Читать книгу Secret Agent Reunion - Caridad Piñeiro - Страница 9

Chapter 4

Troy Dumont sat back in his chair and took a sip of the Johnnie Walker Blue in his glass. The taste of the scotch was smooth but with some bite as if to remind him that it was older than he was.

Months shy of twenty, he had nevertheless seen more of the world than most others his age. Done more than most, including killing a man. How else did you learn to run one of the world’s largest crime syndicates if not by getting your hands dirty every now and then?

Although he had never met his grandfather, Maximilian Dumont, he hoped that he had inherited some strength from the man who had gone from being a mercenary to building a worldwide empire of assassins, gun smugglers and other assorted criminals.

Troy wanted to show his mother, who had inherited control of the syndicate after her brother’s and father’s deaths, that he could one day run their organization as well.

Taking another sip, he considered his mother as she paced back and forth while talking on the phone. A very important call had come in from one of their informants, interrupting their after-dinner conversation.

Annoyance flared through him at how often work pulled his mother away. How, for most of their lives together, one thing or another had always managed to interfere—although he understood just how much control was necessary to maintain power over such a vast network of bad asses. Control that his family kept in a number of ways, including elimination of anyone who got in the way—like Corbett Lazlo and his annoying band of do-gooders.

In the past few months his mother had grown more determined, almost fanatically so, to rid herself of the Lazlo Group. Lazlo’s well-known agency had been a thorn in their side for quite some time, but lately, the Lazlo Group activities had managed to create even more problems for them. He didn’t think the Lazlo Group had been smart enough to figure out the various sources of the Dumonts’ illegal gains, but recently they had unwittingly slowed the flow of money from different Dumonts’ illegal. gains, but recently they had unwittingly slowed the flow of money from different operations.

“Fils de pute,” his mother, Cassandra, nearly screeched and he shifted forward in his chair, determined to find out what had set her off.

“Find out what Lazlo wants with Kruger and where he’s taking him,” she said as she reached one end of the room and whirled, then paced back to the other side, her long legs carrying her back and forth swiftly. Her slender body vibrated with anger.

“I don’t care how difficult it will be. You’re well paid to get this information for us.” Her French accent intensified in tandem with her anger.

Her green eyes narrowed to tight slits as she shot him a glance. Realizing she had her son’s full attention, she sent him an apologetic smile.

As the person on the other end of the conversation signed off, she snapped the cell phone shut, dragged a hand through the long, wavy strands of her auburn hair and walked toward him, the lines of her body elegant. Graceful. Dangerous.

“Je suis si désolée, chéri. Something unexpected came up.” She cradled his jaw and stroked the line of it, her hand smooth against his skin. A mother’s gentle touch.

He leaned into it and covered her hand with his, needy for her affection. She was all he had in the world, having never known the rest of his family. Grandfather. Uncle. Father. All dead before he could meet them. “It’s fine, Maman. I just wish…”

Troy didn’t have to finish. Cassandra seemed to know just what he wanted.

“Once this is done, mon fils, we’ll have more time together.”

He had heard her say it before, and, in general, she had kept her promises to him. For as long as he could remember, she had juggled the demands of the syndicate with those of motherhood in order to give him her attention.

When he had become old enough to learn about the business, she had begun to teach him much as her father had taught her and her brother.

Corbett Lazlo had been responsible for his uncle’s death, and so he could understand his mother’s current desire to see the Lazlo Group suffer. In their world, payback was common. Almost demanded. You didn’t survive if you let others tread all over you.

But this ongoing vendetta with Corbett Lazlo was getting…tiring.

“You’re losing sight of the bigger picture when it comes to Lazlo.”

She pulled her hand away and walked to the bar, poured herself a drink. When she sashayed back toward him, she said, “You can’t understand—”

“I know he killed your brother.” He downed the last of the scotch, wincing as the burn worked down his throat.

His mother sipped her drink and considered him over the rim of her glass before she said, “It’s more complicated than that.”

He shot to the edge of his chair, placed his hand on her arm and applied gentle pressure to lower her glass. “So tell me why you want to hurt Lazlo so badly.”

“He’s disrupted our financing.”

“Merde. You sent the Sparrow after Kruger because he was stealing from us. We needed a new courier anyway.”

“That operative in Prague—”

“Would have taken forever to figure out how that organization was funneling us the money. This is about something else.” But as his gaze met his mother’s, he realized she was not about to reveal what drove her lately. What had been compelling her for the past three years and invading their time.

“When you’re ready, Maman. I’m sure you’d tell me if it was something I should know.”

“I would, mon coeur,” she said. She cradled his cheek again and leaned forward, kissed his forehead. “I promise you, Troy. This has nothing to do with you.”

When Dani had been an agent with SIS, they had footed the bill for an apartment in Rome close to the Villa Borghese. It had been home base for her when she wasn’t traveling the world, capturing bad guys in her disguise as the Sparrow. During her non-spy times, she would “work” at the offices of a financial services company located not far from the Coliseum. The company provided a front for the local SIS headquarters and agents.

She had met Mitch years earlier at a bar not far from those offices. The attraction had been physical at first. Mitch’s size and good looks had immediately snagged her attention. But after a few hours in his company, she had liked his humor and forthrightness.

During the dates that followed whenever he was in Rome, Mitch had mentioned that he worked for a private investigations firm and needing to be careful, she had used her SIS connections to confirm that he was employed by the Lazlo Group. She had also seen his military records and realized that behind the good looks and elegant clothing was a bona fide hero. Not that Mitch had ever bragged about his Silver Star or Purple Heart.

For the next year, she had come to learn more about the complex man he was and had fallen in love.

Now they were back in Rome together, but the Lazlo Group had decided she and Mitch would stay a good distance away from either of her old locations as well as the Lazlo Group office while they were on their mission.

The Albergo Santa Carmela hid on a small street in Rome’s Trastevere section, painfully close to the spot where she had found Mitch bleeding to death nearly three years earlier. One part of her didn’t understand why someone would chose a location bound to stir the emotional pot for both her and Mitch. Another part of her—the spy part—acknowledged that as a base of operations, the tiny hotel was close to perfect.

The street on which it was located had defied discovery even to locals, and the hotel boasted only twenty rooms, all on one floor and opening into a central courtyard. Easy to secure and with quick access for escape. If there was anything that made the hotel not perfect, it was the rather solicitous and eager staff, who had too many questions and paid too much attention to the supposed newlyweds checking in for a two-week stay.

Dani pasted a smile on her face as Mitch encircled her waist and with a playful wink, confirmed their status to the older woman behind the front desk. “Yes, that’s right. We’re on our honeymoon, so I hope you’ll understand if the Do Not Disturb sign is on the door often.”

The woman tittered and handed Mitch two keys for the room. “Non lei disturbano, mai you do not want to miss seeing la citta eterna,” the clerk replied, wagging a pudgy finger in emphasis.

Mitch friskily jostled Dani before bending his head and nuzzling her cheek. “Oh, we’ll see the la citta eventually.”

What she wanted to do was give him a shot to the ribs, but decided a different punishment would be better. She turned and whispered against his lips, “Eventually, amore,” and kissed him to shut him up.

Like most rash actions, it backfired on her as Mitch returned the kiss, leaving no doubt about just how well he could kiss and how it still affected her. She was soon clinging to his shoulders and opening her mouth against his until the excited squeal of the hotel clerk ripped them apart.

“Il amore will soon have the bambini for you.”

Mitch coughed and shifted back a bit from her. “Not yet, signora. I’m not ready to share my wife with anyone.”

The look he shot her made her pulse race, but she tamped down her unwanted desire. Taking the keys from the surface of the front desk, she motioned with them to one of the side exits. “The room is…”

“A la sinestra,” the clerk advised.

“Grazie, signora,” she said and quickly turned left toward the room, wheeling behind her the modest-sized bag with her clothes and equipment. Mitch followed, a decidedly bigger suitcase trailing behind him.

Dani had chuckled when she had first seen the bag, which confirmed to her that Mitch’s status as clotheshorse was intact. When they’d been together, no matter where they went or what the occasion, Mitch had always been sartorially splendid.

So unlike her usual dress when she had worked for SIS. At her home base, she kept to staid, dark business suits and mannish tailored shirts, which fit her cover as a financial services advisor. While on a mission as the Sparrow, she would tone down her appearance even further, going so far as to wash a dark brown rinse into her hair to kill the auburn highlights. The clothes she wore while on an assignment were likewise dark and drab so as to not attract attention.

It had been that lack of color combined with the calling card she left behind at her “kills”—a small bundle of feathers tied together with black ribbon—that had earned her the moniker of the Sparrow. The manufactured identity and faked assassinations had allowed her to infiltrate SNAKE, but only for a few jobs and not deeply enough to confirm who was behind the group, despite SIS’s belief that the Dumonts were the masterminds of the organization.

When they entered the room, a large fruit-and-cheese basket and a bottle of wine sat on a long table to one side of the space. Dani walked over and pulled a card from the gift, smiled as she saw who it was from.

“Your Uncle Corbett wishes us the best on our honeymoon.”

Mitch came to her side and took the card from her hand. “My uncle is such a thoughtful guy,” he said with a grin.

Dani carefully unwrapped the cellophane from the basket, just in case it wasn’t really from the Lazlo Group, but as she did so, Mitch leaned in close yet again. Too close.

“Honey, do you mind if I check my e-mails while you unpack?”

She glared at him as possibly an annoyed newlywed wife would, although she realized what he really planned to do. “Promise me this will be the last time, sweetie. It is our honeymoon, after all.”

“Promise.” He dropped a kiss on her cheek. She shot him what she hoped would look like a playful nudge if anyone was actually watching them.

Mitch pulled a PDA from a case on his belt and while seemingly reading his e-mails, slowly paced around the room, checking it for bugs the way any good agent would. Especially in a case like this, where they didn’t know who in their organization might be working against them.

Dani watched him out of the corner of her eye as she examined the fruit basket. The top was, as expected, a collection of luscious fruits—peaches, figs, pears and grapes. The fruit, however, rested on some kind of platform in the basket. She wouldn’t pull it out to examine what was beneath until Mitch had cleared the room.

“Almost done, sweetcheeks? I’m ready to check out this nice bed,” she said, the tones of her voice sultry. As if to prove her need, she took a running step toward the king-sized bed in the middle of the room and launched herself onto its surface.

Mitch swung the modified PDA around one last time, but the unit didn’t register that there were any listening devices or cameras in the hotel room. It was clear. He turned his attention to the bed. Dani rolled around on its surface, doing a fair imitation of a flounder out of water rather than a needy newlywed. Not that that kept him from imagining just how things might be if she were ready for him.

Like she had been after that kiss at the front desk.

He had promised her to not make it personal. To keep to just being partners, but sweet Lord, he hadn’t expected it would be so damn difficult so damn fast.

He had forgotten just how Dani could affect him, even when she was being a total boob as she was now.

Which only made him want her more. It had been the same way when he had first met her nearly four years ago. He’d been intrigued by her bravado when she had approached him. Drawn by her beauty. But what had made him fall in love with her had been her complex nature—the mysterious side, which hid secrets behind her intense green eyes, and the goofy one she was now exhibiting as she flopped around on the bed’s surface.

Walking over to the bed, he stared down at her, a smile on his face. She met his gaze and stopped her movement. “Everything okay?”

He could have lied and jumped her bones on the bed. Taken the moment to sample another kiss and the enticing press of her body against his.

But he couldn’t do it. It would only cause more problems between them, and resurrecting old passions was the last thing either of them needed. When this mission was done, they had to go their separate ways. Like Lazarus, they might have both risen from the dead, but that didn’t mean their love had also come back to life. How could it, when it had been a love based on deception—on both their parts.

“All clear.”

At his comment, she flew from the bed back to the fruit basket, confusing him until she lifted out the fruit.

He approached, and they both looked down into the bowl of the basket, which was filled with DVDs and a portable USB drive. Judging from its size, one that could hold hundreds of gigabytes. He reached for one of the DVDs, but at the same time, his PDA rang.

The caller ID didn’t list who it was, but both he and Dani knew.

“Good morning, Mr. Lazlo.”

“Good morning, Mitch. I trust you and Dani had a nice flight on the corporate jet. Are the accommodations to your liking?” Lazlo said, the tones of his voice smooth.

Mitch glanced around the room, assessing it. It was comfortably appointed with a king-sized bed that was possible for him and Dani to share without making contact. The table and chairs on one side of the room would give them somewhere to work and the door and windows to the courtyard provided a clear view of anyone coming and going. Possibly problematic, although it did afford a way for a fast exit as well.

As he met Dani’s gaze, he noted her inquisitive look and said, “Mr. Lazlo, I’m going to put you on speaker so Dani can hear you.”

With that, he hit a button and laid the modified PDA on the tabletop.

“Good morning, Dani. I trust you liked the little gift I sent.”

“Luscious, Uncle Corbett. I assume the DVDs and disk contain some information you would like us to review?” Dani reached in and took out the slim jewel cases, shuffling through them to examine their labels.

“Cordez had her staff gather some additional information for you. There are surveillance videos of the areas where the agents were killed. Their backgrounds and other information about what they were working on. The hard drive contains their case files, along with full reports on Randy Kruger. His past activities and connections,” Lazlo said, and Mitch met Dani’s questioning gaze.

“That’s a lot of information to review before we see—”

Lazlo cut him off. “We would have provided this to you in Paris, but I had been advised by my SIS contact that Kruger would immediately be available and time wouldn’t allow it.”

“And now?” Dani asked as she removed the portable hard drive from the basket, set it next to the DVDs and then rearranged the fruit in the basket.

An uneasy cough came from Lazlo before he said, “It appears it will take at least another day to make Kruger available. There’s interference from someone higher up at SIS. Possibly one of the deputy directors.”

“Do you know who’s causing the problem?” Dani asked and moved the basket to one side of the table so they would have a clear area for setting up their equipment.

“No, I don’t, but I suspect the reasons are more personal than professional. I didn’t keep many friends after my stint at SIS,” Lazlo said.

Mitch braced one hand against the table as he asked, “So it may not be possible—”

“It will. Much as some of my old friends might not like it, I will get access to Kruger. It may take longer, but I trust you two have enough to keep you occupied until then.”

Mitch glanced down at the DVDs and disk, but then his gaze swept to the bed and back, as did Dani’s. When she finally looked up at him, worry had crept into her features. He sought to dispel it. “We’re professionals, Corbett. We know what we need to do.”

“Good, lad. You have access to our headquarters in Rome if you need anything else. As soon as Kruger is available, I will be in touch.”

The click over the PDA speaker was followed by dead air.

Mitch slipped the PDA back onto his belt and glanced at Dani.

“So, what do you want to do first?” she asked.

He walked to the door and removed the Do Not Disturb sign from the knob. With a grin, he slipped the sign on the exterior knob, then closed the door and faced her.

“We do what’s expected of any newlyweds, right?”