars waiting on three different routes. Nobody anticipated the bad guys would have the same strategy. They haven’t hacked into my tracking device or bugged the car. Low-tech surveillance, but thorough.”

A DARK officer opened the door. After assuring them the house was clear, he vanished. Janine had left hours ago.

Nick led the way to the kitchen. “I’ll make some coffee.”

“Good idea.” Vanessa lifted a note from the countertop. “Janine left a main course and salad in the fridge.” Her hand rested on the refrigerator door handle. “I’d expect a restaurant supply magnate to be a chef, but Janine creates all the meals.”

“That sounds like a challenge. I know my way around every kitchen from a greasy spoon to five-star dining. I’ll cook for you one evening. My specialty.” A nice candle-lit dinner would be a good break for them both.

“It’s a date.” She opened the door and ducked inside as if to conceal the blush heating her cheeks. “Yum, looks like shrimp scampi. Ready for nuking.”

For the next few minutes, only the clatter of cutlery and dishes being set on the table broke the silence.

Nick retrieved coffee beans from the cupboard. His hands were thankfully steady, and he exhaled slowly. He’d held up through the attack, even put a few slugs in the sedan’s grill. Afterward the shakes hit, racking him like an influenza fever. He’d surfaced before the drive home.

He measured out the beans into the grinder and pushed the button. The coffee’s rich fragrance soothed his senses.

“You all right?” She set the salad bowl on the breakfast bar, then took the two steps to stand beside him.

“I’m fine. No problem.” He didn’t want her hovering, babying him. Or did he? Ground coffee and water went into the drip machine. He starting the brewing and set out mugs.

“Snow nearly died. You both could’ve been killed.” She looked up at him, the concern in her candid gaze turning to anguish. “You did an ace job, but you shouldn’t have had to pinch-hit for DARK today.”

She could’ve died too, but she wouldn’t appreciate his reminding her of that possibility. He swallowed.
He schooled his expression and voice not to give away his emotions. “Someone had to step up to the plate.”

She smiled. “The rust on your Special Forces skills didn’t show. From where I sat, I saw a confident sortie.”

She was partially right. Their success at escaping the ambushers gave him another measure of confidence. But…“False confidence. Put me in combat, and I’m in the zone. Training and instincts kick in. But only as a low-level grunt.” No one should trust him to set up an operation.

Before she could object, he added, “You were the real heroine this afternoon, Ms. NASCAR. Your battery must need recharging.” He handed her a mug of coffee.

“Thanks. I was in the zone too.” Falling silent, she sipped her coffee at the breakfast bar. She’d pulled her hair on top her head with one of her doodads.

The microwave beeped. He checked the temperature of the shrimp dish and carried it across the kitchen. They served themselves and ate in silence side by side.
He smiled. With her, even the silence was companionable, comfortable. Damn. Besides all the turmoil surrounding them, he had a new problem to contend with. Vanessa.

The woman, not the government officer. This thing between them was more than casual. More than sexual attraction. Although he hadn’t been this obsessed with sex since he was a hormonal teenager.
Every day she slid more under his skin. He found himself thinking about her at odd moments, picturing her face or recalling her laugh or the way she knew to offer comfort and understanding with a touch on his arm.

Maybe her empathy was part of the undercover role. Maybe it didn’t matter. After his aborted engagement, he didn’t want anything serious. Or even long term. She was right about his family issues, family honor, but wrong about what it meant for his life. He worked fourteen hours a day in his business because he had to. A family was out of the question.

But not a brief liaison. After this operation ended, she’d leave and so would he. They’d never see each other again.
A blazing affair that scorched those silk sheets was what he needed. What she needed, if he read her signals right. Their having sex couldn’t be any more of a distraction than the frustration of not having sex. She’d see that too. Her professional barrier crumbled more each time they kissed.

Looking up from the temptation of her elegant neck, Nick observed her frown. He knew what was bothering her. “So if they didn’t track you and didn’t follow us to Georgetown, how did New Dawn know where we were?”

“If I could answer that,” she said through a bite of cucumber, “we’d have a prime lead to Husam Al-Din.”

“Our lunch companions all have ties to Yamar.”

“Prince Amir is reported to have led Yamari troops when New Dawn guerrillas tried to disrupt the presidential election. Do you suspect Nadim or Ambassador Khalil?” She rolled her shoulders. Her muscles were probably stiffening after her strenuous stint at the wheel.

“Nadim? Not a chance. He’s the ultimate Western capitalist. But Khalil is an enigma. Remember, he lost the election. He could’ve been president.”

“You’re thinking he might have changed allegiance?” When he nodded, she said, “It’s worth looking into.”

The telephone jangled. Nick’s pulse jumped. He knew who it was before he picked up. “Markos here.”

“Arrange for a transfer of funds,” said the accented and still-unidentified voice, “and your woman will be in no more danger. Nor will you. I will be in touch again soon.” A click terminated the call.

Nick regarded Vanessa expectantly.

After listening intently to her earpiece, she shook her head. “Cell phone again. Different number.”

Good thing they hadn’t found the ten million yet. He’d be tempted to give it to New Dawn just to end the threat. “Al-Din won’t quit. You’ll sleep in my bed again tonight. And every night until this is over.”

Her gaze flitted away. “We’ll see.” She rubbed her shoulder, the one she’d fallen on the previous night.

He turned and kneaded her shoulders. “Your muscles are tight as sailors’ knots. Later I’ll give you a good rubdown.”

The thought of massaging her soft flesh tightened his body. Tonight. It was time.

She stiffened, then slipped off the stool and ducked away. “Debriefing’s starting in a few minutes. Don’t wait up for me.”

She hustled out the kitchen exit and toward the house next door.

His mouth tightened, and other parts of his anatomy. Removing her barriers might take a little more doing than he’d thought.

***

By Sunday evening Vanessa was as tightly wound as the space robot her brother had years ago. He tinkered with it and powered it up to the point of critical mass. Metal and plastic limbs and stalk eyes and internal winky-dinks had cannoned all over the living room. If her nerves didn’t give soon, she’d explode like that juiced-up robot.

The high-priced artwork on Alexei’s sale list had indeed come from the Vienna robbery and two other gallery thefts, but the black-market sales were so far untraceable.

DARK had made no gains in tracking down Husam Al-Din. His captured goons would say only that New Dawn would prevail. The two burglars had entered the U.S. on student visas, and the other two, picked up in the initial stage of the Georgetown car chase, possessed no papers. All were dead ends, yielding no clues to their esteemed leader. The other DARK unit compiled a list of possible targets for the Veterans Day attack, but nothing firm.

November second. Veterans Day was only nine days away, and they had no idea where New Dawn would strike.

She and Nick hadn’t located the ten-million-dollar dingus. And she’d made little headway in peeling off the layers of the military’s cover-up of his Somalia mission.

But none of those frustrations were responsible for her ragged nerves.

Nick took all the blame.
Nicolas Markos. And her tangled emotions.

She sipped her wine. The French champagne — from the house cellar — looked like liquid gold and tasted like heaven. But the intoxication fizzing in her blood came from the man in the kitchen. He was cooking for her tonight, something delicious-smelling called Greek beef. He’d settled her on the sunroom sofa with the wine and a tray of appetizers.

Settled wasn’t exactly the word. She hadn’t settled since their sweaty session on the gym floor.

When she’d returned late Friday from the debriefing, she discovered that he waited up after all. He rubbed her shoulders with fragrant lotion until all her muscles and bones liquefied. Then he tucked her in bed — his bed — kissed her sweetly and left her for his pallet on the floor. The only reason she closed her eyes at all was her lack of sleep the previous night.

After yet another night in the same room, the tension rose to a fever pitch. It was as if a magnetic field arced between and around the two of them.
She felt off balance, as sensitive as a hair trigger. His every action seduced her.
Common sense and her professional duty told her to beware, but her foolish heart ignored the warning. Nick would never betray DARK’s plan, so what was the harm if they yielded to chemistry?

A relationship with him could be only sexual. She wasn’t the woman for him. She wasn’t sophisticated and beautiful like Danielle — well, that was a bad example — or Diana. What would a world-traveling executive see in a plain government officer other than the undercover role she played?

And he had all that baggage of lost honor to work through. Darkness lurked at his core like a coiled force. Yet his mood had gradually lightened during the past few weeks. Maybe he felt empowered by taking part in DARK’s plans. For sure the slight change had nothing to do with her.

He wanted the persona she projected in her rich-girl clothes. At least he wasn’t using her to get to Diana or some society babe. A brief encounter was all she could expect. When this operation ended,
they
would end.
That knowledge lodged a hot ball in her throat. Her heart would break whether or not they made love.
He didn’t love her, but he wanted her. That was clear.

He constantly touched her — her hair, her cheek, her mouth. As they walked, he kept his hand on the small of her back. He spoke softly into her ear, privately, just for her. That deep, sexy voice made an inventory list sound like a hot proposition. Every look, every touch weakened her knees and her resistance. Away from the house, her protector, he hovered, his rangy body tensed for danger, his expression flinty, his eyes alert as a hunting hawk’s.
The man was a walking aphrodisiac.

He crossed the room to her now with the champagne bottle. Her pulse jumped like a cheerleader at homecoming. In black trousers that clung to his sinewy thighs and a silk T-shirt the color of fine red wine, he nearly had her drooling.

He eased down to the cushion beside her, close enough to wrap her in his familiar scent. He turned toward her, his left knee bent and touching her thigh. Not in protection mode at the moment, he appeared focused solely on her. His gaze cruised her face and down her body with blatant heat. “Wrap your mouth around one of these.”

Before she could compliment him on the variety of bounty, he popped a stuffed grape leaf in her mouth. Blinking, she bit off half. Chewed slowly. Fought for equilibrium.

The man was hand-feeding her.
The dinner was cooked. And so was she.

“Well?

SHE SWALLOWED, CLEARED her throat. “Delicious.”

“More?” He offered a ripe olive as large as a plum.

“Whoa, buster.” She held her champagne flute in front of her. “We have the whole evening.”

The olive went back on the tray.

The corners of his mouth kicked up in a smug smile. He stretched his left arm behind her and rested it on the sofa back. The powerful male animal surveying his prey. He curved his right hand casually over her knee, an invitation to closeness, to intimacy.

The blue flames in his eyes glowed with banked desire. “You’re right. Why rush things? Slow and easy works for me.”

Was his seduction deliberate? Oh, yeah. A rheostat had dimmed the lighting. Logs crackled gently in the fireplace. Champagne. Succulent appetizers.

Turnabout was fair play. If she could slip into her undercover woman-of-the-world role, she’d steam up the room.
He was making her melt. She would make him sweat.