White Heat (17 page)

Going commando was a new, and not altogether unpleasant experience, but the muted sound of voices from the forward cabin made her dress quickly.

She flinched at the unexpected knock on the door, then cursed the way her heart leapt into overdrive. Max was back.

“Are you decent?” a woman called, opening the door a crack.

As if Max would knock. “Sure.”

Emily’s first reaction as the woman strolled into the room was that Max had a girlfriend. And here she was, with her striking red hair and fascinating face. Earth Mother. Emily imagined her against a dark teal background, looking over one bare shoulder— Good God. She wasn’t going to
paint
this woman.

Hell. The rat fink bastard had had sex with
her
three times in the past few hours, and he wanted to introduce her to his
girlfriend?
The redhead put out her hand, ice-green eyes warm. Her skin was lovely, lightly tanned and without a blemish. She was probably a few years older than Emily, but she was in superb physical condition in close-fitting black jeans, and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. In fact, Emily was wearing an identical outfit, and presumed it belonged to Max’s “friend.”

“AJ Cooper. Wright really, but that confuses things.”

Emily shook her hand automatically. Slender fingers, but calloused. Short nails. No polish. No jewelry other than a large-faced wristwatch. “What things?”

“I started as an operative before I got married, and everyone knows me by my maiden name. It’s just easier to keep it simple.”

So Daniel hadn’t been
all
wrong. Max was having an affair with a colleague. A
married
colleague. It didn’t surprise her, but it pissed her off. Daniel had been right. Max was a very smooth player. The fact that she’d slept with him again made him an asshole, but worse, made her feel damned stupid. So much for giving herself the pep talk.

“You’re married?”

The redhead smiled, her eyes filled with pleasure. “Kane Wright. He also works for T-FLAC. We met on an op.”

“Really?” Emily said coolly, wondering how fast she could find something else to wear. “That’s pretty dangerous, isn’t it? Having your husband
and
lover both in the killing business?”

“Yikes. You sure leap to conclusions, don’t you?” AJ grinned. “Max and Kane are friends. And Max is
not,
nor has he ever been, my lover.”

“God. I’m so sorry.” Emily rubbed her forehead, feeling like an idiot. She had jumped to conclusions based on nothing but her own insecurities.

“Hey, no sweat.” AJ dismissed with a smile.

“Ready to grab something to eat? Max filled me in on the happenings. He went into town with the team, but he should be back in an hour or so.”

Another bullet averted, Emily thought, not amused that the thought of Max and this woman together had annoyed her. Her stomach rumbled. “Breakfast sounds good.”
And I’m too involved with Max to be rational.
And she needed to keep her chin above water if she was to survive this.

“Great, come on.” AJ pushed through the door. “I introduced myself to Keiko Niigata an hour ago. We let you sleep as long as we could. What Max didn’t fill me in on, Keiko did. She told me you whipped some guy’s ass with a hubcap.” She gave Emily a high five.

“I bet Max forgot to mention I hit him with a cast-iron frying pan, then kneed him in the family jewels, didn’t he?” Emily mentioned dryly.

AJ laughed. “I love a girl who’s resourceful. Smell that? Keiko has the whole bacon and eggs and waffles thing going. Yum. I’m starving, too.”

And apparently AJ was used to doing a monologue. She glanced over her shoulder, her red-gold braid a long snake down her back. “Sorry to talk your ear off. Comes from being married to, and working with, Alpha males who are great in a battle but hard on a woman’s ego when she wants a little conversation. Monosyllabic hardly covers it.”

Emily smiled. “Part of their training?”

“As a male? Yeah. God that looks as great as it smells:’ she told the Asian woman without drawing a breath between subjects. “Let’s eat before the testosterone brigade gets back:’

Emily glanced at the open door. The guy who’d been in the car with them yesterday stood guard at the top of the steps, a large, menacing gun over his arm.

“Morning:’ Emily greeted Keiko. “Thanks, this looks great.” She accepted the offered plate, nodding at the man situated outside. They never had been introduced. “What’s with the wet suit? You were wearing the same thing yesterday:’

The matte black material clung to every curve and valley of his body, and made hiding anything pretty much impossible.

The woman wore jeans and a dark brown sweater now, but yesterday she’d been painted into that strange-looking bodysuit. And unless one had a killer body, it was not the most flattering outfit Emily had ever seen.

“The LockOut suit protects from injury,” Keiko explained. “Similar to a Kevlar vest, but thinner and more impervious. I wouldn’t want to be without it in the field, but boy, gain a few pounds, and everyone knows it.”

“Apparently counterterrorist operatives are all in excellent shape,” Emily said, reaching for the pepper. In fact, she’d very much like to see Max in this getup. Then she’d like to peel it off him. Slowly.

“Geez,” AJ said with a laugh as the three women sat in the large leather swivel chairs at a table with their meals. “You look ready to take a bite out of a large, juicy steak.”

Keiko met Emily’s eyes, but she made no comment.
Thank God I didn’t blush,
Emily thought, digging into her breakfast. The plane wasn’t that big, and the interior walls were thin. She forgotten that she and Max hadn’t been alone onboard for the hour they’d spent behind closed doors.

Emily didn’t hear a ring, but AJ quickly removed a small black phone from her breast pocket. “Cooper. Yeah.” Her eyes met Emily’s across the table. “Right here eating breakfast. Got it. Want Zampieri to—Yeah. I hear you. We’ll be there in—?” She checked her watch. “Twenty minutes? Yeah.” She rose, putting the phone back in her pocket.

“Sorry Breakfast is going to have to wait. Max wants you to take a look at something.”

WITH JUST A COUPLE OF PHONE CALLS, MAX’S TWO WORLDS COLLIDED.
Asher Daklin and Rafael Navarro, both chemical and explosives experts with T-FLAC, were traveling by car with him to this third bomb site.

The streets surrounding La Mezquita were clogged with press and curious bystanders. It took some clever maneuvering for Navarro to navigate the crowds. A bombing of this magnitude, in one of the largest, most unique mosque/churches in the world, was big news. Media from around the world had a presence on-site. Camera crews, vans, cars, and people crowded the narrow streets outside the massive, fortresslike walls.

The team had received an overview about the site early this morning via fax from Control. Originally a smallish Christian church, La Mezquita had been built by Visigoths in 500 CE, then taken over for the worship of Janus, the double-headed Roman god of doorways and gates.

In the fifth century, Córdoba had been the capital of Spanish Muslims, and they’d built, and rebuilt, the mosque over the next couple of hundred years to make it one of the largest structures of the Muslim world. Several centuries later the Arabian mosque was captured by the Christian Spanish king and it was converted back to a Christian sanctuary.

All Max needed to know was that the bomb site had connections to Christians and Muslims. A bonanza for any antireligious group with an agenda.

And the place was big and important. La Mezquita took up a city block, and was considered one of the finest examples of Arabian architecture in the world. Apparently it combined Roman, Gothic, Byzantine, Syrian, and Persian elements. Not that Max gave a rat’s ass about the architecture, no matter how stunning and unique it was purported to be.

He wanted to know what sick fuck had bombed another place of worship. The third in as many weeks on T-FLAC’s radar. Had it been one of numerous radical fundamental Islamic groups? One of the anti-Christian groups? Jesus, the possibilities were pretty much goddamned endless.

His phone vibrated. “Aries.”

“This is Greg Sandoval. My apologies, mist—Aries,” Sandoval said. “The prisoner is urn—well, er. He’s
dead,
sir.”

Their car slowed so Navarro could show ID to the local cops guarding the entrance gates. The barricade was lifted, and they were waved through. Place was still crawling with local forensic teams, bomb squad, and law enforcement. A pall of black smoke lingered in the air.

It took a second for Max to connect Sandoval’s name with the T-FLAC operatives who’d been entrusted with taking the prisoner from Emily’s palazzo into custody. “And how,” Max demanded, “did the prisoner, with the answer I needed,
die?”

Even with the windows closed, the smell of the explosion was cloying.

“W-would you urn like to speak with Kleiver?” Sandoval offered hopefully.

“Does he have a note pinned to his diaper from his mother with an explanation?” Max didn’t bother hiding his sarcasm. He wanted to put a fist through the console. It had been a simple job of interrogation. A job two operatives should have been able to handle with their eyes closed. It had always been considerably more fun in training to be the interrogator, rather than the interrogatee. Hadn’t these assholes learned anything? And, God damn it, were all the T—FLAC operatives in Italy this week frigging
trainees?

“We were questioning the prisoner, and he started gagging— coughing, you know? Urn, er, well then...
Then
Kleiver had to go get him some water. While he was out of the room the guy must’ve taken the capsule. I didn’t realize it until he started foami—”

Furious, Max cut him off. “Jesus fuck! You mean none of you did a cavity check?
And
you left his hands untied? Did you get anything from him at all?”

Shaking his head at the conversation, Navarro turned into the cathedral’s north parking lot. From this side the building looked pristine, but the wisps of black smoke hovered over the rooftops to the south. He continued across the lot. Max covered the mouthpiece of his phone.

“Go around to the south side,” he instructed Rafe. The Patio de los Naranjos gate appeared to be locked up tight, and there were no cars in this lot. “Sandoval?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, no s-sir.” Sandoval stammered in Max’s ear. “We didn’t manage to break him before he—died.”

Damn, and double fucking damn. That trail was now cold. No fingerprints on file, no form of ID. Even the intruder’s clothing had been poorly sewn crap from Thailand—impossible to trace back beyond one of the hundreds of sweatshops dotting the poorer sections of southeast Asia.

Just as Max was about to cut him off again, Sandoval cleared his throat. “But we do have good news. Sir.”

“Yeah? What? He had his mother’s phone number tattooed on his ass?”

“Close. He has a tattoo of a black rose on his back. Could be a coincidence, but could mean he might be inside the Black Rose organization.”

Max straightened from his slouched position. “It means he was a Black Rose asset.” Jesus. A link between Emily and
Black Rose?

“You’re shitting me!” Excitement rose in the young operative’s voice. He was too far down the local food chain to be involved in dealing with the larger, more lethal tangos. Uncovering a member of the very secretive Black Rose tangos was definitely a career advancement—too bad he’d also shot himself in the foot by allowing the prisoner to commit suicide. Asshole.

Black Rose. The news chilled Max to the bone. What in God’s name was a member of the Black Rose tango group doing in the home of an art restorer?

Now there
was
a connection between the players.

Max worked with Catherine Seymour. Seymour, known for good reason as Savage, was a known member of Black Rose. They were watching her every fucking move.

But that particular tango group’s connection to this Italian mess . . . He hadn’t seen that one coming.

The Black Rose were into extortion, money laundering, weapons trafficking and their methods ... Whoever was in charge had given a green light on violence. In fact, the bloodier the better. His brain flashed a clip of the murder scene in Franco Bozzato’s kitchen. Definitely met the high gore factor that was quintessential Black Rose. Learning that Emily’s would-be assassin was a
tango
changed everything.

Knowing what they were capable of, Max needed to take an up close, personal look into investigating what Black Rose wanted from Emily. And why they’d killed his father. If BR was responsible for the hits in Florence then the situation shifted from personal to business.

“I’ll have the body picked up,” he told the junior operative as he and the other men climbed out of the car. “You and Kleiver stay with it until someone gets there. Don’t even step outside to take a leak, you got that, Sandoval?” He disconnected before the hapless man could respond.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath.

“We’re dealing with Black Rose again?” Daklin demanded. “Christ. I thought we’d finished them off three months ago.”

“Savage,” Max said as a reminder. T-FLAC was keeping a close eye on the rogue operative, waiting for her to lead them to bigger fish higher up the Black Rose food chain.

“If I had my druthers that bitch would be on death row waiting her turn at a lethal injection,” Rafael Navarro said. The three of them had been on the S.A. op with St. John, and been there when he’d been at the hospital waiting for word on Taylor Kincaid’s recovery. He’d been like a fucking madman as he paced those corridors chomping at the bit for news on his lady.

“I know we’re waiting for Savage to trip up,” Navarro continued. “But Jesus Christ, that woman is as lethal as a black widow goddamn spider, and fifty times more calculating.”

“Seduced all four men on her ‘team’ in Rio last month,” Max told them, half listening. What in fuck’s name did a Black Rose tango want with Emily? Had they also had something to do with the old man’s death? It seemed so far-fetched, it was hard to believe.