Afterglow (37 page)

“Therefore we weren’t made at the bank. Not by the good guys, anyway. Another issue of concern: why my men haven’t made contact in forty-eight hours. It couldn’t just be bad cell reception, not for that long. And … yes, that is freaking weird. Ham was two feet behind me in the catacombs when he was shot. I wasn’t touched. Yet we were almost shot and killed en route to see Paul.”

“True. But no one seems to have followed us here, right?”

“This feels like,” Rand said grimly, getting to his feet, “you and I are being
herded
.”

Her eyes went wide. “But why? What could they possibly hope to gain?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

“IT’S TIME TO GET
rid of those who no longer benefit us, and put the final clue in place, Szik.”

“Rebik and Ligg?”

“This time, I want you to travel to do the job. Go to Albania and dispatch them personally. I don’t want anyone to see you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Father. Should I dispose of Rand at the same time?”

“Not now. She’ll only go forward if he’s with her. There’s no point separating them now.” Monk threw him a bone. “You can have him when we have her.”

Szik’s face lit up, his eyes glittering with excitement. “You trust me that much, Father?”

Monk forced his lips to curve into a benevolent smile as he gazed with flat eyes at his most faithful servant. “You are the only one I trust, my son.”

Szik fell to his knees and sobbed his gratitude as Monk brought the lighter to the end of his cigar.

RAND WAS RIGHT. WITH
the threat of a hit team chasing them, and the GPS location of the carrier of the missing vial leading them, it did feel suspiciously as if someone was manipulating their every move. Certainly people other than Zak Stark knew about her tracking ability. She’d been mentioned in the local papers several times, if nothing else. There was no resisting the easy strength of Rand’s grip as he bracketed her face with both hands. “You’re frowning.”

She gave a half-laugh, putting her fingers around his wrists to remove his hands from her face. Looking at him made her heart hurt. She wanted to believe that he believed in her, but experience told her that what she was feeling was wishful thinking.

Nobody made such a fast turnaround. Not with all the damning evidence against her. Not a man as steadfast as Rand had always been about things being black or white. “This situation warrants at least a frown,” she pointed out, not pulling him away but instead running her fingers lightly around the strong bones of his wrists. She loved touching him. That never changed. She loved his physical strength, and God only knew, right then, his physical strength was incredibly seductive.

He bent his head, blocking the light. “I’m sorry. I’m so goddamned sorry.” And then he kissed her so gently, so tenderly, tears prickled behind Dakota’s lids. Her heart swelled and her chest felt tight as she opened her mouth and welcomed him inside.

She slid off the chair and allowed herself to lean on him as he stroked her hair, which was still wound in a braid down her back. That would last about two seconds—his fingers expertly combed through the still damp strands until her hair was draped in a damp cape over her shoulders.

She felt ridiculously safe right now. Stupid, all things considered. Dakota fitted herself against him, felt the hard ridge of his erection, yet she sensed no urgency from him as, still kissing her, he backed her against the bed.

He lowered her to the mattress, coming down beside her, and she broke the kiss. “I—”

He murmured, “Shh,” and placed a finger gently on her parted lips. His eyes, a dangerous forest green, turned even darker as he cupped her breast. He made no move to get her naked in thirty seconds flat. Instead, he caressed her through her T-shirt and bra, until she moved restlessly under the slow caresses that weren’t nearly enough.

He petted her, teased her nipples, and kissed her so that they had to pull apart and gasp for air. She loved the musky scent of his skin that even the hotel soap couldn’t mask. Loved the feel of his cool, damp hair as he slid his lips down the arched curve of her throat. She loved the hot, sweet pull of his mouth as he closed his lips around her nipple through two thin layers of fabric.

He stroked a line from her collarbone with a gentle finger, nudging her farther up the mattress, coming to rest between her upraised knees.

Eyes closed, she stroked his nape as he kissed a path up her throat and took her mouth again. Slow, sweet drugging kisses that made her blood surge urgently through her veins. She felt the glide of his hand under her T-shirt, then the brush of his fingers inside her bra.

Rand wasn’t just making love to her, but worshiping her with a tenderness that both broke her heart and made her want to fly. It had been so long, so very long since he’d believed in her, and it came through in every touch. They made love slowly, as if they had all the time in the world and no one but each other. An illusion, but one Dakota clung to as he kissed his way down her body. She was willing to put aside both the past and the future. Because the truth was that all anyone ever really had was the present. And the present was perfect.

SIXTEEN

A
re you sure Rebik and Ligg are dead?” Rand repeated the next morning as they ate breakfast. The outdoor area of the trattoria was doing a brisk business. Nobody was listening to one more couple crammed into the narrow space, with tables placed cheek by jowl to accommodate as many people as possible. A line was forming near the door to the restaurant.

Dakota swallowed a mouthful of eggs. “Positive. I don’t see their numbers anymore.” She’d known in the early hours of the morning when she’d gotten up to pee, and checked. But she hadn’t had the heart to wake Rand to tell him. It served no purpose to rouse him from the first decent night’s sleep he’d had in days to tell him something he couldn’t fix. She’d crawled back into bed, tucking herself into the warm spoon of his body, and gone back to sleep herself.

They’d both woken feeling refreshed. No crazed killers or determined officials knocked down their door in the middle of the night. Nonetheless, she’d had to tell him his men were dead before they left the room to go eat.

Now they sat outside an out-of-the-way, family-style trattoria having breakfast, and Rand placed his coffee cup on the table with a
thump
of disappointment. “Not that I don’t believe what you’re telling me,” he assured her with a squeeze to her fingers, threaded in his. “I just need confirmation that you aren’t having a … glitch. Damn it to hell. We’ve gotten this close, and now the trail is cold?”

“No, it isn’t cold. We know your guys found the person carrying the vial, because they were in the same place as his coordinates when they died.”

“Fuck it! Who the hell’s killing my men?” He kept his voice low, but it took an effort. Rand ran a hand around the back of his neck, frustration in every line of his body.

“I don’t know who, but I know exactly where it happened. I marked it on the map while you were in the shower. But I have another idea. Something Paul said yesterday.”

“Since we both know Paul is only out to protect Paul, implicating you in my mother’s death …” Rand shoved his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Can we believe whatever it was he said?”

“I don’t know, but I have a feeling this might be worthwhile. When we were talking about DL6-94, he mentioned mastic. Mastic is an ingredient that some of our control studies used. I was more concerned with getting a stable product than I was with taste. But Paul implied that the mastic wasn’t for taste. That it was an important ingredient in Rapture.”

She picked up her cappuccino and cradled the shallow cup in her palm. “
Pistacia lentiscus
is found all over Mediterranean Europe, but the subspecies on our approved supplies list came from only one place, in Greece. Specifically, the peninsula of Mount Athos. And how did I remember this small, insignificant detail, you ask?” She took a sip of creamy coffee and looked at him over the rim. He obligingly raised his eyebrows in inquiry, a slight smile on his lips. “Because when I was researching it and where the plant grew, I learned that this is the area that has all the monasteries, and that no women are allowed to go there. The details stuck in my head.”

Rand smiled. “And of course you wanted to go immediately and pick the leaves yourself.”

She smiled back, taking inordinate pleasure in their simple camaraderie. Looking for emotional pitfalls was exhausting business, and she was more than willing to take advantage of the current détente. The sun shone, a couple nearby was laughing, and a small bird near her feet looked up, hopeful for a breakfast crumb. The last time she’d felt this happy, this content, was when Rand had taken time from his busy new company to take her to Carmel for the weekend, a few weeks before everything in her life had blown to hell. Literally.

No. I’m not going there. Not now.
She was going to enjoy every damned second of this morning for as long as it lasted. “Something like that. We used the tree’s resin, not the leaves. It oozes out of the bark. When the resin dries, it’s mixed with the other ingredients. Actually, it’s been used in medicines for centuries, not to mention chewing gum, foods, and cosmetics. It’s in lots of products.”

“Then what makes the mastic used by Rydell different or special? It seems as though your clue is giving us a needle in a very large haystack.”

“The mastic that’s used in this application can only be found in two places in the world.
Two
places.” Her heart started beating faster with anticipation as she realized she could be onto something. This could be the real clue to finding the person responsible. “The Greek island of Chios has one subspecies, but that proved unstable for our purposes. The one we used exclusively is harvested in very small amounts in the Mount Athos region. I think we should go there and see what we find.”

“I hear you.” He considered her suggestion for a moment. “But I’d prefer to go to Albania, and the last place my men were alive, to search for clues. Someone killed them, and that someone might be the same person we’re following.”

Dakota put a free hand on his rock-hard forearm. “While I appreciate that you want to check on your men, my instincts say we should head directly to Mount Athos. We’re running out of time and we can’t do both.”

Rand gave her a half-smile as he lifted his butt to pull his wallet from his back pocket to pay for their meal. “Do you have a manly disguise in that bag of yours? A nice mustache and goatee perhaps?” He laid a handful of euros beside his empty plate.

Dakota stroked her thumb on his warm skin on the back of his hand, which was lightly clasping hers. She loved his big hands. Loved the look of them, loved the feel of them touching her skin, loved the strength and the gentleness when he made love to her. “It never occurred to me,” she teased back. “But I bet I can improvise. Would you make love to me if I were a man?”

“I’d make love to you
pretending
to be a man,” he said dryly, bringing their joined hands to his lips and kissing her fingers. “In the dark,” he said with mock firmness. “With my eyes closed. After confirmation that everything that should be there
was
there.” The waiter came and took the check and money off the table. Rand indicated there was no change and rose, still holding her hand.

On the street, he paused. “Albania first. To make arrangements to ship the bodies home, if nothing else.”

“The coordinates for the guy carrying the vial are still there,” she admitted, hitching her bag higher up her shoulder. “Please tell me we won’t be driving—my butt hurts from all this sitting.”

“No, we’ll fly.”

RAND IDENTIFIED THE SWEET,
sick smell of death the instant he stepped into the hangar. Beside him, Dakota slapped a hand over her nose and mouth as she got a whiff and gagged. “Wait here,” he told her grimly. The large doors had all been shut—but not locked—when they arrived. With no windows or cross ventilation, the heat was oppressive, even though it was barely noon.