Dirty Dare: The Rescue (Sexy Suspense) (Part 1, spin-off to the Dirty and Dare Me series) (9 page)

“I found it in a fake bottom in the takeout containers,” she explained.

The room overflowed with shadows. He took the bug from her while she flicked on the bedside lamp.

“Good thing you like to eat on china,” he said.

She snorted. “My snobbery saved us from having our conversations monitored. Bully for me.”

He turned the gadget, about the size and shape of a lithium cell battery, over in his hand. He recognized the model. It was American-made—and expertly deactivated. She hadn’t smashed a single component.

“You’re sure the rest of the house isn’t wired?”

She nodded. “I inherited this property from one of the most private women on the planet. And after we arrived, Marisela did a very thorough sweep. The place is clean.”

“They could be listening from outside,” he offered.

Brynn reached across to the bed stand, flipped open a hidden panel that revealed a control panel for a built-in stereo system. A couple of clicks later and music streamed through speakers tucked into corners and behind light fixtures. If anyone was listening now, they’d have a hard time distinguishing between their conversations and the lyrics from the songs.

“I spotted a fishing boat anchored about fifty yards from the beach.”

“So?”

“Fishing boats aren’t allowed that close to the shore, but it gives them a perfect angle to the house if they have high-powered binoculars.”

He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “And you know this how?”

“Because my high-powered binoculars picked out the sailors on the boat in about ten seconds flat. The equipment they’re using won’t get them far in netting spotted sea bass.”

“I told you Dante was having us watched,” he said, reaching for his pants.

Brynn scooped up the denim. “We don’t know that it’s Dante.”

“You don’t know that it isn’t,” he said. “I take it you tried to contact him.”

She grabbed his shirt from where he’d tossed it half under the bed and helped him stuff his stiff muscles into the sleeves. The more he moved, the more he loosened up—but he could tell by the haste with which Brynn dressed him that something had changed since he’d asked her to switch allegiance—something that had shifted not only her way of thinking, but the way she moved.

She’d gone from languorous and sensual to compact and precise. She wasn’t trying to slow him down anymore. On the contrary, she was speeding things up.

“What happened?” he asked, grabbing her wrist before she could pull away.

Her hypnotic, green eyes flashed with so many emotions at once, he couldn’t catalogue them all. But the anger simmering in the set of her jaw—thankfully, not centered on him—told him she’d done more than just find unexpected audio surveillance equipment in the bottom of their paella delivery and catch sight of sloppy agents bobbing in the sea below.

“I broke protocol,” she confessed. “I made some more, um, forceful inquiries about what Dante wanted me to do with you now that you’re nearly recovered. But apparently, Dante is on a mission, possibly in the Middle East. Maybe North Africa. My contact could only tell me that he’s been off the grid for at least two months.”

Sean shoved his legs into his jeans, wincing when his muscles protested. “Maybe that’s why he called you to execute my rescue? Because he was going to be out of touch.”

Brynn shook her head. “When I got the call from Dante, I did a back-trace. Call it paranoid, but I like to double-check before I go running off halfway across the world on a rescue mission under orders from a man I haven’t heard from in years. The call came from France, from the
Languedoc-Roussillon
region. I couldn’t pin it down more than that without breaking some serious encryptions.”

“Dante has a home in
Languedoc-Roussillon.
It’s where he and Macy got married last year.”

“I know,” Brynn replied. “It’s one of the few things I was able to learn about his personal life before I rescued you. Not that he lived there, specifically, but that he’d traveled to the area several times in the past year. Seemed legit for the call to come from there.”

“Makes sense.”

She opened her mouth but stopped before continuing. He could practically watch the gears in her head shift, rewind, then grind forward again. “Wait, Dante’s married? What kind of woman marries a guy like him?”

“One who is just as dangerous as he is,” Sean replied, but with a smile. He liked Macy, but the feelings weren’t exactly mutual. She didn’t hate him enough to have him kidnapped and tortured, but she wouldn’t have cried at his funeral if he hadn’t survived.

“Anyway,” Brynn continued, “if Dante was in the Middle East all this time, then it wasn’t him who called me. Even if he had the signal rerouted to hide his real location, wouldn’t he have made it look like it came from his office in DC or his official address in Virginia? Why point anyone toward a residence whose location he doesn’t want to make common knowledge?”

Sean headed toward the closet. “He wouldn’t. Only a handful of CIA people know the location of his chateau. It’s a private retreat, a place Macy owned before they got married. And that worries me.”

“Why?”

“Because Macy is T-45.”

Brynn didn’t bother to hide her surprise, but it only lasted for a split second. Her father had been T-45, and her mother had died because of his connections. While Sean was sure the rogue agency had done some good in the world, in his estimation, they’d done just as much to advance the cause of evil. They had, after all, employed Jayda, even after they’d known about her fucked-up childhood. She’d been a highly effective assassin, but every kill had cost her a tiny piece of her soul.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Brynn said.

“You and me both, sister. I think it’s time we head to France.”

“You know the location of the chateau?”

Sean flung open the closet doors and pawed through the hanging garments until he found a well-worn brown leather jacket that looked to be about his size. “I was best man at their wedding, so I’m one of the few people who knows how to get there and, even more importantly, how to bypass the security once we’re on the grounds. Hey, I thought you said this house used to be owned by a woman?”

Brynn helped him remove the coat from the hanger so he could try it on. “Luckily for both of us, she wasn’t an ordinary woman.”

Two months ago, the fit would have been snug, but even with his renewed workout schedule, Sean had lost just enough muscle mass for it to fit like a glove. “You realize that when we add all of this up—the bug, the surveillance, the wonky communications—we get a compromised mission. You’re not beholden to Dante anymore.”

“I know,” Brynn replied, holding tight to the sides of his jacket so that he was certain her hands would carry the imprint of the zipper. “But I think I would have switched allegiance, anyway. You have a right to know who took you and why. You have a right to know if the woman you once loved is still alive.”

Her voice tripped a little over the last part but not enough so that anyone else would have noticed. It scared the shit out of Sean that he was so in tune with Brynn after so short a time, but when a woman saved your life, nursed you back to health and then enhanced your recovery with lovemaking that took into account your every ache and pain, a bond formed.

One that wouldn’t be easily broken, though Sean was pretty sure he’d do a fine job of fucking it up at some point—some point soon. But hopefully, not before she helped him get the hell out of here.

Well aware of covert operation protocols, Sean could all but guarantee that in addition to the ill-placed listening devices and high-powered binoculars, whoever was watching them was likely employing heat-sensitive spyware to track their movements through the villa walls. Once they both dressed in layers of clothes that would protect them from the chillier temperatures in France and threw a couple of essentials into lightweight go-bags, he adjusted the stereo to an acoustic guitar recording and danced Brynn from the bedrooms toward the center of the house.

He made sure the music was blaring outside, too. If their watchers thought they were enjoying just another romantic evening together, they might win the few seconds of surprise that they needed to get away without a fight.

“This is ridiculous,” she said as Sean twirled her around her bedroom to the strains of a particularly sensual salsa.

Holding her in his arms, he was keenly aware of Brynn’s increasing impatience. The open, adventurous, free lover he’d known hours ago was now out of his reach, closeted behind the efficient, slightly cool professional he’d first met.

“I’ve done worse things than dance while plotting an escape,” he confessed.

His lighthearted response fell flat. She didn’t resist when he gave her a gentle push away from him and then reeled her back into his arms, but she did skewer him with cynical eyes. “We don’t know for sure that they’re watching us with thermal imaging.”

He tugged her a little closer, aware that the longer she had to stew with the knowledge that she’d been duped, the angrier she would become. She’d risked her life for a lie—and now she was doing it again for a lover she barely knew.

“Trust me, they’re watching. The minute we make a break for it, they’re going to swarm this house like mosquitoes on a hot summer night.”

She smirked and her eyes twinkled with a wicked glint that sent a rush of heat straight to his groin. “You don’t think it will be that easy to get in here, do you? Or out, for that matter. You never actually tried to escape, you know.”

To punish her sauciness—and prove he had more up his sleeve than she expected—he pulled her against him and executed three tight turns in time with the bolero beat. Centrifugal forces pressed their bodies even closer together. When he stopped, he took advantage of her disorientation and kissed her.

He expected resistance, but again, she surprised him. She grabbed the sides of his face and deepened the kiss until he was the one with a tentative hold on his equilibrium.

“So,” he said, pulling away before he lost sight of their plan to leave now while it was dark and their watchers thought they were headed toward the bedroom rather than an exit. “We’re packed and packing.” He shoved her to his left so that the holsters they’d strapped on underneath their jackets nearly collided. “But the driveway leads to the only road off this hill, and chances are, they’re down there, waiting for me to make a break.”

Her lips pressed tightly together. “They’re not expecting both of us. Besides, we’re not going to drive down the hill. For one, we don’t have a car. For another, I’d like to avoid a confrontation on the off chance those guys are working for Dante and were only supposed to provide me backup in case you gave me any trouble.”

Sean couldn’t contain a grin. “I guess they really suck at their jobs.”

She rolled her eyes. “You
were
planning an escape.”

“And you very effectively stopped me by offering me your amazing body instead. Dante should recruit you.”

“Who says he hasn’t tried?” she responded, shifting the lead out of his control so that they danced across the main living space of the house. “But Dante is not our immediate problem. This house was left to me by someone I cared about, and I don’t want it shot up full of holes. So you keep that gun holstered unless we’re immediately threatened, understood?”

“You’re no fun,” he mock complained, though he’d also hoped to avoid gunplay or fights if possible. He wasn’t one hundred percent recovered, and though Brynn had a mean roundhouse kick, she wasn’t a trained covert operative. Unlike most of the female spies he knew, Brynn had mainstream standards and morals—possibly even a code of behavior that reached beyond doing whatever it took to get a job done.

Yet another aspect of her personality that made them incompatible.

The song they’d been dancing to ended. Brynn slipped out of his arms. “Are you sure you’re up to this? We could stay here until you’re stronger. With more time, we can figure out what’s really going on. Face things directly.”

He shook his head. “This world doesn’t work that way. You know it doesn’t. If we want the truth, we have to go in sideways. Trust me.”

“Why should I? You’re leaving to look for another woman. A woman who not only hurt you but who was responsible for your pain.”

“I never said—”

She flattened her palm over his mouth. “You didn’t have to say anything. I know what you went through. I changed your bandages and worried about every single wound. You may be willing to go through all of that again to find out if she’s alive, but what if I’m not? And what if you do find her and then leave me to clean up the mess? You’re all charm and sex appeal now, Sean, but I’m not a fool. I know what you’re capable of.”

Did she? Did she really? He doubted it. If she truly comprehended how far he was willing to go to get the information he wanted, she’d run so fast in the other direction even a hungry jaguar couldn’t catch up to her.

Up until this moment, Sean Devlin thought he knew everything he needed to know about himself. He knew he could love. He knew he could hate. He knew he could kill and live with no regrets. But was he truly capable of sacrificing Brynn for the ghost of a woman who’d left him behind and who might not even exist anymore?

He supposed he was about to find out.

Eleven

Brynn understood that Sean meant to alleviate her misgivings, but the admission that he’d leave her to pursue a woman who’d let him believe she was dead cut through her heart like a scalpel.

It shouldn’t have hurt. They were nothing to each other. So what if she’d saved his life? So what if they’d become lovers? Ultimately, they were players in a game of intrigue that neither of them could win if they didn’t get out of the villa undetected.

As Dante had not responded to her multiple attempts at communication, Brynn had no reason to trust that the people watching them were under his control. Until she knew otherwise, she was going to take Sean at his word and act on the information they had rather than on blind loyalty to a man she hadn’t seen in years. Dante had failed to contact her. For all she knew, he’d been neutralized. The wisest course of action was for Sean to fall further off the grid—and for her to go with him.