Читать книгу To Love a Thief - Merline Lovelace, Merline Lovelace - Страница 9

The D.C. fire department, the police department’s crime scene unit, several detectives and a squad from the coroner’s office were already at the house when Maggie and Adam rushed in. Face ashen, Maggie took in the black plastic body bags on the kitchen floor. Her eyes were haunted as they locked on Nick.

“Samantha? Jilly? You said on the phone…” Her voice cracked, broke. “They’re okay?”

“They’re fine.”

Nick’s shoes crunched on broken glass as he crossed the kitchen and gripped both her hands in his.

“They were in bed, asleep. Jilly didn’t wake up until she heard the sirens. Samantha stayed down for the entire count.”

“A police officer is upstairs with them now,” Mackenzie put in. “We figured we’d better have someone keep them company until, well…”

She glanced at Adam. His jaw was set, his blue eyes arctic. He didn’t exude the charm of a handsome, wealthy Boston aristocrat now. He was Thunder, once OMEGA’s most skilled, dangerous agent.

“Until we figure out who was behind the attack,” Adam finished in a voice so soft and lethal it sent shivers down Mackenzie’s spine.

The idea that her children might need guarding in their own home drained the little color remaining in Maggie’s cheeks.

“I have to see them,” she got out. “Make sure they’re okay.”

Adam went upstairs with her. When they came back downstairs a short time later, Maggie’s face reflected the same savage determination as her husband’s.

“What have we got so far?”

“Two corpses,” Nick replied succinctly. “No identification on either. A near arsenal of weapons, all of which appear to have been stolen. A very sophisticated, very expensive electronic security bypass device. If Radizwell hadn’t heard them outside in the garden and given us a half-second warning…”

At the sound of his name, the sheepdog’s tail thumped the floor. Adam reached down to scratch behind his ear.

“You’ve just earned yourself a year’s worth of T-bones, pal. And free run of the house for the rest of your life.”

“Jilly will be happy to hear that,” Mackenzie said with her first smile since the bullets had started flying. Only now was the knot at the base of her skull beginning to loosen.

It kinked up again when the squad from the coroner’s office lifted the two corpses onto gurneys and wheeled them out. The carving knife that had gone through the throat of one of the gunmen tented his plastic body bag at neck level.

Adam’s glance sliced to Nick. “Your handiwork?”

“Yes. Mackenzie got the second bastard.”

“Good work, Mac.”

She accepted quiet words of praise with a small nod. She wasn’t one of OMEGA’s highly skilled field operatives, but she’d gone through enough training to hold her own in a tight situation. Hopefully, she’d never find herself in one this tight again!

“Mr. Ridgeway? Dr. Sinclair?”

Maggie and Adam turned to the two detectives, who introduced themselves and produced their credentials. The older and the paunchier of the two addressed Adam.

“I understand you were supposed to receive an award tonight.”

“That’s correct.”

“Was the award publicized?”

“There was mention of it in most of the papers.”

“And on local TV stations,” Maggie added.

The younger detective jotted the information down in his notebook.

“Are you assuming the gunmen knew my wife and I weren’t home?” Adam asked, eyes narrowed.

“We’re not assuming anything right now. Just getting the facts.”

Adam shared a glance with his wife. Mackenzie could see they were beginning to work through the possibilities she and Nick had been discussing since their hearts stopped pumping pure adrenaline and their brains reengaged.

If the attack was specifically timed for after Adam and Maggie left, the gunmen might have been intending to take the girls for ransom. Or exact vengeance against Maggie and/or Adam by destroying their home and family. God knew, both Chameleon and Thunder had taken down their share of scum in their days with OMEGA. Any one of those bastards could have been seeking retribution.

Then again, their target might not have been the girls at all. The gunmen might have been after Nick. Or Mackenzie.

The idea made her swallow. Hard.

She knew they wouldn’t narrow the possibilities until the coroner autopsied the bodies, the police followed up on every lead and OMEGA put its vast resources to work. Mackenzie suspected she had access to more databases than every city, state and Federal agency combined. She’d soon know if either of the scum who burst in tonight with guns blazing had been fingerprinted, DNA tested, given blood or peed into a cup any time in the past twenty years.

They hadn’t.

At least not that Mackenzie could determine. Once she received the autopsy results and crime scene analysis, she spent two frustrating days cross-matching the information with medical, dental and Red Cross databanks. At the same time, she followed convoluted trails to determine the source of both the gunmen’s weapons and clothing.

The first solid break came not from bodily fluids, fiber content or serial numbers, but from the trash littering the back seat of a nondescript gray sedan found abandoned a block or so from Maggie and Adam’s house. The vehicle had been reported stolen weeks ago in Atlanta. The license plates were also hot. But the back seat yielded a veritable treasure trove.

By running the list of fast-food containers and crumpled coffee cups through her computers, Mackenzie was able to plot all franchises selling those products within a fifty-mile radius of D.C. She then suggested the detectives handling the case e-mail pictures of the gunmen to the managers of each franchise. Within twenty-four hours from the time the car was found, they’d established a pattern that centered on Nick.

The gunmen had purchased donuts at a Krispy Kreme three blocks from his house. Bought chili dogs from a vendor located across the street from his pricey restaurant in Chevy Chase. Downed cup after cup of coffee from a Starbucks on Massachusetts Avenue, just around the corner from the Offices of the Special Envoy.

“According to one of the waitresses at this Starbucks,” Mackenzie told Nick in a voice laced with satisfaction, “they made a call on the pay phone located on the premises the morning of the attack.”

Plunking down a list, she hitched a hip on the corner of his desk. She hadn’t bothered with makeup this morning. She rarely did. But the way Nick’s glance shifted when she crossed her legs made her wonder why the heck she’d opted for a white blouse and a slim black skirt with a slit on one side instead of her usual slacks.

Ha! Who was she kidding? She knew why. That damned almost-kiss.

To her consternation, Mackenzie had relived those absurd moments just before the gunmen struck too many times for her own comfort the past few days. Just thinking about the way Nick’s mouth had hovered over hers got her all flustered. And irritated.

Particularly since Nick hadn’t appeared to have spared those breathless moments a second thought. Like Mackenzie, he’d devoted every hour not taken up with his social obligations as special envoy and his duties as OMEGA director to discovering who was behind the attack. She didn’t know how he could work such long hours, juggling so many roles, and look like he’d just stepped out of the pages of GQ. Not even Ace’s secure satellite transmission from Saudi a while ago, reporting another dead end on the oil refinery sabotage, had ruffled his composure.

Nor should Mackenzie let him ruffle hers. This was Lightning, for pity’s sake! Her boss. The man she’d sensed could be trouble since her first day at OMEGA. If she had half a brain in her head, she’d go hard astern and put plenty of blue water between them before she made a fool of herself. Again!

Frowning, Mackenzie uncrossed her legs and gave him a rundown on the list. “These are all calls made from the Starbucks the day of the attack. I’ve crossed through the numbers that check to friends or relatives of employees. The rest appear to be calls to doctors’ offices, dry cleaners and the like. All except this one. Europol’s running it now.”

Nick eyed the number. He didn’t need the European Police Office’s aid to identify the country code. It was as familiar to him as his own name.

“The south of France,” he murmured. “From the area designation, I’d say the call was made to the Riviera.”

“You nailed it. It went to a phone booth in the city of Nice, to be exact.”

Images of an azure sea lapping a broad boardwalk and a flower market filled with riotous color flashed into Nick’s mind. He’d only visited Nice a few times. He’d always found the pickings in Cannes to be more than sufficient for his needs.

“It’s beginning to look like someone in Nice wants you dead,” Mackenzie commented, studying his face intently. “Any idea who?”

“No, but I certainly intend to find out. Ask Mrs. Wells to come in on your way out, please. I’ll get her working on travel arrangements, then come upstairs and brief you on the operations I want you to track while I’m gone.”

The vertical line between Mackenzie’s brows deepened. Not two seconds ago, she’d made up her mind to put some blue water between her and Nick. Not, however, an entire ocean. And not when it came to finding out why those bastards had opened fire on her.

“You’re not thinking about jetting off to France without me, are you?”

“There’s no thinking about it.”

Leaning back in his chair, he smoothed a hand down his red-and-navy striped tie. His nails were neat and trimmed, Mackenzie noted, his wrist banded by a thin gold watch. For all his reputed wealth, Nick didn’t go for big or flashy. The memory of how those strong, sure fingers had grazed her chin deepened her frown into a near scowl. Or maybe it was how close their mouths had come to doing a little grazing of their own.

“You weren’t the only one shot at,” she pointed out. “I have a personal stake in finding out who hired those thugs, too.”

“The evidence seems to indicate I was the target.”

“Seems being the operative word.”

Pushing away from his desk, Mackenzie paced the plush Turkish carpet. She’d done a lot of thinking in the past twenty-four hours.

“I did a Mediterranean cruise with the Sixth Fleet during my navy days. We home-ported in Naples, and I took a couple of shore leaves up along the Italian Riviera. Never got to Nice, but it’s only a hop, skip and a jump from San Remo. Maybe I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see. Maybe I listened in on some ship-to-ship communications I wasn’t supposed to hear. This could be about me, Nick, not you.”

“The surveillance pattern you established for the two gunmen says otherwise.”

“I think I should go with you.”

He shook his head. “I work alone. I always have. Besides, you’re not trained for field operations.”

“Tell that to the guy at the morgue.”

The swift comeback earned her a hard look. Mackenzie took it without a blink. Roles and missions had become something of a sore point between her and Nick since that operation in San Antonio some months back. She really couldn’t understand why he still got steamed over the fact that she’d snuggled up to the country club type who’d hired a hit man to kidnap and kill his wife. Helping take the sleazy contractor down had provided Mackenzie intense satisfaction. It was hard to accept being relegated to mere staff work again.

Which was where Nick seemed determined to keep her.

Rising with the fluid, pantherlike grace that characterized him, he rounded the desk. Mackenzie found herself trapped between a solid block of mahogany and one hundred eighty-plus pounds of lean muscle encased in a hand-tailored Brioni suit.

“One of the first rules of survival in the field is to avoid unnecessary distractions. And you, Comm, are in serious danger of becoming a distraction.”

Mackenzie waffled between feeling flattered and insulted for all of two seconds before deciding on insulted. She’d experienced plenty of sexism in the navy, some unintentional, some not. She hadn’t put up with it then. She wasn’t about to now. In her characteristic way, she laid the matter right on the line.

“If you’re referring to how close we came to a lip-lock the other night, we both know it wouldn’t have happened. Neither one of us is the type to indulge in an office affair.”

He cocked his head, measuring her through a screen of ridiculously sexy gold-tipped lashes. “You’re sure about that?”

“Yes.” She looked him square in the eye. “I’m sure. You’re a professional, Nick. You take your work very seriously. So do I. I could send one of my technicians over to work communications for you, but I prefer to go myself. Like you, I’ve got a score to settle with whoever hired those bastards. And we both know I’m the best in the business when it comes to comm.”

She was. Nick couldn’t argue that. In all his years with OMEGA, he’d never encountered anyone with anything close to this woman’s uncanny ability. She could coax a signal from a dead satellite or milk data from supposedly secure, protected sources. He’d also spent enough years in the field to know how vital good comm was. You never knew when you might need an alternate escape route or an emergency on-scene extraction.

But his gut still kinked whenever he remembered how close Mackenzie had come to taking a bullet the other night. Everything in him shied away from the idea of putting her in the line of fire again.

For the first time since taking over as OMEGA’s acting director he understood how Adam Ridgeway must have felt whenever Maggie went into the field. Sending men and women you considered your friends into harm’s way was gut-clenching enough. Sending the stubborn, irritating female who’d somehow managed to get under his skin was infinitely worse.

The only plus that Nick could see to taking her to Nice with him was that he could keep an eye on her. They were both operating under the assumption that he was the target, but, as Mackenzie had pointed out, they hadn’t nailed that down yet. They wouldn’t until he worked out this French connection. Nick couldn’t discount the possibility that she’d been the intended victim, that someone who knew her connection to OMEGA wanted to eliminate her. Or, as she’d suggested, maybe the attack stemmed from her days in the navy.

“All right. I’ll have Mrs. Wells reserve two seats on the Concorde, with connecting flights to Nice. We can leave early tomorrow morning and be there in time for dinner. In the meantime…”

His glance roamed her neat white blouse and slim skirt. They represented a significant departure from her usual jeans but wouldn’t hack it at one of the most exclusive resorts on the Côte d’Azur.

“Get the Field Dress unit to fix you up with a wardrobe. You’d better take several gowns, a couple of cocktail dresses, a selection of resort day-wear. And bikinis. You’ll only need the bottoms, of course.”

“Of course.”

Mackenzie didn’t bat an eye. She knew from her Mediterranean cruise that everyone went topless on European beaches except prudish, self-conscious American tourists. No way she was going to admit she’d fallen smack into the prude category.

“We’ll stay at the Negresco,” Nick told her. “The owner has put out tentative feelers about the possibility of opening a Nick’s at the hotel. That will give me the perfect cover for a visit.”

“What about my cover?”

He made a show of shooting his snowy cuffs and Mackenzie guessed immediately what was coming. The man had a tabloid reputation to live up to, after all.

“The best cover is always the simplest. When asked, we’ll merely introduce you as my companion.”

“Define companion.”

“Friend. Mistress. Lover.”

“I don’t think so,” Mackenzie drawled. “Let’s go with business associate.”

For the first time since the attack, real amusement flickered in Nick’s eyes. “Do you really think the French will make any distinction between the two?”

“The French might not, but we will.”

With that firm pronouncement, Mackenzie left his office and plunged into her own preparations for the mission. Her first stop was the control center, where she had the communications tech on duty call in the rest of her crew. While waiting for them to arrive, she zapped out a few queries and began compiling a complete social, economic and geopolitical history of the French Riviera in general and the city of Nice in particular.

That done, she zipped down to the basement and consulted the magicians in Field Dress Unit. Field Dress had more experience outfitting OMEGA’s agents with Kevlar body armor, jungle fatigues and the latest in Arctic survival gear than designer originals. But as soon as Mackenzie explained her needs, the frizzy-haired genius who headed the unit sent his team to scour Washington’s most elite boutiques.

Within hours they’d decked Mackenzie out in sinfully decadent silk lingerie, the latest fall lines from Versace and Armani, shoes by Ferragamo, and handbags from Prada and Chanel. As Nick’s “associate,” she had to exude at least a degree of the same wealth and sophistication he did.

If an entire new wardrobe wasn’t enough to make her feel like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality II, the haughty, self-important genius Field Dress brought in to tame her shoulder-length mane would have done the trick. As Mackenzie explained to the stylist, she usually just twisted the mink-brown mass at the back of her head, anchored it with a plastic clip, and went about her business.

“Obviously,” the artist sniffed.

When finally released from Field Dress, a gelled, manicured and pedicured Mackenzie escaped to control center. Her communications technicians greeted her with a barrage of grins and wolf whistles.

“Whoooo-weee!” the oldest of the group exclaimed. “That’s some new look, boss.”

Mackenzie tossed her head, flipping a glossy swirl over one shoulder, and returned John’s grin.

“Like it?”

“What’s not to like?”

She’d worked with the happily married father of four long enough now to accept the compliment as intended.

“You may change your mind when you realize we have to stuff a suitcase load of electronics into this little number,” she told him, dangling her Prada handbag by its strap.

Her group of experts instantly focused on the envelope-size bag. There was nothing they loved more than a challenge like this one.

“Good thing we’ve acquired those new, miniaturized circuit boards,” John murmured. “What are you thinking you’ll need, chief?”

Mackenzie had worked the list in her mind while Field Dress attacked her body. She had no idea what she and Lightning might run into in France, but she intended to be prepared for just about anything.

“I want secure satellite voice transmitters for both me and Lightning, NAVSAT directional finders, biochemical sensors, a sound amplifier that will let me listen to conversations up to fifty meters away and the sharpest high-resolution surveillance cameras in our inventory. Plus the new Taser we’ve been testing.”

John gave another whistle. The Taser was the latest CIA version of a stun gun. No larger than an ordinary ballpoint pen, it packed a powerful punch. A quarter-second contact caused instantaneous muscle contraction. One to two seconds short-circuited an attacker’s neuro-centers and brought him down. Three would leave him staring at the ceiling in a daze.

Given that an agent’s life could well depend on the equipment he or she took into the field, Mackenzie and her people thoroughly tested every de vice they added to their electronic grab bag. She and John had both endured only a half-second zap. That was more than enough to convince both of them of the effectiveness of this particular device.

“Hope you don’t have to use that baby in an operational mode,” John commented, remembering how he’d snarled like a bear with a sore paw for days after the test.

“Not to worry,” Mackenzie returned with a shrug. “I’ll save it for the bad guys.”