Читать книгу Ironclad Cover - Dana Marton - Страница 7

A woman screamed as people all around ducked for cover. With four years of federal prison and an intensive FBI crash course behind her, Anita managed to stay reasonably calm as she kept her head down.

“Unarmed?” Brant poked his head out, trying to see.

“Sorry.” She had thought about bringing her gun to the Chamber of Commerce reception, but there hadn’t been room to hide it under her slinky dress and her evening bag was barely sufficient to hold her cell phone, a tube of lipstick and the stack of business cards she had collected during the evening. She’d gone to the party to make connections, not to engage in a gunfight. She hadn’t thought the weapon would be necessary.

He didn’t chastise her for the lapse, but pushed her forward. “Let’s go. Toward the kitchen.”

All for getting out of there, she crawled under the tables among people who looked stunned, scared and confused. Spilled food and broken plates littered her path—a few tablecloths had been pulled down in the panic of the moment as people reacted on reflex.

Whispers came from everywhere, punctuated by a few sobs and some swearing. “Where did it come from?” “Is the shooter in here?” “Stay still.”

“Stop moving around. You’ll draw attention,” an older gentleman snapped as Anita pushed by him, then fell silent as he looked at Brant behind her.

She nudged the swinging door open and slipped through into the hot and humid air of the kitchen, which smelled of frying onions and burning oil. She didn’t rise until the metal door was closed behind them and even then she stayed in a crouch.

“This way.” Brant headed to the back.

The man could move. The only two times she’d seen him before—at the Brighton Federal Correctional Institute in Maryland and at their briefing at Quantico, he seemed more the corporate type than law enforcement—crisp suit and calm, professional manners. But right this moment the FBI agent was clearly visible.

They passed kitchen staff huddled in groups some in the cover of refrigerators, others squatting behind the counter.

“Is there a shooter in the restaurant?” one of the cooks, a lanky Chinese man, asked, gripping his white apron with one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. At first glance he seemed prepared to protect the staff, but when Anita looked closer, his darting eyes said he was ready to run.

“Outside,” Brant said. “Stay in here. Call the cops. Where is the back door?”

The man pointed with the cleaver, his arm jumping with nerves when a chair crashed behind them in the dining area.

Brant moved forward. “Let’s get out of here.”

Anita followed him down a narrow hall that led to cavernous storage rooms and stopped when he did at a door with peeling green paint on its wood panels. He paused a second then pushed the door open a few inches to survey the outside. Then he reached back to take her arm and pulled her behind him, into the deep shadows of the night.

The back alley was empty save the Dumpsters. She held her breath at the sour stench. Hundred-degree heat did nasty things to garbage.

“Come on.” He strode to the street and looked in both directions before stepping out from the alley. He walked to the nearest car and had the door open and the motor started in under a minute. “Get in.” The vehicle was in motion before she shut the door behind her.

“Did you see who it was?” She kept her eyes on the street.

“No. Are you hurt? Any of that glass hit you?”

She didn’t feel any pain but looked down at her bare arms anyway. Other than being dirty from the crawling, they looked okay. “I’m fine.”

“Call the others and put them on alert. Call Nick.”

Nick Tarasov was special ops, the man who had trained the four-woman team at Quantico after their release from prison. He had come to the island with them right at the beginning to keep an eye on things.

“Have you heard from him yet?”

Brant shook his head. “He’s only been gone for a day.”

Nick was off to look for Xiau Lin, one of their four remaining suspects who was believed to be on a business trip in China. Marquez and Cavanaugh were on Grand Cayman. They had not been able to locate Ian McGraw so far.

Life at Savall, Ltd. had been relatively calm since Ettori had been shot—a revenge-obsessed hitman who had gone after Carly big-time because Savall had stolen a few of his boss’s clients. After that danger had been taken care of, they had all felt it was safe for Nick to leave them for a while.

Obviously not.

She made the calls, reaching Sam and Carly first. Gina had just gotten in. She had stayed at the party after Anita had left with Law, to see if she could make some useful connections. Nick didn’t pick up. He was probably stalking Lin. She left him a message.

“You think it’s connected to Ettori?” she asked Brant when she was done with the calls and assured everyone that she was all right. She hadn’t fully known until now how Carly had felt for those weeks when she had been under attack. “Maybe he didn’t work alone.”

“He had a driver that one time,” Law said. He was referring to the kidnapping attempt Nick had stopped.

“Right. But that guy never entered the picture again. We assumed he was a one-time deal—a friend helping out.”

“Don’t assume.” He pulled into the hotel parking garage and stopped the car as close to the elevators as possible. “Could be he took over Ettori’s assignment.”

“But Ettori only targeted Carly.”

“Maybe Ettori’s death upset the boss and now he wants all of you taken care of.”

Not a happy thought. She got out and looked for anything suspicious, but the parking garage seemed deserted. Then she caught a glimpse of Brant and all she could do was stare. He was covering her, moving like she’d only seen people move in action flicks before: alert, gun drawn, ready for anything. Watchful energy and strength rolled off his body in waves. She could practically smell the testosterone.

He looked dangerous and capable and more than a little sexy, not that she was prepared to dwell on that.

The elevator dinged. She glanced down her dress, which was covered with food stains, and hoped they wouldn’t run into any other guests. They didn’t need any extra attention or questions from anyone.

They lucked out. The elevator opened on his floor in less than a minute without any incidents.

“This one.” He pulled a key card from his pocket and opened the door, went in first, made sure the place was secure. “Okay.” He locked the door behind them.

The room was spacious, the bed and armchairs covered in tropical prints that matched the curtains. She walked to the window to put some space between them, could see their dark office building across the street. She could even find their offices on the fifth floor, a little lower than Brant’s room. Would he be able to see into her office during the day?

She was too nervous to sit, shaken by the attack, wary of the man whose presence filled the room. All of a sudden she had the ominous feeling like she had just walked into the lion’s den. She looked around, feeling out of place. What am I doing here?

It might have seemed on the surface that they were on the same team, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. He was using her to get to a dangerous criminal he wanted. She was using him and the resources he’d made available to clear her name. With little luck so far.

“Would you like a drink?” He was opening the minibar.

“Water would be fine.” If she ever needed a clear head, it was now. Somebody was trying to kill her. “This is crazy.”

“Did you expect it to be easy?” He watched her as he handed her the plastic bottle.

“I don’t know. There hasn’t been that much time to think about it. We’ve been going nonstop since we joined the team.”

“And you’ve gotten some results.”

She nodded. They had a list of possible links to Tsernyakov. That was something.

Her gaze fell on the suitcase by the window, a small carry-on. No other cases in sight. Didn’t look like he’d planned on staying long. They hadn’t expected him, at all. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Thought I’d check in, see how everything’s going. I’m a hands-on kind of guy. And, of course, I can never pass up a chance to go someplace where there’s even the remotest possibility of boating.”

Naturalmente. And it was just a coincidence that he showed up the day Nick left.

“How long are you staying?”

“Until Nick gets back,” he said.

He was here to check up on them. The thought made her mad, even knowing his mistrust was justified. She was pursuing her own agenda on the side. But that didn’t mean that she was short-changing his. She’d given her word and she would keep it.

Here they were, risking their lives, doing whatever they could to bring his mission to success. The least they would have deserved was a vote of confidence. “You don’t trust us.” She was still jumpy from the shooting at the restaurant, full of nerves and unexamined emotion. It was easy to snap.

He was watching her, his mahogany eyes unblinking. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

The nerve he had. “You don’t think we can do it, do you? Unwilling or incapable. Which one is it?”

He said nothing.

What did it matter? “Bottom line is, you don’t think we have what it takes. And yet we are here. Which means you’re risking our lives just so you can say you tried everything. I could have been shot and killed.”

His expression turned dark. “Believe me, I’m well aware of that. And for the record, I never said I thought you couldn’t do it.”

“Just that you don’t trust us.” Her words slapped his back.

He drew up a dark eyebrow. “You want the truth?”

She nodded.

“I gave it to you. Now deal with it.” His manner was brusque and hard, the attitude she imagined he used with suspects during his investigations.

Maybe she should go back to her apartment. She had been checking the whole way here—they hadn’t been followed. She could call a cab at the front desk and be just fine.

As if he could read her thoughts, he stepped in front of her, solid as a construction barricade. “I’ll take you home in the morning.”

He was too close. She couldn’t move forward and she wouldn’t move back, despite the fact that he made her jumpy in a way Nick Tarasov, with his tough commando-guy stance, never did. Neither had Michael Lambert, even when he had his lips on hers.

Brant Law’s mahogany eyes said he meant business. He was not a man to cross. She couldn’t wait until he’d gone back to wherever he’d come from.

It would be better if he thought he had her full cooperation. She pasted on a smile. “Sounds good,” she said, and turned from him. She would pick her battles.

“You take the bed.” He went around her to the two armchairs by the wall and pushed them to face each other.

Was that where he planned to sleep? And was that a limp?

“Are you hurt?” He seemed such a wall of solid strength, it hadn’t occurred to her that he could be.

“No.” His response was quick, his voice sharper than necessary.

“Looks like you’re limping.”

“Trick of the light.”

The light was perfectly fine as far as she could tell. What was his problem? This macho man didn’t want anyone to know that he wasn’t invincible?

“Okay. You’re fine.”

What did she care? She made herself relax, sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him and bent to take off her shoes, wrinkling her nose as her hair fell in front of her face. She reeked of cigar smoke from the Chamber of Commerce reception.

“Mind if I take a shower?” She glanced at him over her shoulder.

“Help yourself.” He was digging through his suitcase. The next second, he tossed something large and white toward her.

A cotton undershirt, she recognized the thing as she caught it.

“You can’t sleep in that.” He nodded toward her soiled dress, without meeting her eyes.

“Thanks.”

He bent back to the suitcase, pulled out a laptop and set it on the desk. Looked like he meant to work. She was more than willing to let him.

Shirt in hand, she retreated to the bathroom, into the bliss of privacy and the cascade of water, washed her hair, using up one full minibottle of shampoo and conditioner. She was drying herself when he knocked on the door.

“I called down for a courtesy kit for you.”

She wrapped the towel tight around her body, opened the door and stood aside so she’d be covered and blindly reached a hand out. She pulled in the small plastic bag he placed in her palm then closed the door shut. “Thank you.”

“I ordered room service, too.”

Something to eat would be nice. All she’d had were a half-dozen microscopic hors d’oeuvres while scoping the crowd for Cavanaugh and Martinez at the party.

She unzipped the courtesy kit and looked at the comb, toothpaste, toothbrush and razor inside. She rubbed her arm where it was sore from when he’d taken her down, out of the way of the bullet.

He’d saved her life. He’d done so efficiently, with practiced ease, a true professional. And it just occurred to her that she hadn’t even thanked him. She’d been too focused on figuring out why he was on the island and how much he would interfere with her private investigation.

“Thank you,” she yelled through the door. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome. For everything.” He sounded tired and distracted. He was probably on his laptop, checking e-mail messages.

He seemed sharply efficient while staying studiously detached. But then there were those acts of unexpected kindness, the shirt in her left hand, the small bag of essentials in the other, room service.

Brant Law wasn’t an easy man to figure out.

HIS HIP THROBBED. It ticked him off. Brant walked into the George Town police department, using every ounce of will he had not to limp. He wasn’t going to pass his next physical. This assignment would be his last. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth.

All the more reason for him to want to succeed with this case, a big one, something to remember him by other than that one miserable, glaring mistake he had made five years ago. He needed this case. And he’d had to hand it over to a bunch of criminals. It was enough to put him into a permanent bad mood even without the pain.

“Brant Law, FBI.” He flipped his badge to the man at the front desk. “I’m here for a consult. Mind if I get a cup of coffee first?”

The young cop looked at him, duly impressed by the badge. “Help yourself. It’s in the back.”

“Thanks.”

“Yes, sir.”

He headed down the narrow hall, turned at the end. Damn if the evidence room didn’t conveniently have a sign on it. Locked. He looked around, produced his small tool kit, was inside the next minute. He riffled through the plastic bags in the in-box, found one with Reef Street Shooting scribbled on it along with the case number and date, then pocketed the bag with the lone bullet inside.

On the way to Savall, he stopped by a FedEx store and overnighted the evidence to his office for analysis.

“HOW DO YOU KNOW the bullet wasn’t for you?” Gina was drilling Brant. She stood next to Anita’s chair, Carly and Sam were engrossed in sorting printouts by the front desk. “What if you were the target?”

He’d thought about that last night when he couldn’t sleep. The semi-sitting position the uncomfortable hotel armchairs allowed had been murder on his aching bones. And Anita’s soft breathing, which should have been soothing really, tickled something inside him that wouldn’t let him rest.

“The bottle it hit was right in front of Anita.” The man had to be aiming straight for her chest. The muscles in Brant’s jaw tightened. He was about to say something else when the mailman came through the front door, cutting him off.

The guy flashed an industrial spotlight of a smile around the room. “Hello, my lovelies.” He stopped in midmotion and glanced around at the tense silence. “Came at a bad time?”

“Of course not.” Anita, gracious as always, met him halfway and took the mail.

He gave Brant the once-over then threw Anita a questioning look. She shook her head with a barely repressed grin.

“Goodbye, then.” He was pouting as he walked away.

Brant rubbed his hand over his face. He didn’t even want to know what that was about.

“What do we know about the assault weapon?” Gina asked once the door was closed behind the guy.

“A nine millimeter handgun. I’ll know more when the paperwork on the bullet comes back.”

“Tsernyakov?” Gina threw out the name.

“That would be bad news all around.” They weren’t anywhere near Tsernyakov yet. If he had somehow been tipped off about the mission, the women would be sitting ducks. The safest thing to do would be to evacuate them as soon as possible. Which would end the mission.

Damn, but he didn’t like that option. As little chance as he thought the women had of succeeding, he had no better ideas just now. They had put too many resources and too much effort into this to abort before seeing the operation to the end.

And they had made some progress. They had formed something that was beginning to resemble a team. They had identified a handful of possible links to their main target. If they could figure out who the true connection was to Tsernyakov they could get close enough to him maybe to get a location on the man, which would be more than any unit trusted with his capture had ever been able to accomplish.

Except, that now there was the extra complication of the shooter. Who was he? And what did he want?

“Any enemies?” He looked at Anita.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“How about your family? They know you’re out, right?” Gina’s and Anita’s families had been told the women had been released and entered into some kind of rehabilitation program where they weren’t allowed visitors for now. Carly and Sam had no close family who needed notification. “They must be ticked off over the money.”

Anita looked uneasy as she glanced at the other women, then at him. “No,” she said that too fast, as if wanting to close the subject.

What was the matter? Hadn’t she told the others that she’d stolen from the family business? Pellegrino’s was one of the largest construction companies in the state of Maryland, all of it family owned and operated. He watched her as she brought her expression under control. You wouldn’t know that she was a thief by looking at her. Beautiful on the outside, treacherous on the inside. Now why did that sound familiar?

Probably because he’d gone down that road before.

“I have an off-site consult today,” she said, probably looking for an excuse to leave.

“Cancel it.”

“Could be the shooter was connected to Cavanaugh,” Sam remarked from the reception desk. “Maybe someone connected to him picked up on Anita following him at that party or whatever.”

Samantha Hanley, the youngest member of the team at twenty-one, wore nothing but black and had a fair number of facial piercings. Small scars around her eyebrows indicated that even now she was holding back for the sake of the professional image she was supposed to be projecting.

“Like Michael Lambert,” Gina said.

“No, I don’t think so.” Anita shook her head.

Sam shrugged. “I mean, it’s an option, but not likely. I think in that case someone would have caught her and questioned her. You know, like what she wanted, who she worked for kind of stuff. Probably wouldn’t want to take her out without getting some explanation out of her first.”

“Correct,” Brant said. But he was going to look into it anyway. And he was definitely going to look into Michael Lambert. He had already sent off a request to his office for a full background check on the man.

“You stay put for now,” he said to Anita.

“If we cancel work every time something happens, we will never catch Tsernyakov.” Gina was watching him. “It’s a dangerous mission. Stuff is going to keep happening. Right?”

Gina Torno was a tough one. He supposed she had had to be. Being a cop was no cakewalk and being an ex-cop in prison was downright hazardous to a person’s health. But Gina had made it through—although, not without some scars.

She was right about the mission. He just hadn’t expected something like assassination attempt to start happening this fast. First Carly and now Anita. Were the two connected? If not, it was a hell of a coincidence. And yet, as Gina had pointed out, they were working a risky case. Incidents were going to happen, dangerous incidents because they were entering increasingly dangerous situations. And that was exactly why they were here. He had known the score from day one. And so had they.

“I’ll go with her,” Gina offered.

He took a slow breath and considered that option. He would have preferred going with Anita himself, but if one of Tsernyakov’s men was watching her, it wouldn’t be smart for him to spend too much time with her, risking them identifying him. Tsernyakov had connections, “bought men,” in just about every branch of law enforcement in every country that counted, the reason why they needed a team with a one-hundred-percent authentic criminal background, an unbreakable cover. “Okay,” he said. “Be careful.”

It was good for Anita and Gina to work together. The whole idea had been to forge the women into a team that could handle anything. He had to trust these two enough to let them head off to a business meeting in broad daylight.

He looked at Anita. “Mind if I use your office while you’re gone?”

The look of panic that flashed across her face was quickly covered up with a forced smile.

“Of course. Let me gather up a few things for the meeting.”

“I’ll grab my bag,” Gina said on her way out as she passed him.

He stayed and kept his eyes on Anita as she rummaged through the files on her desk. She wore a light suit that covered considerably more of her than the silk gown she’d worn the night before. Her hair was pinned back. She had the tight look of business efficiency. He tried not to linger on her red stiletto sandals or her toes that were tipped with matching shiny red polish. She glanced up at him and smiled again, and he got the distinct feeling that she was playing for time, waiting for him to step out.

Not a chance, he thought as he willed his gaze not to return to her legs. Not a complete victory as his attention was now captured by her full lips. Man, he was a fool. Women always smiled the sweetest when they were trying to screw you over the worst.

HE HADN’T PLANNED on tossing her office, but once she was gone, the idea that something was off wouldn’t leave him. He glanced through her files. Nothing jumped out. Nothing on her desk, either, or in her drawers. She was neat and orderly—that was about all the information he gained.

The space she created fit her. It even smelled like her—some exotic scent that included Caribbean fruit.

He plugged in his laptop and read through his e-mail, thought about asking Nick to scan through hers. Thinking of the devil, Nick Tarasov had forwarded some background info on Xiau Lin whom he still hadn’t located, although he had found some kind of a trail. Brant sent that file to the printer, but nothing happened. Out of paper. He grabbed a handful from the cardboard box under the desk and refilled the tray. As he did so, the printer moved a half an inch, revealing the corner of a dark blue folder.

Damn. He pulled it out, looked at the shiny new cover for a second or two without opening it. She wouldn’t have hid it unless she was doing something she didn’t want anyone to know about.

He wouldn’t have minded being wrong about Anita, but he wasn’t surprised. She had betrayed her family. And family should have been everything to her. It certainly was that to him. He couldn’t imagine any of his sisters doing something like she had.

He read through the papers inside, press releases about Pellegrino’s, about some of her family members who were now running the business: her two brothers, her younger sister, her brother-in-law. There were a couple of financial statements, too, and other stuff—calculations.

On what?

Then it hit him.

She was, at the moment, the managing director of a consulting firm that did money laundering on the sly. If she hadn’t before, now she sure knew all about that subject. Hell, the FBI had trained her on it.

Brant slapped the folder shut and swore.

She was working on accessing the four million dollars she had embezzled and hidden and was getting ready to wash it squeaky clean. She was manning her own operation, probably thinking of skipping the second she had everything in hand.

Not if he had anything to say about it.