Читать книгу Night Pleasures - Jule Mcbride - Страница 8

“WE’VE REACHED A CRISIS point,” she said, pretending to nibble a sandwich, her lips barely moving. “We’ve got to get rid of Edison Lone. Now.”

He sat beside her on a park bench, wearing one of his many finely tailored suits, the uniform of what he was—a major power broker in the most power-hungry city in America. As her low, husky voice rippled through him, he decided that some men would be threatened by her raw sensuality, others by her intelligence, and still others by the power the woman wielded in Washington; he was simply aroused. He was her lover, and each word affected him like a slow-drip aphrodisiac feeding straight into his veins. Slowly, he turned a page of the classified ads in this morning’s free tabloid. “Any suggestions about how to rid ourselves of Lone?”

“Oh,” she purred. “I’ve got a few.”

“Care to share them?”

“Only if you’re good.”

A mental vision of how she’d looked last night, stepping naked from the octagonal swimming pool in her estate in Arlington, made it difficult to hide his surging arousal. “Last night I was good, wasn’t I?”

“Or bad, depending on which way you look at it.”

“I looked at it from every angle.”

“You mean you looked at me from every angle?” she murmured.

“That, too. And I didn’t see any part of you complaining.”

Her trace of a smile vanished. “No, but we’ll both be complaining if Edison Lone gets any closer to finding out what we’re up to.”

Actually, they’d be tried for treason. Glancing from the tabloid, he stared past a fountain toward Pennsylvania Avenue. “Speaking of breaches in security, are you sure you weren’t followed?” While they interacted in business contexts, they’d never been seen together socially.

“Of course I wasn’t. But we had to meet. Phone lines are never secure. And we’ve got to get Edison Lone out of the picture.”

“Permanently?”

She considered. “No…at least not yet. That would look suspicious.”

“Later?”

“Later, if we have to, we’ll make…arrangements.”

“Permanent arrangements?” he echoed, his neck prickling with a sudden chill. “You think the man’s that dangerous to us?”

“He could figure out what we’re doing. He’s the best code cracker in Washington.”

Edison Lone had also been a child prodigy, an early Harvard graduate, and was a Mensa member. He was more patriotic than George Washington, too. “Rumor has it he’d send his own children to the electric chair if he thought they were messing over Uncle Sam.”

“Not his children. He doesn’t have any. Nor ex-wives. He’s a confirmed bachelor,” she told him.

“Maybe we’ve found his Achilles’ heel. With any luck he’s secretly gay. We could use that against him, couldn’t we?”

“Edison Lone? Gay?” She nearly choked. “The man possesses so much testosterone he’s probably taking supplements.”

“I said secretly.”

“Everybody knows he likes women.”

The words rankled. “You know that?”

“I’m just offering common knowledge about the man.”

He sighed heavily, well acquainted with Edison Lone’s considerably thick dossier. Six foot one, thirty-five years old and blessed with jet-black hair and blue eyes, Lone had once upon a time been a foster child who’d exhibited such unusual aptitude in school that he’d wound up getting a first-rate education privately subsidized by benefactors. Off the record, Edison Lone was reputed to be one of those enviably rare, lucky men who drew women to him like an MRI magnet.

The man sighed again. He’d really hoped Edison Lone might be gay. But even he’d heard the female gossip around Washington about Lone being a wizard under the bedsheets.

Her husky voice broke into his reverie. “He’s convinced someone’s using the classified ads to make contacts and sell information from IBI, so he could find out it’s us. This morning, he said he might take his suspicions to CIIC.”

“If CIIC investigates, we’re toast. Did you try to talk him out of it?”

She nodded affirmatively.

They’d probably talked alone, he thought, in one of those high-tech conference rooms laid out with imported coffee and a fancy silver service. In addition to the stab of jealousy and the threat of being exposed as a traitor by Edison Lone, he decided the mind-boggling acronyms in Washington were enough to make a man’s head hurt. IBI were the initials for the Internal Bureau of Information, the organization that employed Edison Lone. CIIC, the Center for International Informational Control, was the watchdog organization that kept its eye on IBI.

“We’d better do something soon,” she said. “Otherwise he’ll realize we’re selling information from IBI’s database.”

The database included strategic plans for every national emergency from biomedical disaster to nuclear attack, and once more buyers were in place, they could finish unloading what they had to sell. “We’ve got to get Lone out of the picture,” she repeated. “And without drawing attention to everything he’s been working on for the past year.”

“All we need is a week, then we can leave the country.”

“Only a week,” she agreed.

He thought of their new identities, passports and disguises, then of the walled compound they’d purchased in Bali, with its private, white-sand beaches and crystal-clear cerulean waters. “We’ve worked too hard to let anyone get in our way now.”

“Can we get Edison Lone assigned to a case that would occupy his time? Just for a week?” she asked.

“If you’re sure he’s not gay, I’ve got a solution.”

She frowned as if conflicted. “The distraction’s female?”

He nodded. “Her name’s Selena Silverwood.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Of course you haven’t. She’s a secretary at IBI.”

“They’re assistants,” she reminded him, ever the diplomat.

He shrugged. “Whatever. The point is, she’s been bringing a highly personal erotic diary to work—”

“An erotic diary? To work?” She stared at him. “Why?”

“A New York house is publishing her erotic fantasies as a book titled Night Pleasures. Originally, it was a personal diary full of her private fantasies.”

“Fantasies?”

He nodded. “Involving a French courtesan’s sexual encounters with a mysterious marquis. The book’s being released next June, and the publishers have asked her to do some of her own editing. Anyway, because she was working on something other than IBI documents on IBI time, the diary came to the attention of our office. Naturally, we had to check her out.”

“Naturally.” She smiled. “Just in case she really was stealing information from IBI. And you found?”

“That Penthouse Letters has nothing on this girl.”

“Her fantasies are that hot?”

“Satan himself would beg for ice cubes.”

“So, you think this woman can turn Edison Lone’s head and keep him occupied for a week?”

He hedged. “Selena Silverwood’s not much to look at.”

She sighed in exasperation. “Edison Lone goes for pretty.”

“True. But there’s something he likes more than pretty.”

“Ah,” she guessed. “Codes that other cryptanalysts have failed to crack. Still, I’m not following you.”

He flashed a smile. “We’ll make a copy of Selena Silverwood’s erotic diary and tell him it’s in secret code. We’ll pretend CIIC thinks she’s using those steamy stories to smuggle sensitive information out of IBI.”

She shook her head. “Too far-fetched. C’mon, do you really think we can pass off a woman’s erotic fantasies as something she’s written in secret code?”

“Stranger things have happened in Washington.”

“True,” she admitted. “And if it worked, Selena Silverwood could fall under suspicion for stealing from IBI.”

“However briefly,” he replied. “But that’s perfect. We only need to occupy Edison Lone for a week. Just long enough that he can’t keep analyzing those classified ads—and start suspecting us.”

She looked unconvinced. “I don’t know. He’s too smart to fall for this, isn’t he?”

“Not if he’s sure the woman’s a traitor.”

Another slow smile curled her lips. “You’re right. His Achilles’ heel is definitely his patriotism. If he thinks CIIC’s involved, he might believe us. Besides, we don’t have much choice but to try this.” She sighed, switching the subject. “Do you know why I love you?”

“Because I’m brilliant and deviant?”

She nodded. “Yes. And because Edison Lone, as much as I’ve sometimes enjoyed his company, is becoming a thorn in my side. I knew you could get rid of him.”

“Lover,” he murmured, “a rose such as yourself should never have a thorn.”