The Spy Who Left Me (7 page)

*   *   *

It’s been a hell of a day,
Ty thought as he parked in front of the plantation house and jumped out of the car. In no mood for company or conversation, he kicked off his shoes and headed to the beach behind Big Auau for a cool, moonlit walk to clear his head. The soft, dependable pounding of the surf soothed his nerves and provided the perfect white noise to drown out the doubts, the horrors he’d witnessed, and the dark turn of his thoughts.

Could the day get any worse? First his hacked-off wife showed up out of the blue from the mainland, hounding him about that damn divorce. Then moments before he arrived at Woo Ming’s, persons unknown slit Shen Lin’s throat, effectively eliminating Ty’s planned way into the tightly guarded Sugar Love Plantation, the neighbor plantation to Big Auau.

He flicked a glance down the beach in Sugar Love’s direction and scowled at the fortress pretending to be a wedding plantation.

Damn it, I need to get in there and find out what RIOT is up to and when the sale of the Pinpoint Project is supposed to go down. I’ll have to find another way. And quickly.

The thought of Shen Lin getting the jump on George and strangling him before George could react sent a shiver down Ty’s back. George had been the best wushu expert the Agency had had in thirty years. A regular Bruce Lee with the mild manners and soft-spoken nature of George Smiley.

George had saved Ty’s ass in what they later laughingly referred to as the great Beijing Pearl Market Caper. Ty had taken on six monkey knife fighters each armed with a kris when George appeared out of the shadows to take down four of them, leaving Ty with a measly two to handle.

Ty ran his hand through his hair. Now someone even more deadly and skilled had gotten the jump on Lin. Of course, Lin’s killer got away clean. And Ty had had the misfortune of arriving while there was still a spark of pleading life left in Lin’s eyes.

Lin had been cocky, always ready with a story of his sexual exploits told in his Chinese New York accent. But he’d been a hell of a waiter. If Lin hadn’t murdered George, and been aiding the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization, Ty wouldn’t have minded shooting the breeze with him when he dined at Woo Ming’s.

Ty couldn’t just stand by and watch Lin die without at least making an attempt at saving him and pumping what info he could out of him. Which turned out to be exactly nothing. Hard to talk with a slit throat. Talking is also not the first thing on your mind as your lifeblood is spurting out of you before your eyes.

In the end, all Ty accomplished for his humanitarian effort was contaminating the crime scene, incriminating himself in Lin’s murder—being covered in the victim’s blood will tend to do that—and nearly blowing both his cover and the mission.

And for all his trouble, he had had to duck out of Woo Ming’s without getting his favorite Kahlúa-barbecued pork eggroll. All that foiled lifesaving left him with too little time before the sunset cruise to clean the bloody mess up himself.

Turned out calling Derek and his informal hazmat team to dispose of the body hadn’t been the best move, either. Next time he’d have to remind Derek to dump in deeper, shark-infested waters. There’d better be a good story behind why Lin’s body only made it as far as the harbor.

Which led to Ty’s favorite event of the day, the complete hat trick. Lin’s body ends up as a floater wedged against the bottom of the glass-bottomed boat
for Treflee to find and freak out over.

She was supposed to have been getting pelvis-pounding, lust-inducing ideas from watching bare chests, undulating hips, and the swish of grass skirts. To remember the time he’d taken her to Waikiki five years ago and humored her by taking a hula lesson with her. The grass skirts they’d bought. How they’d laughed and danced a seductive hula all the way to bed. How much he loved her then … and now.

So that when he professed his undying love after the cruise, gave her the eighteen-inch princess-length string of perfect white pearls he’d bought for her months ago, and made his move, she’d be hyped up and receptive. But, no. He was the one who had ended up all wet tonight. A complete failure on all missions.

He took a deep breath and stared at the moonlit-tipped waves as they crashed in. The sand felt cool and refreshing beneath his feet. He dug his toes in and wished he could stand there forever with nothing more important on his agenda than simply breathing.

But he never shirked duty. Back at the plantation house, a whole host of problems awaited him. In unison with the thought, he turned to look over his shoulder. A flutter of curtains by a balcony door on the second floor of Big Auau caught his attention.

What the—

That’s my room!
He frowned, staring intently at the scene.
I didn’t leave the door open. Which means—

He caught a movement so faint it might have been a hallucination. He focused in on it. The silhouette of a woman being strangled emerged. Her long, silvery hair fluttered as she struggled against a hooded figure tightening a garrote around her neck.

Treflee!
His heart pounded into overdrive.

Hang on, baby!
He took off at a run up the sand hills toward the house, praying he’d arrive in time, willing her to fight right, fight smart. Hoping she’d remember what he’d taught her.
Fight the attacker, not the hold, Tref!

*   *   *

Instinctively, Treflee clawed at the lei around her throat. Her gloves got in the way.

Get loose! Get air!

A plastic flower broke off in her hand. She tossed it away without thinking, pulled off her gloves and dropped them, and felt the strain of the exertion immediately.

Crap!
Every molecule of oxygen counted now.
Every single one.

She tensed her neck and struggled to get her fingers between her throat and the cord. Her attacker reacted by wrenching harder. The plastic cord gave, stretching just slightly before he could wrench again and correct it. Enough for her to get half a breath. If she were very lucky, the cord would snap completely. But somehow getting the strangler to keep twisting and tightening in the hopes the cord snapped before she did seemed like a flawed strategy.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t smell. Couldn’t cry out.

She stumbled, fighting to stay on her feet.

Behind her, the man with the plastic lei breathed evenly and calmly in her ear, so close she could feel his body heat and sense his excitement.

She bet he had a hard-on as he killed on little cat feet while she panicked and struggled futilely as her cousin and friends dished about their evening in the surrounding rooms. Without strain or a single grunt to give him away and bring them running. Extinguishing her life as easily as he sipped rum on the beach.
Damn him!

Her eyes stung. Her throat burned. Her body felt like a lead weight pulling her down.

Memories. Her life flitting before her eyes? Ty’s voice echoed in her head.

Fight the attacker, not the hold, Tref!

Through the haze of her quickly fogging brain, she remembered now what he’d shared with her from his training.

She dropped her chin against her chest, which bought her a quick, shallow breath. Enough to give her a burst of strength.

Act quickly! Mean it! You’ll only get one chance.

Adrenaline driving her, she threw her arm out in a forty-five-degree angle, made an elbow, and slammed it behind her directly into her attacker’s stomach.

He let out an
oomph
and doubled forward, loosening his grip enough for her to take a breath.

Before he could recover, she pounded a fist downward into his groin, just like Ty had taught her.

He groaned and bent farther forward, dropping the lei to clutch his crotch. She caught a deeper breath and pulled the lei off, noticing a Chinese character tattooed on her attacker’s neck as she did.

Her animal instincts called for blood.
Finish him, finish him, finish him!

She was too weak in body and too gentle in spirit to give in to the bloodlust. She bent over, hands on knees, hair falling forward over her face, and took a breath that ached all the way down her throat into her chest. Nothing had ever hurt that good before.

Run!
her mind screamed.
Escape!

She would have. If she could only make her feet of clay move. She should have. Behind her, the happy strangler had stopped groaning and started softly cursing. Or so she assumed. She didn’t exactly understand the language he spoke. Which meant nothing good on all fronts.

She had at her disposal, just a wall or two away, several lady cops, a large
wahine,
and a nurse. She only had to call them. She opened her mouth to yell and did a pitch-perfect impression of the silent scream.

She heard something rustle just outside the balcony door and looked up, brushing the hair from her face.

Ty swung onto the balcony from the jungle of a garden below as nimbly as Tarzan, landing lightly and gracefully on his feet, a regular Baryshnikov.

In the dim room, the moonlight highlighted the take-no-prisoners look in his eyes as he charged past her. She pushed to stand and turned to watch him go after the bad, bad man who’d tried to kill her.

The lei-strangler, however, was apparently no coward. Even though he was a good four inches shorter than Ty and a lot more slightly built, he ran toward Ty in full frontal attack mode. Just before the two collided, Strangler did an aerial leap over Ty and bounded off the balcony into the night.

Ty stared after him. Treflee could tell he was wondering whether he should follow. Finally he muttered something beneath his breath and came over to put his arm around her.

“Now who would want to kill you?” he asked in a tone so full of irony that despite her weakened, recently oxygen-deprived condition, she felt like slugging him.

“This … your—”

He put a finger to her lips and gave them a gentle stroke. “Shhh. Rest your voice.”

She brushed his lecherous finger off and made a gesture indicating his room, frustrated with the annoying skip and deep, raspy tone her voice had developed since nearly being choked to death.

“Ah,” he said, nodding. “My room. You think they were after me?” he whispered, his voice surprisingly tender.

He bent down and picked up the plastic lei. He held it out by a finger. “And they thought they could do it with this tacky, highly lethal thing? Or is it yours?”

Under other circumstances, she might have given him a piece of her mind. But her throat ached. She was dead tired. And frustrated on too many levels to count. Instead, she gave him a gentle shove for insinuating she had poor taste. Which she did. In men.

He flipped on a lamp on the dresser. “Let me take a look at you. Make sure you’re okay.” He caught her in his arms and pulled her close so suddenly she couldn’t protest.

As he brushed her hair out of her face with the strong square hand she used to love to hold and squeeze, she realized her sense of smell had returned. At a totally inopportune and weak moment. Not good.

He smelled like cologne, adrenaline, and pheromones. Not that you could consciously smell pheromones. But they must have been there or her body wouldn’t be reacting as if pulling him onto the bed and breaking her vow of no sex with the nearly ex was a good idea. He gently tilted her head back and ran his hand down her throat.

Her pulse leaped in her neck as he leaned in to inspect her throat.

He clicked his tongue. “Tardieu spots.” His warm breath brushed against her skin, reminding her of the Latin lover imitation he used to do to amuse her. Throw her back over his arm, trail kisses down her neck …

Come to think of it, that move almost always ended in bed.

Tardieu spots. Concentrate on Tardieu spots,
Treflee told herself as her traitorous body ached for his touch and goose bumps of delight rose on her arms. He was probably making that up, spewing something he’d once heard his mom, who was a pediatrician, say. He had a photographic memory, but he misapplied it when it suited his purposes.

He tilted her head farther back still, exposing the length of her neck, leaning in to her throat so closely she wondered if he was going to kiss her like he used to—from lips to everywhere.

In that insane, stunned moment she knew why vampires were such sexy and horrifying creatures. The neck, vulnerable and exposed, was a lover’s dream, the ultimate triumph of trust. A whisper-soft kiss on it was erotic. A suck, a lick, love bite, brought shivers.

He continued his examination, moving his hand all the way down the length of her neck, over her collarbone, to the top of her trying-not-to-heave, or at least not obviously, breasts.

When he skimmed the tops of her breasts lightly with his fingertips and they budded up for him like spring roses, she came to her senses and pushed him away.