Tempting trouble, p.1
Tempting Trouble, page 1
TEMPTING TROUBLE
SHADOWY ASSASSINS (S.A.S.S.) SERIES BOOK THREE
by
GENNITA LOW
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Gennita Low
Tempting Trouble
Copyright © 2012 by Gennita Low
ISBN-13:
ISBN-10:
Cover by HOTDAMNDesigns
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Tempting Trouble. Copyright © 2012 by Gennita Low. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Gennita Low e-books.
* * * * *
Dedication
To Mother and Father,
my troublesome Stash, and Mike, my Ranger Buddy
Simple Timeline
BIG BAD WOLF
|
INTO
DANGERàFACING FEAR à TEMPTING TROUBLE
| /
PROTECTOR /
| à VIRTUALLY HIS
HUNTER |
| à VIRTUALLY HERS
SLEEPER
|
PIRATE
TEMPTING TROUBLE
aka
“GRACE HAPPENS”
CHAPTER ONE
It was safari hot and the sky a blinding blue. Her eyes were closed, but she knew exactly where she was. It always started this way, with the heat, the heavy languorous heat. Yet she never felt uncomfortable, never sweated in this steamy warmth that was like a fiery whip. If she opened her eyes, slowly, she would see that beautiful blue that seemed to fill her whole being, and she knew she would lie there admiring the blinding brightness until she wasn’t sure whether she was staring at or drowning in it. And always, always, that magical moment, when she heard the growl, she would feel her own heat, inside, begin to grow.
It was a dream she was familiar with, for she’d read the pages repeatedly as a rite of passage into secret adult fantasies. Little girls dreamed of princes and fairy kingdoms; growing girls salivated over Hollywood stars and the cutest boys in class. But not Grace. One day, young Grace had read of the long courting ritual of the lioness and her mate, and sometimes, deep in secretive sleep, it would invade her dreams, and she would be her, that lioness. She had made this her escape world, as her father had taught her during their lessons. Some operatives, he told her, chose memories, some focused on repeated text. Whatever it took, he advised, to drown out the present. Grace was only sixteen when her father started training her, and at that age, she much preferred fantasy….
She always knew when he came, silent and sure-footed. He stood in the same place, his mane shining against the blue of the sky, his magnificent body rippling with sinewy muscles as he pawed the grass demandingly. Impatiently. As always, he looked straight at her, and as always, she would purr in excitement at that look he gave her.
Yes, he was here, and he was hungry. He pawed again, a deep rumble starting in his chest. She stretched, working from her shoulders, then pushing up with her hind legs, letting him see her behind. The rumbling increased in volume as she slowly walked back and forth within his line of vision, mewing back love call for love call. She knew he was hungry for her, but she wanted to play. It was part of their dance. At each pass, she moved closer to her mate, sauntering back and forth, glancing at him, now and then turning around to let him see her rump, angled with feline invitation. The rumbling was like distant thunder by now.
He was the lone male waiting for her, her king, her lord and master, but he knew this moment was hers. She could feel his need reaching out as he caught the scent of her heat. He tossed and shook his head in male frustration, his golden mane catching sunlight. He began growling in between the deep rumbling of his chest, the fire in his eyes calling to her to come closer, daring her to disobey him.
She reveled in the power that she held over him. His restlessness spurred her to tease him even more. She wanted him to see how beautiful and strong she was. She wanted to push him to the limit, and circling closer, swayed her hips in front of his face. She thrilled for that moment every time, always, when his patience snapped. His head reared back, revealing his strong muscular throat, and he let out the roar of ownership. The female in her shivered at his blatant sexuality, that roar that told her that the game was over, that she was in his territory, in his power. As some distant call of nature released his bondage, he sprang on her back, his huge paws clamping on her shoulders, forcing her to the ground. He roared again, in triumph, and the whole world reverberated with his claim of ownership. As he marked her with his teeth, she threw back her head to stare up adoringly at her lover, her mate, and his warrior eyes, staring back into hers, were the same hypnotic blue as the sky.
SUMMER, WASHINGTON D.C.
The nagging ringing of the phone finally got through her dreams. In the darkened room, Grace lifted herself on one elbow, eyes still shut, and groped for the nightstand, muttering at the insistent sound. She stretched out lazily, and reluctantly picked up the receiver.
"Hello?”
“Grace? It’s me, Tim.”
Grace groaned inwardly. Not again. “Not now, Tim. I’ve an appointment with my boss. Besides, we’ve already been through this.”
With a sigh, Grace peered at the alarm clock next to the radio. She had about an hour and the half to make her appointment with Edgar Maddux, department head. Wanting to look both relaxed and confident, she didn’t think she could stand another drawn-out argument.
“Geez, Grace, it’s Saturday!” Tim protested, his voice sulky. “Do you get overtime, or something?”
"Nope. It's just a meeting, Tim, some sort of review of my first month on the job. I’m an intern, you know, everybody’s slave." Grace sat up. “I told you I’d be too busy learning the ropes.”
“Too busy for me, you mean. I don’t understand why you took this job without consulting me.”
“Don’t start again,” Grace warned. “I’ve told you, I don’t need to consult you about anything. You want me with you all the time, Tim. I can’t twiddle my thumbs all summer. We talked about this last spring, and all last night, and I’m tired of it.”
She really was. Tim just wouldn’t accept their being apart. It was really time to rethink this relationship thing.
“Well, I’m not going to twiddle my thumbs waiting for you while you work in
D.C. I might not be available when you get back,” Tim, in turn, warned her. He paused, waiting for her to placate him.
Grace’s lips curved into an exasperated smile. Emotional blackmail never worked with her, and truthfully, after last night, she didn’t even feel guilty about being so mean to him. So she coolly said, "Got to go. I can’t be late.”
She could just see the shock on his face. She grimaced. How could she make him see she felt suffocated by his need to spend every moment with her?
“Wait! Grace, please let me come and see you. I promise I won’t yell at you again.”
She should refuse, but if they discussed it any longer, she knew she would really be late. Maybe a last talk would smooth everything out, and they could part as friends. She had nothing against Tim, except maybe his attitude about women in general.
“OK,” she relented. “We’ll talk again later, all right? ’Bye.”
A hot shower helped restore some of her usual good humor, and as she dried her hair, she contemplated her relationship with Tim. Their talk would have to wait. Right now, her job was number one. She stuck her tongue out at her reflection. Trying to prove she could do the job in spite of her youth was her main problem. Why, oh why, did she have to look so fresh and innocent?
Grace had known ever since she was twelve her face and her nature were two different creatures, that people judged her from her face, and that her true nature, when she sprang it on them, would either cause consternation or amusement. That was the problem. Tim wanted a sweet and mild-mannered girlfriend, and had come to realize she was far from it.
But she was sweet and mild-mannered, Grace insisted silently, as she dabbed on blush and applied lipstick. To a point. When she wanted to be. She preened mockingly.
One reason why she took this internship as a translator in D.C., away from her home in Ohio, was she wanted distance between Tim and her, needing the few months before college commenced again to sort out her feelings. There was so much she couldn’t reveal to Tim, or anyone, knowing just too well there weren’t many she could trust. After all, she was a lot more than she seemed.
Never assume anything. She should know that better than anybody. Her father’s unique education had seen to that.
***
Assumptions could kill.
The thought ran through Lance Mercy’s mind as he glanced around the room, before he beckoned to his friend to join him. They needed only to exchange a look before both their gazes settled on the woman lying against the generous pillows of the sofa, legs tucked in to the side comfortably, an arm hugging a big pillow against her body. She looked serene, her eyes
Lance walked to stand in front of the sofa. In a cozy little room, his lanky frame should move awkwardly, but he maneuvered his body with the grace of one familiar with tight situations.
His companion joined him and they studied the dead woman dispassionately. In their kind of business, there were basically two kinds of cancellations. One was messy and slow, leaving a trail of clues. Lance Mercy, COS's top undercover operative, preferred the second kind—quick, clean and bloodless, a relatively painless process. Of course, the latter way was an art form, the first sure sign of a professional job, and some cancellations needed the anonymity of a common criminal. Thus, the first kind was usually the first option.
“He wanted us to know this wasn't an accident,” he said to the older man, at the same time taking in all the details of the scene, vaguely noting it was quite apt an episode of the Twilight Zone was on at the moment. If not for the odd angle of the woman's neck, everything was in order, not a hair out of place. Her soulless eyes stared flatly ahead; her lips had a slight astonished twist to them.
The other man, Dan Kershaw, nodded, the etched lines on his forehead and the furrows around his mouth deepening, as he contemplated his own conclusions. "It was done quickly," he commented. "He watched her for some time."
Lance looked up and saw Dan's and his own reflection staring back. "The closet," he murmured, indicating the mirrored sliding door a few feet behind the sofa. He walked around it and slid the door to one side, squatting down in one fluid motion to examine the floor. "He stood here, kept watch, decided the moment, and cancelled her." Satisfied that no clues could be found, he added, “Charlie will be upset when he finds out. From what you told me, I think he's fond of her.”
"Charlie’s very good at what he does. Even Command isn’t sure whether he’s really fond of her, or not," Dan told him, looking at Lance's image in the mirror, noting the changes of his former underling from eager student to the now suave and watchful man. The old recklessness was still in those blue eyes. Part of his charm. He pulled out his cell phone. "Yes, it's me. Cancellation confirmed. The note wasn't a fake. No, Charlie isn't here. I don't think he knows. Right, we will." He hung up. "Let's get out of here. You're admiring the guy's work too much, as it is. This isn’t one of your jungle ruins."
Lance smiled at the older man. "The guy's an artist. I appreciate good art, in and out of the jungle," he responded, deliberately leaning a shoulder against the kitchen doorframe, knowing it would annoy his old mentor. Privately, he was suspicious about the whole staged scene here. It was too perfect, too clean. A person who took time to create, he reasoned, deserved a measure of his respect, and certainly wouldn’t be easily dismissed. The murderer was deliberately sending a message. Track me. I am one of you.
“Uh huh, there's just a matter of taste,” Dan said, frowning slightly at Lance. “Surely you know better than to touch anything, even after five years on and off in the Far East. We'd better move before your ‘artist’ gets to the real target.”
That, in turn, wiped away the smirk on Lance’s face. He straightened from the doorway, his plan to keep teasing Dan forgotten. “I thought we had the guy secured.”
“Wrong. We don't have the guy. At the moment he's hiding out in Chinatown.”
Lance glanced again at the dead woman. "That wasn't what she told Charlie.
Was she lying?"
Dan shrugged. Information was information. It changed and varied from mouth to mouth. He walked to the front door. Lance followed, closing the door with a decisive click. The summer sunshine was bright after the dim setting inside the penthouse. Birds chirped overhead in the heavily blooming trees.
“What next?" Lance asked, as they headed toward their car, two conservatively dressed Washington businessmen.
"Command said they’ll bring our boy in a crowd. We’re going to a rally on Monday."
“A rally, huh? What kind?” Lance tugged on his tie, loosening it.
“Anti-abortion.” Dan grinned at the upraised brows of the younger man. “Pretty appropriate, don’t you think, since abortion is considered murder by the activists?”
“Why this rally?” Lance asked, as he expertly pulled out and maneuvered between two speeding vehicles.
“The clinic’s owned by a Chinese doctor, so there should Asians around. Our boy can move without too much attention.” Dan lit a cigarette. “There’s information counteragents are likely to be there.”
“Command’s got moles working for us?”
“No, they’ve got a great source.”
As usual, Dan’s answer was vague. Lance had known him for eight years, long enough to know when the older man was holding back information. That was the nature of their business: reveal only what was necessary, and keep what was necessary to a minimum. As he’d been doing for the past five years, he kept his own opinions to himself as he drove. The assignment was unraveling, a carefully planned six-month project careening toward an explosive ending, something Command was trying to avoid.
Weaving in and out of traffic, he sifted through the facts. Someone had panicked about three months ago, making the crucial mistake of speeding things up. Mistakes were made. Information was leaked. He suspected the leak came from the senator’s office, which irritated him, since he was in charge of that part of the operation. Dan, who was responsible for enemy information and target movement, hadn’t received any warning from his sources. If the timetable had run smoothly, in six months, they would have what they needed—the names of the arms dealers; the list of US senators and council members in Chinese pockets; the name of the mole who was leaking their information. But all the current news of moles and arms had spooked the target.
“Agnes Lin was our bridge, getting that student visa for the informant,” Lance said. “Whoever killed her is getting too close.” Outside of Dan and himself, the informant/scholar was the only one who knew they were after the list of arms dealers. The lower level operatives had been told the present assignment was a local one, of little value to the international arena, only important to COS Command for future use. Except for a select few, no one on the team even knew Lance was one of them, since they’d only heard of him under his code name. The nature of his expertise called for undercover work, mostly done alone and overseas. He had only reluctantly agreed to do this one assignment because Dan called and requested his help. A mole needed to be smoked out and they needed an unidentifiable tracker. So here he was, stuck in the plodding world of organized surveillance, the kind he’d always hated, and counting down the days back to his freedom.
There was a good side to this. His mother was very happy to have him around for so long.
“We’re to move quickly now,” Dan admitted with a frown. “We have to make some adjustments to the timetable.”
Lance slowed down for a passing car. Timetables were the foundation of wrong assumptions, and accidents happened on wrong assumptions. Agnes Lin already became the first. They needed more information. Who was going to help them find it?
***
Information had been Ed Maddux’s world for over a quarter of a century. He breathed it; he chewed and swallowed it daily. It was no wonder he was a detail man. Everything he did had an exacting touch, from the way he folded his shirts to the number of times he chewed before swallowing his food. He believed everything added up to a whole, and the more details there were, the more complex the big picture was. He was one of the consortium’s success stories; he’d stayed within its structures, learning from the bottom up, taking each step unhurriedly, knowing the insides and outsides of each phase before moving on. Edgar Maddux, GNE director, was born the day he took his first translating job. There wasn’t any past since that moment, and he had only known one future.
