Diamonds Can Be Deadly (4 page)

“Are you troubled, Felicity?”

“No, Doc. Just horny.”

Apparently that was a common condition for the woman, as her therapist didn't appear particularly surprised by the announcement.

“You're making great progress. It's necessary for you to recognize and acknowledge your feelings.”

“Oh, I recognize them, all right. It's what I do about them that gets me into so much trouble.”

“Why don't you try an extra half hour of meditation tonight,” Greene suggested. “We'll explore your feelings in more depth during the group session tomorrow.”

Jordan almost choked on her guava juice. Oh, great! That's all she needed. An hour listening to another female explore her carnal feelings for Thomas Jackson Scott.

She soon discovered the much-divorced Waller-Winston wasn't the only woman at the institute with an interest in Scott. Nudging Jordan in the ribs, the blonde directed her attention to the slender Eurasian who stopped TJ at the door.

“That's the spa director. Liana Wu. The bitch.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, look at her. She's got that tiny, porcelain-doll thing going. I refuse to stand anywhere close to the woman. She makes me look like a knob-kneed giraffe.”

If Felicity towered over the spa director, Jordan would dwarf her. The possibility didn't particularly concern her. She'd long ago learned to use her five-nine height to her advantage.

“Rumor is,” Felicity confided, “Liana baby is hot for our boy TJ.”

No surprise there, Jordan thought in disgust. Scott had snagged
her
interest at their first meeting. Angry all over again at herself for falling for the crooked cop, she turned away.

* * *

Dinner was a long, lingering affair. Afterward, Jordan walked back to her bungalow through a scented night, stopping at a scenic overlook to prop her elbows on the trunk of a palm that curved at waist level.

The surveillance cameras she knew were scattered throughout the grounds would capture the image of a mainlander lost to the majesty of the surf foaming white against black cliffs. The ocean's roar would serve as a natural sound buffer for her report to OMEGA. Folding her arms, Jordan toyed absently with her earring. One flick activated the transmitter.

“This is Diamond.”

Claire came on within a few seconds. “Cyrene here. I read you, Diamond.”

Lightning chimed in as well. “I'm here, too.”

The fact that her boss was still at the control center despite the late hour D.C. time didn't surprise Jordan. Not with the kind of political pressure OMEGA was facing on this mission. She gave him the names of the guests she'd met at dinner and a rundown of her earlier encounter with Greene and his financial adviser.

“They're interested. Definitely interested. Myers volunteered to get me in good with his pals in Colombia. He's going to help me work a deal on an emerald supply.”

“Nice of him.”

“Isn't it? I suspect he'll pocket a fat broker's fee.”

“Or skim more off the top of Greene's business deals with the Colombians.”

“Speaking of skimming,” she said, scowling at the pinpricks of iridescent green glittering in the dark depths of the sea, “did Cyrene tell you TJ Scott was waiting for me when I arrived?”

“She did.”

Lightning didn't ask the question, but Jordan answered it anyway.

“Scott still claims he was set up.”

“You were there. What do you think?”

What she thought about Thomas Jackson Scott would blister the airwaves. Reining in her anger, Jordan answered as coolly as she could.

“I'm keeping him in my sights.”

Five thousand miles away, Lightning shared a quick look with Cyrene. Any target Diamond got in her crosshairs was a walking corpse.

“I'm going to do some night work a little later,” she told them. “Pay another visit to Greene's office. Among other things, I want to see what kind of information he gathered on Scott before hiring him.”

“Keep us posted,” Lightning instructed. “And be careful.”

“Will do.”

Cyrene cut the transmission and added a note in her electronic log, while Nick digested Diamond's report. He trusted both her skills and her instincts or he wouldn't have sent her in. As far as he knew, those instincts had failed her only once. Thoughtfully, he met Claire's glance.

“Pull up everything you can on TJ Scott. I want the names of the officers who busted him. The pimps and dealers he put the squeeze on. The judge who threw out his case. The address of his favorite pizza joint. Where he buys his underwear.
Everything.
”

T
he black thermal suit fit Jordan like a second skin. As thin and supple as Saran, its inner lining was coated with a high-tech polymer that made the body-hugging jumpsuit easy to slither into.

The lining trapped and contained body heat, thus reducing the wearer's thermal signature and making him or her virtually undetectable by infrared scanners. That was great on missions to Alaska or Antarctica. Not so great in steamy Hawaii. Still, Jordan figured swimming around in her own sweat was a small price to pay for virtual invisibility.

Twisting her hair into a loose knot on top of her head, she dragged up the black hood and worked it
around her earrings. The embedded transmitter was so sensitive she could send and receive right through the polymer coating.

Hood in place, she rolled down the attached face mask. The mouth and eye slits were covered with a breathable version of the same heat-containing shield. With every inch of her body encased in skintight black, she felt like a night version of Spider-Man.

She flicked off the bathroom lights and watched herself disappear. The wide mirror above the sink didn't pick up so much as a shadow when she moved. With the CD player/electronic sweep in hand, she let herself out a side window. She left it open behind her. She'd reenter her bungalow the same way to avoid triggering the iris-recognition system and advertising her late-night expedition.

Velvet darkness surrounded her, ripe with the scent of tropical vegetation and the salty tang of the sea. Avoiding the crushed-lava pathways, Jordan glided across the lush lawns like a silent shadow. The sniffer allowed her to pick her way through the elaborate security grid. The thermal suit deflected TJ's new Y-beams. Or so she hoped!

She reached the business center a few moments later. From her earlier visit, Jordan knew the location of the intrusion-detection devices at the windows. She zapped one with the sniffer, jimmied the lock, got the window up and was through it in thirty seconds flat. Another zap reset the electronic
watchdog. The interruption would appear as a temporary blip on a monitor, if it appeared at all.

All too aware of the cameras mounted at regular intervals, Jordan kept to the shadows as she worked her way to the conference room where she'd met with Greene and Myers. The moonlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling glass window illuminated the map depicting Greene's far-flung empire. The emerald marking the headquarters here in Hawaii gleamed like a giant eye, following her stealthy progress across the conference room and into the private offices beyond.

* * *

Two hours later, Jordan reentered her bungalow through the open window. She'd accessed the computer in Greene's office, rummaged through the files in Myers's sleek little laptop and poked into every corner of the headquarters.

To her intense disappointment, she'd uncovered nothing. Nada. Zilch-ola. No evidence of offshore bank accounts. No link to the Colombians except through legitimate purchase orders for emeralds. No hidden treasure room containing the Star of the East. She
had,
however, sweated off at least five pounds.

Dragging up the thermal suit's face mask, Jordan stopped only long enough to type a code into her laptop and verify no one had entered the bungalow in her absence before making straight for the bathroom. Every pore in her body screamed with relief when she peeled off the jumpsuit and kicked free of the clinging fabric.

In her eagerness to shed the artificial skin, Jordan put a little too much oomph into the kick. Her sweat-slick foot slipped on the tiles and went out from under her. She flung out a hand to break her fall, felt it crunch against the marble counter and landed with a thud that sucked the air from her lungs.

“Dammit!”

She flexed her hand a few times. It didn't feel as though she'd broken any bones, but she'd sport one heck of a bruise in the morning. Rolling to her feet, she stripped off her sweat-drenched panties and bra and wadded them up with the thermal suit for rinsing out later. Her next priority was a long, hot shower.

Turning the crisscrossing shower jets to full blast, she stepped inside and let the water fog up the glass blocks until a gruff shout shattered her bliss.

“Jordan!”

Cursing, she cut the jets and whipped around. Over the stair-stepping glass blocks, she got a good visual of the male who strode through the door. She swore again, yanked one of the resort's ultraplush towels from the rack, wrapped it sarong style and rounded the glass block wall.

“So much for expecting any privacy at the Tranquility Institute,” she snapped. “Can any employee come waltzing into a guest's bungalow, or have you added breaking and entering to your résumé?”

He took his time replying. Jordan steamed while his gaze made a slow trip from her neck to her knees and back again. Tipping her chin, she conducted a
similar inspection. He'd traded his duty uniform for a black T-shirt and well-worn jeans that hugged his muscular thighs. A cell phone was clipped to his waist. Apparently the no-phone policy didn't apply to the institute's director of security.

“The officer on duty heard what he thought was the sound of someone falling,” he said, catching her gaze.

“Heard?”

Jordan stiffened. She'd swept the entire bungalow. There was no way she could have missed a bug. Not with Mackenzie's state-of-the art sniffer.

“Heard how?” she demanded.

“The bathroom tiles are pressurized to detect dropped objects weighing more than fifty pounds.”

“What? Why?”

“Most hotel accidents happen in the bathroom. Usually when people are getting in or out of the tub. Since the cottages aren't equipped with phones for guests to use in case of an emergency, my predecessor devised this method of alerting us to a fall.”

Involuntarily, Jordan lifted a foot. Balancing like a stork on one leg, she scowled at the decorative tiles under her other foot and scrambled to recall the type of flooring in the headquarters building.

Parquet. Both the conference room and the offices featured floor of inlaid wood. Had those floors been pressurized, too? Had TJ tracked her progress the entire time?

If so, he made no mention of it. His concern
seemed centered on the thud his security officer had heard.

“I pounded on your door. When I didn't get an answer, I did a security override and came in to check on you. From what I saw when I walked in,” he added after a short, charged pause, “you look to be in pretty good shape.”

Jordan's foot hit the tiles with a thump. The situation reminded her all too forcefully of the last time she'd gotten naked with this man. A whole anticorruption squad had busted through the door on that occasion.

“Okay, Scott. You did your duty and checked things out. You can leave now.”

“Not yet. Did you fall?”

“Yes, I fell.”

“What happened?”

“What do you think? I slipped on the tiles and took a dive. Now, if you don't mind…”

She waved a hand to send him on his way. He stood his ground, obviously not ready to be dismissed.

“I need to fill out an accident report. What caused you to slip?”

She could hardly tell him her nocturnal prowling in the equivalent of a portable steam room left her dripping with sweat down to and including her feet.

“I got in the shower. Stepped out to fetch the shampoo. Lost my footing on the wet tiles and went down. After which, I got back in the shower where I remained until I was so rudely interrupted.”

She should have remembered he was a cop. One of the best, they'd told her, before he'd turned. His glance zeroed in on the array of toiletries in the basket on the marble vanity. Each bore the resort's exclusive label—including the mango scented shampoo.

Hiking up the bath towel, Jordan moved to block his view of the shower stall. For all he knew, she'd used her own personal brand of suds.

“Look, Scott, I've had a long day and I'm—”

“Well, hell! You really did a number on yourself.”

His gaze had dropped to the middle of her chest. Glancing down, Jordan saw a mottled bruise already forming on the hand gripping the towel.

“It's nothing. I just hit my hand on the counter when I went down.”

He crossed the room in two strides. “Better let me take a look at that.”

“Hey! Do you mind? I'm naked here.”

“Yeah, I noticed. Give me your hand, Red.”

And release her death grip on the towel? Jordan didn't think so.

“What are you going to do?” she jeered. “Kiss the boo-boo and make it better?”

His grin slipped out then, the same crooked grin that had once put a flutter in Jordan's stomach. To her profound disgust, it still generated a few quivers.

“The NYPD first responder's medical training didn't include kissing as a treatment option,” he
said, his eyes glinting, “but I'm certainly willing to give it a shot.”

Enough was enough. Jordan had to get the man out of the bathroom. And she'd damn well better do it before he noticed the thermal suit wadded up in the corner. Conceding this skirmish with something less than graciousness, she jerked her chin toward the door.

“Wait for me in the other room. I'll dry off, throw on a robe and join you there.”

* * *

When TJ retreated to the sitting room, every one of his instincts had clicked into high gear. Right along with his libido.

Grimacing at the heat Jordan had stirred in his belly, he stared through the open shutters at the dark, restless sea. He'd tried to play it cool, had done his best to keep things professional, but the sight of her almost naked had blown just about every one of his circuits.

With his brain recording the erotic details and his blood making a quick trip south, TJ was surprised he'd picked up on her lie. He didn't know why she'd fed him the line about the shampoo, but his gut told him it was just that. The untouched bottle on the vanity, paired with her too-casual move to block his view of the shower stall, would have been sufficient to rouse his suspicions.

Then there was the bundle on the floor of Jordan's bathroom. He'd almost missed it, caught only a
glimpse as he turned away. One glimpse was enough to raise another red flag. That bundle sure looked like a wet suit, one that had been recently worn. But the on-duty security officer reported Jordan hadn't left her cottage since returning from dinner.

The suspicion that was second nature to a cop took over from the man still sporting a hard bulge in his jeans. What the hell was Jordan up to? Why had she picked Bartholomew Greene as a potential business partner just weeks after he'd hired a new director of security? Was she out for revenge, plotting to drag TJ into the gutter the way he'd once dragged her?

The memory of that made him cringe inside. What a mess! Scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck, he stared out at the inky darkness.

He still didn't know how it had happened. All he'd intended was a few hours in the leggy ex-model's company. That night at the charity event, the Sunday afternoon in Central Park, the invitation to drive up to Connecticut for the weekend… All orchestrated to finesse the intriguing, intoxicating Jordan Colby into bed.

He certainly hadn't planned on becoming as fascinated with her mind as he was with her sensuous body. Nor had he figured on moving with lightning speed from plain old-fashioned lust to something harder to define. And he sure as hell had never dreamed Jordan would be in his bed when officers from his own precinct busted down his door.

The swish of cloth slippers on carpet told him
Jordan had finished in the bathroom. Slamming the door on his memories, TJ turned. She'd wrapped her hair in a towel turban and belted on one of the resort's monogrammed robes. It took everything he had not to think about what was under that thick, white terry cloth.

“You don't need to play doc,” she said dismissively. “My hand is fine.”

“There's a slight matter of liability at stake here. Let's see it.”

“I'm not going to sue the institute.”

“Let's see it.”

Taking her hand in a light hold, he performed a visual inspection. She'd hit the edge of her hand, just below the little finger. The bruise was already an ugly red and purpling fast, but he didn't spot any swelling, protrusions or awkward joint angles that would indicate a fracture or dislocation.

“How bad does it hurt?”

“It doesn't. Much.”

Gently TJ manipulated her little finger. When it moved freely without a wince or a grunt on Jordan's part, he tested the metacarpal, the wrist and her lower arm.

“Doesn't feel like you broke any bones. Let's see your other hand.”

With an air of impatience she didn't bother to disguise, she placed her left hand in his. TJ compared the two and saw no glaring distortion in their shape or size, aside from the discoloration.

“I prescribe an ice pack and ibuprofen if it starts to throb. You want to avoid aspirin because it—”

“Because it slows clotting. Thanks, I know how to treat bruises.”

TJ gave her a considering look. “Sustained a lot of them, have you?”

He'd always wondered about the scar above her eyebrow. The cop in him had also noted how neatly she would sidestep any reference to her childhood in their admittedly brief hours together. She'd shrugged off his questions then and did the same now.

“Obviously you've never been behind the scenes at a fashion show. Backstage is nothing short of controlled chaos. With just minutes to make a complete wardrobe change, models are always bumping into dressers, makeup artists or each other. I had to cover up more than one bruise over the years.”

Jordan delivered that last statement without blinking an eye. It was true. Truer than he would ever know. She was battling memories she refused to let surface when TJ raised her hand to his lips.

The kiss was as light as the touch of snow, but the contact jolted through her with the impact of a Taser. So did the glint of laughter in his eyes.