Dangerous to Hold (22 page)

All of which was true, and would be verified by even the most diligent inquiry into his background. What wouldn't be verified was any link between Nate Sloan, former AF test pilot turned small-time rancher, and OMEGA.

She glanced over his shoulder at Three Bars Red. “And that, I take it, is the horse I was told about.”

“Not just the
horse,
” Nate told her, offended on Ole Red's behalf by her slighting tone. “The sire of champions.”

He turned and whistled between his teeth. Red ambled forward and plopped his head lazily on Nate's denim-covered shoulder.

As Alexandra eyed the dusty face, with its white blaze and its wiry gray whiskers sprouting from the velvet muzzle, the ghost of a smile softened her face, easing the lines on either side of her mouth.

“This is the sire of champions?”

“World-class,” Nate assured her. He rubbed his knuckles along Red's smooth, satiny cheek, while his senses absorbed the impact of that almost-smile. “I've got his papers in my gear bag, but you'll see the real evidence for yourself come spring.”

The hint of softness around her mouth disappeared so fast it might never have been. “I may see the evidence,” she replied stiffly, “
if
I decide to accept this gift.”

Nate's knuckles slowed. “Why wouldn't you accept him?”

Her chin angled. “The people of this area have an old saying, Mr. Sloan. ‘When you take a glass of vodka from a stranger, you must offer two in return.' I've made it clear that I'm not prepared to offer anything, to anyone, at this point.”

Well, that settled the question of whether Alexandra Jordan might hand over the decoder if asked quietly through diplomatic channels…assuming she had it in her possession, that was.

Tipping the ball cap to the back of his head, Nate leaned against the chestnut's shoulder.

“There aren't any strings attached to this gift,” he told her evenly, “except the one you just hacked up with that Texas-size toothpick of yours.”

“I'm not a fool, Mr. Sloan. I've learned the hard way that you don't get something for nothing in this world, or any other. Karistan is in too precarious a position right now to—” She broke off at the sound of approaching hooves.

When the guide drew up alongside, she held a brief exchange in the flowing, incomprehensible Karistani dialect. After a few moments, Alexandra gave a small shrug.
“Da, Dimitri.”

She turned back to Nate, her eyes cool. “Dimitri Kirov, my grandfather's lieutenant and now mine, reminds me that it is
not the way of the steppes to keep travelers standing in the wind, offering neither food nor shelter.”

If he hadn't been briefed on Alexandra Jordan's cultural diversity, her formal, almost stilted phrasing might have struck Nate as odd, coming from a woman who'd graduated from Temple University's school of design and maintained a condo in Philadelphia when she wasn't holed up in her Manhattan studio. Here on the steppes, Alexandra's Karistani heritage obviously altered both her speech and her attitude toward a fellow American.

“You'll come to our camp and take bread with us,” she told him, “until I make up my mind whether to accept this gift.”

It was more order than invitation, and a grudging one at that, but it served Nate's purpose.

“Ole Red and I appreciate the generous offer of hospitality, ma'am.”

Her golden eyes flashed at the gentle mockery in his voice, but she turned without another word. She headed for her mount, holding herself so rigid she reminded Nate of a skinned-cypress fence pole…until a fresh gust of wind flattened her baggy trousers against her frame.

A bolt of sheer masculine appreciation shot through Cowboy. Damned if the woman didn't have the trimmest, sweetest curving posterior he'd been privileged to observe on any female in a long, long time.

Too bad she didn't have the disposition to go with it, he thought, eyeing that shapely bottom with some regret. He generally made it a point to steer clear of prickly-tempered females. There were enough easy-natured ones to fill his days and occasional nights when he wasn't in the field.

Although… For a fleeting moment, when she eyed Ole Red, Nate had caught a hint of another woman buried under Alexandra Jordan's hard exterior. One who tantalized him with her elusiveness and made him wonder what it would take to coax her out of the shell she'd built around herself.

Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he gathered Red's reins. Although OMEGA agents exercised considerable discre
tion in the field, Nate was careful not to mix business with pleasure. He'd learned the hard way it could have disastrous results.

As he pulled Red around, he glanced across a few yards of windswept grass to find Dimitri combing two arthritic fingers through his scraggly beard, his cloudy eyes watching Nate intently.

“I stay, cattle. You ride.” The aged warrior's chin jerked toward the mounted woman. “With
ataman.
”

Ataman.
Nate chewed on the word as he rode out. It meant “headman,” or so he'd been briefed. Absolute ruler of the host. Although the Karistanis practiced a rough form of democracy based on the old Cossack system of one man, one vote, they left it to their leader's discretion to call for that vote. Thus their “elected” rulers exercised almost unchallenged authority, and had through the centuries, despite the efforts of various czars and dictators to bend them to their will.

Red's longer stride closed the distance easily. As Nate drew alongside the new Karistani leader, he found himself wondering how a woman coped with being the absolute leader of a people descended from the fierce, warlike Cossacks…the legendary raiders who had made travel across the vast plains so hazardous that the Russian czars at last gave up all attempts to subdue them and gradually incorporated them into their ranks. The famed horsemen whose cavalry units had formed the backbone of Catherine the Great's armies. The boisterous warriors who swilled incredible amounts of vodka, performed energetic leg kicks from a low squat, and dazzled visitors and enemies alike with their athletic displays of horsemanship.

Having seen the way Alexandra Jordan handled both the raw-boned gray gelding she rode and that old-fashioned but lethal Enfield rife, Nate didn't make the mistake of underestimating her physical qualifications for her role. But he had more questions than answers about her ability to lead this minuscule country into the twentieth century. Why had she refused all offers of aid? What was causing those worry lines at the corners of her eyes? And where the hell was that decoder?

Nate had the rest of the day and most of tomorrow to find some answers to those questions, before Maggie arrived in the area. He ought to have the situation pretty well scoped by then. Maybe he'd even get lucky and find the decoder right away, saving Maggie at least a part of the long trip.

He slanted the woman beside him another glance.

Then again, maybe he wouldn't.

 

Alex ignored the man beside her and kept her eyes on the far horizon.

Damn! As if she didn't have enough to worry about without some long-legged, slow-talking
cowboy
from the States charging down out of nowhere, almost scaring the wits out of her with his rodeo stunts! Every time Alex thought about how close she'd come to putting a bullet through him, her heart thudded against her breastbone.

She had to stop jumping at every shadow. Despite the garbled message old Gregor had received a couple days ago over his ancient, wheezing transmitter, there'd been no sign of any raiding party from Balminsk. In two days of hard riding, the patrols she'd led out hadn't found any trace of them. It was just another rumor, another deliberate scare tactic from that wild-eyed bastard to the east.

The old wolf was trying to keep her off-balance, and he was succeeding. He wanted to goad her into some action, some incident that would shatter the shaky cease-fire between Balminsk and Karistan and give the outside world the excuse it was waiting for to intervene. And once the outside powers came in, they would never leave. Karistan's centuries-long battle with the Russians had taught them that.

Even her own country, Alex thought bitterly. Even the U.S. Her hands tightened on the reins as she recalled the conditions the State Department representative had laid out as part of the aid package he presented. If she'd agreed to those conditions, which included immediate dismantling of the missiles on Karistan's border, her tiny country would've lost its only bargaining power in the international arena. It would've become little
more than a satellite, totally dependent on the vagaries of U.S. foreign policy to guarantee its future.

The sick feeling that curled in Alex's stomach whenever she thought of those missiles returned. Swallowing, she gripped the reins even tighter to keep her hands from trembling. She still couldn't believe she was responsible for such awesome, destructive power.

Dear God, how had her life changed so dramatically in three short weeks? How had she been transformed overnight from the latest rag queen, as the trade publications had labeled her, to a head of state with absolute powers any dictator might have envied? How was she—?

“This country's a lot like Wyoming,” the man beside her commented, his deep voice carrying easily over the rhythmic thud of hooves against soft earth. “It's so big and empty, it makes a man want to rein in and breathe the quiet.”

“It's quiet now,” Alex replied. But it wouldn't be for long, she thought, if she didn't find a way to walk the tightrope stretching before her.

As if reading her mind, the stranger nodded. “I heard about Karistan's troubles.”

“I'm surprised.” Alex was careful to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Most of the press didn't consider my grandfather's struggle for independence front-page material.”

His lips curved. “Well, there wasn't much coverage in the
Wolf Creek Gazette,
you understand, but I generally make it a point to do a little scouting before I ride over unfamiliar territory.”

Alex frowned, not at all pleased with the way his crooked grin sent a flutter of awareness along her nerve endings. Good Lord, the last thing she needed right now was a distraction, especially one in the form of a broad-shouldered, lean-hipped man! Particularly one with a gleam in his eyes that told her he knew very well his impact on the opposite sex.

She almost groaned aloud, thinking of the problems his presence was going to generate in a camp whose population consisted primarily of ancient, war-scarred veterans, a handful of
children, and a clutch of widows and young women. As if she didn't have enough to worry about.

“You want to tell me about it?” His deep voice snagged her attention. “Karistan's struggle for independence, I mean?”

For a crazy moment, Alexandra actually toyed with the idea of opening up, of sharing the staggering burden that was Karistan with someone else. Almost as quickly as the idea arose, she discarded it. The responsibility she carried was hers and hers alone. Even if she'd wanted to, she couldn't risk sharing anything with a man who was delivering a gift that, despite any claim to the contrary, came with obligations she wasn't ready to accept.

“No, Mr. Sloan, I don't care to tell you about it,” she replied after a moment. “It's not something you need to be concerned with.”

His brown-flecked agate eyes narrowed a bit under the brim of his hat, but he evidently decided not to push the issue.

“Might as well call me Nate,” he offered, in that slow, deliberate drawl that was beginning to rasp on Alex's taut nerves. “Seeing as how we're going to be sharing a campfire for a while.”

She gave a curt nod and kneed her horse into a loping trot that effectively cut off all conversation.

Drawing in a slow breath, Cowboy tugged his hat lower on his forehead and set Red to the same pace. Alexandra Jordan was one stiff-necked woman.

He suspected he had his work cut out for him if he was going to have anything significant to report to Maggie when she arrived in the area.

A
t that moment, Maggie wasn't sure if she was ever going to get to her target area.

She dropped a clunky metal suitcase containing her personal gear and a stack of scientific tomes on the second-floor landing of OMEGA's headquarters and scanned the flickering closed-circuit TV screen overhead. Verifying that the director's outer office was clear, she palmed the sensor.

“Is he in?” she asked the receptionist breathlessly.

Gray-haired Elizabeth Wells glanced up from the Queen Anne-style cabinet she was locking. Her hands stilled, and a look of uncertainty crossed her usually serene features. “Maggie? Is that you?”

Maggie reached up to whip off glasses as round and thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle. Her spontaneous grin slipped into a grimace as her scraped-back hair tugged against her scalp.

“Yes, Elizabeth. Unfortunately.”

“Good heavens, dear. I doubt if even your own father would recognize you.”

Maggie hitched one hand on a hip in an exaggerated pose. “Amazing what a pair of brogans, a plaid shirt and a plastic pocket pack full of pens can do for a woman's image, isn't it?”

“But…but your face! What did you do to it?”

“A slather of bone white makeup, some gray shadow under my eyes, and a heavy hand with an eyebrow pencil.” She waggled thick black brows Groucho Marx would have envied. “Good, huh?”

“Well…” Elizabeth's worried gaze flitted to the dark blemish of the left side of her jaw.

Maggie fingered the kidney-shaped mark, pleased that it had drawn Elizabeth's notice. The unsightly blemish should draw everyone else's attention, as well. Maybe, just maybe, the distraction would give Maggie the half second's edge that sometimes meant the difference between life and death in the field.

“Don't worry,” she assured the receptionist. “The guys in Field Dress assured me they didn't use
exactly
the same technique as a tattoo. They have some formula that dissolves the ink under my skin when I get back.”

“I hope so, dear,” Elizabeth said faintly.

Maggie clumped toward the hallway leading to the director's inner office. “Is the boss in? I need to see him right away.”

“You just caught him.” The receptionist pressed the hidden electronic signal that alerted Adam Ridgeway to a visit from an OMEGA operative. “He wanted to be sure you were on your way before he left for the ambassador's dinner.”

Maggie hurried down the short corridor to the director's inner office, not the least worried that her dramatically altered appearance might trip one of the lethal devices the security folks euphemistically termed “stoppers.” The pulsing X-ray and infrared sensors hidden behind the wood-paneled walls didn't rely on anything as unsophisticated as physical identification. Operating at mind-boggling speed, they scanned her
body-heat signature, matched it to that in the OMEGA computer, and deactivated the security devices.

Maggie stopped on the threshold to the director's office, searching the dimly lighted room. She caught sight of Adam's lean silhouette in front of the tall, darkening windows, and drew in a sharp breath.

Adam Ridgeway in a business suit or expertly tailored blazer had stopped more than one woman in her tracks on D.C.'s busy streets.

In white tie and tails, he was enough to make Maggie's heart slam sideways against her rib cage and her lungs forget to function.

Damn, she thought as she fought for breath. No man should be allowed to possess such a potent combination of self-assurance and riveting good looks. Not for the first time, she decided that the president couldn't have chosen a more distinguished special envoy than Adam Ridgeway. In his public persona, at least, he epitomized the wealthy, cultured jet-setter dabbling in politics that most of the world believed him to be.

The dozen or so OMEGA agents he directed, however, could attest to the cool, ruthless mind behind the director's impenetrable facade. None of them were privy to the full details of Adam's past activities in service to his country, but they knew enough to trust him with their lives. What was more, he possessed knife-edged instincts, and a legendary discipline during crises.

Only Maggie had been known to shake him out of his rigid control on occasion. She cherished those moments.

Evidently this wasn't one of them. Adam lifted one dark brow in cool, unruffled inquiry. “A last-minute glitch, Chameleon?”

Folding her arms across her plaid-shirted chest, Maggie peered at him over the rims of the thick glasses. “Didn't I disconcert you? Even for a moment?”

After a hesitation so slight she was sure she'd imagined it,
his mouth curved in a wry smile. “You disconcert me on a regular and frequent basis.”

She would've loved to explore that interesting remark, but a driver was waiting for her downstairs. “Uh, Adam, I have a small problem. The sitter I had lined up for Terence just backed out. Would you keep him while I'm gone?”

“No.”

The flat, unequivocal refusal didn't surprise her. “Adam…”

“Save your breath, Maggie. I will not keep that monster from hell. In fact, if he ever crosses my path again, I'll likely strangle him with my bare hands.”

She tugged off the glasses. “Oh, for heaven's sakes! What happened last time was as much your fault as his. You shouldn't have left that rare edition on your desk. I told you he likes to eat paper.”

“So you did. You failed, however, to mention that he also likes to creep up behind women and poke his head up their skirts.”

Maggie concealed a fierce rush of satisfaction at the thought of the dramatic encounter between the scaly, bug-eyed blue-and-orange iguana she'd acquired as a gift from a Central American colonel and Adam's sophisticated sometime companion. By all accounts, Terence had thoroughly shaken the flame-haired congresswoman from Connecticut and sent her rushing from Adam's Georgetown residence. The redhead couldn't know, of course, that the German shepherd-size reptile was as harmless as it was ugly. Nor had Maggie felt the least urge to correct the mistaken impression when she called to apologize.

As much as that incident had secretly delighted Maggie, however, it had drawn her boss's wrath down on her unattractive pet. She tried once again to smooth things over.

“Terence was only feeling playful. He's really—”

“No.”

“Please. For me?”

Adam's eyes held hers for a few, fleeting seconds. Maggie
felt her pulse skip once or twice, then jolt into an irregular rhythm.

“I can't,” he said at last. “The Swedish ambassador and his wife are staying with me while their official quarters are under repair. Ingrid's a good sport, but I don't think Börg would appreciate your repulsive pet's habit of flicking out his yardlong tongue to plant kisses on unsuspecting victims.”

Having been subjected to a number of those startling kisses herself, Maggie conceded defeat.

Adam held himself still as her sigh drifted across the office. Over the years, he'd mastered the art of controlling his emotions. His position required him to weigh risks and make a calculated decision as to whether to put his agents in harm's way. There was little room for personal considerations or emotions in such deadly business.

Yet the distracted look in Maggie's huge brown eyes affected him more than he would admit, even to himself.

“You might try Elizabeth,” he suggested after a moment.

“I tried her before I hired the sitter. She still hasn't forgiven Terence for devouring the African water lilies she spent six years cultivating. In fact,” Maggie added glumly, “she threatened to shoot him on sight if he ever came within range.”

It wasn't an idle threat, Adam knew. The grandmotherly receptionist requalified every year at the expert level on the 9 mm Sig Sauer handgun she kept in her desk drawer. She'd only fired it once other than on the firing range—with lethal results.

Watching Maggie chew the inside of one cheek, Adam refrained from suggesting the obvious solution. She wouldn't appreciate the reminder that lizard meat had a light, tasty succulence when seared over an open fire. Instead, Adam pushed his conscience aside and offered up OMEGA's senior communications technician as a victim.

“Perhaps Joe Sammuels could take care of…it for you. He returned last night from his satellite-communications conference in the U.K.”

“He did? Great!” Maggie jammed her glasses back on,
wincing as the handles forced a path through the tight hair at her temples. “Joe owes me, big-time! I kept the twins for a whole week while he and Barb went skiing.”

Adam's lips twisted. “He'll repay that debt several times over if he takes in your walking trash compactor.”

Behind the thick lenses, Maggie's eyes now sparkled with laughter. “Joe won't mind. He knows how much the twins enjoy taking Terence out for a walk on his leash. They think it's totally rad when everyone freaks out as they stroll by.”

“They would.”

“I'll go call Joe. I can leave a key to my condo for him with Elizabeth. Thanks, Adam.” She started for the door, throwing him a dazzling smile over her shoulder. “See you…whenever.”

“Maggie.”

The quiet call caught her in midstride. She turned back, lowering her chin to peer at him over the black rims. “Yes?”

“Be careful.”

She nodded. “Will do.”

A small silence descended between them, rare and strangely intense. Adam broke it with a final instruction.

“Try not to bring home any more exotic gifts from the admirers you seem to collect in the field. Customs just sent the State Department another scathing letter about the unidentified government employee who brought a certain reptile into the country without authorization.”

Wisely, Maggie decided to ignore Adam's reference to what had somehow become a heated issue between several high-ranking bureaucrats. Instead, she plucked at the sturdy twill pants bagging her hips and waggled her black eyebrows. “Admirers? In this getup? You've got to be kidding!”

She gave a cheerful wave and was gone.

Adam stood unmoving until the last thump of her boots had faded in the corridor outside his office.

“No,” he murmured. “I'm not.”

He flicked his tuxedo sleeves down over pristine white cuffs, then patted his breast pocket to make sure it held his
onyx pen. The microchip signaling device implanted in the pen's cap emitted no sound, only a slight, intermittent pulse of heat.

Adam never went anywhere without it.

Not when he had agents in the field.

 

After a quick flight from Washington to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Maggie jumped out of the flight-line taxi and lugged her heavy suitcase across the concrete parking apron. The huge silver-skinned stretch C-141 that would transport the UN inspection team crouched on the runway like a mammoth eagle guarding its nest. Its rear doors yawned open to the night.

“Be with you in a minute, ma'am,” the loadmaster called from inside the cavernous cargo bay.

Maggie nodded and waited patiently at the side hatch while the harried sergeant directed the placement of the pallets being loaded into the hold. A quick glance at the stenciling on the crates told Maggie that about half contained supplies for the twelve-person UN team, and half were stamped
FRAGILE—SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT
.

Racks of floodlights bathed the plane in a yellow glare and heated the cool September night air. Maggie stood just outside the illuminated area, in the shadow of the wing, content to have a few moments to herself before she met her fellow team members for the first time. Now that she was within minutes of the actual start of her mission, she wanted to savor her tingling sense of anticipation.

The accumulated stress from almost twenty hours of intense mission preparation lay behind her.

The racing adrenaline, mounting tension and cold, wrenching fear that came with every mission waited ahead.

For now, there was only the gathering excitement that arced along her nerves like lightning slicing across a heated summer sky.

She breathed in the cool air, enjoying this interlude of dim,
shadowed privacy. In a few minutes, she'd be another person, speak with another voice. For now, though, she—

The attack came with only a split second's warning.

She heard a thud. A startled grunt. The loud rattle of her metal suitcase as it clattered on the concrete.

Maggie whirled, squinting against the floodlights' glare. If the lights hadn't blinded her, she might have had a chance.

Before she could even throw up her hands to shade her eyes, a dark silhouette careened into her.

Maggie and her attacker went down with a crash.

She hit the unyielding concrete with enough force to drive most of the air from her lungs. What little she had left whooshed away when a bony hipbone slammed into her stomach.

An equally bony forehead cracked against hers, adding more black spots to those the blinding lights had produced. Fisting her fingers, Maggie prepared to smash the soft cartilage in the nose hovering just inches above her own.

“Oh, my— Oh, my God! I'm—I'm sorry!”

The horrified exclamation began in something resembling a male bass and ended on a high soprano squeak. Maggie's hand halted in midswing.

Almost instantly, she regretted not taking out the man sprawled across her body. As he tried to push himself up, he inadvertently jammed a knee into a rather sensitive area of her female anatomy.

At her involuntary recoil, he stammered another, even more appalled apology. “Oh! Oh, I'm sorry! I'll just… Let me just…”

He lifted his knee in an attempt to plant it on less intimate ground. He missed, and ground it into Maggie's already aching stomach instead. She stilled his jerky movements with a death grip on his jacket sleeves.

He swallowed noisily as he peered down at her. With the lights glaring from behind his head, Maggie couldn't make out any facial features.